Ep. 168 Reading Your Audience With Human Lie-Detector Annie Sarnblad

Hey there, Mark Brown. This weekend I was at an NSA event and I met one of the most fascinating people I've ever met in my life. A literal human lie detector. We can say whatever we want, but she's reading your face. It's not even fair.

Oh, my goodness. I have to be very careful today then, Darren. But I tell the truth. I'm very curious to know what it's like to be an unforgettable human lie detector. Let's find out.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the Unforgettable Presentations podcasts with your hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown. Mark Brown.

Your life tells a story, and there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

And Darren Lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time.

Stage time. Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation, AHAs. Let's dive right in.

So, Annie, welcome. I've never had someone in studio before. Timing is everything. I was just. Mark, the content was unforgettable. I'm just sitting there taking notes, absorbing it all. And even I got to drive her to and from the hotel site and I was, like, asking questions. I was fascinating. Oh, my gosh. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to do it in person, too.

Well, I tell you, Darren, you know, when I think of someone being a human lie detector, I'm really curious as to what that means, as I'm sure our listeners are as well. How do you define that? Succinctly, Annie?

Yeah, so I actually am an anthropologist, and I've lived in nine countries, I've studied eight languages through immersion, and I've spent my life trying to figure out what people are saying when I haven't understood the words. So I did a coding certification called the Facial Action Coding system. It's called FACS. And I can numerically code the 10,000 different muscle combinations in human expression.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Did you say 10,000? Oh, my God. Goodness. Tell me more.

So there's this whole system for coding and specifying and doing a numerical coding of every facial expression. So if I do this facial expression and someone else can code it, and we can write a numerical chain that shows exactly what that facial expression looks like. And another one of my counterparts could recreate that to the degree even without looking at my face just through the coding. So. So when I had kids, I had this obsession of making them safer than I was as a child. I had a rough Childhood. And a lot of what I saw wasn't acknowledged. Some of the abuse wasn't acknowledged. It wasn't acknowledged right after it happened. Even so I became obsessed with two things. One, proving what I knew to be true and teaching others how to avoid dangerous humans. So when I had my children in Singapore, my ex husband is Swedish and we spoke Swedish at home much of the time. So I could take my American kids out in Singapore on a daily basis and live narrate human interaction in Swedish. My thing was, what do you see? What do you see? What do you see? And they would be like, well, her cheeks are doing this and her mouth is doing this. Okay, what happens when he leans into her space? Well, she shows disgust and contempt. What happens when he says something funny? Oh, well, now she looks more relaxed and her shoulders go down and she's tilting her head a little bit. So we would do that every day of their lives and they ended up really teaching me a simplified way of expressing these facial expressions. And that's what I now travel all over the world and teach how to quickly learn how to read facial expressions on other people's faces.

And at the event this weekend, you told a story about your daughter and how you would you be willing to share that story?

Sure. So my 5 year old came home from school one day and she said, I doesn't like Matias's teacher's husband. And I thought like, let's just be, you know, I'm cooking dinner, I'm working full time, I'm exhausted. My inclination is to say to my 5 year old, just be nice. But I taught her to code and I taught her to recognize predatory behavior. So, so I stopped and I said, emma, why don't you like him? And she said, well, because he shows contempt and disgust when he talks to me. Yeah, you're doing it great, Marc. That's spot on. So if I tell you, if I show the facial expression of disgust and I say I hate broccoli. Okay, well you really have strong feelings about broccoli, that's fine. But if I'm telling you I'd love to work with you, I mean that's a problem. Or if you're looking at a little 5 year old girl and you're saying, nice to see you Emma, that's problematic. And so probably his micro expressions were a little bit more subdued than what I'm showing you right now. But you have this visceral physical reaction where you want to lean back from somebody who's showing you that facial expression. And what had happened was that her little brother Emma and her little brother Matias went to the same school. And Matthias's teacher's husband was popping in over and over into the classroom. He was actually making a bed for the little boys for nap time. And he was a pedophile. And we went to the head of school and they did a background check right away. And he was sent back to Australia extradited. And it was because she was able to identify it. And the reason he was showing contempt and disgust was that he wanted access to little boys. And she kept getting in his way.

At five years old, five years old.

She saved her little brother and, you know, countless other kids. Yep. And he had targeted this teacher they had met in, I believe it was Thailand a few years before, and he targeted her and married her because she had access to kids.

Wow. I know we're kind of off the topic of speaking here, but the thinking that goes through, that decision to use her as an avenue to get the kids.

Oh, well, think about it. I mean, I do a lot of work with predatory behavior. I mean, think about it. We're strategic human beings and we think all the time, where am I going to find clients? Or if we're single and looking for love, where am I going to find a romantic partner? We strategize about our lives all the time. So predators will. I mean, if you look at pedophiles, for example, where are they going to work? They're going to work in churches, they're going to work in sports clubs, they're going to work as teachers. There's a variety of places they're going to go where they get access to not only children, but where they can isolate children from the grownups that would keep them safe. So they are overrepresented in all of these organizations that are where the organization is focused on the children's well being.

Well, you know why I find this also fascinating is, and I'm sure there are those wondering, hey, Mark, Darren, we're discussing speaking and business. How do we tie all that in? Well, the first thought to me is, I know many of us as presenters, particularly when we're emerging, we are eager to enter into relationships to network with people who we think are going to help us and advance our careers. But if we don't know how to read their expressions, we might find ourselves entering into a relationship.

Yes. And that's true.

Saying yes to an assignment, that won't work.

That's exactly right. So one of the things I'm really focusing on and I'M focusing on. You know, it was a hard thing for me. I've been asked for years and years and years to write everything down. And I think there was a frustration because most of my clients are white men from 40 to 60. They're usually managing directors, CEOs. I work with their teams, their boards. And the books that they put out into the world and that they consume are often these sort of bite sized chunks which are great books. It's just not the way I would write and it's not the way I teach emotion. So I finally got my head around who my target audience is. And my target audience is, is my girls who are 18 and 20. And me from the age of about 20 to 30 when I was making major decisions on who to align myself with in terms of friends, who I trust, who are the people that I not only can lift up, but that will be reciprocal and lift me up back. Which kind of employers do I want to work with? So many young women end up working for at least one employee or colleague that's really creepy. That doesn't want their. Doesn't have their best interest at heart in any way, shape or form. But even work colleagues. And then trying to figure out that romantic piece of love. Is this somebody who deeply cares about me or just wants me because they find me attractive or wants me for power or money or whatever it may be. So that became my obsession. What would I have wanted to learn and what my daughters have learned mostly through me. But. But my daughter's friends, who I also love deeply. And I haven't had as much time to communicate. They come over and they ask me question after question after question. So everything's really about being safe and aligning ourselves with other people that are sort of, what you were just saying, worth our time and money and love. Who wants to have a reciprocal relationship where we lift each other up rather than just a transactional relationship where we take as much from the other person as we could take.

You know, Darren, I don't believe I ever told you this. Hold that thought. I want to close that particular piece of our conversation because I didn't tell you this, but years ago I was asked to deliver a sermon at a Baptist church in Connecticut. I was there three different times over a number of years. And I was asked by a fellow toastmaster who knew I could speak well. And I'd gone to this church to deliver sermons a couple of times. The last time I was there, a gentleman, young man and his wife, probably in his 30s, a bit of a Gary suit on, a little bit overdressed, a little bit above everybody else. And during the time of fellowship, after the service was over, he approached my wife and me and said, you know what? I would love to finance your ministry, to travel across North America. I'd love to do that for you. And there was something at the back of my head that said. And I wanted to bring that story to you, Annie, because I want our listeners and. And our viewers to understand it is valid for us as presenters, particularly if we're going to enter into a relationship with a bureau, with a sponsor, to be aware that in these conversations, you could be putting your career in the hands of someone right. Does not have your best interest at heart. Is there a question for me or a comment on this? I didn't show you his face because I could just figure something was off.

Or the way you spoke, you're showing the micro expressions of disgust and discomfort. Disgust and discomfort is the same thing. Basically, it's a facial expression. So this is discussed. I teach it all the time. It's one of the biggest expressions.

Ew.

And it's that it's. Oh, if you go to Jimmy Fallon and you say, like, ew, you can Google Jimmy Fallon. It's a great way to practice it because he pretends to be, like a seventh grade girl who's really just. But it's a great way to practice it just to see it over and over again. The macro is this. It actually shuts off the nasal passages almost completely. So if we smell our coffee in the morning and then we make this face, we can smell a lot less of the coffee. It's to stop us from inhaling something that's poisonous.

Ooh.

And we do that even when something's really socially toxic. So when I would tell my kids, you know, time for bed. I want to go to bed. Stop poking your sister. He's annoying. And most of us are trained out of that. I have one friend who's a realtor, and she makes this facial expression. Whenever somebody gives her a praise she doesn't like, she goes. And they go, you know, maybe. Should I just increase the price a little bit, do you think? And she goes, yeah. Think. She uses it to her advantage. But the micro is just this.

Yeah, it's a little.

It's just a flicker of. I don't like that. And so when you're making that facial expression, I make it too. It's one of the great pieces of human expression. It's how we connect and how we understand what the other person is feeling. Is that on a subconscious level, we mirror that facial expression. Too much Botox will stop that process.

I was gonna ask you about the Botox.

The Botox question, it makes you emotionally a little slower.

How does that affect what you do when you're reading?

Okay, so these are our concentrator muscles, our problem solving muscles.

You can see forehead right here.

They're etched right into my glabella, which is the skin between my eyebrows right there. And this. They're deep on me. Cause I had my kids way too close together. So it's like six and a half years of how am I gonna get sleep? How am I gonna get sleep? Everybody needs sleep. Everybody needs sleep. So it's the same in anger and concentration. Right? That makes sense. Because if we're angry, there's something off, there's something wrong. And if we're problem solving or concentrating, we're trying to fix something. We're trying to solve something. It's the solving muscles. But with anger, we're always gonna have tight lips. Right. And you can tell like as soon.

As my lips get tight. No.

Whether they're funneled. So I get people. I had this at the NSA chapter event that people would come up to me and say, so. And so is always crabby. And I'm like, no, he's not crabby. He's just thinking. He's just thinking. That's, you know, that's completely different. If he were crabby, his mouth would be tight.

That's fascinating.

And so we kind of went there, we touched on it.

Yeah. Come back. Rope me back in.

No, the kids. You trained your kids.

They did human lie detectors.

And did that backfire on you?

Oh, big time.

Oh, so badly. It seemed like such a good plan. So the first problem was when they hit about all of them. When they hit about fifth grade. Now my son will read it and then not be as sensitive to it. He's got a really testosterone soaked brain. And he's just not as. He doesn't care as much. He's a thoughtful, loving human being, but he doesn't get worried about other people's feelings. My girls both came and they said, I hate that you taught me this. See tight lips. Because I can see when people don't like me. And I was like, oh, what have I done to my kids?

Being a school day.

And I keep telling them, I can see. You know, we remember we can see what somebody's feeling, not what they're thinking. So someone says, my kid says, do you want to come over after school, and they go. That might mean that their house is really messy. They're not allowed to. They're grounded. They already have a playdate. It could mean any number of things. When they got older, they loved that I taught them micro expressions, all of them, because they could see when other people were suffering, when other people are struggling. And that makes it so much easier to manage angry humans. And God knows we have a lot of angry humans out there. But if somebody's, like, really crabby and they're puckering their chin, my kids know that that chin pucker means that they're having a really rough time. So somebody's like, well, why did you do that? And the grand looks like, well, you know, they sometimes won't even answer the question. They'll just say, hey, we're all getting together for lunch. You want to come? Yeah, actually, I can come. So whether you're in church or wherever, that being able to help is very useful. My son, when I was just getting divorced, and I was going out to dinner with somebody that I hadn't seen in a really long time, my son came and looked at me, and he goes, huh? You like him, huh? And I was like, what do you mean? And he had noticed my pupils dilate when he said his name.

Uh.

Oh, that's my vulnerability. Like, I didn't like that. So both of my girls wrote their college essays about what it's like to grow up in a family where you can't lie. And my kids will tell you that I don't lie to them. Generally. Generally is the qualifier. I generally don't lie. As soon as somebody adds a qualifier in a sentence, they're usually lying. Or the. So I try very hard not to lie to my kids. And when I do lie, I'll preface it with, like, when I got divorced and I said I was gonna start dating, I said, do you want me to lie about it or not? And they were like, yeah, we just lie.

Please lie.

We don't want to lie.

So yet it absolutely backfired because I have no privacy. And there's the vulnerability. Like, this is suppression. Like, I could talk about that for hours, but I don't really want to. Vulnerability and suppression.

And if you're listening to this, check out the YouTube version so you can actually see her expressions. We're trying our best to explain them to you. However, if you want the full frontal Annie expertise, full experience, check out the YouTube version of this.

You'll never be the same. Sorry.

So a couple things. Number one, when you were Talking at NSA this weekend, you're talking about negotiation. So if you're sitting down and you're doing a pre call with a client or a potential client, you just talked about when the pupils dilate. Like when the pupils dilate and you've got to start being aware and start looking for that and training yourself to look for that. When their pupils dilate, that's when you close the sale.

That's when you close the sale.

That's a drug.

So let's do this.

Okay, so pupil dilation is one of the fastest things to learn. You get it almost instantly. But then you have to practice, like everything. This is a language. And when I work at church, when I've done this at church, I've called it God's language. But the reality is it's hardwired into all of us. We are physical human beings. Even if we're born blind, we make the same facial expressions. Our bodies are wired. The same has nothing to do with culture, language, ethnicity, who your parents are, how you were socialized. Even if you're born blind, you do the same facial expressions. So back to your point. One of the things I teach my clients and students is that in any face to face interaction, the first thing you do is gauge the pupil size. As soon as you're in a meeting, when you get to a point that's really exciting for the other person, their pupils will swell and it's almost like raising a flag going, yay, I'm interested in that. So you prep for your negotiation. But if you see those pupils dilate and they're raising that flag of like, hey, hey, hey, I'm interested in this. You stay on that topic and that's when you can move forward in your deal. I have tripled my price. At times when I say maybe people, Stanley, I had this one client, I hope he never sees this. But he said, I leaned over into him and he was a really, really good guy, very smart. But I knew there were just a couple things, like what you do. If I just polished certain pieces, I could make him really shine. So I leaned forward and I said, you're a good leader. I can make you a great leader. And his pupils went ding. And I tripled my price. I also printed up contracts, and he's going to kill me for saying this. Another friend of mine, I wanted equity in his company when I was in Singapore and I was at this stage of my career where I wasn't going to do strategic advisory unless I got equity. And he said, no, no, I'll pay you retainer. I'll pay you retainer. I was like, nah, I just want the bragging rights. You can give me like a little bit of equity, but I want a percent. And I printed. He said, no, no, no, I don't give anybody equity. Not even my CEO has equity. I was like, yeah, okay, we don't have to do it. And I printed up a contract and I put it on a folder with a pen attached, put it in my purse. And I carried that purse around for three weeks because we shared office space. And I waited, I said something really complimentary towards pupils to swell pass the contract over the table and just, just sign it. You know you want to, you know.

You want to, you know you want to do it.

He signed it. I did every single thing I promised him I would do. And he ended up selling the company and making a huge profit. And so I knew I could deliver on it. And I also knew that it was good for him. And I also made sure that the contract was super short and simple so that it took like two seconds for him to be like, whatever. But the poor guy, of course he didn't know in Singapore that I worked with micro expressions and that I could code because I kept that part of my identity secret. So he found out many years later, he's like, that's what you did? You used my micro expressions. And I was like, yeah, pupil dilation. Super, super effective.

And you also taught us this weekend about smiling and a true smile. So we saw some pictures. I won't name names of some celebrities who were their micro expression. Well, you taught us that. That's a fake smile. Yeah, that's a fake smile. So what's.

Okay, so tell me. Let's try it on. Mark. Mark, if I give you a genuine smile versus a fake smile, how do you know if a smile is real?

One of the things I look for are the laugh lines here.

Right, but crow's feet, right?

Crow's feet, yes, one of it. Yeah.

Okay, I'm doing a crow's feet smile. Does this look real?

Well, here, Teacher tensed. If the mouth is fairly open and it doesn't look to me, and I'm no pro at this, but if I think the smile is too broad, I tend to doubt it.

Okay, that makes sense because it's going too much horizontally.

Yeah, if it looks. Oh yeah, this is great. I tend to think like, what do you want? As opposed to just, you know, I think. How do I say this? It's almost like an ease of the way they smile. It seems natural as opposed to right. Remember?

Yeah. No, that's good.

I was a youth program chair for the National Speakers Association Youth convention back in 2014. And the last night we all had the kids get dressed up and they have photographs being posed for. I left the room to meet Darren and his new girlfriend that day. I remember too. But I saw the youth come up and they said, okay, let's go guys. Let's go, let's go. And these girls who were the prima donnas, they go, okay, you guys ready? Okay, good. I'm like, really? It was so fake because it was so broad, what I did. Those who are listening, what I did was I shook a pose and just had a big old broad smile that was all mouth, all cheeks, no eyes, really. But it was just so fake. So for me, the crow's feet don't answer. Crow's feet. How broad the smile is and how close the teeth are. If they're cleansed, it seems fake. That's what I look for, right?

And as soon as you said fake, you went like that. You should just ask, right? Right. Cause you don't like it. You don't like fake. Fake doesn't feel safe. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel friendly. So when I was training my kids and we were out again, out in Singapore, speaking in Swedish, having these discussions, and I would talk about some of the things that you talked about and make the point that all the different pieces of the smile. And finally my four year old Emma, who's always just so spot on, she goes, she's 18 now. She goes, mama, you don't have to look at all those different pieces. You just have to see if the skin here is fat. If it's fat, they're happy.

Oh, wow. And I was like, are you saying too what you're saying, the skin under the eyes?

I was like, hold on a second. And this is, you know, these conversations that the four of us, me and my three children have had for now close to, you know, close to 20 years, has really is the foundation of what I teach. And the reason that I've been able to advance so far in my profession is because we've had these constant conversations. So really I could teach you a bunch of different things. And there's a lot that you said that's spot on. But the reality is, all you have to know is that in genuine joy, our inforbital triangles, our cheeks pop up, they lose gravity and that makes this skin that's normally pretty flat, bulge.

So it's okay, in that scenario, to have bags under your eyes, we call them.

Rebecca Barr, who's one of my clients, has now dubbed this smile bags.

Smile bags. Okay, I'll take them because.

And that's joy. And it actually, it's really funny because I just wrote something about this on LinkedIn that especially women are like. But that picture, it's terrible because you can see these bags under my eyes, and my eyes are these tiny little slits. But really, Joy, we humans love joy. We're not looking for flat and polished. We're looking for real connection. We're looking for a human to love us. We're looking for genuine interaction, genuine connection. So very, very, very many humans are incredibly lonely. And they, they don't. Boys don't really know what you look like if they feel like you see them. Human beings want to be seen and known. And if we're not seen for who we really are, we never experience the feeling of feeling loved. So it's one of the reasons that when somebody will talk about a difficult relationship with their parents and say something like, well, my mother or my father never really knew me. If somebody never really knows us on a deep level, we don't ever feel loved by that person. So we have to feel seen and known to feel loved and connected to. And we do that with people that, you know, people that show us a lot of joy. I mean, there's nothing more attractive or appealing in any human relationship than somebody who likes us back. That makes Darren vulnerable.

He pushes his chin when you mention the joy bags. And I do programs together, and one particular program, he shows two photographs. One is a fairly large part of him outside Mother Teresa's house with two security guards. And he says, what picture is better? And he zooms in. And you could see the eyes, you could see the expression on his face when he was, you know, he had his pose going, but you could see that more clearly. Clearly. And another slide he has, he shows a close up. He said, who's smiling? And you can't see his nose or mouth.

Right.

You could see the laugh lines and the eyes. And he says, that, you know is going to inspire you to see. Now, he didn't tell me you knew all this before, man.

Not to the level she knows, man. That's why I get all jacked up, because I love this. I love body language. I love expression. I love the micro expression. We were talking about the TV show Lie to Me, Lie to Me, Lie to Me. Yeah, my favorite. Because of this, like, your teacher was involved with that Show, Right.

Yeah. I had a teacher that was involved with that show. Yeah, absolutely. That consulted.

So, Mark. So one more question that I would wonder for speakers. So if we're telling stories, do you have any insights on how we can try to be more authentic, to be able to tell our story where we're connected to the emotion of the character so it seems like a better story?

Well, so I'm a big. I made the mistake of teaching some actors who I absolutely adored that I knew growing up. And they were so excited about doing this. And it was fairly early on when I thought, yay, you know, I'll just do this for fun. And the problem was when we got too technical about what the facial expression looked like, they would kind of get out of their own heads. And it was just like, okay, now I'm gonna manufacture this facial expression. And, you know, we know when it's wrong. Our brain knows when it's off. And so the only way I believe to be genuine is to actually feel the emotions. If you feel the emotions, we are wired to show what we're feeling. And so that's why people ask me all the time, okay, but I wanna work backwards. I wanna know the facial expressions that will be appealing. Okay, well, then you have to leave live that in your brain, and your brain will do it automatically. That's a knowing smile. You do that all the time. You're like, yeah, I know. Yeah, I know that. It's like that one. You're like, yes, that's it.

I'm being red. I'm constantly being read. I'm glad I'm a nice guy, otherwise you probably wouldn't be here.

Right? I had a guy tell me he's a mostly nice guy recently, and I was like, oh, you're not a good guy, are you? As soon as you add that qualifier.

Yeah, mostly that's point about reliving the experience. Because, Darren, I've been teaching for a while that if you don't try to manufacture the emotion or. But if you can recall and relive the experience, then it becomes more genuine because people are trying. Friends, hear me. Don't try so hard to be perfect on stage and become the dramatic speaker who touches the hearts of the audience. If you can relive the experience, then the emotion becomes genuine.

That's exactly right. And then I also have this trick when. When I get nervous. So two things I do before I go on stage. One, I remember that I actually can my content. I know my stuff. I believe. I genuinely believe I know my stuff. Better than anybody on the planet, confidence. So I'm confident that I have something to give people. And so when I go up on stage, my focus is on what I can teach them. And that gets me out of my head as much as possible and then it doesn't get me all the way out of my head. Cause like any other human being, I have ego and insecurity and all of those very flawed, very real pieces of humanity. So I do, if I'm lucky, I can use a couple people in the audience that I've already connected to and already spoken with. I'm much happier if I have a couple of friends in the audience that I can look at and have that conversation just with that individual person. So I will have, I'll talk to everybody, but then I'll specifically make eye contact with somebody that I feel really safe with and that resets me.

Well, I have a question for you again, specifically from four speakers. From the perspective of the speakers, Darren and I have been blessed to have experience on the platform. I got a call today from one of my daughters. You have all these daughters who had just done a keynote for a company out in Illinois. We had a nice talk about it and she admitted to her inexperience as a presenter. Here's the question. As presenters, sometimes we get audiences that are feeding us some really unwelcoming expressions. And you said earlier, Annie, we have egos.

Yes.

How do we then, seeing these micro expressions in front of us, how can we still stay unforgettable? How can we nail it on stage under those circumstances?

That's a great question. Look, I'm 51 years old, so it's easier for me to feel confident and comfortable with that kind of thing than it would be for my 20 year old daughter or my 18 year old daughter. So take it with a grain of salt. What I'm saying is that I genuinely see it as a challenge. Just remember like the people. I walked into an event once and everybody was angry. They were so angry. They were angry, they were irritated that it was a kickoff meeting and they were irritated that their day had been interrupted. They didn't want to do another one of these things. And what was. Soon as I got up on stage, one of the MDs in the company said, wait, can we just. I got like two minutes into my introduction, I wasn't feeling well, I was really kind of out of it. And the guy said, hey, can you just stop and like code everybody in the room? What are you feeling in the room? And I thought I just said no, and I went on wise and that happens. But people's crabbiness. And if you frame it as crabbiness, it's easier to manage than disgust or anger because four year olds are crabby, right? And big people get crabby too. And so if you're dealing with a crabby audience, treat them like a bunch of preschool kids. You just like they're crabby, they need a nap, a snuggle and a snack. And there's nothing we can do about it right now. But hopefully later they'll get to have some coffee and a muffin and somebody will give them a big hug and say something nice and scratch their bellies a little bit and they'll feel better. But really the audience's mood when they come into your event is not your problem and not your thing and doesn't have anything to do with you. So take it as a challenge and see if you can soften them all up by being warm. We talked about, I think I mentioned this to you the other day, and I certainly said it to Kathy, that one of the things we talk about in Sweden, where I spend a lot of my time, is that it takes two to tango. If one person starts dancing the waltz, the other person can't keep tangoing. And so if somebody meets you and is really, really crabby and you kill them with kindness and just are kind over and over and over again, they'll eventually just surrender because it just takes a lot of energy to be crabby. So I would say to all the young people, just go up and do your thing and don't feel responsible for everybody else's crabbiness. The world is kind of rough and everybody's struggling and their problems really have nothing to do with you. But you can maybe help them out a little bit and just spread a little joy, a little love, a little affection and do your thing.

Little love, little joy, little fix in rubbery bellies.

I like that one.

A snack, same question, but flip it. You walk in and I believe you have to the perfect audience, you're seeing genuine smiles, you're feeling the love. How does that help you to become even more unforgettable on stage?

I think when we humans mirror each other with our body language, with our expressions, both our macro and our micro expressions. So if we get love, we feel love, and we thrive on that. So. So kindness is contagious, just like anger and crabbiness is contagious. I absolutely do better on stage, as I'm sure the both of you would agree. If you're in a warm and loving environment. The more we relax, the more we can shine and do our thing.

So here's the middle. You've got the Crabby and the Angels sound effects. We normally come in here, but then there is the audience that comes in flat.

Yeah.

Do you find yourself as a presenter presenting or analyzing? And presenting.

How does mostly, mostly presenting. When I go into the headspace of presenting, if I focus too much on the, on the analyzing, I get cognitive overload.

Okay.

It's just too, it's just too much to do. So I get into my group. But I did that. I did the Edge, this GLC Global leadership conference for an organization called Young Presidents Organization who. And they do the largest group meeting. They're actually doing it in November now for CEOs all over the world. And I did, the first time I spoke for them, I did two breakout sessions. And the first day I did it, it was the highest frequented event that they had. And then the second day it was all the people who were interested in micro expressions had told their friends, you have to go see it. And the jokes didn't land as well the second day. And it's because day, day three of the conference or whatever, people are more tired. And so as a presenter, we need to know that there are going to be days when your audience is flat. They may still find your stuff fascinating, but it has so much to do with what they're showing up with. And we know as people who travel all the time, you try to do your best, but there are days when you're tired. So the audience's mood is almost none of my business. Or at least that's the headspace I try to get myself into. I still, I still need to teach, I still need to give my gift to them regardless if they're tired. And that's why I do generally treat even big humans as if they were 4 year olds. Not intellectually, but just, you know, we're all these, we're these little people inside these bigger older bodies. It's not like you get less vulnerable as you age.

In fact, you're not saying be condescending.

No, not at all intellectually. I mean, all the stuff I do stimulates our, our intellect. But just remember that we human beings are, you know, we're not immune to being needy. And what I see everywhere, all over the world, in fact, in airports, I have to take off my glasses because it's just so much neediness and so much struggle and I find it, I mean, Vegas, oh my goodness, the Disassociated gazes, the puckered chin, the like, oh, my God, I've kind of given up on life. I can't wear my glasses out in Vegas.

Wow. Well, last question on that theme, and I guess I'm asking you to confirm it. I'm thinking correctly about the don't be discouraged piece because again, the phone call I got this morning, she said, you know, it was a tough crowd. Papa Mark. It was a tough crowd. Her exact words. And I know sometimes when someone is emerging, even fairly experienced, and they see the closed posture, arms folded. Yeah. They see the micro and it becomes a macro expression. And they've worked so hard and they're not sure how to cope with that. But we all want to be unforgettable on stage. So specifically, I want to narrow it down to that scenario where their confidence as a speaker is low. They get this big chance and they walk in and see an audience that tells you they want to. They don't want to be there. Point. Case in point. I spoke at a school two weeks ago. 10am in the morning. They're in the gymnasium. Junior sophomores, junior seniors. Okay. They're in the gymnasium. 400 kids on the bleachers. And there's a kid, a senior, on the back bleacher, and he is laid out and he says, I'm going to sleep. World champion, right? So I. I say, you know what? I won't invest the time worrying about him when I've got 185 People who want to hear me. But the person who's new for the first time, what can you. How can you encourage them in that scenario, Annie?

Yeah, I mean, so first of all, let's have some compassion for the poor kid that is so tired he just can't even sit up. Like, poor sweetheart. Just. He's tired. It has nothing to do with the speaker. Even before the speaker stands up, he's like, I just need to sleep. You don't know what's going on in his household. You don't know the kind of pressure he's under. You don't know if his siblings have special needs or if somebody is struggling with mental health or if he's had a good breakfast or any of these things. Let's have some compassion for the humanity that shows up. And then let's focus on what you have to give. Now, I realize that's much easier for me to say at this stage as a grown woman with three children, but anytime we're focusing on what we can give to other people, that helps Us get out of our head. And then there's that song. Like, what is it? What are the lyrics? Mama said there'd be days like this. You know, there are days like this. And when my oldest daughter is very ambitious, she works in the music business industry. And one of the things we talked about from the age of like, 10 was, okay, honey, the people that are really successful in any field are the people that just keep showing up and trying over and over again. And if you try for 10 things that you really want, you might get one of them. And that's fine. That's great, because now you've gotten one thing that you never would have gotten if you hadn't gone after all of those 10. But let's be realistic about the numbers. I mean, how many events that we go after do we actually get? My numbers are getting better for every year, but it's still not 100%. And it's never going to be 100%. And it's an illusion that everybody else knows what they're doing. I don't know any grownups who know what they're doing, period. Nobody knows what they're doing. We're all just kind of managing and doing our best and showing up over and over again. And we are going to have bad days. You have to be willing to get through the bad days to have the good ones.

Thank you. This is a really, really goal here. Because again, you can probably tell Annie, I am very sensitive.

I like it.

New and emerging speakers and what they're dealing with, because I've been there. And I didn't have much of what you shared with me today. I did not have a clue about any of this when I was starting out right. And I, you know, aired my way to the top. I didn't know how to read an audience.

Yeah.

And somebody said, well, Annie, how do you really read the audience? I mean, do you even try and do it before you go in the room?

No. I mean, a lot of the times I don't because I still have to show up and give. I mean, think about it. If you're. It's not that different from being a middle school teacher where you're showing up every day and your kids are showing up with all their baggage, all their mental health struggles, all their physical struggles of being exhausted. You know, kids, when you're talking about 10 o' clock in the morning, teenagers aren't really even awake until like, 11, 11am so you're dealing with people that should be asleep. So you got most of them wide Awake. That's pretty good.

Darren laughs because he had to handle Darren. How did you feel when you had to face those middle school kids or high school kids?

Oh, gosh. I called Mark because he used to. I grew up with that almost 200 times a year, like Mark.

What do I do?

What do I do? They're intimidating. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And sometimes the. Our expression speaks so loudly.

Right.

That if. But many of us, we don't really know how to read this now. We do talk about Paul Ekman, who established that there was happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust. I checked his website. I was told it's no longer six, but it's seven. Basic. They changed happiness to enjoyment.

I know that's what they say. There's so many more than that, but.

Yeah, I know, I know.

Paul Ekman is wonderful. He's really done the biggest body of work in the field. He's a brilliant man. He's very, very focused on academic research and he's very thorough. I care a lot less. I kind of go out and poke real humans in real life situations, and I'm like, well, this is what I know. Let me tell you what I know. And I'm much less concerned with proving it. So he's a much better source than I am. When you want to look at the science behind it, if you want to know what's really practical and what works and you want the shorthanded version of like, let me teach you a couple tricks in a few minutes. I'm your person. But, yeah, there's much more that's universal than 6 or 7 or 8 or even 12. We humans do the same things over and over and over again.

Yeah, again. And I want to clarify for the audience, I forgot the qualifier basic. Paul was a basic emotional behavior.

Anybody who's interested, I would recommend Paul Ekman. It's E, K, M A N. He's just done this fabulous body of work. He. He's very, very, very good at what he does.

And what I love about you, though, is thanks to your kids, giving them credit. You've simplified it so it's easier, simpler, and more practical.

Yes. I was one semester away from getting a teaching degree when I decided to go into anthropology. And I've spent. Because of all these different languages, I spent my entire life, one, reading people that I didn't understand, and then two, translating. Translating and focusing on, okay, well, how do I explain this when I only have a very limited amount of words in this language? Or how do I translate for this person who doesn't speak the language that this idea originally came from. So I had all these different patterns of thought in my brain because each language is a separate roadmap. And you can't. You think differently in different languages. And unless you've learned languages through immersion, so. But you have them completely separate, that's hard to understand. It certainly was hard to understand. I spoke only English until I was 16. And so I started. When I started to speak Swedish, I thought this is a whole different structure for thinking than English. And so that's made me very flexible and able to put myself in that position. And I like to play. So I don't go into a laboratory to figure out facial expressions. I just kind of go to somebody like poke. What happens if I say this inappropriate thing? What happens if I say this? What happens if I say this that's totally outrageous or really uncomfortable. And then I can backtrack and be like, no, just kidding. So that's where my kids and I have had the fun of the play of learning about humans.

And Darren loves to point out, I think it was George Collin who said, you know, it's writing comedy is like going on a field trip, not being in a laboratory. So you are the epitome.

That's right.

The quintessential playground, lifelong, one big word, Darren. Quintessential Darren.

Yeah.

So Mark's taking notes and doing his keepers. So we kind of wrap it up with two things because I want to honor your time. One, who is your perfect client? Because I want people to know more about you. So who are some of the kind of clients you work with where you're speaking to a group?

So I mean, my absolute obsession is at some point to get. Get some kind of technical solution so that I can reach the autism community in a larger way than I'm able to today, because I can. For somebody who has the kind of autism where they're good at pattern recognition, I can help improve their lives so that they have better, better ability to make decisions of their lives so that they're included professionally, romantically, platonically, in ways that they might not otherwise be included. So the autism community is really big for me. And then really I just do everything from high stakes negotiation in corporate to teaching children how to recognize predatory behavior. I do a lot of that. I'm doing something at the end of the week with a large group to teach how to recognize predatory behavior in an interview process. So safety, security, helping clients stay safe. I do a number of humans where I do their strategic advisory because I did 20 years. That was. My actual job, was strategic advisory. And I kept my micro expressions ability completely secret. I still do that. I will only do strategic advisory when I'm extremely emotionally attached because I found that I can catapult people's careers. And I'm unwilling to do that unless I deeply, deeply care about the person and their mission.

Do you have any dream audiences, like convention conference?

Yeah, I like big audiences. I just like standing in front of a thousand people. I like the show, I like the play. I like to make people think about things that they've never thought about. And I think that if we can better read each other, it's much easier for us to be forgiving and kind. That piece matters to me.

I mean, when I met you and learned about you and chatted with you, even in the drive, I was like, okay, how can we let the world know about anything?

Yeah. And I also. I want to be on Jimmy Fallon.

Sweet. Well, and then, last question. As Mark tidies up his notes. If you were sitting down with a presenter over coffee, just one person. They were new, they were eager, and they desired to be an unforgettable presenter. What advice would you give them?

To share as much of your humanity as possible. Possible to figure out what piece of your message you can be real and authentic in. Because I think we humans are just desperate for real. We're so tired of the polished poison plastic that doesn't do anything for us humans. We don't feel seen, we don't feel loved, we don't feel connected. Go out there and even if you're insecure and even if you're just starting off, share what's real, because that's what we need from each other as humans. Wow.

Bam, man. That was so powerful. And I've got a few nuggets from Annie. How do I say in Swedish, sun blood. How do I say that in Swedish?

Sun blood.

Sun blood. Okay, I'm trying. Yes. You get a Jamaican living in Georgia trying to speak Swedish. That's a bad recipe altogether. No problem, man. Okay, a couple of ideas for us to remember. We are all wired with the same facial expressions. And in the meeting, look at the eyes first. When those pupils dilate, triple your price. So the sale. Okay. Humans want joy, they want human connection, and they want human interaction. Give it to them. They want to be seen and known. We want to feel loved and collect and connected. And we can do that in our interactions. When we feel. When we genuinely feel the emotion, the facial expression will show it. Focus on what you have to give and to share. Get out of your head and be honest with your audience. Their mood is not really your problem. Be kind to them, be compassionate and love them. If we can better read each other, we can be more forgiving and kind. So share as much of your humanity as you can. Be authentic, be real and love your audience.

Yeah, that was a great summary. I was like, who said that Mark's.

The best at summaries and how would people reach you? How would people find you?

Yeah, you can just LinkedIn is, is actually the easiest just to look at annie Sarnblad at LinkedIn and message me.

Boom. And that's S A R N B L A D. Annie Sarnbad. Wonderful. Darren.

Thank you.

Nice. So thank you so much for being with us. Thanks for coming to our chapter. Thanks for doing this for me, Mark and me and our listeners and please like go check out what she's doing, how she's doing it, if you know an audience that she should be in front of. I mean, I love, I can see it. High stakes negotiation, huge. Just what we learned at the chapter that we didn't cover today. Awesome. And obviously taking care of predators. And I love the story about your daughter coding the guy and outing him. Like that's amazing.

Well, that was the first one only. I mean we have a, we have, have stories, you know, we have some stories. Yeah.

And then I love too that it came back and bit you in the butt that you couldn't lie to your own kids.

Boom.

So Annie, thanks for being here with us. It was a pleasure to have you join us next week and if you're listening to Seriously just for Mark's entertaining expressions, go check out the YouTube version of this episode. Thanks for being here. Tune in next week where we'll help you be unforgettable.

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