MC05 – Choosing Your Best Strategy – How To Enjoy What You Are Doing
You’ve probably switched strategies at least once this year. Maybe three times. Blogging wasn’t working fast enough, so you looked at paid traffic. Paid traffic felt scary, so you went back to social media. And underneath every switch was the same quiet hope: maybe the next strategy is the one that won’t feel like work.
In this session of the Classic Masters Course, Dave Wood dismantles that hope, and replaces it with something better. The strategy you pick matters far less than you think, because underneath every strategy that works is the same handful of principles. Once you see them, you can stop strategy-shopping and pick the one you’ll actually enjoy doing every day, which is the only one you’ll stick with long enough to win.
Why does every successful marketer turn out to be doing the same thing?
Dave opens with a seminar he’d dropped in on a week earlier, just to hang out and say hello. The man on stage had built multiple large companies, and his training was, in Dave’s word, brutal. The plan for the next ninety days amounted to walking around town prospecting with a cell phone. Old school to the bone. When someone in the audience asked where they should advertise, the answer was: don’t be a wimp.
Dave’s takeaway wasn’t mockery. It was this: no matter who’s succeeding, they’re doing the same stuff. Old school, new school, whatever you call it, the underlying activity is identical. Only the strategies differ. Some people do home meetings, and Dave did those too, including the era he calls the dog food deal, where he’d show up at somebody’s house by himself to present. Those methods work, and they duplicate. Phone calling works too. The question was never whether a given strategy can work. The question is what all the working strategies have in common.
What’s the one equivalence that changes how you see every strategy?
Here it is, and it’s worth reading twice.
But did you know it’s not really fundamentally different from talking to 30 people a day versus 30 people just seeing a video?
Thirty conversations and thirty video views produce roughly the same result. Some people assume phone calls sell more. Not really, Dave says, about the same, and sometimes the video does slightly better because it’s more polished than a nervous phone call. And it doesn’t matter how those thirty people see the video, whether you handed it to them, they found it on the internet, or someone else showed it to them. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in the room or on a beach somewhere. Thirty exposures is thirty exposures.
So when someone tells Dave they talked to thirty people a day until they burned out, his response is simple: I’ll just get thirty people to see the video, and go to the beach. Same math, different life.
That equivalence gives you the real test for choosing a strategy. Don’t ask which method is trendy. Ask: how many ways can I think of to get people to see a video that sells something, without me being there? Then ask: what’s the cheapest way to get the most of the best people in front of it? And notice the word best, because cheapest and best are not the same thing. Sometimes the cheapest leads are the worst people you’ll ever deal with. You’re optimizing for quality exposures per unit of effort, not for bargain traffic.
Dave makes the same point through a man in the room who’d spent twenty-six years in face-to-face selling. The man assumed he’d have to unlearn everything. Dave’s response: no. He doesn’t sell any differently than I sell. In traditional sales you follow up by calling one person back at a time. In internet marketing you put the follow-up in a video and email it to everyone who saw the original presentation at once. Same concept, wider audience. If you already understand selling, you’re not starting over. You’re scaling up.
Does your lack of credibility actually matter?
One of the most common reasons people stall on choosing a strategy is the feeling that nobody will listen to them yet. Dave’s answer is blunt: it’s irrelevant whether you have credibility or not, because credibility has nothing to do with getting started from zero. Getting started from zero is how you earn your credibility. That’s exactly why the first stretch takes more work than anything that comes after it.
He proves it with Tracy, a team builder in the room. People listen to her now, and they listen because she does exactly what she tells them to do. It’s do as I do, not do as I say. Then Dave asks her the question that lands the whole lesson: how many hours a day does it take you to do the work that actually makes your money? One to two, she answers. And how much did you used to work? Twelve to eighteen hour days. Her results keep growing, and it takes less work than it ever did, because leverage and credibility compound. It’s less work to get more people to listen.
Dave calls this a common story because it’s true all the time, and then he flags the one exception: sometimes something works for you early, and because you were broke when you found it, you keep grinding it long after you need to. You hold on to what got you your first traction. Be willing to notice when a season is over.
But don’t resent the grind season while you’re in it, either. Dave calls it a beautiful process: drinking coffee at eleven at night, a little tired because you have work in the morning, sending one more email, making your first sale, calling that person to help them upgrade. Because when you come out of that stretch, you have a story. And the story gives you power. You have to do whatever it takes to create that story, and no shortcut hands it to you.
What if you’ve failed at everything so far?
Dave is careful to close the escape hatches people use to disqualify themselves. Think you’ve failed too long? He started offline in 2007, wandering around Walmart prospecting, and didn’t sponsor anybody for about his first year and a half. He’d built something in his local town before that, but he doesn’t call it success, because he didn’t like it, he was doing things he didn’t want to do, it was miserable, it wouldn’t grow past the town, and when he moved away the organization fell apart. Real traction didn’t come until 2009.
Sit with that sequence, because it’s the whole argument for the title of this lesson. The version of the business he hated didn’t just feel bad. It didn’t work, and it didn’t survive. Too old? Someone else is convinced they’re too young. No credibility? Covered above; that’s earned through action, not required for it.
None of this means every activity is worth doing. Dave is equally blunt about strategies he thinks are stupid: don’t pick up the phone and pound the white pages. Someone in the room did that in the old days, and it didn’t work well then and doesn’t now. Don’t cold call people you don’t know. If somebody calls you, or you generated their information and they asked to hear from you, call them back all day long. Do what you need to do to start, but start with something that actually stacks exposures.
And the closing instruction of the session is the one people skip: set your intention, then go build relationships. Hang out. Chit chat. Learn from everyone you can, because you never know which conversation changes everything.
This is one session from the Classic Masters Course, and the lessons that follow walk through each strategy, and each stage of business, in much more depth. If you’re new to it, the entire Classic Masters Course, this lesson included, is available for $99 at the Classic Masters Course.
Here’s your assignment. Take ten minutes and list every way you can think of to get people to see a presentation that sells, without you being there. Then circle the one you could genuinely enjoy doing every day for a year, and start there, because the strategy you enjoy is the strategy you’ll still be running when it pays.
Full lesson transcript
Lightly edited from the original recording — fillers removed, nothing added. Income disclaimer.
a seminar the other week for a company. I was just going to hang out and say hello. And they were talking about what they're going to do the next 90 days. And this guy was up there telling stories who he's made several hundred million dollars building companies. I mean, he's rich.
Cool guy. But it was just brutal. I mean, I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to walk around town growling with a cell phone. And 800 people attack.
This is essentially what it was. Somebody in the audience, they said well, where should we advertise? And he said, don't be a wimp. I was like, yeah, you know, oh God, don't eat me. In any case, here's what I learned.
Is I learned that essentially no matter who's succeeding, they're doing the same stuff. Doesn't matter if it's old school, new school, whatever you call it. It's the same stuff. The strategies are different. I mean, some people do home meetings.
They were. I don't know. Truthfully. I mean, I did it. I went to lots of houses where I showed up at their house by myself.
I don't know if anybody else has ever experienced anything like that when you're selling the dog food deal or whatever. Can you say the dog food deal? I'm not kidding. Shows up to sell dog food and the guy's saying, you know, you have eight people there and only one. As a dog, you're kind of screwed.
But here's the thing. It's like, they work. They can duplicate. Right? Phone calling can too.
But did you know it's not really fundamentally different from talking to 30 people a day versus 30 people just seeing a video? Right? Some people think the phone calls actually will sell more stuff. No, not really. About the same.
Right? So no more people will do it. Now, sometimes, here's the truth, is I'll get more maybe from the video because it's more attractive. Right? Truth, you know.
Some people know they're really good. But fundamentally, it's not different talking to 30 people and 30 people seeing a video. And it doesn't matter whether you hand them the video or they just find it on the internet or if a telemarketer calls it and shows it to them. It doesn't matter how they see it. And it doesn't matter whether you're there or you're on a beach somewhere.
If 30 people see it, it's the same as if somebody's talking to 30 people. You'll get pretty much the same result. Right? So, when somebody's saying, I downloaded it and I got 30 people on it, I don't know. And I talked to 30 people every day and I went crazy, and we're gonna go home together.
I'll sit there and say, well I'll just get 30 people to see the video and go to the beach. And you can do that. By yourself. Enjoy. Right?
So remember that when we're teaching stuff that strategy is not everything. Right? You come up with a strategy to understand why it works. I'll tell you what the best way to tell you to do it is, well, how many ways can you think of to get people to see a video without you being there that sells stuff? Right?
That's the best strategy. What's the cheapest way to get the most best people there? And sometimes it's not the cheapest. Sometimes the cheapest leads are not the best leads. Right, Sophia?
Right, Aaron? Sometimes the cheapest leads are the biggest assholes. Right? So you guys got to understand that as we go through the weekend, find out where you are. Right?
Be okay with it. Be willing to do whatever it takes. And be willing to learn some new stuff. This guy, you sell stuff face-to-face, right? And he was talking to me the other day, and he said something and you've been doing face-to-face selling for a long time, right?
You do face-to-face, you do trading, corporations. 26 years. Face-to-face selling, right? And he says, you know, I got to learn that, you know, I got to get used to this thing where you don't fall in love, you know, like, you know. He said something like this to me and I was like, no.
He doesn't sell any really different than I sell. I mean, I might cuss more. He's learning. Drop the F on it and bomb every once in a while. Has a perfect place in the video.
Now, but the fundamental, the truth is that we're both following up. It's just that when you follow up in traditional sales, what do you do? You call somebody back and you kind of do it one person at a time. Whereas what we do is we put it in a video and we email it to 500,000 who've seen the original presentation that's pretty much the same as his original sales presentation to one person. It's no different.
Same concept, right? In front of a wider audience. So remember that as we're going through that principles are more important than the strategy, right? Be willing to learn, be open and realize that in a moment your life can change. And believe that it can.
Right? I don't care. Look, guys, last thought I have for you. Right? I don't care what you've been through, you know?
I mean, God, I failed for a game. I've never had any success. Well, okay. Neither did I until 2009, really. I mean, I had a little success, you know, building in my local town, but I wouldn't call it success because I didn't really like it.
I was doing stuff I didn't want to do. It was kind of miserable and it just wouldn't grow past the town. And then I moved away and my organization fell apart. So I can't really call that success. So I didn't really have success until 2009.
And I started doing this in 2007, offline, wandering around Walmart. Right? You say, Dave, I've been trying for years and I haven't sponsored anybody. Okay, I didn't sponsor anybody for about my first year and a half. Right?
Doesn't matter. Right? Obviously, it doesn't matter. You know, I don't care if you, you know, what your background is, how old you are. You say, Dave, I'm too old to succeed.
Right? Then, well, another person's saying they're too young. You know, I have no credibility. I don't care if you have no credibility. It's irrelevant whether you have credibility or not.
Look, credibility will get you from 10 to 15 years old. But it has nothing to do with going from zero to 10,000 at all. That's how you get your credibility. That's why it takes more work. Credibility.
Right? Now, Tracy, here. Let's, let's. Okay. Now, Tracy.
You, you do team building stuff. We're having a talk this weekend. People listen to you a little bit more now, don't they? They do. Yeah.
Like, it's, it's less work to get more people to listen. Yes. Right. It's less work to get more people to listen. It's less work to get more people to listen.
Exactly. I leverage the team. You leverage the team. Right. And why do you think they listen to you?
Like they do. The credibility. Credibility. Right. Because she's doing exactly what you're telling them to do.
Right. I'm doing, it's a do as I do, not a do as I say. Exactly. So she does it. Right.
Now, how many hours a day does it take you to do the work that actually makes your money? What? I don't know. I don't know. I'm just curious.
One to two now. One to two. How much will you work? Like 12 to 18 hour days. But now you make a lot of money.
You have a lot of credibility. It grows by 30% a month. Correct. It takes no more work. Less work, actually.
Less work. So it's less work to make more money. Right? Now this is a common story because it's true all the time. And here's the exception here.
Thank you. make more money, right? Now this is a common story because it's true all the time and here's the exception here. Thank you. Give her a hand by the way.
Here's where it's not true because sometimes you do something and it's working so well, right? And you were so broke or whatever that you just keep doing it right? Because you don't realize that you don't need to anymore. You're holding on to what got you your first $10,000 right? Now sometimes you've got to go through the 18 hour days or whatever.
It's okay, right? Because it's beautiful. It's a beautiful process to be in. The first time you pick up the phone and you help somebody join, right? Or you're making a you know, you're drinking coffee at 11pm because you know, you're just trying to make it happen and you're a little tired because you've got to get up at work the next day and you're sending an email, right?
And you make your first sale and then you call them and you upgrade them because that's what you do when you need to. Right? But then you've got a story. And what does the story do? The story gives you power.
The story gives you power. But you've got to do whatever it takes to create that story. I don't care what it is. Now I'm not, I've been telling you certain things are stupid because I don't think they work. Okay?
Like I don't think you should pick up the phone and pound the white pages today even though Aaron did it. Right? It didn't work very well. Then and it doesn't work very well now. I don't think you should call anybody that you don't know.
I think it's ridiculous. Somebody calls you, you can call them back. You generate an email and call them. It's fine. Right?
But you've just got to do what you need to do to start. Okay? Is that okay with everybody? Okay? That's what we're talking about this weekend.
So set your intention. Let's go hang out all day tomorrow. Learn as much as you can talk to people. Chit chat. Build relationships, because you never know what's going to happen.
A year from now you could have 40,000 people in your team. Right? Here's my goal is by December, I want 10 people making a quarter million a month in power. Right? Now who would be okay with a quarter million a month?
Not very, it's not really particularly difficult to do. Right? But it's also not difficult to stay broke. That's it. You know?
you know, probably less effort to make the quarter million a month than to say, bust it and broke. Right? But you've got to take action to do that. Then we're going to talk about how to do that and all the way through how to get in the process. And I'm telling you, somebody in here will do it from zero.
Now, how cool would it be if somebody went from zero to a quarter million a month in about four months? How cool would it be if it was you? Right? It starts by doing what you need to do right now and by learning what you need to learn and by setting your intention clear. So let's do that and hang out and have some fun.
Let's lock arms and fight the forces of evil.
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