The Power of Primacy with Jack Schafer

The Power of Primacy with Jack Schafer

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 84 of the business development podcast. And on today's expert guest interview, we have former FBI agent and author of The Like Switch with us. Dr. Jack Schafer stick with us. You're going to love this episode.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development advice. Tips and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business. Brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast. And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 84 of the business development podcast. And today we have an absolutely amazing expert guest interview for you today. We have Dr. Jack Schafer, the author of The Like Switch and ex FBI agent.

Dr. Schafer PhD is a distinguished psychologist. Seasoned professor, intelligence consultant, and former FBI special agent. With an illustrious career spanning over two decades, Dr. Schafer has left an indelible mark on the fields of psychology, national security, and human behavior analysis. During his 15 years as an FBI special agent, Dr.

Schafer undertook critical roles in counterintelligence and counterterrorism investigations, contributing significantly to the nation's security efforts. His expertise led him to serve for seven years As a behavioral analyst in the FBI's National Security Division's Behavioral Analysis Program. In this capacity, he was involved in the development of innovative spy recruitment techniques, conducted interviews with high profile terrorists, and played a pivotal role in training agents in the intricate arts of interrogation and persuasion.

Beyond his remarkable law enforcement career, Dr. Schafer has made notable contributions to the field of psychology and behavioral analysis. He has authored and co authored six books, sharing his insights and knowledge with a broader audience. Dr. Schaeffer's articles have graced the pages of professional and popular journals, and he continues to engage and educate through online pieces in Psychology Today magazine.

Today, DrSchaferer serves as respected professor within the School of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice at Western Illinois University, where he imparts his wisdom and experience to the next generation of professionals. His work continues to influence and shape the understanding of behavior, security, and the complexities of our ever changing world.

Dr. Schafer, it is an honor to have you on our show today.

Jack Schafer: Thank you for the kind words.

Kelly Kennedy: Man. You know, I said it before this, this particular interview for me is, is truly meeting one of my heroes. I read your book for the first time nearing the beginning of my business development career, and It's just as amazing today.

I reread it right before our interview again over the last few days. And it still blows my mind. It, you know, people that listen to my show about business development say it's a bit like drinking through a fire hose. Cause we, we do a lot of educational stuff on here, but I think that the like switch is a bit like drinking through a fire hose with just the sheer amount of knowledge that you managed to pack into one book.

Jack Schafer: Well, thanks again, but it's a, it was like the culmination of everything I learned over my career as a police officer and an FBI agent.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. And it shows very much. So, you know, take us back to the beginning. How did you end up on that path?

Jack Schafer: Well, I think it's, it started back when I was a little, little kid, my mom would take us to the mall and I found myself just sitting.

In a place and looking at people and find them fascinating. What are they doing? Why are they doing it? What's going on? And that kind of fueled my curiosity for human behavior. And then as I got a little bit older, I, I decided to become a police officer and those skills that I kind of picked up. Ad hoc, just observing people really came in handy during police work because I was able to look at people and kind of analyze their behavior and anticipate what they were going to do.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. And like, because the intricacy of which you go into the analysis of just specific things, you know, was that taught to you over time? Or was that something that you've just observed observed and essentially made note of?

Jack Schafer: Well, basically what I did is I, I I like to read a lot of psychological research in the journals.

I look at the studies and I pick things up from there that are very esoteric and what I do is I try to repackage it and bring it down into a practical application for regular folks rather than just academics. Then also throughout my career I met a lot of personal friends that did, showed me a lot of Intricate or different techniques for interviewing or getting along with people and I picked up on those and then also my experience in law enforcement.

I picked up a lot of things on my own, so it's kind of an eclectic approach based on research, fellow investigators and, my own experiences.

Kelly Kennedy: My gosh, you know, you've dealt with special agents. You've been a special agent. You've dealt with spies, counterintelligence. Yeah, your career is unbelievable.

First off. So congratulations on an absolutely stunning and amazing career. You know, how has that experience, you know, changed who you are, the way that you look at the world?

Jack Schafer: Well, I, I look at the world, it's, it's like looking at the difference between looking at a black and white TV and a color TV, or I suppose nowadays a color TV and a 5G TV, you get a keener, crisper look at the world, more insights, you can see more things, so it kind of fills in the blanks that most people don't fill in, in, during their normal lives.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. You know, that was kind of one of the takeaways that I got from reading the book is that once you know. This kind of information and like to your level where it is ingrained into who you are like I imagine you can't you can't end up in a situation and unknow the things that you know, I guess one of the questions that I had was it must be a little bit challenging to be Dr. Schafer because you know, I mean, you have the ability to read people on a level that most people are just completely unaware of.

Jack Schafer: Well, it, it, I, I, people, people often ask me that, do you automatically do those things? And my knee jerk response is no, but then when you think about it, yeah, I guess I do because it is part of me.

I've been doing it so long and it's. It's like I've thrown a switch. When I'm working, I get more intense. It takes a lot of energy to analyze people constantly. So only in like working situations will I, you know, make the effort to really analyze people, but do I do it subconsciously? Yes.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. I imagine so.

I imagine so. One of the questions that I had regarding that was, okay, so when I was listening to the book, obviously a big part of the book is the friendship signals right in the beginning, kind of where we're getting into the say, second, third chapters, we're talking about the friendship signals. And I remember kind of thinking like, well, if I'm doing these things and I recognize later that I do most of them automatically kind of same thing, just intrinsically been in business development a long time.

Building rapport with people, the friendship signals kind of become a part of it, even though I don't consciously think about it, but I remember kind of thinking, well, if I was consciously thinking about all the friendship signals, and I'm doing the canting of my head, and I'm leaning in towards people, or like, wouldn't people notice?

But then, you know, I mean, you kind of mentioned that they're so subtle that most people don't even recognize that it's happening.

Jack Schafer: And it's even, it's even more critical because people do it all the time, every day. They just don't realize they do it because it is subconscious. So, what I always tell people, don't take my word for it.

About the friend signals. I want you to just go out and look at people and look at the head tilt and the eyebrow flash and the smile. You'll see it every day all the time and then you'll catch yourself eyebrow flashing and tilting your head and smiling. And so what I'd like to tell the people I talk to is that.

I'm not teaching you anything new. I'm teaching you to recognize something you do every day. Then you can take those friend signals and then you get into a business situation, a business meeting, a negotiations with somebody. You can intentionally use those to make sure that the message gets across that I'm not a threat.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes, it was super funny because I was thinking about this the other day, and I have a pretty high level client here in Canada that we work with, and they were in a big, big meeting, and they had about half the room bought in and the other half they were struggling with. And they're like, Kelly, like, what could we have done better?

And I was like, man, like, I think we just need to implement all the stuff in the like switch, because I think ultimately you could have targeted the ones that weren't weren't on board and had a little more personal contact and figured out a way to flip them. But it's just not something that in the moment that you necessarily think of, but if you can.

Learn to enact some of these principles into your everyday life. And it is going to take practice and it is a lot of information, but I think that any business person could benefit immensely from enacting even half of the information in The Like Switch .

Jack Schafer: Yeah, because all you're doing is building. A rapport or a relationship between two people.

And if I can get the person I'm talking to, to like me, they're more likely to buy something from me, a good goods or services to help me. And that's kind of the secret of the whole thing is when people like other people, they want to do things for those people without even being asked. So all we're doing is we're trying to develop a relationship where it's a win win.

The person wants to help me. I want to help them fill a need. They want to buy the product for me. So it's kind of a give and take and it's a happy situation. It's a win win.

Kelly Kennedy: In the book, you know, obviously it's, it's near the beginning, but we talk about the friendship formula. Like, you know, in that case, we're talking about proximity, frequency, duration, intensity.

But these are all of the techniques that you guys implemented in order to flip, to flip agents or to flip you know, foreign nationals and things along those lines. And it's, it's an amazing story. And the first the beginning of it, what we're ultimately talking about is Operation Seagull. Can you elaborate a little bit on Operation Seagull?

Jack Schafer: Well, the, we, we initially in, as we, in the behavioral analysis program, Joan and I sat down because people were asking us, how do you make friends? How do you develop sources? How do you get people to talk to you? And so we sat down and we said, there's 4 basic principles. Bottom line, proximity, because if you don't have proximity, you don't have a relationship.

Then there's frequency. So you have to be frequently by somebody. And if there's duration, you can't just frequently be by somebody. It has to be with duration because the more time we spend with someone, the more we can influence them. And then there has to be intensity and we measure those by nonverbal signals.

So we had a. A person that we wanted to talk to, and he said, I will never talk to you. And we said, fine, but we needed the information from him. So what did we do? We sat in his cell and we just sat there and read the paper and did nothing. And then we sat there and sat there and pretty soon that proximity, what proximity does, it subconsciously develops mutual liking.

So just by the mere fact I'm there, I'm not a threat, then he lowers his guard. Then when the fear goes away, then curiosity takes hold. So eventually he says, well, why are you here? Why do you come every day? Well, just to talk to you. And then I go back to reading my newspaper because there's a principle you increase restrictions increases drive.

So you want to, you want to hold back. So I held back. Finally, he just eventually says, okay, I want to talk to you. And I looked at him. I said, well, you sure you said you'd never talk to us. I want to make sure that you want to talk to us. He says, yes, yes, I want to talk to you. What do you want? So it's, it's the, the, that psychological principles.

That really predisposed people to want to talk to you, to like you, to get curious.

Kelly Kennedy: I am incredibly curious about, you know, your time in the FBI. Were you aware of these principles before you ended up in the FBI or was this a specific training program that was given to new agents?

Jack Schafer: No, it wasn't a specific trial.

I'll tell you, it's kind of an interesting story because I was a trainee agent where I had a new agent. I was training and he kind of followed me around with a notebook. And he said, why did you do what you did when you did it? Well, I don't know. He kept asking me all these questions and I said, well, why don't you get 18 years experience and you can do it?

He says, I don't want to wait 18 years. I want to do it now. So he started taking notes and then we did post mortems on all our interviews. And then he started saying, well, why'd you do it? And I explained, there's a psychological principle of this and that, and the other thing I didn't even really. Catalog any of those things.

I just instinctively bred and knew about those things. So in the end of about six or eight months, his notebook was filled with all these techniques and, and the psychological principles of why they worked. And I said, boy, that would make a good book, you know, cause you can take, you can take all those principles that we do in, in getting people to confess or getting people to spy for us.

Or turn, betray their country and work for our country. Yeah. And if I can get somebody to betray their country and work for ours, I can, I can get a date, I can get a business deal. I can sell something in the, in the business and social world.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, absolutely. And one of the things that it made me question, okay.

And one of the things that it made me question is how much. Of interaction is actually a choice because if you can convince somebody to to flip sides to betray their country, right? Something that morally in inside of them, they would fight tooth and nail, but using the right techniques over a period of time using the principles you were able to.

Convince them to do something that intrinsically to who they are as a human, they probably wouldn't go against any other way. It does start to make you question how much of our day to day life is even a choice. Or is it just a series of events? If you push the right buttons.

Jack Schafer: Well, I think we all make choices.

Some of us are more aware of the choices or circumstances surrounding our choices than others. Mm hmm. So some people just spontaneously make a choice and other people think about their choices. So but we all have choices.

Kelly Kennedy: Given the fact that you know what you know now, do you find that, you know what I mean, you would be able to recognize if somebody was, was performing something like this on you, would you be able to recognize the signals, a hundred and fifty percent?

Jack Schafer: Absolutely. And what I tell people is you, you should learn these techniques because that's what con men do when they con people. They take, they take their identity, they take their money. And so what you want to do, they use the same techniques, by the way. So what you have to do is recognize it. And I call it, name it and label it and name it, name it.

And what I say, name it. And what you want to do is you recognize what, what it is, and then you bring it to their attention. So what you say is, Hey, I know what you're doing. I know what you're up to. At least you're thinking, I know what they're up to. Now you're, now you're made aware of what they're up to.

Now you have to think, is this a normal relationship developing? Or is this a con man trying to get information from me that he doesn't need to get? So it gives you red flags.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, and you hit on that very much in the last chapter of the book, where you're talking about red flags to watch out for on the internet, and how much you want to put out there, and I did notice when I was trying to do research on you, Dr.

Schafer, that you are very, very good at keeping your information off the internet.

Jack Schafer: Well, you can, you can, you can find me if you look.

Kelly Kennedy: Trust me, I found considerably less about you than I have about any of my previous guests. There's been quite a few of them at this point.

Jack Schafer: I don't know if that's good or bad if I'm running a business, right? Well, I don't,

Kelly Kennedy: you know, when your business is is trying to keep things.

Close to the chest. I think you're doing a pretty great job.

Jack Schafer: Well, you know, to be honest with you, I don't advertise. I just, people just contact me and I talk to them and, and, you know, consult and those types of things. So, cause I'm in a position where I don't have to build a business.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure. Tell me about about what type of consulting you're doing right now.

Jack Schafer: Well, I, I consult with a lot of salespeople. The sales company will call me and say, Hey, our salespeople are having trouble breaking into a new area or a new field or a new product. How do we get to the people hold the purse and make the decisions? And so then what do you, you introduce the Personal relationship index, you get proximity, you get frequency, you get duration, you add intensity and then you start eliciting from information from those people and elicitation is nothing more than you're steering a conversation to a topic you want to, you want them to reveal information that they normally would keep secret.

So elicitation allows people to reveal the truth before they have a chance to lie or before they even know that they're revealing information.

Kelly Kennedy: You're speaking to a ton of business owners right now. I would love, how do we take this information that's very much In a way, the way that it's kind of shaped is to put it into a situation where you can get, for instance, right in front of these people, or you can have that proximity effect.

How do you do that in a situation like business, where you may not know the target you may not know where the target is, you just know ultimately that you need to speak with somebody in potentially a different state, a different province. How does that work if we were to take some of this information and apply it to a business relationship?

Jack Schafer: Well, I had one company that said they wanted to get into a totally different field. How do we get to the people in that field? And I said, the first thing you want to do is get on LinkedIn because they have profiles. And then the profiles, they often list their hobbies, what they do, what they like. So now we're talking about common ground and based on common ground is a powerful rapport building technique.

So what you want to do is then you, then you also want to set up contact with them. That is a period that initiates curiosity. And so they'll say, I want to call you so you can set up different questions or different scenarios where people will look at that and say, Hmm, what is that? That looks interesting.

Maybe I will call them because we do have some things in common, but it's, it's, it's just a matter of sometimes you need to talk to somebody. That will act as your ambassador. So if you talk to a secretary, right. And just get to know the secretary of the person that you want to get into. She's the gatekeeper.

He's the gatekeeper. What you want to do is be friendly with them, develop rapport with them. And then when the boss asks them, who is this person? They're going to say, Oh, he's a nice guy. He's a nice girl. He's a nice person. Maybe you ought to talk to him. So now you have an M you've, you've, you've recruited an ambassador.

We call that an access agent in the espionage world. You created an ambassador who then will, will give your target good, good tidings about you.

Kelly Kennedy: And in the book, you refer to that as the primacy effect. Yes. And the primacy effect is something that I found really interesting. You mentioned that it can go two ways, which is also really dangerous.

And in the book, I was thinking like, obviously the power of this is huge. We look at it in the business world as referrals. When you're referred, it's the best way, hands down, to get into any business, because you have the primacy effect paving the way. And it's much harder to go backwards from it. So you want to make sure that whatever, whatever effect you're getting is hopefully positive because the other way around, people are already making assumptions about you that are pretty hard to change.

Jack Schafer: Right. And you know, we, we call it, I guess you call it in a business world networking. Yeah. But this will be networking, probably added networking plus. So you're adding different tools just to say hi as networking, but you want to add some tools there that will help encourage that person to, to further.

Your cause.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. Dr Schafer. Can you? I know I have lots of people listening that are thinking the primacy effect. Like, what is he talking about? Could you maybe go into definition as to what the primacy effect is?

Jack Schafer: Yeah, what the primacy effect is, is it doesn't change reality, but it changes the person's perception of reality.

So if I ask you, I want to introduce you to a person you've never met and that you, you know, the person isn't very trustworthy. Yeah. Yeah. Be careful when you shake their hand, make sure you count your fingers, make sure they're all there. So when that, and in fact, that person that I'm asking you to meet.

It's very trustworthy, but what have I done? I've set up a filter through which I want you to see that person is untrustworthy. So when you meet that person, what are you going to think? Whoa, I better be careful. I better be very careful. So it doesn't change reality. It changed this perception of reality.

Yeah. And in the opposite works, I can say, you'll meet this guy. He's really friendly, gregarious. You'll love him. Great sense of humor, but really. He's a, he's a troll and he lives under a bridge and eats Billy goats in the morning. Right. Yeah. So when you meet him, here's the, here's the difference. So you meet him for the first time and you say, Oh, he's probably having a bad day.

You meet him a second time. Oh, it's bio rhythm rhythms are off. Or he's having some kind of moment or some goof, you know, something, but you don't do that when you, when you meet a guy that you think is untrustworthy, you meet him once and that's it. That's right. So that's how you work primacy and I did it in law enforcement because I was talking to a suspect, many suspects, but I talked, you know, we'll just use an example.

I talked to a suspect. My partner has an emergency phone call. I tell the suspect, you know, that guy, he, he, he's a, he's a lie. He's a human lie detector. He knows when people are lying, no matter how sophisticated. So, set up the primacy. When my partner comes back, guess what? The suspect is going to see my partner as a human lie detector.

Yes. And then he's going to be real leery when he lies.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, and you talk about that in the book, and I absolutely love it. Because, you know, you had your partner say things at certain times to just kind of reinforce what you said. And at some point, the suspect just broke and was like, How does he know this?

Yes. I love that. It's unbelievable when I thought about that and the power of that in day to day life, it's very like, I guess your perception of people is so critical and the perception of you in business and having people to be able to paint a positive perception of you as opposed to a negative one.

My gosh, the power of that is unbelievable and scary on the other side of it. Because like you said, it is possible to break that effect. It takes multiple engagements and to try to kind of convince people that, Oh, this guy's not a bad person. It's going to take an incredibly long time, multiple interactions where they see the opposite.

And all it takes is one person to one word picture.

Jack Schafer: Yeah. And I'll tell you how you can use it in business world. And I, and I often often used it when I was trying to get some project through that needed to be funded. So what I do is I talked to in, in companies, there's always one person that is the ring kisser, right?

Yes. Tells goes right to the boss and tells them everything. So what you want to do is you want to set up what I call a third party compliment, which is nothing more than primacy. So I'm going to tell the guy who's doing kisser. You know what? It's about time. We have a good manager. It's about time. The boss knows what he's doing.

It's about time. Things get run right around this place. So he runs right back to the boss and says, Hey, this guy said, you're a really nice manager. So what happens is that's a third party compliment. If I was to walk up to the boss and say, Oh, you're the greatest boss I've ever had. He'd say, yeah, shields up.

What do you want? Sure. But if you get a third party to say it, then it's powerful. Thank you. Cause then when he sees you next time, he goes, Oh, there's the guy that said that I'm a good manager and I think maybe I'll let him do his project or fund his project. It's like, it's like when students come into my office, they go, Oh, I'm professor Schafer.

You're the best professor I've ever had in my whole life. And I go, what do you want?

And, and, and, and I also in, in another technique you can use in a business world is you don't, you don't present a. Say, say you have a new idea that's kind of counter to what the culture is in the business. You don't want to introduce that because then you're telling everybody in the business you've been doing it wrong for all those years.

Yes. So what you want to do is go to your boss and say, I would like your advice. Because instead of saying, I got this great idea, say, boss, I'd like your advice on this. So what happens then the boss goes, of course you do because I'm the boss. And then you let the boss make up his mind whether he likes it or not.

So you're actually encouraging the boss to look at it. And then he's going to look at it. And then he's gonna, he's gonna more than likely at least give it, give it credence.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. And there's a, there's an. Overlying theme to the whole book, and it's the golden rule of friendship. Yes. Can you get into the golden rule of friendship?

Jack Schafer: Yeah, the golden rule of friendship is powerful because the golden rule of friendship simply states if you want people to like you, you make them feel good about themselves. So your conversation with other people is going to be all about themselves. Because the more time you spend with someone and they like being with you, the odds of them wanting to be with you again increase.

In fact, they may even want to make up an excuse to come see you again. And I teach my students, the guys especially, I said, if you want the girls to like you, you make it all about them. And you make, you make them feel good about themselves. And then they're going to like you and they're going to think of an excuse to come by and see it.

So you don't even have to call them, they'll call you. And they go like, Whoa, that's pretty cool. So, but how do you do it? I'll give you some quick techniques. One is the empathic statement. The empathic statement is nothing more than you take what that person said they feel or their emotional state, put it in parallel language, and then you mirror it back to them.

So I'll give you an example. I saw a girl on the elevator and she was smiling. When people smile, the day's going good for them. So I use that as an empathic statement. So you're having a good day. She said, yes, I just passed a test I studied really hard for. So I said, so your hard work paid off. And so she goes, yeah, and then she starts telling me all kinds of things about her day and her life and, and good thing it was only four floors.

But, but, but nonetheless, the second principle that people don't see there is in addition to the empathic statement, I allowed that person to flatter themselves. So, direct flattery doesn't work really well. Because people say, what do you want their shields go up? So what you want to do the best way to flatter people is allow them to flatter themselves And that we'll we'll go back to the thing about I would like your advice on something.

We're not only asking for the advice We're allowing them to what flatter themselves So that's how we make people feel good about themselves. Empathic statements, and they're allowed to flatter themselves.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. And you get into that later on in the book too with regards to disarming anger, which I would like to get into at some point as well.

But one of the things that I found really interesting in the book is you mentioned essentially using using The system in order to kind of game the system in some ways, even at the FBI, when you were trying to get funding for, for various projects that you could ultimately use you know, Hey, like talking to other agents or people that would kind of coincide with the management in order to let them know that, Hey, like, you know Jack Schafer, actually, he, he loves what you guys are doing.

And you were able to kind of create convincing. pitches before you even went in and asked for funding.

Jack Schafer: Yes. So that you want to soften your target up before you go in.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. But how did that work in the FBI when they're, they had to have been open or looking for that or understanding that it was happening?

Jack Schafer: Well, you know what all these techniques, here's the secret. All these techniques are within what I call the human baseline. And so what our brain does is we constantly look for threats in the, in, in the world. So when the brain has already figured out that some action or words is not a threat, they put it in a, like in a storage box and they don't pay attention to those things from that point on because they're too worried about things that are outside the baseline.

So what we're doing, all these techniques, you're operating within the human baseline. So people don't recognize those things. Because the brain has already decided we're going to ignore that because it's not a threat. So, so you don't even know that you're being influenced because your brain doesn't figure it out.

It's only when you go outside the baseline, the brain goes, Whoa, wait, something's different. So I always teach people stay within the baseline and then nobody, then you can daisy chain these, these techniques. And I use them one after another, after another, after another. Nobody knows because we're all, we're in the baseline.

Kelly Kennedy: You mentioned that what could ultimately happen though, is that you give yourself away because you are aware that you're doing it. And so it's like you change the baseline because like subconsciously you're aware that you're doing it.

Jack Schafer: And that's something called the spotlight effect. I always teach.

Surveillance people or intelligence people, they always think, well, I've been made, they know what I'm up to. Yeah. And I got, well, they don't because you get hyper sensitive when you use a technique or you try to do something that you normally wouldn't do, or you think is bad. Then you get hypersensitive.

It's like two, two examples. You got a spot on your tie. You think anybody noticed a spot on your tie? No, but you're so hypersensitive. What do you say? Oh, geez. Look at my spot on my tie. Oh, I see the spot now. So they were hypersensitive before what? Nobody noticed it. Yeah. So I call that the spotlight effect.

So when you're, it's like lying to somebody. When you lie to somebody, you think, oh my gosh, they know I'm lying. When in fact, they don't know you're lying. Because you turn on the spotlight effect, and so you, you start then acting outside the norm. Yeah, that's when the brain says, Oh, something's up. Yeah, you're acting outside human, the human baseline.

Kelly Kennedy: So how do you counter that within yourself?

Jack Schafer: You have to, well, I've trained myself to stay in the baseline.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I know, I know. But it's like, even if you're within the baseline, like you said, you're fighting your own perception because you might be doing things intentionally. Like you said, canting your head or doing an eyebrow flash or something like that, that to you feels weird because you know that you're doing it intentionally, but no one else does, but you do.

And so you have to fight yourself. How did you find, like, obviously in the beginning that had to have been awkward for you. How did you, how did you get over that or how did it become normal?

Jack Schafer: Well, here's what I tell people. I don't want you to turn the spotlight off. I want you to dim it, turn it down really low.

Just recognize it exists, recognize it's happening, and then move on knowing that nobody knows what you're doing.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah. When you were dealing with counter intelligence, You know, I mean, obviously some of the targets that you guys were working with would have been trained in how to spot some of this.

How were you able to still deceive them in some ways? How were you still able to do it?

Jack Schafer: Therein lies the game.

It's a game. It's a game of chess. I make a move and sometimes you feign a move this way and you go around the other way. So it's just a matter of trying to outfox the other person. Have I been beaten? Yes, I've been beaten. And you just go, Oh, well, let me look to see how I was beaten. And then note to self, don't do that again.

Yeah. And then in over time in enough encounters, you, you learn how the other person plays the game and then you try to counter their moves. So it's all, I don't know. It's, it's fascinating how it works. Cause they make a move and they expect you to make this move. And you try to make a move that they're not anticipating.

You try to, you know, do an end around or, or something. Yeah. So, and they see the end around coming, so they'll block it. So you got to think of another way to get, get there. And it's all done without words.

Kelly Kennedy: It's, it's unbelievable. And it's such a cool, you know, I mean, I love, I love listening to the stuff in the book where you're talking about your time as an agent, because it is really, really interesting and a world that most, most people just don't see.

One of the cool things In that, like, obviously you were with the FBI quite a while. You didn't start out necessarily knowing all of these techniques. How did it evolve in, in your 15 years as an active agent?

Jack Schafer: Well, I, I was always keen on behavioral analysis, you know, not behavioral analysis, but just behavior of people.

And so then I, I just started reading and talking to people and then trying to develop. Techniques that I could number one label, because if you can label a technique, I can teach it. I can teach you the variables of the technique. And that's how that new agent kind of helped me identify the variables that go into each of these techniques that I was doing instinctively.

So that helped identify the variables.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. And then at some point you ended up training there's a part in the book where you're talking about obviously the the Iraq Afghanistan war, the early 2000 and that obviously at that point it was hearts and minds, right? We were trying to win hearts and minds, but how the heck do you do that when you're an intimidating soldier?

Can you bring us into that?

Jack Schafer: Yeah, what we did was we tried to teach the soldiers, yes, wear your battle gear, be ready to kill. In this, in the slightest moment, but put a facade on that you're friendly. So what you want to do is make sure you tilt your head, your eyebrow flash, you smile. Because when you smile, you release endorphins.

Endorphins make you feel good about you. So if I make you feel good about you, you're going to like me. Head, the eyebrow flash says I'm not a threat. The head tilt says I'm not a threat. And then you want to use empathic statements. And then you want to throw out a few soccer balls, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah. And then, and then essentially using primacy effect through the kids, right?

Jack Schafer: Well, the kids then, like you, so they're going to go home to their parents and say, Hey, those guys are okay. And so now you've again, you set up this, they become your ambassadors using primacy.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Yeah, it worked. It worked. Yes, that was going to be my question. We didn't get into it much in the book, but I was wondering, was it, was it very effective?

Jack Schafer: Yeah, it was very successful because we ended up teaching everybody who went on deployment. The last stop, I had a lot, I had them for about a week teaching them these techniques.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Wow. That's, that's unbelievable.

Jack Schafer: Not just me, but there was a team of us that did.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure, sure, sure. And then, were you also teaching these techniques at the FBI as well?

Jack Schafer: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I certainly was. I was teaching interview and interrogation techniques. I was teaching undercover. I taught a lot in Canada, RCMP. Oh, amazing. For about 10 years, I was teaching the undercover stuff. Wow. Wow. It was fascinating.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I I imagine. I imagine. Man, I guess one of the questions that I kind of had regarding the book was, we talk a lot about what are some of the techniques you can do to influence a situation, right?

One of the questions that I had ultimately was, what if you were in a meeting and it just really wasn't going your way, and you had, let's say two or three people, you know, it could be one, could be two, could be three people that you're trying to make a connection with but you're struggling. They have walls up.

One of the questions that I kind of had was if we are using the friendship formula, if we're using some of the techniques like you said, like smiling, eyebrow flashes, finding ways to open, having open body communication. Can you influence people to change their approach? Like if you're, if you're in a meeting with somebody who's being very closed off, can you open them up simply by displaying open body language or once they made up their mind, is it really tough?

Jack Schafer: No, here's what you initially what you do in a conference when I'm giving a presentation to just a small conference with, you know, it works better with a small conference room with the small audience around the conference table. What you want to do is you want to look at who's mirroring you, who's, who's, who's leaning forward, who's nodding their head when you're talking, who's, you know, head tilting.

Those are the people that are interested. The people that aren't will be leaning back in their chairs with their legs crossed and their arms crossed. Those are the people you want to convince. You don't want to convince the people that are already on board. So then I would specifically talk to those people and say, hey, what's, what's, what's, you know, try to work through and develop a personal rapport with them. And one of the things that, that really helps in business is that if you're explaining things to somebody, like, we'll give you an example, you, you want some money to do something for some project in your business and you go to the boss and you say, look, boss, look at all the benefits, look at the cost benefit, look at this, look at that.

And then you say, and then the boss says, how much is it going to cost? And you give him a number and he purses his lips. Right. Just like light, a slight outward movement of the lips. That means he has formed a negative opinion about what you just said. So money is the problem. So in sales, you want to identify the obstacles that prevent you from selling.

You can look at the person's lips and if the lips are pursed, that's the obstacle. That's what you work on. Now, the trick is. You want that person to change their mind while it's still in their mind before they have a chance to say no. Yeah. Because it's a psychological principle of consistency. If we say something, we tend to live up to what we say.

So if he says no, it's very difficult for that person to change their mind. Yes. And the other reason is, when we make a decision, when we're in a decision making process, we have a tendency to be a little anxious. Just even slight a bit anxious. So once you make a decision, anxiety goes away. Why would that person want to reengage anxiety by opening up the decision again?

Interesting. So what you want to do then is I use elicitation. I use the I'll bet you're thinking the internal dialogue technique. Boss, I bet you're thinking this might be a little too expensive, but let me show you how this is more effective and you'll gain more and you'll get more and we'll do more and more sales, this, that, and the other thing, right?

Whatever your objectives are. Now you're going to get him to change his mind while he's still in his mind before he has a chance to say no. But how do you know he did something negative? Thinking negative is the lip purse.

Kelly Kennedy: My God, it's, it's weird to think that we tell everything. With our body language.

I don't like that.

Jack Schafer: Maybe we don't tell everything, but we tell a lot.

Kelly Kennedy: By gosh, yeah. I hope our listeners are just understanding the power of understanding body language and how to work with people. It truly is unbelievable. And I honestly, I was not aware of how powerful it was until I read your book. And then it scared the crap out of me.

Jack Schafer: Well, it's just a way to make people aware of what they normally do every day. Yeah. So that's the, that's the thing is you don't have to learn anything. You don't have to learn a technique. You don't have to learn this and that and, and and correlates and all the laws and rules. No, you do it normally.

It's instinctive. All you have to do is recognize what you're doing. Then you go like, Whoa, I just did that. Or I just saw a lip purse. That means that's the, the, the obstacle to the sale.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. In the book, too, you were talking about the difference between introverts and extroverts and how they make decisions.

You know, we were obviously talking about looking for, looking for the, the, the issue or the obstacle. When you're dealing with an introvert versus an extrovert with regards to, you know, an important business decision, are there better ways to handle each one of them?

Jack Schafer: Yeah, an extrovert is more spontaneous.

You could probably push an extrovert into making a spontaneous... buying decision because they're very spontaneous. Yeah, I'll buy that. Now, an introvert on the other hand, they like to go home, take everything into account and then consider it overnight, sleep on it, wake up and then make a decision. So what you can do is I would present my product brochure and all my product, I would make my sales pitch, give them the brochure and I say, oh, by the way, I have the competitor's brochures.

I want you to take it home and look at, cause they're going to do it anyway. Yeah. I want you to take it home and look at it. And then you, then you want to say something like after reading this, sleep on it tonight. And after reading this, when you get up tomorrow, you will make a decision to come back and buy my product.

So what are we doing? We're giving them a chance to go home and think about it, which they're going to do anyway. And then you have an embedded command in there. You will come back and you will buy my product.

Kelly Kennedy: It it's like the primacy effect.

Jack Schafer: Yes. It does. What it does is call it embedded command. What it does is it increases the probability that that person will come back and buy your product.

Can't guarantee it, but it increases the probability. And if it increases it 10%, you're that far ahead.

Kelly Kennedy: It's a little bit like like a hypnotic command

Jack Schafer: in a way that's why they call it an embedded command because you're embedding a direct command for that person to do something and subconsciously it has an effect on people.

Kelly Kennedy: How much of that is happening in advertising?

Jack Schafer: All the time it happens all the time. The primacy is best. You know, Nate's hot dogs got started. No hot dogs back in the what? 20. It was 19 early 1900s were 10 cents. Yeah. Nate comes along and says, Oh, I will sell a hot dog for a nickel. Everybody thought, oh, cheap hot dog, probably not real meat, it's dog or, you know, horse or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. So what did he do? He invited people from, the doctors and nurses from a nearby hospital to have free hot dogs for like a week or so. Who shows up at the hot dog stand in their... Their, their doctor smocks in the, what do they call that? What are the, what are those things? They they wear those things, you know, the doctor suits.

Yeah. I forget what they call them, but those green things. Right. And so everybody driving by goes, wow. If all the nurses and doctors are eating there, it must be healthy. And that's how he got to start.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Wow. Yeah. The power of our perception.

Jack Schafer: Yeah. The power of perception. Three, three out of four dentists like.

Colgate or whatever, I'd like to talk to the one that didn't.

Kelly Kennedy: He, he, he missed that day.

Jack Schafer: You know, primacy primacies is absolutely powerful.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. And you know, we've been focusing so much on business, but I think it's really important. I want all of our listeners to know this book is so much more than business. We're just really keeping it on business right now because of the nature of our show and the nature of the listeners.

But understand that this is just as beneficial for anything you deal with in your personal life. And I want to get into the anger side of it. It's nearing the end of the book, you get into the anger cycle. Can we talk about that a little bit and how to disarm it?

Jack Schafer: Yeah, well, you know, believe it or not.

Occasionally we run into angry people in law enforcement. I know that's hard to believe, but when we do, here's, here's what we do. You got to realize when, when people are angry, they go into the fight flight response. And one of the functions of the fight flight response, physiologically, is to cut off the signal from your, your, your cortex, which is your thinking brain, and the signal goes right to the amygdala or the limbic system, so you're on automatic response.

So you can't, you can't rationally talk to angry people because they're not thinking logically, and that's due to survival. Because if you see a snake, you can't go like, Hmm, it rattles. So that might be bad. The diamond back, you know, it's coiled up. And by the time you figure all that out, think it through, logically you're dead.

So it cuts off that logical part of your brain and you go right to the survival part of your brain. So you can't talk to them. You got to let them vent. So then you got to think, what causes anger in the first place? When people wake up every morning, they have expectations of how they want the world to go.

The way it's gone yesterday and the day before and the day before that. You can predict the world. People are happy. Once that world gets out of whack and their predictions don't work, they get frustrated. Frustration leads to anger. So the first thing you want to do with an angry person is to provide an explanation.

The reason I'm doing this is because and then yada, yada, yada. Oh, that makes sense. Now their world is back in sync again. Well, if that doesn't work. Then they're going to get even more angry. So what you want to do is instead of engaging the angry person, you let them vent, and then what you do is you, you insert an empathic statement.

For example, I'm going to two weeks on a TDY. I come home and I expect my wife to say, give me a nice big hug and a kiss and a hello, right? Well, she's got three kids she's been dealing with for, for two weeks on her own. So she says, geez, when you were gone, I'm pulling double duty. I'm this, I'm, I'm beyond myself.

So what's an empathic statement. You just restate what she says. What she's saying is I'm overwhelmed. So I would start out with, so you feel overwhelmed and she'll say, yes. And then you think, oh, anger will go away. No, it won't. She vents now. And she says, and in addition to that, I wanted to go out with my friends every Wednesday night.

I couldn't do that because I wanted to talk to adults again. I wanted to get away from the kids and used to babysit and you didn't do that. And I couldn't go out. Empathic statement. You miss being with your friends. Yes, so now she'll vent again and then the shoulders will come down and she'll get, you know, you just exhaust, you know, think about the last time you were angry.

You just like let out the big deep breath. I'm done. And that's when you stick in a presumptive statement. That's a course of action. You want that person to take when they have a very difficult time refusing. So my presumptive statement in that example is, why don't I take the kids over to my mom's house?

You go up, take one of those bubble bath things, and I, and I'm going to take you out to a really nice restaurant because you deserve it. What is she going to say?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so it really is just allow, like you have to allow that pressure to release and you need to do that in a non confrontive way.

Jack Schafer: Yes. Yes. And I've had colleagues, you know, in the business sense, I've had colleagues come into my office and say, you're a real jerk. Well, they, they use more decorative language, but you're a real jerk. So I'm thinking, Hmm, I must've made them angry. So I, so the empathic statement is, so I must've done something that, that you didn't like.

And then that's an empathic statement. They vent and empathic statement they vent and in this case it was you're not telling me what you're doing all day and I have to make reports on what you're doing and you're not telling me so my presumptive is why don't we meet every day at 8 o'clock in the morning and I'll give you a briefing of what I'm going to do and what I did.

And then I was funny. The agent just looked at me and said, wow, that was easy. I go, well, yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, and at the end, you look, you look like just the super smart, rational guy because you didn't blow up. You didn't, you didn't fight him back. You just found a solution. It really seems like a better way to handle pretty much any type of argument.

Jack Schafer: Oh, it absolutely is. And then in law enforcement, if that doesn't work, then. You go to the, you choose and make, make them responsible for the choice. Either you're going to come along quietly, or we're going to have to handcuff you and drag you out of here and embarrass you in front of all your friends.

You choose. What would you like to do? Well, I think I should walk out. Very good decision.

Kelly Kennedy: That does sound like the better option. I think I would make that one as well.

Jack Schafer: And well, to go back with what if my wife says to me, she says, Hey, wait a minute. You're not getting away with taking me out to dinner. No, sir.

And so you go right back into the anger psych. So you think you deserve a little bit more because of the work you had to put in. And then you go through the cycle again. The next one is, well, why don't I watch the kids and you take a spa day with your friends?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah, but you can just keep going back into it.

You don't have to like, you don't have to engage your fight. You can just take it right back to the beginning. Okay. It didn't work the first time. Let's do it until I'm done. And as long as you can go back into it, eventually, you're going to get where you want to go.

Jack Schafer: Yes, without a confrontation.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes.

And in the business world, that's critical. Totally. Because if you get into a confrontation, you're going to lose a client. There's no question. So you're better off to just not do that in the first place and find a way to resolve the situation to both of your satisfaction. Yes. And this way allows you to lead it to a direction you want to because every time you go into that presumptive statement, you are suggesting the outcome that you would like to have happen.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I liked, I liked the analogy in the book. I'm not gonna... Get our listeners too much into it, but you were talking about the gentleman who was trying to cross the border with a jar full of dirt. You're like, sorry, there's no situation, but they had to keep going back over and over and over again until he eventually gave up the jar of dirt.

Jack Schafer: I did it. I did a lot of training with CBP and that was one of the encounters they ran into.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, that was kind of curious. It was, it was, especially when eventually they were trying to get a teaspoon of dirt into the gut thinking like, dude, just give up the dirt.

Jack Schafer: That's what I said. Why didn't they just give up the dirt?

I don't know. They didn't. So what do you do?

Kelly Kennedy: No, it was a good one for sure. You know, you get into later on in the book and one that resonated with me because we have three, I have three sons and one on the way shortly. And so we were getting into the well techniques, the land, and the why should I believe use?

And you know, you were talking a bit because you have to be able to tell when people are lying. And this is some of the ways that you were able to Essentially try to understand if you think you obviously you can't tell, but you can use ways that give you an idea that it's more than likely this person is lying to me.

Can we get into some of those?

Jack Schafer: Yeah, in the business world, you can't call people liars. I mean, that's just not appropriate. So what you want to do is test their veracity without them knowing that you're testing their veracity. And I think one of the most powerful techniques is the well technique. So, if you ask somebody a yes or no question, and they answer with the word well, then they're giving you an answer they know you're not expecting.

That's a little complicated, but let's give you an example. I tell my kid, go into your room and do your homework, and you hear nothing but shenanigans going on in there. Nothing but tomfoolery. No homework. Kid comes out an hour later, and you say, did you do your homework? First word in his response, well, stop right there, junior, go back in your room and do your homework.

Well, how do you know I didn't do it? That's because I'm in the FBI. I know that stuff. Get in there and do it. But what's the real reason? Well, now when he, when he comes out and I asked him that yes or no question, did you do your homework? What answer does he think I'm expecting? Yes, dad, I did my homework.

Yeah. So if he says, well, it's any answer but yes. Any answer but yes is no, get back in there and do it. So he asked the boss, am I getting a raise this year boss? Well, no, you're not. Yeah. Can I get the, can I get the day off boss? Well, now, can you deliver this quantity of equipment that I'm ordering on time?

Well. No. Yeah. Yeah. So you're, you're testing veracity without them knowing that you're testing veracity.

Kelly Kennedy: And then the land of is?

Jack Schafer: Oh yeah, it, it, it, it, the land of is, is, is also works with a yes, no question. If you ask a person a yes or no question, they have to answer yes or no. If they don't want to or can't answer yes or no, then they take you somewhere between yes and no, which is the land of is, and that is where they obfuscate, they double talk, they make excuses, they do all kinds of things, and you have to recognize they're taking you to the land of is, and say, well, whatever excuse they give you, well, that's fine that you brought that up, that's very interesting, but Then you go back to the question, you know, ask the question again, and you look for a yes or no answer.

If they still don't give you a yes or no answer on the second time and take you back to the land of is, then the probability of deception skyrockets.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, it's, it's amazing because it really is just the intricacies of communication. And if you know the signals to look for, you have an unfair advantage.

And that's what I learned about the like switch, the like switch. isn't about things that you don't already know or that you're not already doing. It truly does give you a unfair advantage in, in human communication. I would say that is what your book does.

Jack Schafer: Wasn't that what business is all about?

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's why I'm, I'm hoping that I'm, I'm, I'm articulating this well to our business owner listeners and our business development people who are listening and my sales people who are listening. You need this book. That's all I have to say. I recommend two books ever. I recommend Dale Carnegie's how to, how to win friends and influence people.

And I recommend Jack Shafer's The Like Switch and Jack, I want you to take us into another book because you know, I was just kind of reaching back out to you again. I, you know what I mean? I've loved the like switch since I read it for the first time. And I think it was 2016. I think you wrote it in 2015.

Is that correct? Yes. But in 2020 You released a new book and you asked me when we first got into this. Have you read my new book? And I was like I didn't even know you had a new book. So bring us into the truth detector.

Jack Schafer: Yeah. The truth detector is, is I teach people how to elicit information from people.

In other words, you want them to tell the truth before they have a chance to lie. So what you'd want to do is using these techniques, you're able to get people to reveal information. That they would not reveal under direct questioning. So, elicitation techniques are nothing but techniques that predispose people to want to talk to you about their secret things.

So what I do is when I teach intelligence officers, we have a four hour block in the morning about the techniques, very easy to learn. Then we take them out to the mall and I actually appoint them. I said, go get that stranger's social security number, go get their passwords for their computer at home and at work, go get all kinds of things, personal information, my students can do it in three to five minutes of meeting a perfect stranger, that's how powerful it is.

And when you're in negotiations. That's when it becomes really important because the person who reveals their bottom line first typically loses. So you want them to tell you what that bottom line is. And if you ask what's your bottom line, they won't tell you, but if you use elicitation techniques, they will tell you.

And those elicitation techniques are unbelievably powerful to get people, to get people to reveal information. I'll give you a quick example. I was, my wife and I were looking at some real estate. We wanted to buy a new house and I thought, boy, this. This area looks like it might flood, you know, so it's a real estate guy going to tell you if you ask him, does this flood?

No, no, not at all. No, no, no, probably doesn't flood. Don't worry about that. So instead of asking the direct question, I used elicitation that we call the presumptive. I said, wow, they did a really good job repairing it after the flood. And he goes, well, yeah, they did. They did this and that. I went, you dirty dog.

Kelly Kennedy: Right? Yes. Yes. Oh, goodness. You know, there's one other thing that you talk about in the like switch and it's it's about your negotiation technique when you go and buy a new car.

Jack Schafer: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Do you want to, do you want to get into that one? If you want to. If you want to practice this stuff, go buy a new car.

I don't know how it is in Canada, but the United States car salesmen are, they're just unbelievable. So, what I was thinking of before, I used to have my kids go in to negotiate cars, and I would have them What I call name it and claim it. That's what we talked about earlier, but I didn't, I forgot what the terms were.

So you name it, claim it. So they, my son walks in. Well, that's the puppy dog technique. You know, once you name it and claim it, they can't use it against you. But a lot of times I'll give you their first technique. They go to get common ground, they'll go, hi, how are you? My name is so and so. What's your name?

You give them your name. They'll say, what do you do for a living? I'm a plumber. And they go, Oh, my dad's a plumber. The, the salesman would use vicarious common ground. You know, so matter what you say, he's got a cousin and uncle, a brother who's done that. Yeah. The second thing they do is they say, what, what color do you like red cars or blue cars?

They don't ask you what color would you like? They see, do you like red or blue? So I like blue cars. Well, we've got a bunch in the back. Let's look at them. So they don't give you the option. Right. And that technique is your brain likes to work efficiently. And if you give your brain two options, it typically automatically picks one or the other.

It's like when I asked my crooks, you know, the crooks, do you really want to get away with this? They'll either answer yes. And I'll say, well, yeah, that's why I'm here to stop you. Or I'll tell them no. Well, that's why I'm here to stop you. Because I know how the brain works.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh goodness. That one's brutal.

That one's really hard.

Jack Schafer: They often use it though, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack Schafer: And then they want to sell you a payment. Well, what kind of monthly payment you looking at? That's why I'm not looking at monthly payments at all. I'm going to hear to buy a car, not a monthly payment. Yeah, they, they, I wrote a whole section in the truth detector because I, I, I talked to a car dealer and I elicited a lot of information from him how to get the secrets of the deal.

And so I, I. Published, you know, all that in that book. And how do, how do you get someone to elicit information that will help you? You can save thousands of dollars on a car, thousands and thousands of dollars, if you know what, what goes on the secrets, but they're not going to, they're not going to tell you the secrets, so you got to elicit the secrets, get them to tell you the secrets without them knowing that they're revealing sensitive information.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. So, so all of that's in the truth detector, hey?

Jack Schafer: Yes, there's 16 techniques to elicit information. You know, you know, I'd like to tell people is, like you say, there's a firehose effect. Just go take, just take the friendship signals. The friend signals. Look at them. Observe them. Try to emulate them.

Try to try to make it when you're intentionally do it. And then when you get that done, add something else and then get that down. Add something else. Get that down. So take it piecemeal. So you don't look at the whole mountain and say, Oh, I'll never move the mountain, but you can move it like what they say.

Once you can move them out in one stone at a time.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, well, my argument would be the like switch is not a read once or read twice or read three times. It's a read 10 times and implement it all because it's going to take that many. But I'll tell you what, I think that if you can get it to the point where it's semi automatic, it is going to have nothing but benefit for your life.

I got no question of that.

Jack Schafer: And I get, I get a lot of feedback from the sales. I do a lot of I teach a lot of sales staff and they, they, they go back and go, Oh my gosh, it works. Like McGraw Hill was having trouble, their salespeople were having trouble talking to professors. And the one salesperson walked into me and said, Oh, this is a better book, you ought to buy it.

I'm going, you realize what you did? You just told me my judgment on textbooks is very bad. Because I'm using one I think is very good. I said, no, no, don't do that. I said, you got to come in and say, professor, I would like your advice on this. Then I look at the book. Of course, they want my advice because I'm a professor.

Yeah, right. I'm an educated man. So, yeah, of course, they wanted my advice. So, allow me to flatter myself. They give me the deference. I want your advice. So, they put me up on a little pedestal and I read the book. I go like, wow, this is a better book. I think I'll buy it. So, you're allowing that professor to make up his own mind.

Mm hmm. And so I told the salesperson all these techniques and she went back and told her boss and the boss said, Hey, you got to come and train all our staff. And they, they said it works unbelievably well.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, well, you're right. Nobody wants to be sold. Nobody want people want to come to their own conclusions.

And the more that you can let them do that, the better off you're going to be.

Jack Schafer: Absolutely. Amazing. And that's what the Likeswood does. It just teaches people how to be nice to one another, how to have happy endings. To your relationships, your business dealings, social encounters, it just, I would rather have a happy ending.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, agreed, agreed. Well, Dr. Schafer, this takes us to the end. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on today. Thank you for writing The Like Switch. I'm, I'm literally leaving this and I'm going to go buy The Truth Detector. So, I'm a huge fan. I'm a huge fan, a huge advocate, and I will continue to advocate for you.

You know, you mentioned that you're doing consulting services. Do you consult up here in Canada as well?

Jack Schafer: Yeah, I consult pretty much anywhere around the world. I, I, I don't, since COVID I've kind of, you know, things have kind of slowed down a bit, but they're starting to pick up again. Yeah, I go to, I used to go to Canada quite a bit.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. If if I have people listening that want to get ahold of you what's the best way for them to get, to reach you?

Jack Schafer: I'll give you my, my email address. It's Jack Schafer, J A C K. S C H A F E R five zero zero at yahoo. com.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Jack Schafer: My favorite experience in Canada is getting a beaver tail in Ottawa.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, you can get those almost anywhere. But you typically only at fairs. So maybe, maybe if you go to Ottawa, you can get one outside of the fair. Amazing. This has been episode 84 of the business development podcast. We have been graced with Dr. Jack Schafer, author of The Like Switch X FBI agent, but definitely not an X in his knowledge by any means.

It's been an absolute pleasure having you Dr. Schafer.

Jack Schafer: Can I mention one more thing? They can go to psychology. com. And a lot of the, I have 167 posts there. They can look at all the stuff that we've talked about.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Amazing. So psychology. com. I'll make sure to have that in the links for the show until next time.

This has been the business development podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.