Chapter 19. Beware of Other People’s Opinions
thing happen. It was scary and exciting at the same time. I got through it by focusing on the end result: success. Next, it was time to get it on TV, and I was unsure of what to do. So I looked through the phone book for people who would buy TV time. I was clueless getting started, but I was doing it. Then I had a brilliant idea (or so I thought) and hired a gentleman who was an expert in this field. He had been responsible for some of the top infomercials on TV. He had experience and seemed to believe in my program. Before I knew it, we had a contract, and I agreed to give him a full five percent of all the gross sales. I was clueless. In that business, you can do big dollar amounts in sales because you are nationwide, but you operate on very minimal profit margins. So, in essence, I gave him a huge share of the company—probably more than half. But it was okay, because I was getting his advice, his expertise, and having him point me in the right direction. I figured that he was an expert and that I needed him. I can either pay with the mistakes I’ll make, or I can pay for him to save me time and money. It seemed to make sense at the time. We finalized the details, and I was off to work. I filmed, edited, wrote the script, and created the program concept from A to Z. Then we launched an initial test on TV. I was excited! All the hard work seemed so close to paying off. I was smiling ear to ear for a week… until that phone call. This gentleman called and said, “Dean, your show’s not going to work.” I was in shock and replied, “What are you talking about? We’ve come this far, and the numbers are looking pretty good from what I can see.” He said, “I reanalyzed the entire con- cept, and my guess is that people are not excited about making money with cars.” I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t just about cars. It was a tool to give people a simple way to make money. They could simply match buyers and sellers together and make money like I had done. I asked if we could possibly tweak the show. He said, “Dean, unfortunately, it’s over.”
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