Jewelry Box of Diamonds

The exercise sounded simple: find a childhood pain inside yourself and change its image.

I thought of my black box.

Seventh grade. Broom in hand, dust in the air, our homeroom teacher. "Well, Polukhin, you're a black box."

How many years I'd carried it. Through naval college, where I was the odd one out. Through LOMO and soldering phones. Into network marketing, into my own office, into being the strict leader everyone was afraid of. The box was heavy and closed. I didn't know what was inside it. And I didn't know it could even be opened.

This was a training by Mark and Sofia Atlasov. They were among the first to run trainings specifically for network marketers, and this one was for my team.

That's where I pulled out my box.

And it started changing. The black box turned into a black velvet jewelry box. I opened it, and inside lay precious stones. All kinds. And among them, rough diamonds.

You could look them over. You could take them out.

Remember, in Chapter 2, I said I had no idea the box could even be opened? Well, that's when I opened it.

Mark and Sofia helped me pull that box out. But I was the one who opened it.

Ever since that day, this image has lived in my head. And it's about every single person.

Almost everyone carries a box like that. Some people got theirs at school, some at home, some at work. "You're not a salesperson." "You don't know how to talk." "This isn't your thing." A person carries it around thinking: that's just how I am, a black box, nothing good in there.

But it's a jewelry box. And there are diamonds inside it. Qualities, talents, gifts the person doesn't even suspect are there.

Except a rough diamond isn't a cut diamond yet. You have to take it out, look it over, and cut it. Only then does it start to sparkle and carry light to other people.

That's what the cut actually is: trainings, teachers, working on yourself. The precious stones are already inside you. Someone put them there long before any network marketing came along.

Soon after, Mark and Sofia launched a big training program for network marketers — the International Academy of Leadership (IAL). The curriculum was almost like a university program, and at the end, every participant got an official state-recognized diploma in higher education in network marketing. Of course, it was never really about the paper. It was about what happened to us there.

I was lucky enough to get into the first cohort. Network marketers from all kinds of companies were there, and I still keep in touch with some of them to this day. They taught us everything a distributor needs: presentations, public speaking, team building, leadership, and a lot more. Besides Mark and Sofia, we had a whole team of trainers: Igor Nezovibatko and Dmitry Ustinov. Also Sergey Vasiliev, Vadim Volovik, and others. Our guest from abroad was Tom "Big Al" Schreiter, world-famous in the MLM industry. A seriously strong lineup.

And one day, one of the trainers said:

"The money's on the stage."

What does that mean? The trainers would often call a volunteer up on stage and work with them personally, in front of everyone. A full breakdown. For whoever went up, it was terrifying, painful, embarrassing. You stand there in front of the whole room, naked, the way I'd been without my mustache. But that's exactly how people grew the fastest — right there on stage.

Say there are thirty people in the room. Someone's sitting in the back row, and the trainer's energy just doesn't reach them. It's one thing to listen to someone else being worked on. It's a completely different thing when the trainer's asking you the questions.

At first, I sat somewhere in the back. As usual.

Then I realized: I needed fast growth. And I was willing to be up on that stage. I decided to move to the front row and jump up first every time.

The trainer would start, "Now we're going to need..." — and wouldn't even finish the sentence. I'd already be standing on stage, ready for the hot seat.

It was scary every single time. Every time, I had to step over my own shyness, over that quiet kid from the back row. But I got the absolute most out of it.

Eventually the trainers caught on that I was hogging the spotlight and taking up the whole stage. So now, the moment they spotted me in the front row, they'd cut themselves off mid-sentence:

"Now we're going to need a volunteer..." — and a finger pointed straight at me: "Polukhin — sit!"

Polukhin again. Once, a teacher had filed me away as a black box. Now trainers were sitting me back down because I was too eager to get on stage. Me — that same kid who used to hide behind his classmates' backs.

Even after that, I kept getting up and performing. Not always first, but always among the first.

The stage was the same for everyone. The whole room heard "we're going to need a volunteer." The one who walked up was the one who decided to.

That need to be first had been sitting in me a long time — ever since my school cross-country race. But I'll get to that later.

There was one day at that same academy I'll never forget. We spent the whole day playing a role-play game about nations. There were three nations, I think. And each one needed a king.

Naturally, I jumped in first. By then, it was already a habit.

We spent the whole day doing different exercises. At the end, each king gathered with his entourage, his subjects. And the trainers asked the subjects to tell their king what qualities they'd seen in him.

And one of mine said:

"Andrey, you were the wisest king."

The others agreed. I guess I really had said some wise things and made some wise calls.

My ego, naturally, lit up like a Christmas tree. I liked it so much that the next day I announced to everyone:

"From now on, call me Mudry. Not Polukhin. Mudry."

Mudry means "wise" in Russian.

Funny to think back on now. But the name stuck. I used it again more than once after that, and I still use it today: this book came out under that name. And here's the strange part. In all kinds of situations, different people who had no idea about this story would tell me: "Andrey, wow, you're so wise."

Of all the compliments I've ever gotten in my life, that one's the warmest. I barely remember the others. But that one struck something in me. Probably because it wasn't even a compliment, really. Someone had just named a quality I actually had.

Look at what happened. A teacher once told me, "Polukhin, you're a black box," and I carried that box for years. A few people in a game said, "Andrey, you're wise," and I've carried that name ever since.

Here's what I understood that day: a word someone says about you can lock you inside a box. Or it can open a jewelry box.

This is exactly about our business. You're a sponsor, a mentor, a leader. Every day you say words to people about themselves. You can say "you're not a salesperson," "you won't make it," "what's with all that dust." Or you can see a diamond in someone and say it out loud.

My "subjects" saw the wisdom in me before I did. The same way my team once saw my changed face before I did. The people around us often see our diamonds before we do. We just have to let them say so.

The jewelry box was open. I'd seen the diamonds. I'd even gotten a new name. But there was still a question I had no answer for.

What for? What was I doing all of this for — growing, going to trainings, bringing people along?

I found the answer to that question at a training with Marik.