Why Use the Product Before You Sell It (Core Commitment 1)
David Wood opens the first of Empower Network’s eight core commitments with a number: $185 million in sales, all built on these eight steps. The first one is simple to state and, he argues, routinely ignored. Be a product of the product. Too many people join a business online, buy something, and never actually go through it. Their only intention is to resell it for a commission. David’s point is that you sell better what you actually use.
Commitments, not suggestions
David is direct about how he wants these framed. He originally wanted to call them the “eight core commandments,” until friends talked him out of it, so they became the eight core commitments instead. The distinction matters to him. Most people building a business treat every step as a fresh decision: do I go to this event or not, do I buy this product or not, do I get this resource or not. He argues that’s backwards. The real question is upfront: what do you want, do you actually want that outcome, and are you willing to commit to the process required to get it. Once that commitment is made, the steps just get followed. He says plainly that he’ll work with anyone on his team willing to do all eight things, and that he can’t help someone who isn’t willing to help themselves.
Learn, do, teach, all at once
The mechanism David teaches for turning into an expert who makes money is what he calls the success triangle: learn, do, and teach simultaneously. He contrasts this with the traditional school model, where you learn something first, then eventually start doing it, and only much later, after doing it a long time, do you start teaching it and maybe getting paid. He says internet marketing, network marketing, and home business don’t work that way. To create a massive result quickly, and sustain it over time, you have to learn, do, and teach at the same time.
To learn what’s in the products, though, you first need to understand who Empower Network sells to, what the products are, and how they’re sold. He walks through the product suite in order.
Kolatu is the entry point, a blogging platform that David describes as a full marketing system, built and tested through traffic split tests across the company’s blog network so that the core theme is engineered to generate leads, conversions, and sales. Kolatu Premium runs $97 a month.
The Inner Circle is an audio library, priced at $100 a month, meant for listening during downtime. David frames it as reprogramming the unconscious mind, and stresses that the audios are recorded by people actually succeeding at marketing Empower’s products, not generic motivational content. His analogy: listening to audios unrelated to what you want is like trying to become a kung fu master by listening to lessons on how to be a brain surgeon.
The Top Producer Formula is a one-time $500 purchase teaching what David calls the science of selling and recruiting. He pushes back on the idea, common in home-based business circles, that “this isn’t selling, it’s sharing.” His response: if you share it and nobody buys it, you don’t have much of a business. The industry, he says, runs on direct selling, not direct sharing. This product teaches the approach that made him the number one recruiter in four separate direct sales companies before he started Empower Network, and he notes that his own affiliate position in the company still earns him $130,000 to $200,000 a month even though he runs the company.
The Team Building Formula is a one-time $1,000 purchase covering the science of building teams. David’s argument here is that someone building a business alone isn’t really running a business, they’re self-employed, and when they stop working, the money stops. Building teams is how you leverage other people’s time, money, and energy.
The Mass Influence Formula, at $3,500, completes the suite and teaches influence at scale. David illustrates this with his own experience of being recognized in airports around the world, having someone spot him the moment he opened a limo door in Mexico, and being recognized in random restaurants in Costa Rica where he doesn’t even build his business locally. He attributes this to applying the same influence principles taught in the product, at a scale that reaches millions of visitors to Empower’s websites every day.
Where the money comes from
David lays out who these products serve: the personal development industry, the internet marketing industry, and the home business industry, each of which he calls a massive, billion-dollar industry. Within home business specifically, he says Empower teaches people to build from home instead of running around doing meetings and chasing friends and family, teaches people who can’t recruit how to get hot prospects calling them credit card in hand, and teaches people with a large front line but no real team how to create leverage through marketing systems, systems that have brought in over 300,000 people.
Commissions run up to 70 percent. Referring someone into the Inner Circle pays $70 on the first purchase, with the rest paid through the compensation plan. The front-end trial pays 70 percent of the purchase price. The Top Producer Formula pays $150 to $300. The Team Building Formula pays $300 to $600. The Mass Influence Formula pays $1,050 to $2,100. Referring someone through the entire suite, David says, tops out at about $3,000.
He also tells the story of where this formula came from. In 2009 he was homeless, living in a green 1996 Dodge Caravan with a leak in the ceiling he’d tried to seal with glue, parking on public beaches in Hawaii, woken at night by rain dripping onto his forehead. He had a job at Greenpeace, one of the few employers willing to hire him without a fixed address, and got fired for being late. With nothing, he discovered a formula through blogging, and by his third month he had a week where he made over $10,000 in a single night and more than $30,000 for the month, using the same systems now packaged as the Top Producer Formula, the Team Building Formula, and the Mass Influence Formula.
Results from the room
David closes by pointing to people in the room he calls “all in,” meaning they own every product in the suite, and has several speak briefly about their own numbers. Alex Zubrev, four years in, over $1.1 million earned, formerly a systems engineer working from a cubicle. Michael and Chrissy Martin, three years in, just past half a million dollars, formerly in the restaurant industry until they lost their restaurant in the economic crash. D’Varengia, formerly working at Hooters, over $1.7 million with her husband over four years. Mike Hobbs, a 12-year military veteran who led his family through deployments, $870,000 earned, describing 2013 as the year he won his freedom.
David tells viewers this room alone represents leaders responsible for over $100 million in sales, and closes the video by directing people to buy whichever product in the suite they don’t yet own, using the navigation bar to reach the relevant sales video, before moving on to the second core commitment.
Written up from the original recording. The full transcript is below.
Read the full transcript (18 min talk, 3,908 words)
Hey, congratulations again. I wanted to welcome you to the first core commitment. Now, the first thing I wanna do before I get started is I wanna explain what this series is gonna be about and what the core commitments are, all right? And so I want you to really understand this because these are the building blocks of this business. And if you don't do them, you're not gonna succeed. And that's why they're the things that we want you to see absolutely first.
We've done $185 million in sales and they're all done from these eight core steps that you're gonna see in this video. And so there's the other thing I want you to understand about the core commitments is that they're not suggestions, all right? They're commitments to people who wanna build a serious business, all right? And this is the way that I like to teach people about it. It's like a lot of people, they think about building a business like everything they need to do. They make a new decision about whether they wanna build the business or not.
You know what I mean? It's like, am I gonna go to the event or not? Am I gonna buy that product or not? Am I gonna get this resource that I need or not? And that's not the right way to think. The right way to think is actually this.
What do you want and do you really wanna get that and are you going to commit to the process that's required to get that outcome? Because if you're not gonna commit to it, you actually might as well not even get started, okay? And once you commit that yes, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get this outcome, then you need to follow the steps in order to create that outcome. And we've proven that through a lot of sales. I'm gonna introduce you to some of the people in this room in this series. We've proven that if you follow these steps, you will get a bigger result.
So I actually wanted to call these the eight core commandments, but then some of my friends got mad at me and said, don't do that. And so we called them the eight core commitments instead. So these are the things that are required if you want to succeed. And for me personally, I'll work with anyone in my team that they follow these commitments and they're willing to do all eight things. And if they're not willing to do them, I can't help somebody who's not willing to help themselves. You guys agree with that, right?
And these are the leaders here. Give them a hand again for being here and let's give them the first commitment, okay? So first core commitment is to be a product of the product. Too many times people get started in a business online and they buy a product, they don't even go through it. You know what I mean? A lot of times people buy a product and all their intention is is to sell the product.
And I understand that. And I understand the desire to get a commission by selling something. But the reality is you sell better the products that you actually know what they are and you use them, all right? And so this commitment isn't just buying all of the products and buying the products is useful. It's actually going through those products, creating a personal and a business transformation with those products. So you can actually then take those products and refer them out in the marketplace, all right?
And I actually like to teach what I call the success triangle. And it works really simple like this. This is how to become an expert and make lots of money. And if you follow this process inside of Empower Network, you're going to step into greatness over a period of time. And it's called the learn, do, teach triangle, all right? And this is how it works.
You want to learn something and do it and teach it all simultaneously. See, a lot of people, what they do is they follow the traditional school system, which basically teaches you that you want to first learn something and then later after you learn it, then you want to start doing it. And then much later in your life, after you do it for a very long time, you can eventually start teaching it and maybe make some money like that. This industry and the industry and internet marketing, network marketing, home business, whatever you want to call this, it actually doesn't work like that. If you want to create massive results, you've got to do all three things at the same time and that enables you to, number one, create a result quickly, but number two, sustain a result over time. Well, in order to learn what's in the products, you have to understand who we're selling to, what our products are, what market they serve, and also how they're sold in our process.
So I'm briefly going to cover that for you so you actually understand the process and what you're actually involved with. And if you're on this video, actually, you'll notice there's a navigation bar above where you actually see all the products we have. There's a navigation to a product called the Inner Circle, navigation to a product called the Top Producer Formula, navigation to a product called the Team Building Formula, and there's navigation to a product called the Mass Influence Formula. And these actually make up the formula for how to get massive results on the internet. And we know what we're doing. Nobody's ever done as much sales as we've done in the online education space.
And so let me actually talk about what each one is and what purpose it serves. So first thing that we've got is the product that you came in for, right, which is Kolatu. And that's actually our blogging platform. And it's not just a blogging platform. It's actually a marketing system that's gonna help you market your business and get results. What we do as a company and as a community is we run massive traffic split tests across our blog network of people that use our core theme.
And if you use our core theme, that thing is built to get you leads, conversions, and sales. I'm gonna be talking about blogging and how important it is in a little bit. But for now, I just want you to understand what the product is. I'm gonna talk about how much they cost. And then I'm gonna talk about what markets we serve and how much commissions you can get when you refer them to other people. So Kolatu Premium is our core front-end product and that's actually $97 a month.
We have a product called the Inner Circle. The Inner Circle is actually an audio library. I'm gonna talk more about that later in the core commitments. And the Inner Circle is actually $100 a month, okay? And what that is is actually, it's a education library, all right, that you wanna listen to in your downtime. And if you listen to the audios inside the Inner Circle, you're gonna be reprogramming your unconscious mind for the kind of success that you are here to create.
This is really important because a lot of people, they go and listen to audios, but they're not listening to audios of people that are doing what they actually wanna do. You know what I mean? And that's just the same as if I was trying to be a kung fu master and I was listening to audios on how to be a great brain surgeon. It doesn't make much sense, right? So our audios are actually made up from people that are getting success on the internet, that are getting success by marketing our products and services. And they're actually teaching about their stories, about how they have their strategies, about how they're creating their results.
And if you just listen to them, we're gonna show you how to reprogram your unconscious mind. That's number two. Number three is actually called the top producer formula, all right? And I'm gonna talk about what this is here in just a second after I'm finished writing it. And this is a product that's a one-time purchase of $500 that we have in our product suite. Now this, along with two other products, actually make up what I call the success formula online, all right?
And so I'm gonna show you how to not just buy these products, but also to get results using them. What the top producer formula is, is it's the science of selling and recruiting. Look, this is the reality, right? Everybody in the room, and you know this because you guys have all made tons of money with us, right? If you don't learn how to sell and you don't learn to market and you don't learn how to close, you're not gonna make any money. You know, a lot of people, they get involved in some sort of home-based business and they say, this isn't selling, it's sharing.
And it's like, well, if you share it and nobody buys it, then you're not gonna make much money so it doesn't sound like a very good business. It's not the direct sharing association that kind of controls this industry. It's the direct selling organization because we produce sales and get commissions from sales. So the top producer formula actually teaches how I became the number one recruiter in four separate direct sales companies over a couple years before I started Empower Network and in this company, I'm still an affiliate. My affiliate position here makes anywhere from $130,000 to $200,000 a month still and I run the company. I actually show you how I recruited enough people and enough talented people to do that in this product.
I think it's worth a lot more than $500. Now we also have a product called the team building formula. The team building formula is the science of building teams and I don't really need much evidence other than what's in this room that we know how to do that. The team building formula is actually a one-time purchase of $1,000 and it teaches you how to build the teams that you need to get the results that you want. Look, you can go out there and try to do a solo show on your own or you can learn how to build teams and by building teams, how to create leverage in your income. The reality is that if people are building a business and they're trying to do it by themselves, it's not a business.
It's like you're self-employed and you've got a lot of work to do and when you stop working, you stop getting paid. If you learn to build teams, you actually learn to leverage other people's time, other people's money, and other people's energy and that's what we teach in that product. I'm gonna show you where it fits in a second. The last product that we've got is called the mass influence formula and this completes our product suite, hold on a second, formula and it's $3,500. What this teaches is it teaches the science of influence on a large scale. So if you ever wanted to become somebody who's well-known around the world, actually today, it's kind of funny, I have people walk up to me randomly in airports everywhere I stop and just say, are you Dave Wood?
And the reason they do that is because my face is plastered all over the internet because I've become well-known by applying these principles of influence. We have millions and millions and millions and millions of people every single day hitting our websites and they see me and so people recognize me. I stopped in Mexico once and I was riding around in a limo. I opened the door and somebody goes, oh my gosh, Dave Wood! Like the second I opened it. And that's happened to me in airports, it's happened to me in Europe, it happens to me every time I'm in Costa Rica in random restaurants and things in Costa Rica and I don't even build my business locally there.
And the mass influence formula teaches you how to create things on a massive leverage scale. Now, I'm not expecting you to buy all of those products right now, I just want to educate you on what they are and what markets we serve. However, I do encourage you to buy the next one that you haven't purchased yet. And so what market do these serve and where do these really fit in in the marketplace? Really what we're doing is we're capitalizing on a few massive industries that are out there. Number one, the personal development industry.
It's like a massive, massive, massive, massive billion dollar industry. We're capitalizing number two on the internet marketing industry which is also a billion dollar industry. We're also capitalizing on the home business industry which is a billion dollar industry. And so we market to those three groups of people primarily, we teach people in the home business industry how to actually create a business from their home rather than all the time being out of their home running around doing meetings, chasing friends and family and other stuff that really never makes them money. We teach people who can't recruit in the home business industry how to actually recruit and have hot prospects calling them, credit card in hand, drooling because they're ready to buy. We teach people who are recruiting a lot of people on the internet and this happens all the time, you know, right?
Who have a lot of front line but no team, how to also create leverage and get their teams producing as well by applying smart, intelligent marketing systems. And if you're in Empower Network and you're an affiliate, we actually give you a system that we use that's brought in over 300,000 people to do that. So what happens in our product suite is you actually can earn commission from all the products you refer. We pay up to 70% commissions out on everything. Actually, when you refer somebody into the inner circle, you're gonna get a $70 payment from their first purchase and then the rest of it is paid out in our compensation plan. I'll explain how that works later.
On the front end product, somebody comes in for a trial, you're gonna earn 70% of whatever the purchase price is right on the front end. Somebody buys the top producer formula, you're gonna earn $150 to $300 in the range as you go through. The team building formula, you're gonna earn $300 to $600. I'll explain how all these things fit in as we're going along. In the mass influence formula, you actually earn $1,050 to $2,100, okay? So the maximum you could earn by referring all of our products that we have available in our company to other people is about $3,000 as they're going through the purchase price.
Does that make sense to everybody in the room right now? Okay, now when you're getting started, I don't want this to seem overwhelming. What we're doing is we're solving people's problems who wanna make money on the internet and who want to build a business from home. The reason why we have products that go all the way up to the $3,500 price range is because we find that people who are in our business, who are in the home business industry, there's a percentage of them, they want high quality education. They're not tire kickers. They wanna make six figures.
They wanna make seven figures. They want to step into their future and accomplish their goals. So we wanna give them the tools. We wanna give them the personal development. We wanna give them the training and the education that helps people no matter what walk of life they're in and no matter what country they're from to be able to accomplish that purpose and to be able to accomplish that outcome. Now here's how we do it.
Back in 2009, I was homeless and I was living in a van and it was a green 1996 Dodge Caravan. It had a leak in the ceiling where I had like installed a clothes thing in there like this bar and I just thought I could put glue on it and that would withstand tropical storms. I was parking on public beaches in Hawaii and like when it rained, the water would drip through the ceiling onto my forehead and wake me up in the middle of the night and I had a job at Greenpeace because nobody'd give me a job that was like a normal company because I lived in a van. I think that's probably one of the things they ask is what's your address and if you say the van by the river, right, then it's not necessarily a good address to get a job. So I was late to my job at Greenpeace one day and so they fired me from that and I had nothing when I got started. Well I discovered a formula through blogging that I use to start creating results on the internet but my third month from living in a van, I went from that to having a week that I made over $10,000 in a night but over $30,000 in that third month by applying the systems that I teach in the top producer formula, in the team building formula and in the mass influence formula.
This is knowledge accumulated over $185 million in sales and it's a formula that makes up how we get our results online. Most exciting part is though, is watching this video is when you bring new people in, there's gonna be a percentage of people that get in and quit. There's gonna be a percentage of people that get in and they also buy the inner circle and your residual income is gonna increase. There's gonna be another percentage of people, they buy the top producer formula, the team building formula and the mass influence formula all in one go. In fact everybody in this room, who in here has all of our products, raise your hand. Hey everybody in this room is what we call all in because they purchased all of the products in the Empower Network suite and the reason they've done that is because they wanna position themselves for success.
So here's actually what we encourage you to do is we actually encourage you to not just to buy the products but to actually use them in your business to break through with them to get the results that you want in your business and in doing that we're actually gonna show you also how to go into the marketplace and how to suck leads out of it like an out of control lead sucking vacuum cleaner with super powers. That's how good you're gonna be, right? So what we want you to do is to learn how to do that but for now what I want you to do is actually just continue to the next step because you're on the right path in watching this video. We serve the home business, the internet marketing and the personal development niche and we teach them how to sell, how to build teams and how to create mass influence and presence by utilizing our products and we also help people by providing them the system to do it by just giving it to them out of the box and that's actually what you're involved with and it's created a lot of results. I wanna show you how much really quick and we're gonna pass this microphone around to just a handful of people. They're gonna tell you how much money they've made, what their background is and how long they've been in Empower and then we're gonna continue on to the next video and I wanna congratulate you again for joining.
So Alex Zubrev, how long you've been in Empower, how much money have you made and what's your background? I've been in Empower for four years. I made over 1.1 million dollars and I used to be a system engineer. I was working from a cubicle, not really enjoying my life. Give him a hand. Over a million dollars.
Michael Martin, how long you've been in Empower Network, how much have you earned? It's Michael and Chrissy Martin. We've been in Empower Network for about three years and we just crossed half a million dollars earned. We were in the restaurant industry, we lost the restaurant back in the economy crash and Empower has really saved our family and everything. Give him a hand. D'Varengia, how much have you and your husband earned?
I'm D'Varengia, my other house, Justin, the hippie judge, I'm sorry. I was a Hooters uterus. It's kind of funny to say that. So I was slaying chicken wings and I made sure your beer was cold and we crossed over 1.7 million in Empower in the past four years. Give him a hand, give him a hand. Mike Hobbs, what's your background, how much have you made here?
Mike Hobbs, I'm actually, I used to be a military vet for 12 years leading my family on deployments and I just wanted to have freedom and I've been able to earn $870,000 in Empower and I won my freedom in 2013. That's awesome, that's awesome. Give him a hand, give him a hand. We'll stop there for now. I could go across this whole room because this is actually a leadership gathering. They're responsible for over $100 million in sales and so I just want to give you guys a hand.
Give everybody in the room a hand. And also congratulate you for completing this video. What I want you to do is go ahead and buy the next product that you don't have. Activate that now. You can just click on the navigation tab and you'll go to the sales video that will explain that product in full and congratulations again for coming into the team. Go ahead now and proceed to the second core commitment and I'm gonna talk about blogging and why it's important for your business.
Go ahead and give him a hand everybody. I'll see you next year. Practicality dictates that everyone's results will vary as we are all unique and different. Basically it takes hard work to make a substantial income in this business and some people will make no money at all. The earnings of an Empower Network affiliate will be 100% dependent upon their skills, work effort, commitment, leadership capabilities and market conditions. Common sense would suggest that in most opportunities one would find exceptional individuals performing well above average while others perform under the average.
Empower Network does not guarantee any level of income or your success. To see our full income disclosure, please visit our website at www.EmpowerNetwork.com forward slash income.