By the Ocean
Cloudy 67 Degrees
7:08 a.m.
There’s a problem you face in business when you are a good-hearted person who wants to succeed.
The problem is that, when you look out onto the business world, you see plenty of successful “salespeople” who have created success doing completely slimy things. They act, for lack of a more elegant word, like assholes.
So you’re faced with a choice:
- Do you become an asshole just to be successful?
- Or do you stop selling and just sit there hoping your business works out anyway?
I wasn’t born with a lot of asshole potential, so try as as I might (and believe me when I tell you I tried), I had to figure out another way to do things.
- I suck at manipulating…
- I’m terrible at coercion…
- I don’t do well playing the fear game…
- And I have trouble respecting anyone who does do any of these things.
So that left me at my kitchen table with the desire to build a successful business and not much of a clue about how to do that without betraying myself.
And then I realized that, instead of trying to win by forcing others to lose, business could happen where I win BECAUSE someone else wins.
The gurus tell you this is stupid and weak and naive. They say it’s a “dog eat dog” world where there are winners and losers.
But those guys are some of the (cough) folks I was describing with my “colorful” language early on. So I don’t find their opinion particularly valuable.
Business is getting people what they want. It is about service. It is all about THEM, the people you serve. And to the extent you know that, understand that and practice that, the entire journey can shift.
Traditional selling is about getting people to do things.
But authentic business is about solving problems for others.
Can you imagine a world where “selling” doesn’t have to happen for buying to occur?
What would it take to create a business where that was true?