Excel at Understanding People’s Thinking to Grow your Business | The Ask Avi Arya Show

It's almost that moment of creation of a. Of a child in some way. It's not probably quite the same thing, but. But it has some similarities, doesn't it? Because you become very attached to that thing that you've created because you put a lot of work in it, into it, and maybe you've sacrificed something in order to get to that point as well. So you become very, very attached to it. And I guess what you always have to check out is Foreign.

Is our guest for today. Mark, how are you doing?

I'm good. I'm good. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me around.

Thank you very much for your time. Mark, we always say the shortest distance between two human hearts is always a good story. You tell a perfect stranger a good story and you win a heart for life. So I'm going to take the next 10 seconds to give you a short story, which we call the hero introduction, and then we'll ask you to give us yours. Mark. My name is ABHI Arya, father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer, turn hotelier, now social media marketer and founder of Internet mobiles.

Over to you, lovely. My name is Mark Bowden. I'm an expert in human behavior and body language. And what I do is I help people all over the world to stand out, to win trust, to gain credibility every time they communicate, including some of the leaders of the G7.

Wow, that is impressive. Mark, tell us a little bit. We want to go back before we talk to any guests on what they're doing today. We want to know what they've done in the past. So tell us about your childhood. How was that growing up? Were you ambitious for your front bencher? Who, who was, Mark, as a child?

Yeah. Wow, that's. That's a really. Yeah, that's kind of a big story. Well, I mean, what. What stands out for me in terms of what I do now and what I was doing back then and how the two things might be linked is as a kid, I was really obsessed with animal behavior, with sea life behavior. Used to spend a lot of time. I grew up in England, though I live now in Toronto, Canada. I grew up in England and all our holidays would often be on the coastline. And so I'd get into the rock pools and see sea life and anemones and starfish and fish and crabs. And I was really interested in the way they moved. Okay. And really interested in the way that kind of water moved and light played on water. And I got into the idea of movement and visual Imagery. And so now as a human behavior and body language expert, you know, it's from that progression of being obsessed with very simple life and very simple movement to I guess, more complicated, more complex life like human beings and the more complexities of how we move together as groups. But really it just comes down to that childhood fascination of movement and how you capture that visual imagery and what visual image can do to other human beings, how it influences and persuades them. So I hope that answers your question in some way.

Definitely. It definitely does. So Mark, now human psychology, it's the basis of everything, right? From marketing to sales to business to entrepreneurship to having a happy life, good relationships. This seems to be the foundation for everything. So what is your what as entrepreneurs? Most of the time, when we give birth to a new product or a service, that process of giving birth to a product or service makes us a parent and it gives us a lot of self analysis about who we are. Sometimes we look at that mirror image and we're unhappy with it and sometimes we're happy. So tell us a little bit about what you feel happens to an entrepreneur when they go through this journey of self awareness. And what are the human, what are the traits that you normally see in an entrepreneur when they're starting out?

Well, I guess as you were saying there, it's almost that moment of creation of a child in some way. It's not probably quite the same thing, but. But it has some similarities, doesn't it? Because you become very attached to that thing that you've created because you put a lot of work in it, into it, and maybe you've sacrificed something in order to get to that point as well. So you become very, very attached to it. And I guess what you always have to check out is, is it as beautiful to other people as it is to you? Because ultimately, unlike I hope, your children, you don't end up selling that product or you end up selling that product and service. Whereas, you know, one would hope you don't end up selling your children. Okay, so, so, you know, it's. You may well love this thing like to the level that you love something that you've created, but you can't quite hold it in the same value because ultimately you're going to exchange that commercially. And so, number one, you've got to work out, well, there's this thing that I made, but does it really solve a problem that somebody really has? Does it really make their life better? Is it as valuable to them as I feel it is to me? Because there could be Some total disconnects between that. You may have undervalued it. This may be, it's more beautiful to them than it is to you. You may have overvalued it as well. So you've got to check that out. You know, there's the land of you, the creator, and then there's the land of the audience or the user of that. And the two things need to get a little bit closer together for you to really understand how that's, how that's really going to, going to work. And there can be a lot of disappointment, I think, in that and there can be a lot of surprises as well where you go, wow, they're going to pay me, they're going to pay me this, that much for something that I feel like is quite, you know, it's good, but it's quite ordinary for me to do, you know. So I guess you got to be ready for some of those challenges, right?

Mark, your book, Truth and Lies, what people are really thinking. Tell us about, you know, tell us about the book and what all it covers.

Yeah, sure. So originally, when myself and Tracy Thompson were asked to write this book, the, the publishers had come to us and said, can we have a book on reading body language? And that's very exciting. Like, you know as well as I do that the idea of being able to look at other human beings and get a sense of what they might be thinking and feeling, you know, know, there's a lot of power in that. There's a lot of people feeling if, like, if I could do that, that would be incredibly powerful. And there's, there's a lot of books out there around that. Some of them are here as well alongside, you know, our own here. And I've kind of thought, you know, there's already a lot of books on that. Do I really want to write another book on that? Am I really going to add anything to that? Sure. And then I thought, well, hang on, no. What would a really good new book on reading body language actually look like? And what I decided was to make it a book on critical thinking disguised as a book on body language. So really what the book does is to help you think better more clearly and therefore more accurately about other people? It's got all the stuff that you'd really enjoy about body language and how to read that for sure. But its real core is how do you need to be thinking on a day to day basis to understand people and yourself better? Because understand all those people, they just show up in your head. I mean, they are real people. This is not. This is not an illusion. But the matter around you, you know, comes together in a set of ideas in your head. So this book looks at how are you making those ideas in your head and how can you think better about people, so the idea that you have about them is more accurate. So I hope that makes sense to you.

It does. So how does this a conscious role that we're playing or on a subconscious level? And if. Yes, can we be aware of it so that we can play a smarter role while we're creating this reality for ourselves?

Yeah, you have to be aware of it because otherwise you will be unconscious of it. And if you're unconscious of it, there's nothing wrong with that.

But.

But what will be happening is you'll be using your usual assumptions about people. Nothing wrong with those usual assumptions. They've got you this far. If you're happy with how far they've got you and you think your usual assumptions about people will keep you going on the right trajectory, do not read this book. It won't help you. You're fine. Okay. If, however, your usual assumptions have got you a certain distance and you've started coming up against barriers and it's like, I don't quite understand this anymore. I don't quite understand what's happening there. Why did that person say that to me? Why did they do this? Why did I believe them? And it turns out they were lying to me. And it's now cost me so much money in my life or my business or my relationships. If you're feeling some of that, then this is probably a useful book for you because you need to understand a little bit better. Better about how you've been making assumptions about people and how you could make more active, clearer, better judgments, conscious judgments about people. So it is. It is about being conscious. And by the way, I think.

I.

Have a feeling, yeah, in, in. In India right now, this is the title that Truth and Lies goes under. So maybe, you know, if you are thinking about this, look, look for, look for Truth of Lies. If you can't find that, then what People are really thinking, which is published by Jacob Books there. I think this is kind of not, not the, not the, the translation because of course, it's in, it's in great English, but it's the, it's the publication of it by the Indian publisher. So we're very proud that we're. We're in India.

Mark, do unpack a few chapters. Tell us a few nuggets that we intrigue us and we can learn something on this interview that gets us back to the book again.

Yeah, lovely. Look, you tell me this, okay? Are there some assumptions, you know, from your point of view or, you know, anybody watching, listening right now, around what folded arms means? When somebody folds their arm arms, you know, what's your immediate assumption?

This is exactly. I wanted to ask you this because every time I fold my hand that I feel if somebody knows what I'm doing is maybe I'm trying to be defensive or I'm trying to be closed. But the thing is, I'm feeling cold and I'm like, sometimes I just unfold my hands because I don't want to be taken for. And sometimes I challenge the other people to think what I'm thinking. You know what I'm saying?

Well, this is exactly it. You've hit it exactly like, you know, for yourself, you know, know, there are so many different reasons why you might fold your arms. Okay? So many different. Now, when somebody else folds their arms in front of you, are you thinking as clearly about them as you do about yourself? When you fold your arms, you're going, yeah, it's not because I'm closed, it's because I'm cold or because, you know, sometimes people close their. Fold their arms when they're making a decision. Sometimes they fold their arms when they need just a little bit time to. Time to think, often because they're making a decision. There's all kinds of reasons why people will fold their arms. So what we need to do when we see this happening, we need to do what's called suspension of judgment. Okay. And this is talked about a great deal in the book that every time you see a behavior in somebody, yes, you'll make assumptions about it, but then you want to suspend your assumptions and go, well, is it that. What if it was something else? What are the other possibilities? Well, the book will give you lots of other possibilities that, that are denoted by certain pieces of behavior. It will help you look at the context around this. So, for example, if I think about you, Avi, and I think, okay, you know, maybe I'm not sure which country you were, you were born in, whether you were born in Canada or whether you were born in India or. But let's just say you were born in India. Well, my guess is you're used to some warm temper temperatures.

Okay.

You know, and so, and so a warm temperature for me, who was born in England, could be a very cold temperature for you.

100.

Yeah. We're both human beings. We share more similarities than we're ever going to have this differences. But some of the differences can make profound effects like where you grew up and your idea of temperature. Now I've got a friend that I work with and he was born in Pakistan and he's always going, he's always going, it's a bit cold, isn't it? I'm going, no, no, it's not. Like, like this is, like this is great weather for the English. Like this is, this is, this is summer as far as we're, this is T shirt weather. And he's there and he's got his jacket on and, and you know, and, and, and all of the, all of that is just wonderful stuff as human beings to understand we can be so similar and so different. And what we need to do, and the book talks about this a lot, is do is understand each other better by suspending judgment, looking at the context, asking more questions about what's going on. Yeah. And making a new judgment, a new conscious judgment. Now that's not to say that the new judgment can't be the same as the old judgment. Okay, that's fine. But you thought about it for a bit, so I hope that makes sense to you. Ave. Sure.

So when you say what people are really thinking. So does the book tell people a few body language hacks that they can use in their everyday business? And if yes, can you share some with us?

Yeah, for sure. Look, my guess is that everybody in business, you need to be trusted and you need the people that you're working with to be trusted as well. You need you and your organization to be most trusted. And I know you're creating great product, great service. You are doing your best, okay? To, to be worthy of people's trust. And have you noticed sometimes they still don't trust you? You're going, hang on, I've created something beautiful, something wonderful. I'm working with great people. We even talk as a group about doing good work and, and, and doing stuff. So we should be trusted. Yet there are some important people who don't trust us. You're accidentally giving out signals of distrust, okay, because you're getting anxious, nervous, you're getting worried, you're getting worried that you might fail. There's a big contract out there that you want to get or a big sale or a big place that you want to go with your organization, with your company, okay. And with the people that you're working with. And so that anxiety is showing up and it's getting mistaken for something, you should, should be distrusted here's what, what I want you to do when you are most anxious, when you are getting most worried about presentation that you might be giving or a negotiation that you're having or a deal that you're doing. Okay. I want you to make sure that your hands are up at exactly navel height. Okay. And I want you to make sure as you're talking to people. Yeah. That your hands are at navel height and you're gently gesturing here. Yes. Because this will countermeasure any feelings of anxiety that could be misconstrued as distrust. Because what are the, you know, what are the alternatives? Yeah. Sometimes when I'm anxious, you know, I'll self soothe on my face. I'm still the same person. I've still got a great product, great service. I'm still, you know, a worthy entrepreneur. But I'm trying to do the deal with you, and I'm still saying exactly the same things. And now you don't trust me because I keep covering my mouth the moment my hands come to here. And I'm being calm and assertive with those, Chances are you feel better about me. So the best hack that I can give you is open palm gestures like this in what I call the truth plane. This is the gesture plane that suggests that you're calm, assertive and honest. Really? I just say to you, use that as much as you can and especially when you're feeling a little bit anxious.

Got it. Perfect. So I have just two more questions. My second last question is, Mark, when you, you've written this book, you've been through human psychology. When you approach people, what is the end? Because, you know, you evolve as a human being when you learn and practice. So when you approach a new person, is your mind automatically making these judgments? And then you're like, hey, I need to remind myself to suspend my judgment and go back and forth. How does Mark's mind work when he meets a new person?

Of course I'm human like everybody else. You know, I'm expert in being able to understand how this works. I have to work just like you every day on staying open. So I know, I walk into a room and I instantly start judging people. And now I've got to go, okay, suspend your judgment, gather more information. What's the context here? Go and talk to some people, find out more. I've got to be way more curious and investigate more. And I have to do this purposely just as much as you do. It is our nature to jump to conclusions about people. It's cheaper and it's Simpler. And it doesn't, you know, it doesn't get us where we probably want to be. So I need to practice it, you know, like a doctor practices on real people every day. I need to practice it every day, just like you.

So like you said in the beginning, it is a real power, but the power comes from understanding yourself through other people and other people through you. So what is your message to entrepreneurs today? On how important is it to understand how people are thinking in today's real world? What's like your final message to them? What should they take away from you? And then I'm going to link up the book and, you know, ask them to buy the book and everything. But what's your final message to them?

Like, yeah, so here's what I want you to do. I want you to know that you judge people and they judge you. Help them judge you. Yeah, that's okay, that's. Yeah, that's natural. Course, like, how would you get on with your day if you didn't judge people instantly? How would they get on with the day if they didn't judge you instantly? That's fine for them to do that, but maybe you want them to judge you in a certain way. You know, read the book and you can understand ways to project your body language that will influence the way you're being judged and the way you're being trusted. Read the book and you'll be able to judge other people better, make more accurate assumptions about them. And that could really help your business. That could save you money. You know, in some extreme circumstances, it could save. Save your business, save your life and those of your family as well. So, you know, check it out.

Awesome. So, ladies and gentlemen, those were interesting tips on how other people think what they're really thinking about. And I'm going to link up the book over here. And for people who actually make a short summary of this video and send me a one minute clip, three people. I will buy the book and courier it to you. For the first three people who log into the podcast, create a short summary, send it to me, and I'm going to send you three books as our way of saying thank you to Mark and our way of spreading this amazing knowledge that you've amassed over so many years. Thank you so much for everything that you do. Thank you for moving to Canada and for everything in between. What we also are going to do, ladies and gentlemen, is that I'm going to do a summary of the book and I'm going to post it on my YouTube channel. So go for it. And have a look there as well. Thank you very much, Mark. And thank you, audience once again. My name is Avi Arya, father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer turned hotelier, now social media marketer and founder of Internet. Bogus.

Patient that you might be giving or a negotiation that you're having or a deal that you're doing. Okay. I want you to make sure that your hands are up at exactly navel height. Okay. And I want you to make sure as you're talking to people. Yeah. That your hands are at navel height and you're gently gesturing here. Yes. Because this will countermeasure any feelings of anxiety that could be misconstrued as distrust. Because what are the, you know, what are the alternatives? Yeah. Sometimes when I'm anxious, you know, I'll self soothe on my face. Right. I'm still the same person. I've still got a great product, great service. I'm still, you know, a worthy entrepreneur. But I'm trying to do the deal with you. And I'm still saying exactly the same things. And now you don't trust me because I keep covering my mouth the moment my hands come to here. And I'm being calm and assertive with those, chances are you feel better about me. So the best hack that I can give you is open palm gestures like this in what I call the truth plane. This is the gesture plane that suggests that you're calm, assertive, and honest. Really? I just say to you, use that as much as you can and especially when you're feeling a little bit anxious.

Got it. Perfect. So I have just two more questions. My second last question is, Mark, when you, you've written this book, you've been through human psychology. When you approach people, what is the end? Because, you know, you evolve as a human being when you learn and practice. So when you approach a new person, is your mind automatically making these judgments? And then you're like, hey, I need to remind myself to suspend my judgment and go back and forth. How does Mark's mind work when he meets a new person?

Of course I'm human like everybody else.