Eben Pagan distinguishes between 'playing business' and 'doing business,' revealing how most entrepreneurs waste time on activities that don't generate customers or sales. He teaches professional selling as the single most important skill for business success, reframing sales from manipulation to coaching that helps customers solve their problems.
The Danger Of Playing Business
Eben Pagan introduces the critical distinction between 'playing business' and 'doing business.' He reveals how most entrepreneurs waste time on activities like business names, logos, and website design that feel important but don't generate customers or revenue.
Professional selling is positioned as the single most important skill for business success. Eben explains how this skill applies to every business situation and makes entrepreneurs bulletproof in any environment, while addressing the negative reputation selling has acquired.
A powerful reframe that positions professional selling as coaching rather than coercion. Eben draws parallels between effective selling and life coaching, showing how both focus on helping people identify and overcome their blocks to achieve what they truly want.
The episode concludes by showing how mastering selling leads naturally to effective marketing. Eben explains marketing as 'salesmanship in print, audio, or video' and why attempting marketing without selling skills first is a costly mistake.
“Playing business involves everything you think you should be doing to run a business. You want to avoid wasting your time on things that don't directly relate to getting customers and selling your products and services.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 0:31
Playing business involves activities you think you should do like naming your business, designing business cards, and choosing website colors. Doing business focuses directly on getting customers and selling products and services.
“If I could recommend just one single skill to learn that will pay off huge over your business life, it's the skill of professional selling.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 4:19
Professional selling applies to every business situation - hiring, managing, negotiating, and performance reviews. It makes you bulletproof in any business environment and is essential since business owners are both sales managers and star salespeople.
“Professional selling is actually just like coaching. It's helping other people get in touch with the things that are blocking them.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 9:47
Professional selling is like coaching - it's about approaching customers as a coach would, finding their real needs and helping them overcome what's blocking them, rather than using high-pressure tactics.
“Marketing is actually selling. It's just that it's done in print, audio, or video. Many business owners make the mistake of trying to do marketing before learning selling first, which is a huge mistake.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 6:41
Marketing is actually selling multiplied - it's salesmanship in print, audio, or video. You need to understand what works in selling first before you can create marketing that does the selling for you.
“These will be things like, Well, what do I name my business? And What should I make my business card look like? And What should the colors be on my website? And there will be a million little details. This, all this stuff, is like setting up and playing business.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 1:06
Avoid spending time on business setup activities like choosing business names, designing business cards, selecting website colors, and other details that don't directly generate customers or sales.
A framework for distinguishing between productive business activities and distracting setup tasks
Identify Playing Business Activities
Recognize activities like naming your business, designing business cards, choosing website colors, and other setup details that don't directly generate customers
Focus on Customer Acquisition
Prioritize activities that directly relate to getting customers and selling products and services
Learn Professional Selling First
Invest time in learning professional selling as the foundation skill before moving to marketing
Approach Selling as Coaching
Think of selling as coaching customers to find their needs and overcome blocks, not manipulation
Use Selling to Build Marketing
Once you understand what works in selling, multiply it through marketing in print, audio, or video
Most entrepreneurs waste time 'playing business' by focusing on business names, business cards, website colors, and other details that don't directly generate customers or sales
Eben Pagan identifies specific examples of 'playing business': naming your business, designing business cards, choosing website colors, and 'a million little details' that distract from customer acquisition
Professional selling is the single most important skill to learn for business success because it applies to every business situation including hiring, managing, negotiating, and performance reviews
Eben Pagan states 'if I could recommend just one single skill to learn that will pay off huge over your business life, it's the skill of professional selling' and lists specific applications: getting jobs, hiring people, managing projects, negotiating deals, giving performance reviews
Professional selling is actually coaching - it's about approaching customers like a coach and finding their needs rather than using high-pressure tactics
Eben Pagan explains that life coaches help people 'get in touch with their resources and do what they know they need to do already' and invest time 'finding out where you're really stopped, where you're really blocked' - the same approach as professional selling
Marketing is actually selling multiplied - it's salesmanship in print, audio, or video, which is why you must learn selling before attempting marketing
Eben Pagan cites a story about an advertising agency defining marketing as 'salesmanship in print' and gives the example of successful direct mail campaigns where 'millions or tens of millions of the same letter' are sent out repeatedly, written by someone who 'really understood the psychology and the skill of selling'
When you own a business, you are both the sales manager and the star salesperson, making sales skills mandatory for business owners
Eben Pagan directly states 'when you have a business of your own, you are the sales manager and the star salesperson' and emphasizes 'you must learn this skill first' because 'very rarely do products completely sell themselves'
Professional selling skills make you 'bulletproof' in any business environment because you can be dropped into any situation and survive and thrive
Eben Pagan states that understanding professional selling 'makes you bulletproof' and explains 'You could literally be dropped into any business environment at any time, and you'll be able to survive and thrive'
Most entrepreneurs waste time 'playing business' by focusing on business names, business cards, website colors, and other details that don't directly generate customers or sales
▶ 0:31Professional selling is the single most important skill to learn for business success because it applies to every business situation including hiring, managing, negotiating, and performance reviews
▶ 4:19Professional selling is actually coaching - it's about approaching customers like a coach and finding their needs rather than using high-pressure tactics
▶ 9:47Marketing is actually selling multiplied - it's salesmanship in print, audio, or video, which is why you must learn selling before attempting marketing
▶ 6:41When you own a business, you are both the sales manager and the star salesperson, making sales skills mandatory for business owners
▶ 6:00Professional selling skills make you 'bulletproof' in any business environment because you can be dropped into any situation and survive and thrive
▶ 5:06Claim: “Selling involves manipulation, coercion, and high-pressure tactics to talk people into buying things they don't want or need”
Reframe: Professional selling is about helping and coaching people to get in touch with what's blocking them and helping them do what's best for them
Claim: “You should focus on business setup activities like naming your business, designing business cards, and perfecting your website before getting customers”
Reframe: These activities are distractions from the real game of business which is getting customers and selling products and services
“If I could recommend just one single skill to learn that will pay off huge over your business life, it's the skill of professional selling.”
“Professional selling is actually just like coaching.”
“When you have a business of your own, you are the sales manager and the star salesperson.”
“Marketing is actually selling. It's just that it's done in print, audio, or video.”
Powerful Communication Strategies
Learn how to increase the perceived value of your information products by 10x to 100x through refined communication strategies that make customers feel like your content was created specifically for them.
Business Friendship Model
The counterintuitive friendship-building strategy that can transform your customer relationships and boost conversion rates.
Targeting The Right Niche
Discover the counterintuitive niche targeting strategy that turned Eben Pagan's $40 ebook into multiple million-dollar business launches.
Coaching Strategies
Business Frameworks
Common Mistakes
Marketing and sales are the two skills that most dependably lead to profit and long-term income in business
Eben Pagan's 15+ years of business experience and investing significant time, effort and energy to discover which skills result in the most money being made
Marketing and sales are the activities that help you get customers, which is the core function of any profitable business
These skills directly relate to customer acquisition, which is identified as the fundamental business activity that generates revenue
You can increase perceived value by 10x to 100x by refining your communication and learning skills to frame everything as having much more value.
Some books sell for $10 while others sell for $1,000 - the difference is in how value is communicated, not the information itself.
Adopt the mindset that you're teaching one person alone, not a group - talk to individuals who are experiencing your content by themselves from their perspective.
When someone says 'hi, all of you out there,' an individual listener thinks 'I'm not all of you out there, I'm an individual' and the connection breaks.
