MC01 – Masters Course Introduction
You’re sitting in the audience at an event, looking at a leader on stage, and one question is quietly eating you alive: he’s a normal guy. He’s got a wife and kids. He’s got some country in him. He’s just like me. So why is this working for him and not for me?
That question, and what it does to people who never answer it, is where the Classic Masters Course begins. This is the opening session of the first Masters Retreat in Costa Rica, and before Dave Wood takes the stage, his partner sets the frame for the entire weekend: what the course is for, what it deliberately is not, and why the thing holding most people back isn’t a missing tactic. It’s a thing they can’t name yet.
Why does comparing yourself to leaders always end with you beating yourself up?
Here’s an observation from the front of the room that most attendees never hear said out loud: at almost any event in this industry, about ninety percent of the people in the seats are at the beginner stage of their business. Not some of them. The overwhelming majority. And when you’re at the beginning stage, you fall into a very specific trap. You look at someone like Tony Rush, a normal guy with a beautiful wife and kids, living in Dothan, Alabama, and you compare what you can see of him against everything you know about yourself. He looks ordinary. So if he can do it and you can’t, the problem must be you. And then you start beating yourself up.
The session compares this to something much bigger than business. Think about someone who has dealt with an emotional weight their entire life without being able to put a label on it. It wears on them for years. Then one day they sit down with a counselor or a friend, describe what they’re dealing with, and hear: you know what that is? That’s just anger. And here’s what I did to get past it. In that moment, a thing they’ve fought blind for decades becomes a thing with a name, and once you know what something is, you can overcome it.
That’s the actual purpose of this course. Not another how-to. The stated goal for the weekend is to help you identify exactly where you are in your business, put a label on it, and get okay with it, because wherever you are is exactly where you’re supposed to be. Every leader in that room started at the same place. The biggest problem with people in this industry is that they try to skip the stages everyone has to go through, and you can’t overcome a stage you won’t even admit you’re in.
Why isn’t this course going to teach you how to blog?
This gets said plainly in the first session: this is a high-level course. Nobody is coming up to show you how to blog. Nobody is walking you through PPC. Because that’s the easy part. If your reaction to that is “no way, that can’t be the easy part,” the whole weekend is structured to prove it to you, with specific examples from every person who takes the stage. The mechanics of marketing are learnable by anyone. What separates people isn’t the mechanics. It’s everything underneath them.
There’s a warning attached to this, and it might be the single most useful sentence in the session. Everybody looks at the people producing big results and asks, what are they doing? Then they run off and copy what those leaders are doing right now.
And you know what? If you don’t do what they did in the 90 days before to get there, you’re going to be spinning your wheels for the next five years.
The leader you’re watching on stage built the platform they’re standing on during a stretch of unglamorous work you never saw. Copying their current activity without doing their earlier activity is how people stay busy and stuck at the same time. The course is going to teach the higher-level material too, mastering systems, building culture, the things you’ll need later. But it starts at ground zero on purpose, because the secret everyone is hunting for is worthless without the stage-by-stage work that gets you to where the secret applies.
What does an eight-hour cab ride have to do with your marketing?
One attendee, Michael Thompson, flew in from Australia. Somewhere in booking, something went wrong, and he landed about eight hours south of where the retreat was actually happening. He walked out to a cab driver who quoted him a thousand dollars to get where he needed to go. Being a marketer, he negotiated the man down to four hundred, then spent eight hours being driven through Costa Rica in a Hyundai at 140 miles an hour, not knowing whether he’d arrive fast or not arrive at all. But one way or another, he was going to do whatever it took to get in the room.
Now here’s the teaching point, because the story isn’t told for laughs. That is a message Michael can use. In his sales copy, in his videos, in a one-on-one conversation, that story communicates commitment in a way no list of features ever will. Whether you’re presenting to one person or to a room of five thousand, nothing sells like a good story. So the assignment given to the whole room applies just as much to you: be aware of what’s happening around you. Things are occurring in your life right now that belong in your marketing, and most people let them evaporate because they weren’t paying attention. You need to start developing your story, your marketing, and your brand, and your story is being written whether you’re collecting it or not.
What can one decision set in motion?
The session closes with a story about a decision that almost didn’t happen. A year and a half before this retreat, Dave Wood put on an intensive in Costa Rica, a three-thousand-dollar retreat for his list and customers, and invited a handful of marketers down personally. Not everybody came. And the reasons people didn’t come had nothing to do with logistics. When we’re invited to something, we start projecting, telling ourselves in advance how it’s going to go, and we talk ourselves out of it. His partner nearly did exactly that. It wasn’t a money issue for him. It was an internal decision he almost didn’t make.
He made it. He went. And at that retreat, people connected, started throwing ideas around, one idea got built on another, and six months later Empower Network launched. What would have happened if he’d stayed home? He has no idea. What he knows is that everything the audience was sitting in that night traces back to one almost-skipped decision.
The point isn’t the launch. The point is what he says next: sitting in your seat right now, you have no idea where you’ll be a year from now, and whenever we have a plan, it’s only about half as good as what’s actually possible. He and his partners were big dreamers with a real vision, and even their vision wasn’t as big as what happened. Your potential is further out than your imagination reaches, but the responsibility and the choice sit with you. You’re here. Now what are you going to do with it?
What should you actually do with this lesson?
Three things, and they’re all doable this week:
- Stop comparing your inside experience against a leader’s outside appearance. It’s a rigged comparison, and it produces nothing but self-attack.
- Name your stage. Write down, in one honest sentence, where you actually are in your business right now, and let yourself be okay with it. It’s not forever. Everyone you admire stood exactly there.
- Start collecting your story. Keep a running note of what you’re going through as you build, the struggles included, because that raw material is what will eventually move people over the edge for you.
This is the opening session of the Classic Masters Course, and the sessions that follow break down each stage of business in detail, with leaders walking through exactly what they did in each one. If you’re new to it, the entire Classic Masters Course, this lesson included, is available for $99 at the Classic Masters Course.
Before you watch anything else, do the one-sentence exercise. Name the stage you’re in, on paper, today. You can’t move through what you won’t label.
Full lesson transcript
Lightly edited from the original recording — fillers removed, nothing added. Income disclaimer.
The Costa Rica intensive where I got the bug stuck in my throat. And I literally had to stop talking because it was. And any time I want to laugh, the last time we were down in Costa Rica doing one of these things, I remember sitting in the seat, kind of in one of these seats, looking at Dave as he was teaching. And he was kind of talking. And, I mean, it was almost like it happened in slow motion.
It was not a bat, but it was the size of a bat. And it kind of flew in. And it was like, boom, right to the side of his head. And it almost knocked him over. Do you remember that, Lawrence?
I mean, he did one of these things. He was like, you know, he was in his thing, kind of doing his thing. And then this is what he did. It almost knocked him over. It was so big.
It was hilarious. So, anyways, guys, welcome. You know, what we're going to do this weekend is just going to be a big deal for a lot of you. And what we're going to do tonight is we're going to go over. Kind of the plan for this particular course and for this retreat.
We want, we have an outline. We have a loose outline. We're going to go over that outline tonight and kind of break it down a little bit on the whiteboard for you guys. So you can not only get an intent for yourself, okay, but also so you realize what our goal is for you. And then not only, you know, can you really get a good understanding of why we want to do things the way that we're going to do them, but also you can make goals for yourself.
And I think a lot of things are going to become super clear to you why we're doing things the way that we're doing them. Okay? Our real goal here, and we, again, we, tonight what we want to do is we kind of just want to do an intro. And we want to just plan things out so you kind of know what to expect, but still, you know, not plan them to where you know exactly what's going to happen because then that takes all the fun out of it. But to kind of give you a loose format so you can kind of see, okay, this is what we're going to be doing in this particular part of the course.
And this is what we're going to be doing in this particular part of the course. And here's where I'm at right now. And I see so many faces out here of people who, you know, of, you know, Peter and just all these different people, you know, who are, I feel that this weekend is going to give you guys what you need to take it to the next level. Seriously. We can do, we can do, only do so much at the big events, right?
Because we can't really connect with you. And what I want to say for those who are watching this, because remember, this is also being recorded. And those of you who are here are going to have the opportunity to be able to launch this with us, is that, you know, the power of being at these events, right, is not only what happens in here, but also what happens out there. And we're going to make sure that we take enough time to hang out and to kind of just get to know each other, that's where a lot of your breakthroughs are going to happen also. So if you're watching this and also thinking, for those of you who are here, this is not the last one.
This is just the first master's retreat. So what you're seeing on camera here, just as far as in the course, is just a smidgen, right, of what you can get by being here. And we're going to bring people up throughout the day and throughout the various, throughout all of the days, and kind of get their experience of what they've encountered here. But let me talk about the intent for a little bit, and then I'm going to bring Dave up, and he's going to break things down. We're going to break things down a little bit more, and then we'll go from there.
Again, we'll keep it somewhat short tonight just to kind of give you guys an outline and a breakdown of what we have planned. But here's what I can tell you is that 90, usually at any event, okay, 90% of people in an event are kind of at a specific stage. And what stage is that? Does anybody know? Beginner.
Peter says beginner, right? So it's at, and I'll give you proof of this. I've done a couple of events. I was here recently, and the cool thing about Empower is that I was bringing people up who were making money in their first couple of weeks or months, which usually doesn't happen. But pretty much every event, the majority of the people are at the first stage of their business.
The problem with that is, is that a lot of times when you're at the beginning stage of your business, you're comparing your outsides to other people's insides. Here's what I mean by that. Here's what I mean by that. Is that I'm looking at Tony. And I'm looking at myself, and I'm saying, you know, not that he's not a sexy beast, right?
Because, I mean, he is. The guy is just pure badass. And we all know that. You know what I'm saying? But, I mean, I'm looking at Tony, and I'm going, he's a normal guy.
He's got a beautiful wife. He's got kids. He lives in, I think, Dothan, Alabama. He's got some country in him, right? That's why we love him, because he's Tony Rush, right?
But we look at him, and we say, why is this not working for me? He's a normal, he's just like me. Why is this not happening? And then what do we start to do? Beat ourselves up, right?
It's kind of like dealing with something our entire life, whether that be some sort of an emotional disconnect. And because we can't put a label on it, what do we do? We beat ourselves up. And then we sit down with somebody. Whether it be a counselor, a friend, or somebody that just gives us experience, and we talk about what we're dealing with, and they say, you know what that is, Tracy?
It's just anger. And here's what I did to be able to get over that. So now what Tracy did was she took something that she's dealt with her entire life, that's given her all kinds of different issues, and she said, now I know what it is. And when you know what something is, then you're able to overcome it. Okay?
So a lot of you, and I've noticed this just from talking to a lot of you in the last couple of days, okay? John, we were talking about some things last night, right? And a lot of times we're struggling with things, but we don't know what it is. We don't know what to call it. I bow.
Everybody, I'm just seeing different faces as I'm looking up in the audience. So we don't know what to call it. Yeah. Guess not. So what does it do?
It starts to wear on us. So what we want to do for you guys this weekend is we want to help you not only identify where you're at in your business, identify it, put a label on it. This is where I'm at in my business. I'm in this particular stage. I'm in this phase.
And realize that wherever you're at is exactly where you're supposed to be and get you to be okay with that. And realize that every single person, whether it be Tony Rush, Aaron Sophia, Trey, it doesn't matter. We all. We all started at the same place and the biggest problem with people inside of this industry is that they try to avoid particular stages that they have to go through in order to be successful. Yes or no?
Yes. So what we want to do this weekend is we want to help you guys identify exactly not only some emotional stuff that's going on and some mental stuff because I'm going to tell you right now you hear that and the majority of the people don't know how to help you break through that stuff. You hear that and you hear it so often because it's true. So we're not only going to help you identify some of that stuff in here and out there, but we're also going to help you identify particular things inside of your business. So in this particular course, this is a little bit more of a high level course, okay?
It's not going to be your how to's. We're not going to get somebody up here who's going to show you how to blog. We're not going to get somebody who's up here who's going to show you how to do PPC because I'm going to tell you what, that's the easy part of this. Some of you say, no way, Dave. Can't be.
I'm telling you that it is. And every single person who we bring up, me included, this weekend is going to prove that to you and we're going to give you specific examples. Those of you who know who I am, okay, and know my story, know some of the places that I came from, okay? And hanging out with me and seeing me in person along with a lot of the other leaders that you've heard their stories will allow you to kind of really let the things that we've been saying on conference calls and webinars sink in and really allow you to believe it. And I'm going to tell you something that what you're going to experience here over this weekend is you're going to experience something that you've never experienced before.
Okay? You know, I thought you walked on water. I thought you shot lasers from your eyes. You know, I thought that you kind of slept on a cloud up about 30,000 feet in the air. But now I realize you're just a completely real person and hanging out with you gave me that breakthrough.
We've already heard stories, guys. We've already heard stories. And this is going to be one of my big messages for you this weekend. We've already heard stories of people who have done things just to get here that is part of their story that they can use to go out. And I'm telling you what, make 10,000 this month.
I had a guy, I don't particularly know where he is, Michael Thompson. Okay. So what Michael did was he is from down under, right, Australia. And so when he was talking, making his airplane reservations, he must have told the person or they must have heard him. They must have heard that he wanted to go down under Costa Rica, right, because they took him about eight hours south.
And he landed down there and he said, basically, where the hell am I? And they said, well, you're about eight hours south of where you're trying to go. And so he went out to a cab driver and the cab driver said, it's going to be 1,000 to get you where you need to go. Now, he's a schemer and a fellow marketer, so he didn't settle for that. He sat there and negotiated with the guy, right, got him down to $400.
But he drove eight hours because he was going to do whatever it took for him to get here. And he drove eight hours. Actually, he didn't drive. Somebody drove him in a Hyundai at 140 miles an hour, right, Michael? And he didn't know if he was going to get here fast or not get here at all.
But one way or another, he was going to do whatever it took to get on the path that he needed to go. Now, does that sound like a message to anybody that he could use? No. It doesn't sound like a message to anybody that he could use in his sales message to inspire some people and then of course take what he learned this weekend and make an impact on somebody, yes or no? Yes.
But give him a hand. So one thing that I want you guys to be super aware of this weekend is be aware of what's going on around you. Be aware of what's happening. Be aware of things that you can use in your marketing because the difference between somebody who is—we're going to teach you what it takes to go from zero to 10,000. a lot of these guys and girls who are doing 20, 30, 40, and 50,000.
We're going to break down, Dave and I, a lot of what we've done with Empowered. It's, I think, going to open up your eyes a little bit or a lot to really what makes the big difference, but you guys need to start developing your story, your marketing, and your brand. I don't mean you need to develop your brand so you can go out there and do things that you don't need to do right now, but damn it, I'm going to tell you what sells more than anything, whether it's in a one-on-one presentation or whether it's to a group of 5,000 is a good story. Don't be surprised if we tell a couple of stories this weekend, just like I did with Michael, because that's what moves people over the edge. It goes back to what I said in the beginning, which was essentially, we're going to be doing things a little bit differently here throughout this course.
Our real goal here is to really kind of connect the dots with each other. for you and help you connect the dots, because a lot of you are doing things that you don't need to do, but more importantly, you're doing things. Let me rephrase that. You're avoiding doing things that you have to do. You just have to do it to get to the next level.
You're avoiding the important stuff. My goal, and everybody else's goal, and we've met and we've talked about this before, is to help you identify it, help you put a label on it, help you realize that's what that is, and then what's next? Embrace it. Embrace it. Now, are we going to tell you to go home and make 100 cold calls and prospect all day?
Yes or no? Thank you. You already know that. We've got that down pat, right? What we are going to do is we're going to tell you, look, this is where you're at in your business.
I think it's going to be so evident to you that we're not even going to need to tell you. It's going to be so clear. When we start going through a lot of these phases of where you're at in your business, it's going to be so evident to you. Your eyes are going to open up and you're going to say, damn it, that's where I'm at. That's what it is.
When you can see that, you're then going to be able to see light at the end of the tunnel because you're going to realize that it's not forever. You don't have to do it forever, but we all did it. We all did very specific things to be able to get to where we're at. All of us, Chris Darby, Marty did it. Lawrence did it.
Peter, you did it. You did it, Aki. Tony did it. All of the leaders and anybody who's ever done anything inside of this industry did specific things. Now, here's what I want to also tell you is that throughout this weekend, we're going to be talking about also some higher level stuff.
We're going to be talking about really mastering specific things. We're going to be talking about how to master systems. We're going to be talking about how to master systems. This is the most important thing. This is the most important thing.
It's an elite course and product that we offer here at Empower Network. That's what it's going to be. We're going to teach you things that you don't even need yet, but when you need them, you'll have them. We're going to teach you, when you're ready, how to create a system. We're going to teach you, when you're ready, how to create culture.
If we've got anything here at Empower, we've got culture, guys. We like to call it cult building, but we'll just call it culture for those of you who are a little, you know, in You who are a little taken back by that word. But we're going to teach you all of those things. But again, guys, we've got to start at ground zero. Because here's the problem.
And here's why I'm framing this a little bit differently for you guys. Instead of just coming in and rah-rah-ing and telling you that we're going to teach you the secrets of the universe. We are going to teach you that. Don't worry. But at the same time, a lot of times, everybody's looking for the big secret, right?
And missing what they need to do to get there. Okay, that's the missing part of the puzzle for the majority of you, okay? And again, we see big things happening around us. We see huge incomes. And we say, what are they doing?
And then we want to go and do what they do. And you know what? If you don't do what they did in the 90 days before to get there, you're going to be spinning your wheels for the next five years. Okay? So if you can get in.
Does that make sense to everybody? Yes or no? It does make sense. He's excited. Give him a round of applause.
So, so far, guys, so far, my message is not only simplicity, but also the breakthroughs are going to come through that simplicity. Okay? Through keeping it simple. And hopefully this weekend, my goal and everybody else's goal is to communicate what we have to say to you in a simple way that you understand. And then also, we want to give you the ability to help you process anything that you don't understand.
Who's pumped? Good. Because I am pumped for you. And I'm telling you guys, this is just the beginning, what we've got planned. You know, for here in the, in not only the very near future, but also in the next six to 12 months, Heriton Power is big.
You know, it's, it's big. And we'll probably be talking about some of that stuff. We're not going to talk about it specifically right now, because, you know, want to keep a little of the, you know, mystique going. But, you know, we're going to be talking about it. We're going to be talking about it.
We're going to be talking about it. But we are going to let you guys in and kind of paint a picture for you. For those of you, now everybody who's going to be watching this course is not going to want to, you know, not going to want to hear all just about Empower. These are going to be skills and principles that you can basically use on anything that you do, that you're doing. But a lot of people are going to want to learn about it.
And a lot of people are going to obviously be applying them to Empower. So, with that being said, guys, I'm telling you what. There's nothing that I enjoy more. And I didn't realize that I enjoyed this at first when I got started inside of this industry is getting with people and going, and that almost even sounded bad, didn't it? Just getting with people.
But a few of the people caught that. Aaron's not going to say anything because we had an inside joke going on. But listen, guys. Going to these events is something that you, I'm telling you, you can't put a price tag on it. You know, just being here and, you know, being belly to belly and just coming out and networking and laughing and being able to, you know, put, you know, just see something tangible.
Because so many times inside of this business, we're dealing with the things that, you know, we're dealing with life, right? And I'm just sharing from you from my perspective is that we're dealing with life. You know, when I got started inside of this industry, it was an absolute grind, you know. And I had life coming at me from every single different direction. And not only had I just gotten clean a couple of years ago and I was learning how to not only be a, just a productive member of society, right?
But, and that's just my story, you know. But then I had the entrepreneurial spirit that I had realized that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And, you know, I sat back behind the scenes kind of, you know, in my house hunched over, neck hurting, back killing me for a long time. And Lawrence, you know, he can identify with that because I know you did the same thing. And it wasn't until we busted out of our shell, right?
And I just want to tell you guys a little story just to kind of give you a perspective of the power of coming out here and what could happen. It was a year and a half ago. And, you know, Dave put on the Costa Rica Intensive. He was doing that for his list and some of his customers. And that was a $3,000 retreat that he sold for people.
And he invited a couple of people down. He invited myself. He invited Lawrence. He invited Ola and Shola, a couple of other marketers down. And not everybody came, right?
Not everybody came. And Dave can vouch for this. Not everybody came to that event. What were some of the reasons why I almost didn't come and maybe other people didn't come? We were talking about this last night.
Well, so many times somebody will invite us to do something and we start projecting and we start, you know, telling ourselves what we think is going to happen. And usually we talk about this last night. I was talking about having a conversation last night with somebody as well about this. Usually when we are invited somewhere to go somewhere and we almost don't go but then do go, we have the absolute best time, whether it's going out to dinner, whether it's going on a date, or whether it's going to an event. And, you know, it wasn't a money issue for me back then because I had built a huge team and then the company went down and I was just like, you know, I had a little resentment against network marketing at that time and I was selling my own stuff.
I was just selling, you know, I was getting 100% commissions, damn it. That's what I was getting. But, you know, it wasn't a money thing. It was an internal decision that I almost didn't make to go down there. And I know a lot of you in the audience and even some of you who are watching who may be considering doing something here in the near future are struggling with that same decision.
I had a couple of people who somehow got a hold of me last minute and said I made a decision and I want to come down there. And for some of them it was too late. I almost didn't go down to that retreat. But I made a decision and I went. So did Lawrence.
So I want you guys to think about that for a second and think about what can happen in a year, a year and a half and how fast things can happen when you make a decision. So I went down there and we connected, started throwing ideas around. And one idea was built upon that was built upon another idea that was built upon. And before you knew it, six months later, Empower Network launched. And what would have happened if I didn't go down to that retreat?
I have no idea. But I can tell you that I'm damn sure thankful that I did go to that retreat because out of that retreat, this idea, what it is today, was born. And that's why we're all sitting here today. So I go around and I talk and I speak. And a lot of times it's not always about the money.
I come sometimes from a little bit different of an angle. But what I want to give you the perspective of before I turn it over to Dave is that anything is possible. And I'm telling you that sometimes we hear that and it sounds so cliché. But anything is possible. And right now, sitting in the seat, you have no idea where you're going to be a year from now.
No idea. And usually, whenever we have a plan, it's only half as good as it can possibly be. No clue because I couldn't rub two quarters together and make 50 damn cents. So that's four and a half years. And then a year and a half ago, I would have, Lawrence, we had a vision.
We were talking about some plans and some ideas. But it wasn't this big. And we're big dreamers. We really, we are big visionary people. And I'm telling you, we didn't, our dream, it was big but this is amazing.
Right? So as you're sitting here in the seat right now, what's possible and your potential is so far beyond what you can even imagine. And I'm not telling you that because I'm blowing smoke up your ass because it just sounds good. I'm telling you that from a place of passion, from a place from my heart because I'm living proof. And every single person in this room has the opportunity to experience the same thing or maybe even something different.
But the responsibility and the choice lies with you. You're here. Now what are you going to do with it? You're here. What's next?
You're here. We're going to give you the tools that you need to make it happen. And then we're probably going to tell you to don't be a wussy and get out there and kick some ass. Because that's what we do. And that's why we do what we do.
Because it's damn sure time that we all stand up, take responsibility, and go out there and make something happen instead of waiting for something to happen and come to us. And guys, that's why we do what we do. So, with that being said, guys, I'm going to turn it over to a guy who's changed my life, right? One of my best friends in the entire world, the man, the myth, the legend. People, you know, somebody that you love and somebody who works his ass off for me and you every single day and who's just a badass man, Dave Wood.
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