Читать книгу Get Out of Your Own Way Guide to Life - Justin Loeber - Страница 9

Introduction

To live a full life is an honor that comes with a responsibility—to yourself. Whether you are a nurse, a landscaper, a pop singer, a philosopher, an artist, a Broadway hoofer, a brain surgeon, a parent, an “A” student, a fashion model, a gas pumper or a deadbeat, we’re all here on this Earth for such a brief moment. I have unpacked most—not all—of the baggage that has weighed me down emotionally, which could have potentially stopped me from moving into the next semester of life. As I continue to blow out more and more birthday candles, I have come to conclude that a huge number of us are so busy clicking on some sort of electronic device that we’re forgetting about literally looking up, getting out of our own way, and seeing that the life we were given is a gift. Don’t get me wrong: I love what electronics stand for, and I’d be a dummy to work in the communications business without embracing it all. I love pizza too; however, if I ate slices and slices of it on a daily basis, I’d be as huge as a helicopter spinning out of control. So it’s safe for me to say, here and now, that we are all (as a culture) addicted to electronics—to the point where we’re putting ourselves in the passenger’s seat, looking down and letting a smartphone do a lot of the work. You’ve got to admit that for the most part, we’re in the infancy stage of this modern electronics boom. The whole thing is really clunky at times—like us, it really can’t get out of its own way either. It’s trying desperately to be streamlined, but I shudder at how many people have developed physical ailments like “text neck,” carpal tunnel, poor eyesight, and disrupted sleep from all these toys. I promise you in less than ten years, we’ll all laugh at what we all went through during the “Wild Wild West” of twenty-first century technology. More importantly, after reading this book, I hope you put down the gadgets and move over to the pilot’s chair and literally soar up to the trip of your lifetime.

I’m sorry to break that news to you—especially if you’re one of those Millennials or Generation Zers who might live and breathe “glass half empty.” Even though in many marketing circles I might be past my prime (aka irrelevant), the in-your-face street smarts rulebook I have embraced doesn’t include a large-print section for mature audiences. People are people in my book—literally! Because there’s no prejudice here, I figured that it was time to pass on some of the in-the-trenches knowledge that I’ve gained over my more than a few decades of life, to those who might not yet have stepped into their own brighter light—bright enough to understand how precious, quick, and down and dirty living is. Yes, it’s time.... It’s time to understand you’ve made a very intimate pact with yourself to spend your energy on the “it” that makes you tick. Good or bad, you’ve made choices that mark you for the moment and could stick and define you forever. And if you don’t think you have the “it,” I can promise you that you do. After reading this book, I hope you will have the courage, without apology, to find that “extraordinary” in you—the real reason why you’re here.

It’s time to get out of your own way and make “things” happen.

I thought about writing this book when one Millennial paraded into my office for a job interview in flip-flops and shorts and all tangled up in wires from his earbuds—with such an entitlement issue that I was one step from asking this kid to leave before listening to his spiel. I realized that one Millennial after another was coming into my office, shockingly clueless about what his or her life’s purpose is. And many of those considered “older” continue to sashay into my firm as if they saw a ghost of career past—they don’t have a clue, either because they still believe they’re working in the glorious days of the 80s when everyone and everything seemed to be on steroids and sipping liquid lunches. (For those who don’t know, a “liquid lunch” is when you get bombed at lunch on martinis.) Both demographics—under and over thirty—are out of touch with the middle ground that mixes all of our lives together, and impacts how we all communicate with each other—no matter what our ages are. Whatever generation you fit into, please stop being so set in your ways, defeated before you take a risk, jaded, and opinionated about everything.

So, how can this Get Out of Your Own Way Guide to Life help you get out of your own way? I’ve set the book up in ten steps, and at the end of every piece there’s a mini “take-a-quiz” with five practical questions and a cheat sheet with answers. I promise you won’t feel like you’re reading CliffsNotes—it’s just a few easy-breezy flash questions to encourage you to think further about the subject at hand.

As an added bonus (here’s where the big pitch comes into play!), dotted throughout the book are a boatload of my version of “hashtag takeaways.” You’ll notice that my hashtags are full sentences. On Twitter, #hashtags are just one word or a #ShortPhraseWrittenInCamelCase. But part of my message is that we need to slow down, take a personal mental check, and actually say what’s going on in our subconscious. It’s all about what we mean to say. We can be brief. Our actions should speak louder than words...we should listen to that little voice inside our head, because it is the gut instinct that is usually spot on. So think of my “hashtag takeaways” as if you’re cracking open a fortune cookie to reveal “news you can use” at a glance. In reality, it’s me bottom-lining a thought for you in the hope that you’re listening.

I hope these communication formats in the book are ultimately of value—just like some people read hard books while others like e-versions. I hate it when I buy a book or a ticket to a movie or show, and it sucks—that’s money down the drain. I believe the customer is always right. Lemme get back to you if my publisher offers a money-back guarantee if this rant ain’t happenin’ for ya, OK?

#(Wink, wink.)

#(Insert Smiley Face here.)

Let’s show you some sample hashtag takeaways that further describe what the hell is peppered between these pages. Would one of these one-liners describe you?

#She helped the poor escape from the prison camps.

#He didn’t believe there was an environmental crisis.

#She was a shopaholic—didn’t give a shit about her kids.

#He discovered a cure for cancer.

Along with the Ten Steps I will soon be going through with you, and the whole “hashtag” shebang in the book, I will share snippets of my life story—how I saw myself, and see myself now—so that you can use my personal experiences as a thrust towards looking into your history and destiny.

We are in a world that texts, types, reads and speaks in 140 characters or less, with an attention span of a peanut. Boomers like me, who lived in a land that once was truly free from Big Brother meddling in our business, didn’t need an app to tell us how to think, how to date, how to be marketed to, and how to communicate. The sad truth is, in the world of the hashtag, it’s a real pipe dream if you think the galaxy is going to recite your Wikipedia page every time someone brings your name up—dead or alive. Respectfully, with that kind of mindset, you’re slightly delusional from how the world works. If you think that farkakte Facebook is going to create that eerie looped video of memories they’re known for after you die—hell no, papi! The party is “ovah” when you kick the bucket. Big Bro will press “Delete” because your life has used up way too much cloud storage! What people will remember is not your greatest novel or TV series, but a line or two of gossip—that’s right, “g-o-s-s-i-p,” better known as “potentially fake news”—that they heard about you. (“Did you hear he was a nasty sonofabitch?” “She was a trust fund baby and didn’t need to work after all...why didn’t she let the talented one take over her position?”)

After reading the Get Out of Your Own Way Guide to Life, I hope and pray you won’t feel the constant need to fit into a life like The Friggen’ Joneses. You know The Friggen’ Joneses: those “perfect” peeps who feel the need to breathe like, look like, talk like, compete with, and live like everyone else to stay relevant: be accepted. These are people who try and trick you from knowing their real age, because they’re afraid no one will aspire to be them any longer.

Ageism (at any age) is so last Tuesday in my book, so I’m not sure what The Friggen’ Joneses are worried about. It’s only a pain in the butt if we want it to be. For those of us who were alive in the 60s and 70s (two freakin’ fantastic decades, I might add), it seems as if the marketers of today feel the need to keep us locked up at the Woodstock Music Festival, continually playing a Janis Joplin track that no person under thirty-eight has ever heard. These marketing geniuses are desperate to split us up into “demographics” and niche everyone out as if we’re all products, separated up and down the aisles of a supermarket. What would the world be like if cold cereal was sold on the shelf next to laundry detergent? As long as each box is closed, that wouldn’t be a problem.

Many younger Debbie Downers, who think their dewy age gives them the right to act like zombies (because their parents divorced and no one had the time to make them great tuna fish sandwiches growing up), pooh-pooh chances presented right in front of them and waste time with excuses, most likely out of fear. Sadly, they spend way too many hours stuck in pause mode, glued to reality TV, violent video games, and celebrity banter—or, dare I say, addicted to their smartphones. (There I go again about electronics. More to come. ) To many, it’s easy to “click out and tune in” to someone else’s life (like the Kardashians, like the “Real Housewives,” like the judges on “Shark Tank,” and like all the great athletes and superstars), because while you vicariously spend their money, or pretend you’re living in their success-ilicious private compounds, you don’t have time to focus on your own shit.

Nowadays, instead of taking a walk on the beach, needlepointing, playing football, reading a book or newspaper, or playing Frisbee, a lot of us spend our “anytime” on the white noises of electronics and their constant nagging updates—anything to avoid facing the fact that, perhaps, time is ticking by without the sun shining in our direction. Some of us are climbing up a mountain called “Extraordinary,” and some are going down a twisted road called “Time Waster.” That doesn’t mean you can’t binge on trashy TV or run to watch the latest pop star’s live performance on the Grammy Awards. C’mon—we do need life balance; however, balance means that when the show is over, it’s time for you to turn it off, look the fuck up from the dating app, and get the blood flowing again, people...with those who don’t lie about their age and actually look like their thumbnail pics.

#The new boob tube is the smartphone.

#At times, social media should be called anti-social media.

#Social media is really just another thousand channels

on a TV remote.

#If you’d rather watch a traditional sitcom

on your iPad and get “text neck,” so be it.

After hours and hours of electronic and anti-social overload, what do YOU want to be known for at the end of the day?

#He was a creep shoplifting Prada bags at Macy’s.

or

#She was a hero who saved an old lady from an attacker.

Making a 180-degree life turn is not that hard; all you need to do is have the ability to keep it moving in a positive direction and open up to the possibility that you deserve a better experience.

Like the person who goes from shoplifter to caregiver, you can absolutely, unequivocally transition from a negative past to a positive, uber-successful future. Reinvention is amazing. You really don’t need anyone other than yourself to approve the change you want to redefine your life—good, bad or indifferent. Through the anecdotes in this book, I truly hope you will gain the strength to be honest and intimate with yourself, so that when it’s time for the artisans to start etching an epitaph onto your mausoleum, you and your friends will have so many great things to say about you that even your enemies will even applaud!

#Roll up your sleeves and get scrappy about your life.

#Talking honestly about yourself can be inspirational.

Lemme get this party going, and let me start to tell you my story—you’ll find it ain’t hard for me.

Way back in the late 70s and 80s, I was a bit of an ultra-creative ball of fire...a self-involved, overly sensitive twentysomething. But after going through many humbling experiences—including losing my biological parents, losing an inheritance, losing four recording contracts (as a pop singer), going through two cancer health scares and losing friends to tragic illnesses—now, at my age, I live, without apology, in a luscious color of everything. I crave to always be challenged. One side of me wants to kick off my shoes and eat some bonbons, but the other side says, light the fiyah and keep it moving, grandpa!

#Breathe like a dragon who is

going to be honored for Chinese New Year.

People often tell me I have a quirky outlook on life and an inspiring backstory, which I hope is a solid platform for handing out some heartfelt advice in this book. In my career in public relations and now with PR and social media, I have represented hundreds of fascinating people—I’ve had the luck and good fortune to work with some of the greats: superstar athletes like Michael Jordan; recording legends like Peter, Paul and Mary, Carly Simon, Judy Collins, Neil Sedaka and Kenny Loggins; actors like Olympia Dukakis, Blair Underwood, and Marlo Thomas; movie producers like Linda Obst; models like Cindy Crawford; reality stars like Snooki; iconic sex kittens like Pamela Anderson; political prisoners like Ingrid Betancourt; senior prime ministers like Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore; newscasters like Dan Rather; attorneys like Gloria Allred and Raoul Felder; brands like The Elf on the Shelf and Halo Purely for Pets; Latina powerhouses like Celia Cruz; extraordinary wellness warriors like Kris Carr; heartfelt doctors like Andrew Weil and Neal Barnard; moral philosophers like Peter Singer; and literary stars like Paolo Coelho, Leon Uris, Diane McKinney-Whetstone, and Mitch Albom, just to name a few. I have had the honor of stepping into each one’s unique definition of “normal.” Normal or not, seeing some of these people reveal their “deck of cards” has given me the perspective to understand parts of my life that either work or don’t.

#Share your deck of cards in order to

help others find their purpose.

I want to expose you to the fire that burns inside my clients’ bellies, giving them the impetus to persevere. I am humbly grateful for the opportunity to work with such inspirational people—whether for a few months or for several years—and I want to thank them for helping me find one of my personal missions in life. When people sign up for public relations and social media services, they are typically at a quasi-mystical level that drives them to only want to bring their “A” game and to be sitting in the front row when the curtain goes up and the stage explodes. After repping famous people, I now know, and you will too, that:

#Everyone can afford a ticket to their own

award-winning performance of a lifetime.

The public relations and social media “show” that my staff and I proudly perform each day requires a talent for becoming a client’s messenger to his or her own message—holding up a mirror and asking, “Just who are you? What do you bring to the table? Why should anyone care? I want to help you press the accelerate button on the story of your life. From this page forward, it’s just you and me, navigating our plusses and minuses together. (I’ll show you mine if you show me yours!) When it’s time for people to consider you for work, friendship, or play, this handbook and (at least some of) my philosophies will help you, I promise. As I hinted above, one of the biggest secrets to living a full life is that you don’t always need to follow the rules—or struggle to fit into anyone else’s standards to be successful.

#It takes a lotta guts to dream big and take bold steps.

# # #

Back to my life: I didn’t start out as bold as I am today. As a kid, I was so shy and quirky—like a flower that needed to be watered in order not to shrivel up.

#If you’re a hot mess, take ownership of it—

and either fix it or wallow in paranoid.

When people would call my house, I sounded like a squeaky little girl and would get so upset when the phone rang that I’d refuse to speak. (It’s funny that I now own a company with the word “mouth” in it.) At the age of four, someone shot a cap gun in my eye and I was rushed to the hospital, blinded for hours. Doctors thought I would never see again. Overnight, my mom became uber-overprotective. In response to her panic, I built an emotional wall around myself, reinforced with tons of stuffed animals sitting by my side in fantasy. Then, at the age of eight, I had an ear abscess so “dire” that a doctor told my parents I should live my entire life in a plastic bubble to avoid more infections. Michael Jackson had nothing on me, trust me. (Happily, my parents didn’t follow that wacky doc’s recommendation—but then again, it was the 1960s and there were a lot of those wack-a-doodles out there, trust me.)

Before long, my emotional wall morphed into a “wall of weight.” I was the first person in third grade to break one hundred pounds. When I made a mistake in class at South Mountain Elementary School in South Orange, New Jersey, one teacher, Mrs. Ernst, put a dunce cap on my head and paraded me around to every classroom in the building, telling everyone that I was stupid and a dummy. So, you can imagine why I carried around a lot of baggage and became chronically shy and obese. Here I was at nine years old, unlike everyone else, and at times I felt obsolete. (I was in my twenties when my mom told me she threatened to poke Mrs. Ernst’s eyes out if she ever put a dunce cap on me again—I wondered why Mrs. Ernst was suddenly being nice to me!)

In fourth grade, still waddling down the hallways like a roly-poly, the other kids would scream in between classes, “Fat Larry wants to marry Miss Vancarry!” Yes, my first name is Larry—Lawrence, actually. My full name is Lawrence Justin Loeber. My mom had visions of me going to Lawrenceville, a college preparatory boarding school in New Jersey, but I wanted to be comfy-cozy, chubby Larry who was born in NYC and grew up in Jersey, thank you very much! (And no, I wasn’t named after the prep school. )

#My mom wanted me to go to boarding school—

all I wanted was to go to a diner.

I fell further into the “lack of confidence” category—until high school. Hit with the performance bug and armed with potent fantasies—picturing myself singing with Louie Armstrong (while he sang “Hello Dolly”), James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Average White Band, Earth, Wind & Fire, Melba Moore, Rufus & Chaka Khan (my dog Rufus is named after the band), Marvin Gaye, The Brothers Johnson, Ohio Players, Aretha Franklin, The Isley Brothers, Bette Midler, and Barbra Streisand (a huge inspiration for me!), among others—I convinced my parents to allow me to take the bus (from the Jersey suburbs to Manhattan!) three times a week for lessons in singing, dancing and acting.

#When the chips are down,

start tap-dancing and sing pop music!

I’d finally found something that fit me. Once I stepped on the stage, I owned it—without analyzing the fear that supposedly came with performing. As soon as I hit puberty, I morphed into this kid who could sing the shit out of anything. I was absorbing the creative spirit inside me, as if I were a Scrub Daddy “happy” sponge sopping up water on a kitchen counter. Because I had these pipes that could belt out a tune all the way from Jersey to Times Square (really!) I had the honor of being accepted to and attending the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory School for voice and the HB Studio for drama—not to mention the Alvin Ailey School for modern dance, Henry LeTang for tap, and Jo-Jo Smith and Phil Black for jazz (where I learned my moves with the other JLo—Jennifer Lopez—who also studied at Phil’s). In those days, the doors of the greats were wide open, and for about $2.50 a class, one could walk in and learn from them. My parents also let me apply for the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan; not only was I accepted, but I stayed and “starred” in shows for three summers. At camp, I was a ballsy and competitive SOB. One year, I was the first person in the state of Michigan to come down with chicken pox (as a teenager—not attractive), right at the time when campers were auditioning to be in the big productions of the summer. Unhappy with being quarantined for the pox and sitting on the sidelines, I “demanded” that the directors come to the infirmary to audition me behind a window (because I was still infectious). I’d be damned if I was going to watch others on a stage that should be starring me!

#Don’t let a little infection

stand in the way of your spotlight.

After those great summers at NMC in Interlochen, I studied more and more drama, dance and voice in NYC. During one summer, I dropped sixty pounds eating cottage cheese and lettuce while I was learning how to tap, getting my vocal chords in shape, and learning how to act. Talk about coming of age! What I lost in fat, I gained in confidence, shedding a bit of that pompous asshole-ness and becoming a nicer person to be around. Adios, squeaky little girl! (And a big adios to my biological father, who met a waitress and her older daughter on the highway, divorced my mom, and apparently moved to Florida with this brood.) Incidentally, I learned my dad moved to Florida when I dialed his number and the auto-attendant said, “The number you have reached has been changed....” Really classy, dad.

#When you lose weight, you celebrate.

#When an uninterested parent leaves you, you celebrate.

Everything didn’t go my way, though. Fast forward to my first year at NYU Undergraduate Drama. I was accepted to the school after my audition, but then rejected because my SAT scores were abysmal: 390 (Math) and 420 (English). (OK, so I’m tremendously flawed when it comes to taking standardized tests.) I got some help from a family friend who knew someone in Admissions, and simultaneously I pitched many of my teachers, from first grade through high school (except for Mrs. Ernst), to write me a character reference. Voila! I guess this was the first time I became my own publicist. I was re-accepted to the university. Through the school’s undergraduate drama program, I was lucky to study acting under the great Stella Adler; but the academic curriculum I chose to earn some sort of degree (which, BTW, I didn’t get) sucked for me. I wanted out. I didn’t have the patience to go through four years of the “I’m not sure why I’m here” mode that many college students seem to go through.

So I dropped out of NYU and shifted gears again, both professionally and geographically. My focus turned from acting to recording pop music...but not in New York! After seeing an MTV interview with the Stray Cats—an 80s rockabilly band whose members kept yowling about how they “couldn’t get arrested” in the States, but were all the rage in the UK—I set my sights on becoming a pop recording artist in England. Sadly, my dad (the one who exited stage left for an “ultra-fabulous life” in The Sunshine State), refused to help support my leaving NYU in favor of “career” in show business. That was fine by me (no hard feelings!) because my will to be a pop recording artist superseded my biological father’s approval.

#If your dream doesn’t fit into someone else’s, screw them.

When the plane landed in the UK, I put my gut life strategy in motion. I said to myself that I was going to get a recording contract before my visa expired. I was going to pretend that I was Mickey Rooney with Judy Garland, put on a show out of my garage, and never take the word “no” for an answer. I decided I was going to use my “Americanisms” as a plus—to be a bit odd to the Brits and become a character in my own real-life performance.

So, here’s the wrap-up: one day I was Fat Larry, the next I was a college dropout, and the next I left for England and morphed into “Larry Loeber,” the first signed solo artist on Gary “Cars” Numan’s record label, Numa, debuting with a single called “Shivers Up My Spine,” which was starting to get airplay on BBC’s Radio 1 in London. Friends asked me why I didn’t call it “Shivers Down My Spine.” Yup, even back in the 80s, I always thought up, not down—and my visualization of having a recording contract in hand before my Virgin Atlantic flight took off from Heathrow to JFK really paid off.

My dreams continued to grow: while I was recording the demos that eventually turned into singles, I almost passed out when I saw the sign “Sting” in the next room at Shepperton Recording Studios in England. And that’s not all: imagine my reaction at meeting the likes of the late George Michael, who was on the cusp of becoming a household name with his band, “Wham!” Within a few months, I conceptualized and filmed a music video for “Shivers..,” which incidentally, a fan posted on YouTube. Oy. (In the video, I put on a turban and Raybans, flew around in a magic carpet, and the rest is up to you to find out!) This was back when MTV was a network that only played those things.) I was recording more songs, including a rendition of Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky,” for an album. I also got word that I was to be one of the openers on Numan’s multicity “Berserker Tour” across the UK. The deal was for me to perform to the backing tracks of my upcoming album, alone, and in front of the proscenium, which in many of the arenas, were only a few feet deep and wide.

On that tour, I had a lightbulb moment—another visualization—but this time, it didn’t include Rooney or Garland. It happened at a gig (I think it was in Wales), where the stage was at the same level as the mezzanine, so high up you couldn’t see those in the orchestra unless you looked way down. According to the venue, if the audience hated my performance, they would literally throw glass beer bottles at me—hence the reason why the stage was so high up. What the fuck?! Being hit by hurling glass in front of thousands wouldn’t be a nice welcome for an American (or anyone), I’d say, and seemed much worse than hearing that I was Fat Larry who wanted to marry Miss Vancheri. In fact, getting hit in the head by a glass beer bottle is, to me, the absolute most humiliating thing in public that could ever happen to anyone. My pop star dreams got a nasty wake-up call—but I can proudly say that I would never, ever, ever get a beer bottle thrown at me. From that day forward, I figured out a way to always dodge the glass beer bottle—on the stage, with my clients, and generally in life.

One day, I heard the news that Mike Read, a famous DJ at Radio One in London—the guy who started playing “Shivers...” across the airwaves, had wanted to interview me. (Apparently, the interview was predicated on Gary Numan joining in, but I heard he declined.) Hmmmm.

Just as if you’d turned off your radio, my music career in London abruptly came to a halt because of a stupid work permit debacle. I didn’t realize that when I was offered the chance to open for Numan’s tour and the label gave me the necessary paperwork to do so, I needed to leave the country for a few days and enter back in with said permit so that the officials at the airport could stamp a date on it. (What? Yeah, I was confused too.) Airport security said I was in breach of my original entry as a tourist: I took a job (as a pop recording artist) away from an English citizen. But I had the work permit, I just hadn’t reentered to get it stamped! What a shock. God help any Brit (whom I apparently “stole” a job from) who decides to write another single called, “Shivers Up My Spine!” Really? Apparently, it didn’t concern anyone at Numa because no one from the label, including Gary, showed up to bail me out of this mess. I was really heartbroken and totally frustrated. (Honestly, I think Numan was more interested in flying antique airplanes than running his record label, leaving the task at hand to his mum Beryl, and his dad, Tony—genuinely nice people who seemed to be a bit naïve—like me—when it came to working in the music business.) Who runs a record label, hears that one of their acts is stuck at customs at the airport, and doesn’t bother to simply show up—or send a rep. After being “denied entrance” from London (the police, though, gave me seven days to pack up and clear out—I felt like one of Donald Trump’s illegal Mexican aliens getting deported after jumping over a wall to make a dream come true),

Within seven days of the ordeal at Heathrow, I was flown back to the States with no place to live. Before leaving for the UK, I had sublet my apartment to the manager of Wayland Flowers and Madame, a famous and flamboyant ventriloquist and his puppet—and no way was that manager leaving my roost prematurely. (I’ll talk more about this towards the end of the book.) Not only did I lose my techno-pop recording career, but I was shut out of my apartment and was destined to sleep on my parents’ couch (my parents this time around consisted of my mom and my stepdad Tony who you’ll get to know later)—they were the only ones to open their doors to me. Hit hard by that fact, I was in a deep shock and depression.

#Devastating moments are just a test for you to decide whether or not your life choices are worth fighting for.

Six years after L’exit (short for Larry’s exit from Britain), I was now armed with two more dance record contracts in America—one with Vinylmania (where the famous dance music producer, the late Sergio Munzibai, remixed my song, “Those Words,” originally recorded in London), the other with Emergency Records (where renegade dance producer, Freddy Bastone, remixed my original, “Love Me or Leave Me”). According to my Emergency contract, I had the right to approve my mixes; however, at the time I was told when to show up at the studio, the fucker had mixed my record already, and in a few hours I apparently morphed from a techno-pop recording artist to a Latin Freestyle singer. Don’t get me wrong. If I could have pulled off the Latin vibe like Ricky Martin, you would not have heard me complain. What would you think if U2’s music was mixed into Country? I hope I rest my case. What a branding nightmare. Both singles permeated the New York dance clubs in the 80s. And that’s not quite all of the music drama: I later negotiated another recording contract, with music legend Sid Bernstein and his New York Music Company (Sid told me he brought The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, among others, to America)— that contract went by the wayside; and another contract with Buddy Allen Management (which represented The Spinners, Stacy Lattisaw, and Brenda K. Starr, the 80s dance recording artist who gave Mariah Carey her first break as a backup singer, plus more) proved another waste of time.

#Why is the music business

so complicated and dysfunctional?

With all the complications that surrounded the music business and me, none of them compare to what happened on the self-proclaimed “last night” of my music career—which literally ended with a bang. At my last gig, at a club called 1018 (later known as The Roxy) in NYC, someone shot a gun—not a cap gun—above the crowd. I came to realize that the gunshot was meant to be a spiritual “period” at the end of my music sentence—and by “sentence,” boy, I mean it felt like a prison sentence. It was time to blow the dust off my wounded lyrical soul and move onward (Another shift in gear.) I was absolutely done with record labels that screwed me and with snaky club owners who didn’t pay me. I had an urge to surround myself with supportive and trustworthy people who didn’t care about which bass drum sound supported my backing tracks. I finally turned off the music, at least for now, because none of these opportunities paid the landlord’s rent.

#When the work don’t pay, do not stay.

Even though that gunshot closed the door to my music, it opened the door to reinvention. As part of it, I was on a road to switching my middle name for my first (which I finally brought to unofficial fruition in 1990, when I hosted a “Just Say Justin” party for my friends and relatives).

While simultaneously recording music in the US, I needed cold, hard cash; for seven years, I landed at NYC’s MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) Data Center, working as a temp who typed on a Wang word processor. During that period I was still taking a ton of dance classes, just as one of my buddies asked me to fill in for him as a go-go dancer at a club called Danceteria in NYC. That was the weirdest thing I ever did; however, not surprisingly, the nightly pay was more than I made in the music business. After my experience with the MTA, I spent fifteen years in the restaurant business, working my way up from host (at Tavern-on-the-Green, where my manager, the soon-to-be-legendary NYC restauranteur, Drew Nieporent, managed me), and waiting tables (at such places as The Duck Joint, where I served the ravishing, Catherine Deneuve), to general management at the now defunct Triplets Romanian Steakhouse in NYC, an old-time Jewish eatery. Triplets was run by a set of triplets who were separated at birth—two of whom ended up at the same college nonetheless, serving up dinner and dancing as a belly-dancer wiggled around for tips. It was a show put on by the waiters—and me. So the waiters sang show tunes, and I (awkwardly) sang my techno-British-ish pop tunes to my backing tracks, playing to an audience that included, on every Jewish holiday, none other than one of the great music mavens of all time, Clive Davis, who would bring his family. (For anyone who hasn’t heard of Clive, please do your research.) Here I was, a self-served, washed-up recording artist almost no one knew, singing my disco dance hits to a crowd one step removed from the Borscht Belt circuit. Unfortunately, even though Clive Davis coincidentally happened to be a childhood friend of a family friend, I was not destined to be discovered during the High Holidays. The famous record producer (rightfully so) focused on eating his chicken soup with matzah balls rather than listening to my rendition of “Spirit in the Sky.” (I loved singing that song at this Jewish place with the lyric, “You gotta have a friend in Jesus!”)

As fast as the waitstaff hustled at Triplets, I realized the restaurant gigs were bringing me back to my “Fat Larry” days—where I was constantly surrounded by food. That’s when I seized the next 180 degree opportunity—in publishing. At the age of thirty-three, and taking a forty thousand dollar annual pay cut from Triplets, I took a temp job answering phones in the publicity department of Villard, a division of Random House. I was searching for a career change. I tinkered with the thought of designing baseball caps of all things; however, my friend and awesome publicist, Sharyn Rosenblum, presented the PR temp job to me. She and her boss, publishing dynamo Jacqueline Deval, weren’t necessarily looking for someone “invested” in the “opportunity”—they simply needed a body to pick up the phone and say, “Hello,” by the second ring. This gig was a little “administrative,” but I did not leave it every night smelling like chopped liver or singing to thugs with guns! I remember Sharyn silently suffering because I was so awkward in the traditional workplace—Jacqueline got a kick out of me, I think. I had never worked at a publishing company, let alone read a book since reading 1984 in high school. (Incidentally, 1984 was the year I was performing in London—yet surprisingly, wasn’t mentioned in Orwell’s book.)

The people in publishing seemed a helluva lot more honest than the musicians and kitchen staff I had encountered—even if the publishing set in general were a bit snooty and very impressed with their college degrees. For whatever reason, no one in the industry ever questioned my educational background; I guess I looked like someone who went to school—albeit just high school and one (or was it two?) years at NYU.

#Typing well, without grammatical errors,

can get you into publishing. (At least in those days.)

That’s how I broke into the book business—seizing an opportunity with bright eyes open and without a college degree or any experience other than an interest to learn, a passion for showing up on time, an ability to type documents, a knack for organizing storerooms of books, some fun stories about performing music in London, and a will to see beyond a temporary position. Less than thirteen years later, I ended my corporate publishing career as a Senior Vice President, Executive Marketing and Publicity Director for Regan Media (run by the colorful Judith Regan), after enjoying other great job opportunities at William Morrow, Broadway Books (Bantam Doubleday Dell), Ecco (HarperCollins), Running Press, HarperCollins, and Atria (Simon and Schuster).

During my time at William Morrow, I saw firsthand just how powerful PR can work for some. Maybe you’ve read, or at least heard of, the Penguin Group’s best-selling book, The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride. I was surprised to learn that McBride’s mother was my mom’s first cousin, a fact which my mom learned when she heard an interview on NPR that had been set up by the author’s book publicist. Through the power of this PR interview, McBride’s mission for his book—reuniting his mother with her relatives—was accomplished.

After all my colorful corporate PR opportunities, I took another bold leap and launched my own PR firm—from my bedroom. In 2016, Mouth Public Relations celebrated its tenth anniversary in business; in March 2017, we rebranded to become “mouth: digital and public relations.” Now operating out of offices in lower Manhattan, Mouth has represented over five hundred clients in the “entertainment,” “beauty/health/wellness,” “nonprofit,” “food/nutrition,” “consumer/lifestyle,” “wedding,” “B2B,” “author,” and “social media” categories, to name a few.

It seems as if the Higher Power said to my mom (before I came out of her womb), “This one’s going to go on a quirky path, but he’ll be a late bloomer and everything will be alright.” Whether I knew it or not, over my career’s twists and turbulence I built up an arsenal of street smarts, communication skills, gut instincts, a talent for rebounding and surviving, and a keen sense of how to stay relevant without getting a beer bottle thrown at me. I learned how to get out of my own way.

So, leveraging all the moxie I’ve built up, here’s my promise to you: I can help you come to terms with whatever is hindering and haunting you from finding your close-up. Are you tired of sitting back, fed up with reading and watching other people’s success stories cut and pasted over the Internet? Are you at the point where you’re not going to accept that life is passing you by? You have been a bored audience member for way too long, but now it’s your turn to shine bright.

#If the people around you are holding you back,

say goodbye and walk out.

If your conscience tells you, “The only thing holding me back is myself, and I’m tired of getting in my own way,” listen. Then, do something about it. Walk on.

If you really want to throw out the notion you must be perfect to be successful or let go of the myth you have to have some special talent to dream big, I promise you will love reading onward.

No one gets a free pass to live another hundred years just because they’re a Clinton or a Trump or because they won an Oscar. Our clocks tick in sync with every human being, no matter who and where they come from. And that’s also the crux of the Get Out of Your Own Way Guide to Life: to understand that, when all is said and done, we are all blips on a screen with lives that can be filmed in Technicolor or in a grainy black & white—it’s our choice. In all reality, our lives that we have worked so hard or so little on can be summed up in a line or two that our family can etch in a tombstone once we have passed. But before we croak and bite the big one, let’s work on spinning the storyline differently—especially since we’re alive and not ready for anyone to write a sympathy card with our names on it just yet.

If I can carve out a slice of personal success, you can too. I want to encourage you to bask in your own kaleidoscope, and I don’t want your jaded conscience to edit your fortune either. Living a life in color might still sound a bit bullshitty, but why should you (or anyone) apologize for tooting your own horn if you really, really know deep down in your heart that the horn you’re blowing rings true?

#It is NOT a crime to admit you want to be happy.

Aren’t you and the life you are living worth it all? Now it’s time to make the donuts. Take a breath and strap yourself into the roller coaster, because you’re going to have a great ride. Please read on.

—Justin Loeber