Author Archives: george

Perceptions can Trick or Treat You

When I was a kid, there lived a scary old woman on my block. The kids would get together and tell stories of why we thought she was so scary. Maybe it was because she was a secret witch, or maybe it was because she secretly captured children and ate them. Although we could never come to a consensus on why she was evil, we all unanimously agreed that she was evil.

All it took was a brief second of eye contact with her peeking out behind her living room curtains and we would have nightmares and create a million more reasons to be afraid of her.

One Halloween, one of the kids was chosen, on dare, to go and knock on her door. She always kept her house completely pitch black on Halloween night, and as far as anybody could tell, nobody had ever had the courage to do that before.

He went up to her door and timidly knocked. I think he was afraid to ring her doorbell for fear of electrocution or something. He knocked, waited, knocked again, and then ran. It took a while before we could pass by the house again, at least by ourselves. We were sure she was plotting some kind of evil and painful revenge on whatever kids had disturbed whatever she did in their in the dark on Halloween.

One of the cool things about Halloween is all the candy that we got. Most of it was normal, everyday candy you would see at the store, but there would always be one really cool neighbor that would get some kind candy that we’d never seen before. Candy that was made specifically for Halloween. Edible ears, fingers, spiders made out of chocolate. Stuff you’d expect to see in a Harry Potter movie.

One year there was this neighbor that gave out full sized candy bars. Not the small miniature sized ones, but full size snickers, and mars, and three musketeers bars. He must have spent a fortune on candy. It didn’t last long, though, as soon as the kids found out, he quickly ran out.

I was riding the train into town the other day, and this guy sitting next to me started talking about his business. I’m not sure how we got onto that subject, or what his business even was. The conversation just kind of ended up on this. So he was explaining that he had this old roommate, and his roommate was involved in a similar business, which somehow had something to do with his. And he said that he was helpful in the beginning, but then he moved on to bigger and better things, which left him all alone to figure these things out. One of the things that he said was to be sure to always pay attention to opportunities that are around you. And the trick to always finding new opportunities is to see them where others do not. Which means you need to always be able to look at things from a different perspective, and different angles. That way you’ll see this differently than others do, and be able to really get a lot of benefit from this.

My favorite candy of all time was those yellow, waxy candy corns. I never really saw them except during around Halloween. Even though waxy candy corn really doesn’t have anything to do with Halloween. I guess it’s just one of those things. Something that you know you really like and you can really look forward to enjoying this when you get the opportunity.

And one summer, something really interesting happened. The old woman had this cat. And apparently, she had never gotten around to getting it neutered, or spayed, or whatever they do to cats. And this cat had a bunch of kittens. This of course, was very interesting to all the kids, and when we saw this old woman outside taking care of the kittens, she suddenly stopped being a scary witch. She was really a nice old lady that was just scared of going outside. When the kittens came, she was forced to go outside and help take care of them, and the kids noticed them, and it became like a neighborhood project. A few of the kids even took some of the kittens home. She seemed to be a friendly grandmother type after that. She even invited some of the kids inside and let us see her old record player and records from the great depression era. It turned out to be a pretty cool experience.

Change Your Bait to Catch More Success and Wealth

I went out to eat the other day in an Ethiopian restaurant that is near my neighborhood. It is one of those things where you pass by on a regular basis, but you don’t seem to take the time to come inside and find out what might be interesting. When you stop and consider how many opportunities that are around you like this one, you can’t help but wonder how you can possibly fit them all into your life. Which is one of the reasons I finally decided to go in and check the place out.

The waitress was pretty friendly, and I guess the restaurant serves mostly Ethiopian expats, or second generation Ethiopians. Not like your average sushi restaurant on the corner of pretty much every mini mall, where you will see the normal lunch crowd that you see in any other restaurant. The wait staff seemed to recognize me as a first timer, and were appropriately friendly and welcoming to me. She asked me if I had ever eaten Ethiopian food before, and since I hadn’t I went by her recommendations.

Probably more interesting than the food was the waitress. She went through plenty of struggles to get where she is now. Most people who were in her shoes might have given up much earlier. But she kept pressing on, until she got an opportunity and seized it with all her skills and abilities.

When I was a kid I used to build these models. Sometimes cars, but mostly planes, specifically WWII planes. It didn’t matter from what country, any plane would do. One thing about the models is how they all came with detailed schematics. You could lose yourself in the minute details of each particular part your were working on, or you could look at the larger schematic, allowing you to take a broader look at things. Sometimes when you get a bigger picture of how things fit together, it’s much easier to fit the individual parts together.

I had an uncle once that I used to visit when I was a kid. He would take me fishing for catfish on this small lake. One of the reasons catfish are different from other fish is that when they bit into your bait, they don’t’ make a big deal. If you don’t check your line every so often, you could have a fish on there and not even know it. So they key is to always check what’s going on, and see if you have something, even though it doesn’t seem like it. Another thing he told me was how important it was to change your strategy if you weren’t getting what you wanted. Some people would show up to a lake, throw in a line, and then complain if the fish weren’t’ biting. Others would change their bait, change their position on the lake, and even change their fishing poles. Those guys would always go home with a basket full of catfish.

And probably the best model I ever made was of a Japanese Zero, the ones they used in the pacific war. The thing that made it so easy was that not only did they have an exploded view of the entire plane, but also they had an exploded view of each individual section. That gave you the capability of taking a step back and getting a bigger perspective on many different levels. That model came out looking really good.

So next time I go back to that Ethiopian restaurant, I’ll have a better idea of what to order for all those reasons mentioned above. And I know now exactly how friendly and welcoming those people will be.

Renew Your Subscription to Fascination

When I was in university, I really loved comic books. I would always be looking out for the next one to come out, and would always keep a couple with me wherever I went. I would always pull them out to read whenever I had a spare moment. I remember I had this one government class, the kind that talks about the different structures of different world governments. As the teacher would drone on and on, I would pull out a comic book and hold behind my textbook so it would appear that I was following along. I think I scraped by with a “C” in that class.

Like when I was a kid, maybe in third or fourth grade, I got my first library card. I grew up in a fairly small town, and we had one central library. We all went down to the library as a class, and signed up for our library card. We had already filled out a practice form at school, and then filled out the real form when we got to the library. After we all got our library cards, before they turned us loose, we got a lecture from the chief librarian. He told us about the dangers that would happen if we didn’t return our library books.

Big ugly, scary guys would come to our house and hunt us down. Armies of horrible trolls would hide under our beds and wait until we pulled out the library book in question. Giant Cyclops’ would swarm down from the heavens to wreak havoc if we kept a book past its due date.

After the lecture, we were turned loose to roam the shelves. I remember the total wonder and fascination I felt when I looked all the books that I could take home and enjoy. I remember thinking that I would never be bored again. Books are funny that way. I guess it’s not the books, but the fantastic journey they take your mind on. Like you can be reading this, and all of a sudden your daily worries and anxieties will completely disappear as you lose yourself in this. You are transported to magical new worlds that can enlighten and inspire and entertain you. And sometimes, if you find something that is really good, you can enjoy this again and again, knowing that you will find a new perspective every time you read this.

A couple of years ago when I was cleaning out an apartment I was moving out, I found an old library book, about Ben Franklin. As best as I could guess, I had checked it out for a history report I had to do. I don’t really remember ever writing the report, and I certainly don’t remember ever checking out that book, but there on the back, clear as day was the old library barcode. I guess I luckily escaped the parachuting cyborgs that apparently didn’t find me.

The coolest thing that’s been happening lately is all the comic books that have been turned into movies. This is a dream come true for somebody that has really enjoyed reading comic books growing up. When the first Spiderman came out, I was happy to see how successful it was, knowing they would likely make a few more. And with the success of that came all kinds of other comic book movies, which is fantastic.

Qualify Your Leads to Make Maximum Profit

I remember when I was a kid; I belonged to an explorer scout troop. It was similar to boy scouts, but all we did was go camping, and other outdoor activities. There were no merit badges or helping old ladies across the street.

Every summer we would go on these weeklong backpacking trips through the Sierra Mountain range in California. If you’ve never been to or seen the Sierra’s, they are a fantastic, almost untapped natural resource. Because it is incredibly hard and strenuous to get in, once you get in past the first few sets of mountains, you can see incredibly beautiful scenery that is completely void of any signs of humanity. Of course it is heavily protected by the Parks and Rangers, but the main reason it is devoid of humans is because it is so hard to get there.

One of my favorite parts was the fishing. The entire Sierra’s are dotted with small lakes, most of which have an abundance of rainbow trout. This kind of fishing is different form ocean fishing, either on a pier of off a boat. If you are fishing on a pier, especially a crowded pier, you don’t have a lot of options other than to bait your hook, throw a line in the water, and wait. A boat is similar, although you can pull up anchor and go someplace else, but that takes a while, and you have to have an experienced captain that knows all the good spots.

Lake fishing in the Sierras is completely different. Because the lakes are relatively small, you can walk around the entire lake in 30 minutes or so. Which means if you cast a lure out a few times along the way, you can get an idea in as little as an hour if the fish are biting in that particular lake or not. And if that particular lake is not biting, you can go to the next one over, and so on. And as a bonus, while you are fishing, you are surrounded by the most beautiful nature you’ve ever seen. Even if you don’t catch any fish, you will still enjoy yourself. I’ve always had fairly good luck; even on that day I lost several lures before catching the biggest fish I’d ever seen.

Before joining the explorer scouts, I was a member of the regular Boy Scout troop. And as a Boy Scout troop, we had to do several different kinds of fundraisers. Mostly selling stuff, sometimes magazine subscriptions, or services. Sometimes we would have a carwash, or get together with other organizations and sponsor walk-a-thons and other things. This would require going door to door to solicit donations, or sales, or get people to put their name down on a list.

The interesting thing about this is that we could always tell, within a few houses, which street was going to be good, and which street was going to be bad. After a while, we would choose a different street if the first five doors turned out to be a bust. Before we learned that trick, it was not so much fun to go up and down the street and get rejected time after time. Some people even seemed to get angry with us for trying to sell them something, or get them to participate in a community service fundraiser. This one lady was particularly troublesome.

One thing one of our Boy Scout leaders told us was the value of qualifying. He said that you always need to qualify your market before you invest yourself too much. He had a high level sales position, I’m not sure where, but he was always putting things in terms of sales and sales strategy. He said every market is a potential gold mind or a potential heartbreaker, so it pays to learn how to qualify your market before you invest too much time or energy. Some markets you can come back to later, and they will somehow have transformed from a stinker to a real winner, so it’s important never to write them off completely. Always throw out a line, so to speak, and see how they respond. As soon as they turn cold, pick up your stuff and move on.

After we applied his rules into our five houses only strategy, we were able to sell a lot more subscriptions. And that one lady, before would have been a real ego-deflating heart breaker, but because of our attitude, she was really just pretty funny. She started screaming at us as soon as she answered the door, and started saying that the government was after her and that we were spies for them and that we had better not leave any listening devices in her mailbox. We were thirteen years old at the time. As I recall, she was number four on that block, but we needed to stick to our rule, so we went on to the next house.

So after I had lost two lures, I decided to try my last one. I had a three lure per lake policy, as the weeds at the bottom of the shallow lakes liked to eat your lures. My friend would always tease me because sometimes Iost more lures than the fish I caught. One the last lure for that particular lake, I caught these huge brown trout. When you catch a fish like that surrounded by all the people free mountains and flower filled meadows, it really makes you feel good. And you like to feel good, don’t you?

Godzilla and Mind Programming

When I was a kid I used to really like watching old monster movies. There were one or two channels that would always show these old movies on Saturday afternoons, and I would always look forward to watching them. Most of them were “B” movies from the fifties and sixties, and had really interesting plots and story lines. Many of them were Japanese monster movies, and had an underlying metaphor of nuclear holocaust and the dangers that go along with it.

One of things that I find interesting, in retrospect, is that despite the seemingly “out here” story lines and the funny fact that their voices never matched their mouths, I still remember being completely drawn into these stories. As soon as they started, I couldn’t help but to completely lose myself in this and forget everything else. I don’t know if it was because I was a kid, and hadn’t really experienced a lot of special effects that most people expect when they see a science fiction movie, or just that being a kid allows for much more imagination and less critical attention to things that “don’t make any logical sense.”

I remember reading a study where the researchers were talking about different brainwaves in adults. Apparently, there are four different levels of brainwaves, beta, alpha, theta, and delta. Beta being the highest vibration, and delta being the lowest. Alpha is kind of a daydreaming state, the kind when you are in a meeting, and your boss is droning on about the latest sales figures, and you start thinking about that hot date you have this weekend, and suddenly your boss says “Peterson! Peterson! I’m talking to you!” and you say “Huh?”

Then there is theta, which is supposedly a really good brainwave state to be in, as it allows you to reprogram your subconscious, have amazing mental experiences, like shamanistic journeying and out of body experiences, and remote viewing and all kinds of other good stuff. Your imagination is best while it is in theta. It’s that stage just before you drift off into sleep that you are kind of conscious, but kind of just wandering around in la la land. If you’ve ever slipped into theta while falling asleep, and then slipped back out, you know what I’m talking about. You have a feeling of “who, what was I just thinking about?”

The brain is highly susceptible in the theta state. This is the best state to be in if your are undergoing hypnosis, because you can do things like learn to quit smoking, cut back on drinking, vastly improve your social skills, and remove any fears that you may have. And many studies indicate that children, up to about age 7 or 8, are almost always in the theta state.

Which explains why watching monster movies is so fascinating, even with cheesy special effects, obviously fake monsters, and voices that don’t match the actor’s lips. Of course, this is a double edge sword, both for kids and for parents. Anything you say to a kid, especially if it comes from an authority figure, will go straight in as unquestioned truth. Which is fantastic if you understand this and give kids empowering messages like, ” you can be anything you want to be,” or “there is no such thing as failure, you are always learning and getting better,” or “you are a worthy person who deserves success.” These can be wonderful messages to give to kids on a regular basis that will ensure they grow up to be happy self-sufficient individuals. Of course when you say things to them without thinking, or behave in ways that indicate any other that the above statements, that has a powerful effect as well.

The lowest form of brainwaves is delta, which is when you are deep asleep, even deeper than the dreaming state. Scientists believe that you only need less than an hour of delta sleep per night, and your good to go. Even if you sleep eight hours or more, and don’t get that delta state, you will still feel groggy all day, as if you only slept a few hours.

But my favorite was the Godzilla and Gamera movies. I even liked Gamara more than Godzilla, because I always believed Gamara to be a good guy, and Godzilla to be a bad guy. Gamara was always helping people out, while Godzilla was always walking all over Tokyo and generally causing mayhem.

Body Language Tips for Flirting and Attraction

If you’ve ever been in a social situation, and were interested in meeting someone, you know how difficult it can be to sort through all the mixed signals and various levels of communication. I recently saw the movie “He’s just not that into you,” as it was recently released in Japan. A very well written movie about how social signals can sometimes be misinterpreted and frequently misunderstood.

Luckily, there has been a plethora of books (some good, some not so good) written by “experts” regarding body language. And as you would expect, there are a large number of body language signals that you can use to improve your flirting and social intercourse that are consistent throughout all the books.

Of course, that either means that each author or authors is on to something, or they all copied from the same report. I will assume with the former, and proceed to share with you some of the basics. One side benefit from becoming comfortable with learning to read body language, and using it for flirting is you will also be building your self-esteem and self-confidence. There are few things that make you feel better than a successful flirtations endeavor. (And all the good stuff that goes along with it.)

Some of these might be revealing, and some you have likely already heard about, but it pays to be sure. Nothing is more embarrassing than mis reading a signal and making a fool out of yourself (If you’ve seen the aforementioned movie, there was a pretty funny scene after the party.)

The two most obvious is eye contact and a smile. Eye contact can be very difficult to maintain for some people, so if you person you are interested in doesn’t hold eye contact very long, that either means they aren’t interested, or are very shy.

If you are a guy, and you are flirting with girls, if she makes eye contact, smiles a little bit, and then looks down before looking away, that is a fantastic sign. Many times that is all you need to make an approach. Because many girls are shy, you will need to smile first. Eye contact, then slowly let your face smile, both with your lips and with your eyes. Then just relax and see how she responds.

Another good sign, one that takes a while to calibrate, is if when you smile, she smiles in response, and takes a deep breath. That means you are making her feel butterflies. Nice work!

Another one to notice is that if she is talking to somebody else, and she makes eye contact with you while she’s in the conversation. She likely won’t smile at you, because that would be impolite to the persons she is speaking with. What is a good sign in this situation is if while she is talking to him or her, she might turn her body so that it is facing you while she is facing him. If this happens, you can either go and introduce yourself to both of them, and join the conversation, or simply wait until a better opportunity.

Another great sign from girls is if she flashes her palm at you. If she smiles, quickly brushes her hair back while revealing her palm, then looks down and away, that is about as green a light as your going to get. She is basically screaming at you to make a move.

If you are a girl and are looking from signs from guys, pay attention to their voice and body movements. Guys will naturally try to look more “alpha” when an attractive woman is around. They do this buy speaking louder, and using wider gestures with their friends. If you want him to come and talk to you, send any of the signals mentioned above. A good way is to make eye contact, smile and turn your head briefly, looking around the room, but keep your chest pointed at him, but don’t be to obvious or come on too strong. For most guys, eye contact and brief, warm smile is all you really need.

If this is all new to you, don’t worry. There are plenty of books out there to help you lean this stuff. When I first found out the incredible depth of information that was being sent back and forth I was floored. For months I would just go and sit in public places and just watch the signals people were sending too each other. The level of and depth of communication among people is truly amazing.

After you get good at this, your flirting skills will skyrocket. You will never again wonder who to approach, or how to flirt the right way. And when you learn to project the right body language, you will almost guarantee that when you make that first approach, you will almost always be warmly accepted, for at least a friendly conversation. And that is a good feeling.

Brand Loyalty or Habitual Indecision?

I was waiting in line at the supermarket the other day. I was buying a jug of orange juice, the fresh squeezed kind. The guy in front of me was buying six or seven cans of concentrate. We noticed each other, and naturally got into a discussion about the differences between frozen orange juices and fresh squeezed. Because it was a Sunday afternoon when most people do their shopping, we had time to discuss the various differences.

The plusses to using concentrate is that it’s cheaper, you can buy several at once and store them in your freezer, so you don’t have to go to the store as often. Interestingly, the benefits of fresh squeezed, although seemingly numerous are almost impossible to pin down. The drawbacks are obvious. You have to go to the store more often, it’s more expensive, it doesn’t stay fresh as long (you can keep cans of concentrate in the freezer for up to a year) and it really doesn’t have any more vitamins that the frozen stuff.

I suppose when asked, most people who prefer fresh squeezed would say it tastes more “natural,” its healthier, its got some special magic from the sun inside each bottle. None of these are things that you can actually measure. So what exactly are you paying for? Of course the most obvious answer is that it tastes better. That is probably the best reason of all if you are buying food, that it tastes better, but is that how the marketing strategies of these orange juice companies make it out to be? Based only on flavor?

“Buy fresh squeezed, it tastes better.”

I never really thought about it. I remember when I was a kid, Pepsi had their famous “Take the Pepsi Challenge” campaign where they set up stands in front of supermarkets across the country, in an effort to “prove” using scientific studies that Pepsi does indeed “taste better” than coke. They had frequent updates in their commercials of how people overwhelmingly chose Pepsi over coke in a blind taste test. But for some reason, Coke remained, and still remains the soft drink leader. (The whole “New Coke” fiasco notwithstanding.)

I’m sure know somebody, or may be one of these soft drink zealots yourself, who will refuse to drink soda in a restaurant if they don’t have “your” brand. I have a friend who is adamantly against Pepsi. If we go out to lunch, and he orders a Coke, and is told they only have Pepsi, he’ll act as if he’s been personally insulted. It’s kind funny to watch. Personally, I can’t really tell the difference one-way or the other.

Brand loyalty is a strange phenomenon, one that I’ve never understood, although I am an avid driver of Toyota’s, and proud wearer of New Balance. Every car I’ve ever bought is a Toyota, and every pair of athletic shoes, of any sort, has been New Balance.

So as we talked in line about the differences between fresh squeezed orange juice and juice from concentrate, a funny thing happened. The checker in the line opened up her register. And even though both of us could have gotten much closer in line had we moved over one row, we decided to stay where we were. Like once you make a decision on something, you stay with that decision despite all the logic that dictates otherwise. I guess people really are creatures of habit.

Powerful Memories to Increase Public Speaking Skills and Obliterate Fear

I was talking to a friend the other day; actually I interrupted my friend the other day is a more accurate way of putting it. He was reading a book about public speaking, and how to overcome the fear of public speaking. He had recently been promoted at his work, and he was going to have to do a lot of traveling to other divisions, and meet with large groups of potential clients. He was going to have to speak in front of some very large groups, so he was a bit worried about overcome his fear of public speaking. He actually had a stack of books he was working on. It seems he was kind of worried that his new promotion would take him places that he wasn’t quite ready to go.

I can recall another friend from a few years ago that was in a similar situation. He was always getting promoted at work, and he was always learning new skills. From public speaking, to sales, to negotiation, he was always making himself more valuable to the company. He would always invest at least twenty percent of his salary in himself, from books to seminars to self-improvement programs. And he always reaped fantastic rewards. He was telling me about a particular useful tool that he used, which was a memory-improving product.

He explained to me about emotional memory, and how the history of any human is so incredibly rich and powerful and so completely overstuffed with memories that we can choose anything we want to create in the future, and look back into the past to find an appropriate memory. The cool thing about the human brain is that it can apply almost any memory to any situation. Memories don’t really have any particular meaning except the meaning that we give to them. And the cool thing is that we can give the same memory different meanings depending on how you’d like to project yourself into the future.

For example, I’m sure as you sit there, reading this, you can bring to mind some memories from the past. Maybe from yesterday, or maybe from a year ago. And some of those memories that you are remembering now can be helpful, while others will cause a certain amount of anxiety. And if you can just take all those memories that cause some anxiety, and put them aside, you can free your mind up to bring to bear all the memories that give you feelings of pleasure and happiness.

Like that one time, a while ago, where that one thing happened that was particularly pleasant. Maybe you were planning on it happening, maybe it happened spontaneously. Either way, as you bring it to mind now, you can start to see what happens when you project it into the future. And whether or not you can close your eyes and think of that is not really important. What’s important I that you can begin to realize that you can recall any memory from your past that you want, and deliver it to your future, so when you get there, it will be waiting for you.

But emotional memory wasn’t even the main gist of the program my friend had so successfully used. It was more of a technical memory program that taught how to easily remember complex sets of facts and information, so when you needed to present them to a large group of people, you would not only be able to feel extremely comfortable giving a speech in public, but you would be persuasive as well, which could naturally increase your ability to sell and make lots of money.

Metaphors Filled with Uncertainty

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine about normal everyday stuff. Stuff people usually talk about to kill time while waiting for the bus or waiting for their turn at the dentist office. Of course, you want the bus to hurry up and come, but you usually want the dentist to do something else. The conversation kind of meandered into other things that we don’t normally talk about, I don’t know if you’ve ever been involved in something like this. But as you sit there, and read this, you might begin to notice certain sensations in your body. Maybe pleasant sensations, maybe familiar sensations. Maybe some sensations that you hadn’t noticed up until now, like that feeling you have now in the lower portion of your left leg.

It’s like the other day, when I was browsing in a bookstore. It was a large bookstore, one that has over a hundred thousand titles. I happened to be in the self-development section. I wasn’t sure how I got there. I had started off in the music section and then moved on to the investing section, and then I’m not sure what happened after that. The next thing I realizes was that I was standing there reading a book about hypnosis. Now I’m not going to tell you that hypnosis is a fascinating subject, you’ve probably already come to that conclusion on your own. And they weren’t even aware of who was doing that, anyway. But one of the interesting things about hypnosis that you can use for your immediate benefit is the many ways in which it helps you to increase learnings about fascination.

Fascination is another subject that doesn’t get much attention. Sure, people feel fascinated by many things, but the actual subject of fascination doesn’t really get a lot of attention itself. Like the structure of fascination. What makes things more fascinating that other things? And some things can hold fascination really well for a long period of time, while other things are more of a flash in the pan for other ideas.

But my friend started to talk about sailing. He had recently bought a sailboat, and was planning on sailing around the world. Not really around the world, he wasn’t confident enough to venture across the Atlantic or the Pacific oceans, he was only planning on sailing down the east coast, through the Panama Canal, and then back up the west coast. I don’t know how he was planning on getting his boat back to the east coast, I guess that is a different story altogether.

But as we sat there, talking about things like those other ideas, we began to notice that some of the people around us were speaking a funny language. Almost as if we were automatically transported to a foreign country. I’m not sure if that has ever happened to you, but when you suddenly find yourself surrounded by people that are speaking a foreign language, it can be difficult to keep your thoughts in a single file line, waiting to take a number and sit patiently.

Of course, this might very well all be a jumbled mess of misplaced metaphors, but I suppose I’ll think about that later.

How to Sell Your Car Easily and Quickly for Maximum Profit Using Little Known Secrets of Psychology and Persuasion

If you need to sell your car, and aren’t sure how to go about doing it, there are few simple ideas that will not only help you to sell your car faster than you’ve ever thought possible, but also to get the best price, perhaps even a little bit more than you were expecting.

These techniques are based on emotions and psychology, and have been used for years by salesmen and women to maximize their profits and to get their products into the hands of happy customers.

First of all, make sure your car is really worth what you are asking for it. If there is damage that you aren’t willing to disclose, then you will have an angry customer on your hand. Even though these techniques will likely work, regardless of the condition that your car is in, you need to be upfront and honest with any repairs or drawbacks to the sale.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s get on to the good stuff. I’ve been studying sales and persuasion for many years, and have worked in various industries, including car sales. I know the techniques that work, and what doesn’t work. When you apply some of these ideas, your car will be gone, and your wallet will be filled with money eagerly given to you by a happy customer.

The first concept is social proof. People want to buy what everybody else is buying. Social proof was illustrated brilliantly in Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion.” When you can get across to your potential customer that there are many other people that also want to buy your car, their own desire to buy will naturally increase.

How to do this? If you are placing an ad online, be sure to mention that your make and model is very popular. How do you do that? Easy. Just use the words “very popular” to describe your car. For example, instead of saying “for sale, 1998 Toyota Corolla,” you can say “For sale, the very popular 1998 Toyota Corolla.” Sounds cheesy, but it works. Another way to use social proof is to imply there is a high demand for your car. Instead of saying, “for sale, 1998 Toyota Corolla,” say “For sale, the very popular 1998 Toyota Corolla. This car has been always been in demand.” Again, sounds cheesy, but it works.

The next concept, again illustrated in Cialdini’s book, is the concept of scarcity. Whatever might not be around for a while, people seem to want more of it. When the Concord announced it was going to stop flying, demand for tickets suddenly skyrocketed. There is a reason many ads will say, “For a limited time!”

They use that corny phrase simply because it works. So how can you use this to sell your car? Think of a legitimate reason for putting a limit on the sale.

“In demand 1998 Toyota Corolla, for sale only until the end of this week. Email for details.”

You don’t even need to give a reason, and it can still have a powerful effect on your sale.

The next idea is authority. When people hear something from a recognized authority, they are much more likely to be influenced. So how do you connect authority to your car sale? Google the make and model of your car along with “awards” or “consumer reviews.” Doing this with a 1998 Toyota Corolla yields several results. One was a four and a half star review from epinions.com.

So lets see what happens when you combine, social proof, scarcity, and authority all in one.

“For sale until the end of this week ONLY. The always in demand 1998 Toyota Corolla. This very popular and reliable model received a 4.5 star recommendation from epinions.com. Please email for details.”

Now, doesn’t that sound better than:

“For sale. 1998 Toyota Corolla. Email for details.”

Not only will you get more hits, but also more people will be interested in buying your car. Which brings up yet another psychological influential factor. Competition.

In the above-mentioned book by Professor Cialdini, he illustrates a story where a fellow made some money on the side while in college. He would buy used cars, spend a few weeks cleaning them up and fixing minor damages, and then re-sell them. Whenever people would be interested in the car, he would schedule an appointment with them at a specific time. But he would always schedule two or more people at the same time. They would show up, and start a bidding war right there on the spot, and he would always sell these cars for much more than he paid for them.

While that might border on unethical sales practices, it illustrates the almost untapped power that exists when you apply simple psychological influence ideas to selling your car. You’ll sell it a lot quicker, and make more money.