Scattered Diamonds

Monday morning. Several hundred little windows on the screen.

Someone's turned their camera on right from the car, on the way back from the dacha, the family's place out of town. Someone's holding a little girl in her arms, and she's tugging at her mom's sleeve: "Mom, can we go?" Someone's dialed in from work, while nobody else is around the office. Someone's on a train. Someone's in another country, where it's already evening.

This is our weekly get-together: the Monday call, where we recognize new ranks. On the team, it's known as the "Fuel-Up" call. Everyone who's moved up a step in the business that week gets celebrated, and tells their own story. Short, three to five minutes, however it comes out.

I've been listening to these stories for months now. And one day I caught myself listening to them differently.

You've read this far, and you know where the secret element lives. Now I have a request for you: don't take my word for it.

For twenty-four chapters, you've been listening to one person. You could decide this is just my personal path. That Andrey came up with a nice metaphor about a black box and rough diamonds, and it worked out for him. But your life is different, your character is different, your circumstances are different.

So in this chapter, it won't be me talking. I've gathered a few stories from our Mondays. These people haven't read my book. But if you look at them with the eyes you have now, you'll see the same spot in every single story. The spot where the person opened their jewelry box themselves.

First, something I need to say honestly.

All these people are from my team, from the same company. Don't take this as a sales pitch. If you've been in network marketing for years, you've heard stories just like these at every event at your own company. Different product, same stories. Because they're not about the company. Remember Chapter 21? A company is a setting. Don't look at the setting. Look at the stone.

The people who speak on Mondays are the ones who made it. You don't hear from the ones who didn't. So this isn't statistics — these are examples.

I've changed names and some details. I've stripped out ranks and numbers almost everywhere: what matters here isn't how much someone earned, but what happened to them. And where the numbers did stay, that's that person's own experience — not a promise to you.

And one more thing. In Chapter 18, I told you that diamonds really sparkle when they're lying next to each other. Jewelers have a name for that: scattered diamonds. Here they are.

Zhanna. A Crown and Stripes

Zhanna was a strong network marketer for years. And then, in her own words, she crashed and burned.

For three years, her profile read: "Don't pitch me any projects." And an angry emoji.

Several leaders found a way in with her at the same time. Very gently, very softly. Not through the business, but through the lifestyle, the fun, the vacations. They told her something like: "You're not going to be chasing fat carrots and dragging crowds behind you anymore. You're going to have a blast."

She came. And then she was the one who honestly named what had been keeping her from getting results:

"A crown on my head. Stripes on my shoulders. I'm so wonderful and strong, and I already know it all myself."

And she made a decision. For a year, she wouldn't judge the company, the comp plan, or herself. She switched off her whole memory bank — everything she'd known before. "I'm a beginner. I'm giving myself a chance. And only after a year do I have the right to judge that chance."

That same day, three new partners came to her.

Nobody took the crown off her head. She took it off herself.

Oksana. Two Worlds

Oksana is a mother of several kids, and for years she's worked with people in financial trouble: debt, lawsuits, banks. About herself, she says: "I'm very smart, very experienced. That's exactly why I had to work at it."

She started strong. Signed up, and the very next day her first partner showed up. This is in the bag, she thought.

Then came sixty meetings. Sixty. Everyone interested, nobody moving. Disappointment set in: "Look at me, I'm such a big deal, I've achieved everything in life."

And that's when she saw something she'd never noticed before. She says: "I started seeing two worlds. The world of people in pain, and the world of happy people." Her whole life, she'd lived in the first one. Pulling people out of the hardest situations. "Every time I take on more clients, I lose my own health. It's so hard being a god in our world."

So Oksana did the thing that's hardest of all for a smart, experienced person to do. She told herself: I'll take a couple of steps back. I'll learn all over again.

Her second partner came to her, you could say, off the street — the daughter of someone she barely knew. And on the last day, her third partner was her own sister. She said: "I can't stand watching you suffer."

Nobody forced her to learn all over again. She's the one who took the step back.

Karina. "Not This MLM Thing Again"

I heard Karina on our Mondays several times, and each time it was a new piece of the same story.

The first time someone told her about the business, her first thought was: "Oh God, not this MLM thing again. They're trying to screw me over again." Right behind it came a second thought: "But what if something's passing you by?"

On day one, she didn't understand any of it. She decided: fine, I'll figure it out as I go.

What she dreamed of was a cruise on an ocean liner. When they offered her exactly that, she said: "I'll pack my bags this very second." In ten months, she went to the beach ten separate times, and her mentor was already telling her: "Okay, calm down, let's actually get to work."

Karina climbed the next two steps in the business with her little daughter in her arms. She brought her to a big event, ran meetings with her.

And here's how she ran them, in her own words. She was staying at her parents' place at the time, a studio apartment. "Once the baby falls asleep, I sit on the toilet lid and run meetings until two, three in the morning."

And she added: "When people say it's impossible... who do you think you're talking to? On the road with this little miracle, we've been closing qualifications. Nobody's ever going to tell me something's impossible again. I proved that to myself."

A few months later, I heard her again. She'd gone back to people she'd invited a year earlier, and they were kicking themselves: "We should've done it last year, now it's too late." Karina tells them: "It's not too late. I signed up a hundred and twenty people. Our city has over half a million residents. That's not even a percent."

Nobody scheduled those two-in-the-morning meetings on the toilet lid for her. She scheduled them herself.

Gennady. "Do You Even Have One Tool?"

Gennady's nearly fifty. He spent almost thirty years working a job. The last fifteen as a branch director at a big financial company, always in the top five.

"I work, they call me a top manager, and my life never changes. I still only get to go on vacation over the holidays, same as always." He barely saw his two older kids. He worked too much.

He signed up for the business, but there was no firm decision behind it. For a month and a half he just watched from the sidelines, and the whole time his mentor patiently kept pointing out what was possible for him.

Then Gennady saw the kind of result one of our leaders had put together in just a few months. And he asked himself a simple question:

"Gena, do you even have one tool that could get you results like that?"

And he answered himself honestly: "Nope."

The next morning, he wrote his mentor a plan and one sentence: "I need your support."

Today he travels with his family for months at a time. And unlike with his older kids, he's with his youngest son every single day.

He sums up his own secret this way: make a firm decision and cut out everything that distracts you. "Pick up the tool, clear away everything that's in the way, and start doing it."

He's the one who asked himself that question. And he answered it honestly, even though he didn't like the answer.

Nelli. A Napkin

Nelli's been in network marketing for fifteen years. Never worked a single day for anyone else.

And for all fifteen years, the same picture: a room full of product, a car packed with product, always keeping her monthly volume up. She'd been looking for a long time for somewhere she could work without stockpiling.

Meanwhile, her sister was growing right alongside her. Nelli watched her hit one qualification, then another, then a third. "So where am I in all this?"

But the most surprising part of her story is something else. For fifteen years, she never told her husband a thing about her business. "His work stays outside the front door, at home it's fashion and the weather."

And then, ten days before that Monday, she sat down with her husband at a café, picked up a napkin, and sketched out what she actually does.

Ten days later, he was in the business. And he supports her.

Nelli said one line I've never forgotten: "Sometimes we don't see what kind of person is right there next to us. We just never tell them."

Fifteen years of silence ended with one napkin. And she's the one who picked up the pen.

Konstantin. Everything Reset to Zero

Konstantin's a tech guy. Twelve years in network marketing.

There was a time he stood on stage with a big check, with a team of over a thousand people behind him. And then it all reset to zero. In an instant. He went into the red, and his second child was born right around the same time. "My brain couldn't accept it for a long time."

Then came his own company, which also didn't end very well.

When an old friend, a top leader, invited him into a new project, Konstantin said no. Three times. Today he says: "A no isn't forever. It's only for a short stretch of time."

And he started over from zero. After fifteen hundred partners. The most loyal ones followed him.

He also tells people that on his new team, two people have already passed him in rank.

Nobody has to start from zero after fifteen hundred partners. He decided to.

Tamara. The Little Suitcase

Tamara's retired. Been in network marketing for years. Back in the day, she was the one who brought her daughter into the business. Now her daughter's brought her in.

"I figured I was done doing anything new. I'm getting on in years. I thought travel wasn't for me anymore. Time to start thinking about a different kind of road."

And then, as she puts it, the penny dropped. She needs extra income on top of her pension. And she still wants to really live a little.

For years she worked with vitamins and supplements. And then she heard a line that really spoke to her: "Selling a celebration is nicer than treating illness."

She climbed the first step in about a day, I think. And here's her dream now:

"I dream of a pretty little suitcase rolling along through the airport. And I want to go to Dubai."

Her daughter says: "Old age isn't going to catch me at home." Tamara echoes her: "I'm on the road. I'm on my way."

Her daughter invited her. But Tamara's the one who picked the suitcase.

Artur. "Go Rest. Just Don't Check Out"

Artur climbed the first step fast. Then he got twenty-five or thirty rejections in a row. "That lump in your chest. It gets really heavy."

And he went quiet. Dropped out of the business for about three months.

One day after the Monday call, his mentor asked him to stay on for three minutes.

"What happened? Why'd you go quiet?"

"I don't know, I think I'm just tired."

"Well, if you're tired — go rest. Just don't check out. The main thing is: don't check out."

"And it was like that lump fell right off my chest," Artur says.

All those months, he kept showing up to the Monday calls, even when he didn't want to do anything at all. And now he tells everyone: "Even if you don't feel like moving today, don't check out. Stay in the loop. Sooner or later, it'll warm you back up."

It warmed him up. In one week, he ran meetings in three cities and signed six contracts.

His mentor gave him permission to rest. Not checking out — that was his own decision.

Arseny. "I Don't Believe Anymore. But I Do It Anyway"

Arseny's the youngest one in this chapter. He joined his first network marketing company at eighteen.

Back then, his upline told him: "You get that you need to be ready to work about three years with nothing to show for it — for zero?"

Arseny answered: "I'm ready to work until I'm twenty-five for zero rubles and zero kopecks. But at twenty-five, I need a million dollars."

Today, he's got a year and a half left until twenty-five.

He came to us without any belief in the project at all. He just told his mentor: "You're calling me — I'll follow you." He should have taken the next step a year earlier. And it just kept not coming. Month after month — nothing.

And he said a line I consider one of the most honest ones ever spoken on our Mondays:

"I don't believe anymore. But I just do it. Because there's no other option."

And that Monday, we were celebrating his new step.

Belief comes and goes. Whether to do the work or not — that was his call, every single day.

And one more story. People tell this one at the big events, and I heard it secondhand. So I'll pass it along exactly as I heard it.

There was an athlete in France named Ilian. His sports career was winding down, and he had no idea what came next. Someone offered to build a business with him. And gave him one simple assignment: "Make a list of a hundred people."

Ilian made his list. And started calling.

The first one said no. The second. The tenth. The fiftieth. The ninety-ninth.

And the hundredth said: "I'll see what comes of this later. But I'll stand right next to you."

Ilian says that's when he understood something. Tens of millions of people live in France. And he needed to tell every single one of them.

Today, he's one of the biggest leaders I know.

Ninety-nine people told him no. He's the one who made call number one hundred.

You know what strikes me about these stories?

They're all different. A mother with a toddler and a top manager. A retiree and a guy who isn't even twenty-five. A network marketer with years of experience and someone who started out with no belief at all. Some came for the travel, some for the money, some just to follow their mentor.

And the turning point is the exact same one, every time. At some point, the person stops waiting for someone else to open their jewelry box for them. The company, the mentor, a lucky month. And they open it themselves.

There are mentors in almost every one of these stories. They call late at night, they ask you to stay on for three minutes after the Monday call, they find the gentle way in. That matters — you can't do without it, remember Chapter 18. But Zhanna is the one who took off the crown. Oksana is the one who took the step back. Nelli is the one who picked up the napkin. Gennady is the one who told himself "nope."

Here's what I understood, listening to these stories: people's lives are different, the companies are different, and the secret element is the exact same one. It's the person themselves. Everything else is just the setting.

I listen to these stories every Monday. And every single time, being around these people, I grow a little too.

And the last story in this book is going to be mine again. It happened when the book was almost finished.