Last night I was pretty down.
So I bought a present for my current love (my titanium grey Mazda RX8). Instantly I felt better even though the parts won’t be here for a week.
I was upset because my article 10 Things Salespeople Should Find More Valuable Than Money (But Never Do) had gone mini-viral with 10,000 views that first evening.
I should be excited right? I got exactly what I wanted, a crap tonne of people reading my work (I can be a difficult bastard to please).
But I felt like someone had given me an ice-cream and then kicked me in the nuts.
I was down because the article got slammed in every single comment on my facebook page.
Seemingly everyone that follows me values money way higher than anything else.
Knowing that the first thing I did when I wasn’t feeling great was to spend money made me rethink my ideas.
Perhaps money is the most important thing on the planet as it enables you to do stuff?
A) Family
Money enables me to slip my little brother a £20 to go out and get drunk.
Probably not the wisest way to spend it in hindsight.
But he’s making friends right?
It allows me to afford a car and drive home to see my Mum when her cancer medication is getting on top of her.
B) Health
Money enables me to buy decent food, to afford to go rock climbing, mountain biking and the other things I do to get my heart racing.
These are the activities that get me out of bed on a Weekend morning when otherwise I’d be lay there listening to the gurgling sound of my arteries clogging up.
It was money that I traded for an IKEA MARKUS office chair which instantly solved the back pain I was having in my lower back.
That had kept me up at night for weeks on end.
C) Stress
Money enables me to reduce my stress about money.
Sure chasing money is stressful.
I’m the most stressed when I’m close to zero in my bank account .
This happens regularly as I squirrel most of the money I make into places that I can’t reach it when it comes in.
This puts me back to square one where I have to sell to put food on the table.
Serious motivation to not watch Battlestar Galactica and to pick up the phone.
I always make it though. The God of sales always throws an opportunity my way but man does it make me sweat.
D) Experiences
Money enables me to race my RX8 around a track, jump out of aeroplanes, visit distant lands (that always seem to have great wifi) and truly experience life.
I’m not made to go backpacking with zero budget. I need cash.
I’d get pretty far without sit, I’d see a whole lot but I wouldn’t enjoy it.
I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth by any means but I need a good bed, air conditioning if it’s hot and dry clothes if it’s wet to be happy.
Hey, money buys all that stuff when you’re travelling too.
E) Giving
Money enables me to give to others.
Every self-help book I’ve ever read on money tells me to give money first and then after some indiscriminate time even more will come back into my life.
Maybe I’m doing it wrong but that has never happened to me.
And it sounds dumb.
If there is a God, why would he keep score? Doesn’t he have better things to do than monitor my monthly donations to charities that help the homeless?
F) Work
Money enables me (forces me) to work. Work means effort. Effort means reward.
In an impossible world where everyone had abundant money nothing would have value.
It’s the fact that to buy the Ferrari 360 spider that I’ve wanted ever since I saw my ex-girlfriends Dad driving one when I was 15 (I never got a ride in it) I’ve got to earn and save £60k.
Plus a few thousand to insure it.
Plus a second car to drive around in most of the time.
Plus a house with a big enough garage to store it in.
This all forces me to work like a mule and grind my way towards it.
It’s after the fact, not during that makes the grind worthwhile.
E) Happiness
But MORE money doesn’t enable my happiness.
And that’s why we exist right?
To be happy (or die trying)?
18 months ago I let money rule my life. It demanded that I did a certain sales job. Which in turn demanded I dressed and behaved a certain way for over 1/3 of my day.
It demanded I drive a certain car and lived in a particular area.
I was moneys bitch.
And I wasn’t happy.
I hated all of it.
Even though money enabled me to do everything that I’ve mentioned so far in abundance, when I didn’t have my debit card in hand I was miserable.
The trade off wasn’t worth it.
This all changed when I quit selling what I didn’t want to sell (medical devices) and started selling what I loved to sell (ad space on the Salesman Podcast).
Instantly I was thrown from the comfort of $100K+ a year into having to move in with a friend, not having a car and living an hour away from my girlfriend.
And I couldn’t have been happier.
I rediscovered my love for sales.
I was pitching a product that was constantly evolving, growing and that only exists in electrons flowing around a circuit.
I had to sell the concept of what a sponsorship of the show could do for the prospect.
Not to mention the fact that when I wasn’t selling I was interviewing all of my sales heroes.
I’d been reading Dr Dick Ruff, Mark Hunter and Anthony Iannarino’s sales blogs for years and now I had an excuse to call them up and ask them ridiculous questions on the show.
As my Dad would say I was as happy as a pig in shit.
This conveniently brings me back to the original question – Is money more important to salespeople than anything else?
It isn’t the amount of money that makes me happy.
It’s not all the crap I can spend money on that makes me happy.
It’s the hustle of making it that puts a grin on my face every morning (until someone tells me I suck on facebook).
