Coffehouses, El Caminos, and the Art of Selling
Alec Baldwin’s scene-stealer from Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Every Wednesday features a new newsletter from NGL with commentary on how culture influences business, the future of the media, and our entrepreneurial journey. This week, NGL writes on the tricky world of sales before touching on our first couple of events, Google's latest flagship phone, and more.
"Always Be Closing"
In Alec Baldwin's famous, NSFW scene from the 1992 film Glengarry Glen Ross, Baldwin plays a consultant hired to give a crew of down-trodden salesmen a pep talk. His core message is simple: In sales, the only thing that matters is ABC. Always Be Closing. You need balls, he says, even emphasizing this point by bringing out a pair of brass balls.
Would this film get released today due to its, well, vernacular? You be the judge.
If you ask any CRO (Chief Revenue Officer), CFO (Chief Financial Officer), or CFSTO (Chief Fancy-Sounding-Title Officer), they'll tell you that a company can't survive without a business. To clarify, anyone can form a company. In all honesty, it's surprisingly easy. In the state of Illinois, for example, all one has to do is log onto the Secretary of State's website; roughly an hour of online forms and one week of time later, and bam, you own a company!
Your business, however, is how you bring in revenue, and, more specifically, what you're peddling. And as an entrepreneur, if you're not bringing in money, then you're not going to survive, period.
Now, it's a little different being in college, when there's plenty of time to fail, iterate, fail again, and iterate again. Yet time is still money, and at a certain point, even we have to make revenue one of our main goals...which is something we did over the summer, as we sat down and truly hammered out our business model.
There's a difference, though, between saying This is how we're gonna make money and actually closing deals. Back in high school, I ran a t-shirt business where I would design and physically print custom apparel for my peers. Too often, I would make a design render and send it over — Is this what you're looking for? — only for the other party to comment, Can you actually tweak this? And then change this part? And then that part? And then, after several more hours and headaches: Actually, we don't want this anymore.
I learned a bunch of lessons from running that business. First, high schoolers are flaky, and quite picky with their money. Second, you should always charge for any valuable work time you spend on something, even if there's a perceived industry standard that says otherwise. And third, even after bringing in a decent chunk of change through that business, I'm still not really that good at closing deals.
When we think of salespeople, we often think of sleazy car dealers or down-on-their-luck paper dealers. The reality is that the best ones are the ones who can convince you why their product will help improve your life (while I'm rolling with the pop culture references, think Leo in The Wolf of Wall Street). In that regard, a clear-cut and authentic sales pitch, in my opinion, will always be the most effective in closing deals.
Just last week, I was in the room with a potential sponsor, a guy whose family founded one of the most recognizable businesses in Chicago. I opened by chatting about how I used to resell sneakers back in middle school (his son did too) and the evolution of Unplugg'd over the years. About 20 minutes in, however, I realized something: He didn't consider this a sales meeting. Quite frankly, he thought we were simply shooting the shit, and he was acting as a sounding board for my ideas.
Upon appreciating this, I still showed him how we'd worked with other sponsors in the past, and gave him the entire sales pitch. He nodded along, then openly asked, But how are you gonna make money?
Which had me thinking: Well, why do you think you're here?
In the end, even if I didn't close the deal, the meeting was a net positive. I made an awesome connection with a really stand-up guy who I look forward to potentially working with down the road. It also reaffirmed something I knew about myself, though — that I'm not very good at getting to the point or being blunt.
Startup culture often dictates that you always need to be selling yourself. What's your elevator pitch? How much have you raised? How are you gonna make money? There's an air of fakeness to it, I find, as you're actively encouraged to embellish your exploits and make them sound impressive for the sake of sounding impressive, a means of justifying your crazy idea.
For a guy like me that really just enjoys sitting behind a computer screen and creating something cool — writing, designing, editing video, or everything in between — sales is tough. Actions should speak louder than words, which is why I've always approached things with a lead-by-example mindset. Plus, no one likes getting turned down, after all, and it's even rougher when you're pouring your heart and soul into a creative endeavor.
Which I guess leads me to the main point of this newsletter. I'm actively striving to improve my sales acumen, but I sometimes think I could use a good salesperson, a Jeff Johnson archetype who believes in and lives the vision in its entirety.
Or maybe that's overthinking it. Maybe all I need is a pep talk to overcome my sales allergy.
Where's Alec Baldwin when you need him?
A little bit more on our journey, by the way — we ran our first two unplugg'ds in the past week-and-a-half, and they've been a hit so far! We've had 10 different people come to our meetups to build community and engage in authentic, in-depth, and meaningful dialogue about us and our peers' culture and life. The goal is to create a traditional coffehouse-type space where unique perspectives viewpoints are challenged; there aren't any requirements for coming to an unplugg'd, so if you're in the Chicago / Evanston area and want to join in, follow along with our newsletter and you'll receive more information on when we're meeting next!
As always, if you’re interested in supporting us, consider becoming a patron over on Patreon for as little as $1 a month! Finally, if you enjoy this newsletter, consider sharing it with one other person. A lot of work goes into it, and I will be writing one weekly over the next twelve weeks. I would love to talk to you about any of the ideas presented here, so feel free to drop an email to ngl@powderbluemedia.com or DM me on Twitter @bynategl!
That’s all I got for our journey. Until next week!
Links (and Other Things)
Google Enters the Multi-Camera Wars with the Pixel 4
If you've been following along with smartphones this year, you've probably noticed a new trend: multiple cameras. It speaks to the importance of convenient, high-quality cameras for most people's day-to-day lives, between catching moments for social media and effectively making the traditional camera obsolete. Samsung did it, Huawei did it, Apple did it, OnePlus did it...and now, Google's latest flagship is doing it.
Since Google introduced its very own smartphone lineage in 2016, they've focused lots of their marketing on the quality of their camera. This makes it pretty surprising that in The Year of Multiple Cameras, Google opted to skip out on an ultra-wide lens (something almost all of its competitors included) and just include the normal and telephoto lenses.
Also, with all this hoopla surrounding phone cameras, it's pretty clear to me that these companies have realized how difficult it will be to truly differentiate their products moving forward from a specs perspective. Everyone and their grandma now has access to smartphones, and the baseline for what makes an adequate device pretty much starts and ends with access to WiFi. Samsung introduced the concept of foldable phones, which, admittedly, is a really cool development; alas, the Galaxy Fold will run you over $2,000 and features its own grab-bag of kinks, so it's not like that's gonna be affordable anytime soon.
I might be biased as someone who does a lot of interviews, but honestly, I think the best new feature of the Pixel 4 is the voice memos app Google has built in, which can automatically record and transcribe high-quality audio without the need for an internet connection. Regardless, even as Google's Android operating system holds a 76% market share worldwide, it'll be vital for the tech giant to improve on their Pixel 3 sales by making a dent with the Pixel 4, as rumors persist surrounding Huawei and Samsung jumping ship from Android and creating their own respective operating systems.
Gotta Catch 'Em All with Nike's 'Shared Stash'
I feel like I write a lot about the Swoosh in this space, but the reality is that the sportswear king simply does a lot of cool stuff. Nike has delved into the augmented reality (AR) world a lot in recent years in order to improve the experience of purchasing a new pair of kicks, and alongside that development, they've experimented with scavenger-hunt-esque releases through their SNKRS app limited by location.
Now, however, they're testing something new out: "Shared Stash." Sneaker News writes:
"The principle is roughly the same; those interested in purchasing the product in question would have to go to the secret location (revealed by the App), with access granted when the user taps “I’M HERE” on their screen. However, the second city in this “Shared” sequence will only get access once 100% of the stock is claimed by the previous city. For example, in this particular release, those in Boston will only get access once New York claims all the available pairs."
Gamification be damned, this seems a little over the top. Nonetheless, the Swoosh holds a 27.4% market share, (dominating its competitors) and is constantly touted as one of the most innovative companies out there...so what do I really know?
TOTW: Pixar Moveth Onward
I feel like Pixar movies have been an up-and-down rollercoaster ride of late. Some, like Coco, have been masterpieces; others, like Cars 3, have been...unnecessary, to put it nicely.
Which, from a hype perspective, leaves 2020's Onward somewhere in the realm of Intriguing-Movie-That-Nonetheless-We-Don't-Really-Seem-To-Be-Talking-About:
Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus star in the latest animated flick from the Mouse House and Lamp collaborative forces. The synopsis: "Set in a suburban fantasy world, two teenage elf brothers embark on a quest to discover if there is still magic out there." I'm getting real boom-or-bust vibes from this project, though let's hope Onward ends up being more Patrick Mahomes than Robert Nkemdiche.
What I'm Watching: 'El Camino' (Netflix)
(Netflix)
It may be a novelty in today's streaming ecosystem, but I'm pretty anti-binge-watching because I think it detracts from the overall value a television show has to offer.
That's a take for another day, however, because it was five summers ago that I convinced myself to watch the entirety of Breaking Bad over a two-month span. To this day, it remains one of my favorite series because of what's essentially a long, encapsulating character study of a man who decides to trade his ho-hum life for one of excitement. While there are movies that have succeeded with similar arcs (American Beauty comes to mind), I don't feel like can possibly paint a comparable portrait to the slow burn known as Walter White.
So six years after we saw Heisenberg succumb to his wounds after freeing Jesse Pinkman, Aaron Paul reprises the role in El Camino, a Netflix "Movie Event" that picks up right where its source material leaves off. The results? Eh.
Look, Vince Gilligan's sweeping nature shots are still masterful, and Paul is as effective as he's ever been. And yet — though I'm not saying anything new here — did we really need this film? In fact, couldn't Gilligan have left us with Jesse escaping the Neo-Nazis, leaving us to wonder what happened next for the embattled Pinkman using only our imaginations?
In short, I think that any diehard fan of Breaking Bad will enjoy this film because it invites us back into such a vibrant, distinct world that still stands out over a decade before it first premiered. For me, though, I would've been just as content not seeing it as I was seeing it. This one feels like something that'll slip into the cracks of Netflix and pop up sometime over the next decade, leaving us to say, Oh! Right! That was a thing!
NGL is an O.G. sneakerhead, diehard Chargers fan, and huge ultimate frisbee nut. You can follow him on Twitter here.