“The only way out is through. You take more of the thing that poisons you until you turn it into a tonic that girdles the world around you.”
— Dr. Jordan Peterson
“Nice guy? I don't give a shit. Good father? Fuck you—go home and play with your kids. You wanna work here? Close!”
— Cinematographer killer Alec Baldwin, Glengarry Glen Ross
In the last twelve months I’ve lost the four closest friends I’ve made since my mid twenties. One pair were the couple who inspired Lindsay and I to move to Missoula over anywhere else in Montana. We spent holidays, special events, and nearly every weekend together like an extended family for years. Life happens and they took a job opportunity out of state. I value their long-distance friendship but there’s no substitute for meeting up for a hike or gathering around a firepit over a beer (or sparkling water, these days).
Six months ago I lost another pair as the result of a harrowing and dramatic wildlife attack. As the couple were prancing through fields of bear grass, gathering huckleberries and sipping craft beer, a herd of three dozen moose came out of nowhere, roaring, “go back to California!” before trampling them in a brutal and shocking display of violence. It was either that, or, they got divorced and found new people to hang out with—the details of the loss are so fuzzy. My grief, so deep.
While divvying up their assets, the couple fought over who would keep the essential oil diffuser and incense burner, but when it came to me it seems they both decided, “No, no—you keep him.” To the curb on trash day I went, piled next to the wedding photo album and the rest of the junk in the garage. It seems I am the friendship equivalent of a Nordic Track ski machine—novel at first, useless and archaic once you decide to get a Peloton with the make-a-friend app.
No matter the fact they were the first people to visit me after my heart surgery in 2019, and I to visit them after one of their surgeries a couple years later. No matter our ability to lean on each other during the hard times. I suppose if you can throw away over a decade of marriage, why should I be surprised you threw away six years of friendship? Who knows the actual reason why we’re no longer friends. Maybe I’m just too intense to be around—definitely not a thought without merit. I can only imagine what I sounded like when I first discovered the hypotheses surrounding ancient civilizations. Maybe the loss of the friendship had nothing to do with me at all, and it was just a natural dissolution caused by time. All relationships are in a reparative state against the constant of entropy.
Anyway, the de-friended non-couple both seem perfectly happy with their new Pelotons. I’ll keep carving my ski tracks—swish, swish, swish.
Instead of overeating and drinking myself to death, I have decided to bury my sorrow in real estate sales, focusing on a non-corrupting pursuit which invariably sustains wayward people with a sense of purpose and higher calling in life: money.
The day after the moose stampede, as I was walking out of the friendship funeral parlor, I picked up the phone and dialed a “For Sale By Owner” seller. The seller advertised on Craigslist that he wants to sell this house, so after a brief introduction, I got to the point of my call: “And at this price, have you received any offers yet?”
“I’m going to keep that between me, myself, and I,” the man stammers. Click. The line goes dead. Apparently he’d just finished the business strategy book, “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.”
Golly, that simply won’t do, I think. For a moment, my insecure attachment disorder takes over and my head spins; this stranger will not abandon me. I will not be your Nordic Track ski machine. I send him a text:“[Esteemed homeowner] usually I try not to hang up on people when I’m selling a house. Would you like some help with the sale?” Obviously a rhetorical question—he definitely wants my help. Like Jim Carey’s character in The Cable Guy, I’ve decided we are going to be friends.
A day goes by without response. Why won’t you accept my help? I think as I dial the number again. We could have been soul mates, long-term confidants; pen pals for life. Straight to voicemail. I know, I just need to show up to the house, introduce myself in person, and bring him the gift of a free market analysis and my business card. We’re either going to be new best friends or you’re going to gun me down on your front porch—do me a favor.
Extrapolate this scenario 1,000x and you, too, can be a leading real estate sales professional. Over time you will forego the morning ritual of thumbing back the hammer of a .357 revolver, staring vacuously into a loaded chamber (metaphorically, of course) and wondering, “Is this what life is about? Should I go back to Clown College and get a Masters in Poli-Sci? Should I try again to work for the human traffickers and oath breakers at the CIA? Should I find a salaried job as a ‘business man’?” Oh, right, I hated that too. Fuck. Sales it is.
Pulling back from the void, I began to truly appreciate why the Pareto Principle reigns supreme in my industry of residential real estate. 80% of deals are done by less than 20% of the salespeople because it’s really hard to be consistent. In 2023, 50% of real estate license holders in the U.S. didn’t close a single sale. There’s an industry term for those types of agents: Losers.
I deal with rejection as a matter of course. Rejection is the only way one becomes competent at sales. And I certainly don’t want or expect sympathy on account of getting the sales-sads. That’s what the money’s for. But if you’re going to make it, in any meaningful sense in this game, you ought to be ready for some major sacrifices.
Inflated ego, toxic self-consciousness, and introspective navel-gazing are the first qualities which must go—that’s what my Substack is for, obviously. These are pretty easy characteristics to drop if you just gain inspiration from re-watching American Psycho—the 2000 film starring Christian Bale, not a bunch of media interviews with Gavin Newsome.
The prospect of new, conventional friendships is the next thing to go, at least in my experience. Nearly all of my localized relationships are undergirded by my career. I’m their real estate guy. And converting strangers into friends is a challenge when it’s my job to convert strangers into clients. Our relationships for the brief period of “active contract day” to “closing day” are sometimes overwhelmingly intense. I become enveloped in your life, whether either of us like it or not. There are so many moving parts to keeping a deal together. Fortunately, we usually have a good time because absurdity is lurking just beneath the surface of all deals, and that’s what makes it exciting.
While being in sales helps you develop a mithril-like armor to the rejection of strangers, I take the loss of meaningful friendship and connections seriously. This was a major hurdle to overcome early in my career. I’ve been fully enmeshed in the lives of my clients—where we talk for hours per week, for months on end. And then one day they stop calling. I stop calling. My purpose is fulfilled; go away broker-bro, you’ve served your function. If all relationships are in a state of entropy then Closing Day is the heat death of our common universe. Ok, love you, bye forever—or until you’re ready to buy or sell again. Time to make new friends as I’m forced to wipe my tears with 500 Euro notes. Boohoo. That’s what the money’s for.
There are times you’ll wish you’d never met some people. I once had a client who threatened to kill me after I helped him achieve his wildest dreams and by using someone else’s money. Walls of text at 3:00am, followed by rambling voicemails of candid threats lasted for weeks. After a not-so-subtle, “you will learn to fear me,” at the cogent hour of 4:00pm on a Wednesday, I had to teach my pacifist wife how to rack the slide on a 10mm semiautomatic pistol in the event this “friend”-turned-hostile showed up to my house, ready to grind his mania-honed axe.
Sadly, and not without some residual relief on my part, he turned a gun on himself, ending the future risk of physical harm to anyone else close in his life. He fit the profile perfectly of a self-righteous family annihilator. What he did was literally the least harm of which he was capable during his inevitable spiral to the bottom. He was suffering the depths of a living Hell I can only imagine. A prisoner of his own existence. You never know the whole story of what someone’s going through; and real estate people tend to see it all, for better and for worse. If it was easy, everyone would do it. That’s what the money’s for.
Sorrow comes with the territory, and no one—I mean no one; can or should give a damn about what you’re going through. The same day I had to euthanize my beloved Canaan dog Taboush, I had to force myself to stoically negotiate the termination of a buying contract on behalf of a truly wonderful Buyer client. We couldn’t come to resolution as a result of inspection-related discoveries. Lindsay’s and my soulmate was dying in the other room and my client was losing a potential dream home as we navigated our termination language; of course she had sympathy for me, but my sorrow could not, would not, should not have clouded my judgement on addressing the deal in front of me. The stakes are that high. That’s what the money’s for.
In the minds of some members of the community—mostly commonly known as “tenants”—my mere existence is an occupational hazard. Of course, I’m being facetious. To the pee-pants’ that think I actually look down on renters: the dire severity of the real estate market in Montana is not lost on me. I just don’t know in what way I, alone, can structurally reorganize civil society to make more affordable housing, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The Soviet Union tried the equity play to make things better—ask the kulak survivors of the Holodomor how that utopian vision went. Oh, wait, you can’t—there were hardly any survivors.
I’ve been on the other side of the high risk, high reward of sales. I was a retail peon for nearly half my adult life. I worked retail grocery from high school through my mid twenties. I managed a thrift store in my mid thirties. I’ve earned real estate commissions that would cover literal years of my retail employment. And while I have a laundry list of complaints about retail, one of them was certainly not the esprit de corps created by working a retail customer service job. Leaning against the hood of a coworkers car in an empty parking lot at midnight while smoking cigarettes and discussing the existential crisis posed by daily negative customer interactions was formative to the person I am today.
“Oh no, you’ll never shop here again because you tried to scam us with fake returns. Oh you want to escalate this complaint to my manager? How will I recover from the tragedy of losing your patronage?”
“Yes, thank you, I am just a retail monkey. You are indeed very superior to me.” And hopefully you drive head-on into a median after this interaction. Can’t wait to see you zooming around town, blowing into a tube to get around in your Rascal Scooter. Yes, I have residual angst decades on.
I was also in a place in life, where despite that ongoing existential crisis, I’d pop into my dilapidating, overheating Honda Civic and drive seven miles to a casino on the Las Vegas Strip, only to lose two weeks’ worth of retail pay in a single hand of no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em. I was sure poker was going to fund the rest of my life. To my absolute shock, it did not. I’d then have to call my mommy and daddy to let them know I’d goofed and would need some help with the rent. Some people’s kids, man. To be sure, what’s the point of having “privilege” if you’re not going to exercise it? My point is, there’s no inherent virtue in being broke or irresponsible with money, just as having money doesn’t inherently make you a cultural cretin.
In recent years, I’ve witnessed relationships across the spectrum deteriorate around me; brothers who have become sworn enemies, multi-generation familial friendships decay overnight as a result of political disagreements, marriages dissolve over the misunderstanding of “til death do us part.” I think relations are getting worse for everyone. It’s not just me whose suffering this loss of connection.
Two years ago one of my high school friends called me after discovering my phone number on a real estate website. We were immediately transported back nearly two decades, and for an hour of conversation we existed in a stasis of time, where life didn’t move as fast as it does and the friends you make last forever; the great BBQ in the sky. We haven’t talked since, but I value tremendously that he reached out. It was an incredibly gratifying single-serving moment.
The three friends I speak with most frequently, with whom I have the deepest connection, I’ve known since we were 5, 15, and 19 years old. One is a Bolshevik Brooklynite Musical Artiste; another is a SoCal Real Estate Broker-Bro; another is a New Dad on the Trad Life path. We agree on little in the amorphous socio-political discourse of our time and it’s had almost zero impact on our fraternal sense toward one another. We can spend hours on the phone, locker-room talkin’, every few weeks. They’re the only guys I talk to regularly other than my dad and brothers. If I need a third party’s assessment on whether or not I’m being a genuine jerk, I’ll ask them. They’ll tell me.
But I’m in my late 30s now, I think I have all the long-term friendships I’ll ever want or need. The people whose opinions of me I care deeply about shrinks precipitously as I get older. This has made my role as a salesman that much easier. It’s made me a better representative of my clients and their interests. It was surprising at first when learned I actually, sincerely, didn’t care about someone’s negative opinion of me. If you’re not my wife, my brothers or one of my true confidants, then you’re just some disgruntled retail customer who wants to speak with my manager. And guess what? I am the manager now—the metaphorical median into which you will collide head-on. Hope you’re wearing a seatbelt, but I don’t actually care one way or another. There’s too much noise in the world as it is.
Sales is a lonely business and I have no sympathy for anyone in the game. It’s easy to exit and to do something else for a living. Most people should. No one is going to validate your “can do” attitude. I don’t care if you’re “really trying your best.” Get it done. That’s what the money’s for.
As long as my marriage and familial relationships are in good repair, I can accept the death of conventional friendship. There are plenty of ways to earn a living; everyone has to make sacrifices. So, if you’re in the sales game, whatever you’re selling, just know that your clients need you. America needs you. “Our Democracy” needs you. Stop bitching, stop making excuses. Coffee is for closers. Get out there and sell.
And if you really do need a friend, buy a fucking Peloton.
Wow, next time I’ll need to fasten my seatbelt before reading. Friendships and real estate can both create quite a roller coaster ride ! 🎢
Thank you for sharing the highs and the lows
and vivid imagery with your amazing writing
Your writing gets ever better v