People Already Feel Like They Know You, Long Before You Meet Them

A woman walks up to you at a company event, grinning like the two of you go way back. She asks how your brother’s doing. She asks about the dog. You have never spoken to this woman in your life. Do you admit that, awkwardly, in front of everyone standing around? Or do you just nod along and say the family’s doing fine? That exact scene happened to David Wood at one of his own events, and once he worked out what it actually meant, it changed how he thought about every piece of content he ever put out after that.

Why did a stranger already know you before you’d ever met her?

Wood tells the story on himself first. He forgets names constantly, so when the woman walked up acting like an old friend, he just played along, nodding through questions about people and a dog he had no context for at all. It wasn’t until she’d walked away that the real question landed on him. She had never actually talked to him before. Not once. She simply felt like she had.

Every trainer in this industry will tell you the key to network marketing is relationships, meaning you’re supposed to spend your days making friends with strangers before any of them will consider joining you in anything. Wood’s read on that advice, after years of testing it on himself, is blunt: it’s mostly wrong. Building an actual friendship with someone who isn’t already in your business, before they’ve said yes to anything, burns the one resource you can’t get back. What built the felt relationship in this woman’s case was something much simpler: he’d been showing up on video, honestly, over and over, long enough that a person who had never exchanged a word with him felt like she already had. As he told the room, “People feel like they know you without knowing you.” That’s not a trick. It’s just repetition plus honesty, aimed at a camera instead of a room.

If you’ve been holding off on publishing anything because you haven’t personally met the people you’d be talking to, this is the part worth sitting with. You don’t need the relationship first. The relationship is the byproduct of showing up consistently enough to be recognized.

Why is it easier to get out of the way than to keep promoting yourself?

Wood’s second point is a picture, not a lecture. Imagine the most beautiful, jaw-dropping painting you’ve ever seen, hanging on a wall. Now imagine a parade of people jumping directly in front of it, one after another, so nobody in the room can actually see the art. That, in his telling, is what most people do when they try to build a following or a business. They plant themselves squarely between the audience and the thing worth looking at.

His reversal is the part that’s actually useful. Most people assume the advantage goes to whoever is the most charismatic, the most polished, the best on camera. Wood argues the opposite is true.

It’s actually a lot easier to just get out of the way and say, look.

Step to the side. Point at the thing. Let it be seen. That single move doesn’t require talent, and it doesn’t require you to be the most interesting person in the room. It requires you to stop standing in your own frame. Anyone reading this can do that tomorrow morning, on whatever platform they already use, with whatever they already have to show.

Are you actually working, or are you just staying busy?

The third piece of the talk is the one that stings, because it’s aimed at the gap between feeling productive and being productive. Wood draws a hard line between activity that produces income and activity that only looks like effort from the outside.

• Refreshing the back office to see if a commission has magically appeared.
• Checking the inbox again, and again, for a lead that hasn’t shown up yet.
• Scrolling and liking on Facebook while telling yourself you’re staying visible.
• Opting into someone else’s capture page instead of building your own.

None of that, in his accounting, is work. It’s anxiety wearing work’s clothes. He puts the question to the room in the plainest terms he can find: if you had hired someone to do exactly what you did today, would you keep paying them, or would you let them go? Most people, if they’re honest, would fire themselves on the spot.

That’s the actual audit, and it has nothing to do with hustle or hours logged. It’s about which pile your day was actually built from: real, revenue-producing activity, or the checking-and-rechecking that fills a calendar without moving anything forward. Wood is explicit that he’d rather someone admit they’ve quit than keep performing effort they’re not actually putting in. Pretending is the one thing he says he can’t stand behind.

Put the three together and you get a working order, not a slogan. Show up honestly and repeatedly so people feel like they know you before you’ve met. Get out of the frame so the thing you’re offering can actually be seen. Then run the audit, weekly if you have to, on whether your hours are producing anything or just simulating motion. None of that requires more information than you already have. It requires doing the version of it that’s true.

The full session goes further than what’s above, including the room’s own breakthroughs called out one by one and the exercise Wood closes on. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

Kung Fu Master, Mr. Dave Wood! I'd hug you, but my armpits are just like so dry. One, two, three!

Now! Now I want to share this story with him while he's out here because you guys just watched. You know Dave and I, you know, we have a lot of man love for each other, but if you notice when he walked out here, he hugged me very carefully, very carefully. And you know, even arms out, kind of hug.

I want you to know that in preparation, he… I love you guys. Dave was actually just up on the hill there in the backdrop of the Las Vegas sky, practicing Kung Fu. And it was amazing.

So, if you're wondering why he didn't hug me, it's because he's had a pretty good workout. And that's all in preparation to ensure that you guys have an evening tonight that is going to be every bit as intense as if you were practicing Kung Fu up on a hill with the sun setting behind you. So, let's give it up one more time for Mr. Dave.

Dave Wood. Thanks, man. Go ahead and sit down, guys. Sit down.

I'm going to actually try to finish relatively soon here tonight also. We'll probably be here until 10 o'clock. No, I'm joking. The third day, that's when you need the endurance.

Like, you have to take like shots of caffeine all day to stay alive, you know, after three days of being in an event like this. Who in here has gotten the breakthrough that you needed to get this weekend? All right, all right, all right. Shout out some of the breakthroughs.

What are they? Showing up. Okay. Transparency.

Transparency, okay. Huh? Updated SEO. Updated SEO, okay.

Awesome. I keep not hearing you. What do you keep saying? Going through the products.

Going through the products? One time. More than one time, huh? Right, right, right.

Space repetition, right? Let the system work. What? Let the system work.

Let the system work. Let the system do the work. That's actually a big breakthrough for a lot of people, isn't it? It's like people think that the key to their success is doing everything themselves.

You know what I mean? Who in here has thought that before? I got to do everything myself to be successful. But then you're like the same as a doctor or something.

You know what I mean? If you don't show up, you don't get paid, it kind of sucks. What else? What are some breakthroughs?

Huh? Simplified steps, okay? Making your business a lot more simple. What else?

Okay. Give her a hand. First video this morning. Hey, guys.

I'm going to tell you a story real quick. And I've told this story a bunch of times, but it was just such a massive shift for me. It was the first event I went to. Right?

Now, I had actually been recruiting a lot of people. I'd never been to an event with the company that I was in. But I go to this event and this lady walks up to me who I, to my knowledge, I had never seen before in my life. Now, to be fair, I forget people's names and stuff all the time.

So, maybe I had seen her. But she walks up. She's like, oh, yes. And she starts talking to me about, like, she's like, you know, how's the family?

How's your brother Aki, you know? How's the dog? And I was like, who is this lady? I was thinking in my head, do I know this lady?

But I just kind of pretended that I knew her, too, you know? That's what you do when, like, somebody comes up and does that. And you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, you know? How's the family?

They're all dead. Thanks. No. But anyways, so, this lady, like, walked away.

Right? And then I realized something that she felt like she knew me. And I had never talked to her before. Right?

That was a big breakthrough for me. Because, you know, everybody in this business always says the key, you know, to network marketing is relationships. So, you think you got to run around and, like, make friendships with everybody to make any money. Which actually isn't true.

You know what I mean? Like, taking the time to build a friendship with somebody that's not in, right, to me, is not very useful for a business reason. You know what I mean? I might want to get to know somebody because I like them, but not to get them in my business.

I'd rather build friendships with people after they join. But what I realized after that happened is that this lady had what she perceived to be as a relationship, like a friendship. Like, she knew me like a good old friend. And I'd never had talked to her before.

That is the power of being authentic in video. People feel like they know you without knowing you. Big breakthrough. What else?

Stop judging yourself. Right? There's no point. We all suck.

What else? Enthusiasm. New member coaching posture. Right?

Big difference, isn't it? Big difference. Take it or leave it. You're in or you're out.

If you don't want to do what I say, it's fine. You know, I just like to be like Jesus. If you love me, keep my commandments. Huh?

Sponsor two people a day. Two people. And it's actually simple to do. Right?

And you could do it with a new funnel. Now, wait until you guys see that video. I actually just showed that video, that down and dirty one to Chris Rushlow the other day. And he was like, oh, shit.

I'm going to be rich. What else? Just be consistent. Be consistent.

Right? That's actually the biggest thing that you could do. All right? If I could convince you guys to all be consistent for, like, just forever.

Right? There's nothing that would make you more money than, for example, just deciding to follow a pattern. Actually, I was talking to Eric Worre about, it was like three months ago, okay, now. And I remember this conversation because, you know, he has a video blog and he literally makes five videos a week.

But he doesn't just do it. He does it every week. And he's been doing it for, like, five years or, like, seven years. Right?

Literally five days a week. And that just grew and it grew and it grew and it grew. And now he's got, like, 1,500 videos on his website. Right?

But his company, his business that he runs from his blog does, like, probably right now $20 or $30 million a year in sales. Right? Literally just blogging like we tell you all of you to do. Right?

And all he does is he's the most consistent person in the world. One time I was at an event. There's a guy named Brad Duncan speaking who was, I think, a crown or a founder's crown in Amway, which is impossible. If you can go founder's crown, I mean, you know, you're like a character like Buddha or something like that.

So, in any case, this guy, what he said is the secret to my success and the difference between me and all the people around me is I am consistent and I have been consistent for the last 20 years at doing what I do and teaching what I teach. I never change my behavioral pattern. And what Eric Worre said is this. He said, a lot of people, and I used to be one of them, are too goal-oriented.

He says, no, no, don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with goals. But I used to set goals for myself and always feel frustrated because I wouldn't hit my goals. So, I was always, like, seeking something that I don't have yet.

And he said, what I learned to do instead is, hey, I have the goals. I have the goals there, but I'm not focused on the goals. What I'm focused on is my daily activity system, my pattern of behavior, the things that I repeat every single day. And every single day, I make my system a little bit better.

And my focus is not the outcome because the outcome will come. My focus is on what I'm doing every single day. Big breakthrough, isn't it? What else?

Huh? Risk. I have no idea what you're talking about. Risk of what?

Risk? Risk. Take a risk. Take a risk.

Okay. Take a risk. Take a risk. Yeah, that's it.

That's a big one, isn't it? Right? People think they decide it and then it's like tomorrow they're re-deciding. You know what I mean?

So, it's like, you know, that's like, could you imagine what it would be like to be married to somebody like that? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I don't feel like being married today. Right?

The next day, you know, I really love you a lot. The next day, I don't really feel like it now. Right? Most horrible thing ever probably.

Right? What else? Take yourself out of the way. That's a big one, isn't it?

Right? You know, I learned that a long time ago. It's like, this is the best way you could explain how most people build their business. Right?

There's like this fucking gigantic, gigantic, beautiful painting right there. Okay? And it's the most awesome thing that you've ever seen in your life. And people are like, look at the painting.

Look at the painting. And they're just jumping in front of it so nobody can see it. Right? Yeah.

It's actually a lot easier to just get out of the way and say, look. Right? And if you do that, what's the beautiful thing? Anybody can do that.

Right? What else? Stop waiting for something to happen outside of you. Right?

You create your own results. What else? Huh? I can't hear you.

Oh, commit to your decision. Commit to your decision. Right? Well, that's a process.

See, when you make a decision that you're going to do this, okay, then there's no more decisions to make. That's the beautiful thing. You don't have to re-decide to buy the next product. You don't have to decide to go all in.

You don't have to decide to follow the eight core steps because those are commitments that you make from your decision to do this. You know what I mean? You want to finish what you start. Does that make sense to everybody in here?

If you're going to be wishy-washy like that, you will never succeed until you stop being wishy-washy like that. Not ever. What else? Stop being nice isn't nice.

Right? Isn't that a thing? No, that's what actually helped me is like I actually learned that I was being a jerk when I was being too nice. You know what I mean?

And people are like, hey, what are you talking about by that? Sometimes nice people are like the most controlling people ever, aren't they? They try to nice you into doing things. Right?

The reality is people like, I'm going to be nice, so no, don't buy the next product. Right? Because I'm afraid of you spending money. Right?

Well, if you want to really help people, right, you got to let them make the decisions that they're going to make, whatever they are. And you got to let them be free. You know what I mean? Hey, you're in or you're not.

You know what I mean? Do you want to do it or not? Yeah, I want to do it. Then you need to be all in.

When are you going to do it by? Well, I need to make a decision to do that. Are you going to do it or not? Yes, I'm going to do it.

No, you haven't made a decision to do it because if you're going to do it, you're either going to listen to the system and what we teach or you're going to fail, right, in your process of trying it out. Right? And I would rather that you quit right now and get a refund than fail. So what are you going to do?

Are you going to do what I say or are you going to get out of here? That's way nicer in my opinion. What else? Huh?

Embrace vulnerability. Okay? That's a big thing. Right?

Vulnerability, right? Nothing wrong with being who you are. A lot of people, they're like, you know what I think that actually is from? It's from a low self-image.

You know what I mean? Like we're always taught to hide our emotions as children. Like some of us had parents, they're like, don't cry. You know what I mean?

But no, seriously, it's good to express who you really are and who you are. What you really are is a lot more interesting than the facade we all put on for everybody all the time. I mean, I used to go do meetings in a suit and a tie and I always hated dressing like that. It's not because like I don't think you can look good like that.

I just always just like, when I dress like that, I'm like, and I don't feel like myself. You know what I mean? I just don't. You might and that's cool.

We want you in a suit and a tie if you feel good like that. My grandpa actually, I never saw him one time without a suit and a tie. Not my whole life. Sometimes he would take off his suit jacket and hang it on the back of his chair when he ate and when he was finished eating, he'd put it back on.

Didn't matter where he was. Didn't matter what time of year it was. He dressed like that all the time because it's who he was and he liked being like that. I don't, right?

Not a big deal. What else? Huh? Be at every event, right?

How many events should you be at? All of them, right? What else? The importance of culture, right?

A lot of people, they mess this up, you know? People are always looking for the secret of building this business when actually building it is easier than keeping it together, right? And this is evidenced by if you look across all the things that come and go on the internet. I mean, people build stuff real fast and then what happens?

You know what I mean? What happened to Doobly? Right? All right, what else?

Blog every day, right? Blog every day, right? You're hearing a doctor tell you that. For heaven's sakes, listen to him or you might have a heart attack.

Huh? Just do it. Take action, right? What else?

Yeah, 100 people is a magical number. That guy always takes advantage of some moment to scream something, doesn't he? Now, to be fair, he's taken a lot of action, so I like listening to his random rants. You know what I mean?

One day we're going to have an auditorium of people all screaming some crazy thing. It'll be just his team. So what else? You're not alone, right?

You're not alone. We have the huge community of people working for you, actually. And you guys got to think like this as affiliates, right? And really, I want you to realize this, right?

This is the way I view it. Empower Network employees, they're your employees. You know what I mean? You guys never think like that probably, right?

You got a CEO. You got a CMO, right? You got a customer service department. So you don't have to do all that stuff.

You got a big team of affiliates that are there to help you. You got a great group of leaders over here who are here to serve you, right? Right? Right?

We've got systems in place to help build your business for you when you're not around so you can actually detach from it when you're building it and you can keep making money from the organization that you've built because of the systems, processes, and people that we have in place for you. Pretty cool, isn't it? What else? Believe much bigger, much sooner.

Hard thing for people to get, isn't it? You know what I mean? And the biggest thing is people really have never made money like this. I was talking to some people at a dinner the other night and I said the biggest problem we have in this industry is this.

It's people don't believe it in the right kind of way. I mean, they kind of think that it works. They kind of see it. But they don't really believe it the way that they believe that they'll make money from a job, right?

Because if you have a job, let's say you're, I don't know, a lawyer or something like that. Or not a lawyer. That's not a job. That's a self-employed person.

But if you have a job, let's say you work at McDonald's. I'll give the lowest denominator, right? And you make whatever minimum wage is in North America. I hear they're trying to increase it but I don't live here.

So in any case, you make $8 an hour or whatever minimum wage is. Well, you know if you show up. For an hour, you make $8. You know that, right?

So you show up and work. The problem in this business is you might make money. You might not in that hour, right? So what do people do?

They don't work the same as they work in a job. They have a totally different energy. And so the biggest thing to get people over is that gap where they're working in faith without any results yet. Does that make sense?

And that is a gap for people. It's a problem for people. And so what do they do? They distract themselves.

They refresh Facebook. They refresh their email inbox, you know? They log into their back office and see if they've magically gotten a commission yet. They log into their autoresponder and see if any leads have deposited themselves into it yet.

And they don't do anything, right? So when you cross over that bridge, that boundary, and you start just believing that this is going to work for you right now if you're just willing to commit to the process, you'll work totally differently with a completely different energy. Does that make sense? Okay.

So hopefully you guys got the skills you need to have today. What else? So she got to sit next to her sponsor. Give her a hand.

All right. What else? Huh? What?

Confidence. More confident in what? Be confident in yourself, right? Be confident in yourself.

What else? Visualization of how to get up on stage. Okay. What else?

You will, right? You will, right? When you want it just as bad as a drowning man wants to breathe, which is pretty bad, right? Now, when you want it and believe it, you'll have it, right?

And you will. Okay. Cross-linking, building up your older posts. What else?

What goes into your mind in your downtime controls your mind. What else? Okay. Connect with people in different tribes.

Synergize each other. What more? Huh? What?

Mindset. Mindset. Sometimes people say something and it sounds like rah, rah. It's just because you're far away without a microphone.

What else? It's never too late to start your business over, right? What else? We can't talk for a long time.

Just the breakthrough. Just the breakthrough. You always talk a lot. Breakthrough.

When you're on stage, you've earned it. You can speak a lot. What's the breakthrough? All right.

I'm going to start talking. You're over. What next? Sorry.

I'm not going to be rude. Huh? Your time is now, right? One, two, three.

One, two, three. When are you going to do it? One, two, three. That's right.

Right? What else? Leading yourself first, right? Right?

You guys have had a lot of breakthroughs, right? I'd keep going and going and going and going with this. But you've got the point. A lot of people have learned.

Different things. And the most important things that you've learned, you might not even realize until you're on the plane riding home. The thing that I want you to have as the biggest shift that I could give to you is this. This works.

Okay? This works. It works. All right?

It's going to work really well over the next 90 days. And it's going to do it with or without you. My preference is with you. That's my preference.

Because you guys are the all-in folks, right? You guys are the real core team that we have at Empower Network, right? The leaders of the future are the people sitting in this chair. When Empower Network has 2 million active people in it, they're all going to come, all of them, from people who are sitting in this room, regardless of whether it's you or somebody sitting next to you.

Right? Now, the worst thing, the worst feeling, right, is letting something pass you by when you shouldn't let it pass you by. Okay? You know what I mean?

Just letting it go by. It's not fun. It just isn't. I've done it before.

You know what I mean? And I did it before because I didn't know. I made excuses like I don't know what to do and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, the reality is I didn't make the commitment that I needed to make because I kept re-deciding what I wanted to do all the time, like a lot of you guys have decided to do.

If you guys have really decided that you're going to build Empower Network, you're going to get a million-dollar ring, if you've made that decision, you will never again question, going forward, going to an event. You'll never again question the commitments that you need to make. You're not going to question the process. You're not going to question the community.

You're going to commit to the things that you must commit to in order to produce the result that you want. And we're going to be here for you. We're going to be here for you. Okay?

I will be here for you. And the truth is if you guys are not on the beaches of the world five years from now with us, and by that I mean rich, free, and sexy, it's not because I gave up on you. It's going to be because you gave up on me. You gave up on us.

And that's the truth. Okay? And that's not a right decision for somebody who's still here this weekend because my goal this weekend was to either offend you away or to get you to do it. You know what I mean?

Sometimes people don't get me. They're like, why do you talk like that? Why are you so strong with people? You know what I mean?

Why aren't you being more nice, right? Well, because here's the truth, guys, is if you're going to meander about in this, it doesn't feel that great. I meandered around in network marketing for a long ass time and it felt like shit. You know what I mean?

You're like always wondering what you're going to do. You're always wondering what the next decision is. You're always wondering whether you're going to do it or not. And it's exhausting emotionally.

It's not empowering. It's more empowering for you to quit. You go get a job at Safeway. Get a job at Walmart or something like that.

Go be a painter or something like that. You know what I mean? Go be a porn star, some of you. You know?

But the reality is, is that if you're going to decide to do this, I just want you to get that part over with because you know how much less stressed out you're going to be all the time? When you know what you're going to do and you know where you're going to go, you're just not stressed out all the time. You're just going where you're going no matter what happens. You know what I mean?

Actually, Mars said that to me, you know, I think it was a few weeks back. We were talking on the phone, right? And he's like, you know, dude, I'm just amazed at how no matter what's going on, you just aren't stressed out about anything. I'm trying to act like Mars, right?

And he's like, it's just really fun to be around that. And I said, you want to know why? Because I know what's going to happen in the end. I just don't know what's going to happen in between now and then.

But I know what's going to happen in the end. Right? So it's not a big deal. Some bullshit happens.

One time I heard this story, right? Ron Pereira, who runs Worldwide Dream Builders, another Amway group, this is from one of his diamonds, told me this story actually, right? He was over at Ron's house getting some mentoring, right? And Ron was like looking at his numbers and talking.

And then he got a phone call. And he picks up the phone like this and says, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, okay. Yeah, just move it to another city. I mean, I don't care if it's 15,000 people.

Yeah, just find another auditorium. We'll pay for it. Call me back when it's done. Hangs up and just continues to talk.

Now, so this diamond's sitting there and he's like looking at him and just like, just hold on a second. What happened? And they said, oh, they just canceled the venue for our event next weekend. Not a big deal.

15,000 people had to move to a different city. Now, that would stress most people out. Wouldn't it? Who in here would be a little stressed out by that?

Right? Not me because I never know where our events are anyways until I get here. You know what I mean? It was a never, you know.

It was funny. Sifu Fernandez is coming down here and he's like, you know, David, I don't know how to get to this hotel. You know, when I get in town, I was like, you know, I don't know where we're staying either. You know what I mean?

So, you know, Paul Gardner actually looked at me the other day. He's like, Dave, you know, Nashville, you know, for the next event, you know. Thanks, man. Like I choose where the events are.

I don't care where they are. You know what I mean? So in any case, he's like, this is what I do. I choose where the event city is.

No, that's not what I do for a living. I wouldn't even know where the event city is. I wouldn't even know where to put the events. I don't even know how to do this.

I remember I showed up to the first one, and we were lucky we got an event planner in time. Actually, a week before our first event, we didn't have like a whiteboard or a microphone or anything for the room. It was like we were going to show up and scream to a thousand people. You know, like the old Roman days when you had to be able to send your voice across the universe, right?

See? My point is, is that you got to be focused on the right stuff, right? What Stephen Covey say, begin with the end in mind, right? And keep it in your mind.

Know where you're going to end up eventually. And don't worry about that process in between because stuff is going to get in your way in the process, and when stuff gets in your way, what do you do? Well, you can destroy it, walk around it, climb over it, go under it, right? Step aside of it and then walk around in a different path and then still get there.

Not a big deal. You will run into obstacles. Some of you will leave here and you're going to have something happen that will stand in your way. But you know the beautiful thing about obstacles is this, right?

Obstacles make you more powerful when you reach your destination than if you don't have them. Way more powerful, right? Way more powerful. If you never have any obstacles, you're never going to become great.

They're a good thing. It's not that big of a deal. And if you know in advance you've ran into them before and overcame them, it's fine. Now, who in here has ever had a time in their life like really down, right, before?

Everybody's had a time like that, right? And what happened? Eventually, it ended, right? Eventually, you got over it.

You know what I mean? Every time in your life, anybody here ever felt intense pain before at one time in your life? Well, what happens? After a while, it goes away.

You know what I mean? I've hurt myself before and then a couple days later, I didn't feel hurt anymore, right? At one point, I couldn't even walk when I was a kid. You know what I mean?

Seriously. You'll get over all the obstacles if you just persevere. The only one that's going to fail in here are people who don't decide to continue on in their journey, right? That makes sense to everybody in here, okay?

Here's what I do promise you, okay? And I promise you guys this. I promise you you do have the ability to do this. And it's a lot simpler than you think, right?

And it is. And I promise you every single person in here knows the things that you need to know to make $30,000 a month in Empower Network. Now, we might have to make some adjustments to get you past that and you might have to work really hard to hit that. See our income disclosure.

It's starting to sound like a credit card company. But the reality is you can do it and you know what to do to do it, don't you? Okay? Don't you guys know already?

So the question not is do you know. The question is not is there a secret. The question is are you going to do what you've committed to do? I hope so for you, right?

So if you leave here and you've now been to this event and you're on the plane, you're thinking about it and you say, you know, I don't really want to do this. It's okay. Not a big deal. What I don't want you to ever pretend though is that you're doing what it takes when you're not.

It's different. Don't pretend. Why do I talk to people like this? I want to get people over pretending.

Refreshing your back office is not work, right? Clicking around and liking things on Facebook, isn't working. Refreshing your email inbox is not working. Going and opting into a thousand capture pages is not work, right?

Being stressed out all the time and thinking about it and wondering if you're going to do it isn't working. How much time do you spend taking action that makes you money versus the time that you spend thinking about the actions that you're going to take? Which one actually do you spend more time on? People are like, oh shit.

Would you keep yourself as an employee if you worked for you doing what you do now in your business? Or would you fire yourself immediately? Right? Most of y'all are like, oh shit, I'd fire myself, right?

Right? Why? You're like, well, I never work. If you had an employee like that, you let them go.

You know what I mean? It's what you do. It's like, hey, you know, you're fired. What for?

You're not working. You're just clicking on Facebook all day. You know? So how much time do you actually spend doing things that make you money versus how much time do you spend thinking about it?

Right? Good question, isn't it? Right? I want you guys to leave here in a state of honesty.

Right? If you've committed to do this, I never want you to question it again. And if you haven't, then decide to either think about it for a while and then decide later or quit. Okay?

And if you want to quit and keep buying our products, you're welcome to be a customer and just kind of enjoy it and blog about puppies. You know what I mean? But I don't want you to pretend that you're doing, for example, what Tracy Walker does if you're not. I don't want you to pretend you're working like Lawrence Tam if you're not.

I don't want you to pretend that you're doing what it takes and it's not working if you're the one who's not. I want you to be honest. Because when you're honest with yourself and you look at what you're really doing, right, then you can make a decision to change it. Right?

Because if you change what you're doing, you always change the result. You can't not change the result when you change what you're doing. It's impossible. Try it.

Try to do something a little bit different without getting a different result. Right? You're like, my wife's not being very nice to me. When was the last time you bought her flowers?

You know what I mean? Mr. Romantic. You know what I mean?

Seriously. Change what you do to change the way the world responds to you. You've got to change what you do. Okay?

When you change the way you speak, you'll change the way you sell. When you change the way you talk, you'll change the way people respond to you. When you change what you believe about with people, you'll change what people do around you. It's amazing.

People like being around me because I legitimately like them. Legitimately. I don't care what they do for a living, who they are. I don't think I'm better than them.

Like, people get around me like that. And sometimes it's like, you know, destructive to somebody's ego or something because they've got some huge-ass ego. I don't think they're better than everyone. And I don't think they're better than me either.

But I also don't think they're worse. So I talk to them like they're a normal human being, not like some, you know, Lord God Almighty or something like that. You know, they're like, hey, I'm a powerful person. You're hurting my ego by not acknowledging, you know, how big and important I am.

But you know what? If there's somebody cleaning the floor here, you know, or a janitor that works at the office at Empower Network, or a maid that works in my house, or a chef that works in my house, or a gardener who's working on my yard, I don't think I'm better than them either, even though I make a lot more money. I'm just not. Right?

So I don't think I'm better than any of you. I don't think I'm more important. I just don't. Right?

I see us as equals in importance in the world. I think your dreams are just as important as mine. I don't think mine are better. I don't think they're more important.

I don't think they're superior in any way. Right? I think that we all have dreams, and they're all important. And therefore, my goal, because it's part of my mission and it's not better, it's just what I do, my goal is to help you step into your dreams and to realize that you can.

Because that's who I am. Right? So all of you have learned the keys here, and now it's time to take action. It's not time to make a decision anymore.

You should have already made it. If you have to think about it for another hour and make it tonight, everybody here should make a decision tonight. And I actually, like I said, and I've mentioned this multiple times, I don't care if this decision is to go do something else for a living. Don't care.

Right? Because I care that you decide and get off the fence. Right? Because what do I do with people who are on the fence?

I spit them out of my mouth. I did just say that, Chris Rushlow. Not all of you got that joke, but it was slightly offensive and funny at the same time. Right?

You guys got to decide. Okay? And once you decide, follow through. Okay?

Follow through. Finish. Finish what you start. Okay?

Finish what you start. Always keep dreaming. Always believe that your dream is going to happen no matter what. Always believe in the dreams of the people around you because the saddest thing is when somebody does not step into their dreams and they don't pursue their dreams and they don't keep fighting for their dreams because when they do that, they die inside.

And you're all here because you guys do have dreams. That's the issue. So here's the deal. Here's the deal.

Here's what I want you guys to do. I got to finish up here because I got to bring Jonathan back up and then we're going to help Ava and Nikki look for their dog. And they lost their dog. And Jonathan will talk about that if you guys want to be a part of the search party.

And I just wanted to end on a note like this. Okay? I want you right now to just listen to me for just a minute. Okay?

And I want you to listen to me and I want you to trust what I say. Just a couple minutes. All right? You do have the ability to do this right now.

To any level you desire to do it. Okay? You have the ability right now to do it. You don't need anything more.

You don't need some secret. Right? You have the ability right now. Sometimes in life when you're at a crossroads and all of you here are at some sort of a crossroads.

Sometimes you've got to reach down inside yourself and you've got to pull up resources inside that you didn't know that you have but that have been there all along. 2009 when I finally made the decision that I should have made in 2002, I realized something. I realized I've had what it takes all along. But it wasn't having what it takes that was missing.

It was deciding. Now is my time. Okay? When you go all in, the next step is to go all out.

Now, because if you treat this like it's all there is and it's all you're doing, the result you produce is totally different. Okay? Everybody here, close your eyes for just a second. I'll do it with you.

Now pull out your credit cards. No, I'm joking. Okay. Here's what I want you to imagine here for a second.

I want you to imagine that you hear a sound, thundering of applause. There's a curtain in front of you. It opens up. You put your left foot out, and you walk out on a stage.

The lights are in your eyes, so you can't totally see. All you can hear is clapping. And you look out, and you can't tell quite what you're seeing. There's a glittering in the audience as the lights are shining down on something that's spread across the room.

And then you look a little bit closer, and you see thousands of small, blue Empower Network logos scattered across thousands of hands. And they have their hands lifted into the air, and the glittering you're seeing is the diamonds on the million-dollar rings. This is not a normal event. This is a room ten times bigger than this.

And everyone in the room has earned a million dollars in commissions in Empower Network. And I want you to realize, staring out into that room, that as you think back in time, that room came from this room. That room came from right now, and the people who are here right now. That room came from you.

Now open your eyes. I want you to realize I know what's happening in the future, not because I'm a prophet, but because I'm going to create it. Now who's going to create it with me? Come on, folks.

Jonathan Cronstead, come back up. Okay. Is my mic… There we go.

One, two, three. All right, everybody, go ahead and take a seat here. Thank you very much. You guys have listened so well, and I can't thank you enough for remaining in your seats because as all of you know, Empower Network is a family, and families help each other.

And one of the family members that Avram and Nikki Gonzalez have, many of you know Avram and Nikki. They're incredible affiliates. They've got an incredible team and incredible vision. And one of their family members, their dog, Zeus, is missing.

Zeus ran away from his room on Thursday night, and tonight is pretty much the last opportunity we have to do an in-person search and canvass the entire area around this hotel to find this dog. So what I'm going to ask is I'm going to ask for a group of you, as many of you are willing and able, to help us find this dog. And we're going to be organizing a search party. If we have a fair amount of people, which I'm assuming we will because I know how you guys are, we're going to be able to get it done in probably an hour to an hour and a half.

Now, what I'd like to go ahead and do is, I know we've got a slide with some information, so I want to make sure to go over a couple of pointers with you because, as you guys know, we are in a hotel environment. We're in a residential area. So we're going to have three people that are going to kind of be leading the search parties. That's Aaron Rashkin, Krish Rushlow, and Lawrence Tam.

The reason we're going to do that is because we want to make sure it's organized. Make sure that you bring water, sweatshirt, comfy shoes. We're going to be out there for probably about an hour to an hour and a half. And make sure to be very calm.

This is not something that we want everyone out there yelling Zeus's name because either A, we will scare him or B, we will scare the neighborhood. So this is something that Zeus has been out there for a little while. He's likely scared, likely burrowed under something or could be hiding. So we want it to be a very calm, very cool, collected search.

It may be a little bit dark, so you obviously have flashlights on your cell phones. Make sure you use them. Make sure you don't trip on anything and that you've got enough lighting. We're going to be supporting you to do that the best we can.

And for those of you that, if you're unable to participate in the search or you're not able to join in, we just ask that you visualize that Zeus has returned to Avram and Nikki. So, can I count on you? Okay. So here's what's going to happen next.

Avram and Nikki are in back there. Avram and Nikki, where are Lawrence, Tam? Okay. So are they going to be following you?

Guys, can we get them a handheld mic for me, please? Thanks. Everyone just stay seated for one moment because what I'm going to actually do is anyone that's going to be helping with the search, we're going to actually dismiss you and then that way everyone, we can keep this a little bit organized because we got a lot of people. So, Avram.

So we'll have Lawrence and Chris come back. Aaron's coming down from his room right now. Okay. So we need three groups.

We need one group over here of like 12 people. Okay. And the remaining half, I'm sorry, the remaining people will split into half with two other groups. So we'll have one of those groups here.

That'll be with me. Okay. Aaron Rashkin. Okay.

What's up, Chris? You're over here. So Chris will take 12 over there. Okay.

Let's get 12 people, athletic, excited, 12 people over here with Chris. And then whoever else is up for the search and ready to jump in and help Avram and Nikki, let's go ahead and begin. Have small group gatherings. You know, Avram, this corner, in the middle, and then over there.

Yeah. All the remaining people that aren't with Chris just come back here. I don't know where Lawrence is, but Lawrence will come back. All right, wonderful.

And again, everybody, no rush. We really appreciate you being willing to help. We really appreciate you digging in and helping us do this. I'm sorry?

And also, I just want to say really quick. Of course. I've been getting a lot of amazing, you know, heartfelt kind of I'm sorry, and I love you, and I really appreciate that, but we, right now, we don't have time for that. Every moment counts, and we want to spend every moment of that on the search, and we're infinitely grateful that you would do this.

So I had to say that, too. So everybody, there's a picture of Zeus here on the screen. This is the lovely little guy that we're looking for. And so with that, you have our thanks, you have our gratitude.

Remember, we want this to be calm, cool, collected. You guys are going to be going out in groups, providing eyes on the ground, looking for this little dog. We don't want to be yelling. We don't want to scare anybody.

Thank you very much for helping us out with this search. And with that, I will look forward to seeing all of you in Nashville. There's no doubt, you can definitely judge the quality of a company by how people react in situations like this, and I couldn't be more proud of the amount of people that are prepared to help Avram and Nikki find Zeus. So everybody, thank you very much.

Thank you for being here with us this weekend, and I look forward to seeing you in person in Nashville.