Dear World: You Should Be Rich as Hell

I’m Ash, and I’m a writer, traveler, nonconformist & nomad, and every week I’m sharing funny field notes from around the world. Currently, I’m in America writing about what it’s been like to return home to my small town, twenty years after living abroad.

You should be rich as hell.

No, really. I mean it.

You should be walking around covered in ostrich feathers at all times, a vodka martini in hand, wearing all the white pants you want because YOU JUST THROW THEM OUT AND BUY NEW ONES EVERY DAY, saying things like, “Ooo, the garden looks delightful this time of year, doesn’t it James?” (James is your butler. But, like, a modern-day, cool-ass butler to whom you pay a ridiculously generous salary, and he probably gives you back rubs. That might be crossing the line, but I’m just really in the mood for a backrub. My neck has been killing me lately!)

I suppose this sounds extremely wasteful. Who throws away a pair of pants every day? In all fairness, I have always wished I could do this with socks. Imagine the luxury of having brand-new socks every day? The squishy thick kind that feel like teeny, tiny little pillows of success. How can you not feel successful when your feet feel this good? Maybe that’s been the key to life all along. Change your socks, change your life. New book title???

My poor mother. Not because of this sock conversation, though she’s probably cringing from the grave. But because she should have been rich. Should have been rolling in it! She was so talented, creatively. We had dried flower wreaths covering the house. The classy kind. Not the faux “shiny plastic mini pumpkins and bats” kind. I keep seeing this perversion everywhere I go. And blow up Halloween lawn inflatables. The lawn inflatables of death! I wish I could take a picture of this house down the road for you; you’d puke so hard. Instead, I’ll just tell you: there are one thousand of them. I think I might go count them today because I am a monster, but I’m pretty sure there are ONE THOUSAND BLOW-UP LAWN INFLATABLES. I’d rather buy 1,000 pumpkins and just dump them in the yard. At least that has creative integrity! It would probably look artistic, even! But plastic never looks artistic. Plastic can’t look artistic. It’s a universal property of plastic, sort of like how copper will always conduct electricity, plastic will always look like your aunt’s boyfriend Todd who owns a jet ski but not a bed frame.

My mom did not do plastic. She made the kind of dried flower wreaths you’d buy for $150 on Williams Sonoma, but better. Extremely tasteful. Extremely expensive looking. Always muted colors (which make things look expensive); no primary color clowns. No bright, neon, unnatural greens. None of that hot pink horse manure. Eucalyptus was a recurring character. Lavender, too. Ditto pine cones, dried oranges, and seed pods. And lots of natural wood.

I saw this one the other day and the pheasant feathers reminded me of something she would have made. I thought about trying to make it myself. What do you think, should we give it a go? ARE WE MAKING WREATHS TOGETHER ONLINE? I weirdly feel like we’re going to end up doing that, someday. I’ll bring the gin.

Anyway, she should have been rich.

But you know what she didn’t have???

The internet.

Had my mom had the internet, I could have taught her how to sell $150 wreaths. And, back in 1993, $150 would have bought me A LOT of pogs. Remember those? What a weird thing those were. Though, probably safer than collecting, oh I dunno, guns??? Yesterday I met a man who owns 6,000 guns. I cannot make this up. Another story for another day, once I recover from the trauma of THAT.

How do you sell a $150 wreath?

How do you sell $150 of anything?

Artwork. Photography. Hand-carved walking sticks that have little gnomes peeking out of the handle. (I don’t like gnomes; please don’t ever mistake me for that kind of person. They’re as bad as the people with the blow-up lawn ornaments. Or the people who put those ceramic mushrooms in their yard. In primary colors!)

The way you sell your work for top dollar isn’t by making your product better—your product is already awesome.

What other guesses do you have?

• “Find your target audience?” Snore.
• “Use influencers?” Rather die.
• “By focusing on transformation, not transaction.” Oh god, I think I just felt my brain shrivel.
• “Make videos?” How’s that going for us all, hahaha???

No.

The way you sell your work for top-dollar is something entirely different. Something that *everyone* looks past. Something that is horrifically underestimated.

The way you sell your work for top dollar?

Is by making your work human.

Because as much as you’d like the quality of your work to speak for itself?

It can’t speak louder than you.

You are your work—and therefore people must also want to buy you. Most people shove something out there onto a website and hope to hell people will see it and notice it and buy it. But, there is one big problem with that:

Somebody else already did that.

Because no matter how classy, and tasteful, and natural, and sophisticated your (darling) wreaths may be????

Someone else is selling some very nice ones, too.

And what happens when there are lots of choices in the marketplace? Like you, with your design business? Or your photography business? Or your writing business?

When everything seems the same, the only thing you have to differentiate yourself is your price.

And, that’s the worst way to do business on earth.

Lowering your price until it’s so low it’s in a sinkhole and you are gasping for air and your bank account is screaming for mercy is not how you sell more, and it’s definitely not how you sell your work for top dollar.

The only way you can make people punch-drunk to buy from you, at whatever price you’re asking?

Is by making yourself the product.

Because you are the only thing other people cannot be.

How do you make yourself the product? What in a fifth of vodka is Ash talking about? Has Ash lost it? Is Ash sniffing crayons?

Nope!

But, Ash knows how to sell creative work.

And, the #1 way to do that?

Is by writing.

You must learn how to write on the internet.

You must learn how to rip out hearts.

You must learn how to slice through apathy.

You must learn how to give yourself a knife.

You must learn how to sell by not selling at all.

You must learn how to connect with people, with complete strangers, who are on the other side of the world, sipping on a cold cup of coffee, with hot sauce stains on their pajamas. You must learn how to speak to them; how to engage them; how to have fun with them; how to make buying from you the most thrilling, wonderful thing they do all day.

You must learn how to be bigger than life.

And, the answer is writing. It’s always been writing. All of these other marketing trends come and go, but writing is always going to be your biggest, brightest, most steadfast lifeline. Whether it’s writing a newsletter or writing a blog or writing on LinkedIn, you must write. You must show up with blood on your hands. It doesn’t matter what you sell or make or do—whether it’s taxidermy for squirrels or artisanal beef jerky shaped like the Virgin Mary—you must learn to be a writer. You must learn to sound like thunder. You must learn how to come alive again—and sear yourself onto the world.

This is the only way.

This is the only way you can make them care.

And when someone cares about you?

You’re no longer strangers.

And that is the most underestimated thing about the internet: that connection is the real commerce.

Not clicks. Not funnels. Not perfectly optimized headlines.

It’s the spark between two humans who will never meet, but somehow see each other anyway.

That’s the miracle. That’s the magic trick. That’s the sale.

Because once someone cares—really cares—about what you say, they’ll care about what you sell.

And that, my friend, is how you turn words into wealth.

Not by shouting louder.
But by saying it better.

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