In this episode, we dive deep into the crucial skills that truly set successful sales professionals, leaders, and marketers apart: people skills and communication intelligence in an age increasingly dominated by AI and technology. We’re thrilled to welcome Brian Galke, founder of Subtle Skills, facial intelligence expert, and one of the most dynamic communicators out there, to join us for a conversation that bridges tech and true human connection.

We set the stage with reflections on how experiences, whether it’s a magic show or a corporate sales rally, are often less about the technical details and far more about the performance and connection built with the audience. As we all talk about AI, automation, and efficiency, we ask: what if the biggest opportunity isn’t communicating better with tech, but better with humans?

Brian takes us through his fascinating story from introverted self-proclaimed tech nerd to one of the most sought-after experts on reading faces and decoding communication styles. Together, we explore how AI can be a powerful support tool, but the ability to read people, to listen, observe, and adapt—remains an irreplaceable leadership advantage.

Here’s what we cover in this episode:

• Brian’s journey from IT trainer to facial intelligence expert and why communication is a learned skill, not an innate trait.
• The surprising connections between magic, sales presentations, and the importance of always having a “plan B.”
• Practical, actionable methods to decode how others like to communicate through facial features, word choice, and body language.
• Why personal branding and authentic relationships have become non-negotiable in today’s workplace.
• The real risks of losing touch with human interaction in a world obsessed with automation.

Key takeaways:

1. Presentation Over Product: Whether you’re on a stage or in a sales pitch, the quality of your communication and preparation trumps the "final product." Much like a magic show, how you present yourself and adapt on the fly is what builds trust and buys engagement from your audience 00:00, 10:07.
2. People Will Tell You How They Want to Be Communicated With: Every day, your clients and teammates share valuable clues about their preferred communication style—auditory, visual, or kinesthetic via their emails, texts, and speech patterns. Tune in, watch for their cues, and adjust your approach for maximum rapport 12:05, 17:47.
3. Mastering Body Language is Essential: Reading faces is a proactive skill you can use from the moment you walk into a room, but body language tells you how the conversation is actually going. Don’t just focus on crossed arms look at engagement, eye contact, and even changes in someone’s lower eyelid to detect openness or resistance in real time 21:38, 24:24.
4. Leverage Technology, But Don’t Lose The Human Touch: AI, automation, and digital tools are here to stay—and can supercharge your productivity. But they can’t replace the human need for empathy, connection, and adaptability. The ability to connect authentically leads to higher close rates, better retention, and stronger workplace culture 13:27, 36:10.
5. Personal Brand and Relationship Building Matter Now More Than Ever: It’s not enough to be competent; developing your personal brand and deepening client and colleague relationships is what will make you indispensable, even as companies cut costs and roles are automated. In a race to the bottom, relationships are what keep you competitive 34:06, 40:31.

We hope you walk away with a renewed appreciation for the “soft” skills that are, in reality, your hardest-hitting leadership tools. Don’t forget to check out Brian's book recommendations, resources at Subtle Skills, and his insights on why mastering communication is essential for every modern professional!

Rach & Rin

If you've ever been to a magic show, it's more the presentation than the final product. Right. It's how do they dress, how do they move their hand movements, how is this going to look? Because a lot of magic is sleight of hand. So they have to go and look throughout all the different seats to understand how to do the best performance for them.

Everybody is talking about AI now, obviously, hot button topic. That's been a hot button topic for a long time. But how is it changing sales? How is it changing marketing, leadership and business? And what if. What if the biggest opportunity isn't learning how to communicate better with technology, but what if it's learning how to better communicate with actual human beings? That's something that we all can take a page out of that book. We have Brian Galke from Subtle Skills on with us today. And I honestly think, Brian, you're probably one of the most fascinating people that we've had at our sales rally. And definitely here on the Lending Leadership podcast, Brian's got years of teaching people how to identify communication styles and personality all through looking at their face. So we're going to get into facial intelligence, we're going to get into communication style and some really interesting things.

So thank you for joining Landing Leadership. I'm Rach. We've got Corinne here. We got Brian Galke. Let's jump in.

Let's get started, guys.

Thanks so much for being with us.

Sure. I was in corporate America for 21 and a half years. I got into computer, so got out of college. First job out of college was Enterprise Rent a Car. Why? Because they were the number one college recruiter. So you work with all people your own age. Then I became a technical recruiter. And this is going to sound really narcissistic, but I was making a little bit of money and I was placing all these people companies, and they didn't really seem that smart.

I'm like, I need to go get a certification. So I was a nerd. I went back and got a Microsoft certification. And that was right when Dot com, like, I got into it. It's like all these job offers and everything. And then it became dot bomb and there were no job offers. And the only place that was hiring was a place that watched and made sure that all the inmates were making phone calls from federal prisons that the servers were still up. So my job for eight hours at night, from 4pm to midnight, was to just make sure our servers didn't crash way back in the day.

And that was it. And so I'M kind of an introvert by nature, so I. You know, I always picked, like, jobs where I worked on stuff instead of with people, but I was always curious about people, so I was always picking up books on body language, stuff like that. You name it. But what really changed everything for me was, number one, I like to be around people, even though I'm kind of terrified of people at the same time. So I'm like, how can I get off the help desk? Like, well, you can learn how to build the equipment. And I learned that. And then they learned how to install it.

And when you go to install it, then you became the corporate trainer also. And I'm like, ooh, I'm gonna have to learn presentation skills. So I started reading how to Win Friends and Influence People, stuff like that. You name it. And then in 2010, I met this guy named Mac Fulfer, and he was an attorney who walked away from his law practice to teach face reading around the world. And like most everybody who just heard it go, oh, face reading. Ooh, can you read palms? And everything else. I thought, this guy's full of crap.

And I wanted to prove he was full of it. So. And there's a backstory to it, but basically, a friend of mine came in. We were supposed to go to dinner. She canceled the dinner and then told me I have to come meet this guy. I'm like, why do I need to meet him? She's like, because he can read faces. And I go, yeah, whatever. And she finally convinced me.

Go.

But I had a chip on my shoulder. I thought, I'm going to prove this guy's a fraud. And so I went with that intent, and I couldn't do it, so I got curious. And that was back in 2010. I studied with him all through 2011. He did group training twice a month. And what? I was never telling anybody what I was doing at work, but I kept getting promotion after promotion after promotion, and it was because I was focusing on other people instead of myself. And I don't know if you guys have ever read the books Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel.

If you haven't highly recommend it, definitely get that book. But what that book found was the people who were in concentration camps. If they said, oh, I just want to survive, they tended to wither away. But if they're like, I want to see my wife again. I want to see my husband again. I want to see my kids again. Whatever it was, we can do and accomplish more when we focus on others and not Just ourselves. And that was kind of the same thing for me because once I learned how to kind of read faces and body language and everything, well, when I'm thinking about you, guess who I'm not thinking about? And that's me.

And so I just kept getting promotion after promotion. But I was scared to tell anybody that I was studying it because everybody thinks communication's natural, but it's not. Now there are some people who are very charismatic. They just have that certain thing about them, but that's not most people. Most people are practicing in private what you see in public, if that makes sense.

Sure.

That is, that's, that's interesting because I don't, I never think about it, Brian. Like, I just, I guess, I mean, maybe when you're, you're meeting with some individuals, you communicate or act differently subconsciously.

Right.

But you know them and you, you know that, you know, it's a different style to talk to one person who might be more fast paced, opposed to another who might be more quiet, but it's more, it feels like it's subconscious. Like a lot of individuals, if you ask them, wouldn't own up to it or wouldn't know that they were consciously practicing or adjusting their style.

Right.

I love that you brought up that book. Also. It's so funny. Someone was just mentioning that on one of our teams chats, we have an internal book club and Dave Holland was like, hey, has anybody ever read this book? And I'm like, oh my gosh, it's, it is a dynamic read. I mean, life changing read. So I agree with you on that. If people have not read that, you, you absolutely need to go out and do the audiobook, do the, read the book. It's, it's fabulous.

And it just is so still true today. The stories that he shares and the, the drive. Right. And I want to back up though, because I, I've heard you say this before, that you, you know, you have this, this friend in town and you're like, well, this is a bunch of hodgepodge. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go dispel whatever this person is selling over here. The snake oil that someone's spelling selling over here. What did you think? Like, what preconceived notions did you have in your mind of what you thought? This whole facial recognition and, you know, understanding how, how to read somebody versus what you actually heard and saw.

Have you ever seen the movie the Greatest Showman?

It's one of my favorites.

Mine too. Okay, good. Then you know what's Known as a. Yeah. Oh, I just watched it the other day. I sometimes I'll put it on the background while I'm working on stuff. And it's just a great show to have on. It's kind of a motivational one, especially if you're an entrepreneur like he was and everything else.

Well, there was a term named after him called Barnum statements. And Barnum statements are things that are so generic that they apply to everyone. And so when you go to a lot of mentalists, mediums, things of that nature, well, they'll say things like, you know, someone who's had a hard time in life. Well, it's like, who hasn't, right? Or a good example of that is if you go to some, maybe let's say with a crystal ball and they go, I see someone in your family with a darkness in their chest. Well, when they say darkness in your chest, then you start going, oh, well, yeah, my friend had lung cancer or my friend had a heart disease or whatever. So they say these things that are so wide open that you fill the connections for him.

Sure, right.

And so I went in, I'm like, this guy's going to use Barnum statements. He's going to use these generic things. And when he went person by person, if they had the same facial feature, he said the same thing twice. And if they were different, he said different things. So what I thought he was going to do is just use those kind of open loop things or open phrases where people fill in the gap on their own. And he didn't do that. So I was like, oh, maybe there's something to this. And so I bought his book.

As a matter of fact, I keep a copy of it right here so people can see this is the original book. And I know it's kind of hard to tell, but you can see my highlighting on every page because I went and studied with them in those group settings to learn what all it meant. So. But yeah, when I first learned it, and this is kind of a backtracking for a second. Anybody who does presentations or in sales should read books on magic or mentalism, not for the trick, but for the setup of the performance. And what I mean by that is you never know when a magic trick or a mentalism trick is going bad because they have backups in case the primary trick doesn't work. And that's the same thing that everybody in a presentation should do. So, for example, I used to be part of a presentation team.

We were called the pro Demo team and we flew all over the U.S. any client, over a million dollars. Me and two other people were part of that presentation team. Well, we knew what happens if the PowerPoint crashes. Okay, well, then this person will talk while this person recovers the PowerPoint. Because if not, if things go down in the middle, you're scrambling, you're trying to talk to people and figure things out at the same time. And it's a panic show.

Right.

I always like to give the analogy, like, have you ever been married? Most people have. There's always something that goes wrong in the wedding, but only the bride and groom know and the wedding coordinator. Right. The people in the audience have no idea what was supposed to happen, so they don't know what was missed. If that makes sense.

Sure.

Yeah. So.

Yeah, it does. So. So one of the takeaways is what you're saying, Brian, is, you know, when it comes to sales, always having that plan B, that plan C dialed in. And you can learn that from these. These skills.

Yes, 100%. Thank you for railing me back in.

Yeah, yeah, but that's. I mean, we're constantly talking about that, you know, whether it's on this podcast or just in life and in business, like, oh, well, what. What takeaways do you have? And what's another great book and what's a great speaker to listen to? And I've never heard anybody say, look at books or speakers that talk about magic or mentalism. But that's a cool trick. Yeah, that's a trick in itself.

Well, if you really go, if you've ever been to a magic show, it's more the presentation than the final product. Right. It's how do they dress, how do they move their hand movements? It's how do they set up the entire thing that you see. And they have to go and sit from the audience's perspective and think, like, how. How is this going to look? Because a lot of magic is sleight of hand. So they have to go and look throughout all the different seats and say, who won't be able to see what I'm doing? So they absolutely put themselves in the customers or prospect seats to understand how to do the best performance for them. And that's why those books are good for that.

Well, it also reminds me, too, Brian, of our sales rally. Like when I'm rallying up our marketing team for the sales rally, because we run the rally, I always say, we're putting on a show, guys. It's all about the show, because the speakers can be fantastic, but if the temperature's off, if there's issues getting in line for the food, and you can't get your lunch if there's distractions with the materials or some type of setup during the conference or the. The AV isn't hooked up right. Those are the details and the things that are remembered. Then the stuff that, you know could be bucketed into complaints or why things didn't run right. And it takes away from the quality of speakers or some of the quality pieces that you're really trying to emphasize. So it can be applied in so many, many different ways.

What other edgy things do you have for us, Brian, as far as sales goes, that can kind of give you an extra edge that, you know, maybe some other salespeople or competitors are not paying attention to that could cue them in.

We live in the day and age where people will tell you how to talk to them if you learn to pay attention. And a good example of that is we live in an age where people email and text more often than they talk. But even if they're talking to you, people will literally tell you how they want to be talked to or how they take in and process information. So I'll show you a few examples if you guys want to see some examples.

Yeah.

Okay. All right, now, you guys have had a teaser. You've seen my presentation before, but I will kind of show this.

We have new listeners here that might not have.

And these are new slides, too, so even better.

Yeah.

And hey, if we've got listeners that are just listening in, go over to YouTube so you can see some of these slides, too, because you don't want to miss this part of it. I'm sure we haven't seen this yet, but maybe we have.

All right, so I think one of y' all will have to pop it up for me, because. There we go.

Perfect.

All right, so let me make this a little bit smaller. I first want to go back to. I'm going to slide back up for a minute because this is a new slide, I add, that you guys haven't seen. But it makes me laugh every time we talk about it. So you guys saw in the presentation we talked about, you should be scared of AI to a degree, because AI is coming in. It's expected to replace up to 800 million jobs by 2030, and we're seeing that regularly. But the important part is what's here in the purple. And that is every single study says if you learn soft skills, emotional intelligence skills, those are all people skills.

If you learn people skills, you survive a lot longer in Pretty much everything. Because what AI can't do is AI can't be in a room with people. And we crave that. So what do we do if we want to punish kids, we put them in timeout. What do we do with the worst offenders? We put them in solitary confinement. It's a punishment to take people away from other people. And that's why AI is good. It can help you.

I use it every day, hence my slide. That's gonna make you laugh. Like, AI and I are in a relationship, right? So I use it for Claude.

AI Terminators. AI Terminators, Yeah.

It was a funny prompt that said, you know, you know, put this in and it'll tell you, like, how AI sees you. And this was what came up. So it makes me laugh. And I put it in my presentations now. But every day I use Claude for, like, I'm writing a book, actually two books right now at the same time. I use ChatGPT to help me. I write my own posts. But then I have chatgpt rail it in or ring it, Rail it in for me, bring it in.

I improve. Yeah. When I go to events, like when we spoke at your event, I use Opus Clip. So I take the videos and the pictures and I create videos from that. And then I do the same thing with Cap Cut. And then I wear those Ray Bans that you can take pictures and video with. So I'm using technology and AI every single day to just help me be better. And it doesn't matter what position or company you work at, AI is a tool.

So a very simple example is people go, oh, well, that's cheating. So are calculators. But I'm not going to use my fingers and toes to count. Right. It's just a tool if you know how to use it the right way. So that kind of goes back to the AI question. But what you guys haven't seen before is we talked about there's three ways that people learn, and that is they're auditory, visual, or kinesthetic. Well, I taught you guys.

What are the different facial features? How do you talk to them? You know, what's the best way? That's what we talked about at your event. But what I've added since then is, are we really looking here? And I'll make it a little bit larger so people can see. Is. Are we reading through the messages or are we listening when people talk? So this was an example of a CEO who I was working with. And because in the email, I just went and highlighted words. So sit down, take the medicine, position yourself, rebuild. The words he was using were action words. So when I responded back, I used action words as well.

Well, when people send emails and texts and everything, they tell you how they're thinking. So this was a dealership I worked with in California last week and we just took a bunch of different emails and started highlighting words. So in this email, the subject line is, hey, I heard some great things that underlie can't stop listening, spoke his language. Everything I'm hearing well then I know that's an auditory person. So what am I going to do? I'm going to use sound words when I'm talking back to them. Hey, it sounds like you want to come down to the dealership. Let's go in. Let's let you hear the engine roar on this baby.

So you just use words that people already telling you that that's how they prefer to talk. So I'm more visual learner, like the next one here. Hey, I saw your inventory online. That's the first one in the email. It says, hey, they caught my eye. The color options look really sharp. You know, I can't wait to see it in person. I know this is a visual person like I am, so I don't have to change anything in my language when I'm talking to them because I'm a visual person.

But people will tell you in their text messages and their emails exactly how to talk to them. You just have to learn to pay attention to it. And so few people do. But the third one here is I'm ready to pull the trigger. I want to get behind the wheel, I want to feel how it handles. That's somebody who's a hands on learner. So I'm going to respond back with action words again, kind of like that first CEO. So that's something we didn't talk about at your event is yes, there's facial features to look at that can absolutely tell you how to understand somebody.

But people are literally sending you information saying, this is how I prefer to talk. And you can learn to match that. Now, don't match it 100%. Keep a little bit of authenticity to who you are, but you need to make sure that you're not only speaking your language. So the example we gave at the sales rally was there's the golden rule, which is treat people the way I want to be treated. But people are giving you information to follow the platinum rule, which is treat people the way they want to be spoken to.

That is so interesting. And as you're saying this. I'm going to bring us back over here. You know, I can think of the way that I communicate, and that's very true. You know, I tend to use things like listen. I hear what you're saying, but I'm really thrilled to get rolling and moving. So, like, I. And I am a kinesthetic auditory person, you know, like, that just proves your point exactly.

Yeah.

And that's the thing. People will tell you how to talk to them. We just aren't taught how to listen. So.

Yeah, what if you don't? What if you don't know what you are? I mean, I think I'm visual, but I'm not sure.

Go back and look at your own text messages and emails.

Okay. Yeah.

So I'll tell you a simple one. How are you speaking?

Yeah.

When I'm talking to somebody on the phone, I say, okay, I'll see you later. Did I ever see the person? No, no. But I'm extremely visual, and I say, okay, I'll see you later, because that's how I prefer, you know, Or I love to send. If you're visual, you love to send people memes and pictures and things like that.

Oh, I love doing. I love doing Corinne.

Yeah, you're a meme.

Corinne speaks in meme.

I am definitely visual. I am so excited to share another meme. I'm like, oh, how am I gonna showcase how I'm feeling right now to this 100? And I. I get excited to pick out the perfect. I call it a gif. Some people say a gif, but I do the soft G. But, yeah, I love that. Okay.

And then what you do is if you want to. If everybody should have a CRM of their customers and their clients, add in another little section. Do they seem like they're auditory, visual, or kinesthetic? And that will help determine how do I contact them also. So, for example, I think we talked about this. My friend Janine driver, body language expert, she loves to voice text. I'm visual. I hate voice text. But if I want to communicate with Janine, she will respond faster if I voice text her, even though I want to send pictures and, like, text, text.

So sometimes what it is is it's just making a note of how does that person like to communicate. I have another friend, Mary, who the way that she wants to talk is through videos when she's driving, you know, she just puts record on. She could have called me, we could have had a conversation. But she likes to record videos and send them. So I know if I want to Talk to Mary. Guess what I have to do when I get in my car and I go for a drive, I just put on my record. And while I'm driving, I leave her messages. So it's learning, not just how do I want to do it and forcing them to communicate with me.

I just know if I want a faster response. This is how they prefer to be talked to.

And what a great sales skill, too, Brian, because it's forcing each salesperson possibly outside of their comfort zone and their communication style, which is just going to strengthen them in all three that you just mentioned, right? Yeah. Well, it's mastering each of them as I'm hearing.

And this is where people get the wrong idea and they go, oh, it's manipulation. No, it's a sign of respect. It's like when I was younger and I went to other countries. Well, I thought everybody should speak English. If they didn't, somehow, me speaking English louder was going to somehow break the barrier of communication. Right. But what I learned over time is if I'm going to that country, I learned basic phrases as a sign of respect, because if I try to speak their language, then they'll try to speak mine. And probably the best example of that is you can go to France.

So let's say you're going to Paris, and you will have two totally different trips if you only speak English or if you try to speak French. And I say that from personal experience because they're very much. You don't even try. You're a dumb American, you know. That's not a French accent, by the way. That is just. I don't know why that one came out. But when you go and you don't even try to speak the language, they're immediately dismissive at restaurants and things like that.

Not people as a whole. But overall, when you go somewhere and you just like English, but when you try, and you even try, like in broken French, to say, do you speak any English? Then they will try to speak English if they can. But it's a sign of respect versus forcing them to say, you should speak only the way that I think.

Right? Yeah. Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot.

It's also interesting. So on the flip side, you know, I'm sure it's very easy to tell. You can feel kind of the cadence, and when a conversation's going really well and things are clicking and you're maybe reading their facial features and putting this all into practice. But how can you tell when you're losing someone in a conversation and maybe Use these little tricks and clues that you're giving to kind of save a conversation.

Sure. That's where body language comes in. So I'm known as the face guy because that's my main niche. But we also talked about at the sales rally about body language. So if you'll notice this book. I don't know if you guys can see down there. No, you can't. But I can tease a little bit here.

So that's amplify your influence by Rene Rodriguez. Great book on body language. Really good speaker, too. Not just because he's bald like me, but him and I, we're friends to a degree. I'd say I want to be his friend more than he probably wants to be mine, but you get the idea.

Put it out there. You never know what happened. We'll tag him.

Yeah. And then Janine Driver has the book. You say more than you think. This one is. What does your body language say about you? I'm a huge fan of body language because reading faces is a proactive skill. Meaning the minute you walk in, I don't have. You don't have to move. You don't have to do anything else.

I can immediately start figuring out how do I communicate with confidence based on what I can see. And then body language and statement analysis is how you read the room once you're in it or when you're in the conversation with people. So if we were in person and people aren't liking you, then they kind of lean away from you because we subconsciously distance ourselves from things we don't like. So if, if you're in there now, this is what people get wrong. And I'm going to purposely kind of step back a little bit. This is my cool thing, my camera. I can zoom out a little bit. Is people think this is bad.

Crossed arms aren't bad. Sometimes you're more comfortable. There's studies that say that crossing your arms is connecting your left brain and your right brain. And that's what people get wrong. And I just did that the other day. I got to speak. My mentor, Mac, lives in Fort Worth. And I did a gig in Fort Worth on Tuesday.

And he got to come. And I've never presented in front of him. And he sat there with his arms crossed and I thought, oh, crap, he hates it. Oh, crap, he hates it, and I'm guilty of it. And I teach this for a living. And when we got done, he got misty eyed. And, you know, he's like, this is such a full circle moment. Seeing someone else present My material and what I taught him.

And I'm so proud. And the whole time I was thinking, he hates me. Right. So don't always pay attention to crossed arms and things, but pay attention to where people are leaning. Are they leaning towards you? Are they leaning away from you? Now, in faces, what you can look at is our eyes are like camera lenses. And if somebody's lower eyelid is rounded, then they're open to hearing what you're talking about. But if suddenly they go straight, you just flatlined, something you said or did is causing them to try and shut you out. Because if I had a rubber band, I went like this and pointed at you.

Naturally, we close our eyes. Like it's somehow going to protect us. This. So what do kids do when they're scared? You close your eyes because it goes away. That never leaves us as an adult. It's our body's instinct is distance and take it away. So that's why when people get scared, what they do cover their eyes. What? Their lower lids.

If they're rounded, they're open to hearing what you said. But if they go straight, you just flatlined.

That's a really good way to remember it.

Yes. And the best part is, what are you doing? You're giving people eye contact when you're keeping an eye on that lower lid, which is a rarity this day and age, like we just talked about before we got on here. What do we have to do? Go silence all of our devices and everything else as a sign of respect for the podcast. But you know what people don't do in person, Any of that.

Oh, I love it. What do you suggest, Brian, for a salesperson who's trying to learn this? I mean, it sounds to me like you've got to practice. Right. It's not going to be something you're just going to master once you walk into a room with, you know, five, eight people in it. Right. So what are some tips that you give in your coaching to team members or sales teams that want to practice or want to get an edge with this skill? Sure.

We talked about books. I am a huge fan of books. If anybody goes to subtleskills.com resources, I list every book that I think is of value, including man's search for meaning is in there. So I think never stop learning is the first one. But what you have to do then is figure out how do you learn best. Are you an audible person? Are you a visual person? I think the best body language book for a beginner is a book called what Everybody Is saying by Joe Navarro, and I can show you a picture of it. I think. Give me one second.

It might be in that PowerPoint I had up earlier. It may not be. I may have to open up another one. But I recommend two different body language books that are basically covering different things. So let me see. Give me one second.

Everybody is saying, that's clever.

Yes. And he's a former FBI investigator, and he did it. And Jeanine Driver, that other book that I showed you, she is a former ATF agent who wasn't allowed to carry a gun, but she had to deal with gun runners and everything else. So it was her body language that kept her safe during that time. So I'm just looking for the books. I thought I had them in here. I guess I don't. I'll give you guys for the.

The show notes and everything. Just the page to go look at. But, yeah, body language, everything else. And so what everybody's saying is good about how to read other people's body language. And then the one that I showed you from Janine Driver, what you say more than you think is, what does your body language say? And let me tell you, everybody who doesn't remember 2021 and 2022, we got really sloppy with our body language. Very, very sloppy with our body language. Because we're used to just like, we are on zoom right now. Like, you guys don't know, am I wearing shorts? Am I wearing pants? You know, we all did like the.

The COVID Mullet, which was professional attire up top and then workout gear down below.

Right?

That's so funny. I've never heard of all that before.

The COVID Mullet.

That's so funny because people, you know, people would stand up in a meeting like, oh, crap, I forgot I was wearing, like, workout gear down below. So it's kind of funny because we did that when we were there. I'm looking to see if I have a picture of the books here. Give me one more second.

We just finished. Chris Voss has never split the difference.

Ah, there you go. Which we talked about right here. Now my daughter's.

I felt there.

Yes. So I will move this, but it will be going back. My daughter knows I'm a Batman fan, so she drew me a little Batman.

Oh, very cute.

So that goes in front of Chris. But, yes, I met him in backstage. So I was speaking on day two. He was a day one speaker somewhere. And of course, I went and crashed the green room. But you never know how a speaker is because some speakers are headphones. In don't you dare talk to me before I get on stage. Here's what will be really surprising to you.

Now, maybe not for you guys, because you put on conferences. You've met speakers. More speakers are introverts than extroverts. But people confuse that because they perform on stage to help others. And that's what introverts are really good at, is you can tell who's on stage because they want to be seen. Oh, look at me, I'm on stage. And who's on stage because they want to help someone else. And so a lot of speakers are introverts.

And so I went in the green room, and he was sitting on this couch up here. So at first I sat over here, like, I didn't know who he was. I'm like, chris? He's like, yeah. I'm like, can I talk to you for a few minutes? He's like, oh, absolutely. Come on over here. And I had a funny story to share in that. Four years prior to that, when I was still in corporate America, he was coming and doing training in Dallas. My company was too cheap to pay for training on anything.

Matter of fact, I had a executive vice president tell me, oh, I think when I hire people, they should already been trained in sales, which is the poorest excuse any leadership should ever say is, well, people have been trained once. You don't brush your teeth once. Right. It's just. It doesn't make any sense. But I found out where Chris Voss was in Dallas. It was like 10 minutes from my house. So I snuck into the hotel, and it's a private membership club.

Talked my way up, sat outside, and when they went for a coffee break, I took in with the book. I'm like, hey, can I take a picture with you when you sign my book? He's like, yeah. He's like, I don't remember you being in the class, because I'm not. And I just. So I showed him the picture four years earlier, and then we took a picture together, which I'll see if I can find that one here in a second. But let me show you the books I recommend for Body Language. So I want to stop that screen. I want to do another one.

And we can share that list, too, in the show notes, like you said.

Oh, yeah, here. I can. Yeah, there you go. So those are two different books. The one in yellow is what does your body language say about you when you enter a room? And the one in blue is how do you read everybody else's body language? Now I'm going to give you one more book. Well, actually here is the picture of me and Chris Voss. So that was us in the green room four years ago.

Oh, convince me that's his.

His.

Is that his book also?

No, that's written by another FBI hostage negotiator, but he also co wrote it with a PR crisis consultant. So it's like how do you handle a hostage like situation and then how do you recover from it? So Chip and Adele are great. Met them on a podcast. Two great people. They're also on my resources page. I'm gonna show you one other book. People are getting to go through the journey with us here of what you guys learned at the sales meeting. The last book is called the Like Switch L I K E.

This book right here. So this book was written by a former FBI behavioral analysis expert and the book is how did they look at body language? How did they set up situations where if I wanted to get someone to turn and be a spy against their own country, how did they set up the interactions over time? And if you think about that in kind of a weird way, that's how sales are done and meaning that it's very rare that you make a cold call once and all of a sudden they're a customer. But instead it's how do I set up every future engagement to build more and more rapport with a person over time to then they feel comfortable working with me. Yeah, that's a really good book to read.

Oh, that's. That's really fascinating stuff. I mean, man, I feel like especially in this AI world where people are kind of, I don't want to say hiding behind their computers, but maybe hiding behind their computers a bit. I feel like this information is so valuable. Are you seeing that more and more, Brian, with, you know, just everyone's talking about AI using AI, but are we losing a bit of this disconnection and human interaction and kind of forgetting how to 100% communication conversation.

You can go through different people's theories. Some people believe social media within the next three years will just be AI talking to AI. And right now, the way that algorithms reward people is the more content you put out there, the more it pushes your stuff. So what are people doing? They're using things like 11 labs, hey gen. To create digital copies of themselves. That it's kind of like watching a movie. When we see what looks like a dragon, we know it's not a dragon. We know there's something off about that.

We know, hey, that's not real. Well, it's the same thing with AI. Now, there's some scary things in AI. I don't know if you've gone in and played with it. It can do some pretty amazing things. But we still have kind of like a BS detector that we know that's not you. And so what happens is we start to dismiss it. We're like, oh, another one of their AI videos.

So what people are seeing is there's two trends that are growing right now. Mark Cuban just made a huge chunk of investment into a live events company because he said he knows people are craving to be back in contact with others. So he invested into a company that does venues, events, concerts, things like that. What we're also seeing is, and this is just this month, so I'm going to date the podcast here. But Sam Altman and all these other people who before were saying, AI is the way of the future and it's going to replace jobs are now saying, hey, stop letting people go. You still need people there. AI can't do everything. And so if you've watched, I think in the last month, oh, gosh, Microsoft offered early out packages to 9,000 people.

Amazon laid off people. Like it was like 40 or 50,000 people got laid off last month. And the challenge with that is if you were only good at a job and you weren't growing your personal brand or anything else, you were just a number on a spreadsheet. And so I talk about this all the time, Love my parents to death. They told me the same thing that their parents told them. That was kind of proper advice for them, but was horrible for me. And what I mean by that is it used to be that you went to work for a company, you worked there for 20 years and they took care of you for the rest of your life.

Right.

There were pensions and everything else. Yeah. And most of what was around before was the industrial age. We needed factory workers. So what did you do? You worked hard, kept your head down and if you did good work, you got promoted. That is not the day and age we live in right now. You have to build a personal brand. You have to stand out in the process.

Like not over the top. You don't have to go Dennis Rodman and get tattoos and marry yourself and have purple hair and red hair and whatever. But, you know, yeah, it makes him stand out. If you've ever, if you actually researched. I just watched him. He was on TV the other day. That's why that popped up. Dennis Rodman, before it was who we knew.

He was a good basketball player, but there was nothing about him that stood out. So somebody told him, go get the tattoos. You know, basically brand yourself and it's what's known as peacocking and that is make yourself stand out from the crowd. And that's why people remember who Dennis Rodman is versus how many people are in the NBA. So you know, you can name the greats like you got Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippins, all these things. But people will remember Dennis Rodman more for what he did off the court and then he was good on the court as well. So this day and age you have to have a personal brand. Don't just represent a company, be a personal brand in a company, not just an employee.

It's great advice. That's great advice.

Yeah. I mean honestly I think that that is something Corinne we're talking about all the time and how, and trying to help our, our salespeople do that and em that because yeah that's, that's just huge. People don't buy a company, they buy the person.

And also the authenticity piece of you still have to think up your own content unfortunately and make some of your own stuff. It can't just all be driven by AI or just kind of static posting that we notice does not always get the engagement 100%. See the video where you messed up or where you acted silly or where your hair wasn't perfect. They like that. That's what's going to get engagement to see you as a real person.

Yeah, we crave authenticity right now. So kind of. And you guys saw this one because this one was at the show or the sales rally. Is that slide there? If you can pop that one up is what do you get when you learn people skills? 28% higher close rate, 50% better co worker and customer rapport. And what that is is because when you learn to focus on other people when you're not AI is great. Send text messages, send emails, but it doesn't understand how to interact with people. Like even right now, this is my crystal ball on here and that is we love robo dialers with AI right now. But people are going to burn on that out on that very fast.

So like for example, I fly American Airlines all the time. If I want to make a change to my ticket, AI tries to do it for me and I get pissed off and say representative. Representative or agent.

Agent.

Agent. Because if I'm calling to make a change, that means there's something wrong and I don't trust that the computer is going to fix it. I trust A person will hear me out so I feel better, they'll empathize and they'll resolve my issue. Now maybe AI can do that. But do you feel comfortable with it? No, because there's no empathy with AI and that's where that 30 or 63% lower turnover is. 63% of the reason that people leave us our business, they move on to a competitor is miscommunication, misunderstanding.

Wow.

Well, and with AI, it's only staggering number. What's that? Very high.

Yeah.

Staggering number. It's. That's higher than I would expect.

Yeah.

That's the reason. Well, if you think about it, if you've had a relationship with somebody, what's the reason you leave? People can falter once, but if you don't feel seen and heard, I'm moving on to somebody else. And that can be romantic. Yeah.

Yeah. I couldn't agree more. Brian. I always say this with just client work in general, like from the marketing side, working with our loan officers who are our clients now. It doesn't mean, mean we're not going to make a mistake. It doesn't mean that something's not going to take longer than we anticipated at any given point in time. But how did you communicate to them about what was going on? Did you let them know? Did you give them a heads up? Or did you just wait for an email response or sit on something because somebody didn't respond to your email? That's where that's, those are the details that will get you, not the actual end result of, hey, something needed to change or I need more time or a mistake was made with something, we have to fix it. People actually just genuinely appreciate you being transparent, honest and explaining that those are how relationships are saved.

Those are how relationships grow from that level of communication. So I think sometimes there's just so much in there, there's so many good nuggets in there that can be taken away from the customer service side and from the selling side. I agree with you.

Yeah, well, shared strife is how bonds are formed. Not everything's going to work out all the time, but how do you respond and recover says everything about you. So I was in an industry before where they were owned by PE firms. So what do you have to do? You have to chase new revenue all the time? Well, what that meant was every time a new customer came out to bid, they throw all the resources at the new customer and leave our existing customers failing behind until we got what's known as a cure letter. And that is you basically get a Formal letter saying, if this isn't fixed within X many days, we can terminate your contract. And all of a sudden we loved them again. But what they were doing is they were so busy chasing new revenue and putting all the resources at it, which I get it, every company has to grow, but too many people are forgetting the people that got them there, that keeps them there. And that's one of the big things you're seeing is when people are doing things.

Right now is replacing people with AI. Well, AI may be able to do their job, quote unquote, but not the resources, the relationships. How did it get done? They may be able to replace a task, but they don't understand how the task fits into everything else. And the big thing that you'll read about right now is companies are getting rid of higher tier mid level managers. Well, what that does is the people up top don't always know how to talk to the people down below. And so there's that miscommunication. Well, those mid level managers were the people who bridged the gap mostly because they probably came from the trenches. But then they, they understood what leadership was wanting them to do.

Well, when all these companies have gotten rid of those, they're now having to hire back those people because they realize we don't know how to talk to those people. And that's where, you know, it's kind of a weird thing as you grow up in a company is when you're all peers, oh, you can hang out, you can do all these things. And as you get elevated, it's like, well, maybe you shouldn't spend as much time around them. Right. So we start creating this barrier in this glass ceiling, other things. And that's why we crave connection with people all the time. Is that's what really makes or breaks it is you get business because of relationships, but you only keep business because of relationships as well. Because right now with AI coming in, everything is a race to the bottom.

So what we're really seeing is these big, big massive companies that used to charge ridiculous amounts to do something for you are suffering. Like Salesforce is a really good example of that. I don't know if you guys have ever used Salesforce. It is very, very expensive to implement. Well now a smaller startup, Go High Level has come in and they are great for the small to medium tier people and they just stole so much of the business from Salesforce. But also people are looking, going, well wait a minute, I can use this other software that's a fraction of the cost and I Don't have to pay somebody $100,000 to set it up. I pay somebody $10,000 to set it up. And so they start looking, going, okay, in this case, no relationship's going to matter.

That's, you know, one tenth of the cost. I'm going to jump ship. But if it was a close cost and I had a relationship with one of you and not the other, who am I going to go with? The relationship?

Yeah, every time. Every time. Brian, this is. This has been just such valuable information. I feel like we could. We could chat all day long. I think one of the biggest takeaways that I have is just that these, this communication skill, this. This understanding of people and being able to decode someone's face quickly, like, this isn't a soft skill.

This is an absolute leadership skill. This is something that you can build over time. This is something that it's actually really fun to play with too. Where can people find you if they want to get more? If we've excited them a little bit to just say, oh, wow, I've never heard of anything like this before. Give me more info. Tell me how they can find you.

What's funny is when I bought Subtle Skills, I thought I was just a genius. I'm like, wow, it's such a good name. And I realized nobody can spell subtle. So if you go to Decode the face is one way, and then the other thing I'm going to do is I'm going to pop up a QR code there that people can scan if they're online, and that will take them to all the books and everything that we referenced today.

That's great. And that is such a great resource. You shared that with us before, too. For everybody listening, if you're just listening, go over to YouTube. You can get the QR code. We'll put a link in here, too, on all the platforms, wherever you're listening. But Brian, Brian Galkey, Subtle Skills, check them out. As always, thanks for everybody for tuning in to lending leadership with me and Corinne Rin.

This was fun.

This is a fun one. Thanks, Brian. This is a great conversation. Make sure to follow, like, subscribe all the things guys, and definitely connect with Brian to learn more.

Thanks, y'.

All.

Thanks, everybody.

It.