Millionaires’ Club

"Do you happen to need any volunteers? Could I do the filming?" I asked over the phone.

That's how I ended up with Maksim Temchenko. Not as a participant — as a volunteer with a video camera.

A man who'd made two million dollars in network marketing showed up at a financial literacy training. And he didn't show up to learn — he showed up to film.

It's funny to me even now, telling you this.

Let me start with a confession. It wasn't an easy one to make.

I made a million dollars at Neways. Then another million at Morinda. Ten years at each company, roughly ten thousand dollars a month on average. Passive income, travel around the world, apartments. I lived exactly the way I wanted to.

And my financial literacy was at zero.

Money never stuck around. It came in big and went out completely. I didn't save it, didn't put it aside, didn't invest it. A check comes in, a check goes out, wait for the next one.

As long as the checks kept coming, it didn't show. It became obvious in 2014, when the checks stopped. You already know about that from the last chapter.

Where did this come from in me?

Remember my mom, from Chapter 1? In Berdiansk, there was never enough money. And this is the picture that formed in my memory: Mom gets her paycheck, buys something, pays off debts. A couple of days later the money runs out, and she goes to borrow again. Not paycheck to paycheck — loan to loan.

I wasn't earning my mother's salary — I was earning tens of thousands of dollars. But the pattern turned out to be exactly the same: money came in, money went out, nothing left over.

Different scale. Same script.

I understood that much later. Back then, I just lived.

Natasha was the one who introduced me to Maksim Temchenko's training. We'd already divorced by then, but we kept in touch, and she thought I'd find it interesting. Maksim was running a live financial-literacy training in Moscow called the Millionaires' Club.

She invited me to the program's presentation. And it landed right on my birthday. Quite the coincidence.

At the end of the presentation, everyone was asked to fill out a form. I didn't have the money to pay for the program. But I thought: I can at least fill out the form. It's free, nobody's asking me for money right now. I'll fill it out, and whatever happens, happens. It's my birthday today. Maybe something will happen. Maybe money will just show up from somewhere on its own.

And that's exactly what happened. Except what showed up wasn't money.

Two days later, someone from support called and asked whether I'd be participating.

"No money," I said.

And that's when I did the one thing I knew how to do: I offered myself up.

"Do you happen to need any volunteers?"

"Of course we do! Perfect timing. We're actually expanding — the training's grown, we're expecting three times as many participants. We need more volunteers."

"Could I do the filming?"

"Great! Come with your camera, we'll figure something out."

Two more days after that, I was already at the training. I went in as an unpaid volunteer: filming, and helping out with anything that needed help.

I filmed like my life depended on it. Then I turned the footage into a solid piece of content, with the slides included. Maksim liked it.

And he hired me.

For the next year, I worked for Maksim as a videographer. For an actual paycheck this time.

The job was this: record the entire event, then watch it back, listen to it, edit it. Every single module, start to finish.

In that time, I went through practically four full cohorts of the Millionaires' Club. All of it, every module, including the VIP module.

Except I went through it differently than the participants did. A participant hears a topic once. I heard it live in the room, then on the recording, then again during editing, cutting and splicing and listening through it piece by piece.

And that's how financial literacy built itself into me. On its own, drop by drop.

What changed?

My whole relationship with money changed. I don't blow it anymore. I set it aside. I understand what to do with it and how to handle it. It's a completely different level of understanding than I had back when I was making my millions.

Now, honestly — since this book is about honesty.

My mother's script still hasn't fully dissolved inside me. I can feel it. The knowledge got built in, the habits changed. But somewhere deep down, that program is still sitting there.

Four cohorts of financial literacy. The VIP module. A year working alongside a man who teaches people how to handle money. And none of it was enough to clear out what sits deeper than knowledge.

Remember this. We'll come back to it.

Here's what I understood that year.

Remember the formula "your check is a mirror of you"? It's true. The check shows who you've become.

But a mirror has a second side too.

The check shows who you've become. And what's left of the check shows how you handle money. Earning it and keeping it are two different skills. And the second one takes learning too.

Network marketing teaches us how to earn. Invite people, run presentations, build an organization, get passive income. But almost nobody teaches you what to do with that income afterward.

I went through this myself.

And there's one more thing I didn't think about back then, but think about constantly now.

Look at how I ended up at the Millionaires' Club. Nobody called me up to film. Nobody offered me a job. I was the one who asked: "Do you happen to need any volunteers?"

Remember the Academy of Leadership, where I'd jump up on stage before the trainer even finished a sentence? More than twenty years had gone by, a crisis and a lost business were behind me, and the habit was still there. Take the first step.

There's one thing I still think about.

Right in front of me, four cohorts went through the Millionaires' Club. Everyone heard the exact same thing: the same slides, the same assignments.

And I wasn't even a participant. I was filming, and then as part of my job I listened to it over and over again. And the knowledge built itself in.

And yet those four cohorts didn't clear out what had been sitting inside me since childhood.

Which means it's not just about knowledge. Not just about who's teaching and what. There's something else going on.

While I was editing other people's trainings about money, one sentence was quietly working away inside me. The same one, from the stone on my heart: "I am going into the spiritual realm."

I didn't understand what that was back then. Now I do. It was an intent.

And it's time to really talk about intent.