The Setting

I spent five years building a network in Poland. It vanished in a single day.

A year later, at a different company, I was number one in Russia.

There's no miracle hiding between those two sentences. There's a question I've kept asking myself ever since. What got taken from me back then? And what couldn't be taken?

Robert walked off with the entire Polish network. He simply set up his own company, and people switched over to him. Wholesalers, leaders, volume, my commissions in złoty — all of it stayed there.

Here's what I took with me. I knew how to run newspaper ads. I knew how to build websites. I knew how to give presentations and run comp plan training. I knew how to get on a train and go see a stranger because I saw a leader in him.

Remember Chapter 18? I came to Morinda completely alone, not one person from my previous company. But my hands weren't empty. Everything I knew how to do, I brought with me.

Robert could take the network. He couldn't take me.

Jewelers have a word for it — the setting.

The setting holds the stone. Gives it a place, a shape, shows it off to people. It can be gold, it can be silver, or it can be cheap tin that tarnishes in a month. A good setting matters: it makes the stone look different, and you won't lose it.

But the stone is what sparkles. And if the setting breaks, you can take the stone out and put it in a new one.

In our business, the setting is the company.

I've been through a few settings in my life.

Herbalife, where it all started. Neways — nine years and my first million dollars. Morinda — my second million. Then years of trial and error. And today, MWR Life.

Twice I got lucky: I landed in a rising trend. The first time, when network marketing was just being born in Russia. The second time, when the new "super-juice" industry arrived here.

But I wasn't always lucky. And I'll tell you honestly about those "not always" times. They taught me more about the setting than both millions put together.

In Chapter 12, I wrote about it briefly: the business gone in a few months, the passive income dried up. I didn't tell you how that happened at the time. I'm telling you now.

Noni juice at Morinda was expensive. It still is. And copycat juices started showing up on the market — from Costa Rica, from Thailand. Good quality, and five times cheaper. My check started dropping.

And right around then, I got an offer to bring a new network marketing company into the market. A product-based one too. I said yes.

I went and did the honest thing — canceled my contract at Morinda. Burned my bridges, as they say. People had told me: never burn your bridges. I did it my own way.

For about a year, I was all in on this new company. Promoted it online, did everything I knew how to do.

And it never actually launched on the market.

The outcome was simple: I'd left Morinda, and I never got the new company off the ground. No old setting, and no new one.

Do I regret it? No. Everything happens for the best. But I did take a lesson from it.

A setting can tarnish on its own. The market changed, the product stopped being unique, and none of that was up to me. But burning my bridges and betting everything on a company that wasn't even on the market yet — that was my own decision.

Then came the years from 2015 to 2019. I was looking for work, considering companies, trying different things.

What companies those were, I honestly can't remember anymore. My brain's built that way — it clears out whatever's unnecessary on its own. What's left is the bottom line. I finally understood which companies I never wanted to choose again. My criteria crystallized.

And you know what? Even with those criteria, I still stumbled into another mess.

It was an investment company. I went there following a man who'd run his own network marketing company for nine years. He was so confident, and talked about it so well, that I believed him. Everything sounded beautiful. Everything was wonderful.

That company is still promising to return the money. I let go of it long ago and don't expect anything. The way I see it: I paid for the experience with cash.

Nobody's immune to getting conned. Not even someone who's been in network marketing his whole life and gives lectures on pyramid schemes himself. Sometimes they sing it so beautifully. They put on such a great show.

If you've also "paid for the experience" somewhere like this, don't beat yourself up over it. I've been there too.

And then came a mistake funnier than the first one. A mirror image of it.

Once everything about the investment company became clear, I asked that same man: so what's next? What are the options?

He named MWR Life.

I took a look and saw: a travel company. And something clicked inside right away: got it, I know exactly what this is. I'd studied network marketing companies in travel before. Their comp plans were really ugly, full of manipulation. Pyramid schemes disguised as network marketing. Exactly the kind of thing I can't stand.

So I branded MWR Life the exact same way. Without even checking.

Does this remind you of anything? "Polukhin, you're a black box." Take one look, slap on a label, and from then on the person lives with that label. Except this time, I was the one doing the labeling. On a company I'd never even laid eyes on.

And then that same man's ex-wife called me.

She told me about MWR Life. And reminded me how we'd once traveled together: I'd organized the trip, and she'd been the driver of one of the cars.

She suggested I look into the company. I told her straight out: that's a pyramid scheme disguised as network marketing.

"Fine," she said. "Maybe you'll change your mind. Let's meet with my mentor — let him tell you everything. Just listen."

I can at least listen, I figured. Nobody's charging money for that.

We met. The mentor showed me the comp plan, explained how everything worked. And the company turned out to be built completely differently.

I admitted I'd been wrong. I'd never actually analyzed it at all. I'd taken my past experience on faith and gone by a template.

I looked into it properly and joined. And I don't regret it one bit.

Look at these two mistakes side by side.

The first time, I trusted someone else's enthusiasm and didn't check. The second time, I trusted my own old experience and didn't check either.

Different mistakes. Same cause: I was waiting for someone else to do the checking. A friend who was so confident. Or my own old memory, which "already knows everything."

But only the person actually walking into a company can check it.

And then something happened that probably made the whole path worth walking.

One day I told myself: "I love network marketing. And I love traveling." Telling you this right now, and the goosebumps are back again.

That's something I love more than selling little jars of product.

At Neways, I sold supplements. At Morinda, noni juice. And the network that always built up around me was made up of people with some kind of health problem. They'd brag about their results, tell me what they'd been cured of. I was genuinely happy for them. But I understood: my product was for people in pain.

What I loved most at Morinda was the travel. The company organized trips, and because of my high rank, I got most of those trips for free. I saw a lot of countries as a straight-up gift from the company.

At MWR Life, all the pieces finally came together: network marketing and travel. For me, it's the optimal choice, and I'm really glad about it.

You choose the setting to fit your own stone. Not someone else's enthusiasm, and not your own old fear.

So how do you choose one?

I've got a whole lesson on this in my video course. I'll give you the main points here.

To start, you can picture every network marketing company as belonging to one of two pyramids.

The first pyramid: passive-income companies. I call them PICs. At the base of them: an innovative product and a mission that's inseparable from that product. The product genuinely helps people. The comp plan is built to get that benefit to customers. And money comes last.

The second pyramid: pyramid schemes disguised as network marketing. Disguised pyramids, for short. Their founders build the company with one goal: collect as much money from people as possible. The comp plan doesn't pay for product — it pays for collecting money. The product exists as a smokescreen; the distributors themselves often don't even use it. I've seen plenty of people who ended up in debt after one or two companies like this.

By my own estimate, the volume in the network marketing industry splits roughly in half between these two pyramids. That's staggering.

This is my own personal classification. Which one you want to be in is up to you.

Companies also come in different ages. By growth stage, I split them into five categories.

Money games. A sharp launch, huge volume, and a sharp crash. They last two to three years. People go in knowingly — their own representatives call them "high-risk projects." And the leader goes back through their contact list from scratch every single time, and their reputation drops a little more with each round.

Old companies. Explosive growth is long behind them. Huge stadiums, the feel of a big, powerful machine. Except you're sitting in the stands, not on the stage. To break through to the stage, you have to be a superleader.

Sluggish companies. Little-known, small volume. People stumble in by chance and stay because they like the product. These are companies for customers.

Direct-sales companies. Seasonality and selling. You sell, you get income. You don't sell, you don't. This is a job — there's no passive income to speak of.

Young, growing companies. Three to five years on the market. Years from now, they'll become those same old giants. These are companies for leaders, for people who want big money and passive income. You catch the growth and become part of its story.

And all of that is fine. Some people need the crowd, some just want a good product, some love selling, some love risk. The main thing is knowing where you're going and why.

Say you want passive income in the right company. What should you look at?

In my lesson, I lay out five elements of a passive-income company. I'll name four of them here.

First — the product. Is it unique? And does it suit you, your own soul? I, for one, got tired of little jars and supplements. Today, supplements are sold in pharmacies and regular stores — they're not unique to network marketing companies anymore.

Second — the founders and management. How forward-thinking are the founders? Are they growing the business online? These days, if you're not online, you're not in business.

And the simplest, most interesting question of all: what kind of people they are.

A website, a presentation, slick videos can all be bought. A person can't be faked. When you meet the founder in person, stand next to them, hear them talk, you feel them. Their energy. Their love. Or the lack of it. The body doesn't lie.

I've talked with a lot of founders. Some literally glow with the energy of wanting to help people. Warm, open. When money comes up, they say: "I didn't build this company for the money." They make money, of course. But something else sits underneath it.

And others have dollar signs in their eyes. And you can see it, even when the words sound exactly right.

Here's what can give away a person who's indifferent to people. Know this before you ever meet them.

In the voice — a chill. Even when they're joking and smiling. The tone is flat, routine. When they talk about rank-and-file distributors, a flash of contempt slips through, and when they talk about rules and promises, cynicism.

In the energy — indifference. They're not curious who's in front of them. Next to them, you feel the calculation: to them, people are wallets.

In the eyes and the body — arrogance. They look down on you, over people's heads. And those same dollar signs in their eyes.

And here's how a founder who loves people comes across.

In the voice — warmth, no rush at all.

In the energy — genuine interest in you. They listen, they ask questions. You feel calm around them, and you don't want to leave.

In the eyes and the body — openness. They light up when they talk about the product and about people. And about money — almost in passing.

That's why meeting the founder in person matters so much. It clears up a great deal. If there's an event where they're speaking — go. Stand nearby. Listen to more than just the words. Listen to yourself.

Third — the engagement system. New people are needed everywhere. What matters is that there's an engagement system, and that it's honest: through social media, through friendly conversation, without manipulation.

Fourth — team, community, club. People who share your values, like-minded people at your shoulder. Without that, there's nothing to lean on.

If even one of these four is missing, the business won't be solid. Great product, right strategy, a team in place — but no engagement system, and the business doesn't grow.

And don't rush. Dig deeper. Do the analysis. I got burned twice precisely because I rushed.

And the fifth element?

Remember the movie The Fifth Element? Everything was assembled — the stones, the temple, the heroes. And it was the fifth one that saved the world.

It's the same for me. The fifth element is the main one. Without it, the first four don't add up to a picture, even when every one of them is in place.

I won't name it here. Hang on a little longer.

I'll just say this much. Say your friend got into the right company at the right time and has passive income today. And you don't. Same company. Same product. Same comp plan. Why?

The answer to that question is the secret. The secret of the black box, and the secret of success in MLM. You'll find out soon.

I have to be honest about the setting: sometimes it's the deciding factor.

In Korea, the market was divided up before I ever got there, and no amount of trying could get a foreigner in. In Poland, the company itself handed the market to a middleman. Copycat noni juices cost five times less. And in a pyramid, you lose money and reputation no matter who you are.

A good setting holds the stone securely. A bad one can lose it. So choose wisely.

And when the setting does break, here's what's left for you. Skills. Reputation. Remember how Sasha "sold" me to Mark as honest and decent? People who believe in you. And the cut — who you've become.

That travels with you from ring to ring.

Here's what I understood: a company is a setting. Take your time choosing it — with your head, your eyes, and your body — to fit your own stone. But the stone is what sparkles. And you're the one who carries it from setting to setting.

What does this mean for your business?

Stop looking for the magic company. It doesn't exist. I looked. I know.

Check it yourself. Don't take anyone's word for it — not someone else's enthusiasm, not your own old experience. Both of them cost me dearly.

Go see the founder. Stand next to them. Listen to the voice, the energy, your own body.

Choose a product that speaks to you. You can sell something you don't love, but not for long.

Don't drag your contact list from company to company. With every switch, you're spending not just their trust, but your own name.

And before you change the setting, look at the stone. If your check has stalled, maybe the problem isn't the company at all?

The right column is what you bring to people every single day. In any company.

For many years, I chased people like an archer after his targets. Ads, calls, a script I threw out after two days. Then I understood there was another way. You can become the person people come to on their own. Like a street lamp in the dark.

More on that in the next chapter.