Lawrence Tam’s Method for Clearing Mental Clutter and Building on Dead Hours

You’ve got maybe two hours a night after the kids go down, and a job in the morning that has nothing to do with the business you’re actually trying to build. Every video you watch of somebody shirtless in a jungle, monkeys running behind them, tells you that you need more time, more hair, more personality than you’ve got. Lawrence Tam walks out on stage, a former engineer from Houston who still works with a “lowly” mechanical engineering degree, and tells the room the opposite. You don’t need more hours. You need to stop wasting the ones you’ve got.

He built his income part time while his manager was still asking him about deliverables. The session isn’t a pep talk about hustle. It’s a specific method for clearing out mental clutter so there’s room left to actually create something, and for treating every dead hour of your day, the commute, the lunch break, the lawn mowing, as raw material instead of wasted time.

Why can’t most people access their own creativity?

Lawrence’s answer starts with a comparison every phone owner already understands. Your device runs out of storage because you’ve filled it with things you never look at again. Your brain works the same way.

It’s the same thing in your brain. It’s like most of us can tap into a larger amount of it, but some of us can’t. So what you do is you got to dump it.

For him, dumping meant cutting the cartoons he half watched with his kids, the movies he was memorizing quotes from, the background noise most people never question. Not because entertainment is evil. Because every hour of it is an hour of storage his mind couldn’t use for the business he was actually trying to build. He noticed the same drain in people obsessively hunting fifteen cents off a grocery bill. The saving mindset isn’t wrong, but it’s expensive in a currency most people never account for: the mental space that creativity actually requires.

How did he build a business without quitting his job first?

This is where the session gets practical instead of philosophical. Lawrence didn’t carve out new hours. He converted hours that already existed. An hour on the van pool to work, an hour at lunch, more in the evening, all of it filled with training audio instead of silence. Three hours a day, every day, until the material simply became part of how he thought and talked.

The dead time wasn’t the obstacle. It was the opportunity nobody else was using. He’s blunt about the excuse he hears constantly, that there isn’t enough time, while running the numbers on how much of that same time goes to television most people don’t even enjoy that much. Two kids, a third on the way, a full time job, and he still found room, because he stopped pretending the problem was hours and started treating it as a decision.

What does ‘framing’ actually mean when you’re building something new?

There’s a piece of this teaching that’s easy to miss because it sounds like a throwaway joke about dating. Two people can describe the identical situation and land in completely different places depending on how they choose to say it. A guy living with his parents can announce that fact flatly, or he can say he loves spending time with family. Neither is a lie. One kills momentum before it starts.

Lawrence applies the same principle to anyone building a business their family doesn’t fully believe in yet. Negative energy about your own situation doesn’t stay contained. It shows up in the video you shoot, the article you write, the tone a stranger picks up on before they’ve even decided whether to trust you. Recruiting anyone worth recruiting requires becoming someone worth following, and that starts with how you talk about where you actually are right now, not where you wish you were.

Why does authenticity outperform imitation on camera?

The session ends on a point aimed squarely at anyone who’s ever felt like they don’t look the part. Lawrence is candid that his own videos feature an unstyled haircut, a cheap t-shirt, and whatever clutter happens to be in frame. His argument isn’t that presentation doesn’t matter. It’s that trying to copy somebody else’s presentation, especially the loud, high energy persona that so much of the industry defaults to, actively works against you. He tells the women in the audience specifically to stop trying to become another version of the shirtless jungle guy. Be recognizable as yourself, because a story told in your own voice is the one thing nobody else can duplicate.

That’s also why the system matters more than personal charisma. A capture page and a repeatable process do the early work of separating a curious stranger from someone ready to listen, long before you ever have to be the most magnetic person in the room. Standing out happens later, once someone is already paying attention. Getting them to pay attention in the first place doesn’t require reinventing yourself. It requires using the hours you already have and thinking clearly enough to notice what’s actually worth saying.

The whole session is really one argument stated a few different ways: the ceiling isn’t your schedule, your personality, or your degree. It’s whatever you’ve let take up space in your head that isn’t moving you forward. Clear it out, fill the dead hours on purpose, and say what’s true about your own situation instead of dressing it up. That’s the entire method, and it works whether you’ve got three hours a night or thirty.

Watch Lawrence Tam’s full session, including how he handled the moment his own posture toward his day job changed for good, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

Come on, you ready for the afternoon? Very cool. Let me introduce you to one of my best friends in the company, former engineer, and I mean absolutely not to cover off the ball. This guy inspires me every time I hear him speak.

You know him, you love him. Make welcome to the stage, Lawrence Tam. How y'all doing? My name is Lawrence Tam.

You might not know me. I hail from Houston, Texas. And H-Town, I was talking to somebody and they're like, man, you're from Houston, Texas. I thought you were African-American, man.

So I was like, man, that is crunk. And they're like, is that an Asian dude talking about being crunk? This is crazy. But here's the deal, man.

Look, you're here to have an awesome time, open up your minds, and I want to teach you something if you allow me. Do you have your permission to teach you something? All right, cool. So I've been in the industry about 2007 because my dad came up to me and was like, son, you're an engineer.

You're never going to be rich. You're never going to be wealthy. How about I? How about I join a network marketing company and I join under you?

I'm like, what? So that was my first time in network marketing because my dad recruited me to give me money, basically. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have joined. How many engineers do we have in the room?

Yeah, you're the crazy ones, too, man. I get it. I get it. Yeah, man.

And it's just funny because I didn't know what I was going to do. I mean, my whole families are engineers, dentists, PhDs, masters. And. I just got a lowly BSME from the University of Texas at Austin.

And so everyone's here at a different level, right? I mean, some people are thinking, oh, you got a degree. You know, you're so smart. I'm like, man, I barely graduated.

You know what I mean? You know what I mean? And there's people here I've been talking to. He's like, man, when you're talking about heat transfer, I get it.

It's like, I get it, too. But I didn't get it at the time. Right. But the cool thing was everyone here who goes through a formal education in engineering, you guys know it, they don't teach you what you're going to be doing at the job.

They teach you how to learn. Right. Think about that. Like, I didn't understand that.

I thought I'd go to engineering and they would teach me. I'd be like, man, I'm just I'm the bomb. I come in here. I come in here.

They give me like desk work, scrub work, designer work, because you're on the job to learn. You take these internships in college to learn while you're there. Here at Empire Network, you can earn while you learn. That's pretty cool.

Right. Pretty cool. Right. And so I don't know if he's in this room right now, but a buddy of mine, he's like he makes like, I don't know, fifty to seventy thousand dollars a month in a different industry.

And he was paying a mentor twenty five thousand dollars for mentoring. Right. So this is a high end earner looking to get into our industry and get more passive income, more just home income without doing the stuff that he was doing. Who here wants to know what a twenty five thousand dollar.

Training, he said, this is the best thing I learned from that train. Who wants to hear that sweet or I'll get to that. So here's. So here's the deal.

A lot of you are like, how did you build your business part time? Legitly, I was making about fifty thousand a month in Empower Network while working part time. I would go to these meetings and like my my manager come in and talk to me about Gantt charts and stuff. He's like, where your deliverables at?

And I'd look at him in my mind thinking, I make way more than you. And that's all I can think about that. And so my posture changed. We all talk about posturing and believing you are the earner you want to be.

And so when they ask me things, I'm just like, whatever are your deliverables here? I'm like, no, that's it. Not like, oh, I'm stressed out. I'm like, no, no stress.

So I'm going to show you a really cool way to kind of be the earner you want to be. So if your income goals are like seven thousand a month, one hundred thousand a month, whatever it is, everyone has a different kind of. Goal. And you've got to have goals.

You can't just say you can't just say rich, rich is relative, and these are the terms you should apply for everything. So here's an example here in this room. Don't raise your hand, not to embarrass yourself, but don't raise your hand, but nod your head if you have like five hundred bucks in your bank. You're like, oh, I'm sweating, I'm sweating.

And then there's some people in here who go, man, if I don't have ten thousand in the bank, I am sweating. But you're the same person, really. Your neighbors probably like that. And then there's people like if I don't have one hundred thousand.

I'm sweating. But it's all relative. All of that is relative. So what I want to show you is a way you can kind of change that and frame it.

So I was trying to explain this to a group of people. What framing means. What is framing? Framing is like when you're dating and a guy who lives with his parents and he's trying to date.

Right. So instead of saying, hey, how are you doing? So where you live? I live with my mom.

Not real cool. Right. What you can say is, yeah, I live with my mom. I live with my dad.

I live with my mom. I live with my mom. I live with my mom. I live with my mom.

I live with my mom. I live with my mom. I live with my mom. I live with my mom.

I live with my mom. So instead of saying, hey, how you doing? So where you live? I live with my mom.

Not real cool. Right. What you can say is, yeah, I love my mom a lot and I spend a lot of time with her. You know what I'm saying?

It's not really lying, but I spend a lot of time with her. So you just got to frame the situation because a lot of you are like, I'm broke. You know, my husband thinks this is crazy. Frame it.

Say my husband's really involved in it. Say my spouse really likes to talk to me about the business. You know, whatever you need to do to get you through that. To kind of.

Get you going because negative energy will tear you down and it will show through your marketing. Shooting a video, writing an article, you sound needy. There's no way you can impress a person you would want to recruit. We always talk about in the industry to recruit up.

What does that mean? Or having someone look at your information up. How do you do that? You've got to be that person.

And I didn't really understand that. Because when I came into the industry, I'm looking at e-books and websites like, how do I make money? Like everyone's goal was how do I make money? But all these mentors, all these leaders keep telling me, you've got to, if you want to be, you must become.

And if you want to make $100,000 a month, you've got to become that person. And since my goals were so small, I just wanted to make $12,000 a month to cover everything. That's all I wanted. So I developed myself listening to actual opportunities.

I listened to audios at work. I listened to a lot of audio. So Wood keeps telling me, why don't you quit? I go, well, I learned a lot at work.

I don't learn engineering work. I just learned a lot about marketing at work. I watched all the videos. I watched this.

That was when I saw this curly haired dude, shirtless, running in his backyard with monkeys. And I'm like, dude, that is the strangest thing I've seen. It is so odd. And I'm watching this at work.

And my coworker comes by and says, dude, what are you watching? So I was like, dude, what are you watching? No, no, no. I'm learning.

I'm learning. And so what we want to do is really get to the point where you can change that. And how do you change that? I kind of learned this through trial and error.

And it came through a process. But this process, anyone here could implement right now. So our brains are never really maximized. We all know this.

Our brains have the capacity to do anything you really want if you believe it. But people don't believe. And I was teaching on this. It's like, well, a lot of people don't believe if you think of it, it will materialize.

But if a lot of you. If a lot of you were to think negative thoughts, like, oh, I'm sick. If you were to think yourself sick for 30 days, for five minutes, every single day. Like, let's just say, dang, I really got to take a fart.

I just. But you didn't. But you don't really have gas right now. But if every day you thought that, I bet you squeeze one out.

And that's just how it is. It's just. Because your mind materializes it. I'm not talking about that.

But you can flip it. If the mind works like that, why can't you put. Positive things into your mind to grow you passively, right, passively. So here's what I did.

I started doing the things I disliked and just stopped doing them. I just thought I hated mowing the lawn, hated it. But I'm so cheap. I'm going to mow it for twenty five bucks.

But it took me two hours to mow my lawn. I'm thinking I hate this. It's twenty five bucks. I'm going to pay someone to do it.

Not having to think about mowing the lawn on Friday. To mow it on Sunday, to prep, get my gas and all that oil, change the blades. I took that time from thinking on the mundane things to things like, how do I do a Google Hangout to convince people that this is real? Like your creative juices have more capacity.

You can tap into it. So a lot of you have like smartphones or iPads. You guys ever run out of memory on those? You download so much stuff.

It's like not to the memory. You have to be videos and pictures. It's the same thing in your brain. It's like most of us can tap into a larger amount of it, but some of us can't.

So what you do is you got to dump it. So what do you dump? I dumped a lot of stuff. I've done stuff like just watching so many movies.

I'm trying to remember quotes. I mean, just stupid things. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know who has kids here, but, you know, I've watched so many cartoons of my kids, I started to absorb just this garbage like like watching the regular show who has kids who watch a regular show with them.

Right. And the birds are going, oh, you know, step off, you know, I don't know who gets that. But and I started thinking, it's like, why am I doing that to my brain? So I don't even look at that stuff.

And I, I constantly like I'm trying to delete it as fast as possible to allow new creative things to come in and so some ways you can do that is because Lawrence, like how do you learn and market the same time? Like, how do you have the time? You only work like two, three hours a night. How did you fit all that time to build your business?

Because the majority of the time when I was at home after work was marketing. Pure marketing, not listening to trainings, not listening to a video, not getting on webinars, none of that. Just pure marketing. So how did I do that?

I learned on the go. So it was an hour trans commute on a van pool every morning at 530 to go to work an hour. Listen to listen to an inner audio. Listen to some type of training while I'm going to work.

Then at lunch, another hour, I'll listen to more training. Then when I went home, listen to more. Three hours of training. A day, a day.

So people go, Lawrence, you're a genius. I'm like, no, I just listen to a whole bunch of stuff and regurgitate it. Because I've listened to it multiple times. Everyone here can do the same thing.

Stick it on your iPad. Stick it on your phones. Make burn MP3, stick it in your car, stick it at work. Wherever you are, you need to learn as much as you can, as fast as you can.

Now, for me, every time I read a book, I fell asleep. I don't know what it is. I'll just instantly like, boom, I'm gone. So I have to find you have to find creative ways on how you can absorb information.

Right. So now within digital age, everyone here understands downloading an app, right? The fastest way to get information to your brain is download an app. You actually download how you can perceive either visually, video or through audio.

But you have to understand it's a process. It's a process. There is a price to be paid to get to the point where you want to be. You have to get to the point.

Where you want to be, because so many people tell me I don't have enough time. I know a lot of you go, I don't have enough time. And that's an excuse. I truly believe it.

I had two kids third in the way and I worked a full time job at that time. I was running. I was doing at least 20 to 25 hours a week. And I think everyone here can probably do that.

And I think Nicole Cooper was talking about a lot of us watch as much TV as we work. That's crazy. That's a lot of time you're wasting. I mean, not upgrading yourself.

Upgrading yourself. And so I'm listening to this inner audio. And here's a pretty cool, pretty cool thing I learned from the audio. And I was talking about everyone here who's here is probably at least at most hopefully living on 100 percent of your income.

Right. Because if you weren't, you'd be dead broke. You couldn't afford to come here and you couldn't afford to eat because you overspent, but 100 percent of your income. But if I told all of you, if you were to take 10 down and live off a 90 percent, could you do it or would you die?

No, you wouldn't die. You'd be resourceful. You figure out a way to get past that and you would still grow. So a lot of you just need to kind of figure out what are your limits.

I mean, some people only sleep four hours a night. Some people sleep 10 hours a night. You need to figure out how bad you want. And we talked about your why.

How bad is your why? My why was I never wanted my kids to go to daycare ever. And so if that to happen, I had to retire my wife, I had more money than myself in accounting. And so if I had to do that, I had to think, how do I make enough money on the side part time so my kids never have to go to a daycare where they can get sick and bring it home?

And that was just kind of the fears I kind of brought up. But that why was enough that I had to get my wife home. And I retire like three years ago. You know, I mean, it wasn't much.

And so, yeah. And people go, people go, you got to be rich, you know, to stay at home. It's funny because I finally got an accountant. My accountant was telling me, so we have a corporation.

I do say get professional help, right? Professional consults. But for me, she said, you know, you need to form a corporation. And in a corporation, you're supposed to actually pay yourself payroll, a salary.

And I've been living off of three thousand a month forever. Right. And so I pay myself a salary of three thousand a month. And I go visit her and she's looking at her numbers and she's like, you're paying yourself three thousand a month.

Are you crazy? Are you crazy? And I tell you, thirty three percent. But I'm like, I only need three thousand.

Right. Just three thousand. And she's like, if you don't pay yourself, you're going to be paying Uncle Sam. I'm like, oh, screw that.

I ain't playing that game. So she pushed the paying button. And it's just it's just being guided into a direction that will help you. And it's funny because, like, I mean, David wouldn't make fun of me with this Porsche or Porsche, as they say.

And the only reason is because I heard it. I heard it from Simon. If it wasn't for Simon, I wouldn't be driving a Porsche. And that was it.

Because that one time he talked about, I'm like, hmm, I want one. But I never wanted to buy one. You know, it's just one of those things. And then my accountant comes to me and he's like, look, you have two weeks to spend one hundred thousand dollars on cars.

I'm like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? She's like, if you don't pay yourself, you're going to pay Uncle Sam. Like, dang it.

So I'm going around looking for cars and all I can remember was freaking Simon going, I love my Porsche. Like, dang it. You know what I mean? I told my wife, look, so true story.

I drove around with David Wood. I had my 1999 Mitsubishi Gallant, right? I took I took it was a DE model, so I took that off. So people would know it was a DE.

But everyone knows who has a Gallant knows what a DE looks like. It's got the seats that are like real scratchy on you. If you wear shorts, you're like scratching your leg a little bit. And true story, in Empower, making money.

I had that Mitsubishi Gallant. I had no AC in Houston and there was a huge hole in the dash. And we're shooting a video and they was like, man, this guy is awesome. You know, he's one of my top producers, yada, yada.

But look at this hole in this dash. I'm like, man, I cut that out, man. You know what I mean? But, you know, everyone's here is like, man, you got to be you got to be successful, be successful or you got to have money to buy traffic.

It's none of that. And we don't want to show you specific things because like we were telling you in college, we want to teach you to learn. That's it. As leaders, we want you to have the capacity to absorb information and implement it, take massive action on it, because if we show you a specific thing, it could be here, here today, gone tomorrow.

It's like, what if we here right now, like five, ten years ago, told you MySpace is the future. You know what I mean? You would be here now going, man, Lawrence is a jerk. He told me about MySpace and all these leads.

You know, it's not it's not the how to do that that will always evolve and change. But if we can train your mind to learn how to learn, that's all it is. Learn how to learn. Yeah, thanks.

Thanks. And that's what it is. Right. And so over time, you'll get to a point where like people are thinking you're smart and I thought that was hilarious, you know what I mean?

But it finally dawned on me. We're like, I'm just I'm just a normal dude. And my wife's like, that's a pretty cool thing. You just sound like you've been with.

I've been with my wife since high school, high school sweethearts. I met her in a I met her in middle school at a Chinese camp. Like what I had the I don't know that the Asians here who grew up in that time. I had the the bowl cut right here and then I had the long front hair and I would pull up on my ears.

Right. Come on. I know some of you don't play it off. You were like that, too.

And she's. But she remembered me. And so a lot of us, if you're doing videos and stuff, stick out. If you do an audio, stick out.

Right. So like on one of my like audio trainings, I have Chris Rock as my income disclaimer. Yo, yo, yo, this is Chris Rock. And it's just a way for people to remember you by because a lot of us absorb information and it's a lot of times the same information.

But you can differentiate yourself by absorbing what's out there and you absorb. You go, I like this. I like that. It's like a buffet.

I like some of this. Oh, I like a lot of this. And you incorporate it. Into your own story and the way you market.

Every woman markets differently. Everyone markets differently. So here's a super tip for the ladies in the house. You want this tip?

OK, say what you say, but I think all women should do video. I think the days of watching crazy dudes with crazy hair shirtless run in the jungles. Let's kill that. Let's just let's just kill that and have women.

You know, you guys are just naturally beautiful. And I've talked to a lot of you guys and you're like, I got to get my hair. I got to change my shirt on every video. Have you seen my videos?

I got my rock in the Asian fro. I got my one dollar T-shirt. Right. I got all my crap on the side.

I'm like, don't worry about that. You know, let me train you. Let me help you get to where you want to go. And it's not about trying to trick somebody.

It's about being authentic. Be you. You know, I mean, I'm saying you can't fake that. You can't fake that.

Like you go on my Facebook wall, it's all food. You know what I mean? I'm a foodie. You know what I mean?

Because when I was in like like middle school and high school, my dad would give me 20 bucks a week. That was my school lunch money and my allowance. So that one over eight years or seven years was like, if I want to buy some comic books or video games, I really can't be spending money on food. I'm serious.

I'm talking like. I'm a school lunch trader for like a dollar twenty five. And I'm like, I'm probably about three seventy five. If I compound that, I'm making some money.

But it's a different mindset, right? It's the saving mindset. But then when my mind was shattered was finding people who don't look at what you're saving, but what you can expand. See, a lot of you right now, I don't think cutting coupons is bad.

I don't think looking for sales is bad, but it's the it's the consumption of your mind trying to find that deal, trying to save 15 cents, triple coupon day, let me go to this this grocery store so I can save another five bucks and then go to this grocery store to buy some bread or let me go drive down the street a little more so I can save to save on some gas. Those little things compound in your mind and it fills you up. So it takes away from your creativity. You've got to have the creativity because that's how you stand out.

Right. And the thing is, we have a system here where you don't have to stand out until they're already on your list. Think about that. I still use the empower capture pages.

I signed up about 840, 800. My assistant confirms 840 using standard capture pages. Some of them are custom. I tried to build some custom ones and they tanked, they tanked.

Right. And it's all about testing. So let me get back to this $25,000 tip that I can really impart upon you. So you don't have to spend $25,000 for one tip.

Now, of course, you got a lot of other. But he told me, look, Lawrence, if anything I got at this guy, that was the most, like, mind shattering thing. If you want to hear it, you got to get up and just go crazy. Let me see.

Do you want to hear it? You want to hear it? You want to hear it? You want to hear it?

You want to hear it? All right. All right. All right.

He said your brain can't tell the difference. If someone's talking to you next to you or in an audio, think about this. So you. You can take leaders, they can talk to you and your brain doesn't even know the difference between them actually talking to you versus plain sound.

It's just sound. But your brain doesn't know that. And it absorbs that it's a downloaded piece of information into your brain, directly into your brain so you can learn from the best. Any time you wish to learn.

Any time you wish to learn. Any time you wish to learn. Seriously. Seriously.

And a lot of you, there's a lot of you in here right now. I met a guy here. So a lot of you, there's about 5000 people in here. I think this is a lot of people.

I met a guy in here. He has a downline in his team of 17000 people. But he's just creeping, he's just like, yeah, this is like this. I like it.

Remember, it's all about being relative, right? Being relative. Then I talked to another guy. He's like, your story is the reason why I'm here.

I'm like, cool, awesome. Yeah, we met a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

And then he goes, I have a downline of 100,000, 100,000. And then I go, well, why did you want to come here? I mean, we're only like the whole company is like 120,000. Why would you want to come here and do what we do and teach your teams?

He's like, I saw you and you're just a normal guy making a ridiculous amount of money using a system, using a system. So if a guy was 17,000 people, a guy with 100,000 people in their downlines in other companies coming here thinking this is legit, this is legit. So you either sit here and be like saturation. It's a myth.

It is a complete myth. And I just think everyone in here has greatness. And I truly believe David Wood and David Sharp built this company for you. Who?

Who gives 100 percent commission? Think about that. Who does that? Because they saw my story and they're like, man, if Lawrence can't do it, how can other people can do it?

And when I did it and I did it ten times bigger than I thought. I mean, look, so I'm going to end on a sad note, but I don't want to tarnish the other speakers and put you on a down note. But I made a quarter of a million dollars in three months spending about five hours a week because I have a close family friend or not family. She got she got she got she got diagnosed with stage four cancer.

And it spread. I'm just spending my time in the house. Little and it's like I couldn't do that if I was an engineer. And then power is allowing you to go out there and do what you want to do, you know?

And I'm able to do that now, making more money than I could ever make in my lifetime. You can do it, man. They're here for you. Peace out.