Is It In My Bones?

I am a pastor’s kid, the only son, stuck as a middle child between two sisters, and very Irish/Italian. I was born to be a manipulator, an influencer, an attention seeker, and loud.

Growing up I spent most of my days at a medium-sized church in suburban Pittsburgh. This was the perfect place for my soul and my faith, however, this was not the place for my ego. I was somewhat in the public eye. Old ladies commenting on how much of a perfect young man I was, or church elders complimenting me on my leadership in the youth group. This was all compounded by being promoted to the oldest male in the youth program after some church changes. From the time I was 13, I was a role model with no role models. I was an influencer of those younger than me without an older guy to look up to. I was a big fish in a small pond. As I got older I became better and better at non-sales selling in my circles. I found ways to get people to do what I wanted (for better or worse). I thought it was in my bones. I thought I was a natural-born leader. Talk about an ego. By the time I graduated high school and went off to college, I was the big brother of just about everyone at my church.  I decided to study business management and am currently pondering the idea of a sales minor. So while reading through Pink’s book: To Sell is Human, I read about how essentially everyone has turned into a salesperson in this age of technology and entrepreneurship. The concept that stuck out to me the most, or had the most impact on me was the concept of non-sales selling; more specifically the Ed-Med type of selling. For background information, this is the selling where you aren’t necessarily selling a product but moving and influencing people’s behavior. I read this and had an “aha” moment. I was not a natural-born leader, influencing was not in my bones, I just had countless hours of practice learning how people responded to my ideas or the different ways I proposed ideas. Pink says in his book: “To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources- not to deprive that person, but to leave them better off in the end” I realize now that to get my rag-tag group of bandits to do anything, I had to get them to give up what they had (not being in trouble) for something better (having fun or making memories).

(Most of my bandits photographed below)