August 2026 at MAKE Wellness: The Watermelon Sprint and the Summit

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The company I build with hands out homework. Every month MAKE Wellness names a Book of the Month, the whole affiliate community reads it together, and August's pick is The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason, a book about money old enough that the advice has had a century to be tested.

Key Takeaways

What August looks like from the inside

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The product story of the month was a sprint. On August 11, MAKE brought back HYDRATED Watermelon, a limited-run flavor of its hydration formula, and by August 14 the company was posting a last call, expecting the remaining inventory to sell out for good; this run is not being restocked once it is gone. Limited runs only move like that when the standing products have already earned their reorders.

The other date on the calendar is bigger. MAKE Summit 2026 is one month away, an affiliate-exclusive retreat built around training, recognition, and the kind of momentum that is hard to fake over a screen. August's twist is the Summit VIP Experience: from August 1 to 31, affiliates have two different ways to qualify for a VIP upgrade that includes a complimentary hotel night. I have not been to a Summit yet.

The rest of the month is the usual scaffolding, which is exactly what I like about it. The company opened August with a First Look session walking through the month ahead. The MAKE Memories leaderboard toward the next incentive trip, Waikoloa, Hawaii, is still running in the background. There is a F.I.T. Family Challenge with three Hawaii trips and weekly prizes on the line for families that move together. And every Monday night at 6PM Mountain Time there is still a company-wide call anyone on the team can join; the August 17 one is Recognition Night. I am nowhere near the top of any leaderboard. I signed up in May, and my team is still exactly one person. A company that keeps running book clubs, weekly calls, and retreats two years in is a company betting that how its people grow matters as much as what they sell.

The book: The Richest Man in Babylon

MAKE's pick for August goes back further than any business book usually does. The Richest Man in Babylon was written in 1926, and it has stayed in print for a century because the advice inside it never needed an update.

The book is a set of parables, not a manual. Arkad grew up poor in ancient Babylon, a scribe copying laws onto clay tablets for a few coins a day, and by the end of his life he was the richest man in the city. His childhood friends, still poor after the same number of years, ask him how. His answer is almost insultingly simple: he found a part of what he earned that was his to keep, and he kept it, before he paid for anything else.

That single rule, pay yourself first, is the foundation of what Clason calls the Seven Cures for a Lean Purse: start your purse to fattening by keeping at least a tenth of what you earn, control your expenditures so wants do not expand to swallow income, make your gold multiply by putting it to work, guard your treasures from loss, make your home a profitable asset instead of a drain, insure a future income, and increase your ability to earn. None of it is clever. All of it still works.

Strip away the ancient-Babylon setting and the book is about the moments nobody plans: what you spend without noticing, what you keep without being told to, what happens to money when no rule is standing guard over it.

The rule itself is almost too plain to argue with: keep at least a tenth of what comes in, before rent, before groceries, before anything else gets a vote. Most people flip the order, pay everyone else first and see what is left for themselves, which is usually nothing, because spending will always expand to meet whatever is available to spend. Arkad's trick was not earning more. It was deciding, once, that a part of his own income was not available to anyone else, including future him with a good excuse.

Try this version of the lesson this week: pick one thing you get paid for, in money or in time, and set a fixed slice of it aside before you touch the rest, on purpose, before you decide what feels affordable. Not what is left over. First. Do it once and you will notice the same thing Arkad's friends noticed too late: the money you never see is the only money that reliably stays yours.

The part where I invite you

I came into direct selling carrying every stereotype you probably carry now. What I found at MAKE Wellness was closer to a gym membership for building a small business: products people reorder month after month, training on a schedule, a reading list, and a room full of people cheering for effort. I wrote about how this industry changed if you want the longer version.

If any of this pulls at you, two doors. Try the products as a customer, the standing discount still applies. Or, if the building side is what caught your attention, here is how I work with people. Most affiliates in direct selling earn modest or no income, MAKE itself guarantees nobody an income, and the only good reason to start is that you already love the product and want to own a piece of what you spend. The book club is free either way.