I really loved the first half or so of this post. But they went off the rails a bit when they said that the hiring company will start over if you turn them down... that simply is not true. They move on to their next choice, and often have the 2nd choice offer ready to go in 5 minutes once you turn them down. Heck, you may be their 2nd choice for all you know. Or 3rd. Or 4th.
And the rest of the article then falls into role-playing contrived conversations, all of which can be skipped by being even more honest than they recommend. Simply say that you want an offer that is good enough to never make you second-guess your choice in joining them. That pretty much covers every conversation and scenario you can imagine, and you don't need to make up strategy for 3 potential layers of back and forth on who says what.
You assert that the act of individual act of lending creates the money - this is known as the credit creation theory of money; the GP asserts that the central bank creates the money and banks are just moving it around - this is known as the financial intermediation theory of money. That also happens to be the theory that underlies most banking regulation, like the various Basel Accords.
You can look at it either way; or indeed you can take a third view, the fractional reserve theory of money, which suggests that the banking system as a whole creates money in aggregate, but not individual banks.
All of these are theories with their adherents and none has yet been proven right or wrong. The only wrong position is a failure to acknowledge that discussion is still open on this point, or to believe that these are anything other than macroeconomic models.
I'm in my 40's and I have a lot of close friends, both in my city (mostly newer friends) and around the country/world (mostly older friendships).
My trick is, I cheat. I'm happily single, live alone and have no children. That gives me the luxury of doing the heavy lifting in my friendships. I travel a lot and most of those trips are to stay with friends in their homes or to meet them at a third destination. That's been the most effective way to stay very close to my friends, as well as to become close to their spouses and kids. I understand most people can't do this because of their own family obligations. But maybe it's something people with families could do just once or twice a year to visit people important to them?
Beyond that, I'm usually the one to start group chats or send memes on social media or schedule video chats. Sometimes it's a chore, but usually it's effortless for me. And the close friends I've maintained to this point are with people who are usually very eager and able to stay in touch on their end. The others have fell by the wayside over the years. And some I have consciously excluded from my life when I realized they were bad friends.
I'd also add that, as a man, I find that women make better friends then men, especially past our 20's, and I'd encourage all men to consider finding and building more non-romantic relationships with women.
Apologies if this is in the category of unsolicited advice. I noticed that you had a submission describing a similar problem set in the work setting, so I am seeing a theme. It sounds like you are in a lonely place and are hoping for something better.
There's no magic to it but I can recommend some things that work very well for me.
First, do you have a curiosity about people? The folks you're working with, or folks at your volunteering events - do you strike up a conversation? Do you know where people are from, what their families are like, what their hobbies are, what they think and worry about? I don't mean to encourage you to engage in robotic small talk, but asking you whether these things are actually of interest to you? Wanting to know someone is the first step of a relationship.
Assuming you have the interest, ask whether you've done anything to learn these things? If you realize that there are 30 people you could have known these things about but don't - why not? Are you very shy? Do you think people will think you're rude? Do you not know how to chat? Answer this for yourself and seek resources on-line for how to close those gaps. I went from a shy mush-mouth to a pretty good shmoozer in a few years, it's possible.
If you decide that you actually don't have an interest in people (like, you genuinely don't care what anyone's life is like) then there's a strong disconnect between than and the desire to have a family/kids/friendship. If you have the ability to, seek some sort of talk therapy to explore this question. Chances are there's some "wound" that's blocking your ability to want to connect with people if this is the case.
Finally, you sound like someone who closes doors before they are even open. I suspect when you say "hookup culture..." what you are really saying is "I have a reason for why I am not on dating apps." When you say "people treat me like I am invisible" - you are writing off an entire town as not being interested in you, which gives you an excuse to not try to connect with them (yet, somehow they had all met each other - so it's probably your vibes - and that's in your control to change). If you really believe that your location is a problem that's preventing you from having relationships, then move. If you have a desire for family and kids and you think that's not possible in your location, why are you there? (and, if you are about to give yourself an excuse as to why that's impossible, pay attention to that too)
In my experience, and everyone's is different, the key is to find a common activity/interest. I do consulting work, so I often change teams and walk in knowing no one. I've been complimented multiple times about noticeably increasing team cohesion. You know what I do? I start regular/consistent activities with the team. "Tuesday is my go out to lunch day, everyone is invited." I mean I literally just stand up in the middle of work and say that loud enough for surrounding people to hear. Sometimes I go alone, especially at first. But eventually people trickle in and then it doesn't take long before a group of 4-5 people are going to lunch every Tuesday. You can similarly start a regular happy hour if one is not already going on. People join who aren't even on my team, because they heard me invite everyone.
Outside of work, the path is to join a hobby. Find a softball league or something like that. This has built in consistent interaction and fosters expansion into happy hours after the games or other activities.
If there's anyone in your circle of acquaintances that has a birthday, tell them you'd really like to buy them a beer to celebrate their birthday. Ask open ended, "Hey, is there a day this week you're free? I owe you a birthday beer." Most adults no longer get real celebrations for their birthdays and will appreciate it if there's not some other social hurdle (actually busy, afraid you are trying to date them, etc). Some of those social hurdles (like afraid it's a date) can be overcome by suggesting it's a group thing. To use the work example again, "Hey team, it's Susan's birthday this week. I think it would be cool if we took her to lunch or something. Anyone else in?"
To put context on this, I am introverted and autistic (very low social needs). I do these behaviors explicitly for outcome oriented purposes (bring people joy, grow career).
Another category is Shark Bite, a simple push-on tech that is almost homeowner proof. All you need for many jobs is a cutter, some sandpaper, and the fitting: no pro tools, no torch. There are tight joist spaces the new copper crimper won't fit and overhead soldering is fraught, which you can sharkbite in 2 minutes.
Back to O-rings, I do wonder about the lifetime of the seals in there though.
The Teflon tape is only to be used as a friction modifier as NPT and other tapered threads seal on the threads. Reduced friction means that you can get enough load to deform the metal threads and create a seal. Be careful to not add tape to the first 2 threads as small pieces of Teflon tape can break off and get stuck into valves and things within appliances causing them to leak. There is nothing wrong with pipe dope and I find it to be superior though messy.
Annoyance for those in the states: Big box stores used to advertise fittings as NPT (National pipe thread). NPT being an ANSI spec. They seem to have switched to MIP and FIP for Male Iron Pipe and Female Iron Pipe. These are NPT as well but with a new name? Perhaps they are looking to avoid holding themselves to the spec?
Lead content in brass drinking water rated piping and fittings are being phazed out for obvious reasons. New low lead brass is stronger and does not deform as easily as the older leaded brass fittings. The result is that some fittings are now more difficult to tighten untill leak free.
Pex and crimped copper fittings are not without there own issues. Relying on an o-ring with a 30 year shelf life is problematic when the pipe is behind drywall.
Perhaps one day we will get laser welded copper fittings.
I'm really not confident about copper pipes. Metals in solder are very different electrochemically than copper. There might be other electrically connected metals in the installation. There might be some impurities grains in the copper.
I've seen videos of copper pipes developing pinhole leak from corrision.
One of the things I like about it is that because it's flexible, if you route it carefully you can avoid using connectors in a lot of areas that rigid pipe would require a joint. The way I saw it used, the only joints were in areas like cleanout access and crawlspaces, so even if a joint went bad, it wouldn't require opening up a wall to fix. I'm not a pro, so maybe rigid pipe is supposed to only have joints in accessible areas too, but that certainly wasn't the case with the century-old plumbing I saw.
It's still relatively new compared to other pipe material, so there may be some other surprises that crop up with long term use, but I'm really impressed with its ease of installation.
There’s definitely a “right” way and a “wrong” way to do it.
Having each fixture connection being a “home run” without any fittings between source and destination really reduces a lot of vulnerabilities. Having a central manifold that lets you easily turn off any tap is nice too.
A condo building I lived in did something wrong (I suspect) either a bad batch of PEX, or more likely, a batch that sat in the sun for a while, leading to multiple failures of hot water return lines in few years that were a mystery to pin down.
Right, there are multiple variations but they generally work in skilled hands although I learned from plumbers who always used oil (although using oil was always an imperative with gas pipes). Using oil usually negates the initial leaking whilst waiting for the hemp to dampen and swell.
Edit: I agree that using oil is counterproductive with water pipes—initially at least. I was taught by both plumbers and my father (who wasn't a plumber but a mechanical engineer who worked on power station boilers) that using oil is better in the long run as it prevents the hemp from rotting and thus premature failure of the seal. Moreover, using one oil-based method means that
a plumber cannot get confused and leave oil off gas connections where it's essential.
(I'd add that when referring to oil I'm specifically referring to linseed oil (even though I've seen some plumbers inappropriately use engine oil) because it slowly polymerizes and hardens even in the absence of air. This adds to the seal's effectiveness and further protects the hemp.)
"My roommate had a "unlimited BTU" gas fitter license (Canada Class "A") and this for a living and preferred "pipe dope""
I do this kind of thing a lot as we own and maintain our own water plant. My preferred sealant is the yellow PTFE tape that is used for natural gas.
It is quite a bit thicker than the white tape, it sticks to threads better and it is easier to work with, in terms of manual dexterity.
I never use the white tape for anything.
I don't like pipe dope at all and I only use it for large fittings that are going to be buried or inaccessible.
ALSO, helpful hint: If you are mixing plastic pipe (like schedule 40/80) and metal pipe, always have metal female couplings and plastic male couplings. A metal male going into a plastic female is one tighten away from cracking the plastic.
This landing page roast I found years ago completely changed how I think about marketing:
Don't believe for one moment that 5 hours on Product Hunt or anywhere else for that matter represents a serious marketing effort.
If you want to run a business rather just create stuff, your work has only just begun. In the light of Facebook and other social media revelations, the idea of a truly disposable email address which means your entire life is not analysed and spammed to death has to be worth something.
You haven't told anyone about it though. And I mean you shout from the rooftops every day and everywhere you can think of. You market. People are not going to come looking for you. You have to start approaching influencers, be seen and be heard everywhere you think your potenial users might lurk.
And, by the way, everyone sees a million new ideas a day so you have to be consistent, appear to be permanent and appear to be solid. No-one is going to entrust communications with you if they think you are a small, one-man band with an idea and little else.
Time to start reading marketing articles and strategies and applying them.
And expect it to take time.
Added bit : I've just watched your video. No, I won't be using your service and nor will anyone else. I have no idea how good it is and I am not going to find out. And nor is anyone else.
Why not? Because you uploaded a silent, technical video. You have made the classic mistake of trying to show me how something works before I even know if I care. This is a technical video, not a selling one.
You need a voice.
You need to tell me what my problem is and make it resonate with me.
You need to tell me how to solve it.
You need to tell me it is simple.
You need to tell me what it costs.
You need to tell me to link right now to the place I can sign up.
You might need some other things but these are the basics.
You need to sell your idea to me, not explain how the software works. I do not give a damn about the bloody software until I give a damn about the bloody problem!
Tell me where I'm hurting, sympathise and then magic-kiss it better. You know - just like Mummy did when I was small!
There is one way you can beat dollar-cost averaging when you're investing large lump sums like this. Selling cash-covered put options until you get assigned. This is the only strategy that has proven to outperform buying and holding. The reason is obvious: you're buying at a discount if you get assigned, and you get to keep the premium if you don’t. Selling a put is basically being paid to put in a limit order.
One estimation trick that I've found effective is the following:
(1) determine the smallest number that your sure is larger than the true answer.
(2) determine the largest number that you are sure is smaller than the true answer.
(3) take the geometric average of the two. (i.e., sqrt(a * b))
The reason this does well, is that oftentimes, (1) overestimates the true answer by roughly the same multiplicative factor as (2) underestimates the true answer by. So the geometric mean cancels the over and under estimates in order to get an estimation that does pretty well.
I find that this works remarkably well for estimating the dimensions of buildings, trees, etc.
> Choose money and you’ll end up working all the time. Choose beauty and you’ll always want to look better. Choose fame and you’ll constantly be seeking attention.
This is straight-up paraphrasing David Foster Wallace in This Is Water, just that DFW was talking about these things as de-facto personal religions that we're usually unconscious of. So the "choose" part isn't nearly that explicit in his view.
The bit in This Is Water:
> If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you... Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.
I think it's interesting how different people view status, like the "Harvard Professor or Homeless guy?" quiz that used to get passed around.
I grew up in one of the last WASP strongholds in the US and the more money you had, the smaller the house you lived in (up to a point). People could afford insanely expensive cars, but would buy tasteful ones instead (excepting kids).
Most people wouldn't be caught dead in a Ralph Lauren polo, but would happily wear a bleach-stained, rumpled Brooks Brothers shirt. Outside of special occasions, people didn't dress nice at all - they dressed like they just came back from sailing.
Engineering, medicine, and law were not considered high-status. Well, if you wanted to work a job, I guess they were - but they were considered ordinary. It was better to own something (but not work), run a non-profit, or have a PhD (in the classics, or whatever). Most parents told their children "I don't care what you do - but do something interesting!". Being an artist was considered good, too.
Fame, and appearing in the media, were about the worst things you could achieve.
The biggest status indicator was how well read you were. It is so deeply ingrained in me, that I still find myself more impressed by well read people than almost anything else, and I haven't lived there in over a decade.
There are a couple of these strongholds remaining, where even the wealthiest people are not allowed to move to because they don't have the right last name, or can't trace their lineage to the Mayflower.
If you removed these people and put them anywhere else, you'd think of them as low status and strange.
I find that emotional compartmentalization is a critical skill.
A couple years ago, I faced a very tough time in my life. My business was collapsing, my family's finances were in jeopardy, and there was a serious health issue going on.
The emotional stress was incapacitating. I couldn't sleep, let alone focus enough to fix my problems. It was the downward spiral nightmare scenario.
If I didn't have dependents (wife + 3 kids), I might have withdrawn into depression. Instead I was forced to fix my emotional state...
I constructed a personal prayer...
I am the man in the dark room.
In here, I am my loves, my principles, and my ideas.
Who I am cannot be changed by circumstances outside this room,
My loves are my legs which carry me to life outside this room.
My principles are my shield from the burdens the world assaults me with.
My ideas are the sword with which I shape my life.
When I return to myself in this room, the world remains outside, and I evolve to be better prepared tomorrow.
I found that even just stopping to say "I am the man in the dark room" was often enough remind myself that I wasn't defined by my circumstances.
To sleep, I found I could play the audio from old familiar TV shows to drown out the worries to fall (and stay) asleep - it was a surprising turn-around.
These two things changed my life. Hope this helps someone else.
Neither Python's style nor Haskell's style is sufficient. Howtos ("cookbook" style) and reference information are completely inadequate on their own.
The only acceptable documentation is that which hits all four quadrants of the Divio documentation system[1]: tutorials, how-to guides, reference information, and conceptual explanations. Each of these kinds is necessary in a different situation.
If there's a "cultural" aspect, then it's only in which of the four kinds of docs that those two communities ignore.
Explaining things is not that hard, and if you’re bad at it, you can get better with practice and by learning a few tricks. But explaining is mostly useless in the real world. What will get you ahead is, instead, the ability to be convincing. That is, to pry people loose from their existing beliefs, and nudge them to adopt beliefs of your choosing. This, perhaps surprisingly, does not involve explaining your beliefs and hoping other people see the error of their ways. People don’t work like that.
This is very much what I did, but I would add two other things: study above your level, and read the history of the subject.
If an undergraduate read graduate level textbooks, especially overviews.
This gives one a sense of the context of the subject, an appreciation of "where it's going", a hint of why the subject is still interesting and under active development, and makes the undergraduate material seem almost innocent by comparison. It's much harder, of course, and you'll often find that the entire semester's material is covered in a couple of chapters at the beginning, but the feeling of "how the professionals really talk/think about the subject" is hugely important for getting a feel of the thing.
The history of a subject is great for giving the human context, which is hugely useful for grokking how things developed organically, as well as the personalities involved. It can really help remembering stuff.
Before going back to college to do Maths and Physics I went out to the local university to get advice as to how to study the subjects. I was told to get Feynman's Lectures ((in)famous) and Boas' Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences (extremely terse but excellent). I did, tried my best, and in retrospect still think they were taking the piss. And yet, when I went back to university a year later, there were so many ideas and intuitions already in place that although the Maths was still computationally difficult the concepts were not as strange as they might have otherwise been.
In college itself it was the library that was the real draw, so many amazing texts just there for the reading. To be fair, the professors were wonderfully patient and encouraging.
But mainly, just keep at it, hour after hour, without comparing yourself or your efforts to anyone else. It's hard enough without imagining other people looking over your shoulder. I remember a number of young ones who, though brilliant in school, found university just that bit beyond them. Take frequent breaks, even holidays, and remember, above all, that exams are perhaps the worst test of learning we have yet devised apart from all the others.
My main technique from my engineering undergrad days was extremely effective and yet very simple and easy to describe and/or implement. It is:
1. Attend the lectures and take good notes. Don't write things down that are obvious or that you already know.
2. Before any exam, go back over the dozens of pages of notes and condense them down to 3 or 4 pages, omitting details that will be brought to mind by the things you are writing down.
3. Go back over the 3 to 4 pages, condensing them down to a single page, compactly written.
4. Go back over the single page, condensing it down to a single notecard.
The act of condensing requires you to internalize the knowledge enough to know what you have memorized and what you must still note down. And the act of repeatedly writing down the hard parts commits those to memory too.
By the end, the notecard has a handful of difficult to remember formulas and a bunch of keywords that prompt your memory to recall the salient details. In the US at that time, a single notecard was often allowed during exams, so the final work product was also that card.
(My recall 20 years later is excellent, so this is not cramming.)
Be forgiving with your past, disciplined with your present, hopeful with your future.
I'm not a Buddhist or religious at all for that matter. But I've come to appreciate the power of rituals, prayer, meditation and spirituality in some sense. In the Sermon of the Mount it is said that sin starts in the mind (very roughly paraphrasing). In Buddhism there is the concept of planting seeds, karma, with our thoughts and actions.
I understand these things as powerful concepts, packaged as stories and metaphors. They can help us to face difficult emotional challenges (fear, hatred, pride etc.) in two ways: By preparing our minds through a form of mental hygiene and by drawing from fantastic/spiritual frameworks in overwhelming situations.
So the mantra above is a way for me to operationalise a kind of healthy self-reflection (I tend to over-reflect) and put different types of thoughts and motivations into context. It helps!
That’s a tough position. I felt the same pressures when I was an SWE. The way I solved it was to go into sales engineering, and overall it was a great career choice. My product is pretty technical so there are enough challenges to keep it interesting. But at the same time I’m always playing on home turf.
I’m (usually) well respected by customers because of the reputation I’ve developed for my expertise. I’ll spend 10-20 hours each quarter per major customer to unblock their team / launch a project. For me it’s more rewarding than closing endless JIRAs.
My base compensation is less than the equivalent SWE level, but with bonuses my take home ranges from being on-par to significantly more. It comes with the intangible benefit of developing a much broader professional network.
Your mileage may vary. I consider myself extremely lucky and have no illusions about sales being a cakewalk. But if you’re looking for a way to find routine, going to into technical sales with a product you respect might be a good route.
The more I see, the more I think we need a mandatory „Life School“ curriculum in classes. Financial literacy is just one issue, but all that stuff like media competency, scientific method, cui bono, negotiations, assertiveness, how to deal with bullies, mental health basics, economics 101, mechanics of addiction and manipulation aaaand so on, all explained by first principles, would go such a long way towards a better functioning society.
Then again, that‘s not going to happen as it would eventually destroy whole industries and populist voter bases.
Back in the early 90s — on a recommendation from a realtor who was a close friend of my brother's — I hired an inspector who was close to retirement. He worked with his wife who served as his assistant tasked with, in essence, taking dictation of her husband's near constant commentary as he conducted an incredibly thorough inspection. Every outlet tested for proper ground, every nook and cranny looked at, wood moisture content, HVAC pitot readings, masonry, roof … just a super-duper detailed inspection that took about 6 hours to complete.
At the end of the inspection, he summed up by saying the house was good and that he had no qualms recommending the house.
Two days later, he stopped by with a three-ring binder that contained his inspection report. It first contained a summary that concisely covered the positive and few negative aspects of the house. Then there was a section about the history of the house: the year built, the name of the builder, changes in the neighborhood since it had been built, earthquakes it had gone through, flood events in the area, and so on. It also included the manufacturer names of things such as the windows, door hardware, etc.
The third section was lengthy, covering the precise state of the electrical, plumbing, structural, envelope, etc, and included all the notes his wife had taken during the course of the inspection. It included a sub-section with warnings about certain materials that likely contained asbestos and would need to be dealt with if we ever did remodeling.
Finally, the largest section was what he called a "maintenance work order" arranged as a schedule for the ongoing, recurring upkeep of the house but beginning with things he thought needed to be done immediately, replacement of the circuit breaker box, splash blocks under each outdoor faucet, tuck-pointing some of the chimney's brickwork, etc. And then his estimates as to when he thought systems might need to be replaced, the water heater, furnace, roofing, etc. As I discovered when the water heater burst, his estimates were pretty much spot-on. Over time, I added notes as we upgraded things, added low-voltage wiring, and remodeled the basement.
Nine years later, when I sold the house, the buyer was elated to have this owner's manual and I am fairly certain that the book was key to a very fast sale of the house which we did without a realtor.
As I look back on it now, I realize that inspection was perhaps the best $350 I have ever spent.
When we bought our next house, the inspection took about an hour and produced a few page report, most of it boilerplate.
Ahoy! I'm a climber! And I love to talk about "sales for nerds", so this HN thread is delightful to me.
Would you mind if I free-associated through your page, from the perspective of a climber, while speaking a bit to the sales side of things? (I've done B2B Enterprise sales in a past life, and for the consulting stuff I'm working on, I'm now doing more/different sales.)
Phew. Here we go:
1. Your primary value prop is "Use Less Chalk"
As a climber, I don't care about using LESS chalk (it's extremely cheap, afterall) I care about _sending_. So maybe instead of "Use less chalk" it's "Do more moves before you have to chalk up".
I.E. "You know that long crux sequence on your project? You have to slap like 8 compression moves in a row? With regular chalk, you're desperately wishing you could chalk up before doing the last move, but with ChalkRebel chalk, _you don't_ and you can fire the move without chalking"
(Er, I was at the Red River Gorge, Kentucky for the last month, and almost sent a climb the 5th go, but it was slopey crimps with difficult rests, and humid, and as after I fell on my last attempt, I saw damp fingerprints on the last hold. Terrible.)
So - you're not "selling chalk", you're trying to help people accomplish their goals!
Climbers spend so much money on shoes, a lighter rope, travel to the climbing area, etc.
We spend weeks/months/years hanging off tiny little edges, hanging weight off our bodies, to try to squeeze another few percentage points of strength into our muscles.
I dedicate an incredible amount of time and effort to climbing. HELP ME BE SUCCESSFUL! Sell me your chalk!
Start getting testimonials. ASK FOR TESTIMONIALS!
I'm doing this work for some other (software related) products I'm building, and the selling goes SURPRISINGLY WELL when I force myself to... sell.
I have very limited time right now, but I'd love to talk more about all this! I'd love to hop on a call to talk through it! There are some super successful sales folks leaving comments, I'm not "super successful" (yet) but I'm in a similar spot as you, I've just happened to done a bunch of sales in the past. So... we should deff talk. We'll both enjoy it! Send me an email, or visit my website (HN profile) or set up a coffee call: https://josh.works/coffee
I’m a founder/engineer and never found sales to be easy, which is the full extent of my qualifications.
After many years of struggling, I finally came to the realization that sales is simply not a systematic, “system-building” activity in the same way as engineering, and that sales gurus try to make their jobs look more like ours because ... well... they’re good at selling! They’ve figured out that we associate a certain vocabulary (e.g. “process”, “data” ...) with rigor and reliability.
Once you stop seeing sales as a system whose laws you study and turn to your advantage, you come to the underwhelming realization that sales is field work. It’s operational. There is no big trick, only small ones.
With that in mind:
- have you tried going to climbing gyms and showing people your product?
- are there big events or conferences for climbers? (Yes, I know COVID is a factor, here.)
- have you tried calling a bunch of rock climbing gyms and asking what it would take to sell your product at the front desk?
The short story is that sales is costly in time, and you kind of have to live with that until you build a distribution network. Pick up the phone, or better yet, go in person. The good news is that you don’t have to be selling per se. Just go places and ask for help.
P.S. - a few additional thoughts come to mind.
1. I think social media can actually work for niche consumer products like this. Go to your gym, have people try your product, and ask them how they like it. Video tape it and stick it on YouTube. Take pictures of people doing cool stuff, slap your logo on it and put it on Instagram. This is how you start branding. Baby steps.
2. Give out samples at a competition and include “technical” documentation about how and when to use your product. This will pique everyone’s curiosity. Everybody wants to be knowledgeable about their equipment and nobody wants to look clueless. People will read it and remember the brand if only to justify why they use something else. How do you think I know about Rust?
Again: it’s operational work. You spend a lot of time doing. It’s not like programming where you solve problems once and they’re gone forever. No sales library, I’m afraid :)
And the rest of the article then falls into role-playing contrived conversations, all of which can be skipped by being even more honest than they recommend. Simply say that you want an offer that is good enough to never make you second-guess your choice in joining them. That pretty much covers every conversation and scenario you can imagine, and you don't need to make up strategy for 3 potential layers of back and forth on who says what.