All In Startup: Launching a New Idea When Everything Is on the Line

Chapter 3You Can’t Sell Anything by Doing All of the Talking

Owen couldn’t sleep. His mind was racing. His conversation with Sam kept replaying over and over again in his mind. Try to focus on the wife. Try to focus on the wife. All right, try to focus on Pitchford and whatever poker advice he would offer if he were here. Try to focus on the World Series of Poker tomorrow. No use. It was still Sam.

People have a natural tendency to mentally replay conversations that they deem unique, like talking to a pretty girl who was not his wife or talking to an influential entrepreneur. Sam was both of those things. Owen’s instant analysis of the conversation was that he had talked too much. Way, way too much. Did she yawn? He didn’t think so. No, she seemed genuinely interested. But not all the way interested. Why would she be? ReBicycle wasn’t her baby. She had no emotional attachment to it.

So then why did she listen to him for a solid hour? He still didn’t know a damned thing about Sparksys. Were those stories of Hot Air Balloon Fridays true? They couldn’t be—Sam didn’t strike him that way. She seemed to understand him, though. Like, on every level.

She kept nodding her head when he talked about how passionate he was about ReBicycle. How once the idea took hold of him, he could hardly think of anything else. How his work at the consulting firm started to seem so unimportant. How he kept seeing signs of why this was such a great idea everywhere he went. She completely seemed to understand ...