https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=s68qdbivVlo
It’s really, really hard to be a good salesperson. And people like that are unbelievably rare and they’re unbelievably valuable. And nothing wrong with it. And it doesn’t make you a bad person. You’re not selling your soul. Well, it’s also, it’s also, how are you going to generate revenue? Yeah. And without that, how are you going to live? How’s the economy going to, money even going to move in an economy? Well, the other thing that happens with the artistic and maybe the entrepreneurial types, too, is that they end up with contempt for the business end of the process. And that’s a real mistake, you know. I mean, one of the things that I tell people who are artistically oriented, let’s say, so they’re in the entrepreneurial category is, look, it’s virtually impossible for you to monetize your product. That’s the first thing you have to understand. Maybe you’ll get lucky and you’ll figure out a strategy. But if you add contempt for the sales and marketing process to that impossibility, you can be bloody well sure that all you’re going to do is starve. So you better drop your contempt for the sales and marketing end of this if you want to sustain yourself through your life. And that’s going to be a prerequisite for your creative endeavor. And so, and art schools and establishments like that do an absolutely dreadful job of- Well, they don’t teach it. Not at all. I was an artist. I was an artist. I went through art school. They don’t teach it. No. Never once. No, I know. And it’s, and I mean- How are you going to commercialize your venture? How are you going to pay for your mortgage? How are you going to buy food? Yeah, with just a paintbrush and a canvas. Oh, Jesus. And well, and artists are in particularly dire position because as a visual artist, for example, you’re not only competing with all the visual artists that now exist, and there’s plenty of them, but you’re also competing with all the dead artists who are way, who already have an established reputation and a body of work that’s being, still being exchanged in the marketplace. And so you don’t want to add contempt for the sales and marketing process to that. And you also probably have to understand that if you want to be an artist, that you’re also going to have to have, have to have another job. Yeah. Because it’s just, unless you want to bang your head against the wall until it’s bleeding. It’s so hard. And I mean, I’ve known some people who are outstanding artists, and I’ve known very, very few. I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who was able to make a living from the outset of their career as a, as a non-commercial visual artist, brutally difficult. So, and adding contempt to that is not helpful. You should be very thankful that sales and marketing people exist. Even I know there’s that, what would you call it? The mercantilist commercial element to it that is sort of, in some sense, you can consider it distasteful from the perspective of higher aesthetics, but don’t confuse your ignorance of something important, sales and marketing, with your moral purity. That’s a big mistake. It’s a big ethical mistake and you will pay for that. So. Yeah. So I think there’s some simple solutions. I almost like want to sort of summarize this part so far. I’ve always enjoyed selling straight to consumer and not to businesses. Yeah, I like that better too. I think that you’ve got more customers. You’re always at the decision maker. Sometimes it’s the husband or the wife who owns the credit card strings, but other than that, you’re always at the decision maker. You learn very intuitively and quickly. You get a quick feedback loop. Whereas like you said, if you’re dealing with a manager who’s got their own motives and then a company who’s got different motives, they’re not going to tell you the truth. You’ve got to unwrap all of that. They don’t even know what the truth is necessarily because they can’t represent their business, because they, well, they don’t embody it. Yeah. So straight to consumer is number one. I think the second thing is, I think probably it is fair to say that sales and marketing can be learned, but I think it’s also fair to say that sales and marketing are more likely to succeed in certain personality traits. Well, you need to be extroverted, for example, and assertive. It also helps to be emotionally stable because what’s your failure rate as a salesperson? It’s like 50 to 1? Mine’s epic. Oh yeah, it’s unbelievable. It’s like you have to have a constitution of bloody iron to tolerate that. Because what’s the default answer to, do you want to buy something from me? No, it’s no, go away. It’s worse than no. It’s like no, and you’re bothering me. And then even if the best you get is, well, I’ll think about it. That’s worse, by the way. That’s worse than no, I’ll think about it in the middle grounds. Yeah. At least with a no, you can move on. That’s right. You drown in, that’s right. Well, that’s the problem with trying to sell to big companies. It’s like, maybe we’ll do this. It’s like when? Well, maybe in the next six months to a year, which will be delayed. Absolutely. 100%. Yeah, we’ve found selling direct to consumer way less stressful. And you know, the funny thing is- And more rewarding, sorry to jump in there, Jordan, more rewarding because you can actually change an individual’s life with a good product. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Well, the thing about, you know, you kind of have this idea that you could, let’s go for a big company, a couple of contracts and we’re set. It’s like, yeah, but you’ll die in the interim waiting for the contracts. So, and it is so interesting to think about that in terms of the error of Marxist criticisms of capitalism, because the Marxist criticism was something like capital will accrue in the hands of a smaller and smaller number of individuals, which it does, but the individuals rotate. That’s the thing that Marx got wrong. Now with big companies, you think that, well, the big companies absorb all the capital, but the thing is they fail. The reason they fail is because they get so large, they’re so ponderous that they move so slowly that eventually they make themselves extinct. And you experience that when you’re trying to sell to them. It’s like, oh, you have this rule. Oh, you have this rule. Oh, you also have this rule. Oh, this rule means we have to completely rewrite our software, and then these special adaptations have to be made. Then there’s 20 people to clear that with. It’s brutally difficult.