Last week, I was invited by L'Oreal to be their guest at the Intercoiffure luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. It wasn't my first time at the event, which is always a showing of who's who in the hairdressing industry.

This time around the crowd was great! Oribe (who is on the cover of this month's American Salon magazine--in the pic above, I'm with Lori Morris, editor for the magazine), Vivienne Mackinder, Malcolm Edwards of L'Oreal, Nick Arrojo and John Paul Dejoria of Paul Mitchell were there along with my friend Scott Buchanan, owner of the Scott J Aveda Concept Salons. In addition to being one of the most successful people in the industry Scott has always been a huge inspiration to me as a man, a professional and an entrepreneur. The presentations done by L'Oreal, Paul Mitchell and Gina Khan, the spokesperson for Logics, were pretty incredible and I captured some of the models on my Flip camera to show you.

John Paul said something that really inspired me and I have repeated it to my staff, my clients and myself at least a thousand times. "The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is simple. Successful people are willing to do all of the things unsuccessful people aren't willing to do." Every time I clean the toilet at the salon or get up at 5:00 am to take the train to the salon in DC, I remind myself it is all contributing to my future success--and I am so grateful for it.

When you watch the video you can see the passion, inspiration, vision and talent all of these people share. The hair is sometimes a little over the top, but it is intended to be. The hair is transformed into gigantic ribbons that look like sheets of wood or intricate ropes tied into up-dos--not so hairdressers will literally bring that to the salon, but to show us there are no limits. It was very exciting and so much fun to be invited.

What was the last quote or phrase you heard that really inspired you? I'm interested to hear--LMK.