Welcome to Things I Wish I Knew Earlier Sunday!
Here are 3 ideas I found to spur your creativity this week.
Selling is Easy When You Believe in the Product
My first job out of college was selling campers to prospective RV owners.
After about two weeks, the reality of the new job wore away my naive, optimistic enthusiasm.
I took the job because I wanted to learn how to help people through sales. What I learned was that my job was to try my hardest to rip off my customers.
I got paid a percentage of the total dealership profit (total sales price – cost of the camper to the dealership).
So if my customer got a great price, I didn’t make any money. If I made a lot of money, the customer got their head taken off.
What a terrible way to make a living. I was worried that all selling was deceitful scheming.
When I got into real estate, I learned that wasn’t true at all.
As an agent, I get paid a percentage of each sale. So when I get top dollar for my seller-clients, I get compensated well. And when I negotiate a great deal for my buyer-clients, I still get paid well.
That is what happens when morals and incentives align.
And as an agent, I’m not selling properties; I’m selling myself.
So as long as I am working hard for my clients, telling the truth, and doing my best, then I know I’m selling a great product.
Selling becomes easy.
If you are having a hard time selling your products/services, it might be time to take a step back and ask yourself if you really believe in what you are trying to sell.
The Best Way to Test the Strength of an Idea is to Teach It to Others
I’m working on a passion project right now.
The basic idea is to build a framework that helps trapped, aspiring entrepreneurs learn how to monetize and maximize their creative gifts.
So I have been building a slide deck for a class I want to teach on the subject.
The simple act of envisioning what it would be like to teach the ideas to a class of real people has done wonders to test whether the ideas are any good.
If I were in the audience, would I be entertained? Would I be engaged and taking notes? Would I leave inspired and ready to take action?
And I am fired up to actually teach the class to continue learning about the strength of these ideas.
It is tempting to keep your ideas to yourself and convince yourself they are good. All that does is leave you spending time on ideas that might not be good at all.
Teach your ideas to others to figure out if they are worth pursuing further.
It will save you a lot of time and energy.
You Don’t have ADHD, You’re Just a Creative
The older I get, the more convinced I am that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is not real.
I was diagnosed with ADHD in college and was prescribed Adderall. And it did help me sit down and start studying…at first.
What I quickly learned was that sitting down to study, and focusing on the material, was just a skill that I had never developed. So after a few months of using the stuff, I put it down because I knew all I had to do to focus was start.
Once I had started the studying process, it was pretty easy for me to continue.
At the same time in my life, I got very interested in learning about all sorts of things that were outside my college curriculum (to the detriment of my grades lol).
Over time, I realized that it wasn’t that I had some kind of physical disorder that kept me from paying attention. I just wasn’t interested in the stuff I was supposed to be learning.
When I put a book in my hand about something I really wanted to learn about, I had no problem at all sitting for hours and pouring over the text.
Creative people have a hard time focusing on stuff they aren’t interested in. That’s just the way of things.
So when you were a kid and couldn’t sit still in class or pay attention to what you were being taught, maybe you didn’t have a disorder. Maybe you just weren’t interested in what you were being forced to learn.
Creative people across the world (entrepreneurs and artists) have ADHD symptoms that they turn into their super power. They let their curiosity guide them and allow themselves to fall into rabbit holes.
If you think you have ADHD and you have a hard time focusing, take a step back and ask yourself if the problem actually lies in what you are trying to focus on. Are you interested in it at all? If not, don’t go get prescribed medication for your disorder. Just find something that you’re actually curious about.
I bet you’ll be surprised to find that you can focus on it for a long time with no problem at all.