Social Engineering - Christopher Hadnagy [38]
It also seemed that people, sometimes even complete strangers, loved to tell me their problems and talk to me about things. One story that I think helps to see how I was able to utilize not only preloading but also good elicitation skills was when I was around 17 or 18 years old.
I was an avid surfer and would do odd jobs to support my hobby—basically anything from pizza delivery to fiberglass cutter to lifeguard. One time I ran errands for my father who owned an accounting/financial consulting company. I would deliver papers to his clients, get signatures, and bring them back. Often, many of the clients would open up and tell me all about their lives, their divorces, and their business successes and failures. Usually this started with a small session with them telling me how great my Dad was to them. At the time I never understood why people, especially adults, would open up to a 17–18 year old with the reasons their universe is breaking apart.
One particular client I would visit often owned an apartment complex. It was nothing huge and fancy; he just had a few properties that he owned and managed. This poor guy had real problems—family problems, health problems, and personal problems—all of which he routinely would tell me about for as long as I would sit and listen. This is when it began to hit me that I could get away with saying or doing amazing things if I just spent time listening to people. It made them feel important and like I was a good person. It didn’t matter if I sat there thinking about my next great wave; what mattered was that I listened.
Normally I would listen for as long as I could stand the amazing amount of tobacco smoke he put out (he smoked more than any person I ever have seen in my life). But I would sit and listen and because I was young and had no experience I would offer no advice, no solution, just an ear. The thing was that I was truly concerned; I didn’t fake it. I wished I had a solution. One day he told me about how he wanted to move back out West where his daughter was and be closer to family.
I wanted to move on in life and get a job I thought would be cool, fun, and give me some more cash for surfboards and other things I “needed.” During one of my listening sessions, a crazy idea popped in my head, and he viewed me as a responsible, compassionate young man with a “good head” on my shoulders. The preloading took place over the months I spent sitting with him and listening. Now it was time to cash in on that. I said, “Why don’t you go back and let me run your apartment complex for you?” The idea was so absurd, so ridiculous that looking back now I would have laughed in my face. But for weeks, months even, I had listened to his problems. I knew the man and his woes. On top of that, I never laughed at or rejected him. Now he had shared a problem with me, and here was a perfect solution, one that took care of all of his problems as well as mine. My income needs were low, and he wanted to be close to his family. We had built a relationship over the last few months and thus he “knew” me and trusted me.
After some discussion we came to an agreement and he up and moved back out West and I was a 17-year-old running a 30-unit apartment complex as the vice-landlord. I could go on and tell you much more on this story but the point is already made. (I will tell you the job went great until he asked me to try to sell his complex for him, which I did in record time, at the same time selling myself out of a job.)
The point is that I developed a rapport, a trust, with someone and without trying and without malicious intent, I had a chance to preload him over months with the ideas that I was kind and compassionate and intelligent. Then when the time arose I was able to present an absurd idea, and because of the months of preloading, it was accepted.
It wasn’t until later in life that it hit me what was going on here. There were so many factors at play that I didn’t realize