Everything Has a Price

Recently, a convicted sex-offender won $10 Million in the Massachusetts Lottery. A few weeks before that, a deadbeat dad won another jackpot. It often seems that the people who win the lottery are the least deserving, creepiest folks around…right out of Central Casting. In truth, not all lottery winners are such caricatures. Some even have teeth. Others are wonderful, hard-working people. But, the media tends not to focus on the ham and egg winners, the seemingly normal folks who win. Normal is so…well, normal. Normal doesn't sell.

And, then there's me.

No, I'm not a lottery winner. But, for seven years I worked in a company that bought and sold lottery annuities. It's a legal but morally grey industry known as the "lump sum business." Your best customer is a lottery winner in bad financial shape, desperate to get his hands on some cash. It's a sad place to make a very lucrative living. For many of my years in the industry, I held the title of Senior Vice President of Sales. Then, the bottom fell out. In fact, I was fired. I received a severance package, a hand shake, and that was that. For the first time in nearly a decade, I wasn't in charge, I wasn't managing people, I wasn't rallying the troops to hit the monthly sales goals. I wasn't expected or needed anywhere. I was free to do whatever I wanted.

I was scared to death.

Instead of dusting myself off, updating my resume, and going out to look for another job—I jumped off a much bigger cliff: I wrote a book about the lottery business.

You know that show on the Discovery Channel called Dirty Jobs where the host is normally found knee deep in pig shit or inseminating a horse? Well, whatever he's done for a living has nothing on the lottery lump sum industry. Money for Nothing is about the turbulent decade I spent easing gamblers out of their money by day, and gambling my own money away by night. It's about the reality of working and thriving in an industry based upon selling money to desperate gamblers. And finally, it explores the reality that before you know it "just a job" becomes what's defined you for nearly a decade. It's also a funny, wild ride.

The company I used to work for has survived just fine without me. They don't miss me, and there's surely no love lost for me now that I wrote this book. Those who work in the shadows never like a bright light shined in their face. Spending the past year dealing with their legal threats pertaining to the publication of my book are proof of that. Good times….

The lottery business was my dysfunctional home, a place in which I excelled and belonged for many moons. I wrote a candid book about my experience in this unique part of the business world. Still, I purposely left out details, numbers, and names in order to comply with the many legal obligations I had to the company. Some have said that the book is the lesser for it. I can't argue with them. But in the end, the intent of the book was not to tell everything there is to know about this industry. It's a memoir about my time in the business, not the business itself. Some things are best left unsaid.

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