Max Performance MasterCourse

Twenty-two lessons · recorded 2016 · restored from the original archive

“You Are Good at the Thing. You Are Bad at the Conversation Where Somebody Pays You For It.”

You are not short on ability. You are short on a filter. This is the sales process William Wood uses in his own coaching practice — the one that lets him turn people away. Twenty-two lessons, restored, $149.

“You may not even be able to stay dedicated in your passion because the piggy bank is empty. You shake it and there’s no coins.”

That is my brother Will describing the person this was built for, and if it landed, you already know the shape of it. You are not short on ability. You are short on the conversation in the middle where a person decides whether to hand you money. And the standard advice for that conversation — be more persuasive, handle the objection, follow up harder — has made it worse, because it is aimed at the wrong problem.

Will got the idea from a mud puddle

Alaska, 1993, eighteen years old, above the timberline with a fifty-pound pack, one day of water and unseasonable heat. The streams were dry. His friend Brad pulled out a small blue carbon-filter straw and drank straight out of a puddle with mosquito larvae in it — and did not get sick, because everything went through the filter first.

That is the whole thesis of the sales half of this course, and he makes the room chant it back at him with a hand in the air:

“Filter first, persuade second.”

Before any pitch, four questions decide whether the conversation should happen at all. His own recap, verbatim: “These four questions and there’s others, but these will serve most of you out there. Do they want it? Do they need it? Can they afford it? Does it already fit into their general plans and can they actually make a decision? That will keep you from getting skeeters in your teeth and from sucking up mud. So don’t drink out of mud puddles.”

Miss those and you spend your week persuading people who were never going to buy, and conclude that you are bad at selling. You are not bad at selling. You are unfiltered.

Will is blunt about what the unfiltered week costs you, and it is not the commission: “There are people who should not do business with you. Shouldn’t do it. Even if you think you should. You will make your life miserable. You will want to exit the field. You will lose your passion if you try to help the wrong people succeed.” And a few minutes later: “there is no quicker passion killer than finding somebody who hates what you do.”

Then the part almost nobody teaches: what your body is doing

The closing session is the most unusual thing here, because it is not theory. He brings volunteers up and tests one variable at a time, live, and lets the room watch which ones land:

• Gestures. Pointing reads as accusation. Poking reads exactly as badly as it sounds. The palm-out push reads as condescension. The open palm won — the volunteer’s own words: “That’s like you’re inviting me into your world.”
• Three tonalities. Rising turns your recommendation into a question. Dropping becomes a command some people refuse on principle. He teaches the level tone and shows you why.
• The hold-and-wait drill. After you ask, you hold your posture and stay quiet until they answer — against a ten-second timer, which he tells the volunteer to make “uncomfortably long.” “They’re sizing you up going, is he serious? And if you just hold and you’re calm, they’ll go — hmm, he’s serious.”

The connective tissue: hot words — the words a person emphasises with voice or body — fed back verbatim, never paraphrased, then followed with “why is that important to you?” until their state changes. Only then do you link what they said to what you sell. His hard rule: you do not make the link until you have the motivation.

His own numbers, in his own words

Will started selling knives door to door at eighteen. Here is what he says on the recording about the distance between then and 2016. I am quoting rather than summarising, because a vaguer version would be a version you would be right not to believe:

“What I’m going to share with you… is literally a formula that’s taken me like 20 years to learn, and I’ve gone now from having one out of ten people say yes to today where nine out of ten people come into my office… for my services, for my passion… people say yes over and over and over again. Almost everybody. In fact, today I turn away as many people as people say no.”

Read what that actually says, because he is precise about it: nine out of ten of the people who make it into his office. They have already been through the filter. It is a close rate on qualified people, not a promise about anybody’s income, least of all yours. That is his account of his own coaching practice in 2016 — see the income disclaimer.

What is different afterwards

The change is not that you get better at pushing. It is that you stop walking into conversations you already know are wrong, and it shows up as things you stop doing. Will describes his own week without dressing it up: “If they’re actually not a good fit, I don’t want them as a client. I will refer them out about two or three times a month.” He says it out loud to the prospect, on purpose, before anything else happens: “I only take the right kind of client… so if you aren’t a good fit for me, I will actually turn you away, and that’s for your sake, as much as it is for mine.” His note on why that beats enthusiasm: “needy is creepy. It is not attractive in dating, and it is not attractive in a business.”

Day to day, the difference he names is not confidence and it is not closing. It is smaller and more specific:

“you’ll walk away at the end of the day going, I love what I do. If you’re walking away at the end of the day going, oh, I don’t want to go back tomorrow — something you’re doing, it’s something you’re doing, and you can change it.”

Underneath it is the reason he teaches selling at all. In 2005 he had a good job at a good company and a daily headache that got worse until, in his words, “I felt my IQ dropping… the only reason I could really think of… is that I really wasn’t doing what I knew I was built to do. I had disconnected from my own passion.” So:

“Why do we do it? We do it because ultimately we want to help people for a living. We want to unleash our passion. We want to do the thing that will change the world. But until we learn to invite people into our world in a way that they want to come and not in a way that they resist, will they actually show up?”

That is what the money is for in this course. It is the thing that lets you keep doing the work you are built for. Nobody here is going to tell you how much of it there will be.

What comes with it

• Seventeen video sessions — the big idea, defining the ideal client, packaging, pricing and the value ladder, social media, networking and referral networks, and the six sessions that build the sales process end to end.
• Twenty workbooks and study guides as downloadable PDFs, yours to print and keep. Full transcripts and audio on every recorded session.
• Seven guest experts across nine of the sessions — Rich Schefren on finding clients through unresolved conflict; Therese Skelly twice, on packaging and then on pricing and the value ladder; Adam Urbanski on market, media and message; Farzana Jaffer Jeraj on social media without automation; Stephen Michael Miller on listening longer than is comfortable; Shante Schroeder twice, on keyword research and then on ranking and content; and Stacey and Lisa on getting yourself onto local television.
• A session from me on what to actually do in your first ninety days — which starts with not building a website.

Who should not buy this

A course whose first instruction is filter first ought to be willing to filter its own buyer. So: if what you want is language that gets a reluctant person to yes, this is the wrong purchase and you will resent it. Six of these sessions are about deciding not to have the conversation at all. Will’s position is that persuading someone with no want or need is not a skill problem but a thing you should refuse to do: “if they don’t have a want or a need, I think it is your ethical responsibility to turn them down.”

It is also a 2016 recording and it shows. The social platforms named have moved on and the keyword tool has been renamed twice since. The four filter questions have not moved, because they are about people, and people did not get a software update.

The price, and why it is this number

It sold for $297 in 2016 — Will says the number out loud on the recording. It is $149 now, and the reason is not that the teaching got worse.

The teaching did not depreciate. The tape did. Forty-eight lessons across this archive had to be pulled off dying storage, transferred, transcribed word for word and indexed before any of it could be sold again; on this course alone that is seventeen video sessions and twenty workbook PDFs recovered intact. You are not buying a course that was made. You are buying one that was found. That restoration is the cost being recovered, and it is the only honest reason the number is what it is.

One payment, never rebills, lifetime access, and the twenty workbooks are yours whatever happens next. It holds at $149 through the relaunch year. All three restored Will Wood courses together are $297. Thirty days, full refund, no questions asked — one email returns every dollar, and nobody is going to ask you whether you finished it.

If you have ever finished a conversation knowing you had helped the person and still walked away unpaid, this is the missing part of it — and the button below buys all twenty-two lessons for $149.

In Prosperity,
David Wood

P.S. The filtering session comes before the persuasion sessions on purpose. Most sales training has that order backwards, which is why most sales training makes people tired. If you want to test whether Will is worth $149 before you spend it, the open session is the first one — the one where he explains why he started teaching this at all, headaches and corporate job included.

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