What if the people buying are not into what you are selling?
Consumer-driven culture and basic economics would argue that supply should meet demand. If you are supplying something that no one seems to want, capitalism argues that you need to shift your product to where the demand seems to be.
But what if the supply is, well… you?
What if you are selling yourself and your skills, or your ideas and your art?
Is it worth shifting the product to meet demand? Should you change to align with what someone seems to want from you?
Say, you submit a proposal for a big idea or walk into a job interview or call into a pitch meeting—and what you are selling there is your ideas, your skills or yourself—but they are not buying?
Are you in the position to say I’m not going to be or do something I’m not, sell something I don’t have, or pretend to be good at a skill I don’t yet have just to get a gig or a deal? Or are you full on ready for the hustle of becoming someone different simply to get the work?
Maybe you are. Maybe you don’t have that luxury.
Either way, it often seems to be little more than a balance between selling yourself …and being yourself.
Terms FROm this POSt
- capitalism
- I live in a time and place where it is commonly understood that people need to trade their time and skill for money. This is an income which allows the acquisition of currency that can be exchanged for goods and services from others. We assume everyone knows this and thinks about it because it is the system we were born into and we know no other. But it isn’t the only system and being inside of it necessitates certain choices about how creative people interact with the world that are worth thinking about, calling out, and discussing from time to time.
- job
- This is a fuzzy word for me as I write this blog. I am technically self-employed, the overseer of a little one-man Canadian consultancy corporation. Hustling for contracts is hard work tho, so I occasional look for more steady employment gigs that interest me, and allude to it in my writing.
