I worked yesterday ushering at a conference. It was a conference for sales people of a big brand, pyramid scheme. It wasn't all that interesting. Most of the talk was about how if you do the right thing in the company you can retire within a few years.

There was one person telling people how to be good at sales. He said most people were bad because they were worried about what other people thought of them. Like if I push my crappy product on you, you'll probably think I'm a tool. He didn't put it quite like that, but that was the implication. In fact the speakers often mentioned the fact that people tend to dislike the sales people of this brand. It was a source of pride that people dislike them. Kinda like when Christians get together and say "The world will hate us, but we have the truth. Rah rah rah!"

Anyway, the speaker was saying, to be a good sales person you have to not worry about what people think of you. People don't think about you as much as you think they do. He said "I want you to ask yourself, how many times today have you thought about your spouse? Your children? Your best friend? Your friends? Your neighbours? Your acquaintances? Not once. You haven't thought about them at all, because you're too busy thinking about yourself. And in fact they haven't thought about you because they're too busy thinking about themselves. People are essentially selfish. It's alright that's just how we are."

His application for this enlightening piece of information was that you should be as brash as you want in selling stuff, because no-body is thinking about you, so don't worry about what people think of you.

It was rather inspiring stuff.