“Yes sir,” I said, and focused on pulling myself together.
He gave me a closer look and said, “Are you a Christian, son?”
Where did that come from? I followed his eyes to the cross I was wearing. “Yes, sir, I am,” I said.
“Well, I’m going to give you a warning. Just this once. But don’t ever drive again if you’ve been drinking. You understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes sir.”
“Now you call a friend to come drive you home. Got it?”
“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”
I began to think about how my parents would react if I got a DUI. I’d somehow dodged a bullet. As I sat down behind the wheel and watched the officer drive away, I told myself it was time to clean up my act. Basketball was gone—good riddance—but I needed to cut out the foolishness. This wasn’t the way I’d been raised.
I gathered my resolve and walked the straight path—for a whole day or two. Then, as always, my newfound determination faded, like me trying to run a fast break. I was morally out of shape, and I was more interested in trying on identities: jock, Christian rock star, magician, life of the party, whatever anyone was looking for.
And now, a new one: I was trying on the mask of the business whiz—the ultimate symbol of adulthood.
I was invited by my roommate to attend a PBR—Public Business Reception—for a company called American Communications Network. The line the spokesman gave me would be one I would perfect: “If the money were right and it fit into your time schedule, would you be open to looking at a serious business opportunity?” Who could say no to that?
This was a multi-level marketing organization, a telecommunications company looking for young people who were energetic, aggressive, and needed money. That was me. So Dad and I attended the meeting and listened to their pitch. “You can sell long distance service,” the spokesman said. “We give you the opportunity to build your own business and make thousands of dollars while working part-time. The only limit to your success is in the time and passion you bring to it. We have young adults buying new cars, touring Europe, or financing grad school.”
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.
