A Successful Business Model Means a Success Business.

Practicality dictates that everyone's results will vary as we are all unique and different. Basically, it takes hard work to make a substantial income in this business, and some people will make no money at all. The earnings of an Empower Network affiliate will be 100% dependent upon their skills, work effort, commitment, leadership capabilities, and market conditions. Common sense would suggest that in most opportunities, one would find exceptional individuals performing well above average, while others perform under the average. Empower Network does not guarantee any level of income or your success.

To see our full income disclosure, please visit our website at www.empowernetwork.com forward slash income dot php. This is Tracy Walker. I want to welcome you to our Monday night Empower Hour call. And just a couple things. First, I want to just make sure that you guys can actually hear me on the line.

And I just want to make sure that we're coming through clear, and everyone is in an audible position, okay? So I've made a couple of checks, and it looks like we are here. Got a couple of text messages, and we are good to go. Awesome.

Well, guys, you know, welcome, welcome, welcome. Whether you are part of our community here at EAN, or whether you are a guest, whether you're a business owner or an entrepreneur, an individual looking to, you know, generate an income online, or whether you're just someone looking for some tools and some concepts to help you build whatever it is that you have, we're very grateful to have you on the line this evening. And as always, it's a pleasure to share any time that I am offered the opportunity with our community some of the things that I believe can be of value and can be of help to you and your business. First, let me just start off by sharing a little bit with you about who I am and where I come from.

We may have a lot of people on the line tonight that know who I am and know my story and know my journey up to this point. And then we might have a group of people who have never heard of who I am and want to have an idea of the voice, the person behind the voice that you're listening to tonight. So we're going to start off with that, so I'll give you a little background. And then I am going to share with you three concepts that I believe anybody, any business owner or any entrepreneur, whether it's an online business or a brick-and-mortar business, a network marketing business, an affiliate marketer, it doesn't really matter what kind of business it is.

These are three concepts that I believe that can be ultra-beneficial to you as well as something that you can really start implementing today, tonight. It's nothing more than in terms of sparking the ideas, ideas that start moving your train forward. And for those of you that are already moving forward, a little bit faster, right? Because having more business coming in and being able to make more money faster would be ideal.

Nobody really wants to have a slow-moving business. Plus, money loves energy. Money loves speed anyway, right? So let's just kind of get going with my background. Again, my name is Tracy Walker.

I hail from the South Side. I'm from the South Side of Chicago. And, you know, went to high school there, everything there in the inner city of Chicago. Graduated from high school in a natural honor society, had A's and B's. Went away to college.

I went to Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida. And did well there. I was in the business school. I was in the School of Business and Industry. For those of you that are familiar with FAMU, which is just the acronym for Florida A&M University, the acronym for the School of Business and Industry, was called SBI.

Well, it's still called SBI. So I was a proud member of SBI. And I actually matriculated through a five-year MBA program where I graduated in the fall of 1999 with a master's degree in business with a concentration in marketing. And my whole goal through that whole time really was to, at some point, end up as, you know, working in a, possibly becoming the chief marketing officer somewhere and really taking that corporate role. And that was something to do in Chicago.

So that was what I set out in 1999, graduating Magna Cum Laude and, you know, was like a- I didn't even have a job. I did not have a job. I had, you know, tens of thousands of dollars in student debt. And I had to actually stay in Tallahassee for an extra year while I'm doing, because I was coming back off of an internship working at HBO. Started interviewing white men.

Lived in Mexico. Crazy place. You know, I lived and worked in places I lived because, you know, these different companies. I even worked into all of the, you know, investing and more specifically how to negotiate short sales. People, white people, black people, Chinese people.

I began to see just awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds good. Kind of getting a job. So I moved to Atlanta in 2000 and started doing energy trading. I was a marketer there, but literally we marketed in Massachusetts.

Well, then I would be sitting at a desk in Atlanta with all these screens and stuff at my desk, and then I would instantly see my screen flashing on the state of, you know, Massachusetts, and then I would literally have to find other power producers and sellers of power, electricity, and then get on the phone with them and start negotiating the price of the power in order to send it from their location, let's just say like in Texas, over to Massachusetts, and we had to pay for that, right? And then I would have to charge my people in Massachusetts the price. I would, you know, get a call from my people in Texas, and then my company would make the difference based on that negotiation. So I was a middleman. I was a bridge.

I put, you know, a problem and a solution together and made the money for the company. And, you know, overall, you know, it was pretty simple, but I worked these stupid shifts. I worked 12-hour days, and I had four days on, and then I had four days off. So on the four days that I had on, I worked from 7 a.m.

to 7 p.m., so morning to night, and then I was off for four days. Then when I went back for my next set of four days, I worked from night to morning. I worked from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., and literally after about three or four months of flip-flopping like that, your whole body in equilibrium is literally off.

And I would come home. I was staying with my dad and my stepmom at that time. And I would drive that. I was living in Stone Mountain. I worked out cash facility in Atlanta.

Those of you guys in Atlanta, you know what that is. And I would drive back and forth, and every day coming home from work, I would ball out in tears. And I would get home, and my dad would say, oh, well, what's wrong? I hate this job. I hate this job.

I wish I hadn't died. These people get on my nerves. And I just wish I didn't have it. And I didn't like the bureaucracy.

I mean, I had an MBA, and there were people whose cousin was a director at the company, and they were barely in college, but they were making the same amount of money that I was making. And I didn't like that. I didn't like the fact that one time I wanted to go to homecoming. You know, I was big on that. I just came out of college, right?

So homecoming is a huge, huge deal. I wanted to go back to homecoming. I'd actually put in my time, you know, at the beginning of the year, and by the time October came, they literally were like, no, well, we're sorry you can't go because someone with greater seniority than you requested the same weekend off. I mean, I didn't like any of the way things went.

And from the very beginning, my onset full-time in corporate America, I realized, okay, this place isn't for me. I'm not going to be fighting with people about how much I should be paid. I don't want to have animosity against my, you know, my neighbor that sits next to me because I have, you know, I know more than them scholastically, or I've achieved more than them scholastically, but they're making more money than me. You know, I didn't want to have to make the font by going to lunch with people I really didn't like. I just, that wasn't my deal.

And I felt it in my spirit back then at like 22, 23 years old. I knew for a fact, right, or maybe 24 at that time. I knew for a fact that wasn't going to work. And so I started leaning on some of the knowledge, the knowledge I learned in the real estate investing. So in my days off and on the days when I worked the night shift, I would actually start doing my real estate investing.

For a while, I was kind of reading up on the books and the materials and getting my concepts together and making sure I understood the processes and how things went. And then I started moving into actually buying foreclosure lists, pre-foreclosure lists, getting lists of sellers, people who might be looking to sell their home. And then I would actually craft these letters, and then when I got to work, back to say, I would actually print my letters out. And then I would, on a night shift, you know, 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., it's not that much happening in the market.

I would sit there. I would sign all of my letters, handwritten. I would fold them, and I would stuff my envelope. I would address my envelope, put the stamps on them. And then when I would leave out the next morning, I would dump all of my marketing letters in the mailbox and keep going.

And before long, calls started coming in. And I would get a call in from people who read my letter and they actually wanted to know more about how I could help them sell their house, right, without foreclosure. And I began to realize that people actually wanted to know this information and this was well and good. And then my whole world just really shifted with I hate this job, right. Not only did I hate it, but now I hated it and I had something else I could do that worked.

So I've been praying for a way to get out of this job. And, you know, I was scared. I didn't want to quit right away. Because I didn't really know what was going to happen. I wasn't too certain about what the real estate business was going to bring me.

But the events of September the 11th actually took place. And my company started going through a series of layoffs. Because we were in the energy sector and we were affected. A lot of our colleagues were in the World Trade Center. I was at work the morning that took place.

And so a lot of things started to change. And the first set of layoffs, they did not lay me off. The second set of layoffs, they did not lay me off. However, I started packing all my crap. Like I put all my stuff in my boxes.

I had my picture frames in the box, my flower pots. Everything that you, you know, those of you that work corporate, that work at a job or a cubicle, you know how you try to dress up your environment to make it look warm and fuzzy for you, right? So when you come in, you can see the pictures of your kids or whatever, little designs, and whatever you got, right?

And that's how I had my stuff set up too. But I had packed all that jack up, all that junk up, put it in my box. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to do this.

So like, 60 more days hoping and praying that the people call me up to HR to let me go. And sadly, the people that worked with me thought I was nuts but I wasn't. I was ready to go and I didn't want to quit, but I figured if they laid me off, then I could leverage two things, which would be my severance pay, because I knew I would have a nice severance package, and then I would have Georgia Unemployment, right? I would have both. And then I could use those two things wisely enough to kick off this real estate business even further.

So it took me until about March of 2002 before these people finally called me and said, you can go, right? And so I remember sitting in the HR office, the ladies' office, and, you know, when they let people go, they have security and everything ready. I was working in a very secure building because we did a lot of trading and things like that. I was working a trading floor. So you already had security as it was, but when they start hiring people and letting people go, some people really cut up, you know, and their life is greatly affected by the loss of this particular income, and so they have to escort people out, you know, expeditiously.

So when it was my time to go, I was like, I'm going to go. You know, the officer came over and was like, well, you know, I got a call on my desk, and the officer comes over, and I'm like, oh, well, you know what? You don't have to worry about me because I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go. Trust me.

I'm not going to fight. I'm not going to scream. I'm not going to do anything. It's anything going to be for joy, right? So I zoom up to HR, sit down in the ladies' office, and she's talking all of this mumbo-jumbo.

To me, it sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher was like, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, because all I wanted to do was get out, to be perfectly frank. And all I wanted to know was the answer to two questions. Do I get severance, and do I get Georgia unemployment? And I asked her those questions, and she said yes. And then I said, okay, well, what do I sign?

So I had to sign, like, my life away, all these documents and papers, and I was just signing so happy. The lady said to me, do you understand what you're signing? And I said, yeah, I get severance and unemployment, right? And she said, yeah. I said, yeah, I'm completely aware.

I'm trying to sign it as fully as I can. I have things to do. I'm trying to start an event over here, right, is what I'm thinking in my head. So finally got that whole thing done, and boom, that was my release from corporate America.

That was, I believe, March 1st or so of 2002. And so as of last year of March, it was 10 years for me. This year made 11 years in which I have not worked a job in the formal sense of the word. I've not punched anyone's clock. I have not followed anyone's rules in terms of where I have to be exactly at this time, when I can take my lunch break, how fast I've got to be back, whether I can take a vacation, whether I can't, whether I can take it when I want to take it, whether I've got to get a whole family to take it.

Like, all of that completely got pushed behind me, and 11 years later, you know, my life has been completely different. So now during that period of time, transitioning out of corporate, I found a real estate business. That business did very, very well over time. Throughout that process, I ended up losing my mother to cancer, which was March 2nd of 2003.

I ended up moving back to Chicago to help take care of her for a while. And I built my business in Chicago because that's where I was. And from that point, when the business started taking off, it allowed me to build a house, 3,500 square foot house. I built from the ground up, bought cars, had jewelry, went on trips. I took care of some of my friends, some of my family.

I always had people in my house. You know, we had five bedrooms in this house, and every bedroom was full with someone, a cousin, a family member, whoever, who wanted to come hang out and stay with us, and so that's what it was. But when the real estate market turned and the mortgage laws changed around 2006, 2007, it impacted my entire life and my business tremendously. You see, we would only focus on two or three deals.

It wasn't like we were working super hard. It was just we had figured out, you know, what types of houses could allow us to make this type of income with no additional work. It happened to be luxury homes, million-plus type houses, million-dollar plus houses, and then doing two or three. So we had to do three of those a month and stay with that, right, and my lifestyle was built on that, but when everything changed and then we couldn't sell our houses because now all of my potential buyers could not get the financing that they used to before, well, it put a cycle, the whole process, and all of the homes that we had were now stuck in a pipeline. We could not close any of them.

None of my buyers could get financing. All the work that I had done on those homes was just null and void, and there was really no way around it. So what happened was there was no income coming into the house for about six or seven months, and as a result, my home slipped into foreclosure. My cars went into repossession.

My electricity was rigged. My cable was rigged. My gas and everything else was hooked up because, of course, you know, people from the city, people can hook my stuff up, right? It wouldn't be a big deal. And after so long, you know, the reality is that I'm not going to be able to do anything that I want to do.

And so the reality was that if we don't file a bankruptcy, then we're going to lose this house. So we filed bankruptcy once. Well, that bought some time. And in 2007, that's when I started looking for something else. End of 2006 was really like the last straw where I realized nothing was happening.

We went from two to three deals every single month from around 2002 to 2005 to 2006 only having three deals the entire year. So I knew something needed to change. In January of 2007, I had a dear friend of mine introduce me to network marketing. He was from Chicago as well.

We both went to Florida A&M. His dad was and still is a multi-millionaire in Chicago. He's a restaurateur. If I would have said the name of a couple of the restaurants, those of you from Chicago and the Chicago land area would know exactly who I'm talking about because it's a well-known like real place. But he said, listen, my dad has got something that he's doing.

And I think maybe we could take a look at it. At the time, my friend was doing mortgage. He was a mortgage broker. And he was experiencing a lot of the ramifications as well.

So he was looking to do something too. So I said, fine. So I went out to his dad's house and saw this presentation for a network marketing company with a travel business. And I took a credit card and I signed up for $500. I know realtors who need this.

I know sellers. I know buyers. I know mortgage people. I know appraisers. I know surveyors.

I know people that work down at the city. Like I knew everything about that whole real estate market in terms of my network in Chicago. And I knew everybody was looking for a way out. And that was my theory. I could get everybody to do this.

Well, as we got going in it, I went, okay, like I didn't fail. Like I didn't fall flat on my face or fail miserably. I will say that I realized that to bonus in that particular pay plan, I needed to get like six people every week or something like that.

And then that would give me an extra, I think it was like $60 bonus, right, on top of whatever commissions I had. So my whole goal was to at least bonus one every week, which sent me into a frenzy to sign up six people every week or help those six people sign up six people every week, right? And just go on and on and on and on. So as a result of that, I began presenting this opportunity every Tuesday, every Thursday, began speaking about freedom, began speaking about changing a life, and began training people on the business and how to market doing some basic things that I was learning at that point in time.

I began standing up in front of people and literally showing them that this could be a better route for them if they didn't like the route that they were on right now and they desire change. Okay. And then at that point, then I realized that I could do this. This was good. This was great.

It wasn't just to help me save my house, but it did, you know, help keep, you know, like food on the table. Because by that time, I did have to go down to the state and get food stamps, apply for food stamps, which was something that, you know, I don't knock it up on food stamps at all. I feel like you do what you need to do. I've been on food stamps before. But I will tell you that in all the years...

My mother struggling, working, getting into and from dance class, on the bus in Chicago, way too, you know, whatever, she was never on food stamps. And I, for me, it was like, how did I end up on food stamps with a master's degree and a thriving real estate investment company in a 3,500-square-foot house, a Mercedes, a Hummer, and a Lexus? This is ridiculous. And I just couldn't understand how I even got there. And so it was very humbling at that point.

And it was, maybe it was around that time I decided I really wanted to help people. Because I figured, if I could pull myself out of this or begin the process to pull myself out of it, that I can help others do the same thing. So in 2008, after a year of doing everything offline, of doing travel parties for people and running all around Chicago when it's below zero outside to show up to somebody's house and there's one person sitting there who doesn't have a job, and they don't have $500 because they have to wait until their tax return in January or February, I literally was burned out of doing all of that and getting scrapped, essentially.

So I said, there's got to be a better way. In 2008, I posed this question to the internet. And I said, I wonder if there's a way that I could, instead of me doing all of these presentations live, I wonder if I could, like, record myself. But this is just a question I was asking myself. Can I record myself?

Do the presentation once. And then when people didn't see the presentation, maybe I could just send it to them. And I don't have to go put on my business attire, put on my heels, do my hair, drive across town, and stand up for 45 minutes in front of one person who was more interested in eating the cookies and drinking the punch than they were about buying this travel business, right? So I wondered if I could do that.

And that's when I found a gentleman by the name of Bacon Smith, who at that time was like mid-20s. And, you know, I was 30-something, probably five years ago. I was, what, I'm 37 now, so I was 32 when I got on the internet and found him. And he was making, you know, a million dollars plus on the internet or just about to make a million dollars.

I can't really remember. But he was into the seven figures, if not right then, you know, shortly before I even found him online. So I started plugging into what he was doing, what he was teaching. And I started, he told me I needed three things. He told me I needed a blog, he told me I needed an autoresponder, and he told me that I needed a lead capture page.

Now, mind you, this is 2008. Facebook had just come out in 2006. The biggest thing jumping online was MySpace. So, yeah, Facebook started in 2006. MySpace was like the main social media outlet that most of us were using, and video, right?

So you were using video connected to MySpace. And you were doing this social marketing type of thing. And I learned this whole concept of my story marketing and how to, you know, how to interact with people and how to solve problems and so on and so forth. I learned about this autoresponder. I knew nothing about that in 2008.

Maybe like some of you. I knew nothing about what a lead capture page was in 2008. Never heard of such a thing. I knew nothing about a blog in 2008. It was a completely foreign concept and idea to me.

I knew zero about it, just like maybe some of you if you're working in the online space right now. I understand if the language isn't something that you can grab on quickly or if some of the tech things that are happening, you don't smash that right away or the concepts aren't jiving with you and interlocking like a gear should lock. I understand that. But the bottom line is that here was my situation.

I was sitting in a house that was being foreclosed on. I didn't really have that much money coming in. I had lost over $200,000 in value in the house. I bought the house, it was $585,000 to build this house.

And by the time it was, you know, 2007, 2008, after I filed bankruptcy once, and by this time I think twice, it was down to $350,000. And I didn't know that the value wasn't even there. So instead of doing that, I would take the money that I was getting from working offline and that in the travel business, doing the presentations, and I would use those funds to buy training online, to go to events, to do whatever I needed to do, to buy tools, to buy autoresponder, pay for that every month, to pay for any software tools or anything that I needed. I would use those funds to do that as opposed to paying the mortgage because it was stupid finances to do that, right?

Right. Okay? And at that time, the banks weren't trying to hear that, right? But trust me, I negotiated short sales.

So, if you don't think I tried to negotiate on my own house, you'd be mad, right? So, they weren't trying to hear that. So, I decided to screw this house at that point. And it took some time.

It took some time to get over the emotional attachment to the brick and the mortar. It took some time to get over the woe-is-me type of mentality. It took some time to get over the pity party. It took some time and it took a lot of sleepless nights. It took a lot of crying at night.

It took a lot of sitting on the stairs trying to figure out why me? Why me? It took a lot of throwing things at the wall. It took a lot of arguing and fighting with people in my life.

It took a lot of that before finally I got around to the point where I realized, you know what? None of this even matters because this isn't going to change the current circumstances. The only thing that's going to change the current circumstances is me changing the current circumstances. And that is the only thing that I can do at this point. And once I got that, once I got that and I owned that.

Then I was able to get on that internet, sit there in this house that was going through foreclosure and record video after video after video day after day, article after article, blog after blog. Why? Because I was moving forward. I was focused forward. I wasn't focused on time.

All right? And so over time what happened is that I was asked by somebody on MySpace to co-author a book, which I did, and it's published. It's in Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com or whatever that was. It's called The Tower of Leadership.

I have a copy sitting right here on my shelf over here in my office. People bought this book, right? I had other authors in there. I was featured with Ben Gay III and Dr. Ivan Meisner and some of these, you know, more New York Times bestselling authors. It was an honor to do that, right? After that, moved on, kept on going, kept on going. I went to a Jeffrey Combs seminar.

I met somebody named Cedric Harris, right, who introduced me to Jeffrey Combs. At the Jeffrey Combs seminar, ended up meeting a gentleman by the name of Mark Colbertson, who at that time I had no idea owned a network or a direct sales company. I had no clue this man was a multimillionaire. Ended up networking and, you know, forging relationships over time with him. Ended up going to event after event, just meeting people, meeting people, meeting people.

Doors kept opening. And then it got to a point where my little system started. And I said, you know what? Let me see if I can get inside of this system and leverage this information and be able to generate leads for my business and make some additional money as we go.

And I did that. And I kept my head down. This had to be 2009. I just kept my head down. And before I knew it, I was the top female earner in that company.

So when I was the top female earner, I take that back, as far as the leaderboard was concerned, I was the top female producer. I mean, I recruited the most people as a female in that company. It was during this time that I also met a gentleman by the name of David Wood, right, who was living in a van. And you guys might know who David Wood is.

And if you don't, I'm going to share a little background with you briefly. But at this point in time, you know, there was no Empower Network, right? I want everybody to go back in time. There was no Empower Network. There was no Empower Hour Call.

It wasn't any of that in its formalized fashion. What it was, was a man living in a van who was homeless in Hawaii. And he got on the Internet, and he figured out a couple things himself. And I was already on the leadership council when he was homeless in the van, entered into the company.

But I was on a webinar where he spoke the first time, and he made, like, you know, at least five figures from this one webinar. And everybody was like, who the heck is this man? And who signed him up? Who's his father? Where did he come from?

And before long, he had risen to the number one position in the company, was a top earner and was a top recruiter, producer overall. As a result of that, of course, I began to interact with him, and he was me, and we would Skype back and forth. He moved to Costa Rica at this point in time, and we would Skype back and forth. We were in different companies, and, you know, sometimes we would just kind of chit-chat about things that we saw in the marketplace that needed to be or that we wished we could change, right? And David's always been a genius type.

For those of you that know him, you know exactly what I mean. But even back then, he had, like, these lofty ideas and, you know, what if we could just do this, and what if we could do that? And began to get a sense for his heart more than anything else, a sense for his heart and how he actually cared about people. And so before long, we keep moving forward and kind of get faster and get to the content for the night. But this is just as important because it brings you through my mindset.

It brings you through some of my hardships. It brings you through some of the experiences that I've had. It brings you through how I've met people that have opened doors for me, and it brings us to where we are. So right now, this is me being on this call sharing with you what my past was like from the time that most matters up through right now. And in 2011, by this time, you know, David and I, we were both speaking at a conference on stage, and I had a table at the back of this conference because at most conferences, as a speaker, you know, you don't really make anything.

If you're speaking at these types of conferences, what you can do is you negotiate with the owner or the, you know, the promoters of the event, and whatever you sell from your table, you share a percentage with the promoter, right, with the people that put the production on. And so you have to sell stuff from the stage or sell stuff from your table in order to make money. And so I extended a product or two at about this point in time. So I'm selling stuff at the back of the room. Nicole Koolford, who's like my sister, my BFF, she was eight months pregnant at that time.

She actually came down to Orlando, because that's where we were speaking, and she just helped me. She helped me at my table, eight months pregnant, you know, swiping cards for me to help me keep things underway. And the truth of the matter is that I was so tired of even that life. I was so tired of having to create a product every time I needed to generate a lump sum of income. I was so tired of having to go out here and just pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch all the time.

I don't have a problem with pitching when I have something that I really want to sell, and I really believe it's going to be valuable. I mean, you shouldn't either. If you're selling anything, you have to open your mouth and tell people about it. If you have a problem with selling, then, you know, that could be a problem. That could be a problem with your income.

That could be a direct relationship there with whether you have money in the bank or not, right, your feelings or how you perceive selling. But anyway, I don't have a problem with that. It's just I didn't want to have to constantly do that to generate income, right? So David was there, and it's interesting. I was a little busy that weekend. Didn't really get a chance to speak to him.

We did arrange that when we got home, we would Skype, and he would share with me what was going on. So we got back home. He'd share with me what we now know as Empower Network.

I got started at that point and have been pretty laser-focused ever since then, okay? So all that to say that right now, I come from a mental place of having, like, all A's and B's in school, right? That was my deal. That's kind of what I had.

Didn't really have any hardships. Didn't really, you know, have that type of stuff going on where I was distracted. I mean, there were a lot of things going on in my high school, in my youth, yeah, there were all types of things that you experience in the inner city, especially in Chicago and especially in the other larger cities. I mean, I wasn't immune to that.

Anybody that knows me or is from that, you know, you just experience what you experience, right? But you got some kids that don't get caught up in it, and you got some kids who do get caught up in it. I was fortunate enough that my mother kept me involved in dance and sports and all this, but I didn't get caught up in it, and I got out and I went to college. It was simple. Did well in college.

Didn't have any problems there either, you know? The first problem I had was not getting a job, really, major problem. The second problem was me hating the job that I had to fill onto again. The third problem was starting a real estate business that then crashed and didn't really have anywhere to go. And I refused to let that be the end all.

So I share with you on this call tonight a little bit of experience about business. I kind of know a little something about it. I kind of know a little bit about mindset. I kind of know a little bit about having nothing and then having something. I kind of know a little bit about people not believing in your dreams, right?

I kind of know a little bit about working a job that you actually can't stand. I kind of know a little bit about having deals that you need to pay that don't get paid, and the threat of being put out on the street or evicted by the sheriff, you know, racing against the clock. I kind of know what that's like. I kind of know what it's like to pack up all my stuff and move back in with my dad at 30-something years old because I really didn't have much. Like, I understand that.

And so if you're a person that's going through something, you know, all I can tell you is that the sun always comes out after the rain. Now, how long that's going to be? Well, that's a question. That depends on how long you're going to sit and sulk in the rain. It really depends on how soon you're going to start to walk over to the window, peek open the blinds, and expect sun.

That depends on you because as long as you sit in there and mope and gripe and cry about whatever your circumstance is right now, it's going to continue to rain because that is what you are attracting is more rain. But the minute, the instant, the second that you decide that it's time for the sun to shine again, then it will. And I understand that shift, too, because I went through it.

Okay? And so today, I speak from being a top earner in this company. I speak from, you know, without getting into a whole bunch of financials and this and that, I speak from being, you know, a couple dollars shy of a million dollars inside of this company. I speak from, you know, being a minority, right, as a female, a minority in a group of men all the time, majority everywhere we go, right? I'm a minority from the standpoint that I'm a black woman on top of it, right?

And so there's just so many different things that really I could, if I wanted to moan and groan about stuff, I really could make excuses and say, oh, but I'm the only girl. Or I'm the only black face that they see right here. Or, you know, I'm the only one that's in a wheelchair. I'm the only one that's standing this height.

Or I'm the only person that has this background. But you could make an excuse for every single thing that you have in life or you could just accept where you are and realize that you deserve greatness regardless. You could do that. You could. But you could also choose the other, the great things that you have choice.

Right? You have choice. And so I just choose not to do that. I just choose to accept that there is a journey for me to take and I'm going to take it regardless at all costs. It's going to be taken.

And until I do it, my time on this earth will not be up. So long as I'm here, I will continue on with the path that I have and the mission that I have, which essentially is to elevate and empower the masses to be that greatest. It just so happens that this company and this community gives me a platform to do that. Okay? It gives me the platform.

It gives me the platform to share the message that is unified with what the company resonates with anyway. Because if there were not a match between what I believe and what I believe that David and Dave believe, then I wouldn't be here. Because it would not be a match. I'm not here just so I can make a fast buck on the internet. I'm not here just because I need to hurry up and pay my bills.

I'm not here just because I'm trying to sign up people or whatever. I'm not here to scam you or your sister or your brother for $25 or any other thing that is. I'm not here to do any of that. I am here to do what I just said, which is to be able to enlighten people, to uplift them, to empower them, and to help them realize that you actually have everything that you need to do what you need to do. It's either you're going to recognize that sooner or later or not at all.

And in either case, it's your choice. I really believe that's my mission. And so, you know, as I share this information with you tonight, hopefully that gives you some insight for you to understand that, well, you know, I might just be a little bit qualified just to share some of this stuff with you. You may feel that I'm not, but in either case, I'm still on the call and I'm still going to share it. Whether you think that or not, the point is I'm still going to share it.

And some of you will receive it. Some of you will understand it. And others, it will go in one ear, out the other, and you will go back to your life the way that you came to this call. And it's unfortunate that you did not use this as an opportunity to change something. Okay?

So with that being said, guys, again, my pleasure to be here, and I'm glad that I have any opportunity that I have to share my story. Maybe it touches someone, gives them some ability to realize that they're not alone with whatever it is, and that if one or two people or 10 people or 50 or 100 or 1,000 people could actually do something different and change their life and climb out of the dark places, the darkest of dark places, well, then you can too. You can too. And I hope that inspires you to do so. So in transitioning on, I do want to share with you three things, okay, that I believe can be of great value to you, of extreme great value to you if your mind is open and if you are willing to do something to catapult yourself, okay, your mind, yourself, and then particularly your business.

Okay? And, of course, all those connected with the official family and things like that. And so I want to share with you three things that I believe can be of great value to you because, you know, for all you know, you could be the one. I believe I shared this in D.C. When I was speaking in D.C., I said, you know, a lot of times people are always around complaining, looking around, talking about, oh, but the person that sponsored me isn't helping me.

I need help. I need you to do this. I need you. No, you don't need anything. What you need is for you to stop being so needy.

Okay? Every freaking single little bitty thing about a business that I wanted to start. Maybe I should actually start trusting myself. Maybe I should actually start reading things that I buy.

Maybe I should actually start studying things that I buy. Maybe I should actually start implementing things that I buy and believing that if it's worked for others, it can work for me. So in other words, it's you. That's what you should probably start doing if you keep looking around and you keep saying that no one is there to help you. That's because you are probably in a position where God has put you there to help yourself for a change and stop expecting something from everybody else.

Start expecting from yourself what you expect from others. And I bet a major transformation will come over you. I bet that if you were complaining about how you should be helping yourself, as opposed to how somebody else should be helping you, well, then that's just a major paradigm shift right there. So I believe that these three concepts can help you.

They're not steps. They're concepts. It doesn't really matter what order you put them in because they're not steps. They're concepts. So the first concept is, well, let me set the stage first.

I probably believe that how you start off is the way that you're going to end up. Okay, how you start off is the way that you're going to end up. So if you start off raggedy, you're really going to end up raggedy, right? You're really going to end up raggedy if you choose to change something, okay?

If you start off organized, then, you know, you can end up organized unless you let somebody distract you with a bunch of their, you know, unorganized practices and behaviors, all right? So how you start off is really the way you're going to end up, all right? And with that being said, the goal here is that in business you want to set up your business as if you expect it to thrive and as if you expect the masses who want what you have to buy from you. I mean, if you start a business and your initial thought is nobody's going to buy from me, you need to hurry up, get out of business. Because no business succeeds with the visionary saying it ain't going to work.

Like, that doesn't make any sense. That is absolutely ridiculous. Who wants to be part of a group? Or be an employee in a business? Or be a volunteer in a community, a community organization?

Where the visionary is saying and truly believes that this isn't going to work. That is a complete waste of your time and everybody else's time. So you should start off, A, recognizing that if you don't want to be a business owner, that's fine. And if you do, you need to expect how this result will flourish, will flourish from your labor as the fruit. You must expect that.

And if you don't expect that, well, then you don't need to be in business. You might be better off working for someone else where your vision doesn't really affect a lot of other people. Your vision can just affect you and the people that you work with at your job because nobody's really asking you your opinion on anything. You just go there every day and you do a routine job and you get paid for such routine money. And some people are fine with that and that's great.

I have nothing against that, we need people to do everything. We need people at Wendy's to work, right? We need people at the long-term medical program if you go to the long-term medical program. We need people that come by and clean your house.

We need mechanics to work on cars. I don't have a problem with anybody that does. We need doctors and nurses to take care of people who want to go to the hospital. We need naturopathic doctors to work with people who don't want to deal with medicine and deal with more natural things. We need somebody that's going to work somewhere to facilitate our life all the same.

So I don't knock it. I'm just saying if you want to be the person that's starting the business, then you need to get your head out of that mentality and you need to get your head into the mentality of having a vision that is going to actually span across the masses where once you gather the masses, you lead them with confidence and you lead them with knowing that where everybody is going is to a place of better, not to a place of, oh, well, I'm not sure, I don't know, well, what if it doesn't work? That shouldn't be your angle as a visionary of your enterprise.

It just shouldn't. And if it is, you need to check yourself really fast because you are affecting other people's lives, their financial lives, their mental, emotional lives. You might not need to be in a position to lead yet. And that might be why you're not getting any enrollment in whatever it is that you're doing because you're not ready to lead. Maybe not because you don't know how to generate leads.

Maybe because you don't know how to lead. That could be an alternative too. Don't just assume it's a technical thing. Don't assume that. There are other options.

But maybe you're not ready to be in charge of or lead 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 people because you haven't really nailed down how to lead yourself yet. You're still kind of wishy-washy on what you've got going on. So God's not going to allow you to impact other people's lives in such a way where now you've got 4,000 people all confused across the planet. So you want to set your business up as if you expect the masses to buy from you and for your enterprise to dominate, period. If you don't, check that.

Most people play small when it comes to this. Most people do not plan for growth. And some people even go out of business because of their lack of infrastructure, their mental infrastructure, as well as their physical infrastructure. They literally go out of business because of this. I don't want that to be.

It doesn't have to be. So concept number one is infrastructure. And your infrastructure really means that you want to be able to lead, and set up whatever those things may be so that they can expand with you as you grow. As you grow, see, most people don't expect to grow.

So what do they do? They set up these skimpy little systems and these skimpy little processes where then if by chance they do grow, they don't have the ability or the capacity to keep up with what's happening in the marketplace. And that's what I mean about sometimes people go out of business. Sometimes people go out of business because of that, right?

Because they just can't keep up. There used to be an old commercial. I don't know how old. But it used to be an IBM commercial, I believe.

And there was a gentleman or a lady sitting in the middle of the room with four white walls, sitting in the middle of the room with a desk, a phone, and a computer, of course. It was IBM, right? A computer, a phone, and a desk. And they were talking in the commercial about how what if you actually have a bunch of customers, but you didn't know what to do with them, and you could not supply what it was they were requesting from you. You would go out of business.

Right? So IBM's angle was when you set up things with IBM, you're set up for growth. Right? IBM can grow with you. When you have all your computers and stuff with IBM, you can use IBM when you're a smaller enterprise, but as you grow, you can get larger, and we can integrate all your stuff, and you never have to start all over again.

Right? That's their premise, that you could use them to grow with. And so very important point, infrastructure should be designed such that you may be small now, but that as you expand, your infrastructure expands, your processes expand with it, so that you don't have to start all over from scratch to compensate for that which you didn't consider at the beginning because you really didn't even think you were going to grow. You really didn't even think you were going to succeed. You really thought this thing was going to just not even happen.

But something surprised you, and a miracle took place, and, you know, everything took off from there. So here's an example of that. Let's just say you have a business, and you're doing some advertising. And let's say that you decide that you want to advertise on TV. And for right now, you want to advertise local in your area.

You don't want to advertise national, but you want to advertise local. Maybe you don't even want to advertise on multiple stations. You want to advertise on a particular station for cost purposes or whatever it may be, a target market, whatever. And when you do that, you then, at the end of your commercial, because you're creating a television commercial, you have two options for the viewer. The viewer can either call a phone number after they watch the commercial, or they can go to a website.

Right? Here's a question about infrastructure. Do you set up that phone number to go to your cell phone where now every person that watches this TV commercial in your local area calls your phone because you can handle it now because the leads aren't that great in a day's period of time? Do you set that number up to your cell phone or the website part? Do you set that up to go to your personal e-mail where now you have to be responsible for every e-mail that comes through or every report?

Or every request that gets processed on the website or order form or whatever? Is it set up for you to be the person to actually handle all that stuff? Or do you expand in your mind and say, listen, the way I start off is the way I want to end up. What I really want to be able to do is at some point I want to have a huge national campaign. And I want people to be calling in from all over the country.

And I want a phone number that fills all the calls. I want a customer service hotline. I want these questions to be asked. I want the person to then be directed to this order form or be directed to this particular product. I want the person to actually be able to pull out their credit card right then and there, pay their personal customer service, buy what they buy.

I want then that order that was processed to be sent directly to my warehouse where it sends a notice where now the warehouse goes and they pack up this particular thing and then they ship it out and then within two to three to five days or whatever it is, my new customer gets their package, whatever it is they ordered. Or do you think like that? Asking you, can you afford it? Some of you, everything somebody says to you, you're countering that with whether you can afford it or not. And I want to challenge you to stop letting money be the ruler of you.

Because a lot of people always want to say that when you have a lot of money, oh, money ain't everything. Money ain't this. Money ain't that. But there's a lot of broke people that value money a lot more than a lot of rich people. Because a lot of broke people let the lack of money dictate their whole life.

They're the same people that want to say it's the rich people that love money so much and everything ain't about money. No, if everything wasn't about money, then how come you ain't making any? Have some. And then have some options to then choose to not spend it if you don't want to.

But don't not have none if it's not for people that have none. So don't let money be the ruler of you. That goes both sides. Don't pick and choose for the rich people only. No, and for the broke people too.

Don't let the lack of it be the ruler of you either. So you need to think in terms of the business being successful. So setting things up. So maybe right now you can't afford this full-blown call center to be able to house 100 people and the phones ringing. But in your mind you can see that happening.

But right now you're like the IBM commercial. You're sitting at one desk with one computer and one phone. That doesn't mean that you can't hire an assistant to do that where you're not the person. It doesn't mean that you can't set up a phone number that's an office number that no matter what you don't even have to change this number.

It can go with you wherever you go. And as you expand your business from your home office to a storefront to, you know, a stand-alone building to a huge, huge, huge office, you can add extensions to that. It doesn't mean that you have to start over. It means that you start out at least knowing that this call needs to be rerouted to somebody else who can act as a customer service person where it ain't me.

You have to be able to set your business up like that. Some of you are playing too small. And you're wondering why you're not getting anywhere because you closed your own self up in a little bitty, bitty, teensy-weensy box. You did that. You did that.

And so now when we add to the things outside of it, you can't think outside of it because you're so tightly sealed up in that little box you created around yourself, you feel claustrophobic. And so what I'm saying is don't even put yourself in the box to begin with. There is no box. How about just think as far as you can and then set things up in alignment with that based on the budget that you have but still in alignment with that of your vision.

Key requirement, you must have a vision. If no vision, the people will perish. You know that. Stop acting like you don't know that. Start acting as if you know that.

So if you don't have a vision about what you're doing, if you don't have a path set out for what you want to do, then stop acting like you're confused or surprised when things don't work out. That's contradictory thinking and you're not fooling anybody. You didn't even set it up right. So why would you think it should work right? Do you think somebody who set up the iPhone incorrectly would believe that it's going to work correctly?

And then if they sold it to you, you would recognize right away it's not working correctly because the parts are all mixed up. You would recognize that. It's the same thing in your business. Okay? So infrastructure.

Set up your processes so that they can expand with you as you go. Concept number two is your money. It's your money. Be mindful of where you spend it so that you do not waste it. Don't be afraid to spend it for fear of wasting it.

Be mindful of where you spend it, but you can't be fearful to spend it. Those are two different things. Some of you have money to invest in your marketing or your advertising or whatever ideas that you have, but you're so doggone scared, you just scared yourself out of the life you deserve. And that is nobody's fault but your own.

Your own fear is stopping you. Your fear of what? That if you spend it, that it won't come back. Okay, let me ask you this. The fact that you never spent it means that you can't even sow the seed.

And if you can't even sow the seed, then you're not even learning from the experience. And if you have no experience to learn from, you stand still. And if you stand still, that is nobody's fault but yours. See, this is really about responsibility.

It's not the person that sold you the franchise's responsibility to get you to spend your advertising budget on advertising. That's your job. It's not your sponsor's responsibility to tell you to spend your marketing budget on marketing, but you're scared to spend the money on marketing because if you make a mistake, you're scared that you're going to get no money back. That is not a business mentality. That's why you're failing.

If you are clear on who your ideal target market is, I've said this like a billion, trillion times. If you get super clear on who your ideal prospect is and who your ideal buyer is, then it makes it hard for you to waste money. It doesn't mean you won't lose any because a lot of it is going to be put into campaigns that don't go so well. And other ones might take off, and other ones don't go so well again over here using this strategy.

But over here, these just skyrocket right through, you know, the roof. You're going to lose some money, but please don't confuse lose with waste. You see, I get all types of emails on Facebook recently, more recently, where people are like, well, listen, you know, can you help me get started in my business? I have, you know, an essential oil business or I have a, you know, legal business.

I have a this. I have a that. And I want to use the Internet to market, but I'm a single mom. And, you know, I'm on fixed income. And I don't have any more money.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. So your hope is that if you spend some money somewhere and you lose it, you're calling that waste. Because what you're saying to me is that you want a surefire guaranteed way that for every dollar you spend, you're going to get at least a dollar or two back for every single dollar in every campaign you do. And I want to be 100% honest with y'all. That ain't real life.

That ain't business. I don't set those type of expectations up. In fact, I expect to lose some money sometimes, but I expect to make more than I lose, period, the end. I do not expect not to lose any. And for those of you that have the mindset that losing money is wasting money, you're screwed.

Quite frankly, lose some money. Get comfortable with that. In a war, you're going to lose some blood. You might lose some fights.

You might lose some battles. You lose people you love from time to time on this planet. You lose touch with people after time. There's all kinds of things you lose. But for some reason, you're so scared to lose a little bit of green, little piece of paper.

And don't tell me that, because I don't understand. There's one thing that when you get serious, you'll make sure that happens. That for every dollar you spend on something to learn, you get your butt in there and you study it and you learn it. Some of you talking about wasting and losing money and you buying stuff and you're not even diving into what you're buying. You're buying it for some reason, but it ain't to learn from it.

It's to just own it and then complain that it ain't working and you ain't even cracked the book open yet. You didn't even open up the e-book. You didn't even watch the video full through. You didn't even hear the bits of nuggets that the person in the video shared with you. You didn't hear any of that because you're still complaining about what you spent and didn't make.

If you see putting money out there in a campaign and it doesn't work as being wasteful, well, then you will be out of business faster than this call even be over because your mindset is on the wrong side of the fence. However, if you can start to view what you spend in your business as an expense, as a business expense to further the business, not only will you learn from those mistakes if you happen to make some, which all of us do, not only will you then be able to say, okay, this didn't work, but this did work, not only will your guidance system, what we call your intuition, become more keen, not only will that develop, but then you'll actually be in a position to be of advisory, of giving advice to others when they come along. Okay? Especially if you're in an industry like network marketing where you actually have to help people to move forward.

And if you're not, same concept applies, fine. The law is the law. You reap what you sow. If you actually start honing in on who wants to buy what you have in the first place, you will probably lose less than what you have to lose because you're not trying to talk to everybody. You're not marketing to everybody.

You're marketing to a specific group of people that actually want what you have. But you have to understand that not 100% of those people even are going to buy what you have. You think 100% of the people that see advertising buy Sprite? There are some people that happen to just like Mellow Yellow better. There are some people that just happen to like Mountain Dew better.

There are some that just happen to like, you know, Sierra Mist better. You know, you just are not going to win them all, guys. And if you think that you are, then you're wrong. You're making the game not fun. You're trying to make this game so predictable that, you know, you already know exactly each step of the way.

And it kind of takes the whole fun and the mystery out of life. Stop being so serious about everything and loosen up and allow yourself to grow in life. So it's not about wasting money. It's about having a marketing budget that is an identified expenditure for you. It's about having an identified expenditure for your advertising for your business.

Even knowing that not everyone you advertise to is going to buy from you. But the goal is to make more than you expend in terms of the advertising. That for every advertising campaign that you have, that you at least make more from it than you spend. And if you see yourself in a sinking hole where the money is going out of the leaky bucket and there's nothing coming in, the smart, wise thing to do is to stop that campaign. Stop throwing money into something that is not working and reallocate those funds into another campaign where you are getting results.

It's very simple. Some of us keep doing the same thing over and over and over. We keep looking for a different result. And then, you know, we just keep doing the same thing over and over yet again. It's ridiculous.

Stop doing that. It's not helping you. Stop it. It's like if you're driving down the road and you know you're going in the wrong direction, are you going to have ego in your head?

Are you going to keep going the wrong way just because you don't feel like turning around, going back because it took you this long to get here? Are you going to keep going wrong? Or, you know, everybody turns around even if they're pissed off. Even if you're cussing out your husband or your wife in the co-pilot seat who gave you those directions. Even if you are mad, you still turn around and go back.

You don't keep going the wrong direction. You shouldn't do that in your business either because you're so attached. Stop doing the wrong thing too much. So, concept number two is your mindset about money. Don't waste money.

Get clearer on who your ideal prospect is, your ideal buyer is, so that you don't waste money. But so that you spend and you expend money on advertising to the right people so that enough of the right people will buy to cover the expense of the advertising. Concept number three is leverage. How many of you are leveraging yourself?

Here's an example, and I know some of y'all feel me on this example. Some of you get this. You know what I'm talking about. Or you see it at least. You see other people saying it to people like me or to whoever else.

You've seen it or you've experienced these types of comments. People want to call, let's say, my office, and when they don't get me directly in my office, they proceed to say things like, well, I was expecting you to answer the phone. I thought that there was a more personal touch on your business. And, you know, if I were doing this type of business, I would make sure I answered the phone for every person that called. Really.

Okay. So are you speaking from a wealthy perspective because that's what you've done? Or are you broke telling me how you think I should answer my phone or when I should answer it? Like, I'm trying to figure out what perspective are you coming from? Because from the wealth of people I've studied.

The wealth of people I've studied, most of which I don't even know personally, none of them answered their personal phone for their business. There's a secretary. There's a personal assistant. There is a publicist or somebody, a go-to person or whatever you want to call them in the process. You know, I don't think you can call up Microsoft because you've got a problem with how the software is working.

And Bill Gates doesn't answer the phone and handle your every request just because you asked. Right. Okay. That's not how it works.

It doesn't mean we don't value the person as a customer. It means that I am not going to be the person to facilitate the solution to this particular buyer's problem. I am a visionary. I do not answer the phone to do those types of things. I will hire somebody to do that or I will barter and trade with someone to do that.

But I will always leverage myself against others where I can do things that compensate me for the best results. And trust me, you only have one or two things that you are good at. If you think you have five things or six things or ten things that you're good at, you're not. You're only good at one or two things that you are great at, let me put it like that.

That you are an expert in or could be an expert in. That you are gifted in. Things that you do that will generate the majority of your income and your wealth only comes from you doing one or two things. It does not come from the fact that you could answer the phone if you needed to. It comes from the fact that you think big and that you can create vision and that you can move the company forward while day to day somebody else gets paid to answer the phone.

That's why I said to you at the very beginning, I don't have a problem with people working who like jobs because we need somebody to do everything to help us undertake the lives that we have. It's just, it's not me to do that. And it's probably not you to do that. So when people say to me, well, you know, I've been calling, I get this automated system and because I keep getting this automated system, I'm not going to sign up. There's no way I would join a business where the person I'm joining doesn't even answer the phone.

Be my guest. You know why? Because the way that you start off is the way that you start off. You come in the door expecting something when this is my business where I set the expectations. You've got this twisted.

I set up the processes here to help me run my life and my business so that I can do the things that I want to do with freedom, ease, joy, and a smile on my face. I don't do the business to work myself like a slave to make you so happy that I am just like burned out and dying in my business. That's not why I started this business. I started this business to have a life too. One that I choose to have.

And some of you are so concerned about what other people have to say that you revert back to, you know, following the massive mentality as opposed to actually following the minority. Because it's the minority that's wealthy. Not just in this country, being the U.S., but across the world. It's the minority.

It's more people broke than it is wealthy. And I don't know, even the wealthy people that I do know personally, the multimillionaires that I know personally, I don't know personally any billionaires I can call on the phone yet. But I know a lot of multimillionaires. And I don't know any of them.

Aside from their personal cellular device where their friends and their family calls, from the business side of things, they answer the call coming in to the phone number. Guys, you have got to create leverage in your business. Stop being the go-to person for everything. Stop feeling like you owe every single body your personal attention and consideration in business.

Look, if you owned a wing business, right? Like your business cooks chicken wings. Hot wings. Barbecue wings. Whatever it is you want to call it.

Your business did that. Right? And I know when you first start a business, you're excited. Right? You're excited.

And your grand opening just took place. And you're there. And every customer that comes in and buys your bucket of wings, you're punching them out at the cash register. You've got your little apron on. And you've got a big smile on your face.

And it's thank you so much. Please come again. Oh, thank you for buying those cookies and the wings. Please come again. And you do that week after week.

And the fun is still there. And the joy is still there. But then something starts to happen. Like your family doesn't see you anymore. Something else starts to happen.

You start missing the stuff at your kids' school. Something else starts to happen. Oh, you've got to do inventory and this and that. Or the supplier didn't come through with that. And you're running around in a frenzy.

All these different little mishaps start happening because it is business, you know. Nothing is 100% perfect. You are going to have challenges. And you're going to have to pull away sometimes. Because everything depends on you.

Because you have not allowed or given anybody the authority to make decisions outside of your presence. Because everybody must come to you with everything, you are now enslaved to your own business. And before long, you actually hate the business that you started to help you get away from the job that you once hated before. Now you just replace what you hate with something else. And you do know that as an entrepreneur that works in that fashion, you're actually working more and making less than had you just been at the job.

Because at the job, you're only required to work, what, the seven, eight hours you're there and you clock the heck out and you get on with your life. When it's your own business, if you clock out and you don't give nobody else any authority, guess what? The business goes down. So you inherently don't ever clock out, do you? You're there 24 hours a day.

You're slaving all day and night. You're doing all the paperwork. You're doing all the accounting. You're handling all of the inventory and processing. You're doing all of the hiring.

You're coming in the morning, opening up the store, and you're there to the end of the night, cleaning up, locking up the store. You're making sure the security cameras are together. You're making sure the file system is together. You're in charge of doing your Internet marketing. So you find people like us to help you do that.

You go over here and you've got to go get lunch, but you can't never eat. Why? Because you can't leave your business because can't nobody make a decision unless you're there. You have to be. You are a control freak is what you are.

You are a control freak. And you have this premise that if it's going to get done right, it's got to be done by you. What a bogus program they programmed us with when it came to that. And if it's got to get done and going to be right, I've got to do it myself. What a horrible, horrible program to install in anybody's brain.

Because I will tell you, there isn't one wealthy person that, you know, is running every single part of their show in their business. It doesn't mean that they're not overseeing processes and watching people and making sure things are flowing the way they should flow from an aerial perspective, as if you are in an airplane looking down on your business, looking at it from a grander perspective saying, okay, yeah, this needs to be changed, and let's move this, let's rotate that. You can't work on the business if you're so viciously working in it. You can't even see the forest. You can't see the trees.

It's because you have no leverage. And some of you in your entrepreneurial ventures and your Internet marketing ventures and your network marketing ventures and your small business ventures are not creating leverage for yourself, so you're working yourself to the bone. You're working yourself into oblivion. You're super exhausted, and guess what? At the end of the day, nothing is even getting done, and you're not even making enough money to compensate for all the time that you're spending away from your family.

And so they question whether or not this is even a viable business for you, because you didn't start off the way you wanted to end up. You started off the way that, I don't know, you felt you needed to start off because you wanted to appease every customer that walked through the door. You can't do that, guys. It's cool to want to show your customers that you're there and so on and so forth, but I'm going to tell you this.

You better start finding some ways of automation to be able to do that. You better start building up your e-mail list of your buyers that come through your chicken wing spot so that you can then send them postcards on a holiday or get their e-mail list and send them thank you video e-mails or whatever, you got to start thinking outside the box. Because if you are required to stand behind that counter and punch that cash register and order the stuff in the back for the kitchen to see it, if that's you, because you don't trust nobody up there at your cash register, they ain't going to steal no money from you, you're going to be a slave, just to yourself. And trust me, you will ask me with my personal assistant, ask me, do I give her access to my financial card for her to make purchases upon my request? Yes, I do.

Yes, I do. And that means every time I need something to be paid for, I've got to be the person in front of the computer or on the phone, flipping out the card, typing it in. And I'm telling you right now, I don't even do it that way. I have to build a level of trust.

You have to pick and choose your people wisely. Of course I'm not saying get somebody off the street and just randomly throw your entire life and all of your personal and privacy information at them. It takes time to build that up. But your intent should be to hand over as much of what you can over to your assistant.

Even down to the point where I don't make my own plane reservations, car reservations, going back and forth to the airport. I don't pay for stuff. Most of my bills are paid automatically anyway just through the automated system. I set them up because I don't like to see bills come in the house. So they come out automatically as it is.

But anything else other than that, my assistant does that. I'm not afraid of that. Do you know why? Because I can see the transactions on the computer. I can see if she's spending money that she shouldn't be spending.

It's my job to oversee the financial transactions, not to be the person in charge of making every single one personally on the phone with the customer service rep for every freaking thing I want to buy. If I want to buy a new piece of luggage to carry on the airplane with a backpack at the same time as a roller bag, I said, Claire, I need you to go on Amazon. I need you to research some stuff. Find me a bag that converts into a backpack and a roller bag that fits in an overhead bin. Send me back three to five options so I can choose.

And when I choose, I need you to buy it. I could go on with the rest of my day. She came back with three or four options. I looked through them. I thought of what I liked.

I said, B, let's go with choice B. The next thing I knew, the bag was popping up at my door a few days later. Leverage. Stop being the go-to person for every single thing. Here's what happens.

If you do not do that, it presumes that you will always be small. It is a presumption that you will always be small enough to be the person always there to put your hand on everything. That, if you're not looking to do that, will be a self-sabotaging activity that you don't even think is self-sabotaging because in your mind, you're being customer-service friendly. No, you're not. You can hire somebody to be customer-service friendly.

You can get some kids to work part-time to be customer-service friendly. Did you know that my nephew David, who is 16 years old, did a little job, right? And so now he goes out here to advertise. And you guys know, like during tax season, when you're driving around, your Liberty Tax Services or whatever, they have like a statue of a person dressed up as a Statue of Liberty standing on the curb with a little sign that says, you know, come get your taxes, 25% off or whatever it is, like the advertising. Well, my nephew David is a Firehouse Subs guy.

He's dressed as a fireman standing out there on the side of the road with a sign, getting people to come into Firehouse Subs. He's 16 years old. And I believe he told me he makes like minimum wage. And he works three to four hours when he's not in school during the day. And he only works like two or three days a week.

Okay, really? What's seven times four? 28. So he makes $28 in a day. And then he does that three days out of the week.

You can't spend $84 to put a kid out there to be customer service? You can't do that? You have to be able to take your money and reallocate it so that you can leverage yourself to go to the things that you need to do. That way you can scale up. You can't scale up if everything depends on you.

I'm harping on this a little bit more than the other two concepts because I think it's one of the most important. It's not, I wouldn't say that it is extremely more important than the others, but I think it's something that anybody that owns a business right now can start implementing right now. At least the thought process, okay, let me start hiring. Let me start thinking what I want this person to do. Let me get out of my own way.

That is something you can start tonight, getting out of your own way. If you have people that you need to call back, follow up, you need to have a third party calling back. Pre-screening. You need to have some type of criteria for when you will speak to people. At all other circumstances, you do not speak to people.

And unless a person meets this particular criteria, I'm sorry, too bad, too sad. You don't meet the criteria. Until you start being the business owner, you won't be the business owner. You'll be the business slave to yourself. That's what you'll be, the business slave to yourself.

That's the phrase. So always create some sort of third-party validation of what you're doing. If you're on the phone making calls and you're leaving a number for people to call you back, it needs to be somebody else answering the phone. It needs to be somebody else making the outbound call, to be perfectly obvious. Your job is to come up with the idea.

Your job is to come up with how it should flow. Your job is to come up with who to put in place to help facilitate the process so that it flows smoothly. The best person for the job that you can afford at this time. But yet somebody in that place.

Whether it's an intern who you don't pay anything to. Whether it's a family member that is willing to do some work for you just in exchange for some Christmas gifts. Whether it's your child who you actually have a tax deduction for. You actually can write off on your taxes when you pay your kids. Right?

You could do that, but you're all scared to pay your kids for whatever reason. I don't know. You don't want to do it. You're not leveraging how this business system is set up. You're wanting to be a business owner keeping an employee mentality and it's not working.

It's not working because there's a different set of rules over here. You work less and make more over here if you can set things up properly. It does not mean that in the onset of you starting the business, you don't have to put in some blood, sweat and tears with setting it up. It doesn't mean that you don't have to spend a lot of sleepless nights coming up with the ideas, crafting out and honing out the vision. It doesn't mean that you have zero to do with it.

It means that you spend the week or two or month getting all of that together, thus planting the seed and then you allow this thing to run for you on autopilot over and over and over. And as you from time to time check in and oversee, you adjust. That's what you should be doing. So those are three concepts that I have for you. Setting up your infrastructure so that they can expand with you as you grow.

Spending your money being the concept, spending your money on advertising as opposed to thinking because you lost the money, you wasted it. The only money you waste is when you don't study and implement what you just bought. How can you waste something if you use it? If you go downstairs in your house and you go get a garbage bag and you put it in the garbage can and you use the garbage bag in the garbage can and the garbage bag fills up with garbage and then you tie it up and take it out to the garbage dumpster for the truck to come by and get it, you didn't waste the bag, did you? You used it.

It would only be a waste of a bag if you never used the garbage bag to put in the garbage can but you bought the garbage bag and it sat in your cabinet month after month, week after week, year after year. And then you look back and say, I don't need to use these garbage bags. Are you going to blame the public because you didn't use your garbage bag? Really? Is it Target's fault now that you bought something that you didn't use?

Is it McDonald's fault that you didn't use those picture frames that you bought a long time ago? Really? Is it McDonald's fault that you didn't use, you know, whatever it was, those bags that you got? Like, come on.

It's nobody's fault if something is wasted. It's yours because you didn't use it. So when you buy training, when you buy information, when you buy tools, when you buy businesses, when you buy whatever you buy, you need to use what you buy. Stop blaming people for things you don't use, saying the garbage bags don't work because you don't use them properly.

Stop saying that. That is so like taking no responsibility for your own actions. Last night, before I called in, I believe it was last night, maybe the night before last, I like watching late at night. I like watching Law and Order Special Victims, right?

And so last night, there was a case on, and you guys know Special Victims is really for heinous crimes and sexual offenses and things like that. That's the whole point of Special Victims. So there was an episode where there was a black man who, when he was younger, was a racist. And he ended up raping an Asian woman, right? And then the man ended up, over time, some kind of way, got convicted and then he ended up in a wheelchair for like 20, 30 years or whatever.

But the Asian woman ended up having this baby, this biracial baby. And the Asian woman still lived in Chinatown in New York because Special Victims Unit is based in New York City. So they stayed in Chinatown. Now, the Asian family did not accept that her child was half black, right? So he was shunned.

He was talked about. I mean, he was mixed. He looked Asian and he looked black, right? Now, because a lot of this internal emotional turmoil that he dealt with growing up, he started to lash out and attack Asian women amazingly. His mother was an Asian woman, but he started to attack Asian women, okay?

He would rape them and all these different things. So the point is, the police caught him, right? That's the law part of it. And then it's the order part of it. They go into court.

And what his defense attorney was trying to defend him on was that a gene of violence had been passed down to him from his violent father, right? And because the gene was passed down to him from his violent father, he was unable to be in control of himself. In other words, it's not his fault. And he shouldn't be punished.

He shouldn't go to prison for doing these horrible things to these women. We should just accept the fact that he was born predisposed that way and that he should get off because he had a violent gene. And what the DA was saying was that's a ridiculous argument because that would mean that we are not responsible for our own actions. We essentially could just blame the fact that our parent was violent. So we are destined to be violent.

Not that we have a choice to be violent or not, the fact that we just are. Which would mean that as a rule, that if your parent was violent, then you don't have a choice. You will automatically be violent. The defense tried to bring in an expert witness who was a geneticist. And the geneticist said that similar to sickle cell, or the sickle cell trait, where one parent or both parents had the trait, the child would end up with the trait. And so what the DA challenged, cross-examining that person, they said, so what you're saying is that in fact, for the child to end up with the trait, one or either of the parents has to have the trait. And it's a fact.

It is a known fact that the child will end up with the trait. And the geneticist said, yes. And the DA said, but that is not a behavioral problem. Yeah, you could say that because one or two parents had the trait, the child gets the trait. Yeah, they might have the trait.

But the trait has zero to do with how one behaves as a result of it. Meaning that it is not your parent's fault that you turned into a rapist. It's your fault that you began to act this way and lash out and do these types of crimes. Thus, he was convicted and so on and so forth. The point was that they had to win this case, the DA did, because they did not want to set the precedent for all future cases of these types of crimes, for now their defense to use this case as case law.

That because their parent was a violent offender, that this person is a violent offender, and they should not be held responsible for their behavior or their actions. And what some of you want me to believe in this world of entrepreneurship is that because your sponsor doesn't help you, that behaviorally, you are predisposed to failure. And I will not let you set the precedent for the case law in this industry based on that. And it's ridiculous. It is preposterous to think that because your parent was violent, you should not be held responsible for your behavior or your actions.

Because of someone else, you are acting right now as an adult the way that you are acting in terms of success or failure. Because success or failure is a choice just like committing an offense in that type of way is a choice. It is a choice that you have. It is not because your mother was a network marketer that you will automatically be a great network marketer. It is not because your father owned a successful real estate business that you will own a successful real estate business. It has nothing to do with that. You are not predisposed one way or the other to the action that you take. You might learn some things like how to be negative or you might learn how to be violent just like you might learn how to be successful or how to think or how to spend money, how money works. You might learn either of those things on both sides of the coin.

But in either case, the wealthy kids don't always end up wealthy. A lot of them end up poor and on drugs too, just like a lot of the broke ones end up wealthy. So you are not predisposed to failure or success. You get to choose. Your behavior is your choice.

So how do you avoid this, quote unquote, failure play that a lot of people like to throw out in terms of, oh, we're only 3% of the people actually succeed in this industry? Well, I don't know of 100% of the people that go to the NFL or that want to play in the NFL. I don't know of 100% of those kids that actually make it to the NFL. It's probably a very small percentage of those people.

I don't know of 100% of the kids that go to school actually get a job making enough money to pay for their student loan. It's probably a small percentage of those people too. I don't know of 100% of the people that do anything, that have the access to anything, where a larger percentage of them actually succeed at it than don't. It's the case in every aspect of our life. So stop letting these excuses build your life on them.

Last little story. And I heard this at an Empower event from Curtis Brooks. He was on stage one day. He was leading the audience, just kind of emceeing. And he said, you know, remember, this was in San Diego.

This was September of 2012. I heard this, and I've never forgotten it. He said, you know, there was a man that actually was talking to a group of people, right? And he asked one of the people. So he asked a group of people, let's say that someone presented you with a business, and they told you from the beginning that 97% of the people fail in the business.

But 3% of the people succeed in the business. Would you want to buy the business or not? Would you want to buy the business or not just based on that? 97% of the people fail, but 3% of the people actually succeeded with the business. Would you want to buy the business?

And I want you to answer that. Would your answer be yes? Yeah, I would. Or is your answer no? There's just no way in hell I'd buy a business with 97% of the people failing out, no, not doing it.

To be honest with you, the answer is neither. Yes is wrong, and so is no. The answer to the question is, well, I don't know. It depends. I need to see if I can speak with either of the 3% that made it work.

You see, because if you can find out how the minority made it work, then you just do what they did. Why are you so focused on what everybody who failed didn't do? Why does that scare you off? Find out what the 3% did, where it did work, learn from them, do what they did, and you can be part of that percentage as well. But guys, listen, whatever your business is, whatever industry you are in, whether you're online, whether you're offline, whether you're in between lines, whether you're both lines, whether you're borderline, whatever line you're in, or on, or not on, or in, whatever, decide that you are going to run this like a pilot of a 757 jet with 250 people sitting behind you.

Are you going to say stupid stuff? Are you going to say, oh, my God? Or are you going to get your seat in that cockpit and sit there? Figure it out. What are you going to do? Run your business as the captain of the ship.

Run your business as the CEO of your enterprise. Stop trying to run the business thinking like the secretary. Think like the CEO. Hire the secretary. Hire the accountant.

Hire the inventory person. Hire the social media marketing manager. Hire the blogger. Hire the article writer. Hire the editor.

Hire the traffic person to generate leads to your funnels. Hire as many people or barter and trade with as many people as you possibly can so that you remain in the seat of the CEO. Because the minute that you start working in the business instead of on the business, you lose the leverage. You completely violate it. You compromise the infrastructure, and now your money is on the line.

So remember those three concepts. Infrastructure, money, and leverage. I really, really hope that this is of great value tonight. I know that if you wanted to, you could take any of these things, start putting them into place for your business right this second. It wouldn't be a waste.

The hour and 45 minutes you have been on this call would not be a waste if you use what I just said. If you do nothing with it, then you're right, it was a waste of your time, not mine. Why? Because there's somebody who's listening who can actually benefit from what I said, and I told you at the very beginning what my goal was in life, to uplift and to empower people to walk in their God-given grace.

That's what my goal is. So it's not a waste for me. It's actually an expense. I spent some time here. I spent some of my energy here.

I invested into this period of time that I had with you, and I truly believe that rewards will come out of it. Whether it's from you or somebody else, it doesn't really matter, because the universe never said that you can only reap what you sow into the one thing that you reap. You see, I can sow into person A, and person A quits. I can sow into person B, and person B quits.

I can sow into person C, but person C quits. But I can also sow into person D, and person D makes me a million dollars. So decide where you want to sow. Decide if you're serious about sowing, regardless of what the reaping is and how fast it comes, as long as you know that it will come.

In due time. Everything is in due time. A lot of it has to do with your own mental processes, your own emotional and spiritual readiness, and your own business acumen to take action to do things that others aren't willing to do. I want you guys to have an awesome night.

Thank you for joining us on the Empower Hour call this Monday, and I will see everybody in my office. As a matter of fact, before I let you guys go, listen, here's the deal. For those of you that are affiliates of Empower Network, right, here's what I'm going to strongly urge that you do. I strongly urge you to make the decision right now that you are going to be in Miami on January 24th, 25th, and 26th, at the Freedom Event.

Why? Because this is a point in time for you to mesh with like-minded people. Some of you don't have supportive people in your household. Some of you have a lot of naysayers in your circle. Some of you have a lot of negativity around you just because of the environment that you came to this community in.

And in order for you to change any of that, you must be in the soil that's going to help you cope, elevate, period. You can be an apple seed all you want to be. But if you are being blown by the wind across the concrete of every major city and you never have an opportunity to land in soil, be firmly implanted and be watered by God's rain and sun, you will not grow. You will not grow, although you have the DNA of an apple inside of you. You have the DNA of greatness inside you.

You've been blown all around the concrete of this great planet. And you have landed inside of a community that is your cultivating soil, but you're refusing to come and allow the sun to shine on you, to allow the rain to pour down on you, to allow the nice warm breeze to just bestow upon you so that you can grow and become the person of greatness that is in your DNA for you to become. Some of you are letting, again, money, or the lack thereof, dictate whether or not your future will be what you say you want it to be because you are so focused on the right now. The right now is just a result of yesterday's thinking. Do you understand that?

Right now is not a result of what you're thinking right now. Right now is a result of what you were thinking in the past. Every time has to catch up with itself. You don't get, like, right now I'm thinking this and right now you get it. That's not how it works.

You thought something before and you brought it forth and right now you're living it, period. Whatever that is, you're living whatever it is that you thought about before, good, bad, or otherwise. What you're thinking right now is predicting your future. So if you're thinking I'm broke, you're thinking I can't get there, you're thinking all these reasons why you can't get there, then you are solidifying your future that you won't be where you want to be. So I urge you not to think that way right now.

Think instead about what you desire. If you desire to be a super affiliate, if you desire to be around like-minded people, if you desire to feel the energy that, in my personal opinion, I've felt, having been in a lot of events, a lot of companies, with a lot of people, a lot of leaders, some which I liked, some which I didn't like. In my personal opinion, I will not miss an Empower event, so help me God. Unless I am literally about to have a baby on the exact date right before the event, I will be there. And if need be, I will have to have the baby in the city and the town at the hospital of wherever the Empower event is if I happen to be there during that time.

I'm telling you, it's that serious. It's that serious for you to get there. It's that serious for you to hear these other leaders inside this company and even the people who are coming up as leaders, for you to hear their stories. It's so important. I cannot tell you the number of stories that have been captured by video, the number of faces that have been captured by photographs, and the number of memories that have been captured by the minds of those who were in attendance, of all of the wonderful stories of people where they have overcome some sort of challenge and how they attribute their partnership, their alignment with this group, as being part of that change.

Not the change, but part of it. It's not all about the money in terms of how much you can make, but it's a lot about your personal growth and your development so that you can attract the money and be prepared to be a good steward of the money once it comes to you. Some of you want something right now that you're not prepared for, and it will not happen that way. You must be prepared. You must be at the Freedom Event.

You must log into your back office right now. In fact, as you're logging into your back office right now, and as you're hearing me say this exact same thing, I want you to think about how excited you will be when you come back from the event on the 26th or the 27th or 28th, and you look back over that weekend and say, I am so glad I didn't miss that. Look how much time I would have wasted in my business by not getting here, by not hearing some of the little secrets that happen at the bar or the secrets that happen sitting on the couches out in the lobby or the secrets that happen sitting out at the restaurant just chit-chatting with the different members, people who you might know, some who you might not know, the secrets that you listen to and hear from people talking in the elevator, going to lunch, getting in the cab with them, having some fun, a little activity in whatever the city is.

Think about all the things that you would miss out on had you not been there. You ought to be so thankful that you didn't miss out because you were there. You have the experience logged in your brain. You have a new program that you can set forth to run inside of your mind any and every time you feel the heat or the wrath coming upon you, because if you think I don't feel heat sometimes, you're nuts. I feel heat a lot.

And let me tell you something. As a leader, guess what? The more heat you feel, and if the heat bothers you to the point where you can't function, you've got to get the hell out the kitchen. This ain't the environment for you. You might not really want to make a lot of money.

You might not really want to be a leader in any company where masses are looking at you and using your picture on Facebook without your authorization and flagging your videos and shutting your YouTube channel down. You might just not want to be the person where all the spammers are coming and hating on you and calling you out of your name and busting you out. You might not be able to handle it. So be careful, my friend. Be careful about what you ask for.

You're saying that you want it. If you really want it that bad, you get yourself to my event. If you don't want it, then you can stay at home. And you can stay where you are. And while everyone else who has gained momentum in those three or four days comes back home and starts to surpass you, you will still continue to look around and say, what is it that everybody else is doing that I'm not doing?

You will go back into your blame game and you will go back into that same old programming where you're not looking at yourself and what actions you could have taken to change your circumstances. I beg you, don't be a squanderer. Do not squander your life and your time in that way. I beg of you, do not waste the gift that God has given you of breath and life to squander on complaining. Please use your gift of life to, A, benefit yourself, B, those around you, and, C, should you choose to, others around the world.

Log in, get your ticket, get to Miami, get to the Freedom Event. Some of you will probably be on stage. Some of you will not be on stage because it will be your first event and maybe you didn't even know there was a stage to get on. But you will soon want all of the opportunity available to you here. As an affiliate, that's what I'm talking to you about right now.

As an affiliate, log into your back office. Get your ticket tonight. Do not delay. Do not put off for tomorrow what you can do today. What difference does it make today if you spend it rather than wait until tomorrow?

Because tomorrow, guess what? Life is going to happen. Something's going to come up. Oh, you forgot. Oh, your car broke down.

Oh, this. Oh, that. You had to spend the money and you will continue to put your dreams on the back burner. You'll look up 20 years from now just like you're looking up 20 years later from where you were 20 years ago, wondering where all the time went. Where did all the time go?

Well, it went in all of your excuses. The excuses went by so fast you didn't even realize you gave yourself whiplash with your excuses over your life. It's time to do something different. It's time to be who you were destined to be. It's time to be free.

It's time for you to log in right now. Get your ticket to Miami. And I will see all of you guys on the beach, on South Beach, at the arena, at the stadium, whatever it is. Whatever it is you're going to be doing.

Hanging out as a family, as a community, as we all empower one another. Thank you for your time tonight, guys. Have a good night. And I'll see you in Miami.

Although you're listening to a private recording in a non-disclosure Empower Network customer training, the principles and strategies in this audio can be applied in any business. Although these techniques, philosophies, and strategies may have worked for others, no one can guarantee that they will work for you. We report real average earnings updated daily at EmpowerNetwork.com forward slash income dot php.

The purchase of this or any other audio is not required to earn money in our affiliate compensation plan, and you can decide to not continue to buy these products at any time. We hope, however, these ideas and strategies will assist you in building a profitable long-term business. Success takes hard work, determination, skill, and consistent effort. Please refer to our average earnings at empowernetwork.com forward slash income.php.