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How to Sell and Keep Your Soul

I was asked a pretty phenomenal question on Twitter recently:

I’m so glad this question was asked, for two reasons:

  1. I really want to encourage people to believe in themselves, take risks, and make some cool things while being financially successful with it.
  2. I generally have enough self-confidence (or emotional disregard for myself…) that I just put out things and don’t think about this question.

When I saw this, it hit me like a ton of bricks that a lot of people I know must suffer this question every time they consider an amazing idea they want to share with others.  If it’s not this exact wording, it’s definitely similar, right?

You’re afraid of being judged, and of not getting compensated for your time.

I could… probably write a book on this (people, I’m already writing one – give me a minute, please!  Ha…)

If I were to distill as many thoughts and ideas that would go into that theoretical book as possible – it would be this blog post.

Most importantly, I believe every one of you that wants to sell a product or service on your own 100% can.  You have the ability in you now.

You may not make enough to buy a Ferarri in cash, but I believe all of you can at least pay a few bills.

Regardless of if you don’t believe me – or you’re excited by that idea – let me go explain and defend my thoughts on it…

Empathy

Two questions about yourself:

  1. Do you self-identify as an introvert (or mostly an introvert)?
  2. Would you call yourself empathetic?  By that, I mean do you care deeply about other people’s suffering and needs.

Most of you who answer yes to both of those questions also think you’re the worst salespeople of all time and could never sell anything if you tried.

You might also think salespeople are a waste of space and question why money has to be involved in anything.

Do you know what’s funny about this?

If you answer yes to both of those questions you are pre-built to be one of the best “salespeople” of all time.

What?  I’ve got to be joking – right?  Those who are introverted can hardly talk to people, and if I care about someone I certainly wouldn’t sell anything to them, right?

110% wrong.

Most of the self-identifying introverts I know actually have big hearts and an extreme capacity of caring for people.  The thing is, they’re extremely selective about who they care for.

After all, if you have a huge capacity for empathy – you’d kill yourself if you cared for everyone.  So instead as an introvert you discover the people you feel a common bond with and give yourself deeply to them.  You’re not usually trying to actively disregard others, it’s more of a self-preservation mechanism.

Quite frankly, some people you simply just don’t jive with!

But those other people?  Those who are part of your group – holy smokes do you care for them!  You actually have to be careful with how far you extend yourself, because if someone burns you it really hurts!

“Ok Adam, you’ve described me pretty well – but what does this have to do with selling stuff?”

You Don’t “Sell” Anything

Ok, so I don’t sell anything.

Yes, I have products you can buy – but I don’t ever imagine I’m “selling” anything.  If I were tasked to be an electronics store employee and get you to buy stuff, I’d earn zero commission daily.

Instead, I care about people a lot.  That’s… kind of the long and short of it.

I meet people and inquire about them.  After all, it’s easier and less awkward to ask you a question about yourself than it is to talk about me – usually you’d get super bored with that anyway.  I keep asking questions until I find something interesting about you, and we become at least casual friends.

If we talk enough, at some point I learn of something you need.  I might even get pointed and ask you this directly (go look at my tweet above – that’s exactly what I did.)

Then I act on that need.  Literally, just like I’m doing right now.

I’m not writing this to sell you something.  I suppose you could misconstrue my intentions to say that “I’m selling you to believe in yourself.”  The way I see it is that I believe deeply in you and your capabilities (therefore I care about you).  I have no control over if you’re inspired or going to take action after reading this, none.

But I’m going to try and instill what I believe in your brain anyway.

If I do that, and you feel that – you might also want a book from me on “how to sell $#*!”  Not because I listed out all the benefits you’d get if you only took my 10-step approach to selling products online – but because you trust that I actually give a damn about you.

That, my friends, is the crux of every relationship you have – with a company or otherwise.  If the give a damn quotient isn’t real, neither is the relationship, neither is the “sale”.

That is why I say you deeply empathetic introverts have the potential to be the world’s best salespeople.  Your $*%! is 110% real when it comes to care – so real that it’s scary to extend it to a lot of people.

Meeting Needs, Not “Convincing”

The first product I ever launched hasn’t made me rich, but has certainly paid bills.  I’m on my way to being able to afford additional education for myself without taking out student loans again.

That product came from a need, not even a serious need.  It’s now been purchased by a handful of major AAA game companies.  One entire audio team is even using it.

While I thought that would be cool, I never started out with those intentions.

I started out to help literally one person.  Hilariously enough, that one person still has never used it (hi Matt!  I only call him out because he knows I’m not serious and messing with him.)

In the process of making the product (which, at the time, was the “project”) I was proud of what I’d accomplished, so I shared my progress.  Someone else replied

“Ooh, I’d like that too!”

With that, I was off to the races.

I may have wanted to charge or be compensated for what I was doing at this point, but I was still scared.  I was scared to ask for money, I was scared of being judged.  It was all, in general, just uncomfortable to think about money.

So largely I put off that thought, and any conversation about money.

I literally doubled down to focus on making something really awesome.  I also regularly stated my hopes of it being a production-ready product.  Even if I didn’t make a dime, I wanted it help professionals in professional environments – and I let people know that!

A lot of people make things for Reaper as hobbyist projects with no concern about who actually uses them or where they end up.  I wanted to help professionals.

Do you know what happened after that?

Someone demanded I take their money.

I didn’t see that coming.  Quite frankly, that moment might not come for you!  It hasn’t happened to me since – but it did teach me something that I can pass on to you.  It’s what has helped me be able to put a price on what I create ever since.

Yes, I still panic with “Will anyone buy this?  Will anyone even care?!” thoughts.  Only once since has a product gone over like a dud – and it’s because I was trying to make a new product to make money instead of helping people.

So here’s what I learned…

You Must Be Willing to Receive

People value what you do, what you’re into, and what you want to create way more than you think they do.

It doesn’t mean you’re going to get rich – but it’s likely that at least a few people actually want to pay you.

Why?

They recognize the effort you made, and they want to say thanks.

When someone does something super nice for you, how hard is it to express your gratitude in a way that really conveys your thanks back?  It’s almost always impossible, right?

When you make things for people, and fill their needs – that gratitude gap happens.  When you put a price on what you do, your customers (not everyone) are happy to pay you.  It allows them to fill the gratitude gap in a way that they’ll know you appreciate.

Some of them will even want to go above and beyond that – I’ve had someone offer to help proofread my new book.  Yes, he paid to read it – no, I never asked for the proofreading help.  I sure as hell appreciate it, though!

But this is hard, right?  Asking for money is putting yourself out there.  In fact, this is why most of you empathetic introverts are super uncomfortable with money entering the equation – you’re not used to it and you’re afraid it’ll ruin things.  In fact, you’re so not used to monetary transactions that you can’t see how it won’t ruin things.

You’re probably – just like me – a bit scared of receiving gratitude.

So – you know how you really care about other people?

They care about you too.

No, not everyone who buys something will care about you in the way that you care about your future customers – but the customers you most want to work with will.  They’ll be more thankful than you ever expect, they’ll pay you more than you think anyone would.

You know that group that you’re really tight with and used to caring about?  In “business”, that group who cares back is your super tight knit group.  They do exist.  You probably know a handful of them right now.

Do you have any friends championing your ideas and saying “You know, you really should create that thing.  I’d buy it!”  Despite your shrugging it off, they’re probably not kidding.

Don’t “Sell Yourself”

You never have to “sell yourself”, ever.  You don’t need to talk about how great you are.  It’s sometimes helpful for social proof to mention what you’ve accomplished – but I don’t tell 99% of you the things I’m most excited about accomplishing.

That’s because it’s not helpful, and 99% of you will think I’m bragging when that’s not what I intend.

So get this idea that you need to provide proof and be impressive to people in order to sell them your products or services out of your head.

You just need to do what you’re already good at – ask people who you might be able to help what they need.  Care about them and what causes them pain and frustration.  Simply patiently hang out.  If you’re afraid to ask directly – eventually something’s going to come out of their mouth where you’ll think..

“Hey!  I can probably help you with that!”

Then do it.  That’s it.

PS/Side Caveat:

I hope that at this point you’re energized and have a little bit of an inkling that you can do this – that’s awesome!

Here’s a few things about how not to go forward.

  • Don’t just make something you think would be awesome without confirming someone wants it first.  This can be as simple as a Twitter poll:

  • I would advise against making something for your industry’s peers.  I used to work with audio and DAWs a lot.  I understand the background and workflow of an audio professional.  But I’m programming here, not making sounds.  For example, it’s much harder mentally to make things for sound designers as a sound designer (holy smokes, fear of judgement city!) than it is for you to make things for video editors or game devs.

If you’ve got any other questions for me, I’m super happy to answer them.  Go tweet at me.

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