SALES

In 2019, after twenty years in education, I left teaching for sales. My marriage had just ended, and I needed stability. Furniture sales was my entry point — a way to keep using my eye for design, helping people with color and texture, even if the context had shifted. Soon after, I moved into home remodeling sales, where I was trained in the Rick Grosso method (Grosso, 2019).

The Grosso method is simple and devastatingly effective. It begins with a needs survey: a list of questions that looks like it’s about helping the customer, but in reality the outcome is predetermined — I’m going to sell them windows or a bath no matter what they say. Then comes the company story, a credibility pitch designed to keep customers from “shopping around.” Once they trust you, you conduct a physical survey of the home — pointing out flaws, suggesting mold behind walls, creating fear and urgency. Then comes the product demo, designed to excite them about the solution, followed by the price, which inevitably feels too high. This is when the real work begins: overcoming objections.

We were trained in the SALES acronym — Silence, Affirm, Layer, Eliminate, Solve. The job was to dismantle every resistance, offering financing, cutting corners, spreading payments out. Eventually, most customers sacrificed something — vacations, a new car, sometimes even financial stability — to close the deal.

I became good at this process. Too good. I knew I had sold things people didn’t need and sometimes couldn’t afford.

And then it struck me: I had seen this playbook before.

Not in sales school — in public education.

In the schools, the needs survey became standardized testing. But like in sales, the outcome was predetermined. Tests narrowed what counted as knowledge to math, reading, writing, and science — conveniently excluding skills that didn’t generate profitable “solutions.”

The company story was told through respected researchers like Robert Marzano (Marzano, 2009) and John Hattie (Hattie, 2009). Their work, whether peer-reviewed or not, gave reformers a sheen of credibility.

The fear building was relentless: A Nation at Risk (1983), No Child Left Behind (2002), Race to the Top (2009). Headlines screamed that American students were falling behind. Urgency was manufactured.

Then came the product presentation. Magic solutions arrived: scripted curricula, interactive whiteboards, iPads, KIPP schools, data dashboards. Each carried a high price tag, and each was designed to keep schools on the hook for the next upgrade.

Finally, objections: schools said they couldn’t afford it. Enter SALES. Taxpayers were levied, bonds were passed, class sizes increased, electives cut. Just like a family giving up vacations for a remodel, schools sacrificed art, shop, and home economics to afford testing and accountability infrastructure. 

The result? An entire culture of making was gutted. Kids no longer learned how to cook or sew. Without those skills, processed food and fast fashion filled the vacuum. We didn’t just lose electives — we lost intergenerational knowledge. We traded the ability to make for the compulsion to consume. I wonder how many Kirby vacuums these school administrators own?

This is why Samantha’s question cut so deep: “Why don’t you paint anymore?”

Because painting was never just personal. It was systemic. The schools I served kept cutting the very programs that protected making. Year after year, reform shifted value away from creativity and toward compliance, away from self-reliance and toward dependence. And at home, my ex-wife echoed the same verdict, discouraging my studio practice, calling me a failure for the instability the system itself had produced.

So why didn’t I paint anymore? Because both my workplace and my home conspired, in different languages, to tell me it didn’t matter. The world that once nurtured making had been sold off, one survey and one fear at a time. And when the chorus of system and spouse kept saying “you’re not enough,” eventually I believed them.

Might as well ask me why I drink.