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