Using Your Strengths: Why Forcing Someone Else’s Marketing Style Is What’s Stalling You
You watched somebody in your upline build a business off one blog post a week, so you sat down and tried to write one too. Four paragraphs in, you had no idea what to say next, and a nagging feeling that you were doing the wrong thing entirely. You weren’t imagining it.
Dave Wood hit that exact wall early in his career. He tried blogging because that’s what the content people around him were doing, and it produced almost nothing. Not because he lacked discipline. Because blogging was never his game.
As Dave Wood puts it in the Classic Masters Course, explaining why it never worked for him, “I’m not a big content guy, more of a hardcore direct response paid media guy, conversion guy.” That one line is the entire lesson. Most people never test it, because nobody tells them the business rewards more than one kind of person, and they burn months trying to become someone they aren’t.
Why does copying a style that isn’t yours produce nothing but resistance?
There’s a reason some people build an audience off long, strange, wildly creative blog posts, and other people build the same size business off three sentences in an email that push straight to an order form. It isn’t that one group works harder. It’s a personality difference, and it shows up as early as the first week you try either approach.
Dave saw the split up close inside his own organization. Lawrence wasn’t a content person either. Most of what appeared under his name online came from people writing for him, because Lawrence was outsourcing before it was fashionable to call it that. He had two hours a day to work his business around everything else going on in his life, and two hours a day isn’t enough time to build the kind of following a content-first strategy needs. So he ran paid traffic and phone rooms instead, for years, and outproduced plenty of people who had far more time on the clock.
Sophia’s split runs the other way. Dave describes her style as analytical, built for breaking a process into steps and working it methodically. Dave is not that. He never has been. The point isn’t that one style beats the other. It’s that neither of them would have worked nearly as well if either one had tried to run the other’s playbook instead of their own.
what I realized was that I had some strengths and that I was good at something. And I got in my groove and my zone. And it’s not that I can’t pump out a blog post. It’s really not. But I’m more of a copywriter opposed to a creative writer. I understand my style a little bit more. So, I mean, if you can identify what your style is, then I think that you can, like, you know, everybody’s got their own style. They just do. And if you can identify that and label that and embrace that and not try to do a million things. Like, you know, with Aaron and Sophia, I just know that Sophia, her style is more analytical. Now, I’m not analytical, really.
That passage names the actual mechanic: identify what you’re already good at, put a label on it, and stop trying to run five strategies at once because the top earner in your company happens to run all five. Most people never get past the identifying step, because admitting you’re not a content person, or not a phone person, or not an analytical person, feels like admitting a weakness. It isn’t. It’s the fastest route to a strategy you can actually sustain.
Why does doing everything at once leave you further behind, not ahead?
Ask a room full of network marketers whether they feel like they have too much to do in their business on any given day, and nearly every hand goes up. That feeling isn’t a sign you need to work harder. It’s usually a sign you’re running four strategies badly instead of one strategy well.
Dave makes the same point from the other direction. When he tries to force himself into a content-first approach, sending people to a blog post and hoping the story pulls them in, he can feel it going wrong in real time. As he describes it directly, “When I’m, when my mind doesn’t really think like that, I’m going to struggle. I’m going to have resistance.”
That resistance isn’t a lack of willpower. It’s a signal. When the strategy matches how you’re actually wired, the work gets easier the longer you do it. When it doesn’t, every single day feels like pushing a boulder uphill, and you’ll eventually decide the business doesn’t work, when really it was just the wrong entry point for you specifically.
Getting this right is also, according to Dave, most of what actually buys you your time back. Line up your activity with the way you’re built and you need less of it to get the same result. Fight it, and you can work twice as hard for half the traction, then wonder why everyone around you seems to have it easier.
Where does your personality actually plug into the marketing funnel?
Every business, online or off, runs through the same four stages: traffic, then leads, then sales, then follow-up. Dave draws this out on a whiteboard for a reason. Almost everybody skips the leads stage entirely, whichever style they favor, because almost nobody puts a real call to action at the end of what they create.
A content-first marketer sends traffic straight into a blog post: something engaging, a little strange, built to hold attention. Done right, there’s a clear next step at the bottom, a link to a capture page, so the engagement actually turns into a lead instead of just a pleasant read. A direct response marketer runs the sequence in the opposite order. The persuasive copy sits up front, in the email or the ad, and it sends the click straight to a capture page. The relationship-building, the story, the personality, all of that happens afterward, once the lead is already on the list.
Same four stages, opposite order of operations. Neither order is more correct. What’s non-negotiable, regardless of which one fits you, is that the leads stage never gets skipped. Tell people exactly what to do next, every time, or the traffic you generated evaporates without ever becoming anything.
- If your instinct is to entertain and engage first, put your call to action at the end of the content, not buried somewhere in the middle.
- If your instinct is to persuade and convert first, send the traffic straight to the offer, then build the relationship with the lead you already captured.
- Either way, the business only moves when somebody is told, in plain language, exactly what to do next.
Why does telling people what to do matter more than the platform you pick?
Before Dave built anything online, he was in network marketing the old way, sitting through long presentations that ended with everybody pumped up and nobody ever asked to actually join. No call to action anywhere in the whole meeting. Compare that to the instruction Dave gives now: tell your audience exactly what you want them to do next, every single time you communicate, whether that’s an email, a blog post, or a phone call.
That instruction has nothing to do with whether you’re a content person or a conversion person. It sits underneath both styles. A brilliant blog post with no link at the bottom produces engagement and nothing else. A sharp capture page with no clear single action produces confusion and nothing else. The style gets you attention. The call to action is what turns attention into a lead you can actually work.
The full lesson goes a lot further than what’s above: Dave breaks down how to build out both sides of that funnel depending on which style is actually yours, plus why pairing with a partner whose strengths cover what yours don’t beats trying to be good at everything alone. The entire course, including this lesson and everything built on top of it, is available for $99 through the Classic Masters Course.
Get the course, watch the rest of this lesson, and start building the version of this business that actually fits how you’re wired.
Full lesson transcript
Lightly edited from the original recording — fillers removed, nothing added. Income disclaimer.
Okay, let me just ask you some questions, right? Here's the difference, right? Now, I'm a content guy. Dave Sharp really is, right? You never really, like, just succeeded blogging.
No, I got a mic. Huh? I got a mic. I don't want it to scream at me. No, no, I'm not a big content guy, more of a hardcore direct response paid media guy, conversion guy.
The difference that I see is a personality tweak. Really, it is. Because there are certain people out there that just have this, as far as the guys who really make a lot of money from, like, blogging, right? They're just a little bit different characters, usually. They're usually, like, the creative, spacey type people.
Can't match their clothes, you know, take a shower once a week, you know, long, kind of scraggly hair. No, I'm just kidding. Like this guy right here. No. Great.
No, I mean, there's lots of people. There's lots of people. There's a personality thing that people do better in different kinds of marketing. And that's one of the reasons why I don't believe that everybody should just be doing the exact same strategy to succeed. Because some people just are, you know, weird.
Like John and Bros. I can't figure him out. No, I'm kidding. I just like making fun of him. He's a cool guy.
But, you know, the thing is, guys, is Dave was a direct response guy, right? So the way that he succeeded was through paid media, right? You tried doing blogging and stuff, but just never got any. You didn't get any traction doing this stuff. It's just, you know, for me, I mean, what I realized was that I had some strengths and that I was good at something.
And I got in my groove and my zone. And it's not that I can't pump out a blog post. It's really not. But I'm more of a copywriter opposed to a creative writer. I understand my style a little bit more.
So, I mean, if you can identify what your style is, then I think that you can, like, you know, everybody's got their own style. They just do. And if you can identify that and label that and embrace that and not try to do a million things. Like, you know, with Aaron and Sophia, I just know that Sophia, her style is more analytical. Now, I'm not analytical, really.
So it doesn't mean that you have to be analytical to be a conversion person or a paid media person or understand how to scale stuff out. But, I mean, I'm really to the point now in my business anyways that I actually have people doing my paid media stuff. And I'm just focusing on copywriting and conversion. It's just how my mind works. And another difference here is, you know, when you look at, like, what Lawrence did.
Lawrence is not really particularly a content guy either. Right? Now, he's created content, most of it from people in the Philippines who write on his blog for him when he's not around. He's always outsourced things because he didn't have a lot of time. If you've got two hours a day, right, probably it's difficult to get up and get the traction that you need going if trying to do what Justin Brenji does.
Probably. Just probably. Right? It takes a little bit more time than that. To get going with content.
Right? So, Lawrence has always done stuff like that. And you've done paid stuff after that. He's outsourced. He's had phone rooms calling people.
Right? For years. Right? Because he realized he didn't have time to call people because he only had two hours a day to make it work. Right?
So, paid media. Just first of all, if you've got a very limited amount of time because you work a full-time job and you make good money at your job, you know, for a job, which is still not that good. So, it will sketch out there as fast as possible. But, you know, if you've only got a couple of hours here and there. Probably it's better to do paid stuff.
And let me even give you an example of how to, how, what you would do. The difference between generating traffic and leads and then also building a relationship between being a conversion person or a paid media person and a content person. So, we've got two kind of different animals here. Which, by the way, is huge to have. And we can talk about this later.
Having a partner and not always having to surround yourself. With people who are similar to you. But, like with a content person, what Dave did was he took his traffic and directed it to a capture, or excuse me, a blog post. Right? And then the blog post was really weird and creative.
And, you know, people got engaged when they were reading it. And then at the end it had a call to action. Right? To go to a capture page to where then he would generate the lead. And then the sale.
And I can, you know. I actually just broke this down. Actually, let me, let me. I don't know if you can see this. If we can put the, if we can put the camera on the whiteboard.
But, if I can just show you this, it will help you visualize it a little bit better. All, all, all marketing happens like this. So, you have your traffic. Right? Which funnels down into your leads.
Right? Which funnels down into your sales. Which funnels down into your follow-up. Right? Well, a lot of times, most people completely forget this particular phase right here.
Because I see so many people that are content people, like Dave, and they direct their traffic or whatever. If that traffic is coming from email or Facebook or whatever the case may be, they direct them to a blog post. And inside of that blog post, there's like a million different things and it's super confusing. And it's. You know, they're trying to pitch like 10 different opportunities and, you know, sell them 50 different affiliate products.
And then there's no call to action down at the bottom of the blog post. See in a blog post, and I'm not even a content guy, I understand this. Like the Empower blog, we've got your header up here. We've got your content right here. There's a banner right here and another banner down here.
And down here at the bottom, you should always have your call to action. What is your call to action? And this is one thing that I actually wanted to point out, but you did a great job without me pointing it out was, and I don't know if you guys caught this, but Lawrence had no compunction at all in his videos telling people, join me, join me, right? Lawrence actually got people to join him that were outside of his sphere of influence, right? But a lot of people, they don't have the call to action inside of their marketing.
So they completely miss the lead section. The leads portion of the traffic funnel or the online or marketing process. This is marketing in general. This is not just on the internet, but what stems from the leads, okay? Stems from the leads is a list, okay?
And from a list, a relationship, a story, right, sales, but so many people forget the leads portion. So the content person directs the traffic to the blog post. Okay. And engages his people or her people through the content portion, the creative portion of his or her marketing. Now what does the paid media or direct response person do?
Well, I usually inside of my emails, I write just hardcore persuasive copy in my emails that usually directs people directly to a capture page or if they're already on my list directly maybe even to a sales video. But let's say I'm running just traffic. I drive people directly to a great capture page, which in Empower, you guys have lots of those to use. If you're not in Empower, then maybe buy some of our training to learn how to make a great capture page, right? Sounds like a good idea to me, sounds like a fair deal.
And then what I do is on the back end, not on the front end like the content guy, but on the back end, then I shoot to my list a video. Okay. Or I shoot them to a blog post that allows them to kind of get to know me and tell my story. Do you see the difference there? Does that make sense to everybody?
See the difference of how it's almost a totally different approach. I'm sending people to funnels and building the relationship on the back end, telling my story on the back end once I've generated the lead and the content person is able to write such creative kind of out there blog post that they're able to engage the person so much in the blog post that then they literally want more. Because why? What do most people want? They want to be entertained.
That's really the biggest industry in the world is entertaining sports, athletics, right? Movies. You guys with me? So that's really what people want. So if you can entertain people, whether you do it on the front or whether you do it on the back, it's still effective.
Whereas, if I'm always trying to send people to a blog post. When I'm, when my mind doesn't really think like that, I'm going to struggle. I'm going to have resistance. Or what I see people doing more than anything is trying to do everything at once. Right?
How many people feel like they have like a lot to do in their business every day? A lot. It's like this guy's raising two hands and a foot. That's the overwhelm thing, right? But listen, whether you're full time or part time, let's get you to work in two hours a day.
Isn't that what everybody really wants anyway? To work two hours a day? So if you're doing things that are in line with your DNA, your makeup, right, then you're able to get more out of it. Does that make sense to everybody? Chris, come up here.
And just real quick, I want to point something out. You know, a lot of people, a lot of people who, let me stand up here real quick. You know, when we're talking about blogging, you know, a lot of people, they, they, they think that they're doing like what I'm doing. Right? And they're not like really obviously not when I look at it, but they think that they are because they're, you know, they're, they're blogging or whatever.
And still, to me, I still get a hundred leads a day just from, you know, stuff I've done over the last couple of years. Right? Still, you know what I mean? It still is generating traffic and leads years later that I still make an enormous amount of money from, from what I did years ago. Yeah.
Right. But most people who are struggling and they're creating content and they're blogging, they've never, they never tell people what to do ever. Right? They avoid it at all costs. Their, their, their, their content is a never ending maze of never telling anybody what to do.
And it's very similar in how, when I started in the profession of network marketing, I was at Amway. Right? And the orgs, I don't know if this is common, but in my organization, they never told you to join. You know what I mean? They'd go and do a three hour presentation and then it was like, see you later.
You know what I mean? So I really, seriously. It was, it was, they would talk, you know, about nothing for three hours, everybody get pumped up and then you'd be like, right, see you at the next meeting. I mean, it was kind of, there was no call to action anywhere. And so if you're creating content, if you're writing an email, if you're sending a voice broadcast, if you're talking on the phone, that the last thing you should always do is tell your audience exactly what to do next.
Tell them exactly what you want them to do next. Tell them to join. Right? Tell them to click on a link. Click on a banner.
Command them to join. Command them to join. Right? Do it in a funny way. You know?
Make fun of them while you're doing it. You know, tell them to pull out their credit card and set it on the table because they're going to need it after they watch the video in a minute. Right? Which you're going to see when you click on this link now. Tell people what to do.
Right? But here, because here's what happens. A percentage of them will always do it. You know, a percentage of them will always do it. His copy is good because his capture pages that he makes tell you to do one thing.
Right? Right? On the page. That's why. Because you look at the page and you either have to do it or leave the page.
There's no option to do anything else. And I'll break that down for you guys a little bit more about really the psychology of a capture page this weekend and show you and tell you and teach you exactly what you need. I think it will simplify a lot for you. Just real quick. Just Tracy wanted to ask something.
I think. Okay. Chris, David, you mentioned about promotion. Hold on a second. I think that I didn't turn this on.
Yeah. I think that I didn't turn this on. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Okay. All right. You mentioned the promotional cycles and you mentioned it really fast. And I want everyone to kind of go back to that just for a second to understand that some people say that, oh, well, you got in at the beginning and so you had all the momentum before anybody was in. And then you also said that leaders create their own vision.
And something that I always do is we know in Empower, you guys have kind of set the platform. You know, it's going to be something the next 90 days or so. You know that. Yeah. You might not know where it's going to be.
You might not know what it's going to be called. But I probably, I'm almost 100% certain that there's something coming after San Diego. I know that now. So in your marketing, begin to start prepping for that as if it were brand new. So all the videos and all the pictures and all the content that you're getting right now have the vision to start promoting for that vision.
Yeah. Yeah. And eventually you're going to start promoting for that exclusive unknown mystical event, which really is because you don't know what it is and go out and utilize strategies like Lawrence in reference to there's something coming. It's going to be big. Here's what happened at the last one.
I can't tell you what's going to happen at the new one. You just need to get in and start driving that traffic from that curiosity. And I think that capitalizing on promotional cycles is one of the under-looked things that we can actually use to our advantage. Yeah. Yeah.
Real quick here, I want to point something out that a lot of people don't know. And when I got involved with you guys originally, right, years ago, that was at the end of the growth cycle of that thing. And I still was able to outproduce everybody and build a big organization, even though it wasn't really rapidly expanding anymore, because I did that exact thing. See, guys, it doesn't matter if you're just new today or if you're new and Lawrence is new. Now, Lawrence was doing things that not a lot of people can do.
Just because he was in a phase where he got in, right, and he had all these relationships that he'd built over several years, right? Not everybody in the Empower Network could have even done that fast, right? There's people who got in a month ago that have done the same thing. I mean, Justin's story is last month, right? Last month.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah, give him a hand. Give him a hand, huh? So I just wanted to piggyback off that, Tracy. Okay, so.
Yeah, absolutely. So just my comment to that was is that's the difference between just copy and pasting and then going a little bit above and beyond and actually having fun in your business. That's fun to do that. A lot of people don't realize it's a lot of fun to, you know, be creative and, you know, come up with something and stir up the pot a little bit, kind of make a little controversy. It's a lot of fun.
Now.
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