Eric Severn’s Testimonial

It all started when I was 10, two years ago. I was going to a school that was about 20 minutes away from my house. On the way home, my mom would listen to Eric Lofholm cd’s. She had all of them so every day we would listen to them on the way home.

I can admit that I told the tape to be quiet a couple of times (actually, I said, “Shut up,” but my mom said that isn’t nice to say), but it turned out that I liked it after a while, especially since this guy on the cd had the same name as me.

I remember hearing the story of how Eric Lofholm was a McDonald’s employee and things weren’t going his way. But he didn’t give up. He set a goal, had a strategy, and he put it into action by quitting his job at McDonald’s, rushed to see his girlfriend and proposed to her. She said, “Yes.”

So, on the way home from school one hot day, we stopped at 7-Eleven and got a Slurpee, and my mom showed me the ad from Comp USA. They were going to sell the PS2 game, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith for $30. It had only sold for $50 until then. Keep in mind that this was Wednesday and the sale was only from 5:00pm-10:00pm on that Friday.

In the car, I started thinking up ways to get the video game. First, of course, like any kid, I asked my mom to buy it for me. I never understood why my parents didn’t just buy me things that I wanted like some of my friends’ parents did. My parents must be defective.

Well, then I had to think up ways to earn money. First, I asked my mom if I could have my allowance a day early. I earned $3 a week and got it on Saturday if my room was clean. I also asked her if I saved up $25 by Friday afternoon if she could front me the money for the rest.

My mom said that both cars needed to be washed and the lawn needed to be mowed. She said that she had plenty of chores if I wanted to earn money. When I got home, I immediately went out and washed the car. When I came back in, I was discouraged and said, “I don’t know how I’m going to earn $30 by Friday. What was I thinking?”

My mom said to me, “Wait son, listen. There’s something called, ‘Goal-strategy-action.’ You had a goal. What was your goal?” I said, “To get the Star Wars game.” She said, “Okay, what is your strategy?” I said, “To do a bunch of work and earn the money.” Then she said, “Okay, now you just need to go and take massive action to achieve your goal. I will help you think of more things to do to earn the money, but you need to just keep doing the things that you already know to do.”

She told me that I could go and ask the neighbors if they wanted their lawn mowed. Well, I tried that, but it didn’t work so I just continued on with the plan I made originally.

Well, I got out and mowed and edged our front and back yards. After that, I mopped the kitchen floor, which I hadn’t done before. Actually, it was kind of fun. I turned up some music and danced while I mopped the floor.

I decided that I could wash the dog the next day when I got home from school, because it was a half day and it would cool us both off in the middle of the day. Also, I decided not to have a friend over that Thursday afternoon like I usually did, because I wanted to be able to do chores to earn the money for the game.

That night, I wrote down the chores that I was going to do in a notebook so that I could keep track of which chores I still needed to do and how much I had earned. I put boxes next to the chores and checked the boxes when I was done with each thing. I got up early on Thursday morning to clean my room before school so that I wouldn’t have to when I got home.

Well, I wanted to earn all of the money by Thursday night, so that I wouldn’t have to come home on Friday afternoon and do chores before going to the store, because it was on the way home from school. I accomplished my goal. I earned all of it by Thursday night.

The next strategy was getting to the store before all of the games were sold out. I thought maybe the store would be packed at 5 o’clock with people wanting to buy the game. My mom and I thought of a plan to go on some errands right after school so that we would show up at Comp USA right before 5.

On Friday, I kept her on track all afternoon so that we would be sure to be there right on time. Well, we got there at 4:50 and went into the store. There weren’t mobs of people like I thought there would be.

I went up to a store clerk and asked for the Star Wars PS2 games that were on sale and he went back and got one out of a case for me. They still had lots of them. He said that I just needed to wait until 5 pm to buy it to get the sale price.
We did, and then I walked out of the store happy as a clam.

Later, my mom told Eric the story of me using goal-strategy-action and earning the money in 2 days to buy the video game. He had me speak for the first time at a conference in Costa Mesa and I got $5. That was the beginning of my speaking career and becoming friends with Eric Lofholm.