Integrated (Marketable-Value) Replications International

I used to own and run my own Finance and Trading Company. During that time I was exposed to network-marketing when National Safety Associates (NSA) was brought to the United Kingdom from the United States by Paula Pritchard and Kathy Robbins.

I did not initially take much notice of it. The British press had a lot to say about it; almost all negative. Later I began to take more notice of this industry and after doing a lot of research on it, decided to get involved. I contacted one Gary Chamberlain the person with the very best track-record in the business and asked him to teach me it; he agreed. That is how it started.

In 1996 I went to live in Moscow. Why? The British Government refused to give my then Russian wife a visa to come and live with me in the United Kingdom.

I researched what I would do there. Then I got a list from the Direct Selling Association of all the network marketing companies operating in Moscow. After short listing and consulting Gary, I picked out Forever Living Products (FLP) as a company to work with.

I went to see the Managing Director of FLP, UK the late Dustin Greene. He told me I had a great opportunity in Russia as they had just started and gave me the name and phone number of the Managing Director there. Dusty sponsored me and I became his front-line.

I now had two goals on reaching Moscow; one, to build an FLP business and two, to fight the British Government about my wife’s visa.

However it was not going to be easy. When I reached Moscow I was in for some major surprises! I discovered that the office was far from ready; builders were partitioning off where the office was going to be.

There were no products. In fact the first batch never arrived as it was stolen en-route; the second batch turned up some six odd months later.

Some of the other problems I was going to face were I don’t speak Russian and 97% odd Russians don’t speak English. My wife’s English was not very good either! So she was not going to be a good interpreter!

Some other “network-marketing” companies’ distributors had been to Moscow, promised people the earth in a few weeks flat,  took people’s money and vanished!

Also my visas were limited to 5 months after which I would have to travel to another country and re-enter Russia after a couple of weeks or so.

I was going to have to roll up my sleeves and get down into the trenches and work the nitty-gritty.

I would have no Gary Chamberlain to run to for help. I would be on my own, under market survival-pressure and have to take on 100%-total-self-responsibility for all my thoughts and actions.