There are No Shortcuts to Success

[Applause]

for those who don’t know me my name is

jason oppenheim

i founded and owned the oppenheim group

real estate brokerage in los angeles

which is also the subject of the netflix

show selling sunset

the show follows me and my agents as we

sell some amazing homes to the rich and

famous

i love my job i love the people i work

with

i love being on the show i really love

everything about my life

but i didn’t wake up to this i want to

talk a bit about that with you

some of the troubles i’ve had and some

of the lessons i’ve learned about

achieving success

every day i’m asked the same question by

fans of the show or aspiring real estate

agents

how can they become successful and how

did i do it

as though i have some trick that is

going to catapult them to instant fame

and success

there’s so much out there floating

around the internet about success and

the advice you hear is often centered on

the idea

of speed get rich quick achieve instant

success from your living room

become a millionaire in less than a year

invest in this company it’s the next

amazon but better because it’s using

blockchain technology

in reality and this is something i’ve

learned throughout my life success takes

time

years of preparation and hard work there

are no shortcuts

i want to repeat that because it’s

important there are no shortcuts

to be successful you need to believe in

yourself and that means you need to do

the hard work

the work to create that confidence in

yourself and i don’t mean confidence in

some cocky unjustifiably loud wolf of

wall street jordan belfort kind of way

it’s not about exuding confidence it’s

about internalizing it

in my career i must believe in myself

because as a real estate broker

i often have what is my client’s most

valuable asset in my hands their home

although i haven’t always believed in

myself in fact far from it

so i’d like to talk for a second about

my past

my identical twin brother brett and i

were largely raised by our mom

as our parents divorced when we were

very young our mother is amazing she

worked long hours at tough jobs and

tried her best to parent us

but my brother and i were incorrigible

kids we lacked respect for authority

fought incessantly with our mom her

boyfriends when she had one

and each other a lot we were just

frustrated constantly getting into

trouble at home

at school with our teachers even the

police

those days we spent several nights in

jail whether for underage drinking

fighting or just adolescent belligerence

we were two kids that felt like they had

nothing to lose and who didn’t care much

about anything

it was during those troubled years that

i first learned there was no such thing

as an easy fix

i realized this when my mom tried what

could be described as a quick fix

or the parental version of a get rich

quick scheme when my brother and i were

13

she sent us to a correctional camp she

actually told us we were going to

basketball camp

we packed gym clothes and were excited

about the trip only to land in idaho and

be handcuffed and taken away to the

desert

once there the camp officers stripped us

down and gave us a single set of army

fatigues

that started the worst month of my life

the camp was a living hell

we hiked through the desert eight to ten

hours a day on many days we weren’t

allowed to speak

using the bathroom required digging a

hole and using cactus leaves or toilet

paper

to eat which we were only allowed to do

once a day we had to start a fire using

a bow drill and i lived on no more than

three to four hundred calories a day

of lentil soup for flavor i would

squeeze the butts of ants for their

acidity which tasted like lemon

i would catch and eat rattlesnakes

cutting their heads off and spending

hours skinning and deboning the snake

i essentially starved for the entire

month

they would take our shoes at night so we

couldn’t run away not that there was

anywhere to go

and there was no running water so we

didn’t bathe or shower for the entire

month

for one three-day stretch i was left

alone with just a large rock for shade

and some water but almost no food

this camp and others like it have been

shut down but that experience is

indelibly burnt into my memory

it was in every essence rock bottom now

like so many success

stories you hear this is where i’m

supposed to tell you that after hitting

rock bottom

this was an inflection point in my life

but it wasn’t

at the time i really did think the camp

had changed me as the idea of being sent

back to that place in the desert scared

the absolute hell out of me

the complete isolation the deprivation

and really the worst of it the

starvation

but after this camp i was only on good

behavior for a few weeks

and as the memory of the camp faded i

went back to my old ways and so did my

brother

eventually we were sent off to separate

boarding schools of course that didn’t

work either

we were routinely suspended and expelled

from numerous high schools and ended up

going to six different high schools

between the two of us

to make matters worse i was not doing

well in my classes

not because i wasn’t capable but because

i didn’t care

all i cared about at the time was

working on my vintage camaro and perhaps

becoming a car mechanic

for much of high school i took

occupational classes in auto body and

auto tech

where i would work on my car

straightening the body painting it

and rebuilding the engine i barely

graduated high school

this is my senior year report card i did

2.0

with three ds and of course a few

notations for poor attitude and truancy

but i did get an a in weight training

after my brother and i were expelled

from our last high schools i think we

were about 16.

the only option was a continuing

education high school my mother wouldn’t

let me or brett live with her

and this is where the story changes with

nowhere to go my father took us in

my dad is brilliant a uc berkeley grad

with a phd

but he also it was a two-tour vietnam

vet

and very militaristic to this day he

rides a harley-davidson in a motorcycle

game

now rather than a quick fix my dad took

a different approach

he threw away all of my baggy clothes

cut my hair

took away my jewelry took away my

cigarettes and he would wake me up at 5

a.m to work out with him in the garage

he dressed me for school then dropped me

off for school pick me up from school

and take me to his work where he would

have me sit in his office

at the local community college where he

taught and i just stay there with

nothing to do about my homework

then we would go home eat dinner watch a

little tv and go to bed

each and every day was like this

starting in the garage at 5am

i didn’t have time to hang out with

friends or even one second to myself

let alone time to get into trouble my

dad was militaristic about getting me

turned around

he was obsessive extremely overbearing

and he would also whip my ass if i

wasn’t acting right

basically he was everything that brett

and i needed now things didn’t change

for us overnight

my dad knew that it wouldn’t but slowly

the groundwork for change was taking

place

i graduated high school barely but

despite my a and weight training i

wasn’t able to get into any good

four-year universities

so my dad enrolled me in the local

community college where he taught

at community college my dad would talk

to all my professors and ensure that i

was going to classes and study

under his constant supervision i had no

choice but to start taking school more

seriously

i began to lose my old habits i wasn’t

getting into trouble as much and i was

really starting to care more about

myself and my future

my dad emphasized that school was a

ladder a way a way out of my previous

troubles

so we really started taking our classes

seriously my brother and i worked hard

at local restaurants

first as dishwashers then busboys and

eventually as waiters

and we worked even harder at school

after three years at community college

we successfully transferred to uc

berkeley where we would work even harder

and we studied even more

two years later we graduated from

berkeley as a two top students with a

4.0 gpa

we went on to top law schools my brother

went to ucla and i stayed at uc berkeley

and then we were hired as attorneys at

top los angeles law firms scattered arps

and melvin and myers

this process from when my dad took me in

as a belligerent teenager

until i graduated law school took eight

years

it was arduous and it took all the

energy compassion and determination that

my dad could manage and that i could

manage

i studied my ass off i worked my ass off

there was no easy fix

no 30-day camp was going to solve

anything instead it took eight years of

constant parental guidance and hard work

now my story wasn’t done if it was you

wouldn’t be watching selling sunset

you’d be watching a very boring legal

show about me as me and my legal team

tackle exciting things like depositions

and interrogatories

it’s not that i didn’t enjoy being a

lawyer it’s just that there were some

things that were

missing i had a pretty successful career

as a litigation attorney

i spent many years working in the

largest corporate fraud case this

century the enron trial

and even went to the united states

supreme court after four years into my

career i was living comfortably

i was on partnership track at my firm

and i was by every account successful

but i felt unfulfilled i know people who

love the law

and who find passion in law

unfortunately it just wasn’t the same

for me

it was a tough decision to leave i was

giving up a comfortable life

financial security and a prestigious and

stable career

but after turning my life around as a

teenager through hard work and

dedication

i knew i could do it again now that type

of confidence isn’t created quickly it’s

not the type of confidence that’s built

from a quick gamble on bitcoin

or even from watching a ted talk it’s

created

by proving to yourself that you can

dedicate by focusing years on achieving

success

knowing that you have what it takes to

focus your ambitions on doing the dirty

work

not just checking boxes but mastering

the details the long hours of the

library

or the late night after night making

sure that your work is always better

than your last

that’s the type of confidence i had so i

left the practice of law and sold just

about everything i couldn’t fit into a

backpack

and i traveled the world for three years

when i came back to los angeles in 2010

it was the height of the recession

there were things that were pretty bleak

i was in more than forty thousand

dollars of credit card debt

and i couldn’t afford a car so my family

gave me my grandfather’s old lincoln

which was probably worse worth less than

a thousand dollars

it ran but i had to keep my trunk full

of anti-freeze because the car was

always overheating

i equate this time in my life as a

novice real estate agent

to when i first started to focus on

school at community college

but this time i was in my 30s and

starting over back at square one

i joined a great team at coldwell banker

but the first couple years were really

tough

i sat in a tiny 24 key desk in the

corner of a small office i shared with

two other agents

i had literally gone from the corner

office at my law firm to the corner of

an office at my new brokerage i was

sharing a one-bedroom apartment with my

friend in hollywood

and each month we would switch between

sleeping on the bed and the couch

it wasn’t easy it took me over eight

months before i even closed my first

deal

a far cry from where i was as a

successful lawyer just a few years

earlier

and as i drove that lincoln around la

thinking about the 100 000

mercedes convertible i used to drive i

learned something

here’s the secret about confidence it’s

not unwavering

we see a caricature of the confident man

in the media but that’s a myth

there were times my ego was bruised i

even had thoughts about going back to

law

but i decided to keep working harder and

to continue to follow my passion for

real estate

i worked 12 to 15 hours a day i would

hustle leases and small deals that

others didn’t want

i studied street maps i listened to

other agents on the phone and went with

them to their listing appointments

i’d sit their open houses when they

didn’t want to i would print out every

single contract

and disclosure and read them word for

word highlighting them and understanding

them

i went to every team meeting and to

every broker open to learn the inventory

even though i wasn’t making money i was

staying busy i think i made less than

fifty thousand dollars each of my first

two years

but around my third year things started

to pick up i was getting my own deals

small deals but lots of them i was

getting really busy but i made sure to

do everything myself

making sure that everything was being

done right with no mistakes

no detail for me was too small i would

answer every phone call i would go to

every inspection

do every showing sit every open house

and go to every broker open

i would draft every contract myself and

review everything twice before sending

it out

i was working so hard i remember tears

running down my face at night because i

was so tired

but i had to finish things before i

could sleep and just like with my

studies at school

my efforts started to pay off by the

start of my fifth year

not the fifth day not the fifth month

but the fifth year

i finally felt like i was ready to go on

my own and that’s what i did

it was 2014. i just purchased a small

house and i started the oppenheim group

out of the second bedroom

i hired an intern fresh out of usc who

still runs the office today

a year later i saw retail space become

available on sunset boulevard

and well the rest is history i hope what

you can get from my story is that there

is in fact

a secret to success after spending

nights in jail

eating rattlesnakes in the desert and

leaving behind a career in law

i can say the secret is there are no

shortcuts

so the next time someone comes up to me

and asks me how they become successful

i’m going to say find what you love and

work your damn ass off

thanks for watching my ted talk

you