My Story: How I Finally Found a Way to Build a Life Around My Family, Not Around A Job
How a shy, hard-of-hearing kid spent 30+ years trying to make network marketing work and what I finally discovered.
We don't get to choose our cards in life. We learn to play the hand we're dealt and still find a way to win, because with God, all things are possible.
I'm from Rocky Mount, North Carolina, about sixty miles east of Raleigh and three hours from Atlantic Beach.
In 1986, I graduated from Rocky Mount Senior High. I played football, worked on the newspaper staff, and stayed busy in other activities. But for the most part, I was an average, everyday kid still figuring things out.
My father had a hard start in life. He spent three years in a Nazi concentration camp, five years in a harsh orphanage after coming to America, and later served in the Army. He didn't tolerate excuses and didn't put up with any mess. Our house could feel tense at times, and as kids we walked on eggshells so we wouldn't set him off.
I didn't understand his story until after he died, because he never talked about it. But looking back, I can see that the environment I grew up in shaped a lot of how I think today.
Off to College
This is my college ID. My face is sunburned from football practice.
After high school, I had no clear idea what I wanted to do. I figured college might help me figure it out and maybe I could keep playing football. So I headed six hours away to Lees-McRae College, a small school in the mountains of North Carolina.
Fall camp was one of the toughest things I've ever done. No students were on campus yet, just the players, coaches, and support staff. For a week before the semester began, we practiced four times a day.
Players began quitting in the middle of the night, packing up and leaving without saying a word. The older guys called it "taking the Night Train." I didn't realize it at the time, but the coaches were weeding out the weak without ever having to cut anyone.
As the semester went on and the weather changed, we ended up practicing in the snow. It was a grind, but it toughened me. And it wasn't rinky-dink football, either. The Bobcats went on to win the JUCO national championship that year.
I was really homesick that first semester, but football and classwork kept me busy. By Christmas break I realized I missed school more than home, and that feeling never returned.
After two years, I grew tired of the cold and snow and decided to transfer to East Carolina University. I loved the big-campus energy – 28,000 students – and those years were some of the best of my life.
I still didn't know what I wanted to do. I declared a Business major because I wanted to make a lot of money and avoid the financial stress I'd grown up with.
A Rude Awakening
As a Business major, I quickly discovered I was behind the times.
Several professors required assignments in the computer lab, and I had never used a computer before.
One time, I went to the lab, sat down and realized I didn't even know how to turn the thing on.
Too embarrassed to ask for help, I sat there for thirty minutes pretending to look busy. Then I got up, walked out, and dropped the class.
It wasn't funny at the time, but now I can laugh at myself.
Eventually, I switched my major to Psychology, still searching for direction.
I went through the motions, hoping for answers from advisors and pastors, but left every meeting still uncertain. One thing I knew for sure: I didn't want to live with the same financial stress my parents did.
My father owned Carolina Cleaning & Remodeling out of our garage. He used an old Ford pickup to haul tools to job sites, while my mom kept the books and helped with cleaning, painting, and wallpapering. My brother and I worked for him too, keeping food on the table and the lights on.
Sports were my world. When I wasn't playing football, I was on a basketball court somewhere, often the only white guy there, wanting to compete and loving the game.
That's me on the left, after a weightlifting workout.
Born with a Hearing Loss
As a toddler, my mother noticed I didn't respond well when she talked to me. After years of testing, specialists discovered I had a profound hearing loss. By second grade, I wore a behind-the-ear hearing aid.
As a preschooler, I had a slight speech impediment. When I said words with "R," they sounded like "W." Kids teased me: "Hey Paul, you waskerley wabbit!"
I became painfully aware that I was different. I grew shy and socially awkward, often hiding behind longer hair to cover my hearing aid. Still, I tried to fit in through sports and a small circle of friends.
Hyperhidrosis
Adding to my challenges, I had a condition called hyperhidrosis, which is excessive sweating on my hands, underarms, and feet. It absolutely dominated my life. I changed shirts and socks constantly, avoided handshakes, and dreaded summer. For years, while lying in bed at night, I begged God to heal me.
In 1999, after marrying and moving to Conway, Arkansas, I researched my condition online. I finally had an answer! I saw a specialist in Little Rock, had surgery, and months later felt like a new, normal person.
During the hot summer months, my feet still sweat a little, but I no longer live in constant embarrassment. I'm extremely thankful. Thank you, Lord!
Our wedding day. Paul and Laura, November 23, 1999.
Introduced to "The Business"
After transferring to East Carolina, I joined a downtown gym and got to know the owner. One day, I saw him cleaning his mirrors with an Amway spray bottle.
Years earlier, my parents had been involved with Amway. I remembered their excited optimism and big dreams. My mother would cut pictures out of magazines - nice homes, cars, vacations - and put them on the refrigerator. I decided that's what I wanted too.
Getting involved with Amway was both one of the best and hardest things that ever happened to me.
I stepped way outside my comfort zone. I learned how to talk to people, speak in front of a room, and keep going when nothing seemed to work. I went to the big rallies, arenas packed with twenty thousand people, speakers like Bill Britt and bands like The Goads. I'd get home at two or three in the morning, exhausted but convinced The Dream was real.
But I also spent time, money, and energy I didn't really have. I was single, no wife, no kids, no responsibilities. Whatever money I made went into self-help books, cassette tapes, and motivational functions.
On Sunday nights, my sponsor and I would sit at his kitchen table making prospecting calls. Remember, I can hardly hear. On the phone, I can't read lips. He'd dial, then grin and hand me the receiver: "Paul, you take this one." I'd stand up, walk out of the room, and refuse the call. That was my reality.
Back then we used phone scripts I didn't like and didn't feel honest using. If someone asked, "Is this Amway?" we were taught not to answer directly. We were taught to respond with something like, "Trying to explain it over the phone is like trying to describe a haircut. You really have to see it in person." Inside, that never sat right with me.
In 1999, the company launched a sister brand called Quixtar, a rebranding of Amway for the internet age. Eventually, through research online, I learned the truth: many top earners made most of their money not from products and recruiting, but from selling motivational tools and live events. That felt wrong to me. I couldn't, in good conscience, build a business that way.
I walked away, disappointed but wiser. I always knew network marketing worked. I simply had to figure out how to make network marketing work for me.
Finding AIM (Through a Friend)
While all this was happening, something else was quietly unfolding in the background.
My mother had a friend in Rocky Mount named Janice Gravely. By all rights, she should not have lived as long as she did. She was dealing with multiple age-related health problems. A friend introduced her to concentrated nutrition and a green barley product that later became known as BarleyLife.
Little by little, her health turned around. My mom started ordering products from her. Sometimes she'd hand me some cash and say, "Paul, go over to Mrs. Gravely's house and pick up my order."
That's how I met Mrs. Gravely, not at a business meeting, but at her home, simply picking up nutritional supplements for my mom.
Janice Gravely
By the time she was seventy-five, her health had declined so much that her family considered hiring a full-time nurse. But after changing her diet and adding green barley and other concentrated nutrition, she regained strength and independence. She went on to live to age ninety-nine.
Janice loved the products and believed in them deeply. She built a business almost by accident – simply inviting friends to her living room to hear how she had turned her health around. She was wealthy; she didn't need the extra check. She used most of her earnings to buy more product and give it to family members.
I didn't really "join a company." I joined Mrs. Gravely. I joined her belief. Over time I began using the same products myself. It was a gradual thing, little by little.
Mrs. Gravely and me
Eventually, I became an AIM Member myself. But unlike Mrs. Gravely, I didn't have a big social circle, money in the bank, or a living room full of friends I could invite over. I had a profound hearing loss, an introverted personality, and years of frustration from a business model that told me to "just talk to more people" and "fake it till you make it."
I knew the products were good. I knew network marketing could work. But no one could show me a way to do it that fit me.
Thirty Years of Figuring It Out
It took me over thirty years to figure all of this out and a long time to figure me out. To overcome my past. To toughen up without turning hard.
I didn't have a sponsor who could mentor me in marketing. The woman who enrolled me, Mrs. Gravely, was in her late seventies, not tech-savvy, and honestly didn't need the money. Most people I met in the company either didn't know how they'd built it or couldn't explain it in a way I could duplicate.
So I went to school on my own.
I bought books, audios, and courses. I spent thousands of dollars and thousands of hours studying, not knowing if any of it would ever come together. I studied people like Don Failla and his "Own Your Life" system, which finally gave me a simple picture of time, money, and health. Once I understood time leveraging and compounding, I knew I could never again be satisfied trading time for money.
I also studied approaches to selling that were the opposite of hype and pressure. I learned that:
- People buy in their own time and for their own reasons.
- Trying to convince people creates resistance.
- The right people are those who already want what you offer and are ready to act now.
- Your job is not to "get everyone interested," but to quickly and politely disqualify the wrong people and find the few who are a genuine fit.
I stopped seeing "No" as rejection and started seeing it as a simple values mismatch. No drama. No begging. No chasing.
I also learned to speak from my own values instead of pitching features:
- Why health matters to me.
- Why time with my family matters to me.
- Why I refuse to build a business that relies on hype, manipulation, or half-truths.
Instead of assuming I knew what others wanted, I began saying, in effect:
"Here's what I care about. Here's what I've found that helps me. I don't know if this is for you, but I wonder if you know anyone who might like to know about this."
That simple shift – from convincing to discovering, from hunting to sorting, from pressure to permission – changed everything in how I think about this business.
Becoming a Dad Changed My "Why"
Then my son was born.
At the time, I had a lawn-care business in Conway, Arkansas. I did honest work, made decent money, and came home tired and grass-stained. I'm grateful for that time in my life, but I knew I didn't want to be away from my son all day, every day.
Working hard, doing what needed to be done.
I eventually sold the lawn-care business. I drove a school bus, which left most of the day free, and I spent a lot of time with my infant son. A few years later, we decided to homeschool him. It was one of the best decisions we ever made.
Watching him grow up in front of me – not in the late evenings and weekends – cemented something deep within me:
I'm not willing to trade my kid's childhood for a career title, a boss's approval, or someone else's schedule.
That's why my heart goes out to the mom or dad who lies in bed at night thinking, "My kids are growing up without me." I understand that ache. It's why I care so much about building income that doesn't depend entirely on hours punched on somebody else's clock.
How I Work Now (No Hype, No Games)
Today, I'm not a network marketing "superstar" with a giant downline story to brag about. In many ways, I'm just getting started too, much like you. I'm a dad, a husband, and a man with a profound hearing loss and a quiet personality, who spent three decades figuring out what doesn't work and what finally does.
Here's what I believe now:
- Life has toughened me, but it hasn't broken me.
- Network marketing works. The problem is how it's usually taught.
- You don't need hype. You need honesty, tools, and a simple, repeatable process.
- Most people are not your prospects. That's okay. You're looking for a small group whose values match yours.
- "No" is not personal. It's simply feedback. You quickly accept it and move on.
- Your story and your values are your greatest assets. They quietly attract the right people and filter out the wrong ones.
I've discovered a way to make network marketing work for regular people – especially introverts, people who hate pressure, and moms and dads who want more time with their kids without pretending to be someone they're not.
It's simple:
- A short message on a hand out card.
- A quiet landing page that tells the truth.
- A book that explains how this profession really works.
- Then, and only then, an introduction to the company, the products, and the business.
No chasing. No cornering friends. No tricky invitations. Simply sorting through people, using tools, and letting those who are ready right now raise their hand.
Why I'm Sharing This With You
It took me a long time to figure myself out. A long time to let go of needing approval. A long time to realize the cavalry isn't coming – you have to do this yourself, with God's help and the people He puts in your path.
I'm not interested in playing the victim. Life hit hard in a lot of ways – hearing loss, health issues, money pressure, business disappointments, and a home that didn't feel especially warm – but I'm still here. I'm still standing. And I'm a better thinker, better husband, better dad, and better mentor because of it.
I don't lead with hype. I lead with reality. With numbers. With tools. With a system someone like me – introvert, analytical, hard-of-hearing – can actually do and duplicate.
So if you're a mom or dad who feels stuck, who senses your kids are growing up without you... if you're an introvert who hates the idea of pitching people but loves the idea of owning your time, your health, and your life... then maybe my story will help you see that this path isn't just for the loudest person in the room.
"Success in life comes not from holding a good hand, but from playing a poor hand well."
That's what I've been learning to do. Not perfectly. Not quickly. But steadily. One decision at a time.
Life toughened me, but it didn't break me. It forced me to find a way to build a business that fits who I am and that regular people can duplicate without pretending or performing.
If something in my story resonates with you, and you'd like to quietly explore what I'm doing now, you're welcome to reach out to me.