Recovered Read online

  I looked at Dad. I no longer had a scholarship paid for by the athletic department, and I needed some way to fund tuition and books, not to mention providing spending money. All ACN wanted was a $500 registration fee, but I didn’t have it. Dad said, “If I put up the money, that’s my part of the deal. Your part is to work my contacts the way they describe it. Are you willing to do that?”

  “I’m in!” And I was—I was all in.

  I worked the phones zealously. It turned out I had a knack for sales. The idea of ACN was to sell the product first, then the company itself. You looked for promising phone users and converted them to sellers like yourself. Then they’d be part of your “downline,” and you’d pick up a commission on all their sales. In turn, they’d build their own downlines.

  I lived on the telephone, especially during the summer when I would sell cars by day and work ACN by night. As competitive as I was, this was the kind of arrangement that motivated me. Network marketing has a powerful attraction because of the idea of exponential growth.

  The company set out benchmarks to shoot for, “levels” to climb. I hit the first one in seven days, breaking the record in New Orleans for speed in getting to the first position. Then I made Field Coordinator, the next rung on the ladder, within a few months. There were pats on the back, congratulations from those on my up-line—it was intoxicating.

  I figured my fortune was made. I was crunching the numbers and concluding I’d be a millionaire by the age of twenty-two. I was the “Wonder Boy,” as they called me, attending motivational conferences to share my success story. I met all the greats back then—Tony Robbins, Les Brown, and Zig Ziglar. Basketball was old news; I was the next tycoon, with one hundred fifty people in my downline.

  This quick success brought me to the attention of a similar business: LocalNet. I saw immediately it was ACN on steroids. This was 1997, the Internet was still fairly new, and people were dialing up on slow modems. Browsing was all about text and still images, but people could guess what the future held for cyberspace. LocalNet promised it had purchased the technology to quickly transport high-quality video across regular copper lines. It had to be legit, because the son of a celebrated media tycoon was fronting this operation.

  My upline business partners and I were invited to Atlanta to witness the technology first hand.

  “Think about this,” the pitchman said. “Video conferencing is on its way—business meetings between New York executives and their LA clients in real time, face-to-face, over the Net. Or what about millions of people watching first-run movies at home—online? Can you imagine the demand when these things are offered? Well, we’re going to offer them. We’ve acquired the tech!”

  The punch line was, “Think about getting in on the ground floor of something like that. How vast will your downline be? Think of the residual income!”

  He was describing Skype and Netflix before they emerged. We got all the information in Atlanta at a convention center, where roughly two thousand of us salivated over a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to seize the coming market by the jugular.

  The requirement was to walk away from our current business. Dad was not as willing as I was to start over, but he agreed. We poured everything into LocalNet. The lure of massive wealth is incredibly seductive. I was dropping in on Ferrari salesrooms, sizing up my next ride. Maybe I’d buy a Ferrari and a Lamborghini. At twenty-one, I was a master of the universe—at least my own.

  Sure enough, for a year and a half, the business grew like wildfire on the incredible picture we painted for customers, a picture of an Internet video era that was yet to arrive. It was like a fresh lemonade stand in the Sahara. Who wouldn’t put their money down? The actual capability hadn’t caught up to the sales pitch yet, but that made it all the more enticing. It was always just about to hit the market—don’t delay, act today! The longer it took for the steak, the more sizzle we had to sell.

  More than a thousand people were in my downline—some as customers, many building their own businesses. One of them was Pastor Celoria, the father of some friends of mine at Carey, who was interested in helping his church earn passive income to eliminate debt.

  I told him, “Imagine what you can do for your church—and with your church—through an opportunity like this, Pastor. It’s perfect for someone like you.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It sounds like quite an opportunity, something that might really help us out. But you have to understand—I’m speaking for all our people, my whole congregation. They trust me. If I put up their money, this must work. I can’t go back to them and tell them their money’s gone with nothing to show for it. I need your word that you and your company are trustworthy.”

  “Absolutely, Pastor Celoria,” I smiled, without hesitating. “You have my word. All our people are gaining wealth already. You’ll never regret it. Having this kind of financial freedom will change your life and the lives of everyone in your church.”

  Pastor Celoria shook my hand, and he bought into the organization with his church—500 customers and consultants in his downline, in no time. It was a huge boost to my business.

  By 1998 I had graduated from Carey and was working the business full-time. I was building wealth every day. That’s when a call came in from LocalNet’s central office. “Listen, head’s up: we’re no longer in business,” said the service rep on the other end.

  “What are you talking about? We can’t be ‘no longer in business’! We’re selling the product right and left.”

  “Well, we’ve run into some legal issues. You need to advise your downline they won’t be getting paid from here on out.”

  How could that be? We all frantically called each other and compared notes. It turned out that LocalNet was a pyramid scheme, there was no video technology to fill our promises, and the company had gone under. Lawsuits abounded. And not only were we not going to be paid for our sales—the people beneath us weren’t going to be paid, either. All those promises, all that “in on the ground floor” adrenalin, had drained away in an instant.

  We found out later that when the tech was originally demonstrated in Atlanta, video was impressively transmitted from one computer to another—except that there was no modem involved. The first computer was simply linked to the second one through a cable. Apparently it was a desperate “fake it ’til we make it” ploy, except they didn’t ever make it.

  We were one of a thousand such stories. This was late in 1998, the front end of the famous “dot-com bubble” that happened over the next year, when all the frantic Internet investments imploded and threw the country into a recession.

  So there I was. Phone calls to my downline, with explanations and apologies, were difficult to make, but I could handle them, one by one.

  All except the call to Pastor Celoria.

  I couldn’t face this man of God. I had looked into his eyes and asked for his trust, and he had given it to me. I wasn’t responsible for the company’s failure, but I was the face of the company to him. In an act of cowardice, I got rid of my cell phone, changed my number, covered my tracks, and moved on. Or made the attempt.

  I discovered the impact of moral guilt. Now I carried a little weight on my heart wherever I went. I would think of Pastor Celoria often, wondering about the impact of the loss on his congregation. How would he have expressed his anger to me? It chilled me in the depths of my conscience.

  A few days earlier, I’d had the world by both hands. I was on my way to becoming extravagantly wealthy and influential. Just like that, I was out of work and out of money and not even vaguely interested in another traditional business venture, especially with the American economy tanking.

  I went into a state of depression, although I didn’t know it at the time. What I also didn’t know was that I would cross Pastor Celoria’s path again one day, with consequences that would have been impossible for me to imagine.

  God plants a few
surprises along our trails. He was already at work in a number of ways, but I couldn’t have seen it even if I’d had any semblance of spiritual wisdom.

  For me, it felt like walking off the basketball court in anger. Or out of the honors program at Holy Cross. Or flailing at a weak attempt to “be Christian.”

  Another role that had shined, only to flame out in the end.

  Chapter 5

  A Man Walks into a Bar . . .

  Has this ever happened to you? Suddenly you’re twenty-something, school is behind you—and you have no idea what happens next.

  Up to now, the road was well-marked. But now you’re supposed to arrive at your destination: adulthood. An enjoyable career. Family and everything that entails. But here you are, standing at a crossroad that splinters off into a thousand paths.

  Your friends move on with life. Some get married, others move away. Buddies are too busy to hang out, trying to build a career. You’re back at home.

  Robert Frost once said that home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. Mom and Dad are more than happy to see you; you’ll always have a home under their roof. Still, they’re kind of wondering what’s next for you.

  Mom and Dad knew quite well I already had some business experience, including an epic business catastrophe on my résumé. I’d built a huge downline that was definitely down on me. I was burned out on that rat race. I told myself, “I have no business doing business.”

  For lack of anything better to do, I got involved in Brazilian jiujitsu (BJJ) at a gym in Metairie, Louisiana. If it was true I had no money and no clue where I was heading, I did carry a two hundred eighty-five-pound body, one filled with nervous energy, restlessness, and frustration. The gym was a good place to work all that stuff out of my system.

  Let me put it this way—I was wrestling with my future and decided my future was wrestling. At least for the time being.

  Pulling people down to the mat and grappling with them was surprisingly satisfying. BJJ is designed to help the smaller guy leverage his resources to hold up against a larger attacker. In most of our matches, of course, I was the larger attacker, but I enjoyed the precision and skill of martial arts, and, as with every other talent, I went after it with passion and a determination to excel.

  My teacher had trained with the Gracie family. Carlos and Hélio Gracie, the founders of BJJ, adapted the techniques of judo, developed them into something new, and trained their family and followers, such as my teacher. It was all about taking the fight down to ground level, which in some ways felt like the story of my life. I was grappling with something, that’s for sure.

  I aspired to be in the UFC, the Ultimate Fighting Championship of mixed martial arts. In those days, the late nineties, the UFC was only five years old and a far smaller operation than it is today. There were “War of the Worlds” international competitions where you might see a Brazilian jiujitsu master take on someone from the world of kickboxing or karate, along with mixed techniques from other fighting disciplines. In time, its popularity exploded and led to big TV contracts, but when I was involved, none of us had health insurance. Your fight payout wasn’t enough to pay your medical bills after the fight. I never fought professionally, only matches in the dojo with guys my size training for fights.

  So one Saturday night I was at Tony Angelo’s with my parents, trying to figure out what came next for me. The answer was Gene.

  He was a man who walked into the restaurant, sized me up, and introduced himself. Gene said, “You’re a big guy, and I’m guessing you know how to handle yourself. I don’t know what you do for a living, but I have an idea that might be worthwhile for both of us.”

  I said, “Tell me more.”

  “Robby, you ever been uptown during Mardi Gras?”

  I laughed. “Always.”

  “Well, if you don’t have a problem throwing guys out of a bar for causing problems, then you may be the man I’m looking for. I need a head bouncer for my nightclub.”

  He described the job, the hours, and the pay, and all I could say was, “A job where I’m paid to fight? I’m in.”

  My life at the time was all about two things: hanging around bars and fighting. Now a guy walks up and says he wants to pay me for doing what I’m already doing. This was the start of the wildest season of my life, which is saying something.

  Gene didn’t want me to be a bouncer; he wanted me to hire a few other guys to build an army of head-crackers. I went back to the dojo where I trained and asked my biggest, craziest buddies whether they wanted to make enough money to pay their doctor bills and actually have a little extra—guys like Duane, who was bald with a full goatee and a striking resemblance to Stone Cold Steve Austin.

  Lots of nights could be crazy, but one particular night things were five steps beyond crazy. Maybe it was a full moon. I don’t remember that, but I do know we needed reinforcements.

  One brawl was going on in the bar, and another in the parking lot. My earphone was going crazy. I was told to come to the bar, where these two guys were bothering a couple of young women and wouldn’t stop. I brought Duane with me to ask the guys to leave. They refused, so we grabbed them and pushed them along to the door.

  But these troublemakers wouldn’t give up. Now they were pounding on the outside of the door, shouting, still making a scene. We realized they weren’t leaving on their own accord. They needed an escort to the parking lot to get them off our premises.

  We hauled them out to the lot, with them kicking and screaming and cursing at us. After they were dumped at their car and warned one last time to leave and not come back, one of them suddenly pulled a nine-millimeter pistol from under the driver’s seat. “Now tell me what to do! Go ahead, say it one more time!”

  The guy was drunk, raging, and I realized with great clarity that my whole life, my whole story could end right here, in a puddle of blood and stupidity.

  I saw the gun before Duane did, and I pulled him back. Time screeched to a halt for a moment, a standoff—and then all four of us heard the beautiful music of a police siren.

  The police had been called, and they arrived with impeccable timing. The two trouble-makers ditched the gun and took off on foot with the police in hot pursuit. Duane and I just looked at each other and resumed breathing.

  The two guys were actually caught, and all’s well that ends well.

  Sort of.

  I kept thinking back to the shimmer of that pistol in the starlight, and thought, What if? This was a wake-up call. I lucked out this time, but this moment could come around again. I had no desire to die in a bar parking lot.

  I was rooming with Gene, my boss, by this time, and I told him I was a little spooked by the whole incident. I wanted to stay in the bar business, but maybe tone down the rough stuff a few notches. Gene knew me pretty well by this time. He understood I had people skills as well as toughness, and he said, “How’d you like to tend bar?”

  “Seriously? You’d let me do that?”

  “Why not? You learn to mix the drinks, be friendly with the clientele, keep things lively so they keep ordering—you’d be good at it.”

  In the nineties, everybody wanted to be like Tom Cruise’s character in Cocktail, the rock star of the bar with worshipful customers all around him. I’d been paid to fight for a while; now I was going to be a paid class clown, and still in a place I associated with good times. Not bad.

  We had a setup like the one in the Cheers TV show, with a central bar, a dance area to the side, and a back bar area. But naturally, I was given the back bar, where nobody went. They passed by on their way to the bathrooms. It was pretty dull, actually, not to mention how poor the tips were. After a couple of weeks I began to beg for my shot at the main bar. “You know I can handle it,” I said.

  I’d actually gotten a little bit of experience as a radio DJ during college. A buddy of mine had a show, and h
e let me sit in and learn how he selected songs, spliced and edited bits of audio tape together, connected with the listeners, and that kind of thing. One night when a guy called in sick, I even got to be the main guy. I loved it. Now, as a would-be star bartender, I had an idea for a kind of bar-DJ mash-up, where I could be a little more of an entertainer, setting myself apart.

  I had a friend named Matt, and we had great chemistry in doing comedy. Gene took it under consideration and finally said, “Matt, I’m going to let you have your own night of the week to do anything you want—you two guys. Test the boundaries. See what works and doesn’t work. Go ahead and have some fun.”

  “Great! I’m ready now—which night am I on?”

  “Sunday.”

  “Sunday? Is the bar even open on Sundays?”

  He knew that nobody goes to a bar on Sunday night—well, except maybe the really hard-core drinkers, and that wasn’t the crowd I was going after. I needed the party atmosphere that comes with a weekend, or almost any night other than Sunday. But he was willing to open on a normally dead evening and see what we could do.

  On our first Sunday night, Matt and I did our thing, then split a buck-twenty-five in tips at closing time. It was that grim; nobody showed up. A week later, it was pretty much the same scene—a few really somber drinkers, and our act was going nowhere.

  On the third Sunday, in a moment of inspiration, we saw a few guys over at the pool table. I grabbed the mic and began to announce the shots as if we were on ESPN.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, welcome to the Green and Red Eight-Ball Championship Match. I’m your host, Robby Gallaty. With me is Matt Jones.”

  Matt jumped right in with me. “Guy with the cap is chalking up, has his eyes on that three! Do you think—”

  “No way! No way, Matt. Three’s a sucker shot. He’s gotta cut that five into the side first!”

  “He’s doing it! I can’t believe this! He’s aiming at the three! No pressure at all, guy with the cap!”