Confession

Let me just come right out and admit what I was like when I got into network marketing. So you don't think I had anything going for me from the start.

There was nothing. I was thirty years old. Modest, closed-off. Couldn't sell, couldn't speak in public, was scared to meet new people. If you'd looked at me from the outside back then, you'd have said: this guy will never make it as a network marketer. And you'd have been right — by every visible measure.

It all started with a call from my mom. She was a doctor, and she'd gotten an invitation to a presentation for some American company. She couldn't go herself, so she told me:

"You're our entrepreneur, go listen to it."

So I went. Dental Clinic No. 1 on Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg's main street, in the head doctor's office. A handful of people, and Viktor running the presentation. What he actually said, I don't remember anymore. But I still remember the circles. One circle on top — that's you. Three underneath — those are the people you'll tell about the product.

I tightened up inside. Tell people? Me? I had zero experience talking to people, let alone selling to them. I was scared of it.

Then he showed me the second row. Under each of the three, three more — nine people. And I'm not the one telling them. The first three will.

And that's when something clicked. No selling required. Just tell people. And not everyone — just three. A neat little trick to get past my own fear. Fine, I told myself, I'll figure it out somehow. I can manage telling three people, at least.

I had no idea how I was going to actually do it. I just took the leap.

People buy the product for themselves, and I get a percentage. I got the gist of it in an hour and made my decision right there in the office. The product, the comp plan — all of that I could sort out later. The main thing was, I'd grasped the idea.

Only one problem remained: finding $100 to start. Dollars, specifically. And in 1993, I'd never laid eyes on one in my life. Honestly, I don't even remember where I finally got them. Dollars were sold by black-market money changers back then, and finding them turned into a whole quest of its own. But I found them.

On December 10, 1993, I signed my first contract with a network marketing company. It was Herbalife.

Nine days later was my birthday. A table full of food, close family all around, and me with a button pinned to my chest: "Want to lose weight? Ask me how!"

Right there at the table, I gave my very first presentation.

They laughed me out of the room.

I felt ashamed, hurt. Not one person backed me up. Not a single one at that table.

After that, it was straight by the book. I called everyone I knew. There weren't many of them, and every single one said no. And that's when I ran into the question every other newcomer would later ask me: where do you even find people?

At training, they told me: there are tons of people all around you, just go talk to strangers on the street. To me, that sounded like "go jump out of a plane." No — worse than that. At least my father knew how to jump.

April 17, 1994. I'm walking back from a big training by Leon Galperin — he was speaking to Herbalife distributors, not far from St. Isaac's Cathedral. Leon really fired me up. I walked out of there with one intent: today, I'm going to walk up to a total stranger on the street.

On the metro, I'm scanning the women. Trying to figure out which heavier woman to offer weight loss to. And I start shaking. My whole body's rattling, my knees are giving out. I tell myself: no, not today, not now. It hurts too much.

I come up to the trolleybus stop. Catch my breath, calm down. I see three girls. Alright, I think, here goes. I start walking toward them — and I'm shaking all over again. It's me against three of them. I couldn't even approach one girl, and now I'm supposed to pitch a business to three at once. That was beyond any reality I could even picture for myself. Naturally, I told myself: next time. I backed off, got on the trolleybus, and headed home.

Trolleybus No. 17.

One stop later, I'd calmed down a little and remembered my intent. The trolleybus is packed solid. I'm holding onto the rail, and right in front of me, face to face, stands a woman. There's nowhere to go: people all around, no way to escape. The next stop is mine. The trolleybus rolls down Gorokhovaya Street, over the Fontanka River, to the stop right across from my building. And I realize: if I don't do this now, I never will.

So I spoke up.

I wanted the ground to swallow me whole. Right through this trolleybus, through the bridge, through the river — drown, die, anything but standing there. My voice stumbled, my face was burning, my knees were giving out. In a shaking voice, I stammered through my short presentation.

She listened closely and didn't interrupt.

I missed my own stop. She needed to get off at the next one, and we got off together. All that was left was the easiest part — ask for her number. And I froze solid. A lump rose in my throat, I couldn't squeeze out a single word. I just stood there like a statue.

So she opened her purse, pulled out a business card, and handed it to me:

"Here's my number. Call me."

I didn't even say thank you. Just grabbed the card and ran home. Walking on air, completely over the moon. It worked! I had a lead!

At home, I read the card. Svetlana, a professor at the finance and economics institute.

Svetlana. One Svetlana once called me a black box. Another one, years later, listened to that same box on a trolleybus.

I spent a long time afterward wondering why she hadn't just brushed me off. And I came up with an explanation I still like. She's a professor. Hundreds of students have passed through her classroom taking their first exam, blushing, unable to string two words together. She saw one more of those kids. And she simply passed me — on a subject called Talking to a Stranger.

If she'd turned me down that day, this book might not exist. Life could've gone down a different branch, and on that branch there'd be no network marketing leader who'd traveled to fifty countries.

And here's what strikes me now, looking back on that day. Leon had charged me up with energy. But Leon wasn't there on the trolleybus.

I kept approaching strangers on the street. It was scary every single time. Just a little less scary each time.

Still, I never had enough people. So I started watching my sponsor more closely. He never taught me where to find people, but new ones kept showing up around him. Where from? Eventually I worked up the nerve to ask one woman how she'd found us.

"A newspaper ad."

So that was it. I started running ads myself. And people started calling. And I was terrified, with no idea what to say to them.

Then I got a phone script. A ready-made text: what to say, how to respond, where to steer the conversation. For two days I read it into the receiver in a shaking voice. On the third day, I threw it out and started talking however I could manage. I listened to the person. Tried to figure out what was bothering them, what they were missing. And I'd invite them to come: you'll get the details at the presentation, just come.

That's how the guy who was afraid to pick up the phone became a master at inviting people over it.

Now you can see how this looks from the outside. You watch a successful network marketer and you see: ads, calls, presentations. So you think, there's the secret. Give me the right ads, the right script, the right company — and I'll make it too.

I believed that for a long time. And it's an honest explanation: the ads worked, the calls worked. Without them I wouldn't have had a single person. But then why did a script that worked for other people sound like a death sentence coming out of my mouth for two whole days? And why did it only start working once I threw it away?

I didn't ask myself that question back then. I was too busy — I had more and more people coming in.

I'd learned how to invite people. What to do with them after that, I still had no idea.

By then I'd moved to a different company, Neways. I had a strong sponsor, Mikhail, who helped me a lot. I knew how to invite people by phone, but I didn't know how to run presentations or training. He did that. My sponsor ran his presentations right out of his own office.

I'd invite ten, fifteen people at a time. Fall outside, slush everywhere, and all these people trailing muddy boots down the city hall hallway. The security guard saw all of it. My sponsor got chewed out.

Then came a leadership meeting. In front of everyone, he tore into me and told me never to set foot in his office again.

I left. Rented my own office. And started running presentations and training myself. I was scared — but I did it.

Later I surprised even myself. A quiet, modest guy, and suddenly I'm bursting with drive, push, entrepreneurship. Where does that come from? Same question as back in seventh grade with a broom in my hands.

In my own office, I became the boss. A very strict boss. Tough, demanding, rough around the edges. People were afraid of me.

I noticed it. But I didn't do anything about it, because it never occurred to me that there was anything to do.

Then something happened that nobody expected — not me, not my partners. One day I learned there was this thing called a training. I got pulled in as a guinea pig: a student at a teacher-training college was running it to pass a class requirement.

A requirement again. Except this time, someone else was passing theirs on me.

And this training changed the entire rest of my life.