“Welcome aboard ladies and gentlemen. Please remain seated with your seatbelt fastened in case we encounter any turbulence along the way…”
Seventeen years ago I met my wife. Destiny brought us together when I was in the midst of one of the worst professional times of my life. Failure had hit me hard and I lost everything. I was in Miami and when I tell you I lost everything, I mean everything.
I was flying through some pretty turbulent times in life. I spent a year sleeping on the floor of someone’s apartment who charged me half the rent. I slept on a quilt that was spread out on a hardwood floor in the living room. I had taken a chance and it didn’t turn out. I left behind Mexico City where I had my own TV show with Televisa, I declined a position at Coca-Cola Internacional and I left behind many clients who I worked really hard for. But all this was now part of my past.
It look 6 months in Miami to lose it all. I simply miscalculated the coasts and I overestimated the market. Everything was more expensive and would take more time than I had thought and so I ran out of steam much sooner than I expected. Faced with this situation I realized I had to do work I never expected I would have to do. Basically, I did whatever I could just to earn a few bucks. I did telemarketing where I had to make at least 100 calls a day to random numbers from the phone book to sell gym memberships to a gym that wasn’t even built yet. It was probably one of the most ungrateful jobs I’ve ever had and I did it along with other things like selling newspapers and cleaning tables as a waiter in Miami Beach at a restaurant called Cafe Tabac.
How had I gotten to this point? How did I go from having my own TV show and giving conferences and seminars to thousands of people in Latin America to cleaning tables?
There were times during this period when I didn’t even earn enough to eat. My only possessions were the blanket I slept on, my old laptop, and a electric toaster oven I learned to prepare really delicious little meals with.
I remember that I spent my free time exercising and reading (interestingly enough this was a time I was in the best physical shape I’ve been in, in my life and exercise also played a large role in keeping me centered. But that’s a topic for another blog post).
Since I didn’t have money to buy books, I would go to a small bookstore called Books & Books. This book store had a few tables and also sold coffee. I used to buy the coffee of the day for $0.90 and since you can help yourself to milk I used to make myself a nice little café con leche. I’d find a book in the store and then would just hangout reading. When it was time for me to go, I’d hide the book in some corner of the store and leave. That way when I’d come back the book would still be there. I read around four books that way. I didn’t have TV, internet, movies etc because there wasn’t money for anything else. Work, exercise, exercise, work, and a little bit of reading at Book & Books.
I have fond memories of this time. It was hard, very hard but I have countless anecdotes of things that happened to me when I worked as a waiter in Miami. One of the funniest ones was probably when a restaurant manager and the owners tried to throw me out. He wanted to fire me because, wait for it…are you ready for this? It’s a good one; “Extreme happiness in the workplace”. Nope, it’s not made up. It really happened and they even wrote it down on a formal doc they handed to me. The owners showed me the paper and it said “Too happy for the job”.
Of course I didn’t want to be a waiter or sell newspapers but if it was my moment in life to be a waiter, it was my moment! And I was going to be the best waiter at the restaurant.
I never lost hope or changed my course. I had made a path for myself on my map and I was following it. I had encountered a huge storm with “turbulence”, so to speak, and it was my responsibility to manage the situation. I didn’t know if my ship would sink but I kept rowing all the while with hope and conviction. So if I had to clean tables I was going to do it with a smile on my face and giving my 100%, no less.
Every time I spoke with my mother she asked when I was coming back, she’d say that my work was waiting for me along with my loving home. I never told my mom what I was going through. I could never do that. But she is a mother and she knew perfectly well that something wasn’t right.
I remember the day I told her in a tone that came off more self-assured than what I actually felt, “I’m not going back mom. I came for something and I won’t go until I get it.”
The months went by and the days were long and sometimes I would work a full 8 hours at the restaurant and come home with only 6 or 7 dollars in my pocket. In the U.S., a waiter lives off their tips. I sure had my doubts, and I was scared, Oh yes I was. But I couldn’t stop now. If I gave up now, I’d give up the rest of my life. And just like that, without a suitcase, without anything, nothing in my bank account, I met her. And it began the most fantastic journey of my life. But that is a story for another day.