Why Jobs, School and Traditional Business Keep You Broke (September 2012)

Okay, guys, Dave Sharp, co-founder of Empower Network, and here again, we did something that was super cool last weekend. I'm going to get started here in about 30 seconds. I think we need to get the energy up on the call a little bit. I just logged in, and we had some – I think everybody's a little bit maybe full or whatever from Labor Day weekend. If you're here in the States, it was a holiday weekend.

It's obviously Monday today, but I want everybody to just make some noise, just plain and simple. Get excited and make a little bit of noise and kind of get your energy up a little bit. I'm just coming back from a long vacation myself. I'll talk about that a little bit. I've got some powerful stuff for you tonight.

I can't wait to share it with you here in just a second. I'm going to unmute the line for about 30 seconds, and I just want you to go damn crazy for a second. Doesn't that just feel good? Doesn't that just feel just good to be able to just scream and let loose there for a second? My name is Dave Sharp.

I'm co-founder of Empower Network, and welcome to the call. We do this call every single Monday night, 9 p.m. Eastern time. It's called the Empower Hour Call. If this is your very first Empower Hour Call, I just want to take a minute here, just a quick second, and say welcome.

Here's what I hope for you tonight. I hope that you don't hear the same old thing you've always heard. Or I hope you don't take away from this call or hear anything about a two- to four-year plan or any of that horse crap that so many people have been hearing about in the industry for so long. Here's what I do hope that you hear. I hope that you hear something tonight that hits you right between the eyes and makes you want to decide to do something different inside of your life.

I hope that you hear something tonight that makes you want to stop the bullshit inside of your life and stop moving forward and trying to get something done that is physically, mentally, and emotionally impossible. And in most cases, it's just plain and simple going to keep you broke and miserable for the majority. I hope that you hear tonight something that moves you over the edge that gets you to decide to take action and join us and live the life of your dreams. Meet us on the beaches of the world. I'm going to get frank with you guys tonight.

It's not going to be a long call, but it's going to be a short and powerful call. Again, I just got back from a vacation that I went down to one of the most just majestic beaches that I've ever been to. It's actually close to my house. I live in Florida right inside. It's in St.

Petersburg, which is kind of outside of Tampa. And it's that little peninsula that pokes up off the west side of Florida. And this weekend, I just wanted to get away. It was actually my girl's birthday. So we went out and rented a beautiful suite out at this really cool hotel out on St.

Pete Beach and kind of just did nothing for about three days. And I got to thinking about something that was kind of compelling this weekend. I was looking around at what a lot of people were doing to make money, and I thought about where I came from. For those of you who don't know who I am and where I came from, it was only a few short years ago. A lot of times, you'll be on a conference call.

You'll be listening to somebody who had a job 50 years ago who has been in the network marketing industry for 10 decades. That would be a century. Yes, there are people in certain companies that they act like they're that old. And they had a job 100 years ago, and they haven't recruited or sponsored or done any marketing in the last 50 years. And they're talking about what they used to do and what you should be doing, but they haven't done it in a long time.

They know that if you do it, that it will work for you, and you should go out and hammer the phones and get the white pages and do home and hotel meetings. And that if you need – you should do three-way calls, and if you need them, then just call and leave a message, and they'll have their assistant get back to you. And the difference that separates what I do and what a lot of what you've heard inside of the home-based business, quote-unquote, or network marketing industry is that, it was only a short couple of years ago that I was actually broke. I was not only broke, guys, but I was in a situation personally that I had hit an all-time low. I was somebody that left my parents' house when I was 13 years old.

I had my daughter when I was 16, and I hit the streets. I struggled with addiction and alcoholism over the next 10 years, and it took me a long time to find my bottom. I went in and out of treatment centers, in and out of different people's couches, until one day I was able to find my bottom. I was able to find my bottom. I was able to find my bottom.

One day, I found myself in a situation to where I needed to make a drastic change, and I did. Four and a half, almost five years later, I've stayed completely clean and sober. That came from a decision. I'll talk about that a little bit more throughout this call. But it didn't come instantly to where I got involved in marketing and found myself making thousands of dollars a day.

It was a while. I was broke for a long time. I was working on myself personally, trying to change my life. I was going through or coming out of some of the things that I just talked about. And I was actually on a construction site one day, and a guy came up to me who lived on the same street that we had done some work for.

Me and my dad had a small construction company. It wasn't anything that was big. We kind of just went from job to job and hustled up jobs. And this guy came up to me. His name was John, and he worked at one of the local power companies.

And he was on his lunch break. He did the same thing every single day. He'd come home. He'd make a sandwich. He'd have lunch.

He'd sit there and watch Jerry Springer or whatever. I know because I did some work inside of his house. But he came up to us, and we were remodeling this bathroom. And he said, Dave, Dave, Dave, you've got to take a look at this opportunity that I'm doing. And I don't know if you've ever seen one of those people, or maybe you've been one of those people yourself.

But it was the best thing ever. It was the next billion-dollar company. It was a cell phone deal. It was like the next – I just had to get in. I had to take a look at it.

I had to see it. And you've got to remember where my head was at. At that time, I had been clean and sober for about two years. I was still kind of negative. And I was kind of inside of this mentality that society has – really molds us, which is pretty pessimistic.

It's pretty negative, pretty skeptical. There's kind of only one way to make money, which is trading time for money. And my dreams personally were to actually open a – go and get a construction license. And go and open up my own construction company. That was all I knew at that time.

If I looked around at all of my friends, all of my family, the people that were successful in my eyes. And of course, I had a kind of skewed vision or skewed perception of what success even was. So to me, I was really looking forward to going out there and going through – going to a bunch of schooling and paying a bunch of money to get these different licenses. And I don't know how much you know about the construction industry. But essentially, the way it says.

Is that you have to get a license similar to a real estate license and pay a bunch of money to go to a school. This is optional. You go to the school that teaches you how to just kind of find the answers in the book when you go and take the test. So it's not like there's any real education. There's all kinds of ways to get around the test.

I know people who had their wives go and take the test for them because they were better at school. They were super ADD like I am and couldn't sit through school and retain anything from a morning. That's nothing against school. It's just I know my strengths and weaknesses. But I was on this construction site and leveraged the idea of network marketing, the idea of all the different things that we talk about in this industry were so far from my mental grasp that I couldn't even fathom it.

It just didn't even make sense to me. And plus, I was super skeptical and negative. I say that because I want you to, throughout this call, identify and look around at some of the things that may be holding you back. And some of the things that I went through and as a result of me going through and actually identifying them, I was able to transform my life. And today, of course, I'll tell you about that here in a second, but it's much, much, much, much, much different.

And it's not just me. I was actually looking through a lot of the people on our team and in our company. And guys, I'll get to some of those numbers and statistics in a second. They will blow you away. Stay with me here with a story because there are some important things I want you to pick up.

But I looked at what he was doing. Ken, it just didn't make sense to me. So it took five times. He was yet that guy who came back over and over and over and over and over again for about five days straight saying, Dave, and my dad's name is Gene. Gene, you've got to take a look at this.

I promise you guys it's the best thing ever. It's just unbelievable. All you've got to do is get five people, get five people, get five people. And I'm telling you the products are like nothing you've ever seen before. I mean it was a frigging cell phone for Christmas' sake.

It was not a huge deal. But I mean this guy was stoked, right? So I finally, finally opened up my mind a little bit to be able to look at what John was doing. And I kind of saw it. I was like, okay, I get it, right?

Doing something different. I had been exposed to network marketing a little bit before a couple of years ago. And I was like, okay. There was a small opening that was made. I took the money that I made from that construction job.

And I walked three houses up. Because remember, their house was on the same street as the job I was working on. And I signed up for this network marketing company. I took $500 to sign up. It was like another $300 for the phone.

I had $200 left. And I got started. That was my reintroduction into network marketing, direct sales, affiliate marketing. Essentially kind of outside the box money making. Okay?

Because traditionally, right? Remember, I kind of had a one-track mind. I hadn't had a whole lot of jobs. But the jobs that I had were all just basic, regular. I worked in telemarketing places.

I went through a couple of treatment centers. So when I was in drug treatment back in the day, I worked at telemarketing places and things like that. And then I worked for Xerox. I was the dude who went around to different businesses, knocking on doors, handing out. Trying to get church pastors and different businesses to buy a Xerox machine.

I sold a couple of them. It wasn't horrible. But that was my concept of making money. And then, of course, construction. And I don't know if there's any construction workers on the call tonight.

But I was – not only – it was much more than trading time for money. Guys, the way that I made money was physical, manual labor. Yes, I enjoyed dealing with customers and selling jobs. I was getting good at it. But it involved a ridiculous amount of manual labor.

So not only was it trading time for money, but it was dadgum hard. And I live in Florida, so it was hot. Well, I got involved in network marketing. And I found myself at that time – I drove a 1990 Ford F-150 gray. The thing had paint peeling off of the front hood.

I mean seriously, I say this all the time, but it's true. If I would go over 40 miles an hour on the highway… Huge rust chips would fly off the hood. And sometimes they'd fly into other people. I'd have to get off on the exit so somebody didn't chase me down. I didn't have the money to repair somebody's car from huge rust chips flying off of my hood.

It was just – it was my life. So I got signed. I put them in my yard. I got magnets from Vistaprint because it was the only place that I could find to get free stuff, free marketing. Remember, this was my idea of marketing, guys.

This was my idea of now doing business. Taking the same concepts that I knew from working regular jobs and regular business and applying them now to network marketing. And it was frustrating. I'd pull up to the light with a magnet on my car, and I'd be the last person anybody would want to call. I mean I'd have the huge rust bucket truck that – I actually had to pop the hood on my truck and start my truck with a screwdriver in the solenoid.

Those of you who don't know much about trucks and cars, I don't really… But I would have to start it with a screwdriver, and sparks would fly. It was embarrassing as hell. I mean it really was. Whenever I would go somewhere, I would have to park my trucks. I wouldn't have to, but I would because I was so embarrassed, several parking lots over, and hoped that nobody would see me starting my truck with a screwdriver and sparks flying all over the place.

It was just my life, right? So I was taking the same concepts and principles and applying them to my network marketing company that I had always understood business. And then I was like, this sucks, and it's not working. I was still working construction at the time, so I want you to imagine the two lives that I was living during the day and then at night, and then of course trying to harass my friends and family and chase people around and get people into my business. I was dragging people home in hotel meetings.

We talk about this a lot inside of Empower Network because we've done it. I did the three-way calls if I could get a hold of my upline leader. And it was just painful. It was miserable. I was driving around.

I knew that there was something there because I was hungry, and I was open-minded, and I was developing a positive perspective in life. But overall, I was hating it. It was painful. So I said there has got to be a better way. So I got on somebody else's computer at that time.

It was my girlfriend's. And I started to just kind of look through the internet. I started to understand. I started opting to people's email list. And I started to kind of take a look at what they were doing.

And what I saw was something fascinating. What I saw was something magical. I saw this guy back before I even started on the internet. I realized that what I was doing to build a business and my understanding and perception of how to make money and how business was done was totally wrong. And I want you to think about this.

This weekend, it has not changed. Things around me are still the same, right? But over the course of the last few years, I've developed this completely different perspective of how to make money. Back then, I started to see it a little bit. I was opting into people's email list, and they were taking information that they knew and packaging it in little e-books or video courses or whatever.

And they were making it one time. And they were selling it over and over. And they were selling it over and over and over and over and over again. There was no manufacturing. There was no distribution.

Well, there was distribution, but it wasn't through trucks and warehouses and things of that nature. There was no manufacturing. There was no fulfillment centers. There was no huge overhead. It was people were doing ten times the revenue and a massive more amount of profit than an average business did.

And they had none of the headaches that a regular business had. And I said, you've got to be shitting me. That's what I said to myself because I saw it. I realized that. I understood that.

I saw it not immediately but damn sure pretty quick. And I said, you have got to be kidding me. What does it take? I want you to think about this. I want you to look at the my life and my example.

And the reason why I'm laying this out for you is because, A, there's a lot of people on this call tonight who are – who are looking for their kind of – they're looking for what they're going to do with their lives. They're looking at wanting to be an entrepreneur or wanting to open up a business. And then there's a lot of people who are on this call already in Empower, and they're wondering if this is it. They're wondering what they need to do to break through. And I'm telling you that it – not only is this what you need to break through, what we're doing, but this is why.

See, there's a difference between the dynamics and the mechanics of building a business. What we've got is the mechanics. We've already done that for you here at Empower, and I'll explain why. But what I'm laying out and teaching you tonight is the dynamics of what we're doing and why what we're doing is the easiest and smartest way. I say easy not because you don't have to do any work.

Don't get it misunderstood. It's easy because here's what I want you to do. Here's what I was going to do. I was going to go and spend $2,000 to get my contractor's license. And that actually – excuse me.

Let me back up. That wasn't even to get my license. That was to go and take – go to school so they could show me where the answers were in the book because that's just what they did. I'm just being honest, keeping it real. I don't really have time to bull crap around a lot tonight on this call.

I'm just calling it how it is, calling a spade a spade. You pay the money. They show you where the answers are in the book. You go in there. You're going to take the test and hope that you pass.

And if you pass, it doesn't matter. Now, they want you to have experience and put it down, but I'm telling you I knew all kinds of guys who would fudge that stuff and have people just sign off on their thing and say that they had more experience than they did. It was a schemey little deal. It just – it was like whatever. But that was what I would have had to do to become a general contractor, the guys who you contract out homework, kitchen renovations, bathroom renovations.

So there's roughly $2,000, maybe $2,500 off the bat right off the rip. And then there was several months of going to school and waiting for the next test to take place. I probably, if I would have wanted to do it legitimately, would have had to have more experience to put down on my application for the state to say, yes, this guy has been doing it long enough that he can – you can actually trust him to go into your house and remodel your bathroom. And if I was to pass the test and actually get my license, then I would have passed the test. Then I would have been back at square one to go out there and get business.

So I would have literally had to go out there and start hammering the phones. Probably, if I had any marketing sense at all, I would have started doing some marketing because I didn't. I would have went out there, and I would have passed out business cards to friends and family members and tried to get people to let me tile their bathroom floors. And I would have literally, as a business owner, been trading time for money for probably the first several years until I really had to go out there and start hammering the phones. I would have really had a crew going until I was leveraging multiple crews to be doing multiple jobs while I was probably stuck in some office somewhere slaving over a pile of documents and selling the next job.

Because once I stopped selling jobs, then I would have no more work for my crews. Therefore, I wouldn't have made anymore money. So it's a never-ending cycle of not only trading time for money but also constantly selling. They think they know how to save my family. They think they know how to put food in my child's mouth.

The truth of the matter is nobody gives a damn about putting food on your table as much as you do. So take control of your own economy and your business and make the decision yourself. Guys, if you focus, if you concentrate on the things that we've told you to concentrate on, which is driving traffic. And if you're a member of Empower Network, if you're one of our affiliates, that's the only thing that you really, really, really need to focus on is driving traffic. And every single day focusing on the eight core steps in getting to the event.

Because if you focus on those things, friend, where you'll be in 60 to 90 days will be beyond your wildest dreams. Guys, I don't make income claims. I don't guarantee that anybody's going to earn anything. But I can guarantee if you will focus, if you will stay off Facebook, if you will stay off Skype, if you'll stay off doing dumb things that do not make money and focus on going out there and creating content and following the eight core steps, my friend, in 60 to 90 days, your life, your business will be beyond your wildest dreams. And I do guarantee that.

What I will tell you is when you start getting your first lead and you make your first sale, your life will change. And then when you go from making your first sale to having your first spouse, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. And I do guarantee your life will change. It's a new plateau. It's a new awakening.

It's a new understanding of how simple, okay, and efficient our way of building a business actually is. And then you'll start to build the confidence in yourself that you really need to be able to build the business that you really deserve. I'm telling you guys, there's different levels and different things that change in your life and inside of your head and inside of your heart when you start to hit these different levels. I can remember the first time that I ever showed up as a leader, on generating leads inside of this company. I hadn't even made a sale, folks.

I hadn't even made a sale. But I got up just to do one last-minute check on the leaderboards in the email. I don't know if you've ever done that before, but just before you're getting ready to go to bed, your wife or your husband, they're in there in the bed, they're waiting on you. Maybe, you know, they got a little candle going or whatever. You're going to hang out, you know, and just have a nice little nice romantic night or whatever.

But what do you got to do? You got to go out there and check your email. You got to go out there and check your email. One more time, don't you? You got to go log into your back office one more time and just see if anything happened.

And that's exactly what I did. And I went out there and I saw that I was like number eight generating leads for the last week or month or whatever it was. I hadn't made a damn sale. I was in my underwear and I ran around. I don't know if anybody's ever seen that movie Rudy before, but it's one of my favorite movies of all time.

And I don't know if you remember that? Rudy goes and they're like Rudy, Rudy, Rudy. And he gets in the game and he goes and sacks the guy and the guy up, his friend up in the bleachers is like, who is the wild man now? Well, that's what I was doing. I was running around my house and running around my backyard going, who is the wild man now?

Friend, I hadn't even made a sale. But you want to know what that did for me? That took me to that next level of confidence. That inspired me. That day, to keep fighting, to keep going, to keep building my business, and what I know today that I didn't know back then but I was still doing it and it worked whether I understood it or not was today I focus on doing one thing that inspires me to get to the next day, one thing that pumps me up and empowers me to get to the next day so I can find that one thing that pumps me up, inspires me, and empowers me to get to the next day.

And that day, it was that. But when I saw my name there and I saw those results, it didn't just get me to the next day. It built a belief system inside of me. And here's what most people experience and encounter for the majority of their life is they beat themselves up so much that when it comes time to actually building a business and it comes time to actually focusing on living your dreams, moving forward towards building the life that you really want. Every time something goes wrong, it's like, oh, I knew this wouldn't work.

I knew Mary was right when she said that this was stupid and I should just focus on my job and get up every day and make the donuts and drive to work and just kind of focus on being there on time. I knew that building a business and actually working towards my dreams was stupid. You start this negative self-talk that is so self-defeating. And every time something goes wrong and you talk to yourself like that, you reinforce that thinking. And it takes a little while to get out of that.

It takes a little bit, a little awareness to understand and see that and identify that. It takes something to kick or somebody to say something like me on this call tonight to tell you that what I did was I took every single ounce of just… negativity, low self-esteem, low self-confidence, every single thing that somebody had said something to me, every single time that somebody had said what I was doing was stupid, every single time somebody had put something that I was doing down, every single time a hater came up and had something stupid to say and came sideways out of their neck, every time somebody said that I was wasting my time, I took all of that and put it in the bank. I took all of it and I put it in the bank for a rainy day, a day that I would treat myself like shit, a day that I was talking down to myself. And whenever I needed to go and I needed to make a withdrawal from the bank, I would go to the bank and I would think about something that somebody said, and it would pump me up. And I would allow it to pump me up instead of get me down.

I would take that energy that could have gone either way, positive or negative, and I'd say, David, don't you dare quit. Don't you dare quit. Don't you dare stop. And don't you dare give up. And it was a simple, simple mindset change that I made that allowed me to keep fighting and keep going.

And guys, now, a couple of years later, you're talking to a guy who's seen it all, who's done it all, or at least damn most of it, who's experienced all of the pain, all of the hardship, all of the criticism, all of the haters, all of the people who – who all the time, guys, all the time had something to say. And guess what? They're still hating and they're still saying shit, but guess what? It comes with the territory, because if you want to be the boss, you damn sure better be willing to pay the cost, friend. This is the life of an entrepreneur.

This is the life of somebody who's determined to make it happen. This is the life of building a business in 2011. And, friend, the times have changed. The landscape has changed, and it's anyone's game. Guys, it's an underdog's game these days, and I'm going to tell you who and what we are here at Empower Network is we are the underdogs.

We're the people who weren't supposed to make it. We're the people who experienced the pain, who have things going on in our life on a daily basis, and the odds are stacked against us. We're the people who everybody is waiting and watching and hoping that they'll fail, and we're the people that will not stop fighting because we damn sure got more in the bank than most people. And I ain't talking about money. I'm talking about what we've put in the bank for a range.

Any day is a reserve when we need to go in there and make a withdrawal, and we need to tell ourselves, Dan, don't you dare quit. Danny, don't you dare quit. Amy, don't you dare quit. Daniel, don't you dare quit. Friends, if you focus, if you run with us, if you meet us in San Diego, I'm going to tell you that what you're going to experience is not going to allow you to look at life and business and earning money the same.

You will be underdogged. You will be unable to continue to view life in the same eyes that you used to and unable and unwilling, absolutely unwilling to view life the way that everybody else does around you. You will begin to start to see things in a different perspective. You will begin to start seeing money with so much less resistance, earning it, getting it, making – attracting it to you. I promise you that because you'll have this completely new perspective and this unreal, different just way.

You'll see people around you that are no different than you, that are no better, no smarter, that are older, younger, that are of all ages, that are from all around the world, but they put their pants on the same exact way you do, and they're doing it. They're making it happen. You'll look at yourself in the mirror, and you say, it is your time now. Make it happen. This comes with a decision to focus.

This comes with a decision to eradicate the fear. And you know what? It's not going to take a day. Sometimes. You're going to have fear, and you're going to have to walk through it.

Sometimes you're going to have uncomfortability, and you're going to have to walk through it. Sometimes you're going to have to get comfortable getting uncomfortable. Sometimes you're going to have to take what somebody says and smile and say, you're absolutely right, and walk away and say, what a dumbass. I'll show him. Guys, sometimes you have to just reach down inside of yourself and find out what's really waiting down there for you to go down there and grab and pull up out of there, what's really waiting.

What's really waiting for you to go in there and uncage. You're going to have to go in there, and you're going to have to uncage your inner badass, and you're going to have to start walking and running and locking arms with people who have the same ideas and mindset that you are, and you're going to have to start wanting to get around people who are going to want to challenge you to think outside of the way that you've normally been thinking, not outside of the box, to get rid of the damn box, because there is no box. You create your own lifestyle. You are responsible. You are the outcomes.

And when you realize that and you embrace that, my friend, life opens up to you in a way that you absolutely never knew existed. Guys, I come from a place, realize this, that is just a place that I did not believe in myself. So as I sit or stand in front of you tonight on this conference call and hear these thoughts, these thoughts that at one time in life I was fearful to share with you. At one time in life. I did not want you to know.

At one time in life, if you would have told me that I'd be on a conference call sharing with well over 1,000 people my most inner secrets and the things that go through my head and heart on a daily basis, I'd have called you a liar. And, friends, I'm telling you, not only today, right, do I know what financial freedom is. I'm running with one of the richest teams in the entire industry. I have people around me who can literally do whatever they want. They're retired from their jobs.

They're retired from their jobs. They understand what making money is all about, and they're doing a damn good job at it. I'm surrounded by some of the best leaders in the entire industry, and we're attracting people from all different companies and countries who want to run with us, and they're looking for the right leader to join. But also, friends, I know what internal freedom is. I know what mental and emotional freedom is.

I know what it's like to be able to speak openly about what's really going on and share my story in hopes it inspires you to share your story because, friends, here's what I can tell you. Here's what I can tell you. If somebody out there is waiting for you to button up your big girl or big boy panties, get out there and tell them what's really going on and invite them and command them to join you on your journey and not weenie or whisk you around and see if they might maybe want to possibly think about it. Damn it. This is where I'm going.

And join me or get out of the way. Friends, this is about a movement. This is about culture. This is about going through trials and tribulations and realizing that. Every single thing that you go through is just the next step to condition you to go out there and take it to the next level and help more people.

This is about really going out there and, damn, looking inside. Instead of looking at everything around you as the reason why you are or aren't succeeding, did you notice how that can go both ways? But looking inside you and realize that no matter what's going on outside, whether it's a company, compensation plan, product, job, kids. Dogs barking, dishes are dirty. It does not matter what obstacles are standing in front of your way.

You have already inside of you what it takes to do big things in this world. And I'm telling you, the only thing that is in your way is a decision. Focus, friends. Meet us in San Diego. Shake our hands.

Look at us in the eye. Let's walk in arms and freaking fight the forces of evil. Guys, I'm going to unmute the lines. Go crazy. Scream.

I'm pumped up. I love you guys. I'll see you in San Diego. And let's rock this thing, guys. I love you.

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