When Doorways Appear: David Wood on What Actually Breaks First

Something breaks in your business. Not a minor glitch, a real break, the kind that threatens the whole thing three days before it was supposed to launch. Most people have a story like that somewhere. What separates the ones who recover from the ones who don’t usually has less to do with the technical fix and more to do with what they refuse to do in the meantime, which is quit. David Wood’s main-stage talk is built almost entirely around that idea, told through the messiest possible version of his own company’s origin.

What do you do when the system breaks three days before launch?

The launch of Empower Network, in his telling, was close to a disaster. The website did not work, so the team resorted to collecting paper order forms and faxing them in, printing them out, and stacking them on a table while trying to get the site functional. The one developer who understood the software quit three days before launch, no matter what Wood offered him to stay. So Wood, with no coding background, logged into the server himself and started scrolling through code he could not read, looking for anything he could use.

He found a phone number buried in the code, called it late at night, and reached the original developer of the software, a stranger who fixed the broken comp plan logic in two hours over the phone. That is not a story about technical skill. Wood does not know how to code. It is a story about refusing to stop looking for the next door, even when the obvious path had just closed.

• The website did not process orders, so the team took paper forms and faxed them in by hand.
• The one person who understood the code quit three days before the deadline.
• A phone number hidden inside that code led to a stranger who fixed it in two hours.

Why does clinging to an old vision quietly kill a new one?

The more useful part of the talk comes later, when Wood turns the lens on himself during a stretch where nothing was working, despite the same effort that had worked before. He describes going through a private inventory, asking what he was doing differently, and landing on a handful of answers: he had quietly stopped giving, he was holding on to old resentment toward a former business partner, and he was still clinging to how the company used to operate instead of what it needed to become.

He is specific that none of that stuck around by accident. Anger at people who had quit, old ways of doing things that no longer fit, an old comp plan he had outgrown but kept defending anyway. Letting go of each one, in his account, is what actually unstuck things, culminating in forgiving the old partner and, almost immediately after, a new working relationship falling into place that changed the direction of the company.

the real problem has never been in power network. The real problem is always us.

That line does the real work of the talk. It would be easy to blame a platform, a partner, a market shift, and sometimes those things really are the obstacle. But Wood’s argument is that the obstacle you can actually do something about is almost always the internal one: what you are clinging to, what you refuse to forgive, what old identity you keep defending because letting it go feels like admitting defeat.

What has to change first, the strategy or the state you’re operating from?

His answer is unambiguous. State first, strategy second. Not because strategy doesn’t matter, but because the same strategy executed from a closed, resentful, defensive posture produces different results than it does executed from openness. He describes the mechanism plainly.

As David Wood puts it, “Because when doorways appear, I walk through them.” That single habit, treating an unexpected idea or opportunity as something to act on immediately rather than something to evaluate for months, is the thread connecting the launch crisis to the later turnaround. Both times, something had to break or get released before the next door showed up. Neither time did he wait for certainty first.

The challenge for anyone hearing this is that it is much easier to blame a broken website, a bad hire, or a partner who walked away than to sit down and ask what you personally are clinging to that is quietly capping your own results. Wood’s talk is an argument that the second question is the one worth answering first, because no amount of new tactics fixes a business being run from a closed heart.

The full session goes further into how that internal shift reshaped the company that followed. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

Alright ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, Dave Wood! Just for a second everybody here, close your eyes. Close your eyes. Get quiet.

I want you all to remember a time when you had a breakthrough. Biggest breakthrough you ever had. Go back. Step into what it felt like to have that breakthrough.

Breathe the same way you were breathing. I want you to open your mind, open your heart. Go ahead and put your hands up in the air for a second with me. Just repeat after me.

I declare that tonight I'm having a breakthrough. I declare that tonight I'm having a transformation. I declare that today is the day of my victory. I declare I am going diamond.

I declare I am a leader now. I declare Empower Network is having victory. I declare I am getting on the leaderboards. Open to receive.

I believe you. Everybody give Chris Jones a hand for a minute. Brilliant, isn't he? Who in here is excited about what Chris Jones has to say?

Who in here is pumped up about the future? Who in here believes we're going to have rooms of 10,000 people? Who in here believes we'll have rooms of 20,000 people? Who in here believes you can go diamond?

Who in here believes and you have faith in your future? Who in here believes that your poverty is over today? Who in here believes it's going to be easier to sponsor today? Who in here believes that it's your time?

It's your time! It's your time! I believe in all of you. I believe that tonight you'll all have a transformation.

I believe you'll get a new vision. I believe you'll step into a new victory. I believe that you'll change on the inside. I believe your gifts are going to come alive.

I believe you are a lawyer! One, two, three. Just wanted to set the energy right. I'm getting off stage now.

No, I'm joking. So, what I want to talk to you guys tonight is about something. I need some water. Hold on a second.

I got to remember to yell at the end. So, I'm going to talk to you guys about something. I've been talking to a lot of people about, and that's prospering. And I think that there's too many things out there people believe about prospering that don't help them.

Right? And I think that too many people in this room are really struggling too much. Right? I think you're fighting too much.

I think you're struggling too much. A lot of the struggle that you have is going inside your own heart and mind. It's not the company. It's not the products.

It's not the comp plan. That stuff all helps. But the real problem has never been in power network. The real problem is always us.

That make sense? Who in here believes that's true? Say, I. Who in here believes that's true?

Say, I. Okay, that's good. Right? I'm the problem and therefore you're also the solution.

Right? That true? That true? Okay.

So sometimes what we're doing is we're getting in our own way. Forgetting the results we want. We're doubting ourselves. We're listening to people we shouldn't listen to.

We're believing things we shouldn't believe. You know, we're saying things about ourselves that aren't even true. You know what I mean? How many people in here, you walk around sometimes beating yourself up?

Time to time? You know what I mean? Beating yourselves up, condemning yourselves for the past. You know?

Saying, oh yeah, I'm gonna, I just can't wait until I have that breakthrough to where I can finally be that leader who does this thing. How many people in here say things like this? Right? Like, my breakthrough's just around the corner.

And then like a year later, you're like, my breakthrough's just around the corner. Right? I'm on the two to five year plan. Then two to five years later, you're like, I'm on the two to five year plan.

It's like, so when are you gonna go diamond? Two to five years. Five years later, when are you gonna go diamond? Two to five years.

You know? I used to love it in Amway, you know what I mean? When like, you'd ask somebody like, like, how long you been in? You know?

And they'd say, I'm just getting started. Well, no matter how long they've been in, right? It's like, well, so how long is that? I'm just getting started.

How much money you making? I'm more excited than I've ever been in my life. Right? Okay.

Okay. Right? The reality is, though, is that sometimes, no matter what we're in, we get stuck. Right?

You get stuck at lower levels. You get stuck at higher levels. You go up. You go back.

Right? Sometimes, you prosper in your abundance. Sometimes, you're not. Who in here has succeeded at something in your life?

You've succeeded at something. Right? I mean, for years, all I could really cling onto was I had a black belt in karate. You know what I mean?

It was like, I'm 16. I'm like, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do that.

I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do that.

I'm gonna do that. It was like, I'm 16, and I have a black belt in karate. And then, it's like, I'm 27, and I'm a black belt in karate. You know what I mean?

Some of you, all your success you had, you were like the prom king or something, you know, back in 40 years ago. Right? But you, something. You know what I mean?

But some of us, we've succeeded real big before. Right? And then, we've kind of fallen out of it. And then, we've come back.

And we've come back bigger and better. Right? Some of us, we've succeeded really big. And right now, we're in the space where we're out of it.

It'll change again for you. Right? It'll change again for you. This is what I believe.

I believe all things work together for your good over the long term, if you believe. Now, even when it sucks, that's still true. Even when it sucks. You just don't know why yet.

Sometimes, until years later. In fact, a couple things in the past, I'll share some stories with you here. I remember starting Empower Network. I have a vision about it.

And then, I start working to start it. Nothing works. You know what I mean? And then, finally, it starts coming together.

When I meet my first business partner, Dave Sharp, our energy bouncing off of each other was able to get things moving. And then, I remember, we finally got things we thought close to ready to launch. So, we just decided to call a meeting and launch it. We do a meeting.

The website doesn't work. So, we take paper order forms. Everybody joins. We get like $30,000 in orders.

And then, our website still doesn't work a week later. We're trying to launch on Halloween. Actually, four years ago on Halloween. And the website still doesn't work.

So, what we do is we tell people, hey, we won't let you join unless you're serious. You have to fax in your order forms. Why? Well, the website didn't work.

We had to take orders somehow. So, we get all these order forms faxed in to like an e-fax number and then print them off. And we're sitting there with a quarter million dollars in paper order forms on a table trying to get the website to work. We hired this coder.

I won't mention his name. And he was the only one that knew how to run this software we were using. Right? He quits three days before.

And I was begging. I didn't know too much about employees then. I was like begging this guy. I was like, please.

Just, we'll pay you more money. And he's like, no, I got a safe and secure job. I was like, how much are they paying you? They're like $12 an hour.

I was like, I'll pay you $13.50. $14, $16 an hour. And he's like, I just don't know if it's safe and secure. Seriously.

And I was like begging that guy to stay. Right? Mars is probably having a heart attack back there. You know what I mean?

Like, he'd be whipping him with like the chain on the end of his beard for that. Safe and safety and security. Whoosh. You know what I mean?

Like, he'd be whipping him with like the chain on the end of his beard for that. Safe and safety and security. Whoosh. He knows how to get good people.

Right? So, in any case, this guy's leaving and I'm feeling all desperate. And I'm sitting there with a quarter million dollars in order forms like stacked in a table. A website that doesn't work.

A coder that doesn't know how to code. And me with some PHP code. So, guess what I do? How many of you in here know that like if you've got a dream and you don't quit, you just try weird stuff?

Well, I do. I do. I do. I do.

I do. I do. I do. I do.

I do. I do. I do. I do.

I do. I do. I do. I do.

I do. I do. I do. I do.

And I don't need to do it if what you're doing doesn't work. You just try something else weird. So, I'm like, I'm going to fix it. Right?

True story. I log into the servers. Right? Three days before launch.

And I start looking at PHP code. Like I could even read it. That's like if I was trying to solve a riddle in a Japanese book. You know what I mean?

It's like, first of all, like without any guide as to how to understand the characters, you know what I mean? I'm just like looking at a Japanese book. book saying, I'm going to solve this riddle, and I'm assuming, you know, I know there's a riddle in there because somebody told me who speaks Japanese, but they won't translate it. You know what I mean?

That's about the equivalent of what I was trying to do. So I'm sitting there, and I'm looking at this, and I was like, shit. I'm scrolling through, scrolling through, scrolling through, and all of a sudden, I scroll back. I go, wait a second.

There's a phone number in there. So it's 10 o'clock at night. I pick up my cell phone, or actually, no, I didn't have a cell phone then. It was Skype.

So I pick up Skype, right, and I dial this phone number in this code, and this guy picks up. Hello? I say, hello? He goes, who's this?

I say, it's David. He says, why are you calling? I said, because I just found your phone number at my website. He goes, oh, which site?

And I said, oh, it's empowernetwork.com. He said, where'd you buy that code from? I said, this guy. He said, that guy's an idiot.

He doesn't know how to do anything. And I was like, yeah, yeah, we kind of figured that out, but like we're launching in two days, and our comp plan won't work. He's like, what comp plan? I explained it to him.

He goes, that comp plan's stupid. You should do it like this. I said, just do it the way that I want. He says, okay, I'll fix it in two hours.

Hands up the phone. Two hours later, the website's working. I was like, that guy still works for us. Yay!

Who even says that? That's like that guy in those Adam Sandler movies that goes, you can do it! You know what I mean? I think it's that guy.

It's his voice. So this guy, like, here's the thing. How many people would have quit right before? Before the breakthrough.

Yeah, almost everyone. Not me. Why? I don't ever quit.

I don't quit nothing. Doesn't matter what happens. Right? Satan appears right there with a pitchfork.

I just say, fuck you. I ain't quitting. You know what I mean? It's like, I just don't quit.

Doesn't matter what happens. Doesn't matter. That was the first thing. So then we get up and running.

Three weeks later, of course, we have, like, we have run into several problems. First of all, we create so many blog accounts on a crappy blog system that was built by the government. And then we have, like, a lot of that same idiot that it crashes our entire server and deletes most of our database, right? And so we put this video of, like, this guy talking that was inspirational on a page, well, that same code, or reconstructed our whole affiliate database from random emails that were sent from the server.

And that was a miracle. Got it back on. The merchant shut us down. Sure story.

This is all, like, way back in 2011. This is all within, like, a month and a half, right? I mean, my God. How do we keep anybody around?

I guess they believed in something, right? So anyways, we keep fighting, and guess what happens? The merchant shut us down. Now, how many people would have quit when the merchant shut us down?

About everyone else. Not me. Why? I don't quit nothing.

I have a vision. I'm just going to do it. That's it. Period.

Doesn't matter what obstacles stand in my way. Doesn't matter what happens. I'm going to do it. So keep fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, right?

It's like, what, two or three months with no merchant accounts? I mean, my God. We were making no money, spending $100,000. A month of our own money, with no merchant accounts, no processing, and Tracy Walker's sitting there getting her whole team to blog, just say, keep believing that it'll come back up.

Right? That's called having faith, right there. That's why she earned a million dollars, right? So these people are just sitting around waiting.

All these cool people in power, they're just sitting around waiting for it to work again. I'm like, man, this is so cool. So finally, we abandoned the merchant account idea at the last possible minute. Now, some of you are like, well, that was a pretty big obstacle, and most people would have quit, and most people would have said that was a bad thing that happened, but was it really?

All things make me prosper more. That's what I believe, and here's why. Because had we gotten any bigger than we were at the time, no merchant would have ever taken us after getting shut down by the largest merchant service provider in the world. Nobody.

Any bigger at all, right? Any sooner it had happened, we wouldn't have had a enough success to keep people around. It happened at the only possible moment in time it could have happened for the universe to say, it's time to change directions. Seems like when something bad happens, it's always to cause something better, isn't it?

Again and again and again and again and again and again through history, but the hard part is believing in your vision when the obstacles appear, because they will. Believe me. Because you have to fight through the obstacle to get to your breakthrough, but some of you will look at the obstacle and you'll cringe, and some of you after you cringe will uncringe and say, go ahead, try it. So the first thing I'll tell you is the last thing Chris said, which is don't you ever quit, right?

Well, when should I quit? Never. I mean, the world explodes. We'll be floating through the universe on media or sponsoring people, taking it to the galaxy.

I had this dream one time where aliens landed. This is how I, in the Amway I was, and they, they like, you know, the alien spaceship comes down, they beam the sky down, and like, he opens his mouth, and there's this translation speaking in English, and he says, I'd like to show you this business opportunity. Okay, we need to change my mic. It's making noise.

So stretch for a minute. I'll be back. Hello. Who here's pumped up?

Say I'm pumped up. Who here's pumped up? One, two, three. One, two, three.

One, two, three. Fight. Okay, sit down. So, in Empower Network, there's been time after time after time after time when something bad has happened, just so something better could happen, right?

Just so something better could happen. I believe that the biggest struggles we've ever had have all let up and been caused, actually, to lead us to where we are right now. Because Empower Network needed to go through some changes from how we used to be. How many of y'all know that?

How many of you know? Some of you don't know. Some of you weren't in before, and that's okay, right? Some of you are new.

We needed to go through some changes. We needed to go through some changes. We needed to go through some changes. We needed to go through some changes.

We needed to go through some changes. If we hadn't gone through those changes, we wouldn't be around today at all. You know, we launched ENV2, which really was the dumbest thing we ever did. That's what it looked like, right?

It was stupid in one sense. But what nobody knew is that if we hadn't launched that thing, the company would have imploded in about five months. About five months out from implosion. That dumb thing saved our company.

Because it was being mismanaged by some previous staff. I won't mention any names. And, of course, I was too ignorant to know. John figured it out.

And he would have never figured it out had we not launched ENV2. If we hadn't launched that thing, the company would probably be gone. Truth. We needed to change some stuff.

We needed to get more compliant, too. We needed to improve our products. Because, had we continued on that growth curve, we probably would have been in the place of Veeam. Truth.

That's honest. Because we were growing real fast. But we've reformed. We needed to change to step into the vision.

Sometimes you need to go through a cleansing to become a better you. Sometimes your business needs to go through a cleansing to get rid of some leadership that has poisonous energy. Sometimes you need to have a cleansing inside your heart and let go of old visions and dreams to receive a new, better, more powerful dream that's got your destiny written on it. Sometimes you need to get rid of a relationship to step into a better one.

Sometimes you need to get rid of a job to really start prospering in your business. Sometimes you need to cancel out all the crap your relatives have told you in order to believe in yourself. Sometimes you need to do more than what you really can do. Sometimes what you need to do is you need to become a new you.

And sometimes the only way to get you to do that is the universe has to inject pain into your life in sufficient quantities to cause you to say, okay, I'm ready to change, please no more. Seriously. How do I know? Experience.

Right? I'm going to tell you guys about some stuff that might sound strange to you. But this is, this is heart to heart for me to you. Okay.

And I like being just blunt and honest because I think it's the only way to fly. And you never know what's going to come out of my mouth after I say it, because neither do I. So I started in power network where from a place of prosperity, right? I'm making 50 to $80,000 a month, selling other people's stuff, living in a house that costs $1,800 a month in Costa Rica in the mountains.

Right. With like no overhead and no. Employees, but Chris Rushlow, who was probably very frustrated trying to manage my very disorganized life, right? So I start the company because why I'm prospering, but I'm in a place where I want something different than what I'm doing is giving me, I want something that's bigger than the visions of the people who even own the things and all the things I was in, I had a vision for their thing, bigger than their vision for their thing.

And didn't realize that my vision just didn't fit there. I just didn't realize it because it wasn't big enough. Their heart wasn't big enough at the time. I don't know how they are now.

Right. Not judging them. They are who they are. Good people.

They're just, their dream went as big as mine and I was in their dream. So we were having some conflicts, right? So I want to help my team and they kind of want to make more money themselves. And I'm walking.

Around just stop working for months and I say, how can I help people make more money, right? I want to help my team succeed. I want to create the richest team in network marketing. I want to pack rooms with 10 and 15,000 people.

I want to create something that does hundreds of millions and billions of dollars in sales. I want to create millionaires, an incredible amount of millionaires, a hundred of them a year. I want to see people prosper and be abundant and be able to live on the beaches of the world. I want to see people have spiritual transformation.

Transformations and personal breakthroughs and have their eyes be open to the possibilities that exist in the world, to be able to travel the world, to be go, be able to go live in Bali, to be able to sink their toes into the hot sand and the beaches of the world. Whenever they choose. I want people to be able to live their passions. How do I do that?

So I'm walking through the mountains one day and I'm asking and asking, how can I do that? And then one day I have a vision. Boom. Empower network downloads into my brain.

Comp plan products, everything. Just like that. All right. Kind of weird.

It's like, wait, so you didn't sit there and like sketch out this comp plan. Nope. Walking through the mountains. Boom.

That didn't hurt. I do Kung Fu. I'm used to that. I strike myself with bats to condition my, I'm joking.

Vision. Right. Just downloads. Bam.

Right. What do most people do when that happens? Ignore it. Ignore it.

Discount it. I'll say that's just another idea, right? What do I do? I don't do anything else until I accomplish it.

Yeah. I'm just going to make it happen. So I start working on it right then. That's in January.

Getting the phone. I'm brainstorming with Chris Rushlow. He actually came up with the name Empower Network because we were trying to find a good name that also had a domain to it, which is really hard these days. You obviously got to make it happen.

You obviously got to make it happen. You obviously got to make it happen. You obviously got to make it happen. You obviously got to make it happen.

You obviously got to make it happen. You obviously got to make it happen. You obviously got to make up some crazy word from some ancient language nobody speaks anymore that means something now in today's language that also has a domain to get one. Well, we couldn't even get kolatu.com because some Chinese poetry guy has it, and we can't even find a kung fu master to find the guy over in China.

We got to get kolatublog.com, right? We've been hassling that guy. So if any of you live in China and you could find that guy, we'll pay for you to hire the mafia to go ask him. I'm joking, right?

So I start working on it. Buy the domain name, start trying to figure out how to do it. And man, I'm just like beating my head against the wall trying to figure anything out. I'm looking for scripts that can just run comp plans.

I'm like, there's just no good thing like this. There's nothing that can make this comp plan. So there's something that made something kind of like it. And I bought that and it didn't work.

And then I bought something else and it didn't work. And then I'm like trying to hire coders and like, I'm just like unbelievably, dumb with the way I'm trying to hire employees because I don't know how to do it because I never had any. I mean, I was making 50 to 80,000 with no employees, you know, call that a dream. And like, nothing's working.

So then I start testing the ideas out because I'm like, well, I might as well try this stuff out and they're all working, right? I make a little blog network on a little name network and just get my little team in this company all blogging with their own links in the posts, right? And it's actually sponsoring people into, you know, this company I'm in. I was like, well, that worked.

Then I do a mastermind retreat out at my house because I wanted to see if I could sell something for $3,000 on a webinar without many phone calls, right? And I did like $30,000 in sales one night in two hours. And I only had a list of like 12,000 people at the time. It's unbelievable.

I was like, that was the easiest money that I've ever made in my life. Now, I thought that until I spent all 30,000 on the seminar. Have somebody hit me up the other day and they're like, I want to do a seminar in Costa Rica. I'm like, well, maybe you want to do it somewhere cheaper than that, you know?

So anyways, I learned some stuff, start making some money, start testing ideas. And then at that retreat I do down at my house, I invite a handful of people, Lawrence Tam, David Sharp, Chris Rushlow, a handful of others to brainstorm ideas. And here's what you do when you have a vision. You work at it and work at it and work at it and work at it, knowing not everything you try is going to work.

But then all of a sudden, you keep working and working and believing and believing and believing. And then all of a sudden, it's like God places a job. He places a door there and you just turn the knob open, it walks through and the blessing begins. So, Dave Sharp comes down.

Now, Dave Sharp, I know I'm not working with him today in Empower, he's still my friend. But that relationship was needed because it was like when I was talking to him, it was like this energy was coming off of him telling me, I need to work with that guy right now. Right? I start working with him and what starts to happen?

Everything begins falling into place immediately. From the combination of both of our unique gifts and skips. Right? All of a sudden, it begins to prosper.

Right? Now, what if I had ignored any of those things? Right? I don't look through the code.

I don't do, I don't start trying the ideas and invite down some people to my house and brainstorm. I don't begin to mastermind. What if I didn't keep fighting after the merchant shut us down? Right?

What if I didn't? What if I didn't keep fighting after we launched the NV2? Right? This wouldn't exist.

2013, truthfully, okay, because I know a lot about both sides. Right? I didn't make money almost all year. That's 2014.

Right? Launched three products, spent all day and night making them. Just to keep Empower Network alive and keep the operations running because the company was making no money at all. Right?

That's the truth. Now, most of y'all are like, really? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Didn't make the money for my affiliate position. Didn't make money for my product launches. Living off of savings.

Right? Because I won't quit. What did Chris Jones say in a loud thundering voice? Don't you ever quit!

So, why wasn't I making money though? That was the question, and that's the lesson to learn, right? That's the lesson to learn in prosperity. It's because I stopped operating the same as when I prospered.

That's why. See, sometimes what happens is, you have a vision, number one, you need to go to work, and you need to just work on it, then you need to kind of like step through doors, is what I'd say, and continue to do that, because there will be things that are placed in your mind. There will be things that are placed in your mind. There will be things that are placed in your mind.

There will be things that are placed in your way that you guys can't even believe. You guys would not even believe the weird coincidences that exist all over in my life. And it's not just an Empower Network. It is freaking everywhere, right?

I'll give you an example of just a weird, strange coincidence that just is silly because there's no point in telling it to you other than it's weird. I went to Lathrop High School in Fairbanks, Alaska. There's a Kung Fu school up there, okay, that was in a lineage of Kung Fu taught by a guy named Eben Bostepe. They had a student in that school, blonde-haired chick, that became a Kung Fu Sifu, right?

That guy, Eben Bostepe, had a big school in Turkey where he's from. His number one school in Turkey was ran by a guy named Jamal. Jamal is the Kung Fu teacher of my local Kung Fu teacher in Costa Rica, and he married that blonde girl in Alaska. That was my friend growing up.

That's all over my life, right? Weird things like that. Running into a line of code in a website, make a phone call, and then a guy still works for us four years later. You know what I mean?

All over the place. All over the place. Why? Because when doorways appear, I walk through them.

So there's a lot of doors that appear all over the place because I always take action on them, always. If I feel like God wants me to say something, I just say it right then. Right then. Right?

So, I really don't care what it is, honestly. That's why I come on stage. I never know what I'm going to say. That's why I come on stage.

I never know what I'm going to say. That's why I come on stage. I never know what I'm going to say. Never.

I know Chris Rushlow told the speakers not to do that, but he wasn't talking about me. That's exactly what I do. I go up. I have no plans.

Nothing. Except for tomorrow, because I'm explaining the comp plan, so I had to make slides. Grueling. Grueling.

That work. I like this stuff Chris Jones does, and I was like, how does your brain work? It's amazing. It's all organized and everything.

Right? So what happens? Right? This works when you are operating from clarity, humility, right, hunger, asking.

You only really have vision when you're open. You don't have it when you're closed. You're never going to have a really big vision come to you when you're all caught up in your ego. You're not going to have a big vision come to you when you're clinging onto a vision from the past.

You're not going to have real vision for your future come to you when you're stuck in old relationships and pain. You ain't going to have vision come to you when you're just going to do it your way anyways. I didn't want to own a network marketing company. Ask anyone I worked with prior to 2011 if I ever wanted to own a network marketing company.

I convinced everybody out of it. I was like, I'm so glad I don't have to do that. Those guys have to work hard. I was like, we just get a salesman.

We sell stuff and make money, be free. That's the dream right there. I had never owned a company. I swore off.

I wasn't wanting to own a company. I see people and they're like, Dave, you inspired me to make my own company. I'm like, okay, that's fascinating. I never got really inspired to do that until I was walking through the mountains and had a vision about it.

Right? And then I was like, okay, I'll do it. I have to work. I mean, and so if you're not open, you're not going to have vision, right?

What are some things that stop you from really being open? Like a lot of you guys, you come here and it's like, yeah, I want to break through. Yeah, that guy, you know, but you don't listen to anything. I'm not talking to that guy.

I don't know if he listens or not, right? But it's like you ask one leader what to do and then they tell you and then you just keep asking people what to do and then they tell you and you don't listen to any of it anyway and you do it your own way anyway. So why are you asking? You're just going to do it your way, which so far has not been working.

You know what I mean? I mean, if your way is not working, working harder at it doesn't make it, it just makes it not work more than it was not working before, right? It was like, when I get all caught up in my ego, my way doesn't work either, truthfully, because I have to be in a state of openness, ready to receive, ready to listen to all feedback, and any time I get out of that, nothing works, which is what happened to me in 2014, right? See, I'm never going to look at somebody outside myself and put blame for something that's going on in my life.

Yeah, maybe they're doing something. Maybe they're not. Maybe they're not. Maybe they're not.

Maybe they're not. But I still attracted it. I still got around it. I'm still not doing what it needs to be done to change it.

There's still something I'm doing, all the time. Who in here believes that's true? Say, I. I.

Oh, that's not enough. Who says they believe it's true? Say, I. I.

Right? You need to be in a state where, even if you know what you're doing, you're humble. Okay? You're humble.

Because if you're not willing to listen to people, and sometimes that's hard, especially for us that get evil. There's egos that get tripped off real easy, like me. Look, I'm pointing all ten fingers at me. You know what I mean?

And when you're making $200,000 a month, it's a very, very strong effort to keep yourself humble. Because everything you're doing is working. And you can very easily get to a place where you forget what state you're in that created the $200,000 a month. That can happen from pain, too.

Business partner quits. Right? Now, truthfully, guys, you know, had my business partner stop working with me. Right?

It actually wasn't a bad thing. We became out of alignment. I wanted to do one thing. He wanted to do another.

And, right, he had some health issues. So it was a good reason. It's okay. Right?

Not a big deal. But I clung to that pain. You know what I mean? For a long time.

Right? I clung to it. I was clinging to the way we were doing things before in PowerNet. We're like this.

Like a pit bull grabbed onto a raw steak. But we were doing it like this before. Well, it's not a state of humility, is it? Because it wasn't working the same.

Right? And so guess what happened? And I talked to a couple of you about this this weekend. Some people are like, man, I used to just be making so much money.

It was just like, you're just, you're just like in a boat with a tug of war. You're just a boat team rowing downstream. Like, what does it feel like now? It feels like I'm swimming upstream.

It sounds like you're fighting the current. Right? Because this is what it feels like when you really start to prosper and be abundant. What it feels like is it feels like you're just sailing.

You're working. But it's like all your effort is multiplied. That's what it feels like. And if that's not what's happening, you're not in a state of prosper.

You're not. So I actually had this weird phone call with Chris Rushlow. It was back in, what was that, June? June or something?

I think June. I called you. Well, I have a lot of weird phone calls with you. Not the shadow people thing.

The one where I was like, there's some sort of like spiritual weirdness going on. Right, June. Right, June, I think. And I call Chris and I'm like, man, there's some sort of like, it's like, and I just talked for 10 minutes and hung up the phone.

Right? I think is what it was. I was like, call him. I said, it feels like this and this and this.

I was like, oh. And then I hung up the phone. Right? He's probably like, okay.

What I realized is, is I realized that I wasn't prospering. And I just had to voice out loud what was going on in order to figure out that's what was going on. That's all I needed to do is voice it. I was like, oh.

I was like, I'm not prospering right now. I'm fighting everything. And I imagine the stream and myself. Turning.

Turning and just swimming downstream rather than fighting. And I was like, gosh, that's easier. I need to change this up. So what I did was I said, how am I getting in my own way?

How am I getting in my way? Right? Right? What am I clinging to?

What am I holding on to? What pain is causing this? And I sat there for like days just thinking about that and then releasing it. Forgiving people.

Letting go of old stuff. A lot of time. Because I was like, nothing is going to happen while I'm operating like this. I'm just going to keep operating in this frustration.

And this is not what happens. Yeah, I work hard no matter what. But like, this is not what happens when things are prospering for me. Now, this is what happens, okay?

I think through all the things I was doing when I was really prospering, right? What are some things I come up with right away? Giving. I'm always giving money away.

I stopped doing it. I don't know why I stopped doing it. I just stopped doing it. I started doing it again.

Right? Immediately. I was like, okay. Changed that one up.

Wrote a check for 10% of my income. Sent it off to feed kids. Now I'm feeding, I think, like 4,000, 5,000 kids a week. Right?

So like, I'll get to a quarter million a week. Right? I will. I'll have to make a lot more money though.

Which will be good for all of you. All right, giving. Right? I used to do it all the time.

I just stopped. I don't know why. I stopped doing it. Right?

But it's not just giving money. It was giving to myself. Right? If you want to be abundant and receive, look at the leaders.

Look at how giving they are with their teams. Look how giving Silvio is with his team. Right? Look how giving Kevin is.

Look how giving Tracy is. Look how giving Aaron is. Right? Look how giving all of the leaders are.

See how much they're available. How much they give on their hangouts. How much of their knowledge they're willing to give if you just ask. Right?

Think about how giving they are. And then think about how giving you are in your life. Probably a difference sometimes. Right?

Well, if you stop giving, if you stop doing the things that got you where you are, if you stop giving your knowledge away, it's like knowledge stops being given to you. The universe kind of works like that somehow. Right? You got to give what you want back.

You know, try receiving love without giving it. Works pretty well, doesn't it? You know? No, it doesn't work well.

Not at all. Not at all. Not at all. Not at all.

Not at all. Not at all. Not at all. Not at all.

Not at all. You got to give what you want to receive. I stopped giving. The other thing I was doing is I was just holding on to all sorts of pain.

Right? Because this happens. You know what I mean? This happens.

This happens to all of us. Right? I'm 34 and so I got 34 years of stuff that's happened. Right?

But I was holding on to all this pain from business and stuff. People quitting. Right? Not working with Dave Sharpe anymore.

I was so mad about that for no reason. I don't even know why I was mad. I have no clue why I was so mad. Now that I'm not mad I can't even remember why I was mad.

Because every time I think about being mad I was like, gosh that was something dumb to hang on to for so long that kept me stuck. Right? Pain from people quitting. People I used to work with.

All sorts of stuff. Right? So there's that. There's giving.

There was pain. There was stuff I'm doing. Right? That I'm not doing anymore.

It's like what aren't I doing anymore? I wasn't getting on hangouts. I wasn't getting on webinars. You know what I mean?

I wasn't doing the stuff that I love to do. So it was like I was holding on to all this stuff. Clinging to how it used to be. And that's the other thing I was doing.

Is I was clinging to old vision. Clinging to old vision. I see people do this all the time. They're not even aware they're doing it.

Somebody walks up to you. They're like, you know, I'm gonna make this happen. By the way, you know, I was a successful lawyer for 30 years. You know what I mean?

It's like, well that, that, it's okay. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? You know what I mean?

You know what I mean? You know what I mean? You know what I mean? We're not dogging the success.

But you let go of that old stuff. Because that doesn't even matter here at all. You know? When you, when you got a hippie up here, right?

Who's never succeeded in anything really but this. And all of a sudden your, your 30 years of being a lawyer just doesn't matter so much to whether or not you're going to succeed here. It's useful because now we got a lawyer story when you walk across the stage. You know what I mean?

That also did it in addition to the hippie. But your knowledge as a lawyer is not the same as the knowledge that you have here. Right? You need to let that go.

Some other people, they walk up and they're like, you know, I've been a big dog in this deal and that deal. Right? You're like, okay, you've been a big dog. You know what I mean?

Congratulations. But this is not that deal. This isn't that. This isn't your previous success.

This isn't your old company. I'm not your old owner that quit. Right? You gotta let that pain go.

Some of you all, you have a leader quit. A downline quit. Somebody who says they're coming to the event and they don't come and you get all hung up on the inside. And what do you do?

You cling to them like this. Right? A lot of women, a lot of men, right? They have the past love.

What do they do? They're clinging to that so angry. They're filling the space in their heart that's designed for love with pain, hatred, and anger. That's gonna work.

I'd never get a guy like that again. Never. You know what I mean? It's like, okay.

I think that'll work out really well. You know what I mean? Who in here's tried that? Right?

I was like, it doesn't work so well. I'll never do that again. It's like, all right, whatever. You're hanging on to this old crap.

Right? Right? Right? Right?

Right? Right? Right? Right?

Right? Right? Right? Right?

Right? Right? Right? Right?

Let me tell you what happens. This happens in June. Okay? I list off all this stuff, and I just sat there meditating about it, praying about it, and asking, what am I doing?

What am I holding on to? What am I doing that's preventing me from being able to be blessed? Right? Old vision.

I was so clinging to the old vision, the way Empower Network used to be. But it wasn't the same company anymore. It wasn't the same people anymore. Wasn't the same leadership council anymore.

Right? It was time for something new. And I'm like this, because it works so well. Guess what happens?

I go through this list. I let go of it all. I change it all. I make plans for all of it, the stuff that I need to do.

Last thing I get on this list was the piece where everything started to move. Okay? And that was forgiving my old business partner. I put that last because I was like…

Now, again, I think that's stupid. I'm just telling you guys honest truth, right? There's a bunch of other stuff in between there, right? One of the things was, and this is just me to you, right?

I went for ages and ages and ages just not taking payouts from the company because I was like playing this hero-savior thing, right? But I was suffering. So I decided not to do it anymore. I said, I am going to take a salary from the company no matter what, right?

Because I'm projecting… I'm projecting energy on other people of lack by doing this. That was something that came up when I was meditating on what am I doing to keep myself stuck, right? Immediately started doing, started giving money away, right?

Last thing on the list I get to, I forgive my old business partner, right? Now, here's the interesting thing. It goes back to vision. Forgive that guy and like, bam!

Chris Jones appears in my imagination and a voice. You need to work with him. Bam! So I pick up the phone.

I send Chris Jones a very weird 30-minute message. And we were in California brainstorming about Project Titan that Friday, right? And the pieces started to move and some new decisions needed to be made. Decisions to let go of things that need to be let go of.

People that need to be let go of. Even people that I like, right? But they shouldn't be there anymore, right? Decisions to forgive all the people that quit.

To not hold on to it. To not be angry at anyone, right? Decisions to let go of clinging to the old way of doing things. And then I'm clear to say, what's next?

See, so this is the way I see things. This is the way I see things, okay? Empower Network got corrected in the place where it first went wrong. And the place where it first started, which was not what we're doing.

It's what's going on in the heart. And that's where it starts and ends. What's going on in the heart. The reasons.

The why. The vision. The faith in people. The prosperity.

The abundance. The direction we're going. The belief in the future. Being open to receive.

And wondering at it all like a child staring into the depths. At the universe saying, what are all those lights in the sky? Teach me. That's a great attitude to have.

So we come here and some of us have been around for a while. And some of us haven't. Some of you are brand new. You say, how does this apply to me?

Just make sure you just are humble when you're here. Be open to receive a new vision for you, right? Be open to it. Be open to let go of that old stuff and get something new that comes inside your heart.

Something new where you can prosper bigger. You can prosper more abundant. You can create something more magical. Right?

I was so clinging to that old comp plan we had. Right? I was clinging to it. But at the same time as clinging to this old comp plan, right?

What am I also doing? I'm trying to figure out how to do something that can't exist in our old comp plan. Right? For like two years.

I'm going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about that tomorrow night. So guess what I did? I sat there and I said, I'm just going to let that go.

I'm going to let my attachment go to it and say, how do I help people? How, what do we need to do to create massive growth in rooms of 15 and 20,000 people and people just getting rich, right? Then it takes me like 30 minutes to write a new comp plan that still, me and the coder are the only ones that really understand. It took me 30 minutes to write that, but I had to let go to be willing to build something that's a hundred times more powerful.

Right? Some of y'all you've been doing something that ain't been working and you're going home and you're just trying harder in the night after all day of listening to people doing things differently. Maybe it's time to try something new. Maybe it's time to listen to somebody new who's on the stage.

Maybe it's time to open your heart and humble yourself and say what's next for me. Maybe it's time to let go of that vision you had that's keeping you trapped in something that's not working for you anymore. Maybe it's time to let go of that big check that you had in that other deal and to say, it's okay. I'm ready to start from zero.

Maybe it's okay to be okay. With being at zero. Maybe it's okay to be okay with being at zero. Right now with treating yourself like that, even if you're making $30,000 a month, how did you act when you were at zero before you'd made 30,000 or a million or half million or a quarter million dollars?

How did you act then? How did you act on your way on your rise to the top? That was different, right? So empower network gets corrected in the heart, which is where it started and from the heart.

Flows everything around you and your little world you're creating. And some of us are creating a big world. That's what I like to do. All the people begin to fall into place.

The ideas begin to fall into place. The comp plans begin to fall into place. The systems start falling into place. And all along this path of things coming together, it's like there's miracles all along the way that just go and remain unsaid.

And the biggest miracle of all of it is you being here, sitting in the chair, wondering what's in this for me, because that's where it starts. Wonder, looking up and saying, can I be on the stage one day? Wonder, looking up and listening and saying, can I make a sale too? Wonder and looking up and saying, will this really get that big?

Wonder and looking up and saying, okay, teach me happily, opening your heart and saying, I'll step into it and believe in it. Wonder is where it begins. Wondering if it's possible. Then all of a sudden, because you're open, a seed gets planted in your heart where you believe just a little bit what I'm saying to you.

You believe just a little bit that this room will expand, that I see a future where we're filling auditoriums and stadiums. We've got people along all the walls in rooms so big they have no ceiling. As we're speaking late in the night, staring into the stars in the sky, as everybody in the audience is roaring and screaming. As we're showing them.

Away to an even bigger future because we've still just gotten started as my hair begins to turn gray and as we have people that are just born today crossing across the stage as diamond. And then we start stepping into a bigger future as Portugal and Spain and Europe start to begin to have events of their own as it paints into a vision that's like a river flowing through time. A light traveling through the universe, casting out the forces of evil that try to stand in the way of belief, power, vision, faith in a new and a better world where people can have victory.

All sorts of people in here that are going to do great things. Some of you can do great things greater than you think you can. Some of you right now, your vision ain't a vision. It's all caught up in your ego.

You need to humble yourself and say, what's my aim? What's my real purpose? Why am I really here? Let go of your big ass ego and say, show me the truth and here's what you'll find.

You'll find the seed that gets planted in your heart is even bigger than you can imagine. And it'll grow into a tree that springs into a forest traveling through giving prosperity through generations of time. As you step out of the curses in your family tree of poverty. As you step out of the negativity from your mom and your relatives and your parents.

As you step out from the lies they told you in school that you got to follow the system to be successful. As you step out from the bull crap that your spouse told you on your way to the event. As you step out, you step in to a new and a better you that believes in something different, something, something that doesn't even seem possible. Possible to other people.

Something radical, something that's growing like a fire on the inside of your heart. And as you're feeding it and feeding it and feeding it, you turn in to a warrior. That's what this is really about. About becoming the best you you could be.

The divine you. The you that's filled with all the power that you can have. All the gifts inside your soul lighting up. All the passion you've ever had in your life and expressing it through time.

All the gifts. That you've ever had in your life expressing themselves in a moment of prosperity. Giving light and giving fire to people around you. Because that's why we're here is to uplift and edify the people around us.

And when we get out of our own ego. When we get out of ourselves. What we see is we see I'm here for a cause. And my cause is to light a fire that fills the world.

That travels through time. That gets people to rise up. That gets people to believe in something new. Something bigger.

Something out of this world.