Making Friends With Money

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. All right. Hey, guys. Tony Rush here dialing in from my home office in Dothan, Alabama. We're starting a few minutes late.

My apologies. I was actually just having a chat with David Sharp. He and David Wood have been in Hawaii this weekend, doing some math. They're masterminding, and they are hitting the plane, and we wound up having a little bit of a chat and looked down, and holy smoke, it's time to start an Empower Hour call. So Sharp's jumping on a plane, and I'm going to be your host for the evening, and we are delighted that you guys are here.

This is going to be an on-purpose call, so because we did start just a few minutes late, we're going to jump right into a topic. I do want to get a couple little pieces of housekeeping out of the way. First of all, if you're brand new to Empower Network, congratulations. In my opinion, you are the most important person on the call tonight. Brand new people who've just pulled the trigger and just gotten started.

My goodness, what an exciting place for you to be in. I am thrilled. I'm almost envious, almost envious, because you are getting started in Empower Network in the absolute best possible moment. There's never been a better Empower Network than the one that exists right here today on June the 3rd. So we're delighted for it.

June the 4th. If you're down under or in New Zealand. But what a great place to be. You've got absolutely everything at your fingertips that you need to actually go out and create whatever results you want, whether you're marketing Empower Network as an affiliate opportunity and your primary business, or maybe you have another business and you're looking for marketing tools and training to really ramp that up. So whichever the case may be, what a great place to be in.

We're excited that you're here, and let me be among the first to welcome you aboard. Also, we've got some guests tonight. We've got some guests that are eavesdropping, and that's always nice. Monday nights, every Monday night, 9 o'clock Eastern, we host this call. Same phone number.

And unlike a lot of companies, we actually don't mind if guests eavesdrop. This actually started a year and a half ago or so. We started doing this Monday night call, and it was actually intended to be members only. And people started sneaking on to say, what's going on? What's this Empower Network I'm hearing about?

And so we... We ceased even trying to make it a closed call because we have so many people that sneak on the call to find out what's going on behind the scenes. So now it's actually an open call. So we've got guests on the line. We've got folks that are looking at Empower Network for the first time, and we've got people that have kind of been looking at it for a while, and you've kind of shown up here tonight to find out, what's the scoop of this thing?

What's up with these Empower Network guys and gals? So we're glad you guys are here. I would invite you, get started. Get started. Get started.

Get back in touch with the person who invited you to the call. If you've got an email or a Facebook message or something like that, you probably see a link somewhere. You can push the button and get started with the person who invited you here. So hang on one second. Let me...

I'm going to grab a bottle of water real quick. And as is always the case, my dog never wants to leave my office until the door's closed. There's probably a personal development lesson there somewhere. When the door's closed, you want to get out, right? So there you go.

So dog's out, bottle of water in hand. Hey, I did a two and a half hour mastermind last night, and let me kind of set the table this way, because let me kind of lay it out this way. There's a lot of people, and by the way, let me say two things real quickly. First of all, we are going to talk about money tonight, and one of the things that means is we've got a lot of people here at Empower Network, either as affiliates in Empower Network or who are using our training and tools to market something else. We've got a lot of people making a lot of money.

So as always, to keep the guys in suits happy, our standard income disclosure is pretty much that, hey, you're a big boy, you're a big girl. We're all adults on the line here. We all know that any business requires actual effort, okay? This is not a soup kitchen. It's not a campfire sing-along.

This is a real business, right? So if you choose to get started in the affiliate program here, you can make more money than some of these people. You may make less. You might sit on the couch and eat Doritos and make no money at all. Some people also get started just to enjoy our products.

So even though we are going to be talking about various levels of income tonight on this call, none of that should be construed as a guarantee of income. If you're looking for a guarantee, I don't even know if there's a guaranteed income anymore. I used to say, hey, if you want a guaranteed income, go get a job, but that's certainly not a reliable way to guarantee income either anymore, is it? So the only guarantee that exists... The only guarantee that exists is the guarantee that you bring to the table yourself.

So with that disclaimer out of the way, let me also say, too, this is my personal disclaimer. I believe David Sharp and David Wood would probably co-sign everything that I'm going to say tonight, but my name is Tony Rush, and this is also my perspective. After having been here for about 18 months, I got started in Power Network in November of 2011. And I actually came here. I came here because I was in another home business, and I wanted to learn how to generate more leads and do a better job of turning those leads into sales.

And so my plan was, hey, I'm going to come here and learn what this David Wood and David Sharp are doing, and I'm going to sneaky, sneaky take this information over to my other business and really knock the cover off the ball. And as it happened... Five weeks after I got started in Empower, I noticed that I had a couple hundred dollars a day coming in affiliate commissions. Now, bear in mind, I didn't come here for the business opportunity. And this is not the topic of the call tonight, but just by way of introduction, I want you to know who I am and how I got here and why I am qualified to talk on the topic that we're going to talk about.

I'm a normal person, right? I don't wear a cape and tights. I'm not a superhero. I am just like anybody else. And about four months into the business...

The amount of time I was working, I think, is less important than pointing out that I wasn't doing any of the hassles that are normally associated with a home business. In other words, I wasn't, you know, chasing friends and family and making a list of everybody I've known since, you know, kindergarten. You guys have done that, right? If you guys have done that, I can probably feel you nodding along and chuckling a little bit. You're making that list of everybody you've known since daycare, you know, like, what's that kid's name that was in the crib next to me in the hospital?

I need to call him up and see if he wants to make money from home, right? All of the shenanigans that we used to do to make money from home, the home parties, you know, driving across town, you know, sitting at somebody's kitchen table doing a one-hour presentation, going to coffee shops and drawing circles in the back of their car, you know, you're making that list of everybody you've known since daycare. And I'll never forget, David Wood, one of our co-founders, made the comment one day, and this was in March of 2012. Excuse me. I'm sorry.

It was April. I believe it was April of 2012. And he said, I'm going to do a webinar tonight. And I thought, you know what? Rather than Mickey Mouse around, rather than second-guess everything, rather than do what is naturally my, it seems to be my instinct, which is to reinvent the wheel, rather than try to turn simple things into complicated things, what if I just did exactly what he said to do?

What would that look like? And now 18 months in the business, this business has put well over a million dollars in my bank account. And now here's the thing. I say all that, and it's great. It's a great story.

Let me tell you a better story, and this will be fast, because we've got lots of these stories too. Here's a great story. Single mom in Ohio living with mom and dad after a divorce, right? $100 bill every day. Wakes up every morning to the idea of a $100 bill in the bank account that wasn't there when she went to sleep.

Man, that's a story. That is a life-changing story, is it not? Or the story of somebody who was so burned out on this industry that they nearly threw in the towel, and they ran across that website, almost a secret or whatever, right? Or my buddy Sam, Sam Crowley from up in Ohio. You know?

Personal development speaker. Speaks for a lot of network marketing companies. Never gets involved in one himself. And he sees this and says, you know what? I think there's something here.

I think there's something here I can get my teeth into that actually will serve people, and it's not just going to be a money grab. And he comes here, and not only has he made multiple six figures, but he's got a group of people that are also doing the same thing. Or Kevin Connect, who I think just passed a quarter of a million mark after being here for something like 13 months. Kevin and Melissa, just absolutely knocking the cover off the ball. I was talking to Christian Haneke last week.

Haneke. Sorry, Christian. I butcher his name every time I talk about him. And just on a whim, I was like, dude, how much money have you made here? I think he really got started like last October or November.

How much money have you made since you've been here? And he's like $125,000, $140,000 or something. It was between $100,000 and $150,000. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. Really?

I mean, he's like one of those under-the-radar people that you don't really... You'd hear his name. And then all of a sudden, you find out that there's a lot of people that you don't hear about on these calls, names that maybe just they don't lodge in your memory, people just quietly going about their business, making six figures in five months. It's an amazing and beautiful thing to watch. Okay?

Now, I'm going to offer you something tonight, though, that's a little bit off the beaten path for what we normally talk about. Well, it's just my perspective of a topic that we do talk about quite a bit. But I did a mastermind last. I did a mastermind for some of the members of my team, people that were members of the 15K formula and up. And we spent about two and a half hours together talking about a few of the things that I see in my own business that...

Because it's a common thing, right? And by the way, I'm not even the top earner here. But anytime somebody's getting great results doing anything, the obvious question is to simply say, hey, if you had to narrow it down to a handful of things, what would you say you're doing differently than the masses? Right? And I think, by the way, this will be good content no matter whether you're in Empower Network or not.

What I'm going to tell you is my perspective on what I consider to be fairly universal foundational truths. So this will be something you can stick in your pocket and go use tomorrow. All right. I think the first thing... When somebody asked that question, I think the first thing that has to be mentioned is it's a concept that gets talked about a lot, but I think a lot of people pay a lip service.

And they're certainly not talking about it out in major society today. They're down at Denny's. You know, they're sitting at the bar eating scrambled eggs. They're not talking about this. But every top performer I know of talks about this.

When I sit around with David Sharp and David Wood or Aaron Rashkin or Lawrence Tam or Vic Struzzo... This is what comes to the surface. Number one, personal responsibility and self-reliance. Write that down. We're going to take some notes tonight.

I want you to leave here with some stuff that, in my opinion, is worth a minimum of at least a couple million dollars to you in personal income if you take this stuff and apply it. Okay? And I'm not exaggerating. It's certainly put at least that in my pocket. Personal responsibility and self-reliance.

Now, personal responsibility... Let me say something kind of sensational. Probably that initial... And I'm going to tell you up front, I don't want you to hang up. Because what I'm going to say here is probably going to tick you off for about 30 seconds.

And I'm probably not saying what you think I'm saying. Okay? So I want you to hang with me. Because if what I'm about to say ticks you off a little bit, I want you to hang out long enough for me to explain what I mean. Okay?

So... It would be this. I would say, if I was at a job where I was being sexually harassed, or if I was talking to someone and they said, you know, I'm on a job and my boss sexually harasses me, I would say, you know what? You need to take responsibility for that. Now, I told you, that's going to be a little controversial.

And again, this is Tony Rush's perspective. Okay? I think you'll find after I clarify what I'm talking about, I think you'll understand this is a core success thing. If... If...

If somebody's in an abusive relationship, I would say to the person getting abused, you know what? You need to take responsibility for that. If you're in a business where other people are making lots of money and you're not making money, guess what? You need to take responsibility for that. Now, I sound like I'm being a jerk, don't I?

But here's what I mean. Let's look at the word. What does it mean, responsibility? See, a lot of people think it means blame. And whose fault is it?

Because that's how society... That's how society thinks, isn't it? Like, the first thing everybody wants to know... Something bad happens on the news, and the first thing they want to do is, whose fault is it? Well, who's to blame?

Let's forget fault and blame for just a few minutes tonight. Because, you know, it's always real easy to point a finger out there at what's going wrong. And the old cliche is true. Every time we point a finger out there, there's three pointing back at us. Okay?

Okay? But let's look at what the difference between fault and blame... ...which is a negative and very victimhood-type concept. Let's compare that to responsibility. What is responsibility?

Well, for one thing, it's one of those words that most people don't care for very much. Kind of like the word discipline. People don't like that word. It's not sexy. It's not light and frothy.

But look at what the word responsibility means. It means you have the ability to respond. That's all it means. You've got the ability to make a response. That's why I say if somebody was in an abusive relationship where they're getting abused physically or emotionally, no, it's not their fault.

No, they're not to blame for that situation. But they have to take responsibility. They have to say to themselves, if I'm going to change my life, if I'm going to get a different situation, I've got to be willing to take ownership of this situation and reserve for myself, the ability to respond, whether that means going and getting help, going to the police, going to whatever, going to a therapist or counseling or whatever is required. But this person has the ability to respond. Somebody's like, well, I'm overweight.

Okay, fine. And somebody says, well, I've got big bones. Okay, well, we'll give you 10 pounds for big bones. But if you need to lose 80 or 100 pounds, you have to take responsibility. Let's forget blame.

Some people want to go blame a McDonald's for people being obese, right? And somebody wants to blame Wall Street and the Federal Reserve for somebody being broke. Or somebody wants to blame Coca-Cola for children being obese. I get all that. But that's all on the wrong side of the table.

That's all fault and blame. Once again, what are we talking about tonight? We're talking about the attributes that create excellence in personal production. Step one, personal responsibility. Okay, fine.

Maybe Coca-Cola has got some products that aren't in my best interest. Maybe McDonald's is churning out cheap food that does cause people to be overweight. But what's my stake in it? Where am I going to take my personal responsibility? Nobody's put a gun to my head and forced me to consume these products, right?

So I have to take ownership of the situation and reserve for myself the what? The ability to respond. The ability to respond. Let me tell you a quick story. This was so critical for me.

Because, see, I used to be one of those wussbags who my life wasn't working, but it was everybody else's fault. You guys ever known anybody like that? How many of you will be honest and say maybe you've been that way before? Okay? If I could imagine looking around an audience right now, I think a few honest people would slip their hand up and say, you know what, Tony?

I have been. I have been the wussbag, too. I have been a wussy. I have been the guy who was whining and complaining about life. And, see, that was me.

It's like I had this whole list of reasons why my life wasn't working. You know, it was my boss at Walden Books. That's where I used to work, bookstore. I worked at a newspaper for a little while. My negative boss who wouldn't give me a raise.

Or it's the Republicans' fault. Or the Democrats' fault. You know, or it's the game. Or it's the gas prices. A lot of people are hung up on, it's the Federal Reserve's fault.

Which, again, that's all about fault and blame. Always wondering, you know, checking the cost. You know, checking the cost. I didn't have a dollar ID before I would answer the phone. Scared it was a bill collector.

That was how my life was going. I was married with kids. It's humiliating to be in that situation. But here's why I was there. And the same reason you are where you are.

You are where you are in your life right now because of your best thinking. I learned that from John Lavinia, a friend of mine. He's actually in Empower Network. Fantastic speaker, published author. But he told me, he said, Tony, your life looks the way it does right now.

Because that is what your best thinking has produced. Man, I wish I had gotten that advice years ago. I wish I could have come to a call like this one when I was about 18. If you're under the age of 25 right now, seriously, I would have fought tooth and nail to have gotten to some of this information when I was younger. But hey, if you're 40, 50, or 60, and you're hearing it for the first time, oh, how great to get some of this now.

Better today than tomorrow, right? Get it quick, get it early, and apply it. Personal responsibility, taking ownership of your life. And so here I was in this awful situation. And I had this long list of reasons why my life wasn't working.

And yet, I had not put myself on the list. It was always somebody else's fault. And I remember very clearly the day that it all shifted. The day that it all shifted, I was driving home from Asheboro in North Carolina. I was on Highway 42 going out to Ramsewer, North Carolina.

And I went by a new neighborhood. They'd been building it for several... I've been by it a hundred times, but who knows why you really notice things. But the day I drove by, it looked like... It looked like a freaking Hallmark card commercial is what it looked like.

I'm driving by the neighborhood, and it was like every single house looked like a postcard. And all these cars... Newer cars and dad getting out of the car, coming home from work. And you can just picture the little girl running out the front door in slow motion, running out to meet dad. And there's a nice little picket fence and two poplar trees in the front yard and a yellow canary in the birdcage in the front living room window.

You know what I'm saying? You can picture it, right? Now, that's not real, but that's what it looked like to me. Because I'm living 18 miles out in the country in this crappy little house that I still can't afford and trying to figure out how to pay the bills. And I drive by this neighborhood, and it just looked suddenly...

Who knows why, but that day, it just looked like everybody in the world was doing better than me. And it hit me that they were all operating in the same economy that I was operating in. They were paying the same prices for gas as I was. The same person was in the White House for them as was for me. You know, same people in Congress, same people at the Senate, same people in the city, same gas prices, same everything.

So why is it that these people are having a much better quality of life and I'm grinding? That's always a good question to ask, even if you're not starving to death, even if you're not having trouble paying the bills. Look at how you spend your time, right? Why am I grinding while other people seem to do it so much easier? Have you ever asked that?

Have you ever wondered that for yourself? Like, why is it that somebody else seems like they can just twitch their little finger and a bunch of money comes flying in the door and I am pouring forth two and three hours of labor part-time every night after I get home from work, you know, calling leads, putting people on conference calls, doing all the stuff, and it's a grind. And part of that, there really is an answer to that question. And part of the answer is the reason that we created the products that we have here at Empower Network so that we can show people how to work in an easier way. But it's always a good question to say, why am I grinding when somebody else is doing it easier?

What can I learn from them? And on this particular day, at 31 years old, I went home and I said, you know what? I told my wife, I said, we're moving. And she said, what? I said, we're moving.

We're packing. I'm going to go to the grocery store and get some boxes and I'm going to start packing. And she said, Tony, we don't have any money to move. We don't have anywhere to go. We're behind on our bills.

And I said, Tony, I know that. I know that. And as a provider in the house or not provider as the case was, I felt horrible. I felt horrible feeling like I was the dad and the husband who constantly said, no, we can't do that. We can't afford it.

And I was well aware that I wasn't doing for my family what I needed to do. But that day, Jessica said, well, how are we going to move? And I said, well, I don't know. All I know is that I'm not going to die living in this house. I don't know if we're moving in a month or moving in a year or 10 years, but I'm not going to go another day going through the motions of mediocrity.

Write that down. Going through the motions of mediocrity. Not going to do it. And here's another phrase for you. I said, I'm going to do whatever I can from where I am with what I've got.

And I don't have any money, but I know I can go get some boxes and start boxing up some stuff because we are going to move at some point. And I'm starting today from where I am with what I've got. And I am blessed to have a wife that's much smarter than me. And we went to the grocery store. We started packing.

We packed it. Guys, we packed everything in that house that we did not need for day-to-day living. We literally, at one point, we had the whole living room was nothing but stacks of boxes. You couldn't even remember how many boxes you had in there. And I said, well, I'm going to do whatever I can from where I am with what I've got.

And I don't have any money, but I know I can go get some boxes that we did not need for day-to-day living. We literally, at one point, we had the whole living room was nothing but stacks of boxes. You couldn't even really go in there. And we were boxing up baby clothes. We were boxing up every book that we had that didn't have something to do with success and personal development.

It went in the box. And we literally lived in the kitchen and around the computer area there. I had like a $400 e-machine. If you guys remember those, a $400 e-machine I got at Office Depot. And we literally lived in our bedrooms.

So kitchen, computer area, and two bedrooms. And every day when I'd get off work, I would start packing. Now here's the thing. Something really weird happened. Because I was in the home business at the time.

Wasn't making any money. None. I was doing, I was grinding, but I wasn't getting any results at all. Strangest thing happened. When I started taking action from where I was with what I had, weirdest thing happened.

You ready? I started making money. Just started making money. I mean, for where I was at the time, good money. Suddenly, and here's what was weird.

I didn't change my banking. I didn't change my marketing. I didn't change my ads. I didn't change what I was saying to people in the business. Same company, same product, same pay plan, same customer support, same upline, same team, same everything.

But when I decided that I was going to take ownership of my life, instead of riding around in the passenger seat of my own life, when I decided to get over in the driver's seat and start making some moves, that's where everything shifted. And suddenly, this business that I was in, it wasn't that great of a business, but I mean, you could make a little bit of money. And there were people in that company making money, but not me. And then suddenly, because of this decision to become self-reliant, to take personal responsibility for where I was, suddenly, it's like that quote from Napoleon Hill's book, Think and Grow Rich. He said, the money will come so quickly that you will wonder where it's been hiding during all the lean years.

And that happened for me. I've seen it happen for thousands of people since after they get this concept of self-reliance, personal responsibility. The life you want also wants you. Write that down. The life you want wants you.

But the only way to get it is to stop pretending, and I'm using that word deliberately, stop pretending that your results in life have anything to do with external factors. They don't. They don't have a thing in the world to do with the economy. People don't have a thing in the world to do with the economy. People say, well, you can't make any money in this economy, and yet we do.

And yet we have thousands of people making lots and lots of money here in the same economy where many people are grumbling and complaining that you can't make any money. Or somebody sees a commercial. I was somewhere the other day, and I saw it was a Mercedes commercial came on. It was advertising. I don't know what it was.

It was probably, it wasn't even, it was like a $75,000 car, I guess, or something. And somebody says, ain't nobody can afford to buy that. But I just bought one. I did. And paid cash for it.

Went down to the Mercedes dealership and got a GL450 and wrote a check. Now, please understand, if you know me, and many of you do, many of you don't, I'm the least arrogant person that you'll ever meet. I'm, I mean, I just, I don't have an arrogant bone in my body. I am very grateful for the success that I've got here. But I also know that's the result of my work and my decisions.

But I'm not a boastful, arrogant person. So please don't, just when I say that I went to the Mercedes place and bought a brand new Mercedes and paid cash for it, don't take that to mean that I'm bragging. I'm making a larger point. The larger point that I'm making is that Mercedes sells cars every single day. Okay?

Every single day. And here's the other thing. Mercedes don't care who they sell them to. They'll sell them to anybody that walks on the lot and says they want to buy one. And this brings me to the second part of my call tonight.

Because after personal responsibility, I'd like to kind of, let's segue over here to this other topic. Because I think there's a conversation that we have to have. There's a lot of people that want to make a lot of money. Okay? You want to get rich is what you want.

And you won't say that. Because that's not good to say that, supposedly. You're not supposed to say things like, you know, hey, I want to get rich. But let me invite you to, I want you to sit back for just a second. I want you to imagine something with me.

Okay? I want you to think about this. Because this is key. This is important. If you get this, you are that close, I mean inches away, from an avalanche of prosperity in your life that you don't even realize how close you are.

Okay? But I want you to get this. Because there's a lot of people, this ties into personal responsibility, but I'm moving to a new topic here. And it's, you need to make friends with money. Some of you on the line have been keeping money at arm's length for way too long.

And you want to know why you don't have much of it in your life? It's because without realizing it, you are, in some ways, you're actually repelling it from you. And I'll give you an example. People who like cars, like people that really, really like cars, they have cars. You know?

I was in Atlanta a couple weeks ago, and talked to a guy who, he loves art. That's what he loves. Well, guess what's in his house? He's got lots of art. I'm back in a project on Kickstarter.com.

There's some guys that are putting together a documentary about a hobby of mine. And here's the thing. Everybody that's in that documentary has a huge love for this particular hobby. Well, guess what they do? They actually have a lot of the thing that they're interested in.

Okay, so here's my point. People that like things, and if I like cars, or I like vintage fountain pens, or whatever, you pick anything. If you like dogs, you probably got lots of dogs. You like cats, you got lots of cats. So how is it that you say you like money, but you don't have a lot of money?

And I'm obviously talking to only a portion of tonight's audience, because there's a lot of you on the line that are making a ton of money here. And it's clear that you have your likes. The valve is open. The valve is open in your life. You have money flowing into your life because you have figured out some of the stuff that I'm about to talk about.

But those of you on the line who are finding it difficult to make money and to have lots of money flowing in your life, why is it that you don't have a lot of money? Have you ever asked yourself, why am I not rich already? And I would submit to you tonight a couple of things. Number one, you're probably not wealthy yet because you never decided to be. That's the first thing.

Nobody accidentally trips and falls and slips into a big pile of money. Very rarely does that happen. Now, somebody may have an accidental idea or something, but they still had to cultivate that idea and work their ass off to turn it into a major, major enterprise. But most people are not wealthy, first of all, because they've never actually decided to be wealthy. And the second reason, and this is what I want to spend, I think, the balance of my time talking about, is they don't actually like money very much.

They're scared. They're scared of it. They're scared of it, and they are negative about it, and they repel it from them. Now, you say, now, Tony, come on. People need money, and they want money.

They work hard to get money. Why would you say they're repelling money out of their life? That's a fair question, and I'm glad you asked, okay? This is back before I learned how to work online. Actually, probably about the time the Internet really got hot.

But 1990s or something like that, Internet marketing really didn't happen until early 2001. It was really starting to blossom into a profession of its own. But around 1996, we were all on AOL and paying per-minute charges, and there wasn't really any organized Internet marketing. So back then, we were doing hotel meetings. I was in my first real MLM, and I was traveling around doing meetings in hotels and restaurants.

I was in Lenore, North Carolina, on a Tuesday night, doing a meeting for a nutritional MLM company, and there was maybe about 60 people in the audience. And I had just started reading Think and Grow Rich and some of the other books about how your beliefs and your thoughts actually create your decisions and actions. And I deliberately asked the audience, how many people came here tonight to learn how to get rich? And, like, maybe only two people raised their hand. And I thought, hmm, that's interesting.

And I talked on for a little while longer. And then about 15 minutes into my presentation, I said, now, let's be honest. How many people came here tonight because you want to be financially independent? And every hand in the room went up. Now, it's the same thing.

But isn't it interesting that 99% of the audience refuses to raise their hand when we say rich? But they'll all raise their hand as long as we're talking about finance, we're talking about financial independence. Now, what is that? Now, that's interesting, isn't it? When I see things like that happen, my brain just kind of, I have to stop and look at that and say, now, what's going on there?

Why is that? What is going on that there's a different, just changing one word that means the same thing, rich and wealthy mean the same thing, rich and financially independent mean the same thing. Why would 99% of the people not respond? And this is what led me to start studying how people think about money. Now, I want you to sit back and relax for just a moment.

I want you to close your eyes and I want you to, I'm going to give you a couple of examples here to illustrate how stupid and ridiculous we can be about ideas. So I want you to picture that somebody's kind of making an announcement. Maybe it's after dinner in a restaurant and they push back from the table and they say, guys, I want to share something with you. I have made the decision that I want to be as physically healthy as I can possibly be. I just, you know what, I've really become aware lately of all the importance of really having good quality food and working out and drinking enough water and getting good sleep and, you know, I can just do a better job and I want to really focus on being as physically healthy as I can be.

And what is the response? Everybody's like, oh, that's, oh, that's fantastic. We salute you. That's great. And now picture somebody else says, you know what, since she has just spoken, I want to share something, a decision that I've made.

And my goal is I want to be, I really want to focus on my emotional health. I want to be as emotionally healthy as I can be. I just realize, there's people in my life, I need to forgive. There's grudges, I've got grudges against people that I've been holding onto for years. And it's just, it's created a lot of internal stress.

And I just recently realized that I really need to let go of all this baggage and really start loving people and really focusing on creating quality relationships. Oh, oh, that is, oh, what a wonderful thing. Oh, such a great decision. And the third person says, you know, since we're kind of all sharing our hearts tonight, you know, I've just been aware of how much TV I watch. I just, you know what, some of the crap that I put in my head, you know, I read the newspaper and I listen to talk radio and, you know, I just, I've recently become aware that I'm really not putting into my mind what I need to really live a life of excellence.

And I want to start, I want to start reading at least four books a month. And I want to start getting some good quality audio books. And I want to start really spending my time around intellectual people who are talking about something other than what the Kardashians are doing this week and who's in rehab and who's out of rehab and who's having a baby. I want to, let's talk about some of the important things that really can make life on our planet better for our children. I really want to focus on being as intellectually healthy as I can possibly be.

Oh, what a, what a fantastic decision. Everybody's with me. We can keep going. Spiritual health, right? Marriage, we can talk, I really want to focus on my, and everything gets applause.

So what does it mean when everybody freaks out because somebody pulls out a dollar bill? Can't you picture it? Imagine in your mind, if you will, hey, guys, I'll tell you what, we've all, everybody's been making decisions. Let me share with you a decision I just made. Me and my husband were just, you know, just talking about this and we've decided we want to be as financially healthy as possible.

We want to really focus on making as much money as we can and really get completely out of debt and just have so much money coming in every single day. We'd really like to make as much money in a day as the average person makes in a month. And that'll let us pretty much do anything we want and we can buy nice clothes and travel the world and stay in great hotels and fly first class and enjoy all the luxuries of the world and really just sort of live life to the fullest. Where's the applause for that? Isn't it interesting?

You can almost hear the crickets in the background. Can you not? Now, let us stop and think about this. I want to go ahead and dispel the myth right now. Let's do away once and for all the idea that money's not important.

Money is just as important as the food that it buys, the medicine it buys, the clothes that it buys. Money is just as important. And here's the thing. I would submit to you tonight that one of the reasons that you may not have as much money as you want in your life is because you're pushing it with one hand and pulling it with another. So you go out and you do all the income-producing activities in the world, punching a clock, working for a salary, calling leads, doing presentations, selling something.

You're working in the external world to create wealth. You obviously need it. You want it. You're on the call tonight. This is the topic.

You know, you didn't come to Empower Network to buy a cheeseburger. We're here to talk about money. So you're obviously interested in money, and yet, we've got these mind viruses. We've got these mind viruses. Not physical viruses like make us physically sick, but mind viruses.

Like if I say to you, hey, well, money doesn't grow on, you already know how to fill in the blank. Money doesn't grow on trees. If I say to you, well, we might not have a lot of money, but at least we're blank, fill in the blank with whatever you've heard because you know you've heard somebody say something like that. We don't have a lot of money, but at least we're honest. Or we don't have a lot of money, but at least we love God.

Or we don't have a lot of money, but at least I love my family. As if you can't have money and be spiritual. Or as if you can't have money and be a great church member or a great Christian or a great whatever, right? As if you can't have money and simultaneously love your children. We hear these mind viruses over and over, and they get ingrained in your subconscious.

So please tell me, what happens, what would happen if a man or a woman has in their mind the belief, if I make a lot of money, well, that's just going to give, that's just going to, that's just going to open the door for the devil to come in and tear up my life. Or as a non-religious example, if I were to make a lot of money, a lot of wealthy people don't have time for their children. If you picture a man or a woman who has that kind of belief in their head, and yet over here on the other side, they're working night and day to try to get more money to come in, can you not see your belief system will not allow you to get that money? The internal workings of your mind will not allow you to get too much money because your mind is programmed for your survival, and that includes emotional survival. Our brains are evolved to let us know to flee from danger.

Our minds have evolved to do whatever it takes for survival. So if being broke is who you are, like as in an identity, because you get emotional pain, because you get emotional payoff in your life, you can say, well, I don't have a lot of money, but at least I'm spiritual. Or I don't have a lot of money, but I love my family. Well, you've programmed yourself to think that the only way you can love your family or have a great spiritual life is if you're struggling to make ends meet. You will repel money from you faster than you can possibly imagine.

I did it. I did it for years. This is how people destroy their lives. Every leader I know grew like a tree