How I Learned to Sell Mood Rings To Vulcans: A Feral Entrepreneur’s Awakening
I had 2 failed companies under my belt and that's because I didn't know how to sell. I was not going to let that happen under company #3. This is the magical story of learning the essence of sales.
Failed Twice - Third Time’s the Charm?
I’m going to take you back to 1986, after leaving MicroWares (see: The Revolt That Launched My 3rd Startup) and still smarting from two failed businesses before that. Those two were my first cracks at this game, and now I’m diving into my third, XenTec Software Engineering, just getting it off the ground with my partners Marcus and Danny—great guys, at least in the beginning. With those first two failed companies, I was the programmer—I did my job, built the software, made the tech work and kept the customers happy. However, I wasn’t in charge of sales, and the folks who were couldn’t bring in enough to keep us afloat. Both companies crashed hard, leaving me to my last dollar. XenTec is just starting out, and I’m looking at Marcus and Danny, wondering if they can deliver the sales we need—I just don’t know. All I could think about was, “NOT failing a third time!”
This Time It’s Going to Be Different
So I decide right then—I’m going to learn how to sell, because I’m not letting this ship sink again, right? Thing is, I’ve got zero experience—I’m a programmer, a software developer, never touched sales in my life. Sure, as a teenager I worked at R&B Clothing, a men’s store in Chicago, but I was clueless back then—no idea what I was doing, just helping guys find dressing rooms, handing them shirts, not really selling, you know? Here I am at 23 starting XenTec after two flops, with no sales chops whatsoever, but I’m dead set on figuring this out, because this time’s got to be different, it just has to be!
Library Calls Me - and I Talk to It
Where do you go to learn when you’ve got no clue? The library, that’s where—so I head to the Liliha Public Library in Honolulu, this nice, clean, modern spot up on Liliha Street near the H1 freeway, tucked in a neighborhood that’s part of Kalihi in what’s considered a “rough” part of Honolulu (and rough here is really relative - I was born in Chicago and the Hawaii folks have absolutely no idea what a rough neighborhood is), but the library’s a gem. I walk in there, coincidentally in the early days practicing my Hawaiian shamanism—the Huna system—and I’m thinking, “I’m going to use a little shamanism here, ask the library to lead me to the perfect book to make me a great salesperson,” because why not, right? This is the mid-80s—card catalogs, old-school stuff—and I dig through ‘em, find the business section, and wander over to where the sales books are hiding.
The Perfect Sales Book Jumps Out
I’m standing there in the stacks, scanning these books, and one just pops out at me—maybe because it’s thin and I don’t do thick how-to books—if you can’t tell me how to do something in a few pages, you’re probably either full of it or you don’t really know what you’re talking about. So I grab this thin, white book, and the title hits me over the head—The One Minute Salesperson by Spencer Johnson, a guy I later find out is a big-deal author living in Hawaii, but I didn’t know that then. It’s calling to me, so I pull it off the shelf, take it home, crack it open—and man, it’s a treasure trove that lays out selling in the simplest way, like one-minute simple (Hey - was this the genesis of “Your Computer Minute With Peter Kay? IDK!), and I’m hooked!
The Essence of Sales Clicks With Me
The One Minute Salesperson is incredible—like someone flipped a switch in my head, because it boils down selling to this: find out what people want, and if you’ve got something that fits, show them how it solves their needs, and they’ll buy. It’s as easy as that! One line sticks with me hard—“People hate to be sold, but they love to buy”—and it’s so true. I mean, I love buying cars, video games, stuff I’m into—I’ll spend hours dreaming and researching because I wanna buy, but the second someone tries to sell me junk I don’t care about, I’m running away as fast as I can. This book is teaching me the true essence of sales—helping people, understanding what they need, and if I’ve got it, giving it to them—and it’s changing everything for me, because now I get it, I really get it!
I Can Sell Anything
That book—man, it sets the tone for my whole life after that, because I pick up sales right there and then, and I’m confident, like really confident. I start bragging (Watch it! Pride goes before the fall!) I can sell anything—“I can sell mood rings to Vulcans,” my techie nerd twist on the classic “He can sell ice cubes to Eskimos” line —and it’s true, I can sell, because I’ve got the fundamentals down: find out what people want and show them how I fix it, done! It’s an “aha” moment that ties into my shamanic stuff too—I’d asked the library for the perfect book, and it delivered exactly what I needed, resonating deep, shaping who I am. It’s a huge shift, because now I’m not just a coder—I’m a salesman, and it’s going to carry me for the rest of my life.
XenTec Lifts Off
Now, circling back to XenTec—it takes off, becoming a real success after those previous two flops. Marcus and Danny are instrumental, great partners playing key roles, and I’m the sales guy now, landing big deals that keep us rolling. We’re a Unix-based value-added reseller, building and supporting SCO Xenix systems—we become the biggest SCO Xenix reseller in Hawaii, with killer leads and a solid marketing plan, and I’m attributing that to learning sales, because without it, we could have been toast like the last two. It’s my third swing, and this one hits—six years strong making real money. At last, my first win!
Selling Is A Fundamental Skill You Must Master
Here’s the reflection, the meaning for us feral entrepreneurs—you’ve got to know how to sell and there’s no way around it. You can’t be an entrepreneur—any kind, especially a feral one—without getting this down. It’s not hard—read The One Minute Salesperson, soak up the fundamentals, and start selling mood rings to Vulcans! It’s not just business—it’s life, e.g. getting married is a selling process—find what she needs and if you’re the guy, show her how you are. Raising money from investors is obviously a sales process: understand what they want, show them how you’ll help them get it, and they’ll beat your door down. Selling is everything, and learning it here, right after those failures, made me the master of my own path and was a massive turning point in my life: I now had the grit of losing everything, surviving failures, and making a business succeed - and all by 24 years old.
Hawaii Shapes Me Again
I’m only seeing this now after re-reading and re-writing this story some 40 years later: I have Hawaii to thank, again. Had I never made the first wild leap to move here at 21, I would have had a very comfortable life running The Blue Arc- my parent’s restaurant (yes, like any other good Greek first born son in Chicago, my duty was to run the restaurant!). Paraphrasing John Belushi , “Buuut Noooooo! You had to run away to Hawaii, get your ass kicked several times over, lose all your money, get fired from your first and only job, and when you had no other option only THEN did you learn how to succeed in business”. I see it clearly now: it was Hawaii that brought out the feral entrepreneur in me and I will be eternally grateful.