The thing I regret not doing is sales. And I mean SALES. Selling plots of land in a swamp. Selling GIs suits of armour on an aircraft carrier. Selling fake Gucci jackets out of the boot of a car. I'm talking Glengarry Glen Ross shit and worse. If I had a career timeout I think that's what I might do.
Bear with me here.
It's like there's two ways of looking at what life is really about. On the one hand life is about stopping to smell the flowers, feel the sand in between your toes, enjoy balmy evenings with friends and family. On the other hand life is about a cruel and monstrous struggle for survival in which every living organism is consuming or parasitising some other organism for its own advantage.
Both these things are true: I feel like people who have the privilege of NOT doing sales, don't see both sides on a regular basis. Don't understand where their incomes really originate.
So I always felt like it's a world I know about, but haven't really experienced. Like sometimes I love walking through an industrial estate at 6am and feeling like this is really where things are happening.
As someone who was in sales as a first job working with all kinds of companies, small and Fortune 500, this is absolutely true. Unless you learn to pick up a phone, learn to ask for what you want in an agreement, and learn what it takes to communicate the value of a product effectively you'll have a handicap in starting a company, but also fully understanding any company for which you're working.
Most of sales is pretty depressing and drips of desperation while one person in the office crushes it and others struggle. I'm talking "prestigious" areas like commercial real estate too. Most salespeople are not in high margin, booming areas like IT/software.
Higher the margins and technical complexity the better.
Bear with me here.
It's like there's two ways of looking at what life is really about. On the one hand life is about stopping to smell the flowers, feel the sand in between your toes, enjoy balmy evenings with friends and family. On the other hand life is about a cruel and monstrous struggle for survival in which every living organism is consuming or parasitising some other organism for its own advantage.
Both these things are true: I feel like people who have the privilege of NOT doing sales, don't see both sides on a regular basis. Don't understand where their incomes really originate.
So I always felt like it's a world I know about, but haven't really experienced. Like sometimes I love walking through an industrial estate at 6am and feeling like this is really where things are happening.