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People buy four things and four things only, ever: time, money, sex, and approval or peace of mind — if you try to sell anything other than those four things, you will fail.

A legendary Hacker News comment distilled sales to a simple truth: people only ever buy time, money, sex, or approval/peace of mind, and selling anything else is a route to failure. ✦ AI generated

Speaker 1 · My First Million · 2026-08-04 · original ↗

starts at this moment · 0:45

Number three, people buy four things and four things only, ever. Those four things are time, money, sex, and approval or peace of mind. If you try to sell anything other than those four things, you will fail.

verbatim transcript · starts at 0:45

Transcript · around this moment

0:27so vigorously that my C4 C5s all >> sore. So, let me just give you this here. >> He said the guy goes, "Yeah, there's tons of resources to help you with sales, but I'll start with I'll try to offer some simple tips. Number one, sales is a lot like golf. You can make it so complicated that it's almost impossible, or you can simply walk up and hit the ball. I've been leading

0:45sales orders for about 20 years. My advice is to walk up and hit the ball. Number two, sales about people and it's about problem-solving. It's not about tech or solutions or chemicals or lines of code or artichokes. It's about people. It's about solving problems. Number three, people buy four things and four things only, ever. Those four things are time, money, sex, and approval or peace of mind. If you try to

1:05sell anything other than those four things, you will fail. Number four, >> people buy aspirin, always. They'll buy vitamins, sometimes, and but it'll be unpredictable. Sell aspirin. Number five, I say in every talk that I give that all things being equal, people will buy from their friends. So, make everything else equal and then go make a lot of friends. >> [laughter] >> Um number six, being valuable and useful

1:30is all you'll ever need to sell things. Help people out, send them interesting posts, write birthday cards, record videos, like sharing your ideas of how they could grow their business, introduce them to people who would benefit from knowing each other, and get out of the way. Expect nothing in return. Do this consistently and authentically and people will find ways to give you money. I promise. Number seven, no one cares about your

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