Do you have any advice or can recommend resources to learn how to sell or alternatively reframe my views on commerce?
Yup! Start off with "The One Sentence Persuasion Course" by Blair Warren & memorize that sentence:
If you like that book & want to dive in deeper, get the book the "Forbidden Keys to Persuasion" by the same author:
Watch everything you can find by Zig Ziglar on selling: (there are some good audiobook courses on Spotify too!)
As far as changing your mindset goes, learn about "frames" in "Pitch Anything" by Oren Klaff:
Also read "Flip the Script" by the same author. He teaches the psychology behind "how to get people to think your idea is their idea", which is essential in my line of work: (I work in freelance IT & have to get customers to buy into big, expensive projects that they need for their business)
The book "Pre-suasion" by Robert Cialdini is one of my more recent favorites:
"Never spilt the difference" by Chris Voss is also a good one:
If you want to learn how to make outstanding presentations, "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs" is ultra-excellent:
As far as this goes:
I feel like a total alien in this money-world everybody else seems so accostumed with.
Here's the bottom line: the world will largely pay you what it thinks you are worth. Half of that is what they're expecting to pay and half of that is how you present yourself & how you negotiate. You don't have to be a jerk or rude or put the pressure on or be a bad guy to get what you deserve, but you do have to learn how to advocate for yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you!
If you don't have a product or service that you personally believe in, then it's going to be a much harder sell because you aren't really going to buy into the fact that the customer needs what you have to offer. A big part of that is the "Flip the Script" approach of getting people to think YOUR idea is THEIR idea, because otherwise, you're just going to be spending your time pushing on a rope instead of helping guide them into seeing the value that YOU see in the sales offering!
No one likes being pressured into a sale. And people are pretty adept at sniffing out when someone just desperately wants to make the sale or wants money or wants to hit their quota for the month, which is also a turn-off. And many people are MORE than willing to let you under-sell yourself in order to take advantage of you!
Anyway, those are some good starting points! Selling is both a science & an art. The better you get at it, the better you'll be able to bring the goodness you have into the world because of your ability to convince people of the value that the product or service you have to offer has.
And that's exactly the difference between invention & innovation! Anyone can have a great idea & invent something up, but innovation is all about your ability to bring that goodness to the playground of life so other people can play with it!
Look back at Steve Jobs with the first iPhone...there were plenty of other PDA's & touchscreen devices on the market, but he came into an established area & introduced some new ideas in order to disrupt things & made billions of dollars as a result! Which is really what creativity is all about:
Don't think of it so much as changing your mindset as much as learning more & adding to what you know in order to expand your current "tunnel vision"! The biggest trap we have in life is FEELING trapped! So it's really an additive growing process where you dive deeper into learn how we work as people & learning what works as far as selling goes!