Something niche to my field (custom furniture and woodworking) is that RAISING prices can increase sales. Wealthy clientele want both a piece that is quality, but also something “worthy” of gracing their home.

A mentor of mine had beautiful, handmade pieces for 600$. He was still in his “starving artist” phase and kept slashing prices to make some money back. He had lunch with a friend who was a painter. he discussed the amount of time (30 hours) and materials that went into these pieces and they weren’t selling for even 600$. She immediately told him he was insane and to jack up prices. He told all the stores he was showcasing in to raise the prices from 600$ to 3000$. He sold ALL 10 of them in 3 months.

Pricing is a careful balance of charging what is fair, and what the client expects to pay. If you are building a dining table for a client that has $500k worth of art and paintings covering the walls, he is expecting to pay in excess of $50,000. If you quote him $10,000, hes gonna get cold feet and go to someone else charging more.

Same phenomenon in this video. Banksy selling pieces for 60$ on the street and barely sells any. His pieces usually sell for $20k

https://youtu.be/7mxJT2uXtrE?si=m0RexNfLI2EBIydf

People are HIGHLY class oriented and kind of stupid. The price is not the piece but what it says. They want a piece that says “I’m rich as fuck”.

Upvoting posts that really aren’t that great.

Allowing yourself to be wrong. Especially as a male.

Instead of trying to figure out a way to still kind of be correct, you just objectively reconsider the facts.

It made me a better adult. I prefixed a lot of my statements with “I think” or “I believe” to emphasis the possibility for me to be wrong. And I’m more inclined to ask questions. (Which sadly gets a lot of people riled up because they have a hard time believing I’m not doing it sarcastically.)

Not a specific one, but Cialdini’s book the principles of persuasion, is probably the best book on psychology, and it’s centered on a short list of these “tricks” that cause an automatic “click-whirr” response in humans.

The power of “yes, and …”

Basically when you are being accused of something, or need to shift how someone is perceiving you, instead of saying “yes, but …” You should try 'yes, and…"

Not only does it take the attention away from the negative, but it’s helping in building up new ideas.

If you’re walking towards someone on the street and you want to avoid the whole “I’m going left you’re going right” dance - DO NOT make eye contact with them and glance toward the way you intend to go. They will automatically go the other way and you won’t bump into anyone ever again

People just want to be accepted and loved. Use this knowledge to get almost anyone to do what you want.

Observe their body language. Do they cross their arms a lot? How much eye contact do they make? Do they shift around when talking? Do their eyes dart around the room?

All these are clues about their personality and disposition and you can tailor your communication to them depending on how receptive they are. Do they laugh easily? What makes them laugh? Do they talk a lot? Do they talk about themselves?

Finding out to what degree of extrovert/introvert they are can go a long way into successfully manipulating anyone around you to do what you want.

It’s how I’ve made friends and how I’ve dated women with variable rates of success.

If you are in a debate and you want to nudge someone towards your opinion, or at least away from theirs, without triggering the typical emotional defence behaviour which ruins rational discussions, calmly ask objective questions which point towards problems in the arguments of your partner.

From my experience, I found this certainly helps to keep discussions civil and make people think rather than just judge emotionally, even though this is not a one-fits-all tool.

(A) Such questions can be used to inquire about the reasons for a statement or opinion, which can provide you with a broader argumentative “attack surface” and might weaken your discussion partner when they discover that their point of view is not as sound and good as they thought it to be.

This basically boils down to principles of epistemology. “How do you know?”

(B) Another use is to include facts or opinions in such questions which counter the argument of your partner and let them re-evaluate it.

Two simple examples:

• “Why do you think that wolves are dangerous for humans?” (A)
• “How does this fit with research which shows that wolves avoid humans and don’t see them as prey?” (B)

That way you don’t necessarily present yourself as an opponent, since your own opinion is not directly verbalized. Instead you hop into a more neutral role, where you ask genuine questions and show interest in the other person’s point of view. Combatative counter arguments are rephrased and hidden that way without the other person realizing it.

“Langer demonstrated this fact by asking a small favor of people waiting in line to use a library copying machine: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?”

The effectiveness of this request-plus-reason was nearly total: Ninety-four percent of those asked let her skip ahead of them in line.

Compare this success rate to the results when she made the request only: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” Under those circumstances, only 60 percent of those asked complied.

At first glance, it appears that the crucial difference between the two requests was the additional information provided by the words “because I’m in a rush.”

But a third type of request tried by Langer showed that this was not the case. It seems that it was not the whole series of words, but the first one, “because,” that made the difference.

Instead of including a real reason for compliance, Langer’s third type of request used the word “because” and then, adding nothing new, merely restated the obvious: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?”

The result was that once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed, even though no real reason, no new information, was added to justify their compliance.”

Excerpt From Influence Robert B. Cialdini, PhD

Being nice to people makes them happy to be around you.

A good retail one: don’t say “sorry for your wait.” Say “thank you for waiting” or “thank you for being so patient”.

Something to do with… it makes people feel good about themselves if they think they’ve done something for you, which in turn makes them more likely to keep being patient.

Be kind and use people’s names. Also, just asking for stuff.

You’d be amazed how far it will take you just to ask for something, using a person’s name, and being kind about it. Demand something and people will be reluctant to give you a thing.

Procrastination.

In an argument, never use “you”. No accusations. Keep a calm, relaxed tone of voice. Even if they don’t concede, they will eventually apologize and reconsider their position, but it may take a while after the conversation ended.

“I told you you shouldn’t have bought that.”

“I didn’t think that purchase was necessary.”

“You upset me.”

“I was made to feel upset.”

The soctatic method. It forces people to actually think about their position in an argument