The Sponsorship Math Behind MLM Income Projections (Wealth Plan 4)
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David Wood tells the story of a phone call with a man named Mark Call, a builder with teams of over 20,000 people, whose goal was to hit $40,000 a month within a couple of months. David told him the real goal for Empower Network in 2012 was ten people making $250,000 a month. Mark’s reaction, in David’s retelling, was blunt disbelief. “I said, oh no, no we don’t,” David recalls telling him when Mark assumed it would take tens of thousands of people joining every day to hit that number.
The math comes from what he and Dave actually did in month one
David grounds the claim in a specific result rather than a hope. He and his partner Dave marketed Empower Network from a plain affiliate position, one with no special pass-ups and the exact same compensation plan as any other affiliate. Nothing about the account was privileged. In month one, that position sponsored about 800 people at the $25 entry level, during a period when the whole company was averaging around 250 new people a day joining at $25.
The affiliate position, starting from zero, with no residuals, no recurring payments, and what David describes as “massive problems” in the business at the time, produced $257,000 in income. He anticipates the objection about fees, noting the merchant account carried a 6% charge, so the real number is that figure minus 6%. Beyond that, he treats the number as clean.
He contrasts this with another example, a woman he does not name who had built an 80,000-person team in a major juice company. She had 1,000 people a day joining her team and was making $80,000 a month. As David lays out the comparison, she had four times the daily sign-up volume of his month-one affiliate result and less than a quarter of the income.
Why the $19.95 doesn’t explain the income
David addresses directly the assumption that he profits from the $19.95 product that every new affiliate buys. He says that price exists to cover the cost of running the company: customer support, servers, hosting, programming. He points out the site was getting a million visitors a day at the time, which makes it expensive to operate. “Right now, we’re not making a dime from it,” he says, adding that the $250,000-a-month income is coming from the same activity affiliates themselves are doing, not from some hidden corporate cut. He frames this as the difference at Empower Network: if he tells someone to do something because it’s working, it’s working because he and Dave are doing it themselves, from a regular account, under the same plan as everyone else.
The theory for how ten people get there
From the month-one result, David builds out a projection. If a team has 250 people a day joining and has sponsored at least 800 people, his theory is that this produces a quarter of a million dollars a month in income, with no recurring billing counted. He is careful to frame this as a theory, not a guarantee: “I’m not a prophet and I can’t tell the future,” he says, and later adds that he doesn’t see the future, he projects what he wants onto it and works to make it happen.
Scaled up, the theory becomes a company-wide goal. If Empower Network as a whole could bring in 2,500 people a day at the $25 level, with the upsell numbers behind it, David’s theory is that this would produce ten people each earning a quarter of a million dollars a month, and he names this as the goal for the company by the end of 2012. He argues the reason this could work at Empower specifically is that the company was attracting, in his words, some of the best marketers in the world, people willing to learn math and direct response rather than treat the business as guesswork.
He closes this part of the talk by pointing people toward joining at the $25 level at minimum, arguing that affiliates can make money without buying everything, just more slowly, and that buying in fully is what makes things move fast.
Written up from the original recording. The full transcript is below.
Read the full transcript (9 min talk, 1,584 words)
See folks, here's the goal. You want to know my honest goal in Power Network? You want to know the goal? And if you ain't in, get in right now. Seriously. You want to know the goal this year in 2012?
Ten people making $250,000 a month. Now that is astronomically higher than most of your goals. Astronomically higher. And I was on the phone actually with a guy, I'm going to tell you his name, actually. Mark Call, earlier today. And I told him this, and he said, what?
See, he had a goal to make $40,000 a month here in a couple of months. Mark, he knows how to build teams. He's got existing teams that are over $20,000 people. And he said, ten people making a quarter million a month. I was like, you have to have tens of thousands of people coming in a day to do that. And I said, oh no, no we don't.
You want to know how I know that? Here's why, folks. Remember this math I showed you here? Do you want to know the truth? Do you want to know the numbers? Do you want to know what happened to me?
Now here's what you do as in Power. You say, Dave, if you're paying out 100% commissions, how do you make money? Well, here's the answer. Like you. You say, well, you're making a fortune off that $19.95. Well, that might be true, folks, if the company wasn't so expensive to run.
The truth is that $19.95 pays for the company. It pays for the customer support. And our money that we make right now, you want to know where it's coming from? The same thing you're doing. So that means I don't profit unless I go out there and do the stuff affiliates are doing. That $19.95 pays the servers.
It pays the hosting. It pays the customer support. It pays for programming. And it's very expensive because our site gets a million visitors a day. Now I'd love to make a quarter million a month from that too, but it's not going to happen until we have a lot more people. Okay?
Just truthfully. Right now, we're not making a dime from it. And that's okay. Because you want to know why? You want to know what happened to me? We mark it like you.
And that's the difference here at Empower is that if I tell you to do something that's working because we're doing it, okay? Month one, this is what we did. You guys ready? You wanted a quarter of a… I'll tell you how to make a quarter of a million a month right now. You want to know what we did.
This is month one because we have a different model. It's more in your favor than in our favor. It's more to help you than it is to help me. I'm going to make money regardless. You ready for what we did? You guys ready?
If you guys are excited about how to make a quarter of a million a month, I'll tell you, and this is how ten people are going to do it this year, and this is my theory. All right? You ready? Month one, okay, this is what we averaged. Dave and I marketed from an affiliate position. This affiliate position has no extra pass ups.
It has the exact same compensation plan that you have. There's nothing special about it whatsoever other than Dave and I are marketing from it. So if I bring somebody in, this isn't the front of the blog. If you send your visitors to the front of the blog, we don't get the sign ups. It just goes to who everybody's affiliate account overrides that front blog. So we're not talking about that, okay?
That front blog barely signs up any people. Why? Because people look on the internet, they find somebody, they click on their thing, and every affiliate ID in the entire company overrides the corporate affiliate ID, every single one of you, okay? So we market from a regular affiliate account. Month one, we brought in a lot of people. It was about 800 people month one that we sponsored at 25, okay?
We brought in, that's a lot of people, right? The total sales that were happening in all of Empower Network was averaging 250 new people a day coming in at 25. That's what averaged on month one. You ready for this? You want to know how much that affiliate position made? This is no residuals.
This is starting from zero. No recurring payments. Massive problems, if you guys remember the problems we had month one. This produced $257,000 in income from that affiliate position alone. Now I told Mark, call that, and he's been around the block. And you want to know what he said?
He said, I'm going to make a quarter million a month. You've got to be shitting me. I said no, because I just gave you a formula to make a quarter of a million a month, right? And that's no, with no recurring payments, okay? So what I tell you guys, this is how to make money as an affiliate, it's because we're doing it. Just get in, just get in.
Now hit the button below the video and just get in for the 25 at least. At least get in for the 25. Guys, if you don't buy anything else, you can make money. It's just going to be slower, okay? You've got to buy everything if you want it to move fast. Okay, so this was no 1995 payments, this was no affiliate payments, this was just like you make money.
$257,000 in commission. So you say, Dave, there were fees in that. Well, yeah, you know, we have a merchant account with 6% fees, so this may be minus 6%, whatever that was, right? So don't be a dork, okay? Let's be on the same page here. Let's think like business people, not people that are jobs and are in poverty minds, right?
So you say, what? This doesn't even make sense for another gal, okay? Another gal that I, I'm not going to mention her name, massive producer. Had a team of 80,000 people in a massive juice company, okay? And I told her this and she said, what? Want to know why?
She had 1,000 people a day joining and was making 80,000 a month. That means she had four times the production and less than a fourth of the income. So here's the goal. So you say, Dave, how can 10 people make a quarter of a million a month with this formula? Really easy, because we attract the best marketers in the world here at Empower, people who understand math, right? And are willing to learn direct response, okay?
And this is the formula, this is my theory, okay? Will my theory be true? Well, I'm not a prophet and I can't tell the future, but this is the goal for 2012. You ready for this? My theory is, my theory, again, this is a theory, it's not no guarantee. I can't guarantee you're going to make a quarter of a million a month with these numbers happening.
This is just what I think. My theory is that if you have a team and your team has 250 people a day coming in and that you've sponsored 800 people at least, which seems like a lot and is not a lot, my theory is that that will equal out to be a quarter of a million dollar a month income. You say that's a lot of people, it seems like a lot, but not if a lot of people are doing a little. You're not bringing in 250 people a day. So my theory is, okay, so if we can produce this, this is with new income, no recurring billings, that means that if we can get Empower to bring in 2,500 people a day at the $25 level with these upsell metrics, my theory is that we will have 10 people making a quarter of a million a month. So then this is my goal by the end of this year.
Are you guys excited about this? Now, will this happen? This is my theory on what will happen based on what happened with us. It's not a guarantee of what will happen because nobody can see the future, right? At least, I mean, well, I can't say nobody can see the future. All I can say is that I definitely don't see the future.
What I do is different. I project what I want on the future and I make it happen like an animal, and then when it doesn't, I say, oh well, but usually it does, right? It's different. Okay, so then let's erase this. This is my goal, right? We've talked about the value of the blog system and why it's better for you to just buy this than to spend your own money.
Now, I'm going to talk about this here for a second because I want to talk about what you need to do if you want to make the thousand a day math happen now, okay? Now, this is for members of Empower, and this is also for people that are just watching this and you're checking it out.