“Think you had a long, hard week? At least you didn't burn your hair off. Tori Locklear, a Florida middle school student, suffered an unfortunate fate while she was filming a beauty tutorial for YouTube. The video is entitled "Burning My Hair Off -ORIGINAL VIDEO- (Hair Tutorial Gone Wrong)," a spoiler of a title if we ever heard one. Locklear is using a hot curling iron when suddenly her hair simply... comes off. The reaction on her face is priceless. "Oh my God..." she whispers in disbelief, ”You're kidding me." [The Huffington Post – 02/22/2013]
Hardly big news, right? Wrong. When my daughter first told me about this video, I wondered why this young Florida teen would ever post what, for her, must have been a very embarrassing event. Well, I wondered that for half a minute, and then I looked up and confirmed my suspicions. Within four days of her initial YouTube post (which you can view here: http://bit.ly/WpeMMJ) she had over 14 Million views (views are now double that at almost 28 million) and over 33,000 comments (including some from well-known celebrities … well, well-known if you’re 13 I guess). Comments have also now doubled to 65,000. She went on to create a facebook page with nearly 6,000 likes (http://on.fb.me/XA6jJU), has a buzzing Chat Room, was interviewed on The Today Show, RightThisMinute.com, and appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
Quite a way to get your five minutes of fame, but I predict this young girl will go on to engineer her curling iron mishap into far more than fleeting fame. In this day and age, this is how stars are born. If you doubt that, check out the “Teatime with Sophia Grace and Rosie” videos on YouTube, swept up in much the same way by Ellen DeGeneres, leading to two little girls (8 and 5 year old cousins) not only getting national coverage and the opportunity to meet their idols, but also landing a major book deal.
The point I want you to focus on is what opportunity dwells in the cesspool of your own adversity and what can you do about it? Part of what Tori (the girl who burned her hair off) had working for her is that she had positioned herself as a “helper”, and while the lesson she ultimately taught on her how-to video was different from her original intention, she went on to position herself with humor and humility. Don’t go burning your own hair off, but do ask yourself what troubles you’re facing that you could turn into triumph.
Throwing up in snowbanks
This philosophy, after all, is what led me to the creation of this system. Like many (most) agents, I had trouble generating leads at the beginning of my career and I suffered mightily as a result for a few years. I did manage to find business, but I did it the hard, stupid way – cold calling (they should call it frozen calling), ridiculous ads that cost me a fortune and never made me a penny, etc. etc. You’ve undoubtedly heard the story of how, despite becoming the top Remax agent in the world, I was demoralized, exhausted, throwing up in snow banks, and honestly on the verge of leaving the business altogether. If the whole ordeal hadn’t been this painful for me, I might just have kept on doing what I was doing, eking out a dissatisfactory existence, without any thought of making a change. As it was, though, things were so bad that staying where I was simply wasn’t an option. When I projected my life forward, I knew it was impossible to keep doing things the way I was doing them so my choices were two: give up or reinvent.
I hope your life is REALLY bad
How bad is your life? For all the reasons stated above, I hope it’s REALLY bad … so bad that you won’t fight the system we’re trying to teach you. I hope it’s so bad that you’re banging your head against the wall, wondering how you can possibly go on.
Do you think it’s coincidence that many of the agents who do so well with my system have devastating stories to tell of the hardships they went through on their way to earning millions. I love stories like this. I love helping agents completely reinvent themselves, rising like a phoenix out of the ashes of the hell they were living. And there are so many great stories.
One couple from Utah confessed to me last year that when they came to my first SuperConference a couple of years ago, they were so poor that they snuck around the hotel eating from discarded food trays outside the doors of other hotel guests. Desperate for a way out of such dire circumstances, they didn’t question, they simply implemented. Need I tell you that they now run a thriving business, live in a beautiful home, have started their own family and are living high? They turned their version of “burning my hair off” into a life they’d only dreamed of. They were able to do so because they embraced my real estate coaching. They got out of their own way.
Another agent from California (David Delgado) was in dire financial straits, his home and vehicles being foreclosed on. The utility companies had also paid him a visit and he and his wife were living in their shell of a home with no running water. A Florida couple (Tim and Rosangela Johnson) were desperate, demoralized, on the verge of quitting. Their thriving business now pays them $60k profit (yes, that’s after expenses) per month.
How is your life measuring up against these SuperStars? More importantly, how is your life measuring up against the goals you have for yourself? Ironically, if your present circumstances aren’t quite as dire as the stories I’ve told you, it will likely be more difficult for you to make the choices you need to make to get where you want to go. Please don’t continue to “exist” short of your true potential. Find a way to get to my Anaheim SuperConference this June and I’ll show you how to get where you dream of going. Or you could just burn your hair off.
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