David Wood has always come across as a bit of an oddball.

Used to the best of his ability to promote Empower Network, it’s resulted in a string of hit and miss marketing attempts over the years.

We last checked in on Wood and Empower Network earlier last year. Coming of the back of several personal and relationship issues, Wood appeared to be embracing religion.

Appearing on camera in a Facebook video, Wood revealed he’d “hated David Sharpe’s guts for two years”, but was now ready to let it go.

David Sharpe is co-founder of Empower Network. He left the company in 2014.

At the time of his departure, Sharpe claimed ‘Dave Wood and CEO Jonathan Cronstedt are fully capable of leading this company into the next phase of growth.’

Cronstedt left Empower Network a year and a half later in 2015.

With Wood working alone at the helm, Empower Network has continued to plunge into decline.

Wood at times himself seems uninterested in the business, retreating into daily kung fu training for months at a time.

In a recent development, a Facebook livestream from Wood has raised questions about the current state of Empower Network and what’s to come.

In what appears to be a direct response to recent Empower Network complaints and processor chargebacks, Wood (right) commands affiliates to cease doing both.

[0:06] Here’s the deal… all of you will remove everything negative that you wrote about Empower Network, now.

You will stop telling stories, now.

And if you don’t, a curse will fall on your families. And if you do, I will heal you.

There we go, that’s the deal.

You will stop your charge-backs, you will join and you will do it now.

I remember seeing a video a few years ago in which Wood and some top Empower Network affiliates were on a webinar and trying to get people to “pull out their credit cards” and sign up.

The marketing angle was using credit cards is scary, so if we all laugh it will lessen the caution of those spending thousands to go “all in”.

Today the laughter is gone and Wood is sounding a whole lot more authoritarian.

[00:47] Worship God. Worship Jesus, that’s why he’s there.

That’s the deal. You will obey it now, I command you. That’s why we made it.

Look, your prayers are healing the world. You will share this now.

You will send it to every friend. You will text it to everyone in your phone. You will pull out your credit cards, you will go to Empower Network dot com, and you will join.

Now. All of you.

If this wasn’t already sounding bizarre enough for you, what Wood promises if you sign up as an Empower Network is… well, just read for yourself;

[1:29] And when you do I will bless your families.

When you do, I will heal you.

You will do it now, I command you to do it.

(at this point in the video a female appears to try to take Wood’s recording device away, to which he responds with, “Nope, you will not take.”

Wood then goes outside onto a balcony.)

[2:02] We will heal the oceans (and) be alive forever.

We will heal the trees. We will heal the plants. We will heal the dogs. We will heal the cats.

You will stop eating meat, now. You will only eat eggs, fruit and vegetables. That’s it.

You will feed children. You will pull out your credit cards and you will go buy meals for children.

There will be no children from this moment who die of starvation.

And if you don’t do it, the flesh will be eaten from your bodies.

If you do do it, you will live forever.

I’m answering your prayers. You have no HIV. You have no AIDS. You have no cancer. You have no bone cancer anymore. You have no herpes anymore. You don’t have diabetes anymore, your kidneys are healed.

If you do it and obey I will bring your families back to life.

After stating that “the curse will be immediate”, Wood rests the recording device on a table and goes off camera.

At this point the video still has five and a half minutes of playtime. I thought perhaps Wood would return to reveal this was all some kind of joke… but he doesn’t.

At the end of the video Wood grabs the recording device and ends the stream.

Perusal of Wood’s “Empower Network” Facebook profile reveals a new fiancée and plans to turn Empower Network into a “non-profit”.

One last announcement before I go:

When I’m back I will turn Empower Network into a non-profit (for me) and everything over $10,000 per month per million dollars of sales as a salary to me will go to charity.

Half to feed kids.

The other half I will direct.

Affiliates will be paid as normal.

If I may make a friendly and hopefully polite suggestion, perhaps the “other half” could go towards a few therapy sessions?

There’s obviously some issues here going unaddressed…

 

Update 14th June 2017 – In a video uploaded to David Wood’s Facebook account a few hours ago, his brother William Wood has confirmed David was under the influence of drugs.

As many of you saw several days earlier, my brother David is not well. And I’ve been working around the clock, literally, to get David the help that he needs.

I’m going to be very transparent about what’s going on … Several weeks ago David began to make some very poor decisions and he started to use some drugs.

And as you see those drugs altered his ability to make good decisions about himself and about his business.

Last night David was admitted into a rehab program and he is currently hospitalized and David’s getting the help that he needs.

William Wood states that Empower Network corporate is removing David Wood

from a leadership position for a period of no less than one year and perhaps two to three years, depending on how his sobriety efforts go.

With David Wood pretty much the face of Empower Network over the past few years, how this will impact the future of Empower Network going forward is unclear.