I used in Korea, but I never got around to speaking Korean.
I remember once they had some kind of festival at this park near my apartment, so I went to check it out.
Pretty much like any other city type festival. Plenty of food stalls, a few folks selling trinkets.
And this guy selling this slicer dicer gizmo.
The way it worked was pretty simple. You put whatever you wanted to chip into bits onto the counter, and this gizmo on top. It was shaped like a cylinder, with a plunger on top, and some space on the bottom.
You put the space over your soon to be pulverized vegetable, and push down the plunger a couple of times, and you had some nicely diced carrots or cucumbers or whatever.
And just like any body else selling a kitchen gizmo, he had about a ten minute pitch he kept going through, again and again.
Each time he’d started, there’d be a couple people watching. By the time he got done, there were maybe ten or twenty folks gathered around.
Of those ten or twenty folks, about five to ten would buy one of these gizmos.
After a couple rounds of this, I was absolutely compelled to buy one.
Not only did I not speak Korean, but I had not compelling to chop up a bunch of onions.
But something inside me made me absolutely NEED one of these things.
It’s funny how that happens. You can always tell when it’s happening to somebody else, but not to you.
I’m sure at the time I had a perfectly logical reason to buy an onion chopper.
But looking back, the reasons were obvious.
Social Proof, and Scarcity.
Social proof because people kept buying. Which made me want to buy. Scarcity because his huge pile of these gizmos was quickly shrinking. Meaning I’d better buy one before they run out.
These mind triggers are incredibly powerful, and can make us do things a lot more serious than buying an onion chopper you’ll only use once or twice.
Not knowing what these triggers are, and how they’re used, can leave you open to some mischievous manipulation with potentially far reaching consequences.
Protect yourself.
Learn how: