This morning I started to read my one non-fiction book for the quarter. John Carlton’s The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Getting Your Shit Together
I wish I have read it a decade or two ago. It would have made a huge difference.
It brought to light a ‘delusional’ worldview I have, where I expect people to do what I would do.
I’d never realized, and I am in shock. I am mortified, and it is, sometimes, too late, even though it’s not over till the fat lady sings. But I think it may be too late for me, but it is not too late for you.
So I am sharing it, even though I look bad… I am OK with that.
I am talking about the fact that everything needs to be sold. If you build they won’t come. If your product is exactly what they need, is not a guarantee that they will buy it.
This applies to everyone… in every area of life.
You have to sell yourself, your service, your product, your virtues again and again… and if I am an anything to consider as a ‘normal’, you don’t want to.
You want to be loved for who you are, exactly the way you are… Good luck… has never happened.
You want others to ‘buy’ your cooking, your love-making, your companionship, your looks, your housekeeping, your moneymaking: you have to sell it. Or it will be taken for granted, or not enjoyed as much as you think it’s worth.
Why? Because humanity, the species, lives through words… and words tend to be overwritten by other words. Huh?
Other words that sell maybe something inferior, but new and titillating… claiming to give a better life experience.
This is, I think, why people cheat on their spouses or partners. Or change restaurants. Or complain about what they used to love about you.
Some words overwrote what ‘bought’ what they had before.
Or maybe you made a gaffe, a mistake, a wrong step, and they decided that it’s time to look for the perfect whatever you failed to be…
It’s human nature in the age of consumerism. It wasn’t always this way, but it is this way now, and unless you are prepared and skillful and diligent, you are sh!t out of luck.
This is where I find myself… this is what I now see, after reading just the first chapter of that book, see clearly: I wasn’t prepared. I am not skillful enough. And I haven’t been diligent at selling myself, my solution, what Life wants you to do so you can have health, wealth, love, and happiness.
I have thought as individual spite, that most people listen to me while they say in their head: ‘I know better’… humoring me.
The book says something, in the same chapter, that will also apply to you and it will wake you up.
It woke the author up, John Carlton, some 30, maybe 40 years ago:
if your last five years weren’t all that good, just think of the next five years. They will be reruns of the same, unless you change.
I don’t have five more years. But hopefully you do.
And the most minimalist, albeit difficult way to change is the way I teach to change. The strait and narrow way.
But there is something I can’t teach, because I don’t do it well myself. And that is selling. I can teach you what attitude works. I can teach you how to listen so what you’ll say clicks with what they are saying… or not saying out loud, only in their heads. And I can help you to be interested in what they want, even if what they want is unconscious.
But I can’t teach you to sell. I can only teach you who to be while you are selling. Only what context to have, how to be ‘desire to receive for the sake of sharing‘, how to feel good about yourself before, during, and after the sale. They are important.
If you are in sales or anything else and you are not happy, here is another Carlton quote:
If you’re ashamed of anything you’re doing, then STOP fu..ing doing it.
Carlton says: selling is simply saying:
Here’s who I am, here’s what I have, here’s why you want it… and here’s what to do now.
Most of you don’t know who you are. Most of you don’t have much to offer. And you don’t know why people would want it… so you have some work to do!
If you have words that resonate with the other, and you have all the hows I teach: if you mean it, if you are in their world… then you’ll be able to sell yourself. Sell your value to the other. Sell your companionship, sell your work, sell your product. And you’ll have what you want in life.
WIIFM
The core element of any sales is the answer(s) to the question humans ask in their heads: WIIFM. What’s in it for me? If that doesn’t answer what they already want… as it seems to be in my case, then there will be no sale.
If you are willing to indulge me for a moment, I’ll talk about MY business… hopefully you learn from my failings.
If you don’t agree with what people want, and I didn’t… then you cannot sell them. Unless you, at least first, align yourself with what people want, and create a ‘yes, yes, yes’ scenario, you’ll be poor.
They may NEED what you are selling, but there is no connection in their minds between what they want and that NEED.
For example, if you are my typical reader, you think that what you know will get you what you want. And you resent me for telling you what you NEED… and of course you argue with me in your head.
Here is an example: One of my paying clients.
She wants to live a life where she is worth a damn. She can see that if she continues being the way she has been, she will lose everything. So she is ‘doing’ the 67 steps.
She is in the 67 steps coaching program.
Her cell hydration is 1%. I have been telling her that her intellectual and emotional IQ drops when her cells are dehydrated.
But she knows better. She wants a better life, but she feels she needs to be right. And for that she needs to make me wrong.
She needs to be right. That is her ITCH… Unless what she wants becomes more important she will have what her ITCH allows her to have: misery. Illness.
She wants to be free to be herself… but at this stage this means to her: free to be a judgmental, resistant, stingy person. Huh. Yeah, that will work! Not.
My programs point out the ITCH, the misconception, the stingy ways you get in your own way… so no one can help you to go for what you really want.
You see, my mistake has been trying to sell you what you NEED, while what you feel you need is what is blocking you from getting what you want. Really.
Your ITCH, the PEBBLE in your shoes, are like a drug: you feel that you’ll die without them. You feel you need them more than you need sustenance.
And that’s why I am poor… I chose to teach what you really NEED, and that: you don’t want.
You need to sell to people what they are already buying. That is how they really tell you what they want.
Cheap closure now. Relief. Excuse. Hope. Fantasy. Illusion. Looking good. Being right. A way to dominate. Not feeling guilty.
So sell them that. Don’t follow in my footsteps unless you like to be poor.
PS: and here is a little bit of gold:
start with writing your bullets. The style of bullets that show what the buyer’s life will be like, unless they buy what you are selling. but there are all kinds of bullets. Curiosity bullets. Sensational bullets. Entertaining/funny bullets. Get good at bullets… or not many people will buy what you sell. And for getting good at bullets you definitely need to get out of your safe ditch… and take a look at the whole wide world.
The fastest way to do that is with the 67 step coaching… If you do it with the right mindset: it is not all about you.
My job, as a coach in that program is to nudge you onto the right mindset… Because your ITCH will do everything in its power to pull you off, and make it about you.
PPS:
I bet many of you don’t think that this article is giving you something that would make your life go from ‘meh’ to worth living.
But if you consider that one of the reasons your life is ‘meh’ is because you live in your head, having your mind as your only companion.
Getting seriously interested in what people want, what they think they need, and what they really need… i.e. getting interested in something outside of yourself, can transform your life seriously.
I can say ‘get out of your own way‘ till I am blue in the face, but unless there is someplace for you to go, to relocate yourself so you are not in your own way, you won’t know what to do and how to do it.
Pick a group of people you COULD be interested in.
It doesn’t need to be the final group of people… you can start anywhere. Just make sure you have access to that group’s thoughts.
And get interested… They can be your enemy for all I care… A group you don’t agree with.
I am doing the same. I have chosen the Settleheads… a totally unattractive group. ugh. But I am interested nevertheless. I have to get over my disgust, dislike, and that is a good exercise for anyone as well. People are people… so what is underneath the ugly?
I am also using my reading of Kevin Wignall’s novels to get really interested in the different kind of approaches to death… through different characters in his books. Fascinating.
Can I turn my business around? No. The original issue, I am hellbent on what people really need, I can’t get rid of, can’t even tone down. So unless I pick something I am NOT passionate about, no. My business is kaput. So don’t pick anything you are hellbent about, not even something you are passionate about. The passion will prevent you from being able to connect to the people who would be your customers.
