Either become a designer or seller.
My first official job was the most fun job I had — demonstrating the use of drones and remote control helicopters in a toy shop. At 17, I wasn’t going to work on the weekends, I was going to play games. Since then I worked with a plethora of retailers, charities and also worked for myself.
In any business, you could be the person designing the product or service or you could be selling that respective product or service. You could become both. These are the lessons I learned from selling and how I look to transition in order to become a designer.
The objective in most places I worked was the same: to sell. To get the person across the table to purchase whatever you are offering. Looking at the bigger picture, we are always trying to sell ourselves. Whether that is for that special job you want so bad, persuading a friend to join you on a run or telling yourself you’re going to read. Yes, sometimes that includes selling an idea even to yourself.
To sell is human. Selling is a broad category. It ranges from marketing to communication. To sell, in my opinion is to get an idea across effectively and efficiently. Getting the person to be likeminded in whatever you are trying to sell. Understand this: people don’t buy because they want something, they buy because there is an emotion attached to whatever it is you are selling. Appeal to their irrational, emotional side of their brain. Most products and services are not needs, they are wants. You think you need them because of clever marketing, great advertisement and ultimately because it makes you feel some type of way. The most significant feeling of all is the feeling of significance. Believe it or not, it’s all psychological manipulation.
One of the most important skills to hone is active listening. Simply put, don’t listen to respond, listen to understand. A great salesman has an individualistic approach to selling. He will make you feel like you are the man. He’s finessed you, you know you’ve been finessed and you’re still happy about it. That’s a mark of a great salesman. This will usually come from active listening. A lot of individuals will find symptoms to a problem. A great salesman will find the root cause. Find what the actual pain is and not just an annoyance. This could only be achieved by actively listening.
I think what is also important is to add value to an individual’s life. Why would they want to come to you and not your competitors? It’s because you go above and beyond everyone else. You do things that make your competitors look like amateurs. This is linked to customer service but it is so much more. It’s being personable, relatable and a great storyteller. Body language is important too but that is secondary and I won’t dive into it. All of this makes you a more charismatic person. Become charismatic. Charisma is when you are able to portray love and confidence at the same time. Try coming across charismatic.
I would encourage anyone to learn how to build before how to sell. To master coding takes years of practice. Don’t get me wrong, selling takes years too but as I mentioned before, to sell is human. Selling will come more natural than to code. Unless of course we get Elon’s Neuralink, we’d be able to code with ease.
Anyway, I am currently adding the finishing touches to my own coded blog website. I am excited to share it with you soon. I am also learning to code on Solidity, which is what most blockchain are coded on. A great time to start since there are less than 3000 Solidity coders in the world! I am also looking into AWS and Python too. These are programming languages I truly think will aid anyone in the future. Big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence are being applied to most firms decision making. In order to become future proof, focus on these languages. There are many other great programming languages that I am not familiar with and may be of importance. I can only suggest to do your own research.
To become superhuman, try becoming good at both selling and building. A good example of a superhuman is man like Elon Musk. His achievements and character speak for itself.
I sometimes come up with the best ideas (or so I think). These ideas more often than not require someone to build it for me. When I come up with an idea, I want to execute it (provided I have the finances and knowledge for it). Once I do execute it, I don’t like to rely on individuals like programmers. I want to bring something to the programmer and take the project from 0 to maybe 50% and let him take the lead from there. Aswell as this, another reason I am learning how to code is so that I can weigh up the options. For example, how long will it take me to code the MVP? Could I program the basics? How hard is it to execute this idea in code? To learn how to build, you get an idea to the answers of these questions. The idea behind learning how to program for me is to distinguish between what can be done realistically and what is just a brain fart.
To learn how to build, use platforms like YouTube, Udemy or skillshare. Try start a project like learning how to make a blog website, a dice game or a landing page in order to keep you motivated. Like anything, it’s a habit. The more you do it the more it becomes natural to you. Sometimes we fall off. We all do. There’s no harm in starting and picking it up again.
Nowadays, there is an abundance of tools to learn a new skill, it’s the lack of motivation and ambition to learn that hinders us. Sell this idea of learning how to code to yourself, you’re better off in the future with all these paradigm shifts happening.
