I got my hair cut by the same person for nearly 15 years. Despite buying every product she suggested, I couldn’t make my hair look remotely like she did once I got home. My styling job looked like the “before” picture and hers looked like the “after.”

One day, on the recommendation of a friend, I decided to give someone new a try. I liked my first haircut and, once again, bought the products she recommended. I got home, eager to try them, only to find myself in the same situation I had been in all along.

I went to the beauty supply store and enlisted their help. I went in on my worst hair day. “Can you fix this?” I asked. I walked out with new supplies. Slight improvement, but not much.

Exasperated, I went back for haircut No. 2.

“I do everything you do,” I told her. “I’ve bought every product you suggested, used my round brush, dried it layer by layer. But my hair still looks like this.” I pointed. “What am I doing wrong?”

After explaining that I wasn’t an octopus and that I could never get the brush at angles on my head the way she did, she confessed. “It’s the hairdryer,” she told me.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s the hairdryer. I’m not recommending that you buy it. It’s expensive,” she said, “But if you really want to know, that’s the difference.”

Expensive? More expensive than the zillion products I had already purchased? I asked for the model–Chi Rocket–went home, looked on the Internet and ordered.

The hairdryer? Could the explanation really be that simple? Turns out, it was. The new dryer came a few days later and when I put in the time and patience, “Success–After!”

Well, close enough–I’m not an octopus.