Reciprocity and Contrast Tricks From a Vacuum Sale
At sixteen, walking through the Seattle airport on his way to a karate seminar, Dave Wood got handed a free copy of the Bhagavad Gita by a stranger in a robe, and watched reciprocity turn a gift into a guilt trip for his last $20. Two years later, selling Rainbow vacuums door to door, he learned the flip side of that same psychology, perceptual contrast, the trick that makes a big price feel small next to a bigger number. In this episode he walks through both encounters, including the exact handshake that landed his first commission. Here’s the episode.
When I was 16 years old, living in Fairbanks, Alaska, I was a black belt in Shotokan Karate, and I got invited to help my instructor, Shihan Charles Scott, teach at a seminar in Denver, Colorado. Normally, jumping from one state to another only takes a couple of hours, but traveling from Alaska to anywhere else is a full day’s journey. So I landed at the airport in Seattle, Washington, packed with people everywhere, homeless people, salespeople, circus entertainers, and more. Keep in mind I was 16 in 1997, so there was no TSA, barely any airport security, and you could walk into the airport without a ticket at all.
A Hare Krishna, a Free Book, and My Last $20
I was walking down the hallway, entertaining myself with the social chaos and the circus entertainers, when I noticed a bald guy walking straight at me, staring, smiling, holding a book. He was dressed in a zen-like robe. He put the book against my chest, smiling, and said, this is my free gift to you, take it. I took it and said thank you. I felt amazing that a bald stranger would give me a gift like that for no reason, and I like to read. What is it, I asked, looking at the title. It was the Bhagavad Gita, with pictures of strange, multi-limbed creatures on the cover. I thought it was science fiction. I had no idea what it actually was, because I grew up Mormon. This is the book about the spiritual nature of the universe, he said, and it’s yours to keep. I said, man, this is totally awesome, I’m going to read this, thanks, and I started to walk off.
That’s where it got weird. He stepped in front of me and said the book is free, but could you make a donation? I told him no, I’m actually only 16, and I only have 20 dollars for snacks for the next week, but thanks for the free book, and tried to walk off. He stepped in front of me again, put his hand on my chest, and said, it’s bad karma to receive a gift without giving anything in return. I felt guilty immediately and said, well shoot, I don’t want it, and honestly I’m not even going to read it, it looks kind of weird. What I was actually thinking about wasn’t the book, it was the $20 in my pocket, all the money I had. I got uncomfortable trying to hand his unwanted gift back, and he said he wouldn’t take it back for any reason, it’s yours to keep. I got mad and told him, look, I’m 16, I’m in school, I have barely any money, if you want money go talk to someone who looks like they actually have some, because it’s not me, I need this money for my trip. So you have a choice: take your dumb money, or give me the book back, or give me the book for free, like the Mormons do when they say it’s free, and let me walk away thankful for your gift.
The Magic Close I Learned From Mr. Mustache
I learned the close that eventually resolved that airport standoff from selling rainbow vacuums. When I was 18, I was working in a restaurant in Fairbanks, saving money for the Mormon mission I went on at 19. Payday came, and my check was about $200 after taxes. I looked at it and thought, what the crap is this? I drove home angry and talked to my parents, furious that the government had taken out withholding, since I’d never had a job that wasn’t under the table, and I actually thought my boss was stealing from me. When my dad explained it, I said, screw this, I’m going to make some real money, I wasn’t going to work all week for a hundred bucks. So I looked through the local newspaper and found an ad: earn $2,000 a month guaranteed demonstrating simple in-home appliance automation systems, no experience required, call now. That was ten times my restaurant pay, so I called, and the ambiguous conversation led me to an office where a guy with a mustache and slicked hair tried to sell me a $3,000 vacuum.
Once I found out I didn’t have to buy the vacuum to get in, I said sweet, I’ll do it, sold, I start tomorrow. Ten days later I had zero commissions and was getting discouraged. I told Mr. Mustache, which is what I called him, that I wasn’t sure this was going to work for me, zero out of five appointments, maybe I should just go back to the restaurant. He looked at me, concerned, and said, Dave, did I teach you the magic close? I said no, curiously, what magic close is that? He apologized dramatically for never teaching me the one secret strategy that guaranteed his system would work, slapping his own forehead and shouting, I can’t believe I didn’t teach you the magic close, of course you’re not making any sales, don’t worry, don’t worry, it’s not your fault, dumb, dumb, dumb. My heart was pounding, because I wanted that secret so badly. What he taught me is a psychological compliance principle I read again in chapters one and two of Influence, in my reading session that same morning: creating psychological contrast makes big things look smaller and small things look bigger.
I often repeat a favorite quote I picked up from an unfortunate teenage friend: it’s not how big it is, it’s how you use it. Psychological contrast comes from comparing one thing to another, and the difference in perception between the two changes how you see either one. Compare and contrast lets you create a perceptual shift that changes how you process what you’re experiencing, distorting your external environment through your own nervous system. Robert Cialdini cites a study on the contrast principle done at Arizona State and Montana State Universities, where researchers found that we may be less satisfied with the attractiveness of our own partners because popular media bombards us with unrealistically attractive models. Our minds are in a constant state of automatic, unconscious perceptual shifts, distorting, deleting, and generalizing the information around us to create order and meaning out of our environment.
Welcome to Rainbow: My First Commission
So how did the Hare Krishna get my $20? A few minutes after walking away angry, still a little confused, looking at my brand new Bhagavad Gita and wondering how I’d just gotten scammed, I’d already tried, out of codependent desperation, to appease him with $5. He stepped in front of me again and said the book costs $15 to print and is often sold for $20 in bookstores, and that it’s good karma, Dave, to give an abundant gift, that the information inside is priceless and the universe would bless me for giving with no thought of return, and thanked me in advance for my abundant gift. Something shifted right then, looking down at the book, feeling a strange desire to keep it and walk away feeling abundant instead of ripped off. So I reached into my pocket.
Here’s how I sold my first rainbow. I drove to my next appointment armed with a free pair of deluxe kitchen knives we’d give away in exchange for an hour to demonstrate the rainbow cleaning system. Mr. Barnes sat glaring at me with his arms crossed the entire time, and I couldn’t get him to laugh, smile, lean forward, respond in any way at all. Near the end of the presentation, armed with my new magic close, I built a perceptual contrast: the cost of 20 years of cleaning materials that still don’t really work, compared with a single decision to buy the rainbow system and solve that problem for good. I asked Mr. Barnes, as long as the rainbow costs less than the $19,000 it’ll cost you over the next 20 years, it’d be worth it to you, right? He rolled his eyes, said yeah, I guess, Dave, and looked at his wife, who just shrugged. That’s when I stood up, stared him in the eyes, reached out my right hand, and executed the magic close I’d learned only 18 hours before: Mr. Barnes, welcome to Rainbow. Then I waited, saying nothing at all, for two full minutes. He glared at me the whole time, without blinking, looking down at my hand, then back up at my eyes, sizing me up. Finally he sighed, said what the hell, and shook my hand. That, my friend, was the day I earned my first commission.
Full episode transcript
Lightly edited from the original recording — fillers removed, nothing added. Income disclaimer.
Hello, welcome to The Daily Shortcut. If you've been following the daily episodes, then you've been learning some powerful concepts to apply to your life and your business, and also sharing them with others, I hope. If you haven't tapped into the power of The Daily Shortcut yet, I'll tell you how you can take action immediately later on in this episode. For now, plug in, allow yourself to experience today's episode, which is called Perceptual Contrast and the Power of Reciprocation. When I was 16 years old, living in Fairbanks, Alaska, I was a black belt in Shotokan Karate, and I got invited to help my instructor, Shihan Charles Scott, teach at a seminar in Denver, Colorado.
While normally in the United States, jumping from one state to another only takes a couple of hours, anytime you're traveling from Alaska to anywhere else, it's a full day's journey. So I get to the airport in Seattle, Washington, and it's packed with people everywhere in the airport. Homeless people, salespeople, circus entertainers, and more. Keep in mind that I was 16 years old in 1997, so there was no TSA, barely any airport security, and you could go into the airport whenever you want without a plane ticket or anything. So I'm walking innocently down the hallway, entertaining myself with all the social chaos and the circus entertainers, and I notice a bald guy walking up to me, staring at me directly, smiling with a book.
He was dressed in a zen-like robe. He put the book in my chest, smiling, as he said, This is my free gift to you. Take it. I took the book, and I said, Thank you. I felt amazing that a bald stranger would give me a gift like that for no reason, and I like to read.
What is it, I asked as I looked at the title of the book. It was the Bhagavad Gita, and it had pictures of all these strange, multiple-limbed creatures on the front of it. I thought it was a science fiction book. I didn't know what it was, because I grew up Mormon. This is the book about the spiritual nature of the universe, he said, and it's yours to keep.
I said, man, this is totally awesome. I'm going to read this. Thanks. I started to walk off and proceeded my way. See, the power of reciprocation works to influence ethically, and also to manipulate coercively, if you want.
This is where it gets real weird. The guy steps in front of me and says, the book is free, but could you make a donation? I replied, no, I'm actually only 16, and I only have 20 bucks for snacks for the next week, but thanks for the free book, and I tried to walk off. He stepped in front of me, he put his hand on my chest, and he said, it's bad karma to receive a gift without giving anything in return. I felt guilty immediately, and I said, well, shoot, you know, I don't want it, and to be honest, I'm not going to read it anyway.
It looks kind of weird. Of course, what I was actually thinking about wasn't the book, it was the $20 in my pocket that was all the money. I had, and I started to feel uncomfortable a little bit, as I attempted to give his unwanted gift back, and the hairy Krishna proceeded to say, I won't take the gift back for any reason. It's yours to keep. I started to get mad.
I told him, look, dude, I'm only 16, I'm in school, and I have barely any money. If you want money, go talk to someone who looks like they have money, which is not me. I need money for my trip, so you have a choice. A, take your dumb money. B, give me the book back.
Or B, give me the book for free, like the Mormons do when they say it's free, and let me walk away and be thankful for your gift. So what do you think I do next? I want you to choose one of the following options. Option number one, I punch him in the face. Option number two, I walk away with the book.
Option number three, he takes the book back. Or option number four, this guy somehow gets me to give him $20. Well, I'll tell you what happens in a minute. Keep paying attention. Keep paying attention to this video.
Let me tell you the magic close. I learned this from selling rainbow vacuums. When I was 18 years old, I was working in a restaurant that you walk into by going underneath a train near a park in Fairbanks, Alaska, saving money for my Mormon mission that I went on when I was 19 years old. I get paid on a Friday, and I look at my check, and it's like 200 bucks after taxes. I look at my check, and I say, what the crap is this?
And I drove home angry. And I talked to my parents. Of course, I was mad because the government had taken out taxes withholding, and I had never had a normal job that wasn't under the table. I actually didn't know what it was, and I thought my boss was stealing from me. True story, right?
When my dad explained it to me, I said, screw this. I'm making some money. And I started looking in the local newspaper. I saw an ad that caught my eye, and I dialed the number immediately. The ad said something like this.
True story. No experience required. Call now. After I found out that I didn't have to buy the vacuum to get in, I said, sweet. I'm going to do it.
Sold. I'm going to start tomorrow. Ten days later, I had no commissions, and I was starting to get depressed and discouraged. I don't know if you've ever tried to sell something and not been able to do it. It's discouraging, right?
I walked in, and I told Mr. Mustache, which is what I call this guy, I don't know if this is going to work for me. I'm not making any sales at all. Zero out of five appointments. Maybe I should do something else and go back to this job at the restaurant.
Mr. Mustache, he looked at me concerned, and he said. I don't know if this is going to work for me. I'm not making any sales at all. Zero out of five appointments.
Dave, did I teach you the magic clothes? To which I replied curiously, no. What magic clothes is that? And I perked up in my chair. He proceeded with a dramatic apology for not teaching me the one secret strategy that he said would guarantee his system would work.
He was slapping himself in the forehead, and he was shouting, I can't believe I didn't teach you the magic clothes. Of course you're not making any sales. Dave, don't worry, don't worry. It's not your fault. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
As he was slapping himself in the forehead, true story. At this point, my heart was pounding because I desired to know this magic secret clothes so badly. And what he taught me then is a psychological compliance principle that I just read again in chapters one and two of this bestselling book, Influence, by Robert Cialdini. And this was in my morning reading session today. I want to tell you something, and that's how creating psychological contrast makes big things look smaller and small things actually wind up looking bigger.
I often repeat a favorite quote that I learned from an unfortunate teenage friend, and that's this, it's not how big it is, it's how you use it. Psychological contrast is created by comparing one thing to another thing, and the difference perception between the two objects makes what you're looking at. And I want to tell you something, and not me, but a lot of people, because they're sick of looking at things, they want to connect with a different setting. Because they're sitting in a room and they're listening to something that's different. So this is what I learned from a man who looks at his7 he's doing this thing, and he's sitting in his office for an hour.
And he's just, he's not just like, oh, I'm going to watch this stuff, I'm going to just sit and watch this stuff. I'm going to watch this stuff. And he's like, he's really looking at it. And he's like, there's another thing I can learn, and there's another thing I can learn. And he's like, it's the same thing.
He's looking at it. And he's like, I've never done it. and experience of time, Compare and Contrast allows you to create perceptual contrast that produces an alteration in the way that you process what you're experiencing and distort your external environment through your nervous system. On Perceptual Contrast, the book Influence, Robert Cialdini cites a study that was done by Arizona and Montana State Universities. He said this, In fact, studies done on the contrast principle at Arizona State and Montana State Universities suggest that we may be less satisfied with the attractiveness of our own lovers because of the way that popular media bombards us with examples of unrealistically attractive models.
Our minds are in a constant state of automatic unconscious perceptual shifts where we distort, delete, and generalize information around us to create order from chaos and help us create meaning from our external environment. Learning to use basic influence principles. Allows us to both ethically and also coercively utilize the structure of the human perceptual system to create automatic responses from people with what we're doing. The subject of Dr. Cialdini's book.
So how did this Hare Krishna get my $20? It's a real question I bet you're asking. Well a few minutes after being angry, I'm walking away and I'm a little bit confused and I'm looking at my brand new copy of the Bhagavad Gita, wondering how I just got scammed. First, out of codependent desperation, I had tried to appease the manipulator by giving him $5 and I tried to walk away and escape his psychological trap. He stepped in front of me and he said, the book costs $15 to print and it's often sold for $20 in bookstores.
See it's good karma, Dave, to give an abundant gift. The information you'll find is priceless and the universe will bless you for giving with no thought of return. I wanted to thank you. Thank you in advance for your abundant gift today. Now something automatically shifted that moment as I looked down at the book, feeling the desire to have it for some reason and walk away with the feeling of abundance.
So I reached into my pocket and here's how I sold my first rainbow. I drove to my next rainbow appointment armed with a free pair of deluxe kitchen knives we would give away in exchange for an opportunity to demonstrate the rainbow cleaning system. For one hour. Mr. Barnes sat in a chair glaring at me like this with his arms crossed as I unsuccessfully tried to get him to laugh, smile, lean forward, just respond in any way.
He just would stay like this mad. Nearing the end of the presentation and armed with my new magic clothes, I first created a perceptual contrast by creating a cost comparison of 20 years of cleaning materials that of course still don't work. Obvious. You know, I'm cleaning this carpet and pulling dirt from it, right? And I compared that with a simple decision to buy the rainbow vacuum cleaning system to solve that problem.
And I asked Mr. Barnes, remember he's like this, so as long as the rainbow costs less than the $19,000 it'll cost you over the next 20 years, it'd be worth it to you, right? Rolling his eyes like this, he says, yeah, I guess Dave, and looked at his wife and she shrugged her shoulders. At that moment, I stood up, I stared him in the eyes, I reached my right hand out to shake his hand and I perfectly executed the magic clothes I had learned only 18 hours before and I said, Mr. Barnes, welcome to Rainbow.
Now for the next two minutes, I waited like this without saying anything at all. Mr. Barnes glared at me like this for two minutes. Without blinking, looking down at my hand and looking up at my eyes and then sizing me up. Finally, after two minutes of uncomfortable waiting, he sighed, he said, what the hell, and he shook my hand.
And that, my friend, was the day that I earned my first commission. And I want to help you do the same. And to do that, I've prepared three powerful bonuses that go along with today's episode to help you attract wealth faster. You can take advantage of these bonus shortcuts immediately. Just pay close attention.
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