Imagine my laugh, then, when Eve suggested that I look at my Ameritrade account, just for fun. Well, to no surprise, my 3,500 shares of Etravelserve.com Inc (TSER), is still valued at $0.0001, for a total value of 35 cents. They were delisted a long time ago. However, good old QPSA, of which I bought 65 shares at 25 cents a share, closed trading yesterday at $5.39. Wow, that is a jump from a $16.25 purchase to a $350.35 value.

Louis Rukeyser may have been right about there being three animals in the stock market: bulls, bears, and pigs led to slaughter. After spending most of my time in that third category, I’m happy to finally have some personal good news from Wall Street. Now I am going to see where else I can get a 2156-fold increase in investment. Isn’t that more than 200,000 percent?

Keeping It Simple

All I did was to peel and cut up one eggplant and put it into a frying pan with some coconut oil. This is the best cooking oil there is, in case you didn’t know. Olive oil is so twentieth century.

Then I took some leftover green beans, cut them up, and added them to the eggplant.

I chose an Organic Three Pepper Pasta Sauce for the base.

I stirred in some sea salt and my new favorite spice mix, Cajun Spices. (Thus, making it ‘creole’ – fabulous flavors and not too spicy.) Then I stir-fried the eggplant and green beans until they looked a little toasted.

This is when I decided that they needed some red color, so I cut up and threw in a couple of fresh tomatoes. Now they looked fine to my Artistic Iron Chef eye!

Finally, I added the sauce, then covered and let simmer for about 30 minutes. Here is the result … yummy!

Serve On A Bed Of What?

This took a little more vegan-brain creativity. I happened to have some quinoa grain and buckwheat in the cupboard. So I decided to nuke them up together … must be the first time this combination has appeared in human history! … for use where you might normally have pasta. (I’m down on pasta, which is another story.)

Both of these so-called grains are actually seeds. Calling them grains is one of those silly things the USDA does. They are seeds! They aren’t even in the same family as wheat, rye, barley, and rice, all of which produce true grains. Nope. Not even close.

One heads up if you use quinoa and buckwheat is to add about twice as much water as the directions call for. Buckwheat is like a sponge and will soak it up pretty fast, which might keep the slower-cooking quinoa from getting done. Here is what it looks like … brown!

And Now For The Drumroll Please…

The new dish here is accompanied by a few slices of avocado, just to round out the meal. Actually, I served it with salad, too.

This really nice thing about this recipe is that it is really simple. The final dish is delicious, too.

All You Need to Know

The six points of influence are listed in the figure below. These are widely available on many websites. What I want to point out here is that Dr. Cialdini not only outlined each of these and why they work, he also described how he had been a sucker for them and, more importantly, how he developed resistance to them. This is perhaps the best bonus that he could have included. It has helped me become more aware of when and how marketing is being thrown at me. See what I mean below.

Reciprocity: I’ll do something for you or give you something for free if you give me something back. How about a free report if you just subscribe to my newsletter? That is the most common example of reciprocity on the internet. This one is easy to ‘resist’ if you really wish. Just subscribe, then get the whatever-is-free, then unsubscribe later.

Authority: People are more persuaded if they recognize the influencer’s authority. Celebrities are bought and/or invented for this purpose. This strategy is a name-dropper’s delight. It doesn’t take much to resist this strategy when you stop and think about how little value a celebrity endorsement provides for anything.

Social Proof: Testimonials, testimonials, testimonials! Please don’t ever be suckered by anyone’s testimonial. They are never bad. Heaven help you if you are persuaded by testimonials. This is such a strong component of marketing psychology that it is almost impossible to wade through the countless testimonials (i.e., “social proof”) that clutters sales pages.

Commitment & Consistency: The Encyclopedia Britannica used to be sold door to door. Each sales rep was taught to ask 22 questions, starting with simple ones that could only be answered with a ‘yes’. People have a strong tendency to stay consistent with such answers, even when the final question asks for the sale. Very difficult to resist this one. You have to be able to violate your own consistency to not buy the product or service after you have said ‘yes’ 21 times in a row.

Liking: People are more likely to be convinced by someone they like. This is why attractive or humorous sales people, or sales people who are similar to you in some significant way, are successful. Have you ever read someone’s business story about how they were broke and out of work, etc., etc.? The purpose for this story is to get you to feel an identity with that person. This is the seed of liking, and it is a powerful tool of persuasion. Just keep in mind that it may not be a true story and, even if it is, it doesn’t mean that the product or service will necessarily work for you. Sneaky, huh?

Scarcity: Deadlines, scarcity of inventory, limited time price – all these create a fear that if you don’t act now you won’t be able to get what you want. I can tell you right now that if you ever encounter a web page that says something like, “This page will never appear again, so you have only this one chance to buy [fill in the blank],” get off that page immediately. There is just so much B.S. I can tolerate! The fear of scarcity is one of the most overused and easy to resist of all the six points to persuasion. How to you have a limited supply of ebooks, for pete’s sake? (Yes, I’ve seen that claim.)

Keep these things in mind when you encounter any kind of sales page or advertisement. Your awareness will make you a better customer and a better businessperson.

All the best,

Dr. D