Using Your Story for Sales: Turn the Chip on Your Shoulder Into Your Closing Argument
Someone across the table already doubts you. Maybe it’s a spouse watching you build this from a laptop at the kitchen counter, maybe it’s a prospect on the phone who’s heard three pitches this month already. You reach for the comp plan, the product facts, the compensation chart with the arrows on it. It doesn’t land. Not because the numbers are wrong. Because the person in front of you isn’t checking your math. They’re checking whether you actually believe this, and the comp plan can’t answer that question for you.
That’s the entire subject of this lesson from the Classic Masters Course. Not a script. Not a closing technique. Your own story, specifically the part you’d normally leave out of a pitch, used on purpose, both to keep you in the game on the nights it gets hard and to close the person sitting across from you.
As someone building this from a kitchen counter or a car between shifts, you already know what it feels like to sit on the fence, one foot in belief and one foot in doubt, while the people closest to you wait to see which way you land. Dave Wood opens this session by naming that fence directly, and by pointing out that everyone in the room had already survived something just to show up that day.
Why does a chip on your shoulder work better than a script?
Most people treat an old wound, a parent who doubted them, a boss who said they didn’t have it, a spouse who’s still not sold, as something to bury before they get in front of a prospect. Dave does the opposite. He traces his own selling energy straight back to being told, more than once, that he wouldn’t make it.
Why do I have a chip on my shoulder is because I had a lot of people around me in a lot of my life that said, Dave, you got potential, but you’re probably not going to do it. You know? So I developed this attitude of just pure kind of, I’m going to show you. That’s what I developed.
That’s not a one-time pep talk. It’s a mechanism you can run every time doubt shows up. Doubt lands on you, you don’t argue with it and you don’t swallow it as true, you convert it into fuel and go prove the opposite. Do that once and it’s a mood. Do it on purpose, every single time someone doubts you, and it becomes the actual engine that carries you through the parts of this business nobody enjoys, the cold calls, the family dinner where nobody asks how it’s going, the month with nothing to show for it yet.
This only works once you stop being careful and diplomatic about your own feelings, judging your own anger instead of pointing it somewhere useful. The instinct to be graceful about it, to smile and change the subject when someone questions you, feels like maturity. It’s actually the thing standing between you and the exact energy you need to close your next ten conversations.
Why do you already have the story, even if you don’t think you do?
Here’s where the lesson gets more useful than a pep talk about attitude. Dave doesn’t point to network marketing for the source material. He points further back, to Little League.
As Dave Wood puts it in the Classic Masters Course, “I was a good pitcher, but I started to deal with that pressure. I started to deal with having to either save something or come back from something. And I was 10, 11, 12 years old, and I was getting accustomed to having to deal with situations to where everybody was looking at me and everybody was expecting something. So I knew what it was like to not only be the underdog, but also I was then reminded once I was an adult to pull from that situation.”
He was a kid on the mound at the bottom of the sixth inning with the whole game riding on him, and he’s using that memory, decades later, as raw material to keep himself steady on a prospecting call. The point isn’t baseball. The point is that by the time you’re an adult with a business to build, you already have a personal case study in coming through under pressure while everyone watched and expected something from you. Most people never think to use that as material. They think of their own history of being the underdog as embarrassing, something to bury rather than something to present.
- Whatever it cost you to get into this business in the first place, the scrounging, the borrowing, the ride you weren’t sure you’d survive, counts as story material, even before you’ve made a dollar from it.
- The people who’ve already doubted you out loud have handed you the exact fuel the lesson says to spend on purpose instead of swallowing quietly.
- A prospect who says they need to think about it is asking you the same question your own doubt already asked, and you already answered it, whether you’ve noticed or not.
Why do you keep remembering the times you quit instead of the times you didn’t?
There’s a memory problem underneath all of this, and it’s the reason most people never get to use their own history as fuel in the first place. We are wired to relive our failures on a loop and skip right past the times we actually pulled through.
As Dave Wood names the pattern directly, “What we fail to remember when we’re going through what we’re going through in building a business is we don’t remember those situations. All of the situations that we did give up, that’s the times that we think about. So then what do we do? We start beating ourselves up.”
His answer isn’t therapy. It’s a discipline. Deliberately go pull the file where you were the underdog and came through anyway, on purpose, before you pick up the phone or walk into a room, instead of letting your mind default to every version of you that gave up. That file exists for every single person reading this. Everyone has had a bottom of the sixth. Most people just never go looking for it when they need it.
What happens when the people closest to you haven’t caught up yet?
The lesson doesn’t pretend this part is easy. A spouse or a parent watching you build this from nothing, no computer yet, still working a construction job or a day shift, is going to ask reasonable questions you don’t have reassuring answers for yet. The honest truth some weeks is that it isn’t fair to expect them to be sold on this before you’re fully sold on it yourself.
That doesn’t mean you go quiet and wait for proof to arrive before you say anything. It means you keep telling the story you actually have, the scrappy, unglamorous, not-yet-proven version, instead of waiting to only tell it once you’ve made money. The version where you’re still figuring it out is the version that actually connects, because it’s the version most of your prospects are living in right now too.
So how does this turn into an actual sale, not just a pep talk?
The mechanism completes the moment you stop treating your story as private motivation and start using it as the close. A prospect sitting on the fence is asking you, in different words, the exact question you were asking yourself before you had any proof. The honest, specific answer to that question, your own story, does more work than the compensation plan ever will, because a comp plan can’t look someone in the eye and say I was exactly where you are right now.
Tell them the specific moment, not the general idea. Not a vague line about struggling at first, but the actual detail: the low-dollar package you settled for on your first sale because it was all you could get, the person who listened to you talk for forty-five minutes and still said no, the night your own doubt was louder than anyone else’s. Specific details are what make a story land instead of sounding like a pitch. Vague inspiration gets nodded at and forgotten. A real detail gets remembered, and it’s what a prospect repeats back to their own spouse later that night when they’re explaining why they said yes.
The lesson is also blunt about where your hours should go once you’ve made peace with your own story. Mostly building and pitching. Only a small slice studying the how-to. Endless research and a perfectly polished pitch is just a more comfortable way of staying on the fence, and the fence is exactly where this lesson is asking you to stop living.
The full lesson goes considerably further than what’s above: how to actually structure your own story for a live pitch instead of just feeling motivated by it, the specific moment a first prospect flatly said no and what that did to the pitch that followed, and the discussion afterward about protecting your mental energy so the story stays useful instead of becoming another thing you spin on at two in the morning. If you’re new to it, the entire Classic Masters Course, this lesson included, is available for $99 at the Classic Masters Course.
Stop editing your story down to the parts that make you look finished. Go tell someone the part where you almost quit, and watch what it does to the conversation.
Full lesson transcript
Lightly edited from the original recording — fillers removed, nothing added. Income disclaimer.
I'm focused. I believe that there's a bigger purpose for me on life, in life. I believe I've got a story that people want to hear. And that's one thing that I talk about a lot is that, you know, a lot of you are sitting in here and you're on the fence, not of about to break through, but on the fence of really, truly believing in yourself. A lot of you I know are just kind of sitting on that self-doubt, you know, just right there at that pillar, right there at that tipping point.
And all it really takes is a decision internally that says, you know what, damn it, I've got a story and I'm going to do whatever it takes to go out there and tell it. And we're going to talk about that this weekend, that, you know, there's a couple of things that are going to allow you to build a really big business. And one of those things are mastering a lot of these different phases and getting from one phase to the other. But a lot of it is also right in here. So what I want you guys to think about is, as you're sitting here, is that if you're here, then you've done what it takes.
It's the first step. You have it inside you to make it happen. It took something for you guys to get here. A lot of you have stories already that you went through just a whole bunch of shit to get here, right? Some of you had to go out there and scrounge and come up with resources.
Some of you had to borrow money. Some of you got dropped off 800 miles south, right? And had to take a cab, you know, going 140 miles an hour in a Hyundai that you didn't know if you were going to get here. And you had to get here faster and not get here at all, you know? So what I want you to do as you're sitting here and listening and thinking about what we're saying is know that there's going to be obstacles that are going to come up.
Not only just being in Walmart and walking around and, you know, maybe some of the things that you've done in the past, right? We're not going to tell you to go in Walmart and walk around. But some of the things that you've done in the past have not only affected you guys because the fact is that our past affects us. Regardless of whether it's what we did in network marketing. Or regardless of whether it's what we experienced as a child, right?
And I'm going to talk about that a little bit, of that kind of stuff here this week and also. But regardless of what comes up, to know inside. Because I can tell you that when I got started, one of the things that really was the defining factor for me was that I just had, I just knew. It didn't matter whether it was my significant other, whether it was my job, whether it was a family member. Whether it was friends, whether everybody just ostracized me, I was going to do it.
And I was talking about this last night. Lisa actually asked me, how did you get really started? And I did the same thing, Dave. You know, I just didn't wander around in Walmart. I went and bought signs from Home Depot.
And I put them, I lived on a main road, so I put them in the road. And then I bought magnets from Vistaprint. Because you can get them there for free, you know. And I didn't have a budget. So I would slap them on my old 1994 F-150.
And I would drive around hoping and expecting somebody to call me. And what I didn't realize was I would pull up at the light. And out of all the cars there, I was the last one that anybody was going to call. Because they were like, I certainly don't want what that guy has. So I was faced with the dilemma of I dragged one person to a meeting at a restaurant and got them in at the $99 package.
Didn't even get them in at the $499. Got them in at the low package. Still, I was excited because I got one. But. I was faced with the dilemma of realizing that wasn't working and I had to do something else.
And I was at ground zero. I didn't even have a computer. I found myself wandering around on the internet opting into people's lists and stuff and trying to figure out. And Lawrence, you probably did the same thing. Okay.
Opting into people's lists, trying to figure out what I was going to do. And do you know that I had to get up every morning and go to a construction job? Do you know that my significant other was looking at me saying, what really are you doing? I thought you wanted to. What about.
Starting a construction business or what about, you know, going for maybe a job at a real company and going for a supervisor position. This is not to predictably say that you can't have a job because if you have a career and you enjoy it, that's up to you. We're only saying that if you hate what you do and you want to be an entrepreneur, then maybe that's why you're here. You know, but I was faced with that and there were so many obstacles along the way. I can remember the first person that I went up to and I threw up on him, of course, because it was the most exciting thing that I'd seen in so long.
Right. And he just kind of looked at me after I got done talking for about 45 minutes. Right. Because that's just what we do when we're excited and we get started. And he was like, eh, probably not.
Let me talk for 45 minutes, though. And that was the first time that I was like, this is not going to be easy. I didn't say it, but I kind of felt it. Right. And I also experienced the same thing when I got started on the Internet.
Right. I was like. This is not going to be easy. But what's the difference between somebody who said it's not going to be easy, but I'm going to keep going and somebody who said it's not going to be easy and I'm going to quit? The difference is it's something that is reinforced externally, but it's something that's built internally.
I'll tell you where it starts from with me a little bit is when I was younger, I played baseball and they would put me on the mound. I was a pitcher. They would put me on the mound. We didn't have nine innings. We had six innings in Little League and they would put me on the mound at the bottom of the six.
Right. I was a good pitcher, but I started to deal with that pressure. I started to deal with having to either save something or come back from something. And I was 10, 11, 12 years old, and I was getting accustomed to having to deal with situations to where everybody was looking at me and everybody was expecting something. So I knew what it was like to not only be the underdog, but also I was then reminded once I was an adult to pull from that situation.
Everybody's had a situation in life to where they were faced with something like that. It was kind of like the bottom of the six or the ninth. Right. And they had to pull through with something. As a matter of fact, the reason why I know everybody was is because every single person in this room was faced probably recently with a situation to where they had to pull through.
Right. They had to pull through a tough situation. Okay. What we fail to remember when we're going through what we're going through in building a business is we don't remember those situations. All of the situations that we did give up, that's the times that we think about.
So then what do we do? We start beating ourselves up. Right. We don't remember the time that we pulled through something. We don't dig deep and look and pull from that experience.
Because we've all had similar experiences. Guys, I know that sometimes it thinks it looks like the outside is different. But it is. But guess what? The inside is all the same.
It is. Human beings have a couple of different feelings or, excuse me, a very simple set of feelings that they experience. Fear. Faith. Happiness.
Sadness. Anger. And anger even stems from fear. Right? So why is it in these situations that we pull from the times to where we are weak instead of the times that we are strong?
Why is that? Well, it's because we don't condition our mind to think of those times. Here's one thing that I want to say about this that I think will give you guys a great insight into how you can use bad situations or being the underdog as you're in your favor. I'm the type of person, because of the things that I've been through, who has always kind of had a chip on my shoulder. And I don't know if anybody...
I don't know if anybody can relate to that. To kind of just feeling like a couple of hands are going up at rock four. Chip on your shoulder. Right? Why do I have a chip on my shoulder is because I had a lot of people around me in a lot of my life that said, Dave, you got potential, but you're probably not going to do it.
You know? So I developed this attitude of just pure kind of, I'm going to show you. That's what I developed. So what? What I learned to do was in these situations, and I want you guys to listen to this very carefully, because this really, for a lot of you who have been through some shit in life, can use this to absolutely turn a negative feeling into a feeling of motivation.
What I did was when a situation came up, I used the energy that I had, the energy that I had and turned it into an I'll-show-you moment. I'll prove it to you. Can anybody relate to that? Can anybody relate to having kind of that, that I'll prove it to you? Right?
But sometimes we want to be graceful and politically correct, and sometimes we even judge our own feelings. Right? We judge kind of the way that we're acting and feeling because we want to either maybe people please or we want to be in line with what we think we're supposed to do instead of just being just ourselves and letting our emotions run free. And doing whatever it takes to be able to get the job done, whether I have to use an emotion and get angry about something, that's just what I have to do to get to the next phase. If I could just pull my head down and I have to just say, you know what, mom, you're doubting me, and this is something that a lot of people are not going to talk about, or you know what, husband or wife, look, I love you.
This is not, I mean, it's personal, but it's also, I'm building a business here. Let me show you. Instead of letting people frustrate us. Right? So the reason why I'm talking about this is because Dave was talking about what are some of the things that we struggle with, and I think that we need to get this out of the way right up front.
Because so many people deal with this stuff sometimes right inside their home. I had a guy, I was in Santa Clara just a couple of weeks ago, and this guy had been in network marketing for 15, 18 years. Right? And he struggled. He still hadn't convinced his wife that it was something he should be doing.
Still. But he was still there. He hadn't had success yet, though. So that's why she didn't believe in him. Now, there's one way to get people on board with you, and that's to do what?
Make some money. Right? There's one way. That's one way to do it. But I can tell you, even sometimes you'll start to get results.
And the world will still bring. Negativity to you. People will still doubt you. They'll still laugh. They'll still hate.
Right? Is there some haters out there? Honestly. Is there anybody in the room that has no haters around them at all? John, you didn't.
Okay, I was going to say. In Vegas, there's a lot of haters. Because when you walk out of the casino broke, and your boy's balling. And you're like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.
I don't know what to do. Dude's hate. Straight up. So, there's always going to be that factor. So right now, one thing that I think you can take away.
Just before we even get started. Is, I expect that. And what am I going to do when I'm faced with it? I expect you to hate. I welcome you to hate.
Right? You just posted something the other day that I saw. It was like, the haters are going to hate. You know? Bring it on, we'll have more for you later, right? So right now, wherever you're at inside your business, expect it, know it's going to happen, and learn to play the game better than anybody else, because there's people, look, there's people who are going to come at you in different areas of your business. The edge that you can have, because we're telling you about it, is to say, hey, I know you've got that concern internally, this is what you're saying to yourself, I know you've got that concern, and I know that I have nothing to prove to you, and I'm not only going to go kind of along and not get excited, but I'm gonna beat you at your own game, right?
So I can tell you, for us personally, in the last nine months, with merchant situations, why did we tell you guys about that so much? And for those of you who are watching, when we started in Empower, we had merchant issues. I mean, it's one of the biggest, most common things that, you know, network marketing, direct sales, and online, I'm not talking, online businesses space, is processing. Right? Just process. I didn't even know, right? I didn't expect this to be a problem, right? But it is. And different people were calling me every day. This is just an example outside of just building a business the traditional network marketing way. But so many of these guys were calling us every day, and the only thing that they were focused on was merchant account. They weren't there with the sales guys, they weren't worried about the people, they weren't worried about teams, they weren't worried about, you know, the people who were out in the field, all they were worried about was their merchant account and getting us.
So I realized that, and instead of, what I at first tried to do was explain myself, you know, and I tried to sell them and tell them why they needed to understand our business model and all this. And then I realized these guys are focused on one thing, and I just need to beat them at that game. I don't need to get them to understand my game. I just need to meet them and play their game with them. Right?
So with people in your life, and people who are at your job, or people inside of your house, everybody doesn't need to understand everything. We only have so much energy in the day. Right, Justin? We only have so much energy in a day. And what I see most common that people are doing is just what Dave was talking about, going around and spinning, and that's just the physical way that it happens. Mentally it's a whole nother ball game, spending their time doing things that have absolutely nothing to do with getting to the next level, getting to the next phase. We spend so much of our time mentally, do we not, Dave, mentally, just exhausting ourselves with just stuff that doesn't even matter.
Does anybody have a hard time going to sleep at night because of racing thoughts? I do. So everybody, no, I would expect the whole room would raise their hand just because, you know, you're all just thinking. But the majority of you did, and I think that the rest of you probably do as well, right, Curtis, because I know you do, brother, because your mind's always thinking. Here's what I want to ask you, how perplexing this room is, but how often does a brilliant, just brilliant, idea come when you're just sitting there, racing thoughts, and just sitting there, and you can't stop thinking. John, he's the weirdo in the group.
A lot of times, a lot of times, though, guys, a lot of times when we're sitting there and we're just spinning our wheels, good ideas don't come. My experience is when I'm laying in bed and I can't go to sleep, I wake up the next morning and realize, because I've done it so many times, that none of that even mattered. I'm not going to use it. I'm not going to use it. So it's an example of the way that I use my mental energy and I waste it.
When instead, if I maybe tried to focus on my breathing and go to sleep immediately, I could be more rested for the day. And that's when the ideas would really come. When I was out on a walk, or when I was away from my computer in the gym, or when I was taking a shower. John's probably had a, you ever had that happen? Taking a shower and just something comes to you?
Out working out or whatever, you know what I'm saying? And just something comes to you? It's not when you're looking for it. So the other thing that I want to remind you guys is that sometimes you've got to get out of here and stop thinking. Sometimes you've got to dumb it down and stop being so analytical.
Right? Sometimes. Sometimes our mental, our mind, our brain is our worst enemy. Is it not, Justin? Our worst enemy.
Our best friend, but also our worst enemy. And I was talking in Atlanta a couple of months ago. And I was talking about this. How people spend their energy and their business on a daily basis. A lot of you only have two hours right now.
How are you going to spend it? Are you going to spend it spinning your wheels, building team sites? You know? Are you going to spend it, you know, grinding it out? And trying to think of the next best idea?
Or are you going to do what we had to do? Which I had a couple of hours too when I got off construction at night and I had to use those hours wisely, right? I went in and I learned how to market. I was, I was taking action. I was doing about 10% training in 90% action.
Write that down guys, 10% training in 90% action.
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