Our Watermelon Story
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
By the time you finish reading this page, you’ll will feel a RUSH of motivation and a DRIVE to say “F-U” to all the people in your life that tell you you “can’t” do something. I have to relate this to the online marketing space, because that’s one of the only places I’ve been able to OWN my successes.
I’ve had a lot of success in my life, and some EPIC failures. The further on you read, you’ll begin to understand what drives me and I hope for you, that you find what drives you.
Imagine what it would be like if you could just have some little successes, some pint sized results from all of your hours on the internet. Late nights, too much coffee, blurred vision staring at the screen, imagine if that actually amounted to a real, visible, tangible result. Just think about it… you place an ad, or write a blog post, and someone actually sees it and acknowledges that it’s there. Isn’t that what we all really want? To know that someone sees us?
In a moment, I’ll tell you exactly what I’ve personally done to increase by subscriber list sell more products online and make more money in the past 68 days online, than in the previous 7 months – and the great thing about it, is no one really knows yet – but you’re here, so you get to be inside.
Most people I talk to or meet online, have absolutely no idea what I do. Even people I meet in person (even my wife is perplexed with what I do on the internet all the time…). We sat with her friend for coffee a while back, and she asked me — what’s all this online stuff – really – does it work? What do you even do with it? Well I didn’t really have an answer, because sometimes I don’t even know what I’m doing, but it’s working.
It All Started With Splatter Paint
Creating and thinking outside the box is something I love. Because I put myself in a box a long time ago, I stopped myself from getting to the core of what this creativity could mean for me.
This is a painting an old friend of mine and me did together on his front lawn. I had no clue what I was doing. He gave me some paint, a canvas, and I went to town. After, he painted over it in some parts, so the final result was more of a collaboration…. I have it up in my office. Every time someone comes in, regardless of how long I have it up, I get a comment.
“Did you do that?”
“Wow — where did you get that?”
It’s sort of funny how I came to be where I am in my life.
I was a trouble maker as a kid, dropped out of high school (after attending 4 different schools in 4 years), somehow got into college, and I went down the road of “financial planning” because that’s the picture of wealth I had from a family member.
My upbringing I was taught to get an education, study, keep a low profile, don’t make a scene (didn’t really listed…). God willing I did ok, struggled a bit but graduated and got a really great job supporting some of the top top people in our business. The benefit of this job was meeting the right people, but more important was I was able to get creative. I have a feeling this is because my creativity and passion for making things perfect was able to shine. It had been bottled up for so long, that I had an outlet. It was on a spreadsheet, but it’s amazing how creative you can be with some numbers 
I “tried” going out on my own and positioning myself in the market, prospecting for business, knocking on doors, and doing all the things I “thought” I wanted to do. I had a miserable time, cried more than laughed, and had next to NO money.
Funny thing is that I was drawn to the internet. I started a website for my business, started blogging, learning about advertising online and in print, started doing short info videos, and really all the things that I see online now in the internet marketing/affiliate marketing space. Long story short, I ran out of money. It didn’t work out in the long run, for some other reasons, but the main point was that I saw something on the internet that I could do – some potential, some incling of hope. Are you beginning to see where my journey started?
This was around 5 years ago. No excuses, it didn’t work out. Financially there were insane commitments and I had personally made some stupid financial decisions. This led me and my family into a situation I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies, which we are out of now, but it is still such a close thought that I shutter every time there is a phonecall (from anyone…). The positive in this, is now I actually understand how fragile life can be. How close we all are to having our lives changed, for good or for bad.
The Creepy Emails That Started My Journey Down The Rabbit Hole Of Internet Domination
Since you’re still here, I’m going to assume you really want to know how I became an EPIC failure in all types of marketing. Here it is.
“Hey! I see you also have a home business?! What do you do?
Love to connect,
Darren.”
That was my prospecting intro… I would go on facebook, search groups like “home business”, “MLM Sucks in Ohio”, “Biz Opp For Junkies In Toledo”, “Epic Failures are Welcome – Spam Allowed – Come one come all, no one will buy anything…”
….
Sorry I just gagged. Nasty memories.
So you see how creepy that is? I would try and find people I had things in common with, then randomly send a chat message… who does that!? Actually I got recruited into a company that way twice, so I guess I learned wrong from the start.
All this while I was watching insane amounts of webinars, training videos, listening to audios in my
car, and “talking the talk”, while having NO CLUE what the hell I was doing.
These were my successes over 7 months:
– Sold 1 copy of Magnetic Sponsoring
– Sold 2 copies of a Todd Falcone book
– Generated 16 leads in MLSP
– and that’s it.
** I signed up my brother into my first network marketing company, and pissed off EVERY friend of mine from highschool.
Oh ya I almost forgot!! I sold 3 people some weight loss shakes, and made my 11 year old next door neighbor idolize me because I had awesome coins…
Chaos Theory AKA The Butterfly Effect
My past has 100% created my present, and yours (keep reading I’ll explain).
As your view of my life continues to expand, imagine a time when you thought you had complete control over your life.
Imagine that right in front of your eyes, a solution appeared out of nowhere, and you question where it was all these years, through failures, life changing events, children, marriages, death.
Years of suffering, and then something rises up like a pheonix.
There are 2 choices. You accept and chalk up your past failures as experiences, or judge the solution and keep walking.
As time passes by I realize that every single choice I made in the past, however insignificant I imagined it to be at the time, has created results in amazing proportions. The blog I tried to create, the videos I made, the online leads I tried to generate, the phone calls at night in my office, seeing people and trying to “sell” them things they didn’t want or couldn’t afford, working for people’s dreams…
All those experiences have caused my current clarity.
All of the people I met, friends I made and lost, troubles I had as a kid and throughout my life, were all part of my own butterfly effect.
They were all part and parcel of my life today.
Without them, you wouldn’t be reading this.
My life 10 years ago, effected your life today, and will effect thousands of others.
Now I want your unconscious mind to listen very carefully to your feelings right now.
What does this mean for you and your life?
Let’s face another harsh reality. Only 1-2% of people who understand this fact, will EVER act on it and change.
Since you now see this clearly, it’s vital that the 1% of us that read this fully take action everyday on our goals. No one else’s, our own. Agree?
If It Walks Like A Duck, It Must Be A Watermelon
You are ready for success, aren’t you?
In a moment, you’ll find out how I use my distaste for watermelon to attract success.
Like a watermelon, we are sometimes confused about what we are. The watermelon is a fruit – not a melon. It’s called a melon, it looks like a melon, but it ain’t no melon!
Here are all the names we use to tell people what we do.
“internet marketing”
“internet marketer”
“online network marketing”
“social media marketer”
It’s hard to cover up bullshit with bullshit
Just get it straight – the only time we make money, is when people buy stuff. No one gets paid to MARKET anything.
Marketing is HOW we get our message out to people. If you saw Frank Kern’s “State of the Internet Address”, which was hillarious if you stayed until the end, he made a great point. All Internet Marketing is, is using the internet, to get the right message, to the right people, at the right time. That’s it! And the message, needs to include a BUY button!!
If you get paid to coach people, great – you’re a coach, and you can call yourself whatever the hell you want.
But if you don’t get paid to coach, train, develop, build, or any other fancy word, just tell people what you are — A WATERMELON!
You know what I mean, don’t you?
Here’s a secret – It’s ok and accepted to be who you are. Especially online – if you want a following of people that actually know you, who else can you be!?
Here’s another secret: I don’t really like watermelon. I don’t like strawberries and chocolate either. My wife LOOOVES it. She could live on watermelon alone – I would starve, she would thrive – C’est la vie.
In this page are the answers I told you I would provide. They may not be clear now, but in time you will see.