Before going any further, I just want to make it clear that I try really hard not to generalize. And that my views are often informed by the somewhat myopic—and even insular—worldview of someone who hasn’t even traveled to continental Europe in their forty years of existence (two years ago, I met an awful man who truly laughed in my face and exclaimed “you haven’t even been to continental Europe!” when he’d asked me my favorite part of Europe and I had to disclose the very embarrassing truth: I’d only ever been to Iceland and Ireland, albeit the latter several times), nor has actually ever attempted to own their own home.
Caveat out of the way, there is something about realtors that just doesn’t…I don’t want to fully say, “doesn’t sit right with me,” and I don’t want to fully co-opt Gen Zer’s by saying “gives me the ick,” but…let’s go with that there is something about realtors that gives me…pause.
Now again—keeping in mind, of course, that I’m a very provincial man who hasn’t really lived (yet!)—this is fully based on my own experiences, but it’s just that all the realtors I’ve interacted with (and again, I know #notallrealtors) just have a sense of flagrant self-promotion about them that I can’t fully get behind.
Now, I get it. It’s a tough business! You have to sell yourself to survive. Especially in our current economy. And I also get that in some social circles, constantly selling—constantly hawking—is considered a positive. Hustle culture! Rise and grind! Optimize! There are entire tribes of people where this ethos (and not for nothing, those kinds of people 100% call their people their tribe) isn’t looked down upon. It’s embraced! It’s celebrated! Those people probably all have owned multiple homes and would never run a blog for six years without trying to monetize it. It’s just…I find people who can never turn business off to be exhausting. It’s not the tribe I surround myself with, ya know? And for better or worse, realtors, to me, embody that kind of sell-at-all-costs lifestyle.
This past winter, though, I’ve had to sell the hell out of myself.
I was closing in on five months unemployed. I got laid off the previous October, and had been dutifully applying to jobs ever since. I’d been dutifully selling myself ever since, trying to show a rotating cast of HR professionals, recruiters, marketing managers, and CEOs that I am the best person for their job. And very honestly? It was extremely frustrating, largely, I’m sure, in part because this kind of behavior does not come naturally to me.
I saw a LinkedIn post recently that sums it up best, and I’ll do my best to paraphrase the general ethos. “I didn’t get one job because I talked too much. I didn’t get another because I didn’t talk enough. I was too cocky for one hiring manager. I wasn’t confident enough for another. I use AI. I don’t use AI. I have nuanced views on AI. My AI views aren’t nuanced enough. I showed up too early, which stressed the hiring manager out. I showed up on time, which another hiring manager deems ‘actually late.’”
The current hiring landscape is a roller coaster. A very subjective one.
After three very close calls (including one job right before Christmas, I more or less convinced myself was mine—rookie mistake), the last of which was a firm “we’re going with someone who better aligns with our core values” at the end of January, I told myself I needed to make a pivot to plan B. Or, several plan Bs. One of those was to try to strike out as a freelancer (the other was… Uber driver; we’ll get there soon, don’t worry).
Going into this endeavor, I felt super confident. I know I’m good at my job (for those unaware, for my 9-5, I’ve been doing content marketing, primarily for B2B software companies), and with more and more people starting to utilize generative AI (ChatGPT, etc), the content landscape is a bit in disarray. What’s worked for years isn’t necessarily working anymore. And at the same time, people are being told to use AI, but aren’t really using it effectively. Or are using it unsuccessfully? And while the world of LinkedIn is saturated with other folks like me, set adrift by layoffs—possibly being made redundant because of AI—I thought to myself: there are probably plenty of folks in Asheville who either want to take advantage of this new content landscape, or need help navigating it. So my strategy was to revamp my website and canvas town with flyers and business cards advertising my content strategy services.
I spent a lot of time revamping said website. And thinking strategically about how I could differentiate myself from other job-seeking content folks. I created what I still feel is a super valuable set of services and felt very proud of the flyers and business cards I created. I was excited to take them to businesses around town—breweries, gyms, coffee shops, etc.—and see what kind of reception I got.
Well, the reception has been…not for the faint of heart.
I like to think I could take rejection well. I work in the creative field. Half of my job is pitching ideas just to get shut down. But, and maybe I’m lucky here, a lot of times that shut down is done by colleagues who know how to do it tactfully, and other times it’s simply silence. Now, for the most part, I didn’t encounter anyone who was outwardly cruel, but it’s just not in my nature to walk into 30+ establishments in the course of a day and be politely told to essentially not hawk my wares there. And then there were the establishments that told me, sure, they’d hang them up, and then I’d go in a few days later to find the flyers nowhere. Or worse, to see them grafitted with mustaches and glasses.
But the worst blow to my ego was at one of the most hipster-centric coffee chains in Asheville. I probably deserve it. Maybe it’s comeuppance for my feelings towards people trying to make an honest living selling homes and themselves, which I’ve been learning in real time is a skill set that shouldn’t be mocked. Or, maybe it’s some kind of karmic retribution for my admittedly not-super-kind take on the hipsters of Asheville, but either way. It stung my fragile little ego.
I walked into the coffee shop and said, “Hey, do you mind if I hang a flyer in your window?”
The barista, a man who wasn’t wearing a “male feminist” T-shirt, but 100% had the energy of a male-feminist tote carrier, rolled his eyes (did he? Or did my dented ego imagine this? UNCLEAR) and said, “If you could find a spot.”
Find a spot, I did, and then I sat around waiting for my chai latte to be ready (this entire endeavor cost me so much in chai lattes, because I find it virtually impossible to walk into a business and ask to put something on their bulletin board or window without purchasing something), and I heard the barista shit-talk me to his coworkers.
“Did you check out his flyer?” he asked her.
“Tragic,” she said.
“Yeah,” he concluded. “Like, why is his headshot so big? Is he selling his writing or himself? He doesn’t feel like a writer. He feels like a realtor.”
AshevilleExplorer 