Creating Live Groups: Why a Weekly Live Event Builds Real Producers
You keep telling yourself you’ll start your weekly call once your list is bigger. Once you’ve got more people to invite. Once you feel a little less awkward talking into a webcam or standing in front of a half-empty room. So the weekly thing never starts, and neither does the momentum that supposedly comes after it.
As someone who’s built a list one contact at a time, you already know how tempting that logic sounds. It also happens to be backwards. The list doesn’t come first. The habit does.
Why does doing something live every single week change everything, even with a tiny list?
Committing to a live event on a fixed schedule, a hangout, a call, an in-person meeting, forces a handful of things to happen whether you feel ready or not. First, it forces you to solve the problem of getting people there, because showing up to talk to an empty room is humiliating enough that you’ll actually fix it instead of avoiding it. Second, it forces you to get good at making offers and calls to action, because now you’re on the hook to deliver something every single week instead of whenever inspiration strikes.
There’s a story behind this worth knowing. Early on, when Dave was just a couple of weeks into his own business with fewer than a hundred people on his list, he interviewed a guy who ran a live call every single week and asked him when he should start doing the same thing. The answer wasn’t to wait for a real list. As Dave recalls being told, the answer was for him to start “doing it when you had one person on your list. Even if you’re talking to yourself.”
That’s the entire objection, dismantled in one sentence. You don’t need forty people to justify a weekly cadence. You need a fixed day and time, and the discipline to show up to it whether one person registered or fifty did. The security, as that mentor explained it to Dave: “I’ve got this group of people who show up every week because I’m giving them value. They’ll buy whatever I’m selling.” People learn to expect you on that day, every week. New people find the call, listen for a few weeks, and eventually reach out wanting to join, simply because you kept giving them value on a schedule they could count on.
Why do the same names keep showing up as the real earners?
Here’s the pattern Dave says he’s noticed, in his words: “Almost every single person I’ve known that has done something live every week for any significant period of time, meaning more than three months, is a six-figure earner that I know.” That’s an observation from what he personally saw back in 2012-2013, not a guarantee about your results, and it’s worth treating it exactly that way. But the mechanism behind the pattern is easy to understand even without the anecdote.
Every week you show up live, your communication gets sharper. You get more comfortable handling objections in real time. You get better at closing, because closing is a skill you can only build in front of actual people, not in your head while you rehearse. And there’s a side effect almost nobody mentions going in. As Dave puts it, “When you show up live in front of people each week, you’ll start to develop a charismatic, dynamic following”. People start to recognize you. They start to trust the rhythm of you being there. That’s not something you can fake by being clever once.
What changes when you take this into a physical room instead of a hangout?
The formula for what you say is the same whether you’re online or standing in a hotel conference room, but a live room gives you a few extra levers a webcam doesn’t.
- Play music as people walk in, and turn it up as the room fills, so people have to raise their voices to talk over it.
- Cut the music at the exact scheduled start time, so the sudden quiet marks a clear beginning.
- Have someone else introduce and edify you before you take the room, instead of introducing yourself.
- Run testimonials with quiet music underneath them, back to back, instead of one at a time with dead air between.
The music trick sounds like a gimmick until you hear the mechanism in Dave’s own words: “you turn up the music so people have to talk louder as they’re coming in because when they talk louder, it increases their metabolism, which increases buying”. Nobody consciously registers why the room feels a little more up, a little more excited. They just feel it, and that state carries straight into the presentation that follows. It’s a small, deliberate lever, not a personality trait, which means you can install it the same way every single time you run an event.
None of this replaces the substance of the presentation. It just removes the friction between a person walking in distracted and a person actually paying attention to you, the same job breaking attention does at the start of any presentation, whether it’s a room, a call, or a hangout.
The testimonial stretch is where rooms visibly change. People who walked in with their arms crossed lean forward once they watch someone else stand up and explain, in their own words, why they just bought. It does the same job live proof does anywhere else: it makes the decision to buy feel normal, because someone standing three feet away just made it.
Why is this a profession, not a lottery ticket?
Underneath all of this sits a bigger reframe about what you’re actually doing when you commit to a weekly live event.
You’re in a profession, not a lotto. You’re in a profession, not chance
That distinction matters because it changes what you expect from your own effort. A lottery ticket either hits or it doesn’t, and there’s nothing you can do about it either way. A profession is built through repeated, improvable skill, which is exactly what a weekly live event gives you room to develop. Dave describes learning this from a mentor who explained the progression bluntly: once you’ve sponsored two people in a month, you can learn to sponsor two in a week, and once you can do that, “you can sponsor two a day in no more time than it used to take you a month.” The number that changes isn’t luck. It’s the skill compounding on a fixed, repeated cadence, which is exactly what showing up live every week is designed to build.
That’s also why it stops mattering so much if one particular person on your team quits or one particular leader flakes out. When you’re bringing people in consistently through a system like this, individual outcomes stop being the thing your income depends on. The cadence is the thing your income depends on.
The full lesson walks through the complete version of this, including how the presentation formula folds directly into a live weekly group, the specific room tactics for running it in person, and the call to action Dave gives at the end of every one of these sessions. You can get the entire course, including this lesson, for $99 at the Top Producer Formula course.
Get the course, pick a day and time this week, and show up to it even if you’re the only one on the list.
Full lesson transcript
Lightly edited from the original recording — fillers removed, nothing added. Income disclaimer.
What I want to do is explain really quick in 10 minutes how to take this and apply it in live groups as a part of a system. So you take this formula, you've got the presentation formula there, you will close huge amounts of people by doing that. It'll blow your mind. Those of you who start weekly stuff and you just start doing it, it does a lot of things. Number one, when you start doing something every week, it forces you to get people there.
Because if you don't get people there, you feel so stupid for not getting people there. It's like, you know, you're talking to yourself on a hangout for an hour. So it's kind of like puts you on the line, you got to do something, right? You can also team up with some other people. So together, you each have five and then together you have 10 people to sell to each week, right?
You can sell if you've got 10 people on there. You don't need huge groups, all right? You just need to get started. There's a bunch of neat things that happen. So number one, it'll force you to figure out how to do it.
Number two, it'll figure out how to get people there, right? It'll force you because you got to hang out, and it's free, Google Hangouts, right? You just use that. It's free. You just go to plus.google.com.
You could go find a million tutorials on YouTube about it. There's other kinds of webinar services that are free too, right? Force you to get people there, number one. Number two, it'll force you to learn how to start creating compelling offers to get people to make decisions, right? Just by making it, it'll force you to get people to make decisions.
Because now you're on the line to deliver something when you do it, right? So when you show up, you got to talk. You say, well, I'm nervous to be in front of people. Then make slides if you want, right? And use the free screen share on Google Hangouts and do a slide presentation and it'll work the same, okay?
It's fine, right? And you get better and better and better over time. That's the first thing it'll do. Number two, as you're doing them, your communication ability will unbelievably increase. Vic, the other day, he was up here on stage two.
I can't remember who it was with. And I think somebody in Vic's team that was starting doing live Hangouts every week or something that was up here the other day, I think. I can't remember who it is. Huh? Was that you?
Yeah, he does live Hangouts every week. Major difference, wasn't it, in your income when you started doing it? I've told people to do this for years. Almost nobody does it. Almost everyone, okay?
Nobody does it. Nobody, right? I'm telling you to do it because you'll force you to get people there. Your communication skills will start to get unbelievably good. You'll start doing, getting really good at doing calls to action, which are really easy to do, right?
There's another side effect of doing it too, though. When you show up live in front of people each week, you'll start to develop a charismatic, dynamic following, okay? I'm telling you, all of the big leaders in Empower do this. Aaron Rashkin does a weekly Hangout. Chris Rushlow does a weekly Hangout.
Vic does a weekly Hangout. Tony Rush does a weekly Hangout. Tracy Walker does a weekly Hangout. Paul Hutchings, he does a call every day. Prosperity Team, weekly Hangout.
Everyone. Paulo, you do one? I don't even know. Or do you partner up? So he doesn't do one, but he still made half a million last year.
Huh? Oh, he does webinars for other teams, right? Which has the same effect, right? And you start doing that when you get bigger.
You start going on to other people's things in your organization and helping other people and then inviting people there, right? You can partner up. Almost everyone that does it starts getting bigger results immediately, okay? For a lot of reasons, all right? I'm encouraging you to do it.
Now, how would you take that formula and apply it in a space if you wanted to sell locally, right? Number one, you'd need a way to get people, right? Number two, you'd need a way to get people, right? Number three, you'd need a way to get people, so we'll do a bonus training on that because we don't have time. But number two, you just take the same format and you do it in a room.
And it works literally, probably actually better, except for it's harder to get people in a room than it is to a webinar for most people, okay? But when you do it, it works with unbelievable consistency. Better, I would say, than it works online. I used to get 80, 85% closing ratios with everybody I ever brought to meetings doing this, right? And there's a couple of differences that you do.
For example, if you're doing something where people are actually gathering, when they show up, you want music playing. As people are walking in, you turn up the music so people have to talk louder as they're coming in because when they talk louder, it increases their metabolism, which increases buying, right? They're excited all of a sudden. They don't know why, but it's because they're talking this loud. And you only talk this loud when you're excited, but it's because the music's loud, right?
That's dirty. Right? No, there's that. You have somebody cut the music at the exact start time. Somebody comes up and introduces you and edifies you, you know, that's a step.
And then you come out. Well, I'll give you a little sheet or something on this. And then you come out and you follow the exact same formula that I just gave you for the internet. And it works exactly the same. You just need a way to get people there.
But then when you get to the testimonials section, that's the fun part. You play a little music in the background and you teach people how to do the testimonials. And you have them just do one after the other, after the other, after the other, right? And I'm telling you in a room, you'll see this. I saw it in people's faces.
People were wanting to buy the 15K formula. They're like, I need to actually go through that. I bought that. I didn't even know it was a real product. I need to buy that.
I need to go through that thing, right? But what happens is that the social proof eliminates all objections. And then you just come up and you do a call to action, right? And you tell people what to do next, right? If you got leads or reps in the room, you have them help close like I worked out, the magic close.
Turn next to the person next to you and they're going to help you get started. If you don't have reps in the room, you just tell people to fill out the damn order form and rush it to the back because there's only 10 spots left that you're taking this week, right? Okay, I was doing that in Hawaii. I think he's getting like 30, 40% close, getting people straight from the internet to a meeting, right? It's a good way, right?
A lot of people like stuff like that. So here's the thing. If you do live stuff, you'll sell lots of stuff, okay? If you're willing to connect with people, you'll dramatically increase the amount of sales you do from very small lists. And what's the aim, right?
What's the aim? You're in a profession, not a lotto. You're in a profession, not chance, right? Not some sort of like Ponzi deal where unfortunately we don't have magically increasing commissions. By the way, if you ever see that, it's a Ponzi scheme.
You just put money in and it increases by 2% a day. What magical mechanism does that? Is Jesus blessing the pile of money like he did with the loaves and the fish, you know? Doesn't work. You have to work here or you have to work in your business.
You have to work in this industry. You have to produce sales. And what should your aim be? If you are in business and want to be full-time, we recruit and we sell all day long, and that's it.
And we actually only make money from product sales, right? And when our team makes product sales, that's it. That's all that's going to make you money ever until you've got a pretty big group and have something to work with. That is enough. And here's why I'm excited about this information.
What I just told you is enough to get every person in here to a full-time income, okay? By itself, it's enough. That is enough to get some of you in here to go from sponsoring one a week to sponsoring three to four a day and overshooting everyone. That's enough to get you from zero to sponsoring your first person in the next week. It's enough, right?
But you got to make a commitment to your business in order to make that happen. Because it's not about sponsoring people or selling a product or whatever. It's about hitting your goal. Right? It's about Paul Gardner being up here.
The reason he's here is not to sell, right? And sometimes that whacks people out. It's not why I'm here to sell. The reason he's here is for his daughter. And that's why he needs to make the sales.
The reason he's here is for his family. The reason you're here maybe is to pay off debt. Maybe the reason you're here is to buy a new car or to pay off the car you've got. Maybe the reason you're here is maybe you're in another deal and you just want to learn to recruit for the first time in your life, and you're so damn frustrated from like wandering around and doing bullshit in the dark, right?
Maybe you're here because you just want to get to the next level. And how do you get to the next level? You move groups of people. You bring in larger numbers of people. You'll be willing to do what it takes because here's the dream of it.
See, this stuff, what I told you today, I didn't tell you anything that would keep you trapped for the rest of your life. Nothing, right? And so, I'm going to tell you something that I'm going to tell you today. The thing that's different about us and the thing that's different about me is even if something works doesn't mean that I'm going to teach it. Three-way calls work, right?
And I actually don't have any massive issues with them. I just will never do one ever, right? Because I don't want to be on the phone with grandmas all day. And it's not grandmas. I mean, you could say teenagers, lawyers.
It doesn't matter who somebody's warm market is. I do not want to talk to them. I'm super antisocial and would rather live in a cave, right? Just that's me, right? But I taught you things today.
They all work. You can keep them into a very part-time schedule, all of it. Even the phone stuff takes like three minutes, right? And you can go out and you can start making money in your business immediately when you leave here. But that's up to you, right?
That's up to you. And you're going to do it by recruiting and selling every day. Some of you in here, you learned what you need to learn here today to double your income and you're already making a lot, right? Some of you in here today, you learned today how to go from almost nothing to where you're literally selling every single day in your business. You're bringing in somebody new every single day.
Maybe you're bringing in somebody every day and you learn to go from one to three, right? There's not much difference. And here's what I learned from a guy named Tom. I was struggling to sponsor people into my business. Back in 2006, I met this guy and he just built a team of about 50,000 people and some vitamin deal, right?
By bringing in a couple of people a day. And I was totally perplexed by it because I was like, I mean, I can't bring in two people a month barely. And that's if I'm working my ass off. And I met this guy and he was just, he was doing more a day than I was doing in a month in way less time. I mean, he was doing it in an hour a day.
I was doing this in like eight hours a day and bringing in as many people a month as he was doing a day. Right? It's a big difference, right? And I was frustrated by it. But here's what he told me.
He said, Dave, here's the beauty. If you sponsored two a month once, and you were doing it every month, sponsored two a month, one time, you can sponsor two a week. If you can sponsor two a week, you can sponsor two a day in no more time than it used to take you a month. Right? You just got to learn what to do.
He said, if you can sponsor two a day, you can build a team so fast that none of the weird stuff in network marketing will ever matter. Because it doesn't matter if you sponsor leaders because they will appear in numbers. It's irrelevant. Okay? It doesn't matter if anybody ever does anything.
It doesn't matter if a leader quits. I have leaders quit and I still make tons of money. And they're replaced almost, almost, right? Like, I about forget their name and then they're replaced. That's how fast I replace them.
Right? Because I'm not worried about it. Because I can go bring in an army more. Right? Because if you could do this, you can build teams.
If you could build teams, you can build communities. You can build communities. You can build dynasties. Right? And you guys all have what it takes now to do that.
You all have what it takes to do that. You all have what it takes to shut down bullshit all around you. Right? Which a lot of you, I saw you had big breakthroughs from that.
I'm surprised I haven't taught that stuff before. Right? You all have it now. You have what you need to do. So here's going to be my call to action for you leaving here tonight.
And I do it with you here now, but we don't have time. Set an outcome that's new. You all have a worksheet in there. You all hopefully have the 15K formula. Set a new outcome based on what you learned today, on what you're going to do differently.
Okay? A bigger outcome. A new goal that's based on what you learned. Start a weekly live thing now. And just start doing it.
When I first started online, it was 2009. And I did an interview with my good bud, Cedric Harris. Right? And asked him some questions. And he taught me some stuff about closing, actually.
On that. And then I actually ended up out recruiting him. You know? The whole time I was around him. And he was one of the most prolific people I ever met.
You know? But I got on this interview with him. And I asked him a bunch of questions. And he taught me, you know, what he was doing. And then I said, you know, I said in the interview, I said, you know, I noticed you do these live calls.
These live things every week. I said, should I do that? And he says, and he said, well, yeah, of course you should. I said, well, I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know. When should I start doing it? Right? I said, how many people you got on your list? And I said, like, 80-something.
You know? It's 86 people on my list, I think. I said, it was, like, brand new. Right? I'd been in, like, two weeks or something.
And he said, you should have started doing it when you had one person on your list. Even if you're talking to yourself. He says, because here's my security, is at the end of the day, he says, people show up to that every week. Every week they're on that call. And he says, I've had to change companies before, and all these people are all on this call every week, and they join me in everything because I keep giving them value, right?
And he said, whenever I need to sell something and make some sales, I've got this group of people who show up every week because I'm giving them value. They'll buy whatever I'm selling. He says, new people are popping on there every week, and they listen to me, and they just want to join my team, and they hit me up, and they give me a call, and they ask me if I could join. And he says, I've been doing that for years, and I'll stop when I'm dead. Right?
To me, I just took that and ran with it. The interesting thing was when I learned these strategies, I just did it. And immediately upon doing them, they produced the same results as they did for the people that taught them to me, and then I improved them, and they worked better. Okay? Immediately.
Right? Now you have a choice, right? What I told you wasn't necessarily easy. Okay? Because, you know, sometimes we're like, ah, it's easy, just send people a page, right?
Which you can do, too. But, you know, this is a different message today because I'm talking to people that want to be leaders. I'm talking to people that want to build organizations and teams. And you know what? Sometimes you're going to have a hard time.
And it's okay. Because this is worth it. I mean, I have now lived, and I want you to think about this. I have now lived in Costa Rica since 2010, in February, and I'm only 32 years old. Right?
Okay? And I moved to Costa Rica. And I still don't even know how to do paid strategies. Still don't. Right?
We have people doing them, but not me. Right? I went from a team of 2 to 10 to 100 to 200 to 1,000 to 2,000 to 10,000 to 30,000. By the way, each time I add 1,000, somebody thinks I'm saturated. Right?
To 50,000 to 100,000 to 200,000 to 300,000 people. I've created a... But I didn't know the stuff that I'm going to teach in these next two seminars. And then I changed some stuff, and now I've got 100. How do you do that?
It's called The Top Producer Formula. Thanks for coming. Give yourselves a hand. Folks, obviously the income examples discussed are extraordinary.
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