Page 90 - Hard Goals

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Brent Hardgrave is one of the top hairstylists in the world.
He’s the fi rst American stylist ever given the honor of Inter-
national Artisan by Keune Haircosmetics. And without know-
ing it, you’ve probably seen his work everywhere from celebrity
weddings to the pages of Esquire.
Brent innovated a particular dry haircutting technique. At
the risk of stereotyping, the women reading this will probably
know what I’m talking about better than the guys. So, fellas, let
me put it like this: One of the perks of writing books is getting
the occasional test-drive. Brent cut my hair using this technique,
and when I got home, my wife took one look at me, and, well,
let’s just say it’s good the kids weren’t home. Then my wife had
Brent cut her hair, and she was so ecstatic about it that when
she got home, well, Brent’s my new best friend.
So, back to the cool haircutting technique. Brent told me,
“I could picture the cut perfectly. I knew how I would hold the
scissors, how I would shape the hair, what each strand of hair
would do.” Brent had his new technique pictured so clearly in
his mind that he realized he faced a huge roadblock: normal
scissors just don’t do what he needed them to do. It’s at this
point that a lot of putative innovators (whether people or com-
panies) turn back; lots of people are addicted to the word can’t.
But not innovators like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, or in this case,
Brent.
Armed with the perfect picture of what he needed (fi rst men-
tal, then physical), Brent designed just the right scissor for this
cut and then called a scissor manufacturer. It turned out that the
manufacturer he called had been prototyping a similar scissor,
but it wasn’t quite “there” yet. So they put their visions together,
and thus was born a new kind of curved scissor. It’s due out
soon (as of the writing of this book), and it’s already generating