Pilot Project

The most important part of this story happened after we were no longer around.

Natasha and I had left the country and stopped working with these people. And they pulled together their own distributors, ran their own event, and led it themselves. Without us.

But let me start from the beginning.

Natasha wasn't a network marketer. And at first, she didn't like network marketing. Or more precisely, she didn't like the pushy people you run into in it. Later, in one of our video lessons, she said that I didn't act like them.

And I'd tell her about my team and the problems in it.

And Natasha saw something I couldn't see: all of it came down to specific roles. Presenter, communicator, leader. You could learn them through a system, the way an athlete grows through a training plan.

I suggested she run a training for my team. She did. And after just that first training, I told her:

"It feels like you've been in network marketing for twenty years."

And she hadn't spent a single day in it.

So we decided to run a pilot project. We picked one team: the leaders and their distributors.

Once a week they'd come to our place. We'd put out a good spread, and the training would run almost the whole day.

First, Natasha assessed everyone: who was on which level. Then came the homework. Every week people would show up and report what they'd done, how it was going, what was working, what wasn't.

I gave my part, the business side. But just a little. Natasha's part, the personal-growth side, was the main one.

We worked like that for several months.

And the group started growing. You could see it.

In how they talked. In what they did. In how their relationships with their distributors and their families were coming together. Their lives were changing right in front of us.

Then Natasha and I left the country to travel. The work with them ended.

And here's where it gets interesting.

Six months went by, I think, maybe a year. And those leaders took on more responsibility. They organized an in-person event themselves. Pulled together their own distributors themselves. Led it themselves.

They'd become independent. Become real leaders for their team. And their business jumped to a new level: they started earning more.

Remember LifeSpring? Back then, I went through the training together with my team, and everyone's check went up. There, I grew myself and watched the people around me grow.

This was different. This was the first time I saw the formula from the outside. Not on myself — on other people. They grew as individuals, and their income followed right behind.

Personal growth is the foundation of income growth. No personal growth, no income.

And one more thing. For the first time, I watched diamonds in other people start to sparkle on their own. With no cutter standing next to them.

There was one thing I thought about for a long time.

Natasha did the assessments and gave the assignments. We hosted people at our place and supported them. But they organized that event after we were already gone. Nobody was pushing them, nobody was calling to remind them.

Which meant the growth wasn't resting on us. It was resting on them.

Here's what I understood then: a real leader doesn't grow followers — they grow leaders. And there's only one way to check whether it worked: step aside.

If everything stops without you, it was all resting on you. If people kept going on their own, you did the one thing that mattered.

As for Natasha and me, a year on Bali was waiting ahead.

I had passive income there, freedom, and time. You'd think — just live and enjoy it.

But it was in Bali that I had to face the thing sitting deepest inside me.