It Only Takes One Person: How Anna and Alex Zubarev Turned Skepticism Into A Hundred-Person Weekly Team

Your spouse thinks you’ve joined something strange. You know the feeling, the slightly embarrassed explanation at a family dinner, the raised eyebrow when you say you’re driving twenty hours to a hotel conference room instead of taking a normal vacation. Anna Zubarev was that skeptic herself, the self-described proud member of the skeptic society, while her husband Alex built a business she wasn’t sure was real. Both of them grew up in a communist country where being self-employed wasn’t even an option, so none of this came with a family blueprint. What changed their trajectory wasn’t a script or a product pitch. It was one specific decision, made over and over, to actually show up.

What happens when your spouse doesn’t believe in the business you just committed to?

Alex joined the industry after a friend introduced him to a product Anna wasn’t interested in. She let him do his thing and told him plainly not to bring strangers around. He kept going anyway, through hotel meetings and house meetings, feeling for himself whether any of it was real. The turning point wasn’t a call or a webinar. It was his first live event. He came home a different person, and Anna noticed it before he said a word. Not how he dressed. The energy behind his eyes.

That’s the pain most people underestimate about building something on their own: you can be doing the work and still feel like you’re spinning your wheels, self-sabotaging without realizing it, because belief hasn’t caught up to effort yet. Alex describes exactly that stretch, working hard with results that didn’t match the hours, until a mentor’s story convinced him the missing piece wasn’t more strategy. It was proximity to people already doing it.

Why does attending events only work when you treat it as non-negotiable?

Anna joined Alex at her first event months later, and what actually shifted her wasn’t a stage presentation. It was a few hours on a yacht with the company’s top earners after the event ended, surrounded by people who didn’t perform the fake corporate smile she’d spent years learning to give and receive at work. She’d seen that hollow routine plenty of times: the forced how-are-you, the smile that means nothing. This was different, and she knew it within one conversation.

That night became the reason she stopped being the skeptic and started supporting the business directly. It’s also where the couple’s real commitment got tested, because showing up to one inspiring event isn’t the same as making every event non-negotiable. Alex is candid that the difference between doing some of what the business asks of you and doing all of it was the difference in how their business actually performed. Skipping isn’t a small decision. It compounds the same way showing up does, just in the other direction.

What can one hangout with two people turn into if you never miss a week?

The proof for Anna and Alex is a program they call team consistency, and its origin was almost nothing: one team member, Michael Martin, doing a weekly hangout with a single other person, just checking in, nothing formal. It kept happening anyway. Two became a handful, a handful became dozens, and by the time Anna and Alex told the story on stage, their weekly team hangout had crossed a hundred people and maxed out the video platform’s capacity. Nobody engineered that. It was one small, boring, repeated action that nobody quit on.

• Start with even one person willing to hang out and talk shop on a fixed weekly schedule.
• Don’t wait for polish. The earliest sessions were just two people checking in.
• Protect the cadence more than the content. Consistency is what compounds, not production value.
• Let newer members ask questions live, so the training answers what people are actually stuck on.

Anna is direct about why she never walked away, even through years with real setbacks along the way: “I never quit on this company.”

Why does it only take one person to change your entire belief?

Alex’s clearest lesson from those early events wasn’t tactical. It was that transformation doesn’t require meeting an entire room of successful people. It requires meeting one, at the right moment, when you’re ready to actually hear them.

it only takes one person to inspire you only one

That’s the internal shift underneath everything else in their story. Not a funnel, not a script, not a comp plan detail. One person, one conversation, one decision to keep showing up after that conversation ended. Anna’s version of the same idea is that family, in the fullest sense, is what kept her in the business through every hard stretch, not a strategy document. The mechanism they built afterward, the weekly hangout that grew past a hundred people, only works because two people who almost gave up on each other’s belief decided instead to build something neither of them could have predicted from where they started.

The full session covers how they structured their team’s boot camp and what specifically changed once they stopped treating events as optional. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

And stay on your feet as we welcome to the stage, Anna and Alex Zubarov! Guys, it never gets easier to be on stage, I tell you that much. It really never. As many times as we've been asked and offered this incredible role of sharing our story, sharing our wisdom with you guys, it really never gets easier, I tell you that much.

So for those of you that are thinking and imagining in your head, when I'm going to get on stage, what am I going to say? How am I going to feel? How am I going to inspire someone, right? I was once that person when I traveled to my very first event in 2012 in San Diego.

I joined my husband in this business. Finally, right? Finally. Finally.

Hey. I'm always honest. So when I traveled to my very first event, I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know who I'm going to meet, who these people are, nothing.

Because some of you do know our stories and some of you don't. We come from a, I would say, different world. Both Alex and I have been raised in a communist country where religion was prohibited, a lot of different beliefs was prohibited, and all that jazz. I don't know if MLM was prohibited, but that's…

The what? MLM industry was prohibited or not. I honestly don't remember. Well, being self-employed was prohibited, too.

Yeah, yeah. It was not an option. Yeah, pretty much. So why don't you start with your story first?

Because, like, guys, Alex and I met in America. We married in America. We've been together for 15 years now. Thank you.

So you go first. And we kind of, you know, we do our thing. Go for it. All right.

I heard, as I was walking through the hallway, everybody wants to hear the secret, so I'm just going to share the secret. Nobody cares about the story. Start from the beginning. So the secret is secret to success.

You guys want me to share it? Yes. All right. My kind of crowd.

So the secret to success is, well, you guys know, you need to become a guru. And for a limited time, if you go to my website, www.guranteedresults.com, you're going to start making money. And it's only $80,000, but I'm not going to charge you that. It's going to be cut in half.

So it's only 40 grand. It's a joke. All right. It's a joke.

I always wanted to do that. I'm going to get in trouble for this. Anyway, so there's no real secret, guys. The secrets are in the book.

The secrets are in the products. You have everything in the products. Everything that will take you from point A to point B is inside of the products. I'm a product of the product.

She's a product of the… She's a byproduct of the product. Right. I confess.

When I had a choice, whether to go or not to go, I made a decision to go. Because I was listening to my mentors. Guys, you need to be plugged in. You need to be plugged in into your mentors, your sponsors, your teams, your masterminds.

Because that's the real magic sauce. You need to be plugged into the community. I'm so glad that Leila is doing this for all of the amazing women we have in Empower Network. Because you guys need that.

So I had a choice to whether to go or not to go. I was kind of spinning my wheels. I was not really generating results that I wanted to quit my job. So if I was making, I don't know, back in 2010 or 11, like if I was making like $500 a month, that means I probably spent like $1,000 a month.

So I was negative as far as business income. And then I came across one of my mentor's videos and he said something profound. My success started when I went to my first live event. I didn't go to any live events.

So I made a decision to go. I went to this live event and this event was near this hotel four years ago, four years ago. I had like a deja vu moment. We came here on Wednesday, Tuesday?

Tuesday. And as I was walking outside, I saw this conference and I'm like, I was here four years ago. This is when it all started. Some of you guys remember that.

So I did a Periscope about that because I was like, wow. This incredible moment started here, Orlando, Florida. So long story short, I came to my first event. I met Dave.

I wanted to see if it's real. So he's a real person. Little weird, but he's real. Aren't we all weird?

Aren't we all weird? We all have our things. And that's when it started cranking, you know, it's all in the eight core commitments, all in the eight core commitments. And one of the.

Eight core commitments is coming to every single event, not skipping, not making excuses, whether, I don't know, you have a wedding to go to or whatever, you have to schedule your business around your time, around your family, around everything else, because Anna was not on board. So the next event was June 10, 2012, my birthday in Atlanta. She was not on board. She was kind of like proud member of skeptic society, as they called her.

And. I just told her, like, look, I need to go making some money. So I need to actually get more belief level and, you know, meet more people and meet Aaron Raskin, meet Tracy Walker, meet Lawrence Tam. And that's, that's exactly what I did.

I drove for like 20 hours or whatever. And my belief level just went through the roof because I was spinning my wheels. I was self-sabotaging myself because all of you guys need to know the income goal. You need to achieve, right?

If you got, like, how many of you guys know the income level you need to achieve to do whatever you want with your life, quit your job, stay home. Okay, awesome. So about like 70%, 75%. So 25% of you guys that did not raise your hand, uh, today, tonight, when you go back to your room, uh, go through your numbers, know the number that you need to hit, set a deadline, set a deadline.

So the way you calculate that, I mean, uh, whatever you're making at your job, uh, at 50% on top of that, all right? Because business is always like this. It's like a stock market, right? It's up and down.

It's up and down. So my advice is add 50% to your monthly expenses, whatever you're making at your job. So if it's, let's say, $5,000 a month, make it eight, right? And then work towards the goal until you hit that goal.

But don't quit just. Yet, I suggest you stay at your job for two, three months, three months just to make it official stable because, uh, again, income sometimes drops. Sometimes it goes up, right? Every single one changed their business.

The next event was in San Diego. It was Anna Z's birthday, September 20th, 2012. She came with me. Why don't you talk about that story?

So, um, before I got to my very first event in San Diego, um, Alex joined the, uh, network marketing business industry in 2009. Um, he joined this business because our friend came and introduced us to a bottle that looked like a wine. And, um, I sat down, I looked at that bottle and I'm not a drinker. I don't drink.

The only bad habit of mine is I smoke and I curse too. Hey, I said, I'm honest. So, um, that really did not spark my interest. So I left and let, let them do their thing.

So then, uh, he, he was very much so engaged that sparked his interest and he pursued this business. It was really fascinating to Alex and he went on to hotel meetings and he went on to do house meetings and all that jazz. But I did tell him, do not bring strangers. And so.

So that was that when he traveled to his very first event, which was in April of 2012, this was in Orlando. Like he said, somewhere near here, maybe this hotel or the October, October, he came back home as a completely brand new person. I looked at his eyes and I saw life and I saw vision and I saw. I saw belief that there is a bright future ahead of us because where we come from, like I said, it was very kind of just gray.

We, we, our parents brought this, brought us to this country for bigger and better life. Yes. That's an immigrant's life. But how do we take this life to the next level?

Not just doing nine to five. Right. Alex and I, like I said, we did not have any experience in being self-employed or entrepreneurs, none of that. So when he came home and he's, he was a completely transformed person.

So I said to him right there and there, Alex, this is really interesting. I see, you know, those different things about you, not the way he dressed or not the way he spoke, but just the energy was different, guys. So I said, when is the next event happening? So I joined him in my very first event of September, 2012.

We went to San Diego and knowing my husband, how, uh, driven he is, how motivated he is to get that prize to be in the top 20. He got it guys, literally night before the contest ended. What did that gave us guys? Not only the status that we were, you know, making it big and right.

Making all that amazing things happen. I mean, he made it to Atlanta event already in the top 30 or 40 of the company where he got on stage with a big check and he didn't even know actually he, they called him up and he was really shocked. But in San Diego, this time at San Diego, well, not this time, but in September of 2020. Yeah.

Yeah. It transformed my life because like I said, I did not know what to expect. I didn't know who we're going to meet. I don't know what kind of, what type of people, what do they are, what they feel like, nothing.

So we came there and, um, the very first night he said, have a very, very big surprise for you, honey. He always likes to do that on me, even though I'm not really much to in surprises, but he said, I have a very big surprise for you. And, uh, what happened next? We went to another hotel by a river or some sort, and we went on a yacht guys for like three hours.

And who was on this yacht? I had no clue. There was Dave and Dave. There was Justin and D there was Tracy, Nicole, Rushkin and Lawrence and top 20 of the company guys.

Like I said, I did not know what that meant until. I started to speak to, to, to them and feel the different energy and different vibe because coming from a corporate background, guys, what do we know for those of you that are working or have worked in the corporate industries, right? What do we know? We come to work, we see each other, Hey, that's fake smile.

You do it. How are you right? Exactly. It really doesn't mean anything until you get to experience.

The expressions with these people that you get to experience and the conversations, right? There's no, there was nothing fake about that. So, and right there and there, I told them, Alex, you know, we came back to hotel room. It was one of the most magnificent, magnificent ways I've celebrated my birthday without even knowing it.

Right. And I said to him, honey, this, this is what I want to do. I'd like to help you in this business. I'd like to do what I can to support you in this business.

Because this is the type of people I want to be surrounding myself with family. Thank you guys. Family is everything to me, guys, whether it's my blood family or my friend's family and power is my family. That is another reason guys that why, no matter any hardships, no matter how many times there were so many mishaps or whatever it was, Alex, I never.

I never quit on this company. We thank you. Thank you guys. And not only that, not only that, the, the things that started to happen after every single event that we went to San Diego, Austin, Texas, every single time Alex produced, Alex showed that he can do this.

And. And also say this, he had a full-time job Monday through Friday. He had to be at work from 7 00 AM, excuse me, from 10 00 AM until 7 00 PM. And it takes one hour to, and from work from where we live.

So he did this after we hours, he built this business. I've supported him 100% as a spouse, as a friend, as however you want to call it. Thank you. Bye.

The other thing. I want to say is this guy. So by attending events, nothing is guaranteed guys. It's not, it doesn't guarantee you're going to get inspired or you get sparked or whatever.

You're going to meet that person. Who's going to give you that information that you need, but what I know, in fact, that happened to me, it only takes one person to inspire you only one. And that exactly what happened to me in San Diego, in Austin, Texas, both of them. Only took one person to inspire me greatly to continue belief in the greater vision of this company of what Dave had offered.

What he have spoken to us, right? So last thing I'm going to say is this guys, and I'm very extremely proud to say that. That's finally after realization that. Alex is a traffic.

all know that right but he was not into ever speaking to people and mingling and twangling like you know connecting that you know doing customer service kind of a thing like nobody's jazzed about that ever so so we we we found our rising super star who came through and actually shared with me just a few days ago who got truly inspired by what i've told them in austin texas i've met michael martin and we've had several different conversations and one of the conversations i've told them you know alex and i work together but you know there are things that he does and he doesn't do and whatever whatnot and i've told him michael we need to build team we need to build team so thank you michael for reminding me of that this was extremely special to me it means tremendous to me as well thank you so from then on it took a little bit of time right right it's everybody goes through a learning curve so did we right so alex did not get this right away and i'll be honest and you know it michael went on to doing uh his weekly hangouts with one person and it was just two of them hanging out and just like hey what's up dude how you doing how's everything right and and it proceeded and it's increased and increased and increased guys so today we would like to do a little bit of a talk about how we're doing this special thing for our team and i would love to bring a team consistency to our team every single one of you please come up on stage i want you guys to experience what what does it feel like when we do our weekly few times a week weekly hangouts and every single one of them shows up and being consistent being committed to this business guys because guess what we are here for the long run all right so team consistency and we're going to do this special thing for our team consistency please line up we want to show you guys it only takes two people to start hanging out even one person right even if you don't have anyone it only takes a little bit of effort and desire to do it guys right so was it last week or a week before we actually we are using zoom system right and it's a private way of doing google hangouts not a google hangout but it's a team hangout so we broke we crossed over all over 100 people that showed up to our weekly we maxed out our capacity we maxed out our capacity and we're just getting started michael martin you you're a beast come on guys come on make room make room make room keep coming team consistency so guys when you show your dedication to your team when you show your support i mean even if it's just a verbal support right it comes from here guys it comes from your heart right because you're not just doing this for yourself right you're here to inspire others and but like i said in september of 2012 i if you ask me i would never tell you that like in a million years i'll be doing this right here right now in front of you right yeah guys it feels amazing to have all these family with us here you know it feels just crazy dude love you one two three five guys this is the difference between doing seven core commitments and eight core commitments because until we really started doing the eight core commitment our income was about four hundred thousand dollars or five hundred thousand dollars and then i just went this is the difference between doing all of the core commitments or doing just one or two or three or four or five or six or seven seven this is the biggest difference in your business what's in what's in the products for you guys is exactly what we're doing we're not there's no secrets there's only action steps that you need to do every single day show up to your business just like you're showing up to work right schedule your business don't make excuses do not make excuses because if i made excuse not to go to my first one none of these people will be here you guys realize that right so all of you guys individually have that power to create this but you need to drop the excuses and make this happen because it's not about you it's about thousands of people across the world and all of you guys the teams you are supporting and inspiring because we want our team to get this put a ring on it you know what i'm saying put the ring on it so it feels just just really surreal guys knowing that michael right john jason everyone here right are so supportive of everyone right and we we got our backs you know what i mean we got each other's backs that is another next level guys of being surrounded by the right people at the right time my family starts with one person that was two people just like you had two people right and they were both trying to get the hangouts and then they just multiplied that's right it works guys that's what multiplication looks like guys just start doing it guys tracy walker said exactly what you needed to hear everything is in the products duh give it up for tracy walker dream team so for those that are watching live stream really too bad that you're not here what's gonna be revealed today by chris and dave is gonna be so next level it's crazy never give up on the belief guys never give up on you first and foremost right if you don't believe in you but it only takes one person right to believe in you but it takes a will and a power just a little step forward to that next level of direction where you want to be just think about it visualize it right justin and dia great inspiration right when they came to atlanta right we were just speaking about this not long ago nobody would ever predict that they had so much power in them by being on stage and speaking their life into you guys it only takes a little bit of effort just do it guys don't put self-limitations on yourself challenge you you i said that at the previous one but it's that's truly how i operate my business there's always challenges but you can always push through them you can always push forward that's why we have inner circles that's why we have all of these amazing products if you guys don't have all the products you need to get all of the products if you want to take your paid traffic game to the next level go watch lesson number three and all in library and another thing actually i'm going to give you a little tip that is badass tip what we started to do right after last event guys we actually started not only we were doing two or three times a week weekly hangouts for certain levels of our team right for you know different trainings but what we also michael and john and alex did they created a boot camp guys free boot camp for our team where we go step by step by step by step and we get to hear them as well we get to hear the questions of how to do this right it's not only us talking but right i'm sure team members are asking the questions on how to do this and guys our team is duplicated not not because it's just it's not because we are teaching them but because they're actually doing it so guys let me inspire by saying just do it right everything is in the products well not in that song just do it but just just do it just do it everything is there guys everything's in your hands every baby step you're taking is taking you closer to the goal it does you don't have to do crazy amount of work every single day just take do something every single day that can propel you to the next level in your life so last but not least like i said i want to thank you for being here guys i want to thank team consistency for being so dedicated for being so amazing being so lovable thank you guys thank you guys love you one two three fight thank you guys we love you give it up for anna and alex zubarev