Freedom

I'm buying into an apartment in a new building under construction. Then a second one. Then a third. I barely touch my organization. I almost never show up at team meetings.

And the money keeps coming. Every month.

That's when I first felt what freedom actually is. Not read about it, not heard about it at a training. Felt it, in my body.

And it all started with a crisis.

1998. My check at Neways was fifteen thousand dollars a month. Within a few months, it dropped to five.

I could have run around trying to save it, squeezing my organization for more. Instead, I decided to buy into apartments in new buildings under construction. Three in a row. Then my daughter was born, and I focused on raising her. I didn't actively work the business. For about five years.

And the entire time, every single month, the passive income kept coming in.

I remember that feeling very clearly. I do whatever I want. My time is mine. The money comes in not because I called someone today, but because, at some point, I built an organization, and now it runs on its own.

For me, that was freedom.

The second time I felt it just as fully was at Morinda.

There was a funny twist there. My top leader told me one day:

"Keep your internet stuff out of my organization."

Someone else might have been offended. For me, it felt like I'd sprouted wings. Stay out? Fine, I'll stay out. The income kept coming, the organization kept running. And Natasha and I went off to travel the world.

Just lying on beaches didn't interest us. I helped Natasha build out her personal-growth system, record courses, package up her knowledge. But we did it wherever we wanted, and whenever we wanted.

Country after country. That's how fifty countries ended up stamped in my passport.

Now, 2014. You already know about this one from Chapter 12.

The business was gone in a few months. The passive income dried up.

And freedom ended. Right away, in that same moment.

Money got tight, and I felt it inside at once. Tightness, tension, a brain stuck in a vise. We scrambled: what to do next, where to go, build a new project or go find a job? We tried one thing, then another, then a third. Nothing took off. Every day started with the same question: where do I get money?

That's when I understood something. Not right away — years later.

My freedom was resting on my check. As long as the check was there, I was free. The check disappeared, and freedom went with it. Which meant it had been freedom on loan.

I'm not saying passive income is a bad thing. It's an incredibly powerful tool. It gives you time, choice, the ability to live wherever you want. But you have to build it as a system and keep maintaining it. And it can't give you what's on the inside.

A check can pay for freedom. But it can't give it to you.

So what is freedom, then, if not money?

Remember the sentence Natasha and I wrote down at Marik's, word for word? "I am free, and I help people become free." In Chapter 9, I told you there are three kinds of freedom for me: financial freedom, freedom from other people's patterns, and freedom from manipulation.

You now understand how the financial one played out for me. Let's talk about manipulation.

I ran into that one right at the very beginning, back at Herbalife.

At every event, leaders would go up on stage and tell their stories. And almost every story was the same: I borrowed money, bought a ton of product, put myself in a tight spot on purpose. But in exchange, I became a Supervisor. And a Supervisor gets a fifty-percent discount right away, so you can sell the product at a markup.

Nobody ever told me personally, "Borrow money and buy the product." Not once. But it was there in every story, from the stage, over and over. Everyone was supposed to buy themselves that Supervisor rank.

And I bought it.

I borrowed money from people I barely knew. Bought a pile of product. And didn't manage to sell it in time.

And they came to me:

"Pay us back. Or we'll take your apartment."

It was a horrible time. I lived in fear. I was terrified of ending up with no roof over my head. Where I found the money, I honestly don't know. By some miracle. But I found it and paid off the debt.

And right then, I told myself: in network marketing, I would never do artificial qualifications.

I didn't even realize at the time that it was manipulation. Nobody was lying to me, nobody was forcing me. The whole room just breathed one thing: "borrow and buy." That's group manipulation. The hardest one to spot, because there's no one person to blame.

I understood this years later, when Natasha showed me the system of levels.

Later, in one of our video lessons, I mapped manipulation straight onto those levels. It came out to four steps.

Unconscious manipulation. The person is manipulating and doesn't even notice it. A newcomer calls their sponsor: "Remind me, call me, motivate me." A genuine request. But in practice, they've just put their sponsor to work for them. And they get manipulated just as easily themselves. This is where I was at Herbalife.

Conscious manipulation. The leader already understands that people can be controlled, and uses it. Deadlines, discounts, "today only," stage stories. They get the money. The people in the room just keep sitting there, exactly where they started.

Conscious non-manipulation. The person catches themselves in an old thought: they're about to push someone into saying yes. And they stop. They choose differently. For them, it's still an effort, still work. But this is exactly where real teams start: two people who don't manipulate each other, who actually hear each other and work things out.

Unconscious non-manipulation. The person no longer has to stop themselves. Those files simply aren't there anymore. They share generously, light people up, and the money just comes on its own.

And right there, on that last step, real freedom begins.

As long as you're manipulating, even without noticing it, you're not free. You're inside a game you didn't invent. And as long as you're being manipulated, you're not free either.

There's another kind of freedom. An inner one. Freedom from the patterns someone once planted in you.

I learned about it from Vera. She was a leader in my organization at Neways, not even my direct partner — one level further down. She had no obligation to call me. But she did.

"Listen, I just went through this training, we had it at the office. It was absolutely mind-blowing. I really want to share it with you, because you need to know this."

And then:

"Open your planner."

I obediently opened it.

"Write one word in big letters: 'change.'"

I wrote it down.

"Now cross it out, big X."

I crossed it out.

"And next to it, write the replacement: 'add myself new options to choose from.'"

Then Vera explained. "Change" is a terrible word. It wrecks a lot of people's lives. Everyone says you need to change. But a person can't actually be changed.

Everything that's inside you can only ever accumulate. You can't throw anything out of yourself. If you have some habit, you can build a new one alongside it and choose that one instead. The old one doesn't go anywhere. You can always fall back on it if you want to. Or not use it. But it's there.

And that doesn't mean you've changed. You've added yourself a new option to choose from.

That sentence turned everything inside me upside down. The realization was enormous. I'm still grateful to Vera for that call.

Ever since then, when I want something new, I don't try to break myself. I add myself new options.

And there are so many little phrases floating around: "break yourself," "force yourself," "get out of your comfort zone no matter how much it hurts." How can you actually break a person? A human being is a creature that only ever accumulates life experience. You can't throw part of that experience out like garbage. That would be the equivalent of dying.

That's why, somewhere deep in the subconscious, the call to "change" lands as a threat. As a small death. And everyone's afraid of death. So nobody actually likes changing. It's not about laziness or weakness. It sits at the deepest level there is.

But "adding new options to choose from" is something else entirely. You don't have to lose anything. You only have to gain. That's the whole point.

My "black box" label never went anywhere. It's recorded inside me. But right next to it, "jewelry box of diamonds" is recorded too. And "Mudry." And every day, I choose which one to switch on.

Freedom isn't when the old thing disappears. It's when you have a choice.

One day I took it further and wrote my own rules of the game.

At some point I was watching people play video games. And it struck me that they talk almost like network marketers: levels, leveling up, achievements. They sink so deep into their games that they practically live there.

And that's when the picture flipped for me. Life is exactly the same thing. We hit levels, buy artifacts, level up our skills. Life is a game. Except in a video game, someone wrote the rules before you ever showed up. In your own life, you can write them yourself.

Here are mine:

See that last line? That's the exact sentence from the notebook at Marik's. It became the rule I live by.

And now, a confession. An honest one.

I don't feel a hundred percent free today.

For instance, I barely post on social media. For a long time I told myself I didn't have time, that it wasn't my thing. But really, there's a fear of self-expression sitting inside me. That same kid who used to hide behind his classmates.

I'm working on it. And this book is one of the steps. Every chapter is me stepping out and saying out loud what I used to keep quiet about. And I like it. I'm already looking forward to turning this book into short clips and posting them. With the same pleasure I get from writing.

So this book is an important milestone for me. It's leveling up my freedom of self-expression.

But other freedoms, I already have. And I feel them every day.

The freedom to live wherever I want. I'm in Bali right now. Natasha and I once lived here for a whole year, and I fell in love with this island. Later I traveled through fifty countries. And I couldn't help comparing every single one of them to Bali. It was still home — the place I wanted to come back to.

A year ago, I came back home. There's a spiritual atmosphere here, kind people, warm weather, real food. I'm happy here.

The freedom to do what I love. And what I love is network marketing. I love talking to people, building systems, helping people grow. That's my mission. I get to spend my time on what I love, and that's exactly where my freedom shows up.

And freedom of movement. I love traveling and want to see a lot more countries. Right now I'm earning through a travel company, MWR Life. And that's how two things I love came together in one business: network marketing and travel.

But there's one more level of freedom. I haven't grown into it yet. I'm exploring it.

It's when you don't depend on any circumstances at all. Not on money, not on people, not on a company, not on a country, not on wherever you happen to be.

There's still money, of course. But it's sitting in the right places, generating income simply because it exists. Or there are businesses running on their own, producing reliable passive income. The kind that doesn't vanish in a few months, the way it did in 2014.

I'm heading there.

And right here, while I was talking this chapter out loud, something new happened to me. A sentence slipped out of me on its own:

"I'm inviting you to walk this path with me."

I stopped. I think that's the first time in my life I've invited anyone anywhere quite like that. And I understood right away why it happened exactly here, in the chapter about freedom.

Because this is my mission. I am free, and I help people become free. The second half of that sentence is the invitation itself. It was always in there. I just finally heard it.

Here's what I understood: freedom isn't something you have. It's the place you act from. No company issues it, no sponsor gives it to you, no check guarantees it. You build it yourself: choice by choice.

What does this mean for your business?

If you came into network marketing looking for freedom, that's the right dream to have. But check which freedom you're actually after. If it's only the financial one, it can leave just as fast as it arrived. Build a system, aim for passive income. And grow yourself in parallel. Then, whatever crisis hits, you'll still have what nobody can take from you.

If you're a leader, look at what you're motivating people with. Stage stories, "borrow and buy," artificial qualifications — that's a trap. Even if you honestly believe you're helping. I know what it feels like from the other side: the fear of losing your home.

And don't demand that your partners "change." They'll hear a threat and shut down. Instead, help them add themselves one more option. That's exactly what Vera did for me, with one phone call.

And if you're pressuring someone right now, or someone's pressuring you, don't beat yourself up. Just notice it. Noticing is already the first step.

Nobody made me free. Not Neways, not Morinda, not passive income. Vera gave me the words, but I was the one holding the pen. When the check ran out, this became crystal clear: whatever was left was my own choice.

You can't help people become free all by yourself. An invitation is always about two people, and then about many.

One soldier can't win a battle. More on that in the next chapter.