After about a month, Lou was still bleeding, but he had started to regain a bit of strength.
He was taking liquid iron supplements, and we found a fitness park a few blocks away from our condo. Every morning, we’d walk to the fitness park and do a few laps. There were little stations for doing pull-ups, dips, and sit-ups.
At first, one lap nearly totaled Lou; but after a full month, he was up to three or four laps each day. He was still not feeling his best, but exercise is such a game-changer. It lifted Lou’s spirits to have that healthy kick of endorphins every day.
The fact is, Lou really needed a way to lift his spirits because his job was clearly not inspiring good feelings. As Lou suspected, Hans wasn’t happy to have him on board. Hans was always nice on the surface, but he had a very strong, passive-aggressive style of working with Lou.
Looking back, I think that Steve hired Lou to be a buffer between him and Hans. Steve only came into the office once a week after Lou joined the executive team, and the rest of the time, Lou was left to fight un-winnable battles with Hans over how things should be done.
But Lou hired a graphic designer from his network of talent to rebrand the company, and he helped Steve isolate a few new products that he thought would revitalize the company, and give the distributors something innovative to sell. But Hans was very resistant to every idea or revision Lou set in motion, and there were days that Lou would come home from work looking completely defeated.
Steve was like some kind of “daddy” to everyone in the company. He’d come in once a week to unwind the drama between the team, and Lou often felt like Hans was tattling on him to undermine his efforts.
It was all very petty.
To be fair, let me just say this: I’m sure it wasn’t one thing or one person who was completely at fault for how things were going at the company. Lou was physically depleted, and the health challenges he had just experienced were enough to take down a giant. And, I can’t dismiss how the years of trying to regain our financial footing were taking a toll on Lou and me spiritually and emotionally as well. I think we both started to let doubt seep into our self-talk, and we began to let people steal our voices — because maybe we couldn’t hear our own words anymore either…
But no matter how we got there, it was clear that Hans and Lou were not a match made in heaven.
Hans was in charge of the company financials, and I remember Lou was always so worried that Hans was going to renege on Lou’s compensation package. Lou was still awaiting his formal contract, and that was a huge problem for us. Lou would repeatedly pressure Steve and Hans to formalize their agreement, but there were always weird excuses that kept that from happening.
I personally believe that the contract delays were a stalling tactic by Hans — because he would eventually pay Lou, but there would often a big withholding or two that Hans would justify to Lou in some bizarre way. But without a contract, Hans had us by the short hairs. And, there were also changes to the agreement Steve made with Lou for our car allowance.
Steve had a “friend” who owed him money, and this “friend” owned an independent car rental company at the Ft. Lauderdale airport. So Steve arranged for Lou to go to Ft. Lauderdale every week to get a different rental car. The cars were in various states of repair, but they were mostly OK.
But changing cars every week was such a hassle.
Lou left our garage opener clipped to the visor more than once, and we lost at least two elevator FOBs in the cars when we switched things up. But the relationship between Steve and this rental car friend always made me suspicious.
So many things about my life in Miami felt shady. Everyone seemed to be leveraged in some way, and that included Lou and me. But I was determined to make things work. So I stepped in and started doing some writing for Lou and Steve.
Hans seemed to like what I contributed, but I often felt like Hans was using me to undermine my husband a little. And even though I sincerely wanted to help Lou, I hated writing for the company. It put so much added pressure on our relationship because I couldn’t find anything authentic about what we were doing, and that made it difficult for Lou when I would start to question everything.
As a result, I always felt defensive and angry about how Lou was asking me to write things. I genuinely felt like I was betraying myself and Lou by writing things that didn’t make sense, and the fact is, I didn’t believe in one word I wrote.
It was a terrible company; yet, I was trying to write about how terrific it was??
But somehow, I’d find a way to contribute content that I hoped would help Lou build up a company that I didn’t believe in, but one that I hoped would keep us afloat. In the meantime, Lou started looking for more products to try to private label and sell through the company.
After our stint as MLM distributors selling wrinkle cream, Lou was certain that the market for anti-aging beauty products was hot, and he was positive the real story was in stem cell-based technologies. So he put the word out to his network of people that he was looking for stem cell skincare lines.
In the meantime, Thanksgiving and Christmas came and went, and Santa never brought Lou a formal contract with his company.
