#185 Blake Eastman: Learn to Read Anyone
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- This is the problem with relationships. Everybody has a different version of what a relationship is. And a lot of conflict comes from when two people have different ideas of what a relationship should look like. - My uncle gave me this test and without fail, it is predicted every divorce. - What is it? - And the test was so simple. It was like,

That is a huge red flag. The best paradigm for dates is storytelling, never questions. So as soon as you get in the table, not just like, hey, how are you? It's just like the craziest thing just happened. You were on a double date with your wife and you met somebody for the first time and you were like, they're cheating on their partner. How did you come to that conclusion? There was two things. One...

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Blake Eastman, who has dedicated his entire life to psychology and nonverbal behavior. In 2009, he founded the Nonverbal Group, a behavioral research and education company in New York City. And he's been a member of the Nonverbal Group for over a decade.

which conducts large-scale studies on human behavior and uses a wide range of technologies to systematically deconstruct and improve human communication. In this episode, Eastman dives into a number of subjects revolving around how we communicate with one another, including the ability to read nonverbal cues, his thoughts on big talkers versus silent types, how we can communicate with our partners,

without complaining, the value of watching ourselves communicate on video, understanding the power structures and social dynamics at work, and so much more. It's time to listen and learn. ♪

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I want to start with how I can improve my ability to read nonverbal cues. Okay, that's a process. All right. So it starts with evaluating how you process behavior as it is. So it starts with your default approach. The problem is this. We go down through life. We...

have this like neural net in our head and it's based on all past model of all the interactions that we've had. And the truth is you have to understand how much you're wrong before you can improve the accuracy of what you're right on. So there's a lot of like pop science stuff or cultural biases or just experiences in your life that shifted the way that you view things. And the first is acknowledging all of that. That's like the first step, which is a pretty robust process, which I'll talk about later.

It's really looking at your perspective for life and how you view social interactions.

And then after that, it's increasing your behavioral awareness. So this is just the ability to notice and pay attention to the shifts and the variation in somebody's behavior and understand in real time the meaning you're deriving from it. So the truth is a lot of people, body language experts, will look at someone's behavior and be like, oh, this means this and this means that. That's not really what you're doing. I think it's more about noticing than making meaning out of.

So just like noticing. So for example, like noticing that the way that you're nodding your head at me right now, that is a facet of social coordination. You're showing me that you're listening to what I'm saying. It doesn't mean that you're quote unquote interested. But if we really looked at your head nods over the course of like a six month period, we could find out when you're genuinely or probably not

really interested in something when you're just socially coordinating because you are, I got to shake my head because this is interesting. So it's a multi-step process, but it really starts with confronting all your biases. That's fascinating. How does it work in terms of cues I might misread then? Because if I don't have knowledge of myself or a baseline of sort of how I'm approaching things, and I'm just meeting you for the first time,

How can I deal with that situation where are there obvious things I can do? What are the things that are more likely to misinterpret? I think people are. So first, you have to understand where you are on this threshold of I call it literals and contextual. So there are certain people that I can say these things three ways. I can say, Shane, how are you? I can say, Shane, how are you? I can say, Shane, how are you?

There are people out there that see no difference between those three things. They're all just Shane, how are you? And there's other people that over contextualize or try to extract more value from the tonal shifts in what I'm saying. And the truth is most people over contextualize certain things. So for example, I'm someone who like on my team, there's a rule that no one could give me a one word response. So no one could ever say yes or no. It has to be like, yes, emoji, yes, gif or something like that. Because I think someone's mad at me when they just say yes.

That's my own weird cultural type of thing. Where you get that passive aggressive, like, sure. Yeah. I'm like, sure, what? Like, I can't stand that stuff. And I don't know why, but I have to know that first. So there's behavioral signs of this as well. So you'll have people like watch videos of like a 20 second interaction and they'll say, oh, this person doesn't like them. And I'm like, well, why do you say that? I'm not really sure. And we break down second by second by second and they go like, oh.

I think it's the way that they're smiling. Most people don't know how they're coming up with these perceptions. They don't really understand the origins of it. And when you break it down systematically and they start to see it, they get to understand a little bit more depth. So the true work is video work, looking at videos and understanding what's going on with those. How does trust form between people?

Because it has a large indication that the nonverbal and also the verbal cues that we get from other people. And I'm thinking specifically meeting somebody and forming trust with them in person where you're getting a three-dimensional view of them. But now Zoom, right? It's very common to meet new colleagues over Zoom and not in person. And you have to form a trust relationship with each other. And maybe there's less detail in those interactions. How do we...

look for signs that somebody might be untrustworthy? And conversely, how do we convey trustworthiness to other people through these interactions? That's a great question. Okay, so trust from a nonverbal perspective is just you could think of behaviors on a bell curve distribution, right? So certain people are going to act in certain ways that are not in alignment with how society perceives that behavior to be trustworthy. So an example of this is eye contact.

right if all of a sudden your eye contact is constantly darting all around the space people have a perception of like why are they doing that like what's going on there but on the other hand like if you ask me blake what is the most important moment that happened in your life and i go well the most important moment that happened in my life i look at you dead at your eyes when i'm saying that look it looks better when i'm like

I mean the most important moment that ever happened in my life. It looks more genuine because it makes sense that I'm looking away to recall an emotional event and then look back at you. So it's in alignment with how society perceives things. And that really, in my opinion, is what it's about. So everybody has their own sort of perceptual lens for what trustworthy behaviors are and aren't. Right?

for me, I always look to have conversations or do things that are like three standard deviations to the right of a bell curve. So like if me and you had a conversation for an hour, we're bringing up topics that you normally don't have with other people, which is going to create a higher level of trust between me and you. So I'm looking for more nuanced topics and nuanced areas to draw that conclusion. And then to have the mimicking of my behavior to be associated with the excitement for those things. So for example, like if, um,

me and you had like a very long conversation about your children for example like your children are obviously important to you if my behavior is just asking you standard questions and i'm doing all that but it doesn't actually look like i'm interested it's like something's off here like what's this person trying to do what's this person trying to get but the truth is it's different for each person which is why the puzzle is so fascinating because it's

I mean, I've met with executives that have these weird things that like, oh, I never trust somebody who walks in the room and doesn't shake my hand first.

I'm like, well, okay, so why? And we look at it and it's like when they were 12 years old, their dad taught them that. So you got to understand that it's build trust, build trust. There's not this like step one, two, three, four, five. It's way more complex than that. But the first thing is don't be so outside the bell curve distribution of how someone acts that you're just not trusted from the get go.

And how much do we update our information once we form an opinion with you? Like how much information would it take to, because I'm not looking for signs anymore, right? Like my brain shuts down. I'm like, oh, this person's trustworthy. Therefore, I stopped looking for it. Or I say this person is not trustworthy. Therefore, that's all I see. And how do we go about changing other people's perceptions of us and also changing our own or being open to changing our own perception of other people? So like,

We have this Bayesian brain and even people that are the most like think they're the most Bayesian approach when it comes to human behavior, we get lazy and we build these things and we don't change. And I feel like the only time we're changed is if we're shown we're really wrong.

And that's one of the things that I do a lot. So in like working with executives and programs and training, I get somebody to make a read or a prediction about someone else's behavior. And then I show them like, oh no, you were completely wrong. And they're like, really? And they're like, oh yeah, this was the reason why they boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And enough of those wrongs, it gets people to sort of challenge how they're viewing the world. And then you can start to have the self-growth. But

It's not an easy path. Like some people will hold on to their perceptions. They were like, oh, no, like I've been doing this thing for 25 years and it's never got me wrong. All the cognitive and decision making bias stuff that you're famous for gets applied to behavior every single second of every single day. You did a lot of work with prisoners. Did you feel safe?

Did you feel like you could trust them? Yeah, I never felt, you know, my forensic background is no way as robust as some people have been doing this for like 30 or 40 years, but I never felt like

unsafe in a forensic setting. I just didn't. I view people as like, most people are still reasonable. And if they're sitting down and talking to me, there's a level of reasonable there. And yeah, I mean, I think I just, through conversation, through looking at my lens for the world,

I used to be scared by people when I was a kid, like a lot of social anxiety, all that. And there's been so many instances in my life where, you know, even on the street with somebody that's looking like really tough or on the way here, something happened where I was like, oh, just a person.

And I believe through discourse and through conversation, anything could be settled. I wasn't really... Yeah, it's a great question. I can't remember fear. But did you feel like you could trust these people to give you honest answers? Well, in a forensic setting, like... So, no. So, like, that's one of the coolest... In all forensic psychology, there's a lot of personality tests, which I'm very anti. But forensics has one...

It's built by a process. I think this is correct empirical King procedure So it's really cool what they basically do is they'll like ask people that have been diagnosed with like schizophrenia like 15 or 20 questions and they find the patterns that like 99% of people hear voices in like one year or two years or whatever it is and then they ask people those same questions that are malingering right and that's how they determine whether or not they're lying or not there's always and that's why like one of the biggest tests I think still use the MMPI

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. It's like 530 questions. And a lot of the inventory is asking questions in different ways. So you don't remember what you said on question 26. And that's the point of it. And that's the whole point, right? So there's like this embedded in these forensic instruments, these embedded concept of the person might be lying. And we're trying to figure that out. So I think it's just different. But yeah, people lie for...

Different reasons for shame for embarrassment. I remember I had to ask this inventory about Sex like how have they had sex in the past like 12 months nine months six months three months and they're in prison and a men population and when you ask that question people get like very like would you say and like people react in a different way and it's like it makes total contextual sense that they would I'm gonna use a very subjective term in terms of like toughest or bodice your most dangerous person if you had to rank them

and categorize them sort of like by percentile into less or more dangerous without knowing their background and only having the information from sort of their answers and their nonverbal cues. How would you go about doing that? That's a great question. So I would always think

focus on massively erratic behavior that worries me more than anything else. So seeing somebody, seeing like a schizophrenic in a full violent rage or episode like that, which society thinks it's way more common than it actually is. It's not, it's like a stigma that these, most people walking down the street that are talking to themselves just continue to talk to themselves. They don't really hurt anyone. But when somebody has really lost their touch with reality and they're violent, I think that's the scariest thing by far.

And that's always like, all right, just watch out.

do you think the biggest talkers are more dangerous than the silent type i've always in my experience i've always found the silent types to not be i i the biggest talkers are the ones that just talk talk talk talk and they don't really do much but the problem with them is that like if that threshold of ego or disrespect gets violate violated i feel like they feel the need to actually assert themselves

But some of the big tough people are just big and tough. Are they more like a light switch? Yeah, I think they're more erratic in that regard. Like all of a sudden you say something like, what'd you say? Like it's quick. Where like some of the bigger, if they want, they'll just lay you out right there. Like they're big. They've got that aggression. They've got that power. Yeah, I would definitely say that. And also the younger population, like people in their 20s that are just 25, 26 in prison, right?

It's different. It's a different time for someone versus 40 or 50 that have had that experience in that lifelong, uh,

It's just it's completely different when you've been institutionalized and grown up in that area and understand how to handle yourself and how to play the game and how to navigate all these things. But I've met some really, really, really smart people that were like just really ingenious ideas and concepts that came from prison. We tend to judge people based on their worst choice in some cases, right? Oh, I mean, I am. That is probably like my advocacy. Like so, yeah.

My foundations will be all for prison reform, all for giving people second chances. I believe that society, it's kind of crazy to me that if you were put in that situation,

You might, if you like, people don't understand, you see somebody commit a horrible crime and they do something horrible, but that person has a story. And if you were to touch that person and see every step of that story, most people would be like, I'd probably commit that crime too. And there's just this massive fallacy that people are like, well, no, I know you grew up in a completely different world and a completely different context. So be, be careful with that. Whenever I see somebody who does something that I think is, uh,

not something I would do. I always ask myself, what would the world have to look like for me for that to be my default behavior? And it can be often an illuminating process to get out of your perspective, shift into a different perspective. And you're right. Like their behavior makes sense to them. Yeah. And when you hear these people's stories, like they're real stories, it's like, like you're doing quite well considering like just like the most horrible things that people can't even sort of fathom. Um, and yeah,

If you're not, if you don't view it through their lens and through their perspective, it's impossible to like truly relate. I want to come back to the trust thing again, because you were on a double date with your wife and you met somebody for the first time, I believe. And you were like, they're cheating on their partner within a few minutes. And I'm wondering like what went into that? How did you come to that conclusion? How confident were you in that conclusion? Yeah.

Yeah, I was like 100% confident. I would have placed a lot of money. There was two things. One, it was like the gaze direction in the person's eyes. So for example, like, you know, an attractive woman walks by. It's not uncommon for men to go like that and glance away. The way that he glanced was like there was just a certain amount of desire in his eyes where he just like stared and was like,

And what he was doing was doing all these like more like a predator. Yeah, more like a predator, more like a predator. That's a really good term predator desire for it. And he kept saying things to me like little things that were like, are you one of these people that cheat on your wife? Like I could just. Well, he didn't say that. No, but he knew about he knew about this poker game. And there was like a couple of things that he stated that I was just kind of like, oh,

This is a little sketch. So he's testing the waters. Yeah. He was like testing the water to see, yeah. Are you one of us? And I, I think what I did is I, I walked the line of like, oh, I know that game or I know that I know that person, but I didn't actually cross it. And then that gave him a little bit of trust with me to kind of go a little bit more. And I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure you know your wife.

How much of that is ego coming out, too? Like, why would he... I'm also just trying to, like, understand his... Like, why would I put myself in a situation in this double date where I'm exposing part of myself I'm trying to hide? I assume he was trying to hide the fact that he was having an affair. I don't think he was. I think also, I mean...

I definitely have a disarming quality to me when I meet people because I'm very I'm not really judgmental. I'm like a low judgment. So I have I have friends on every spectrum of everything. Right. So I think I give permission to people to just sort of be themselves and then they keep pushing and I'm still fine with it. And then they keep pushing and I'm like, OK, like it is what it is on there. But there's just like these cultural narratives. Like I was at a dinner once and

And I was with like six of my friends and one of my friends started like complaining about his wife. And I everybody else started to like it was like such a cool dynamic. Everybody else was like, yeah, you know, my wife does that, too. And it bothers me. And I looked at my friend. I was like, why don't you just get a divorce?

And he was like, what? I was like, just get a divorce. And he was like, obviously not going to get a divorce. I'm like, well, why are you sitting here bad mouthing your wives? Like, I don't have anything bad. I love my wife. I love spending time with her. Like, why are we doing this? And immediately the conversation switches to be like, yeah, you're right. Like, I love my wife for this reason. I love my wife for that reason. And it's just like.

I really believe, I hate saying this, but I do believe people are sheep in that regard. Where there's a narrative and if a powerful person just comes along and shifts the narrative, you see how quickly everybody else falls in line. And we're all on both sides of this. Sometimes we're the wolf and sometimes we're the sheep.

I know you sort of specialize in nonverbal, but is there like a way that we communicate about our partner that would be indicative of like common complaining about our partner versus like, oh, there's something seriously wrong here? Oh, totally. I mean, like, I think there's just this is like all the work that Gottman did, relationship labs and all predicting like signs of contempt and all these things.

This is a problem with relationships. Everybody has a different version of what a relationship is. So one of the reasons why me and my wife have been together for 12 years, we are together like 99% of the time. It works because both of us have the same definition for what a relationship should quote unquote be. So we view things through the same sort of lens. And a lot of conflict comes from when two people have different ideas of what a relationship should look like.

And there has to be like that negotiation between that. And I think that's hard for a lot of couples. And it's like, it's a good question before you get married. Like, you know, what are our characteristics of, yeah, what's an ideal relationship? What does it look like? Some people are like, no, I hang out with my friends. You hang out with your friends and we get together on the weekends. I've known couples that have been together for 45 years that have that paradigm.

To me and my wife, we're like, well, they're not that close. That doesn't make sense. But it doesn't matter. It's what their relationship should look like. My uncle gave me this test. I think it was like a decade ago now. And without fail, it has predicted every divorce. And the test was so simple. It was like, if you hang out with people...

And they talk to each other, but only in transaction and transaction being like you get groceries, you change the diaper, you like errands, you know, sort of like day to day life stuff. And they don't ask each other questions.

Like that is a huge red flag for predicting a problem. And it's actually enabled me to like intervene in some friends' lives and be like, hey, we just had dinner last night, but I noticed this thing. Is everything okay? Is there anything you want to talk about? And they're like, how did you know? And I'm like, oh, because like...

I'm sitting there and you're both talking to me, but you're not talking to each other. Oh, yeah. And, you know, on a one-off basis, that's fine. But like repeatedly, okay, well now I'm detecting a pattern and something is, something's up. There are so many patterns.

interesting, nuanced themes. I remember we used to do a bunch of studies in New York City and I had this one couple come in and they were like, "Oh, can you study us?" And I said, "Sure." So they come into the office and they sat down on a couch and I recorded them from like three different angles. And they're like, "What do you see?" I was like, "I'm not gonna say anything."

I'm going to leave the room. I'm going to go get lunch, sit here and watch your interaction and write down what problems you think we, you know, you have. And they did it. And it was like, they saw so many things. He's like, I don't really listen to her. I was looking at the video and she was speaking and I was just kind of nodding my head and distracted. And they both had, I was really impressed to see that level of awareness. But I think that

You know, video does in a world with so many different perspectives and perceptual differences. Video doesn't lie. It's just like raw data. And I think it's so helpful to like see yourself on video in a relationship. Why don't we do more of that in terms of like recording ourselves? Because I mean, I'm a big fan of it. But sure, there's going to be lots of comments on YouTube here. I mean, it's just, yeah, like sit down. And the truth is people like we'll talk about the observer effect with video and all that. It goes away in like 10 minutes.

Like if you have like a small iPhone, you forget about it and you're actually seeing patterns of behavior. And that's something I say to my wife a lot, like, oh, like let's get a video of it and see what it was actually like, right? 'Cause it's so difficult to just, you ask two people to recall an event, it's just wildly different. It's like, what? And then you show the video and you see that it's like somewhere in the middle of what those two stories were.

And I just find that fascinating. So I'm obsessed with video. I like the feedback. Well, if we're giving a presentation, we watch a video to like see ourselves articulation. So that's another big problem. So in presentations, we had a program called Dynamic Presentations. I used to do it for in New York City for like five years and a lot of corporate stuff around it. And people are obsessed with recording the person on stage. What's more interesting is recording the audience.

Because the truth is, I'm always asked, how did my presentation go? I don't know. Let's see the audience. A presentation is for that group of people. So what often happens is a lot of communication experts will watch like a presentation and they'll go, well, I think you should move your hands more or less, or I think you should speak up. Like they're doing that through their perceptual lens. They're not optimizing for the engagement of the audience.

So I used to record my presentation and the audience every third presentation for like three years. It was fascinating. Why don't we take that approach? I mean, comedians effectively take that approach without recording the audience because it's based on, oh, that joke got a laugh. I'm going to use that next time. That joke fell flat. I'm not going to use that next time. It's the feedback loop is instant. So that's how...

that was what was such the value. Like when I was teaching psychology at CUNY, I was speaking like 80 to 100 hours a week, both at my office and both instant feedback loop of what story worked, what story didn't work. Like did that land? Did that offend somebody? And you just start to develop this quicker repertoire of things that actually work. But that comes from that audience interaction. But most people when giving a presentation,

They're not even present enough to do that because they're so in their head about the presentation. So it's sort of a skill set that comes after you've been more comfortable being on stage to be able to process and sort of predict the behavior of an audience. What's the biggest thing that gets in people's way when they're presenting? Really just the social construction that a presentation is something different.

So it's got this whole cultural narrative. Oh, you have your big presentation coming up. It's hyped up as this different thing. You're just talking to a group of people and they're responding by shaking their head and nodding and you're sitting up there. I think that's the first construct that needs to be broken. And then also just people just don't put in the reps. That's something that just takes time. And most people work so hard for a presentation and they do it. And it's like, oh, it's flood of release where they should have just done it

Every day for the next three weeks do a presentation. It'd be so much better. What is putting in the reps mean? Does that mean? Crafting your story and positioning it for the audience. Does it mean your intonation? Like how do you actually go about working on that? Like how would you make me an expert presenter if you had three weeks and you had one hour a day of my time? So that's so cool that you did that. So my question is always be what was the constraint?

So if you said three hours a week, one hour a day of your time, the first week would probably be reps of just let's get you comfortable. So the thing is, a lot of nonverbal behavior stuff and movement, I have found reliably that the most effective version of someone is when they're the most comfortable.

Bar not every single time so the whole joke is people think I teach like oh Stan this would not like step one is get you to the level where you're the most comfortable where you feel most free and then build on top of that so I'd try to get you there first and I wouldn't be focusing on I mean it really depends if you're doing like a TED talk that was like 20 minutes I'd probably tell you just to rehearse it and get that down but we're doing an hour presentation or the most presentations that people have to do it would be all outlines repeat repeat repeat repeat and

And it's a careful balancing act to understand where you're at because some people with a lot of anxiety, I will know, or some people that are trying to get it right, I won't be focusing on little details.

It's a way more dynamic process. Like so some people that have like these facial things to getting better at presentations, like it's different for every person because some if someone you're telling someone, listen, you're moving your hands too much and they're going to get in their head about moving their hands too much. You start looking all weird. Yeah. And some people can take a cue and immediately change it. And other people just get them comfortable, just get them comfortable. And then using video.

But you're going to hear something else fascinating. So what do you show people? Video of themselves. I once worked with this woman. I hope she's hearing this because I love her, but not to call her out. So she gives one of the worst initial presentations I've ever seen in my entire life. She was extremely flat. She was like moving her hands. She literally spoke like this for an entire 20 minutes. And it was like painful to watch.

and at the end of the video i was like okay so let's see what we're working with and i put her video on her like projector and the first thing she says to me is like i need a nose job and it just shows you like that's where that person's perception is focused on like we're focused on these weird little different things that no one else recognizes or no one else cares about and i truly believe that the most world-class

best presenters are truly about their audience and not about themselves. They're not trying to come across a certain way. They're trying to like, I even feel that now, like I'm stepping more into my own self after the first 20 minutes. Like at first it's a little bit, you know, it's a little different. I'm trying to be more measured. Now it's more me coming out of it. And the truth is how do you get to that immediately and build from there and go right away into that. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about, um,

workplace and sort of power structures and social dynamics. How can you teach me to understand the power structure at work and social dynamics? How would you go about that? So power structures? Oh man, that's such a good question. Uh,

They are these invisible things. That's what I, when we talk about reading the room in a corporate structure, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about power structure, we're talking about permissions, all these things. The first way to do it is to do this exercise where you sort of do a decision tree of the potential, like show people what the potential landscape could be. So for example, let's say all of a sudden a new CEO gets pulled in.

And we want to say, okay, what is this CEO going through?

Is the CEO just pushed in by the PE company? Does the CEO have performance-based incentives? Like what are they trying to do? And just map out all what quote unquote is possible and then start using the data and evidence that's coming in on a daily basis to like cross out which one it is. And then sometimes just to straight up ask. I think that's something that a lot of organizations don't do. I can't tell you the amount of times where I'm just like,

So I have this really cool perspective because I work with often the entire C-suite. So like the COO, CTO, like everybody I work with. And it's like, you two need to talk about this because this is blocking your, you two need to talk about this. But the amount of communication that just doesn't happen at like a personal level or just a level that's like blocking decision-making, it's kind of crazy. I think organizations need to talk way more than they are in this siloed environment sometimes.

If you just were able to have those conversations, you would be able to navigate and see the power structures way easier. And people just don't have that social skill set, that the people skills to sit down with someone. And a lot of I've just seen every a lot of people get power structures. Oh, I'll give you a good one.

If you are falling in line with a power structure, it's often very difficult to navigate it. Meaning if it's like, oh my God, this person is this and this person is this and I'm just this, you're very rarely going to be able to see eye to eye with that person because you perceive them here and you perceive yourself here. And I feel like people do that a lot inside of organizations and it doesn't give them that creative freedom to actually read what's going on. Yeah.

Is the delta between where you are and where you perceive the other person, like, does that influence your how? I mean, just from, like...

Yeah.

And I look at why and they're like, I don't want to bother the CEO with this. I'm like, they said seven times this year, come to me with this specific kind of problem. Yeah, you're right, but...

I just don't know. You get in your head like that. How much of that do you think is cultural too? Because I worked with a CEO who said that, but the minute you came to him with a problem, he basically like scream at you. That's the kind of stuff that I correct. So that's the bulk of my, when you say something, but you're patting a lot of these people often just don't understand. A lot of executives don't understand the impact of their own behavior, right?

So I have met people that are wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people.

But yeah, the way they give feedback, oh my God, it's just ripped the person apart. And they're like, no, I love them. They're one of my best people. I think they're great. I'm like, well, let's take responsibility for what that interaction looked like. And that's why Zoom and video is so important for me. Because sometimes when you work with an executive or you work with anybody and you tell them something, they don't see it like the way that you described. But when you show them on video, yeah.

That feedback I was like listen go back 20 years in your career if you were given this feedback How would you feel they're like and I and I do this cool thing. It's the exercise that really works So, you know leadership Principles and all that stuff. I'm not there to tell somebody how to lead. I'm not there for any of that I'm there just to make sure that their intent is aligned with their behavior so I do this thing where I'm like close your eyes and imagine

You're at your funeral and everybody you've ever worked with in your entire life is there. What are the stories and things that you're saying about you? And I just make sure that those things are in alignment with their behavior. And they choose and solidify what those things are. And then I kind of hold them accountable to making sure that they're carrying out those things.

It's kind of interesting, right? Because it's almost like a destination analysis, which is like, there's a difference between getting what you want, and then wanting what's worth wanting. And then also, the way that you employ a strategy to go about getting that thing. So like, you have to want the right destination, and you have to know how to get it. But then also, it's like, am I getting it in a way that's

That I'm going to be happy with at the end of my life. And you can think of Ebenezer Scrooge. Yeah.

was mutually exclusive from a life of meaning, which he later determined, which is sort of like this deathbed sort of test, right? I'm calling it the Ebenezer exercise. I'll credit you with that because that's a perfect sort of analogy. And also about that destination principle. I think there's a major gap in leadership or organizational culture, that whole world between theory and application. Yeah.

So somebody reads a book about the radical candor or some like concept, and then the way that they apply it is completely different. So for example, some people just have like tonal aspects of their voice that society or 80% of people perceive as harsh. And they'll say, listen, so I'm just being totally honest here, but, and it's like, okay, that's coming across a little bit strong, a little bit this. And what I've been fascinated by is not everybody sees that.

Oh, yeah. So some people see it and some people don't. And I'll play it back for them and they go, I'm just giving them advice. And I'm like, you really don't hear the difference between that? And they're like, no. And that's why you get some people in an organization that are hyper literal and some that are more contextual and they clash. And that's why it's like you said one word answer. You said this. You said that. Back and forth. But it's all this just...

It's all this cool narrative of everybody seeing the world differently. And it's like my job to solve the puzzle of documenting that and bringing them together and show them. And that's usually the best step. Like, I really believe that

the personal like operating manuals that sometimes people I've seen some people do them that are so good and just like listen you hear my quirks hear my things about me you get it all out there first so that you create the narrative and not somebody else is imagining the narrative are there different techniques to enhance your communication I'm thinking specifically with people who are hyper literal because if you're not a hyper literal person you don't tend to think that way by default and

It's harder. So it's easier to deal with the people that are more contextual and lower them down than the hyper literal. It becomes like certain people on spectrums and multi-axial spectrums. I sometimes have worked with people that I have to like, yeah, it's basics, basic. And they're like, interesting. So I had a client once that, this is years ago. This is maybe like,

14 years ago in a bar 15 years ago in a bar in New York City at 3 o'clock in the morning not in a bar I'm sorry in a diner He walks into the diner and I was like on a double date and he walks into he walks in and he goes Blake How are and introduced everyone? Hey, how are you? How are you? How are you? And everybody starts hysterical laughing and I'm like good and our session later I was explaining to him like this is why the context was different and

And I'm drawing circles of all the layers of context in that dynamic. And he's like, okay, I understand it now. And I was like, it was inappropriate for that dynamic. And I have so much empathy for people that don't see the world that way because it's so, so, so hard. It's learned almost for people like that, right? It's like now next time he knows in that situation, but it's not intuitive for him. It's like a learned behavior and algorithm he's following. And it is intuitive for some people. And it's right now in this room, there's just this invisible norms. Yeah.

of how I should act on a podcast, how you should be like... And if you don't know those norms, you're sort of like ostracized. And sometimes one of the things that happens is these like hyper or really successful people who violate those norms get modeled

And it's like, whoa, like Elon Musk could violate all the norms he wants. Steve Jobs can too. But like you can't, you don't have that authority. You don't have that contextual understanding of who you are. So you have to sort of play the game in the beginning.

This always comes up with small talk. Like people hate small talk. I hate small talk. Well, small talk is a path to big talk. So you get like a couple seconds, a couple of minutes of small talk. You don't just walk up to someone and be like, hey, like, so tell me what's the biggest conflict between you and your wife right now? It's like, what? It's very off-putting, right? Like there's a gradual process. But if you don't understand those things, life is hard. Totally. What strategies can we use to enhance our nonverbal communication at work?

Our ability to communicate? Yeah. I think one, step one, obviously I've been repeating this over and over and over again, is get as much video as possible of you interacting. So everyone out there listening to this, if you work, I promise you, you have a good amount of video.

on zoom on whatever you just basically want to re-watch those videos and make sure that your intent is aligned with that with or without sound uh with definitely with sound what are you watching are you watching you are you watching other people's reactions so that's so the exercise of watching other people reacting to you is very valuable in the sense where you understand when you're losing people when people are disinterested when they're engaged so on and so forth but also

Understanding aspects of you. I believe that most people, you need somebody else to help you with this. People look at the things that don't matter. They'll say like,

I say like so much or I say um or I say ah, like you're missing the picture of what you're trying to sort of convey. So part of the process is like coming up with almost like a series of words that you'd want to, like how do you want to come across in this interaction? Well, I want to be enthusiastic. I want to be interested. I want to be to the point. And then making sure that your behaviors are in alignment with that and landing for the people in that way. But a lot of it is like breaking down video and just analyzing video. Like that's the best way.

way by far. - Okay, and if we don't have access to video for whatever reason? - If you don't have access to video, I would really, if I had to give you that, I would say I'd want you to record yourself, not in a work context, record yourself with someone that you have a true, unconditional, positive regard with, someone that you know is not judging you, that you're a close friend, and I'd like you to look at your tonal patterns, your movement, how you are, that's how you should be at work.

That's for sure. It's like 95% of people. And every once in a while, there's a certain percentage that's not that, but that's, I think, a good standard to follow. And do you consider writing nonverbal or is it verbal? Because we sort of like read it with that little voice in our head. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'll take nonverbal as everything. So all of our software analyzes language patterns. It analyzes tonality. And I go into...

You can't really separate nonverbal from verbal. Maybe the only place you could do this is poker and a couple of other things. The truth is we're always, so the model for how we read behavior is we're looking at behavior within a context and we're coming up the reason for why it occurs. If you don't have like words, you don't understand the context.

That's why I like a lot of things, a lot of these body language people take a 10-second clip and be like, you know, because my feet are sitting this way, that means this or that. And they just build this narrative. Words allow you to understand words.

the consistency of that narrative. So it's so much better to have the full picture, as much data as possible. I like that. Is there a way that we can look at our emails and evaluate our communication by sort of looking outside in or questions we can ask other people to evaluate how effective our communication is? So that's probably the best way is questions of asking other people.

But see, this is where it gets- What would we ask them? So this is where it gets interesting, right? So like you have to have a leadership style and a presence and a history of being the kind of person that could sit there and be like, hey, everyone, I'm really trying to improve how I am on emails. So I just want you to know, like when I send you an email, do you have any like weird stories of an email that I sent you that you thought I was a certain way or I was frustrated of a certain way? But a lot of leaders or executives, they can't even create the like space or the dynamic to do that. Most people be like, no, you're fine.

So like, I love these questions where we do all these like perception research, right? So you go like this, you say, how do you think that interaction went on a scale from one to 10? People are horrible at answering it. Like, do you like that person from a scale from one to 10? They're like, I don't know. But you ask somebody a question, would on a scale from one to five, how likely are you to invite this person to a dinner with your closest friends? And the answer is so easy for them to answer.

So I like questions that are about predictive type of things, right? Not about just your trait because it allows them to conceptualize and give a better answer. So I would be asking questions like, you know, on a scale from like, just tell me, let's go from one to five. How many times do you leave an email for me feeling frustrated? Because they can easily give you the answer instead of searching for it. And

But let's be real. A lot of people don't want to do that work. Yeah. Like they're just going to protect themselves from that. And listen, also, I think we have a problem in this kind of like self-help personal development world where I think a lot of, let's say like thought leaders and leadership and all, I think they're disconnected from what leaders actually go through.

And the reason why I'm saying that is, it's like all this stuff is easy in theory, but I see some of these people, like they're pulled in six different directions. Their board wants them to do this. Their stock is at this. This team is this. And I, it's so much harder than just like, oh, you know, be a little bit more happy in the morning. And I feel like, yeah,

You really, as like a coach, you have to feel like, you know, what's the 80-20? Like, what are the small things that you're going to do that are going to have the greatest impact on the team? And then also, I really do struggle with this in the sense that like, I've seen certain leaders be horrible and get incredible things done.

They violate every book ever written about leadership and work a team to complete death and play this Machiavellian game of just when they're about to fire, just about when they're about to quit, give them enough of reinforcement. And I see they're like the dark side of everything that I'm teaching. And I'm like, they know exactly what they're doing here. And I call them out and I'm like, you know exactly where they're doing it. And then you look at their KPIs and their metrics and how the organization is structured. And they're like...

They're actually in perfect alignment with how they should be acting. It's tricky. It's a tricky thing. And I don't think that's spoken about enough. Do you think all behavioral is contextual or environmental in that case? Because their environment is those KPIs. The environment is the culture. The operating environment of the organization is your environment. So the way to address that is to change the environment. Yeah, I think all...

optimal behavior is within a construct of your environment. So the more you have context, the more you understand an environment, the more your behavior can be designed or

to navigate that environment. Are there things that we can do in our environment that we control individually outside of the context of an organization that we can use to improve our behavior that come to mind for you? Set up cameras. Also, just set it up so that you win. I feel like certain structures and certain environmental...

just the way an office is integrated. I had worked for one person a long time ago that had like a desk and he had a really large desk and then there was a chair and he would, every time somebody came to the office, he would like walk behind his desk, like shake their hand and then bring them to like a couch setup where they were faced one-on-one and that's before Zoom and before COVID. This is how they did all their one-on-one sessions.

And it was just like a simple way of getting, making sure the person feels really heard because you're just aligned with them. Totally. And you're looking at them and you're facing that direction. I was like, huh, that's a really cool way of saying it. And I mean, we do this all the time with our kids, with friends. We grab our phone and like we're talking to them but are not really talking to them. Yeah. We're not.

There's a huge advantage to sort of being gained by like... I remember somebody said something who met Bill Clinton. And I was like... Everybody's got so many Bill Clinton stories. No, but... Well, this one's not... About this though. Yeah. Oh, wait. Well, so this was like... And I was like, oh, what did you take away from that? And this person like looked me in the eye and they said, I felt like the most important person in the room for 45 seconds. How did he do that? How do we create that? So...

The amount of people that have given me that build, I'm like, and I'm so curious because I've seen some footage of him in interactions. A close friend told me the story once of walking into a, he was with him and they walked into like a conference center and there was a cleaning lady cleaning.

She got really like I'm not supposed to be here and he walked right up to her and he looked at her with the level of presence and focus for two and a half or three minutes that people were like You know and part of me is this is like first there's definitely this halo or this thing of he's the president or yeah the United States, right but there's also these like nonverbal ways of just the piercing eye contact and the way that he looks deep into your soul and it's there's definitely a balance of both

I am so curious though. That was what my friend said. He's like, he never broke eye contact. Like he was just very intense, but it was like a warm intensity. If that makes sense. Not like a, there's also, I think this is all about that perceptual bell curve. So I think there are qualities in tonality, the way the gaze, the shape of someone's face. It's kind of like these, these whole old ancient process, ancient practices of like determining if somebody is going to be a criminal or not based on their facial structure. And,

And the interesting thing about that is like our culture supports that. Like William Dafoe is usually the villain because he's got that really like angular sort of like type of face. Like he was perfectly casted in one of the Spider-Man movies, right? And there's certain things about like there's a professor out of UPenn that does a lot of stuff about impressions and the structure of someone's face. Oh.

And like that stuff's an advantage in life. Like some people have a face that's going to be more trustworthy or a face that's going to be more aligned with attraction or whatever it is. So I definitely think it's multivariable, right? There's so many different variables. And when they come together, you get that like really gifted communicator that just has that ability. But I will tell you one thing. So one of the big things that I've noticed in the best communicators is they have range. So they have the ability. There's a lot of...

shifts in their tonality. There's a lot of movement. You kind of can't predict what the next word is going to be. I just think there's something that the brain loves that. It loves the chaos. Because it keeps you guessing. Exactly. It's like autocomplete in Google. Exactly. No, that's the best way of thinking of it. Like you know what's going to happen and then...

I think there was one cool study, I think out of like UPenn that found that like people that talk faster are listened to at a greater level, even though what they're saying is nonsense. Like they're just not, like that happens to me every once in a while. Like I'll listen to somebody and I'll be like, I sounded really good. And then I replay it and they say the same thing three times. I even catch myself doing that. I was like, I just said that the same thing three times. Like, but I'm passionate about it. So it sounds good, you know? Say it with confidence. Yes. I mean, that's,

How are we on the other side of this though? Like one of the biggest things that you can do in life is pick out people who are incompetent but sound competent from competence. How do we go about doing that? So it's tricky. It's a tricky one. It's in the sense that I believe that certain people speak with, I was like a lot like this when I was younger. I would talk about things so confidently that I knew nothing about.

And my wife really changed my perspective on this. When we first started dating, she was like, you have a responsibility with that level of conviction. And I was like, you're 100% right. Like, I definitely like, I'm not really sure. So it's like, this is my opinion about this thing, but not like it's absolute fact and nobody else. And I think when you find somebody like that, I like to look for I don't knows. So whenever I talk to any expert and there's always an answer, sometimes it's nice to be like, oh, I don't know.

Or there's not always an answer to something, right? They don't always, because I feel like there's a compulsion to always contribute or always to be confident. And the truth is, it's just not possible. And then also there's just little traits of humility of when someone was wrong or how they were wrong or why they were wrong that come up in language and are not prompted.

Like it's refreshing to hear an expert say I was really wrong about that. I think this is one thing that like Huberman does so well of just being this kind of like senior, very distinguished professor, tons of research, but has this like boyish kind of passion for science and for that. And I think that comes across as that's the new expert.

One person that's not just I have all the answers and trust me and I'm right, but one person that's able to have humility and adapt over time.

I like that. Are there other things that stand out in terms of identifying incompetence or even deception? And I'm relating those two because sometimes people are trying to deceive us and sometimes they're deceiving us in part because they're playing, you know, fake it till you make it sort of thing where it's not necessarily intentional deception, but it is sort of like masking a base level of incompetence. Yeah, so that's...

So I think the best way... So on the nonverbal behavior spectrum, dating is probably the easiest paradigm to understand. And deception is the hardest because it's so multifaceted. It's so complex. I don't know if there ever will be a system that can predict whether or not someone's lying or not because it's a nuance that's very difficult to encapsulate. I think the easiest way is to throw out fake information and see how people respond. So I've done this.

In academic settings where I meet someone that I just I think they're a little bit full of it So I just like make up studies I'm like have you read that like Dillington study in like 2014 and they're like about that and then I'll say something like yeah I think I've read it and I'm like, yeah, well they did the double blinded it and like yeah Yeah, it was it was great. I just made it up. Yeah, and this is the trick though It's not to make a judgment call about that person. So I don't do something like that and go liar, how can it but I

I know that in terms of how they're willing to be seen, they're willing to sacrifice that for being read in on the no, right? And they want to be perceived that way. So it's an interesting sort of character thing. And then there's questions like...

do you want your head of business development, your salesperson to respond that way? It gets interesting, but I think that's the easiest way. - 'Cause ultimately, I mean, there's a very innate biological function in us that is self-preserving and the self-preserving instincts that we have mean that we want other people to like us because for thousands of years,

If we weren't liked, we died. And by liked, I mean we got kicked out of the tribe. So sometimes we would fake things, I would imagine, to stay within the tribe rather than get excommunicado from the tribe, which is certain death. Yeah. People have to be reminded, we're so bad as humans of looking at time. But the amount of time we've been around on this planet, utilizing exactly what you're talking about,

is like this, and then the time that we're navigating all these crazy structures, it's like a teeny, teeny, teeny, teeny, teeny thing. And it plays such an important and valuable role in how we function. My wife owns a sleep optimization company, and she's all about circadian rhythms.

And very anti these lights, right? And what's so fascinating is like, if you look, we have had our sleep dictated by the sun in the same way for so long. And just over the past like 90 years or 80 years or whatever it's been, completely altered. That's so, so, so new. And just we are, the time that we're going into right now is the most socially complicated time.

Ever. There's nothing ever like it. We've got, you know, tons of political everything. Everything is so nuanced right now that there isn't. It's not just about your survival. It's about survival and looking good when you post this Instagram post and making sure it doesn't offend this, this, this, this. It's getting more complex, not less.

And it's happening quick. It's like that, you know, hockey shaped curve of just like, whoop, complexity is driving up. Well, we did that right before this started. I moved a book, right? Because I didn't want that book in YouTube and I didn't want people commenting on that book. Totally. My perception of how people would respond to it. Yeah. I mean, all these weird things. Like I'm wearing two different socks right now, two different kinds of socks. And I was like, oh, maybe I'll cover my sock. And they're like, I don't care about my sock. Like we do that. Like we just, we, and we...

We over index these things that other people don't even notice. So there's when I was teaching psychology at CUNY, I had this. So I was wearing the same J. Crew pants every day because they're really comfortable. And I started like, I'm just wearing the same pants like every single day. And I have like two pants. And I was like, I think people are going to know. But I couldn't find these pants anymore. Yeah.

So it was in my head about these pants and my students looking at my pants. So I was like, you know what? Let me ask. So I basically set up this cool thing where I was like, hey, everyone, like a month into the course, I had like 140 students or whatever. I was like, there's something about me that hasn't really changed.

What is it? And I had everybody like fill out a little form and they gave it to me and only one person knew. And guess what? They worked at J.Crew. And they said, you really love our pants. You must have so many. And it was just this moment where I was like, no one cares.

No one really cares. And I think we spend so much time on those things and not enough time on connection and not enough time on really like getting the other person, getting out of our own head into what's like actually occurring. So it's interesting because I have a different approach to this, which is I believe nobody cares in day-to-day life and interactions. A video lasts forever. So what people care about today and what somebody is going to pick out in 10 or 15 years is

are two different things. And then that adds like a layer of complexity to thinking about how things play across time or not about what people remember or not about their experience in the moment. But now I can go back and analyze that video and like nitpick everything. Well, this is my big problem too. So I've had to get a lot of personal coaching with my coaches about video. So if I had to give a presentation in Madison Square Garden,

Tonight, I'd be ecstatic. But if I have to make a video that I know that's going to be out there on it, I overthink, I overanalyze. I mean, there's videos of me saying things. Because also, I mean, I've changed my own opinions on things. Totally. So like I have videos out there that I made in 2016 about Poker Tells.

that over the past eight years, I've completely changed my mind and thoughts about that. There's videos of me saying things that I completely disagree with today. And I, oh yeah, I struggle with the same thing. I think I have to go the, what's the Rick Rubin? Rick Rubin had great quote about like a creative process is like you're creating something for the time.

Yeah. But I struggle with the same thing. I like video of just like, Oh no. Of like how this is going to be perceived or, you know, I'll be more effective at this kind of conversation a year from now. This is my second podcast in God knows how many years, like those type of things. But yeah,

Do people really care? I think we care more than they do. You brought up dating. What are the things that we can take away from this conversation and apply to dating? Whether we're a guy, a girl, it doesn't matter. How can we read into...

the first few interactions with somebody from a, am I trying to determine if I want to spend my life with this person or see them more? Or how do we, how do we use this information in that specific context? Yeah. Dating is a tricky one because dating is this, like, it is this weird game still. Like in the beginning, it's this game of like delayed attraction and delayed gratification. And it's, there's so much nuance to it. I'll tell you one thing. I think that,

So I used to do this. I used to teach a dating class in New York City. And one of the cool things I would do is I'd ask people in the room, like, what's their ideal person? And they'd, like, write a list on that piece of paper. And then I'd go, okay, the last three relationships in your life, how many of them met that criteria? And they would all, like, laugh and it would never be one-to-one. Right. I think people have this real weird concept of...

it's almost like mimetic desire like there's a desire of what you think you want but what you actually want and i feel like the first step in really dating is like what do you really want and for a super young super somebody's young in their 20s or whatever you don't know it's going to take some time to sort of like figure it out

But I think doing that work of like, what makes me happy? Like, what am I looking for in somebody else? And not going for the traits of just, I mean, attractive is an instant quality for the most part, right? You see somebody, you know if they're attractive or you're attracted to them or not. But there's sort of like these deeper things. Like I remember like me and my wife met. It was so funny. We met in like 20, 12 years ago. She met in my class. I had a class called Body Language Explained. She was in the second class ever. And she walks in and I was like, okay.

what do we got here and during the she sits down and then during during our conversations this uh she on my bookshelf she said you know you remind me of like you remind me of like tim ferris a little bit like a new york city tim ferris and i was like

How's the attractive girl? This was before Tim was like Tim Ferriss, right? It was just kind of like four hour body had just came out or four hour work week. And I was like, and she really read that book. And she's like, oh, I love him. I love his books. And I was just kind of like, huh.

Like it was this qualifier that was like different. And I was like, yeah, I think I'd like to, I never thought that I never had the concept that my partner was going to share my interests at that age. Right. I just, cause the women I had met weren't interested in this kind of stuff. And I met somebody that was like really interested in self-development. And I was like, I didn't realize how important this is to me. And it was so funny. Cause then it was all these things that are like truly important to me at the time and continue to grow. That solidified this sort of relationship. And I,

And then there's all the other game type stuff that you got to do. And it's even very difficult to even articulate. I can tell you what not to do. I can tell you, try not to be someone you're not. Everybody's got a song playing and sometimes you just need to dial the volume up and down. Some people try to play a completely different song. So they try to become someone completely different to be more of a chameleon for that person. And after three or four dates, it's just like...

This is not really me. You don't want to be too much yourself and too authentic and too straightforward. But it's funny. Our first date, my first study ever was on dates. So I rented a restaurant in New York City. This was in 2008 in the subprime mortgage crisis. I put on an ad on Craigslist, $50 to set you up on a 30 minute date. I got like 300 applications and I set up a series of dates. People came in, 30 minute date, and then the guy would leave and I would ask what's going on. And we found that the

What's so interesting is when you show people these dates, what they perceive to be the best date is not the best date.

So the best date is the one that was a little bit more awkward, a little bit weird, but it had more depth to it. And those people connected at a much deeper level. The surface ones, they look because and then you also see all people's biases. So you see, I show people two people in a date and like in one, the female is by society standards far more attractive than the male. And people immediately don't think that she's interested in him because of that reason.

So they just met you projecting all your stuff onto the world around you every single second. And that really showed you. Are there questions we can ask on dates that are more revealing of who the other person is? I don't, I don't, I, if the best paradigm for dates is storytelling, never questions. Because when you fall into this question and all right, so if we take,

If we write a story out, let's say you told me like before we started this, you're telling me a story about your kids. Right. And we list that out. There were so many threads of connection between me and you in that story. It would have been impossible for you to do that in a question and answer. So like even when I was dating people, when I was like helping people with dates, I would say start off with story. So as soon as you get in the table, I'm just like, hey, how are you? It's like the craziest thing just happened.

Or just get into some sort of story. Story are, it still is the single most powerful communication tool, bar none. The problem is people are now in our society going into performance storytelling, which is a lot different than social storytelling. So performance storytelling is the, when I was seven years old,

Something happened that changed the course of my life. And it's kind of like, I find it icky. A real story is just telling a story like you tell your friends, but it has a beginning and has an end. I find that tell more stories in dating. It will really show you how you connect to someone. That's fascinating advice. How do nonverbal styles work across cultures? No, they're so different. The trick is this. So I have this thing called the anywhere on the planet approach. And the trick

Sort of concept is you can be dropped anywhere in the planet and you could observe and you can look at things so you can look at like the proxemic differences between a Midwestern interaction versus the Middle East Middle East people they talk quicker together The behavior will be perceived as maybe a little bit more aggressive in the way that I move in this it's a cultural construct It's how they interact. It's not aggressive to that not aggressive to them. They're fine in in New York City

Way I was raised, around my friends, we were brutal to each other, constantly making fun of each other, insulting people left and right. It was part of the cultural construct. Or even the way you walk in New York. Oh, I mean, still. You can pick out a tourist just by how they're walking, right? I mean, still to this day, everywhere I go, I'm like, can you hurry up, hurry up.

Exactly. Because you can't prompt. Yeah. Like, what are you doing? There's like six. I still get frustrated. How does one person take up the whole sidewalk? Like those kind. So that's one of the interesting things. Like now I just get like really interested. So I see someone on the elevator and there's two people and they're blocking the other side. And I'm just like, you really don't have the concept that other people are. And I don't think people do. I don't think people have that concept.

Theory of mind that other people are interacting this world and it's why it's so infuriating for the people who do have that But I just don't like even on the plane today. Somebody was literally holding back yesterday everybody is walking on this line and they're trying to get their little luggage out and they just and then their wallet falls and they have to take their wallet out and Tuck it into there. There's a world happening around you. What's going on? and

That's like my one prompt for everybody listening. It's like there's a world happening around you and I think it's very healthy to sometimes make your behavior about others and not yourself.

So how can you optimize your behavior for the people around you as opposed to what you're going through? It's a very helpful exercise for people that are in their head. And I think the best communicators and the people that are the most well-liked are consciously doing this. They're putting other people first. And it's just sort of like a reaction or a way of doing it. I mean, I walked in here and I was like, just as a default approach, they were unloading gear. And I was like, hey,

Do you need help? And I picked up a stand and brought it in. Like it just, because I know what it's like to carry all these damn stands down the block. It's just putting others first. It can change your life and change what you get back. You just can't do it from a place of trying to get something. Like it's super weird if all of a sudden I bring this stand in and I'm like, hey guys, I have a shoot after this. Were you willing to da-da-da-da-da? Because I was like, oh, I see where it's going, right? Because now it's insincere. It's totally insincere, right? There's an order to it. And I think...

Approaching life from that perspective, I promise you, I always say this, you can never measure the ROI of a social interaction. You have no idea what one interaction will lead to. I mean, I went to a meetup and I met you and now I'm here, right? Like just never know what one thing is going to do. So it makes sense that you want to show up in a way that's about others as much as possible in these interactions because it comes back to...

It comes back. And even if it doesn't come back, I tend to think most people feel better about themselves knowing they're for others than for themselves. My good friend Peter Kaufman has a saying, which is go positive and go first. And you really unlock the world in a way that you can't even anticipate the second, third, fourth, fifth order consequences of that.

But his theory is most people don't go positive, go first. They want to go positive, but they want the other person to go positive first. So they sit around waiting for people to recognize their potential, for the world to give them what they're owed. And because they're doing that, nothing happens because there's no action. So there's no response. That's absolutely genius. And in my opinion, that's what leadership is.

So leadership is that stepping up and doing that. It's not waiting for it. I'm going to lead. And I love it because like everybody can be a leader. You ever been like on an elevator and it's like awkward and like the person who speaks up first and everybody laughs. It's like leadership right there. You broke the cultural norm and you said something. I always get in there sometimes and I'm like, oh, it's the awkward elevator silence. Perfect. Everybody laughs. Laughs instantly. Right.

I want to switch gears a little bit. What's the Rockefeller method? Okay, so I read, I think it was Titan, the book. And there was a lot of lessons in that book. But there was one story that fascinated me. And it was John D. Rockefeller was in an oil barreling facility. And he was watching his group of people barrel.

barrel these oil barrels and like back in the day you would take tar and you'd put tar all around the barrel and then you'd put it and you'd hammer it and he's sitting there watching this and he's going why do you use nine or ten or whatever pieces of tar and they were like i don't know mr rockefeller it's just what we do and it was and he was like well can you find out do it do like a little study and find out how much can you do it without without ruining the integrity of it

And I was like, that's absolutely fascinating. Like that way of thinking. And it's so cool to be like, just Rockefeller sitting there as like Titan of industry, looking at this really small process and being like,

How can we optimize that? So after reading that, I made this like Rockefeller method internally where every quarter I would sort of view things from that perspective. Right. And it comes up in weird like sass ways right now where it's like, oh, wow, we spent a lot of money on this. Like reach out to them and see if we could maybe get a bulk discount. And the amount that comes back from that method is absurd. Like just it just works. And then also just think about it like in my own life. Like where am I putting extra tar on that I don't need to put tar on?

And it's so helpful because I am a very big control person.

do-it-myself ethos. It's often hard for people to work for me because I'm like, I'll just do it. I'll just do it. And I have to almost get people around me that are like, listen, the thing I value the most is when you say, no, I'll do it and I'll do it better than you. And then you back that up. And I need that sort of culture around me. But the Rockefeller method was very helpful for that. What else did you take away from that book, Titan? Or lessons from Rockefeller? So many. I found the...

When he was discussing how he didn't know how to give away his wealth, I thought that was like the most interesting problem ever. He's like, I need to build a whole, I don't know how to do this anymore. And how people were constantly asking just the, the ruthfulness of some of it all of just the early monopolies were not a thing. And,

and just squeeze out, squeeze out, squeeze out everything. I found that really interesting. Yeah, I mean, the funny thing is the thing I take away most from that book is that one story, is that Rockefeller method out of everything. Also, I learned this in graduate school. I had a really good professor. I wish I remembered his name, but he...

I was teaching, it was like a terrorism class or something like that. And he, the way we did it was we had to read six books in the class. Terrorism. Yeah. So I got like my certificate in terrorism studies. Okay. Cause I went to John Jay, which was a criminal justice school. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. It was really cool. We had like people from, uh,

intelligence agencies come and give presentations and do all these things. So what he had us do is he had us read like six books. And the only assignment for the entire class was to read a book and take five passages out of the book, highlight it and write why they're important to you.

And genius. I was like, it's asked. I still do that to this day. So I still try to like, I have like a Kindle connection where I just like highlight certain things because you highlight so much and then it all goes in one ear out the other ear. But if you highlight five things that could actually improve or impact your life in a certain way or change your perspective, so much more tangible value from a book. So tell me your workflow. You go from Kindle to Notion, if I remember correctly. Yeah. Good. Kindle to Readwise, Readwise to Notion.

Okay. And then what do you do with it? So like I have this different colors mean different things. So I'm trying to improve my writing right now. So blue is a, I like the way a sentence or a paragraph is structured. White,

Red is I need to do like more research on this. Yellow is one of those things that I want to sort of like take away from a lifetime perspective. And I've been trying to also have a difficult time retaining a lot of what I read. I'll remember aspects of this day for the rest of my life. Like I'm very good at like experiential memory.

But like things just go in one ear out the other ear. So I've been doing a better job of like highlighting things that I want to remember. And I've been I'm wanting to use this like Japanese method of flashcards. It's just basically create flashcards for my events. So it's hard to keep things. I remember when I used to teach, I used to like have all these like cool things in my head that I could pull from. And now that I'm doing more like podcast, like podcasts.

i'll know a ton of researchers that i could reference but i forgot their names yeah so i'm like yeah a person from upenn like i'd rather know their name so just trying to be more intelligent about how i remember the sources and the things that are leading up to it and then there's just certain like people or writers or authors that i use as like anchor points like one of them is like robert skpolski like uh how why zebras don't get ulcer determinism behavior he's like while he's deep in

biology, he's pretty cross-disciplined. Like he'll pull from different areas. So it sends you down all these rabbit holes. And I like to like document it in the best way that I possibly can. But I think AI is making that a hell of a lot easier now. Well, let's switch gears to AI. You're a master researcher. I'm curious about your process around using chat GPT to get up to speed on something or how do you leverage AI to go about learning a new subject?

Yeah, it's ridiculous. Because six months ago, I was like, I don't know. It would just make things up, and now it's great. So one of my big things is I say I have a prompt that if I'm looking at an academic discipline that I don't know a lot about, I say I want you to imagine this academic discipline as the branch, and I want you to imagine the subcategories as the –

I'm sorry, as the, not the branch. I want you to imagine the base of the tree as the discipline, the branch as a subdiscipline and the leaves as the academics that correspond to that. And it does it for you.

So like it goes into neurobiology. Like I've been really interested in predictive processing, which is this sort of universal theory for how consciousness really is, like how we process our world. And it's a rabbit hole to say the least, right? So it has all these different philosophical approach, all of that. In order to understand that world, I need to understand the bigger macro principles behind it and like who the key players are in it.

And I mean, you used to have to do that research or have a research team and have somebody like do this. And now I literally do it in a couple of prompts. It's absurd. It's like absurd for workflows. So then what do you do with it? You have the leaves, you have the people's name. And then I try to look for, so I try to look for what are the three biggest sources of conflict?

So what are they disagreeing about? Like, where's the big fight in predictive processing? Now, do you look for that or are you asking ChatGPT? I've lately, I've been asking ChatGPT and the responses are... Pretty good. It's pretty good. The problem, so what I, I sort of back-tested this and did it on things that I have an intimate knowledge about, right? So I was like, what are the discrepancies of research in the universal of facial expressions and emotionality? And I'm like, oh, whoa, okay.

But I did it like six months ago and it wasn't, oh, whoa, it was bad. I was like, you just made up a person. This is not real. This is misappropriated. It is getting considerably better to the point of where I'm really trying, starting to trust this tool. In six months from now, I think I'll have full confidence in these things. And also you could do like cool things. Like we have a pretty robust database of all like the PDFs on nonverbal behavior from every academic journal that I've just been collecting. I could build my own little language model on that and just ask questions and query that. I mean, there's different ways of doing it. But yeah,

I mean, AI has helped me with behavioral coding more than anything else.

So I started this other company called behavioral robotics what the goal is to teach machines to read human behavior Because if reading human behavior is all about these complex decision trees There's no reason from a first principle perspective that a machine can't do the same thing in fact It should be way better than we should be way better because the camera on you is not just Blake's worldview It's all these modeled out world views that can predict and understand and I think it can be something really special It's gonna take a lot of time to get there but um

You know, my first big study on beyond tells I spent like a stupid amount of money, like maybe quarter million dollars manually coding. Like we counted 550,000 blinks, somebody. So we had a team of like 70 people sit there and every time someone blinked, they clicked M on a keyboard and it got cross validated and made sure it was right. And all that's not anymore. My machines do it. They just run it. Amazon Web Services, every blink exactly when it happens. Accuracy is incredible. It's it's amazing.

So how are you using it aside from that? Like, what else are you doing with it? Because you had some interesting takes on like how you're leveraging AI. Yeah. So like I am using it to develop inventories and scales to better predict people that have social challenges. So for example, like we're building something right now that's like a facial heat map. So basically it could understand when I'm saying, so I'm having a language just by words, right? So basically it's,

Our system takes all your movement and breaks down to raw data. Coordinate data, so like where the hands and fixed points of the hands are moving. Facial data. And a lot of this stuff is you can do it open source, but we're starting to refine it. So we're starting to understand like the composition of wrinkles in people's faces and then understanding how their facial movement changes the wrinkles to better classify behavior.

And we know every word that everybody says at every second it says. So then in interactions, we could easily create summaries and inventories for like, this is something where this person should have shook in their head or shown some sort of facial reaction, but they didn't.

So a great example of this is a personal example. My dad passed away like literally two weeks ago from a two year battle with ALS. Right. So horrible disease, horrible. But to see how people handle death and react to death from my level of expertise has just been really fascinating. So some people are like, oh, so like, why aren't you coming? Oh, my dad passed away. And they don't have the mimicking, like the empathy, like, I'm so sorry. They don't know how to do that.

they're like oh okay and then i'm like and i have to know so i'm like listen in that moment you just i just feel really weird about death i'm like okay thanks but you should probably tell people that because that's going to impact yeah so we can use machines to sort of identify that right we could basically know that like there's a low level of facial animation in this person's face when this person said something that there should have been social coordination and that's the truth like

like all these like i mean so it's almost like blind spot identifying for people because it's like hey you should have responded in this one way you responded in a different way

That's not a judgment on how you responded, but we're going to tell you how that's perceived. Exactly. So everything we do is about perception, not meaning. The biggest problem with this industry of nonverbal behavior and body language is it's pushed towards meaning, not perception. And the truth is, it's just understanding that your behavior is outside the distribution of what would be perceived as...

socially relevant and that's a lot more complex like all those like but there's also another angle to this as we keep talking about this this is amazing for for classifying behavior our society progresses because of people who are outside of the yeah

Like on an individual basis, it might be very detrimental to you on a societal basis. It's hugely advantageous to society to have people who operate outside the norms. So I wonder, like, to what extent if we try to rein people in to be more normal, we're actually giving up.

Sort of we're almost putting a ceiling on progress. Yeah. So this is my whole thing. So we want to be to the right side of the bell curve, not the left. Yeah. So I'm never pushing people towards normal. I'm getting them to understand normal, to be themselves in the most powerful way as possible and to make sure they don't have behavioral blind spots that are completely going to be like really ostracized by society. Like, okay, you can't do that kind of thing. But I, there's nothing more that I love when a person is just themselves and

and just themselves like it and that's a very attractive quality that's like that's the definition of charisma in a lot of ways like somebody just walks in the room and they they own it you're like who is this person like they must be someone they must be something but the truth is first you want to understand what normal is before you can break normal right like that's how you know you're doing something that's on the right side of the bell curve and i say that because a

When you try something that's on the right side of the bell curve and it doesn't work, you become the left side of the bell curve. So that's why you're always trying to push in the right way. Yeah, I like that a lot. Are there any other things you use ChatGPT for?

I should use it more and more. I mean, we use, I mean, I'm using chat BT to build some of them. This is kind of meta, but I'm using chat GT to build some of the language models that index and label communication. Cause it's phenomenal at that. So, so for example, I was like trying to create a mechanism for determining assertion in text.

So I said, I posted in chat GPT like 300 separate like words, not words, phrases that were from a conversation. And I said, I want you to create an inventory on a scale from one to five measuring assertion. First of all, what do you think is the opposite of assertion? And it's like, oh, probably passive. So, all right. So assertive and passive rank all of these. It was phenomenal at it.

it like perfectly mimicked my like what i perceive to be nuanced understanding of like the way someone structures a phrase and then you ask it i said okay better yet give me the rationality behind why

and it was like because this answer is a little bit short and the other person's a little bit larger and it's and i'm like yeah you got it yeah it's phenomenal but it goes into like hundreds of details that we can't even exactly we can't even begin and like to me this is my world of nuance so i'm like oh this thing gets it so i'm using it i can do that to build out inventories like super quickly like it would have taken a lot of time and effort to do that i'd probably hire some like

some PhDs to like sit there and blah, blah, blah. Now it's just like, it's incredible. I don't know how else to describe it. I mean, yes, it's not AGI. Yes, there's so many other things. Yes, there's flaws. Yes, there's this. But as a tool, it is incredible. You use coaching as a tool. You have a lot of coaches. Tell me about the process you use to select coaches and what's the difference between

a great coach and a good coach for you? That's a great question. Okay. So process is not so much. I always look for people that either I have had some sort of experience with. I like to follow people also, or I like to be coached by people that I believe are living in alignment with their values.

Like, I know coaches out there in the world that I'm like, you're saying that, but your whole team hates you. Like, how could you ever coach that? So I'm looking for that first. Do they show up? Because I tend to stop listening to somebody if I don't see that they're teaching something and not applying it. I also just like maybe like a tougher coach.

I want somebody that's going to call me out on my bullshit because I can be very convincing and I can argue and I've been in a stop. That's bullshit. Like one of my coaches, um,

jocelyn hermitage she is very quick to call me out on anything she like that doesn't sound right like she just gets to the point and gets the heart of what's going on and my other coach john michael morgan is very good at saying like well you said this two weeks ago and now you're not saying this like i think it's very difficult to get people to hold us accountable and for us to be our word and all that and then also i just coaches for other things like

running and I just like coaching. If you're a coach and you don't have three coaches, you should stop being a coach. Well, it's really interesting, right? Because it's a shortcut to sort of

expertise in a way which is like they don't have the expertise they shouldn't be a coach but from your point of view it's like I can hire a coach who's done this taught it I can get up to speed rather quickly no matter what the subject is whether it's holding me accountable or like learning how to run longer distances or whatever objective I'm trying to achieve I now have access to sort of a better quality of thinking than I do in my immediate vicinity 100% and there's so many different and also just like

I'm at point A. I want to get to point B. And I want to get to point B, but I want to minimize the suffering that I'm getting at point B. Find people to help me along that way. It's also my biggest. So if I were to go back, I always say this. I would go back 21 years old and it was like, what advice would you give your 21 year old self? I would say get a coach. But my 21 year old self would probably tell my 38 year old self to grow up. I don't even know.

off. I don't need. Yeah, exactly. Right. Well, let's go back to that a little bit. I did want to touch on this before we wrap this up, which is you were a terrible student. Yeah. Up until university. Yeah. What changed? I felt like a complete failure. I think I had this identity that I was a smart person and I went to school. And at this moment where this kid next to me was going to West Point, kids to the left was going to Harvard and

And I was like, I can't believe I just like wasted this whole thing. And I was like, this is when everything changes. And literally it was the, it was a massive identity shift for me. I had two big identity shifts that, that moment when I shifted and when I started teaching psychology, those are the two big things that shifted me. Go back to high school. Yeah. What was the shift? I was just like, I'm going to take school very seriously. I'm going to go to Harvard. I'm gonna get my JD MBA. I made a decision that this is what I want.

And it went a completely different way, but I still worked like that. Then your actions aligned with that identity? Yeah, 100%. Like I was sitting, I remember vivid conversations with my mom. She's like, Blake, like what's the difference between like a 95 and an 88? I'm like, you don't understand. Like I need my GPA to be four. It was like the first time I really like applied myself to something. I mean, except for like maybe gaming or a couple of other things that I did when I was younger. But yeah.

I overcorrected to say the least. And I was like stressed and dealt with a lot of other things. And I think I calibrated it like 21 or 22 to like, okay, now I know not to. And also there's just like weird systemic things. So in like City University, if anybody's still going there, like CUNY has the weirdest grading system where an A is 92 and above from a numerical point. So there's no point in getting 100

Or a 93. There's no difference. So like if you're studying to get 100 on a test, it's stupid. Like study for a 90. Get 90s across everything. Be nice to the professor. You'll get an A. So it was just like seeing all this type of stuff. And then also like...

Being in school had me like question a lot about psychology question a lot about research I learned how to critically think and then I applied that critical thinking to that Which I think was what you're supposed to do. Totally But I'm like this study seems kind of like bullshit like there's not that many people here and like what's going on and it really opened my eyes to like the flaws of research and how data can be manipulated I had a very

early experience with that where i had a my professor was an adjunct and he was the head of data analysis at the mta at the time and i had just done a study in my like experimental design class and i was like yeah i'm doing this study he goes you seem really happy with your study i says yeah he's like give me the data set i vividly remember handing him a flash drive that had spss my data set he goes what do you want it to show i was like significance of course and he's like watch this and literally 10 minutes later he's like there you go

And it blew my mind. It blew my mind. That man blew my mind about how data could be manipulated. And he taught me at a very young age. He was like, this was happening everywhere around. And he gave an entire class on how data is manipulated in day-to-day life. And I remember...

Being like, oh my God, like this is so cool. Like this is such a... Well, imagine now, right? You just uploaded to ChatGPT and you're like, I want to show this. Give me the logic. Give me the reasoning. Lay it out with references. And you got a draft paper right there. Oh, that's another ChatGPT point. So I probably spent maybe $150,000 in hiring data scientists to clean and to produce dashboards for BeyondTel's.

Chat GPT, I could have done it all in a weekend. 20 bucks. Yeah. Just sitting there. Insights are incredible. Yeah. I like the point about not, you know, after 93, it doesn't matter. So you might as well just optimize for 93. But that's how, this is a systemic problem in organizations. Well, so set the metrics and you're like, oh, okay. So I need to do this more than this if I want to move up, right? Well, so this is interesting. One of my kids came home and he had a science fair project.

And I was like, oh, that's an interesting topic. And it didn't seem like something he was super interested in. I was like, why'd you pick that? He's like, well, if I pick what I wanted to, I'd probably win. And then I'd have to present at like the regional science fair. And I don't want to present at the regional science fair, but I want to get a good grade. But I don't want to get like a really good grade. So he's like, he's already thinking in terms of like optimizing for, it's a really interesting approach. I mean, that's just like a sign of,

Hyper intelligence in my opinion like the ability is well No, but that's like the joke where a lot of people was like a lot of wealthy people would be like, oh I wasn't smart I was lazy and I'm like, yeah, but laziness in yeah, that's a smart sophistication, right? I get to interview the best people in the world. How can I ask better questions? Oh

Well, these were really good questions. So one of the things I'm doing right now, I can do it on you. So we're doing a thing on how to ask better questions. So we're taking some really good question people. Like one of the people that I've seen evolve is Tim Ferriss, his ability to ask questions in a certain way. And we basically take every single interview he's ever had and we analyze all the behavior. And we're looking at the nonverbal and contextual language patterns that do that. So I'll have to let you know, because this is something that I'm like, I could do it for you too. Yeah, yeah.

I think, Oh God, those early interviews are terrible. But that's, that's like the beauty of, so like I've seen so many people, like people that put themselves out there.

I find it so magical to see someone shift over years. And it's something that I've been almost afraid to do on video in a lot of ways, not giving myself permission to just be myself on video. I'm being myself in person, but something about the video we spoke about is like, whoa. But you see people change and you see people warm up and you see people become different over time. And I feel like that process is so much cooler than just seeing a master change.

Like anybody that puts themselves out there and applause to you for doing this right now, you're seeing their improvement from where they started to where they ended. And I think the lessons in improvement are the greatest lessons. Like why did they go from the first 10 podcasts? They're asking questions this way. Then the next 10, they shifted like why? Right. And understanding that context is, oh, that's a good one. Is like ask somebody, okay,

Is there any context that you think I need to know in order for me to ask a better question or to make this a better question? I like that. Because sometimes people don't give enough context and they have to be prompted to. But once you give them the ability to give them more context, that works. And that's also a quick tip. That's probably my single biggest communication tip for everybody in a corporate culture. The more context, the better. It's just that simple.

I like that. It works. One question before the last question. So the penultimate question, I guess, is we were talking about writing earlier and the power of writing in terms of thinking. Can you expand on that?

It's over time I have seen more and more that it is probably one of the most powerful self-developed mediums, self-development mediums over anything. I think that people, we're in a war, especially for those who are thinkers. I know I'm a thinker. I spend a lot of time in my head and not being present and thinking and processing. There's no checks and balances up here.

There's no one to stop and say, hey, that's kind of not the right idea or not. When you write something out, you're creating reality. You're taking your thoughts and you're putting it out into reality. And then there's an ability to critically examine that. And I just feel like it's so much help. It's so helpful. It allows you to structure your ideas. It makes you a better thinker. It makes you a better communicator. It's evidence of how you've shifted your thoughts and your principles and ideas over time. I think a writing practice is so, so, so important.

I think of it in terms of reflecting as well, right? So mental reflection, I tend to just keep going over the same things a lot. But when I write it down, it's like, oh, that doesn't make sense. You're checking your own thinking in a way, right? Because now you're, and I prefer pen and pencil, even if I like shred it or burn it after. Yeah, me too. Yeah.

But you're checking your own thinking and it's the process by which I discover I don't know what I'm talking about. But it's also the process by which I know where to look for more information, where to go about it and learn what I'm talking about in a way that I can convey clearly to other people. But it's also how I get new ideas and importantly, how I give up ideas, which I don't think we do a lot of these days. And so there's like an ego thing to it where it's like you're practicing what

that's a really good sentence. You want to keep it in. Then you're like, oh, I got to get rid of it because it doesn't fit with the piece. Right. And, but then you're giving something up and you're sort of, and then you can give it to other people and get feedback because they don't see all the thoughts that you have in your head that you see that

And so like they're giving you, oh, this doesn't make sense. And now all of a sudden it's like, oh, I've got something here. Yeah. And you talking about this makes me want to bring back this practice. So I started journaling and I started to realize that because I'm such an optimist, I lie in my journals. So what I started doing was I made a video journal and I sat in front of the camera and I spoke to myself every day.

And I have some of these videos where it's like the IRS is coming after me. Like it was like the worst business moment. All this crazy stuff. And I have a video of myself like being like, yeah, things are okay. And I have like...

big dark circles under my eyes and i look like oh you poor kid things are not okay right now well because you have a different perspective exactly exactly but also if i would have watched even that video after i recorded it i probably would have seen that things are not so okay with your analysis yeah i would have been like what's the best kid uh so i think it's a helpful but that optimism can be helpful right which is i mean it's how you get through it as an entrepreneur i mean i'm

That's how you push through, right? That's how Elon saved Tesla, effectively. That book's insane. I won't say a lie, but close to a lie. And saved the company through that lie. Raised money, and now we have this. But had that not happened, whether he was deceiving himself or deceiving other people, or didn't even know he was deceiving himself or deceiving other people, objectively speaking, it was sort of fiction-based.

that save the company. So then do the ends justify the means? Do the... I mean, I think so. As an entrepreneur, like there's like true belief that...

in being able to create something. And you're not necessarily knowing what the path looks like, but you're going to create something, right? And then there's just flat out lies. And that line is, I think, a lot different. Intent is a lot of a different thing. But a lot of people, maybe they started off with the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I think that's what happens. I think people try to protect, they lose their values and then...

it's somewhere else but yeah i mean everybody does it like everybody any any vc pitch i've seen yeah come on it's like it's a hockey stick right after this month right exactly it's like all right no our users are we're redefining what active users is yeah but they're growing up like it's like come on we all know the game um

The question we always end with is what is success for you? Success for me is pretty simple. You write things down and you accomplish it. That's success. I believe success is a personal journey in whatever you want to do. So some people don't actually know what their version of success is and it just happens to them.

So I think it's really helpful to sit there and be like, you know, I want a relationship where there's no friction and I have the love of my life. And like I texted my wife, I was like, I miss you already. And we were gone for like eight hours. And it was like, that's on the list. So I have a successful relationship. The business right now is not necessary. There's certain things that need to get changed this year, certain things that need to change that can be listed. And I can measure if I'm successful or not, because the truth is.

If you don't do that, you're likely playing somebody else's game. And it's just so it's so hard to live that life. Well, thank you for taking the time for this incredible conversation. This is great. Great questions. Thanks for listening and learning with us. For a complete list of episodes, show notes, transcripts and more, go to fs.blog slash podcast or just Google The Knowledge Project.

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