When I was 18, I decided to prove I wasn’t a lost cause by getting Christmas presents for my family.

I didn’t have a job, so my inner idealist suggested selling mistletoe.

Getting mistletoe is easy. You drive into the mountains and find a mistletoe tree. No one does this! They’re all shopping and singing and waiting in line.

Presentation is not my strong suit, but I did my best to cut the mistletoe into sprigs and tie the sprigs with red ribbon. Red ribbons say, Yes, welcome to my party. These dead sprigs hanging from my ceiling? I put them there on purpose.

I set up shop at a corporate business center for lunch. As it turns out, business executives love mistletoe. Mistletoe astonishes them. “Where did you find this?” After lunch, I relocated to Stater Brothers. In general, people buying groceries are not impressed by mistletoe.

I made $125 that day. And I learned the first essential truth of selling mistletoe.

#1: Some people naturally want to buy mistletoe.
Others just don’t care.

The people who don’t care don’t even not want. That would require attention and reflection. They’ve already made up their minds not to care—long before you came along. They just. Do. Not. Wanttolookatyoubecausethey’reinaterriblehurry. They want what they want, and then they want to go home.

That’s when the second truth hit me.

#2: I was one of those people. The people who just don’t care.

I began to feel uncomfortable whenever someone bought my mistletoe. The more excited they were, the more uncomfortable I became. They’d smile, joke, ask questions. I’d think, You are infinitely more wonderful than I will ever be. I would never talk to me like this!

Then someone would pass without making eye contact, and I’d think, How can you just WALK BY MISTLETOE like that? Are you some kind of monster?

This was just a one-day business. Nothing was at stake. Yet, I found myself obsessing over the outcome.

Was it my job to try to entice them to care? Or, to simply let the ones who didn’t care go on not caring?

And then I saw it. The third essential truth of selling mistletoe.

#3: The person who cares and the person who doesn’t care are the same person.

That would be me. And you. And most people.

Which is where the fourth essential truth presents itself.

#4: If you’re selling something, you are the mediator between your own inner skeptic and your own true believer.

Our mission is to build a bridge between these two selves.

Skeptic: A bridge? That’s not overused.
Mediator: Well, then, a mediator type. An ombudsman.
True Believer: My mediator is a bear.
Skeptic: That doesn’t even make sense.
Mediator: Let’s just go with mediator.

Your own mediator can appeal to the mediators within others—those people who seem not to care, but who can be enticed into caring with the right approach.

• What if I’d kept showing up every weekend for a month?
• What if I’d opened up a mistletoe kissing booth?
• What if I’d started a mistletoe flash mob?
• What if I’d set up in front of a party supply store?
• What if I’d partnered with a local singer for mistletoe hour five nights a week at 7pm?

These are just a few of the tactics I might have tried to reach more people. Not everyone. But the people who, like me, are a bit shy, a bit distracted, a bit busy, and just need the right bridge-bear-mediator-ombudsman to help them say, You know, I don’t usually do this, but today I think I just might have some of that mistletoe.

Ta da! It’s a new service! The Critique. For the sales page that almost has everything. Read all about it.