We found the internet's best sales advice

This is from like years and years ago, but it's this comment about sales because Hacker News is full of engineers and they're like, hey, like, you know, I suck at sales. Anybody can help me get better at this. And this guy wrote 7 points and I just nodded my head so vigorously that my C4, C5 is a little sore. So let me just give you this here. He said, the guy goes, yeah, there's tons of resources to help you with sales, but I'll start with, I'll try to offer some simple tips. Number 1, sales is a lot like golf. You can make it so complicated that it's almost impossible, or you could simply walk up and hit the ball. I've been leading sales orgs for about 20 years. My advice is to walk up and hit the ball. Number 2, sales is about people and it's about problem solving. It's not about tech or solutions or chemicals or lines of code or artichokes. It's about people. It's about solving problems. Number 3, people buy 4 things and 4 things only ever. Those 4 things are time, money, sex, and approval or peace of mind. If you try to sell anything other than those 4 things, you will fail. That's so good. Number 4, people buy aspirin always. They'll buy vitamins sometimes, and, but it'll be unpredictable. Sell aspirin. Number 5, I say in every talk that I give that all things being equal, people will buy from their friends. So make everything else equal and then go make a lot of friends. Um, number 6, being valuable and useful is all you'll ever need to sell things. Help people out, send them interesting posts, write birthday cards, record videos sharing your ideas of how they could grow their business. Introduce them to people who would benefit from knowing each other and get out of the way. Expect nothing in return. Do this consistently and authentically, and people will find ways to give you money. I promise. Number 7, no one cares about your quota, your payroll, your OpEx, your burn rate. No one. They care about the problem you're solving for them. There are more than $100 trillion in the economy just waiting for you to breathe it in. Good luck. Who is this god of Hacker News?

In 2014, I had just read his book and I wanted to implement what he talked about. And he has this rule called the rule of reciprocity, which basically just says Let's say that neighbor 1 goes to neighbor 2. Let's say I go to Sean and I say, hey, can I borrow a cup of sugar? And you say, yeah, I got you. The next day, if you come to me and say, hey, can I borrow your car for the day? Even though, even though those 2 asks aren't even remotely equal, I, because of the rule of reciprocity, am very likely to lend you my car because the rule of reciprocity states that if you do something nice for someone, they are, they have a high chance of doing something nice in exchange to you. Even if they aren't equal. And that's like how society is built, one could say, is like based off the rule of reciprocity. So when I was a kid, I was 24 years old, there was a motorcycle for sale, I think for $1,800. And I went to buy it, and I took photos and documented all of this as I went. And I was like, hey, you have the motorcycle for $1,800? Let me see it, let me check it out. Awesome. Oh, by the way, I'm really sorry I'm late. I just, I wanted to stop and get a Coke 'cause it was kind of hot outside. I got one for you if you want one. Do you want one? No. And he goes, yeah, sure, thanks. And then I start talking to him, and I'm like, look, I love this motorcycle, but, like, I'm a young guy. I don't have a lot of money. I know you're asking for $18,000. Could you do $14,000? And he goes, you know, you brought me the Coke. You seem like a nice kid. Yeah, I guess I can do that. And so, like, there's a blog post where I took photos of myself, like, when he was, like, turned around, like, signing the paperwork. I, like, took the photo. But anyway, the rule of reciprocity is pretty amazing.

And so here I am. I thought I was past this. I'm now in my late 30s and I'm nervous. I'm going to the principal's office. And I bring— so we're recording a vlog of this thing and I'm telling the vlog, I said, my friend Sam taught me this trick, this little The law of reciprocity. Let me put you guys on some game. People have this really high likelihood to return the favor if you do a small favor for them. I said, watch. I said, I'm going to be late to this meeting, but I'm going to stop and get this Diet Coke because this is the most important part of the meeting. And I'm like, follow me. The vlog camera follows me in. We get 2 Diet Cokes and we go. And I'm so ready for this. And I get to the meeting and we sit down. And I'm like, I don't fully remember the line that you said about how to do it. I think there's actually a really specific way in the book that Robert Cialdini describes it, which is 2 people are doing a psych study. The guy walks out and he comes back and he says, hey, I asked the guy if I could have a Coke. He said yes, so I brought you one too. So it kind of sounds very thoughtful in passing. And you said a very similar thing. Yeah. And so I walk in and I just go— he's like, hey, guys. And I go, you want a Diet Coke? And then he's like— and he just goes, no, thanks. And now I have 2 Diet Cokes. I go, I have 2. I go, I have 2. And he goes, I'm all set. And then I— and the vlog camera's on me and it's like The Office. I look at the camera and it's like, this is not going as planned. I'm Michael Scotting this. And then I open up the Diet Coke, almost explodes because I've been like, you know, nervous the whole time. Luckily doesn't totally foam over. And I proceed to drink 2 Diet Cokes while this guy absolutely shuts down my program. And so that's the law of reciprocity gone wrong.

Exactly. So listen to this story. So he tells me this story. So Mark, he started GLG when he was only like 23, 24, pretty young guy. When he's something like 27, 28, he meets this guy named Ellie. Ellie was either an ambulance driver or was at the scene where this happened, but basically a kid was choking on his food. And the am— they called an ambulance. The ambulance didn't make it there in time, and the kid died. And he was like, it really sat with him. He was really bothered by that because they come to find out that there actually was a doctor, like, next door or, like, down the block or something like that within, like, a pretty close vicinity. And he's like, it really stinks that this ambulance took 15 or however many minutes to get here when there was a guy right here that could have, like, cured this kid and he didn't have to die. And so, uh, Eli ends up starting this very small thing with only, like, 6 or 12 people where they basically self-organize and they train themselves on how to do very simple things like CPR, the Heimlich maneuver, and they train themselves on that. And then eventually went to, like, they could even, like, do, like, an emergency baby delivery. And he had started a nonprofit where he would actually give out these, like, 40-pound backpacks that had, like, very, uh, a small amount of oxygen. A baby kit system, so, or a baby delivery kit so you can like deliver a baby in case of an emergency, like these like really essential supplies. And he starts telling Mark about how he's got these things going, and Mark's like, that's awesome. This thing could be it. This could be like a really big thing. And Mark gives him $18,000 because Mark was just getting successful, but he's like, I have 18 grand I can give you, but I can be your co-founder and I can help commercialize this thing and make this a huge thing. And so it's been around since, for the last 18 years. And at this point, they have 18,000 volunteers in Israel. It's mostly, it's only in Israel. They answer something like 2,000 calls a day. And the mission statement is very simple. They say that on average, it takes something like 12 or 10 minutes for an ambulance to arrive to you. Our goal is to get there in 90 seconds, anywhere in Israel. Wow. And right now, I think they do it in like 2 minutes. And Mark was telling me, he's like, basically right now we are, him and I went out to eat, He was like, if you were a member, you would carry your bag with you at all times. And if somebody 10 floors down got, got sick or something happened where they had to call an ambulance, you would be alerted because you are nearby and you could run down and give them some type of need until the ambulance got to them and they could actually do the real stuff. But at least you could be like a lifesaving thing. And because of this, this company, it's a nonprofit. They have saved potentially millions of people. because they've done this since— Wow. In the last 18 years. And what's interesting is they started this before iPhones, before GPS. And when they started it, they actually just gave out these like walkie-talkies, like these radios. And now it's gotten quite sophisticated. So they— the entire foundation runs off of donations and they are spending many tens of millions of dollars a year. And what they have noticed is like, for example, through 18 years of data, they know that heart attacks are more likely to happen in the morning. Which means people are probably in their home versus the office. And so they know that they need to recruit volunteers who are on call and ready, and they're prepared for a potential heart attack within these areas. And they have this— they actually did a YouTube video on it. They have this entire, uh, like AI setup that they know when to predict that something bad potentially might happen and to have their 8,000-person volunteer force to do it, to be ready. And there's a few interesting things here about this. One, There's this thing called, like, it's called Good Samaritan laws. We have it in America, they have it in Israel, which basically just says, like, when you're on an airplane and the captain goes like, is there a doctor on board? Can someone help me? As long as that doctor acts in good faith, they can't be sued by the person. You know, it's called the Good Samaritan law where it's like, as long as, so, but if you are on there for pay, meaning if you are a professional, like I'm paying you money, there's an exchange of goods for you to do a service. you could potentially be sued. Right. So Mark was like, this thing, it needs to strictly be a nonprofit. He said the second thing, he was like, in Israel, what's cool about this? He's like, we have super Orthodox Jews who are doing it. We have non-secular Jews who are doing it. We have Arabs, we have Muslims, we have Christians. He was like, I've noticed that what has brought us together is not just us sitting around talking, but I can get all groups of people to come and work together on something and get their hands dirty. And it really brought us all together. And he was explaining this in a very altruistic way, and I totally got bought into it. And I was like, why aren't you in America? He's like, well, we actually did try to, but we started in 2019 or '20, like right before COVID and it, it was a false start. So we just haven't, we just haven't made it here. But he's like, this 100% could work in virtually every city in America. And he was like, it could even work in rural areas. He's like, uh, in rural areas they have volunteer firefighters. But it was really fascinating to hear all about this stuff. Because I think that, you know, we talk about money and for-profit stuff, but if you are like a social entrepreneur or something like that, this is a really interesting opportunity. And hearing him describe this, it was amazing.

Yeah, he's kind of yeah. He floats you know between number one and four and the richest men in the world. And he writes this post, and it's just titled Merci, right? Thank you in French. And he he basically says. So what happened was this publication in France did this, like, year-long kind of sort of exposé on his family, and they tried to make it as, like, juicy as possible. So they dropped a 6-part investigative series called The Empire of Bernard Arnault. And it was talking about how— and it basically paints him as the last royal dynasty of France. And it describes, like, tension between his second wife and his son-in-law. Oh, my God. And how their Sunday family dinners are like, you know, palace intrigue type of thing. And how they're, you know, they're trying to figure out that, you know, the 5 heirs or 5 kids are sort of jockeying for position because he's, he's now close to 80, I think, of who's going to succeed. You know, it's like basically Succession, but for real life. And so he— so they dropped this whole series and he goes, and he goes, here's a 3-page open letter that he basically posts. And I just want to read you a little bit of this. So he goes, Thank you. That's how he starts it. Instead of being defensive, he just starts with thank you. He goes, it seems I am the head of, quote, the last royal family of France. I'm reading this between 2 cups of tea, and my children, who were alerted to this over WhatsApp, um, asked me if they should now curtsy in my presence, and I told them hello, sir, would be, would be sufficient. They burst out laughing. Um, and I, you know, this has just been a wonderful week. And it says, it seems like Le Monde has decided to roll out the heavy artillery. 6 months of investigation, 2 full-time journalists, blah, blah, blah. He basically like paints them as absolute overkill for what they were trying to do. And this deserves a word, and that word shall be thank you. You know, I haven't been granted this treatment since I took over, you know, the company in 1984. And at that time they called me the Terminator, but I far preferred the Last Royal Family. It's far more elegant and really good for sales at Dior. Then he continues on and he basically says, um, uh, he, he goes, he goes on and he goes, apparently I'm the whisperer into the ear of every president. Well, I plead guilty. And he starts naming the different presidents and he says, oh, and by the way, it's not just the French, uh, you know, presidents. It's also 5 American presidents. I've whispered to 3 British prime ministers, blah, blah, blah. And am I to understand that whispering into, uh, that only French whispers are scandalous? That a group that earns 75% of its revenue outside of Europe should, shouldn't, should be sort of isolated and not be talking to leaders of these countries. And then he basically just addresses point by point the accusations in the article, but does it in such a smooth, non-defensive French way where he basically turned a diss, like a diss track into a, into a giant compliment for himself. And, you know, he just addresses each term one by one. I'll give you one more. He's known as a lover of arts and tax breaks. And he's like, yeah, I contributed €200 million to the reconstruction of Notre Dame. I fund to the tune of €50 million mathematics research at the school. You know, I pay this much in taxes every single year. We employ 220,000 employees, 40,000 of them who work in France itself. Yeah, like, I'm sure you forgot to mention that in the research, but I'm happy to help. You know, happy to help you here. And, and so he's just— he calls out like the wording, you know, that they use for the different things, just making them seem a little bit ridiculous. And he ends Um, with, rest assured, I will keep doing the Mond crossword, which I— which that I must say is excellent. That's so good. Complimenting the crossword and basically inadvertently dissing the article. And I just thought, damn, this guy— this was like such a perfect takedown where you normally see CEOs get really flustered. They either ignore, they deny, they go start to complain and say they're biased and they're— it's a hit piece and you know, play the victim and instead just so smooth. And I thought there's a lot that, that American CEOs could learn from this.

Yeah, so it's a, it's a, it's a game you can play. 2 people can sit down and you can kind of like have a duel. So it's like a card game, But, and this is kind of the genius of it, a lot, a lot of the fun isn't even playing the game against each other. Like Pokémon, it's about collecting. And so how did they do this? And so the backstory is pretty fascinating. So for, so first of all, Hasbro is this company that owns Monopoly. They own Nerf guns. They own, uh, like, you know, they own a bunch of stuff. But like every, you know, of every dollar that comes in, 1 out of every 3 is driven by Magic. It's like, it is their cash cow. Magic will do, you know, $2 billion this year in revenue. It's been just cranking along. This was like, you know, an all-time best quarter. So you'd think like, is this old IP not like fizzling out? No, no. It's like having its best quarter ever. If you read the true backstory, you realize one thing, which is what true sort of tinkering, the power of tinkering. So this guy starts with this, he's making this game called Five Magics. And Five Magics is a game he makes, doesn't go anywhere, but he puts a lot of heart and soul and sweat into it. And he puts it on the shelf because who cares? And then he goes along and he's working a job, but then he creates this— he has this other idea for this like more advanced game, like Robo-something, where you like kind of like build robots in the— it's like a board game where you're actually like building a robot. And then he pitches it to this guy who's doing this Wizards game. And that guy's like, dude, this is too hard to build. Can you build something that's like more like kind of, you know, this sort of sci-fi lore type of game, you know, this wizarding lore fantasy stuff? And make it like something simple, not the like, you have to build a robot, but like just like a card game or something. So he goes back and he's thinking, and he's on a hike one day, and he has this sort of eureka moment. He's like, oh, I could take 5 Magics, but I could change it. And he has this really good insight, which is most games like chess or checkers, um, at the time were all like fixed games, meaning you open the box and the pieces are all what they are. Monopoly. The pieces are exactly what you think they are, and I'm going to play with you. And then when we're done, we put the box, you know, close the lid on the box, and the game stays in the box. And when Richard was growing up, he had a very unique upbringing. And this is very, this was like a fascinating part of this, how these like, this like butterfly effect. So his dad moved them when he was very young to like Bangladesh and Nepal, these countries that, you know, totally fish out of water, didn't speak the language. And so to make friends, really the only thing he could do was play games because he didn't know how to talk. So they had to use the shared language of a game that he knew that they knew. And that game for him was marbles. And so he would go and he would play marbles. And marbles is a very unique game where you don't go and open a box and play marbles. Each kid brings their own marble set to the game, and you play and you can win other people's marbles. You could trade marbles, and you have your own ever-growing collection of marbles. And sometimes you run into a kid, he's got a marble you've never seen before, and it made you just want to go find your own version of that marble. You didn't even know it existed. And so that was part of the allure of the whole thing. And so he has this idea of like, hey, what if I take that mechanic from marbles where it's this like infinite set of, of possibilities? You have your own collection. You bring the pieces to the game. It's not a game where the pieces are already inside the box. And that was the core insight for Magic: The Gathering and why 20 years later it's printing, you know, $500 million this quarter. off of that single insight about like, what if the players had their own collection that they would bring to the game, they would walk around with, rather than like a fixed set of pieces?

Yeah, so he sells it about, I don't know, I don't know, 6, 9 years in, something like that. He sells it to Hasbro for $300-something million is the reported price. Then he had an earnout that took it up to almost $500 million. What? So he was only 5 years or 7 years into this when he sold it? Something like that. And he was very smart. So he was building this game and I'll tell you kind of like how he got it off the ground. I'll tell you how he, the very smart thing he did right before he sold it. And then why this is so great as a business model. So first, how he got it off the ground. He has the idea, he starts tinkering with it, and he's a total game design nerd. He's been focused on game mechanics and game design for a long time. In fact, when I told you he grew up in Bangladesh and Nepal and he was playing these games, he actually got into Dungeons and Dragons, but he didn't know the rules. It didn't come with the rule set. So he had the pieces, But he didn't know how to play. So he was inventing his own rule set, which again is like, if you look through, you know, great inventions, it always comes with this weird constraint or this irritation that sounds like a total problem. But if they turned it into actually like the irritation drove the innovation. So him not knowing the rules led him to experiment with all different types of rule, uh, game design and rule design. And he would play it. And later in life, he actually found the official rule set. It was almost like bummed out, like, oh, that's how you play. I'd been inventing all these other like versions of this that were really interesting. So he had been studying game mechanics for a long time. And so even with Magic, he was playtesting like crazy and he would do things that others weren't doing. So he would find, he would say, okay, who would be the best playtesters for this? I can take guys who play these card games or these like board games. But he also went into baseball. He's like, you know who really loves studying the statistical, um, aspects of games was Strat-O-Matic, which was this like base— baseball. simulation game that like uber statistical nerds who loved baseball would get really into Stratomatic. So he'd find the best Stratomatic players, get them to test this. Because he knew if you get the game design wrong, the game fizzles out. He's like, you could have the rich kid problem, which is just, it's all about going and buying the best cards. And once you have the best cards, you can't be beaten. He's like, so it can't have that problem. And it can't have this problem. And it can't have this problem. He was finding all the bugs before he ever got to launch. And by the time he gets to launch, He doesn't just try to launch this widely or, you know, just like launch it to his friends. He goes and he drives basically like down the coast and he's going from like, uh, Comic-Con to like trading card conventions to, um, board game conventions. And he's finding like the white hot center of who should love this game. And it should be basically like board game nerds. And he would go and he would demo it to like very small groups of people, but he would influence the influencers. He would get the guys who owned the shops. He would get the guys who write the magazine articles. He would get the guys who are the pro players of other games. He would win them over. And once he won them over, they would then be his sales engine explaining it to the next people. And so he would just like, you know, kind of like traveling in his truck with the game in his trunk, go and win over like hand-to-hand combat each of these people.

And then it turned into like boons, right? So he, he runs out, it sells so fast. He has no cards. He can't print any more cards. It takes time to do a print run. But the scarcity of there being no more cards and people going into shops being like, hey, do you have any Magic? And the owners being like, what's Magic? And then they would have to go figure out why are people walking to our door, like hunting for this thing? I've never seen this level of passion. So the scarcity drove the economy of the game. And so he, and again, the business model, the genius of the business model. So a normal board game, will sell for like, whatever, $20, let's call it. Well, the average Magic player is spending $100 a year for like 8 or 9 years of their hobby. So the average player is spending like $1,000. And obviously there's extreme collectors who are spending hundreds of thousands. There's casuals who fade out right away. But if you just do the math, like the LTV per customer is in the thousands of dollars per player. You could never get somebody to buy a board game for $1,000. But by doing this kind of drip, drip, drip mechanism where You get into the game, but then you want your collection to become better so that you show up with like the ace up your sleeve and you have social status because you have cool cards. And then you can trade or sell those cards. So it's an investment, it's not spending. And that's what, you know, Pokémon did that afterwards. Uh, Hearthstone did that afterwards. And now like, you know, a lot of the like sports card stuff have, have really taken that model and run with it. But, you know, Magic was really one of the OGs who did it. So I thought that was pretty amazing. The other cool thing he did was he bought Dungeons and Dragons. So he wanted to IPO the company and he realized, like, if I'm just one piece of IP, I'm going to be seen as inherently risky. And so Dungeons and Dragons had been out before him and it had like $40 million in revenue, but it had like $30 million in debt and it was doing really poor. They could— they stopped printing cards because they just had too much debt. They owed a bunch of money. They were— they had scattered their business too much. So he bought the company. Nobody knows exactly how much, but like, looks like it was like $30, $40 million maybe. And he just took care of their debts. And in doing so, he had a more diversified, you know, brand portfolio of like another franchise that had millions of players and had been around for a while. And so he's, you know, you buy it for $30 million, but then your, your eventual exit is for, you know, $300 to $500 million to Hasbro because you were more defensible. So I thought that was actually pretty brilliant as well.

I think he sold it late '90s is my, my guess. Um, but it was like, you know, it was like 8 years in the making before he even launched the game because he's just been I mean, really, he'd been thinking about this stuff since he was a child. I think there's a belief in entrepreneurship that these ideas just sort of exist. You just have to sort of find one and make one. And, um, or you sort of get to be the one who gets the winning lottery ticket. And then you read about stories like this. You read about the story of how the UFC almost went bankrupt and really like Dana White and the Fertittas, you know, built that thing brick by brick against pretty much every headwind you could have being outlawed by, by states, losing money. Nobody would put them on TV. Like just every headwind you could have, they faced and still built a multibillion-dollar company, still doing it today, even after cashing out. And I think there are actually many businesses that were only going to be built by one person. It was either going to be built by that person or it wasn't going to exist. And I don't think that's a popular belief, but when you hear these stories, you just can't imagine. there really have been another person who had the, this combination of the background, the hustle, the insight, the personality, the force of will, like the combination of factors that it takes to make it happen? Uh, the other time I felt this was when we were, uh, talking to Joe Gebbia from, from Airbnb, and he was telling the true founding story of Airbnb and all of the headaches that they faced along the way. And, you know, just being shut down and being sued and being this and being that. And it was like, Being copied by these like much bigger, more well-funded competitors. And just the, the number of times they escaped death in the first 2 years, it's like a dozen deaths that they escape. You know, they're, they're out of funding and then they create a cereal box for John McCain and Barack Obama and they sell that at the conventions and they get just enough money to continue their business. It's like, what the hell is going on? And so, you know, those are businesses that it's like, oh, Airbnb was not meant to survive. It broke the rules. It was supposed to die 12 times, and finally the universe gave in. It was like, fine, go ahead and exist. It was not like just anybody was going to make that happen. It was, it was not going to happen that way.

The whole thing himself. You know what I mean? Um, I have a friend who's a very, very smart venture capitalist. You know, this guy's like backed some of the biggest winners. And he said something to me once about, I remember when esports was like on trend. People were investing a lot in esports, and Overwatch franchises were selling for $20 million a pop because they were trying to make it the next NBA. And he wasn't buying any of it. And I'm like, but this is kind of your thing. You like these weird niche things that could be huge, but they're kind of written off, and now they're starting to pick up steam. I'm surprised you're out. He goes, esports needs its Dana White. And he was like, I don't know who that person is. But he goes— Anybody could have told you that. Fighting, martial arts, it was a thing. For sure. But the guy who was gonna make it the worldwide thing, it took a very special, like, batch of entrepreneurial energy to do that. And somebody who was gonna just break through walls for 20 years. Yeah. And so he's like, you just need to— and he's like, so I'm just waiting. I'm just waiting till esports has that. He's like, I don't think esports is not gonna be a thing, but I also don't think it's a thing. It's going to be a thing right now because I don't see who that person is yet. And you see this with other things. Like right now, longevity is obviously a huge trend. Wellness, longevity. It's kind of replaced health and fitness as like the way people want to optimize. And Bryan Johnson, I think, was the Dana White of that industry. I think Bryan Johnson was willing to do things no one else would do in a way, in a combination of like skills and personal sacrifice. that very few people were ever going to do. And he had that special combination. I think he's going to do it for a long enough time that it's going to be— I mean, it's already broken mainstream, but I think it's going to just keep going. And in his case, he's not creating the one company necessarily that will be the winner in the way that, let's say, the UFC was. But I think he made it happen in a way that no doctor, no scientist, no fitness athlete was ever going to do.

He told me his motivation. He was like, I can't tell you who the 70th or 50th or 100th richest person was in 1975, but I can tell you who Galileo is. I can tell you what the Wright brothers did. There's about 5 to 10 people who I could tell you what they invented and how they impact society. And none of them does it relate around money. And so that's when I realized that going after just business and making more money was not the answer to my question of how do I be somebody that other people remember in 500 years? Because that's my motivation.