The Line At The Barber
I went to the barber’s to get my hair cut on a Saturday afternoon and the shop is one of those old-school setups where you basically have a row of about ten chairs all manned by different guys snipping and buzzing away.
Now because it was a nice afternoon in midtown it seemed like a lot of people had the same idea I had.
In fact, when I first walked to the back of the shop where the waiting area is, I was greeted by the sight of seven guys all sitting and waiting for a haircut.
I contemplated walking out, but since I knew this would be one of the only times I had to tame the mop on the top of my head, I decided that I would stick it out and I settled down for what I expected to be at least an hour wait.
A few minutes later one of the barbers walked to the back of the room and asked who was next and I, being the polite guy that I am, pointed to the seven people all sitting there before me who didn’t move a muscle.
One of them turned to me and said,
They’re all waiting for someone specific.
Which meant that even though there were technically seven people ahead of me, I was next and I was in and out of the shop in record time.
As I walked out of the shop, I reflected on what had just happened and thought about something that I hear all the time from people who want to reach out to a celebrity in their industry.
Most of the time when I ask people why they haven’t reached out to that celebrity that they’ve always wanted to talk to, they say that the other person must be bombarded with requests so they don’t want to “bother” them, or that they doubt the other person would ever respond.
Much the same way that I was ready to assume that I was going to have to wait all day for a haircut, they assume that the person they want to reach is too busy to take their call.
When most times the OPPOSITE is the case.
Everyone is a celebrity to somebody, but celebrity is relative to everybody.
To all of those guys waiting, they were waiting for the barber who was a celebrity to them, for me anybody ready to cut my hair right now was the celebrity for me.
Your celebrities are not everyone else’s celebrities.
In fact, some people have never heard of the person you consider a celebrity.
So if there is someone you have been wanting to reach out to, but haven’t done so yet because you think they’d never respond- TEST your assumption.
You may be surprised at how quickly you can CUT the line.
Get it?
Ok. I’ll stop now.
But seriously, the line is never as long as you think it is.
Why not get in it?
Excelsior!
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