Unlocking the Secrets of Investigative Techniques

**[00:00:00]** Hello everyone and welcome to the web talk show. My name is Armando Prescareno and today we're joined by Mark Anderson from Anderson Investigative Associates. Welcome Mark. Thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you. But no, it's a pleasure to have you here. It's an honor. I've seen what you're doing in your industry. We'll get to it in a second and it's really amazing and I think we're going to give our listeners a sneak peek into something that they have not seen before. So before we continue, Mark, could you give us a very brief intro as to who you are and what you do? Sure. Uh I'm old uh number one. So I've been around a while. I always tell people when I uh do classes, the one thing you get from my resume is number one, I'm old, and number two, I can't hold a job. So I I've been in this business, the investigation business for uh over 40 years now. Uh I actually have two degrees in chemistry. I'm a forensic chemist by training. Uh, so I started out working in the crime lab and decided that those people were kind of weird and I didn't want to do that for the rest of my career. So I used my science background to move over into the investigation field and I've been doing interviews and uh investigations for the last 40ome years about about the last 15 in the arena of training. So out there uh training people on how to do interviews and interrogations and things like that. Wow, that is a very interesting background. So you were in the forensic space and was that the again this we we stumble upon these things sometimes out **[00:02:00]** of just randomness luck I don't I don't know but was it so did you enjoy the job at first and then it just changed or did you from the very beginning you start to see that there was some part of it that you really like but the others that just were completely Yeah, you know that it's a Armano, that's an interesting question. I I I think we can summarize. I like to make things really simple because I'm a simple guy. Uh I was young and dumb, I guess, is how it would go. Uh I went to school and uh I had no idea what I wanted to do. Wasn't mature enough to know what I wanted to do. My dad was a chemistry teacher for years and I thought, well, I'll make him proud if I get a chemistry degree. So, I got my chemistry degree and then I thought, well, now what do I do? And there were like four options for graduate school that I thought about and I decided the forensics sounded fine fun because I I've always been interested in the criminal justice side of things, but never really thought about doing it on the street, you know, being on the street doing it. Uh, so I I got that degree and it it was interesting. I thought it would be interesting working in the laboratory. And then I saw how laboratories are set up and that I would be doing the same thing over and over and over again. And I thought, you know what, I I would rather be out there doing this in the field. And at that point, they could use people who had my background in the field for crime scenes and stuff like that because **[00:04:00]** there weren't many people out in the field that had that kind of a background. So, it made it pretty easy for me to slide out of the forensic side and move into the into the law enforcement side. Oh, that makes sense. And at what point did you start the training side of it? So, you went into the field, but what point did it Wow. sort of start to flow into well, yeah, training at the end of the day. I I think it goes back to the same thing. You know, my dad was in education for years. Uh, and and I always found the education arena fascinating. I think when I got into the law enforcement side, I became a certified police instructor within a couple years of that. So, I I guess I've been a certified police instructor since 1985, which is a long, long time. I realize time is going awful fast for me. Uh, so I've always kind of done a little bit along the way. I didn't move a and and then while I was working out in the field, I also took a couple positions as a adjunct instructor at a couple colleges uh here in Pennsylvania uh kind of to keep my foot in that classroom side. Uh and then it wasn't until 2009 that I moved full-time into the training arena and and uh trained for the federal government for five years and then started this business thereafter. Oh wow. So what is in an investigative technique? Because we you talk about it, it sounds like something we understand, but at the end of the day, I just from incorrect assumptions, I guess, or uh maybe perhaps out of not having context, we assume immediately or at least I **[00:06:00]** wrongly investigative techniques. I start thinking law enforcement, right? Does this only apply to law enforcement and related fields or is this something that is also used in business for example? Well, I think it has huge applicability in business and I and I think this is one of the things I you make a really good point Armando is uh I think a lot of time terminology becomes uh a drag on the system. You know, we have these concepts from what we see on TV and it's not necessarily realistic. Uh the easiest one is the term interrogation has a terrible connotation associated with it. Uh but it's not in fact accurate as to what interrogation is. So the investigative technique side, you're right, you think of law enforcement. Uh but the reality is is this is stuff is applicable across the board wherever you have people that might be taking advantage of a situation. We talked about, you know, some of your listeners that they're business owners, small business owners. Uh I was just listening to a podcast yesterday uh and they were talking about dental offices and the American Dental Association apparently indicates that over onethird of dentists are embezzled by employees of their office. So they have a receptionist or a billing person that's taking money out of the pot for their own well, you know, their own benefit. Uh, so what would we use to find that? Well, number one, you want to have controls to try and keep that from happening. But if you called me in to look at that, I would be using investigative techniques to try to identify where that uh shortcoming came from, how they lost that money, and how to restore that and fix the system so it **[00:08:00]** doesn't happen again. Does that make sense? It does. That is actually and and that is a very good use case because yes, like you very clearly just stated, it could apply to any conversation or any situation where someone needs to acquire additional context information from someone else. But that example is great because it is an investigative technique to find out what happened. In this case, it might be some something wrong that someone did and you're trying trying to figure out who did it, why they did it, try to stop it from happening again to avoid the business having future issues like that. And it's funny the the example that you gave. I we have a client that uh works in that space and and I clearly remember at some point there there was something like that going on and and so I I guess the stat the statistic is real. So okay that's that makes perfect sense and so it'll help in business it will help in law enforcement. Is it something do you think that businesses actually look into? Do you see some businesses going into training for things like this or is it mostly that it's still a very well-kept secret of the law enforcement u space? I I think that's that's another fantastic question. I think in this arena of which would fall into the arena of fraud, uh, a lot of times it's not talking talked about until you get caught with your pants down and you lose money, you know. So, it it's when you think about expenses for a business, you're probably not proactively going to in invest in this until it becomes an issue for you. And and and that becomes a problem. uh one of the things **[00:10:00]** we want to do is have some controls within that business so that we know whether this is happening or not because that's what these uh especially frauds are propagated on is the fact that nobody knows it's done in a closet. It's done secretly and that's how they can sometimes continue to fester for years at a time. Uh so I don't think a lot of people invest in this until it becomes a necessity where uh they're now hurting and they now need to figure out what happened. Do you think that businesses or organizations doesn't have to be a business should take a proactive approach like you're saying and learn about this that I'll give an example before sorry letting you answer there were I remember very clearly remember I was having lunch with the CEO of an important bank in Mexico and it was just a casual chat and I remember the topic of comedy came up and he was saying that he was learning comedy, like standup comedy, not to do standup, mind you, but because of the mental agility that it gave him for the dayto-day in the business. And so it was a very out of context comment that just stayed with me. And and so going back to what we're talking about now, do you think this is something that people should strive to perhaps learn and get those muscles going for other things? I I think it is. And I I love your example because I actually uh know a fraud examiner, you know, fraud investigator up in Seattle, Washington, who actually just did the same thing. she joined this comedy troop now and she's learning uh improvisation and stuff like that for the mental agility aspect. I think that's that's **[00:12:00]** fascinating. I just I just do it as a rank amateur and stink at it, but uh I continue to try to do it for some reason. I I think it is I think it becomes that issue that you and I you actually said to me when we got on here today. There's so much going on in life. People don't have time. And that's kind of where you see this show fitting in is giving people some access to stuff they might not normally, you know, wouldn't normally have access to. I think we get so busy that we don't take time for things like that. Uh the stuff I talk about all the time in the interviewing space is when I train, I say, you know, if you feel like you're giving enough money, you know, time to your employer, then don't use this for that. Use it for the stuff that's important to you. like when you go out to eat or when you go shopping or you know I know you have young kids. If you have kids the stuff I teach in the interviewing space is very good for using on children not to manipulate them or or punish them but because we get more information and more information allows us to parent better. So I I think some of this stuff has multi-purposes. So if a business owner took that time, really what they're doing is securing their future. So it is time out of today, but when you walk away from it, you have the confidence that I'm not going to get ripped off or or at least I've lowered the possibility of getting ripped off, which I think provides far more than saving the money. It gives you that peace of **[00:14:00]** mind, and we're all looking for that peace of mind. So yeah, I I think it's a good idea. I don't know. I don't know how you get people to do it though. Content content is is very good. You you talk about technology. We talked about it off off the the call and sometimes we're scared of new things with regards to technology and technology that's it. It is new things. That's what it is, right? And so all across time people have been scared of technology up to a point. And so no matter when you grow up, whatever is the new thing is going to be new to you and the younger generation might see it as normal, but just because when they're learning, that's what they're learning with, but it doesn't really make a difference. We can all learn the same thing. So with technology comes nowadays social media. Some people shy away from it, but you shouldn't. Why? Because content provides context. And so one very interesting thing that happens and just to give a little background here because if you don't know this side of me I maybe eight to 10 years ago I did a lot of training on Facebook advertising and digital marketing. So I would train teams, I would give like sessions and seminars and things like that and it was fun. But the I did a lot of live streams where where we would talk about what we were doing etc etc. But what would happen six 8 10 years ago was that everything was socialbased. So it was based on what's called a social graph. So you had to acquire a number of followers or fans whatever you want to call them. And then when you did a live **[00:16:00]** stream, when you put out content, a percentage of them would see it. And that percentage declined and declined and declined and declined and especially when ads came along. And so it became problematic because if someone wanted to get content out there, they needed to grow an audience. And that's hard or at least it was. Now platforms like Tik Tok, love it or hate it, did something very interesting. They created an interest graph. So when you're on Tik Tok, it shows you things that it thinks you will like. It doesn't matter if you follow that person or not. And so I can put out something and have five followers and it could be seen by 100,000 people or nobody. But that's the thing. So it's all based on how good your content is. Not in the terms of how well produced it is, but how much people resonate with it. So if you start creating content about things like this, then people can start to see it and they're like, "Oh, this is interesting." And so they start seeing more of that and then they start searching for that. And that's how we get people that would otherwise might not look into something like this to to see like, oh, okay, this this is this is something that's interesting. And you mentioned the example of children, right? I on I don't know if it was Instagram or Tik Tok. One day suddenly a post came up and it was this lady that provides like little videos about I guess behavioral support for for and just like in in the family like how do you work with this situation if they are complaining if they are not wanting to follow the etc. and there is very gentle **[00:18:00]** videos that she's doing. And so I wasn't searching for that and I didn't even think to search for that. But once you see it, you think to yourself, "Wow, okay, maybe I should follow this person and see what other tips I can get because obviously you want to give your children the best experience possible." Right? So just a little side there, but yeah, content is a way very interesting way for people to learn about things that they might have not thought of thought of. Yeah, it's very good. Yeah, it useful. Um um and then also for for those in the business space listening, content is very important for your business too because when people look for you regardless of if they found you through content and I know you blog so you do content you're already doing it well but a lot of people don't they don't do any any but I don't think I do it well. it. I'd be really interested on your input on that because I I'm so old school, you know, and and we I go with this. I love the technology thing. I I sure get where you're coming from. I fight that issue all the time because sometimes people want to rely on uh technology in the in the investigation space. And really, when push comes to shove, the only way I'm going to know what happened and why it happened is talking to somebody. uh it because they're going to have to tell me. I'm not going to know the the the reason behind it unless I get them to tell me. I might know what happened, but I'm not going to know those details. So, I fight that technology side all the time on that. Well, **[00:20:00]** we got the analytics. We really don't need the person to tell us. Yeah, I do need the person to tell me. So, I I fight this all the time, but I'm old school in the content side because I do a lot of blogging. I mean, I got hundreds of blogs out there, but people don't want to sit and read anymore. So, you know, isn't the video way really the way to go? I mean, you're you're the expert in that. You know, I'm am I trying to force feed something that people don't want anymore? I No, you're not. You're definitely not. The important thing is the content itself, as you very clearly stated in the analogy, right? So without thinking of it, you need to talk to the person whether there's analytics or technology or whatever. You need you still need to talk to the person. Okay. So let's bring it into the context of content. You want to publish content. Sure, it could be in video, it could be in audio, it could be in text, but at the end of the day, what really matters is the content of the content, right? So you that's why I said and prefaced it with you are doing it right because the hard part is creating it. So you already do the hard part which is drafting the article the blog post. Now is text the best way? Who knows? It depends on your audience. There's a huge audience on Substack of people who really just enjoy reading text and so they go on Substack and they subscribe to their content creators that they like and they just read and they love it and they pay for it. Like they have monthly subscriptions and they they just **[00:22:00]** subscribe to support that person who is writing these articles. So is text going away? No, definitely not. That's one way. Now, can you enhance it with audio and video? Sure. If I were you, I would just grab Riverside or whatever and you could just actually, if you don't want to, you could do video, but even if you turn off the camera, you could just record your blog post. Literally talk into the microphone, record it, and put it out as a podcast and people would listen to it because I might like what you want to say, but maybe I don't have the time to read it in my work. But maybe when I'm putting the girls to sleep, maybe when I'm driving the car, I might want to read it because this is content that gives itself to listening. You're not showing me exhaustive data, charts, or about actions and conversations, things that I can listen to and understand without looking at the screen. So, yeah. Yeah. To your question, sure. Record it as a podcast, record it as a video, you talking to the camera, do a live stream, like because you already have that content, you could just repurpose it and it could even be those same articles. Now, you could go all modern and tell AI to do the 11 labs, for example, it'll it'll do the audio for it and you could just publish that. But I'm still a little old school. And I mean, if if you have the time and you can speak into the microphone, I feel a little more genuine uh and your readers will love it more if it comes from your voice than then automatically generated because really I want them to get to know me **[00:24:00]** anyhow, right? Correct. I I if I'm promoting my business, I don't want them to get to know my AI clone, I want them to get to know me. That's right. Right. Right. And there are AI clones, by the way. I don't know how much you've you've given I'm aware. I haven't played in that arena, but I'm aware. Yeah, it is. I mean for business again coming to the business side it's okay in certain terms but I can grab one of these tools hey Jen for example and feed it a lot of my conversation from previous videos and content and then I can tell it okay now record a video of me saying blah blah blah blah blah and it'll do it and it'll look like me it won't be exactly like me there's there's small nuances but it's it gets pretty close and it uses your mannerisms and the way you go up and down and whatever so it really trains itself on you. And so for things like maybe you want to send someone a thank you video after they purchase or training or something, that's that's okay because you don't have to want to record one for every person. If you want to personalize it, that sort of thing is fine. But for content, still a little on the if I can, let me record it. Do it myself. Yep. Cool. Tell me about influence versus persuasion. Uh you have been reading my stuff. I have. Yes. Uh we again we and I brought this up earlier. It's funny that you bring that up because it's that whole issue of uh you know what words mean and all the rest because I the other one that comes into mind when you say those **[00:26:00]** two is manipulation would also fall into that category. Uh because uh my wife would always say, "Yeah, you you're trying to manipulate me here." And I'd say, "No, no, I'm just trying to persuade you. It's totally different, you know." So we we have to be careful about a use of terms. So influence and persuasion. Uh interesting. Uh when when I am talking to somebody and I have to move them, you think about and this goes back to uh when I brought up the term interrogation. You know, you say the term interrogation and people might naturally think of, you know, phone books and rubber hoses and and things like that, which is not my definition at all. I mean, for a while, it wasn't even that term wasn't even used in the federal government because of the connotations. Uh so, I'll give you my definition, which is off of a a good uh friend of mine, Don Rabin, who uh is where I learned this uh definition. And the reason I'm doing this is because this addresses that is issue of influence and persuasion. So you don't think I'm having a senior moment here. Uh when I go into an interview room and to talk to somebody, the person that I'm talking to sits in one of two chairs when they come into the room, if they're happy to see me and they want me to address whatever I'm addressing, they're going to sit down in what I what is called the willing chair. They're in that willing chair and I can ask them questions and they're going to cooperate with me. They're going to give me indications that they're on my side. They're going to uh take possession of what they're saying. They're going to **[00:28:00]** use pronouns like I and my because they're owning it. And I'm going to ask them questions. They're going to provide me information. That's an interview. I'm interviewing that person. That person is sharing information. My goal is to get the greatest quantity and quality of information and I'm doing it without opposition. Now, a person could come into the room and sit in the unwilling chair. Uh anybody who has children sometime have had the ch child sit in the unwilling chair. Uh people in penitentiies that are there for the rest of their life sometimes sit in unwilling chairs. So anybody can sit in the unwilling chair. And it might not be be because they did something wrong. It might be because you're looking at somebody that they like and they don't want to tell you about it. It might be they don't like you because you look like their sister's ex-husband. It might be there's all sorts of reasons people sit in the unwilling chair. So when that person sits in the unwilling chair throughout our conversation, at some point I'm going to have to influence or persuade them to get them to understand the value of moving to the willing chair. So, and the process of moving somebody from the unwilling chair to the willing chair is what I call an interrogation because I'm having to change their mindset as to where they sit and see the value of moving to the other chair as to how it's going to benefit them. How it benefits them, not how it benefits me. So when I move want to move them, I want to do that mainly through influence. I want to develop a relationship with them enough where they trust me enough where they're going to move **[00:30:00]** to that other chair and not feel judged by me. Because number one, my job is never that of a judge. My job is just to get the truth. So I don't need to be judging. That's somebody else's job. whether it's their boss, whether it's a court, whether it's their, you know, uh a parent, whatever it is, it's not my job. Uh so influence versus persuasion. Persuasion, uh sometimes is a little bit more tooloriented to get them to move versus influencing them to move from that, uh unwilling chair to that willing chair. The persuasion aspect of it is what a lot of people attribute to sales interviews where the dealership, we've all seen that one. And sometimes when they're calling, cold calling, there's a lot of tools like you were saying that people can use to now in some cases manipulate, in some cases persuade. But I I feel that the moment that you as the other party start feeling something here like something's off, they're doing it wrong, right? They're they're manipulating or persuading and our our bodies are so smart. We we get that. We feel that in the gut, right? And if that is triggered, they have to diffuse it if they know what they're doing, right? But uh going back to influence, which I think is much better, and you see influence with like the highest level salespeople at at some businesses. I was just talking about this with John, a new customer. He was saying the other day someone he was on a call on a demo call with a system and he says I mean I've been in the business for many many years and this guy was so good like I almost bought I didn't need it but he **[00:32:00]** was so welltrained he was one of those high-end very very good closers that and he was just telling me this as as an experience like not as a bad thing but as a wow I mean I got off the call and I And I felt, oh, I'm going to miss out if I don't if I don't buy that. Why? Because that other person was so good at his job that he he built rapport. He did everything right to get him on on the the side of of the the purchase, I guess. So, going back to to your point, how does one build for influence? How does one build rapport in such a like your experience, those are very short moments and people are already tight, right? Maybe they're they're in a place of fear. And how do you build rapport in such a small period of time with a stranger such that you can do influence and not persuasion? That man that that is very insightful question. Uh I think the one thing that's interesting about the investigation space in the interviewing space uh where you're talking about people that and you bring up a a most important word in uh when you talk about it is the issue of fear. Uh we have to be very cognizant of that person's fear that's sitting across from us. And this kind of goes back to what you were saying about people that don't do the sales thing well and you pick it up in your gut and you don't feel right about it. Uh the one thing we have to be is sincere and real about what we're doing. And I deal with this all the time. Well, yeah, I'll do rapport because that's what I'm **[00:34:00]** supposed to do. And I can show some empathy and say, "Yeah, I feel bad about it." Uh if you're going to do it like that, don't do it because the person is going to pick up on it. And I say this all the time because you know lying is allowed in the interview room by the interviewer. But do you want to do it? Because the issue becomes to me and think about it in your own life. Uh if I lie to you and you determine that I'm lying to you, why are you going to tell me the truth when I'm a liar just like you are? I I I mean at some point it makes no sense. you know, if you lie to me in my life, I'm probably going to distance myself from you because I can't have confidence in who you are. So why do we think in the interview room that's going to have a positive effect? So we everything that we do in that interview room number one needs to be genuine and real. So that would be the first thing I was saying. So I I am answering your question believe it or not. Uh the other thing I know is that in the interview room because of that fear, because of the subject that's happening, we have a greater ability to build that rapport and trust in a shorter period of time than like a day-to-day interaction where you're running into somebody down at the hardware store and you, you know, you meet them a few times and you start building a little bit of a relationship, but you kind of have your walls up. But when that fear and the dynamic exists that's in the interview room, I've **[00:36:00]** seen people go to extremely deep and what we call intimate rapport, intimate levels of rapport in a relatively short period of time because of the the pressures and stuff that are on the person that's in that interview room. So I I think that's one way that you can do it. But the way you do that is not through you persuading them. It's through you asking them questions and involving yourself and what what I call uh demonstrating strategic empathy which is a genuine empathetic understanding where you show them that you understand and I've used this in uh several interactions that I've had with people. We have to earn the right to ask the questions. We have to earn the right to get that trust. Uh, so we have to do that work to make that happen in that room. Does that kind of address that for you? It does. It actually goes in line with one of my questions. One of your posts is actually about empathy in highstakes interviews. So, it's so interesting to read about it because it's common sense once you read about it. That's right. You got you figured it out, man. I'm no Einstein, man. This stuff is common sense. If you really think about it, it's just good human interaction. It's caring about your brothers and sisters. It's caring about people around you and in investing in that. You're you're dead on right. No Einstein here. Is it is it just listening? Do you think is that one of the key things? Is it more about listening than anything else? It it it really is another fantastic point. I can still hear my dad saying to me, "Hey, Mark, you got two of these and one of these for a **[00:38:00]** reason. Keep this one shut and use these." You know, we don't listen. Well, we listen with the intent of responding. We listen to figure out what we're going to say next instead of actually listening to the person. The the older I get, the more I realize everybody doesn't think like me. the world would operate obviously much better if they everybody thought like me but for some reason everybody doesn't think that's a good idea. So I really need to listen and understand the person that I'm talking to because I really understand that I don't understand how a lot of people think. So if I want to understand how you think and what's important to you and what you believe in and the situation in which you find yourself, I need to listen and I need to listen with my whole being, not with my ears to say, okay, what am I going to say after he's done talking? I need to invest in that. And the best way to do that, if that's not something you're good at, a lot of us think we're good listeners and we suck at it. So, if we want to be better listeners, listen to what the person's saying and then be working on a question to ask them to clarify more of what they're saying because people give you in in the depth chart, they give you a little bit under the soil, but if you ask that follow-up question, they go a little bit deeper. And that's how you learn where somebody's really at. That's how you learn what their needs are in a business standpoint. They don't always tell you what their need is. Sometimes they don't know what it is, but by you asking those questions, **[00:40:00]** by you listening in order to ask questions, I I think that's where the success is. So, you're dead on right. We're not good listeners. We need to be better. I love how your dad put it. I had never heard it put that way like that. That's I'm I'm going to quote that. That's fantastic. It's a great especially for kids to understand it. That's that's a fantastic way to put it. I I heard it my whole life and it it's funny because you know he's passed and I when I teach I use that example all the time and I can actually see him and hear him saying that to me uh from early on from very early on. So I I think you're absolutely right. The time to teach that is now. Uh where we teach that ability to listen. And it's just going to make our kids so different from those around them as they grow up because they're going to have that ability to recognize where those people are at that they're encountering and interacting with. I think that's a great point. And I think just us discussing this empathy really comes down to how well you listen. Because you were you made an example earlier about people learning empathy for sales or other types of interviews, but they're just doing it to mirror the other person. And they have all these tools and they're trying to fake empathy. But real empathy is listening because you can put yourself in your in their shoes or think you are, but if you haven't listened to them, really listen to them. And it doesn't have to be their words. It could also be we'll get to cues in a second. It could also be everything else **[00:42:00]** around it. Once you open yourself up to actually listen, that's when you can really have empathy. Is that Do you think that Yes. applies? I I think you I think you're dead on accurate and and you think about it going back to what you said earlier about uh salespeople and how eventually they get caught in their town foolery if they aren't genuine about it. I think it's you're always going to get caught on that. It's a matter of time. Uh I don't know. I I debate this with people I work with a lot. If some of this stuff you can actually, you know, can you teach common sense? I'm not sure you can teach common sense. Not sure you can teach people to be genuine. Uh I think the people that'll have success in this realm are the people that actually do have the potential. I I also think there's an epide epidemic of narcissism in the country today. Uh self-centered, self-focused people who can't get outside themselves. I think none of this stuff is going to work effectively with those people. But if you're a genuine person that cares about people around you, I think that you can de develop this sense in a way that's very beneficial not only to and the question becomes are you only trying to benefit yourself. Uh I I I don't see it that way. I think a sub category or what comes out of this is a benefit to me but that should not be my primary focus if that makes sense to you. So, I think we do need to develop this empathetic spirit and and I don't know. I totally agree with you. Rapport and empathy if you're just trying to act it out is **[00:44:00]** not going to be effective in the long run. So, I I I I think there's a difference there. I don't know how you teach that uh unless you help them to see that this really is the most beneficial thing uh to the world around you but also to your work product as well. Well, one of the ways I think can help that at least has helped me sometimes see things that I maybe hadn't seen clearly before is to play it out, right? And so sometimes if you if someone tells me something, I might or might not listen, especially if I'm a kid, especially if it's something like a behavior that I shouldn't be going on with. And I a way that I don't know why this particular movie stuck with me a while back. There was this movie, I don't even remember the name, but it was about a couple Fireproof. It's called Fireproof. And I think it's a Christian, but yeah, regardless it the the Yep. the moral of the story was so well thought out. I think if you take out the religious context, just the way they show the interactions between the couple throughout the storyline and how he's trying to get better, but they're at a point where she no longer trusts you, going back to your point, she no longer trusts him. Then he's trying, but now she has a wall. And so you see, but when you see it acted out, even if it's not a like multi-million dollar production, just it maybe I don't know, but it's not a Hollywood type film and but you see it acted out and sometimes that triggers something and you're like, "Wow, yeah, that's that is true." And because you've seen it **[00:46:00]** before in other people seeing their interactions and you see how someone could have gone the wrong ways and then decided to fix it or had help fixing it, but then the other party is not ready to accept it. And so there has to come a point where where they both reach that sort of middle ground. And so I thought that movie was very well executed in that sense. So to your point, yeah, I think if we can, going back to content, if there's a way where we can, I don't know how exactly, but if there's a way to to sort of go back to the really really core basics, storytelling, and that's how history showed us like if you look at the Bible, if you look at the Tai, if you look at whatever, there's stories that people were telling each other through the years to show morals. to educate, right? And so sometime I think we forget about storytelling not just for entertainment but to to actually impart real knowledge uh of of life. Yeah. And and when you do it that way, you also there's there's the story and there's the practical example of it which makes the premise or the truth that's being taught more palatable and understandable to the receiver. So I I absolutely agree a valuable way to do it, but it's a it's a lost art in a lot of cases. Yeah. Yeah. I I don't know. You touched on a point that I really don't understand but I I feel it's going away fortunately which is the lack of actually listening in an interview in in this space like podcast space but more traditional media. So if you have ever gone on TV, local TV or whatever, they **[00:48:00]** invite the guests over and like that if you're that person going on, you're like, "Yeah, and this is like a break for you and people are going to see you on the daily news or whatever and you're excited, but you go on and they're not listening at anything you're saying. They have a set of questions. They just want to go through them. Sometimes they want to put you in a hole, right? They trick you. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they just have a specific narrative that they have to like sort of guide you through. Non-political, just in general. And and so you come out of that what was that? And I've seen many people have that experience. And I and I just don't understand it because at the end of the day, if you're having a guest over in your show, it in my opinion, it should be all about the guest shining, doesn't it? Right. Yeah. I I I think a lot of times people have their agenda and they want to stick to their agenda and hopefully you don't interfere with that so that they can accomplish what they want. Uh absolutely great example with uh you know TV journalists uh I see it happen in interview rooms all the time uh where there's like this preconceived notion of what's supposed to take place while you're in that room by the interviewer not the interviewe who it's really all about. Uh and those don't go well. Uh I I totally agree with you. Uh, and likewise, what makes an interaction really good is you say, "You have your guest on, you have me on, and this is all about me." And I come on here and I say, "Yeah, but this is your show. **[00:50:00]** You have an audience. You have people that you're trying to support. My reason for coming on is all about supporting you. So, if we both have that attitude, then the dynamic and the interaction is going to be very positive." Very true. That's that's very well well put. It's a two two-sided approach, right? And if that first person has that approach, it is more likely that the second person won't be adversarial and they might want to collaborate because at the end of the day, it is a collaboration. So, I don't know why the You also touched on when people are listening, you're talking, they're not really listening. They're just thinking of what you're what to say next. I like that you put it in the sense of you should Yeah, you should be thinking, but more of what I should be thinking what to ask you next more than now, let me give you my monologue after you finish talking. And I see that a lot even in friendly groups. Friends are just talking and you if you just sit back and look at their conversation, you see how how they're just trying to one up each other and one is talking and you see the other one's just like thinking, "Okay, so now I'm going to say this because now and so it's so strange if you step back and look at it because it's like they're not really there at all. They're just both doing their own monologue and and nobody got anything out of the conversation except maybe you had a little fun watching watching it. I I think there's a lot of insecurity that plays into that. I think you and I talk about this a lot in the interviewing classes I **[00:52:00]** do. Uh you you need to know who you are and I think a lot of people really don't know who they are and and I'm not sure 40 years ago I knew who I was. So, you know, part of this comes uh my the illustration I've used is I've been run over several times by buses in my life. And the more tire tracks that are run over me, the more I understand that I don't necessarily understand where other people are coming from and I need to really engage and and uh uh invest in understanding where people are coming from. So, I think that we have to know who we are. And when we know who we are and we're comfortable with who we are, we don't have to play that competition game. We don't have to there's nothing more ill irritating to me and you described it so well sitting there and listen to a conversation and you're thinking is anybody in the same conversation here or are we all just theatrically performing? You know, I I don't understand it. Uh it is entertaining to watch. Pretty frustrating to watch. Uh, but it is amazing how many people do that instead of just pull themselves away and say it's not that hard to do. I mean, listening to you before we turned on on the record, I don't know you at all. So, I want to hear who you are so I know what I can ask you and I can understand a little bit of uh more about you. That's why you and I went back and forth with I don't know 10 emails before we decided to do this. Uh I I I just think that's so important and I I I don't **[00:54:00]** understand why we don't want to invest in that. It's important to realize that by meeting your needs ultimately my needs are going to be made. Uh instead of being so focused on getting my needs made that I run all over you. It just doesn't make sense to me. Uh but people we're not in a wait mentality in today's times and I think sometimes we have to be in that weight mentality. Uh and and when we are we ultimately get what we're looking for but we've invested in others along the way. I I don't know if that's clear. I love that wait mentality. That's a good one too. The it's patience and it is patience. going back to listening and I well also I think I'll give you an example of why I think it's also maturity not age necessarily maturity you've buses right so you you know based on experience a lot of young kids don't have the experience or the maturity some do unfortunately they they get hit with maturity very at a very young age And yes, and so you learn that and you get better at it. But the example I was going to give is very very close uh family member. He father James, he he's a I think he's 87 now. He married us, baptized our girls, married baptized my wife, uh married her parents, married all her like he's done all the family, right? and very loved by the family. Very smart man. He one day asked me because we did applications and things. He said, "Can you build an application that people can have on their phone that will show you the percentage of time each party is talking?" So basically who is dominating the conversation such that **[00:56:00]** you can have it and make yourself better at listening because if you see yourself at 90% it means something is likely wrong. And I thought that was such an Mhm. Yeah. Such an interesting insight because probably someone younger or not as mature would not think of that because they they care about dominating the conversation instead of the other way around. Yeah. I I bet the father is not afraid of silence either. Not afraid of sitting quietly and waiting. Uh that's something we need to learn. Uh there's no harm in silence. There's no harm in investing just by being there, not necessarily saying anything. So true. I have one last question for you, Mark. I don't want to take too much of your time. No, this is fun. I'm having a blast. So, you know, however many questions you got, it's cool. Okay. So, you're ch you're challenged me to think outside the box a little bit. I I love that when I interact with people who are not in my normal circle of who I interact with and they ask questions that cause me to think, you know, is this well formulated in my mind, am I right about where I'm going here? Am I conveying this in a way that'll make a difference for somebody else? uh that challenge you can only get by interacting with people who are outside that circle and and and getting to know them. So I I really appreciate it. It's not a big deal. Listen, your content is very wellmade because I skimmed through some of your posts as one does and I got so much just by reading the title and then really quickly browsing through the little headings and the content. It was so welllaid out **[00:58:00]** that I then I then went back and read it and you don't see that often with content, especially people who are doing content for the sake of doing content. You sort of lose lose some of that quality. And so it was very easy to from a very quick glance get some like notice that there there's you know how people say this is a technology thing but they say TLDDR on on posts. It's like, oh, it's too long. Just like this is the this is the meat of it if you don't want to read it. Like you don't it's too long. Uh don't don't read this is the the thing. And it's a thing of our culture. But the way you have it set up, you can just glimpse it very fast and wow, I need to read this without having a TLDDR, right? Because it is well laid out. And one of those things was you were talking about the myths of nonverbal cues. Oh, now I never thought of them as myths. So, that caught me, right? Because all the sales books and things of the sort talk about the non-verbal cues and you have to look them. You have to do the mirrors and the mirror neurons and you if they're looking that way and and it always struck me as I don't know. I mean, if we all know that if you look up and to the right, you're lying, then wouldn't someone that's good at lying just know to look the other way, right? So, I mean, at at a moment in time, they're going to catch on and they're pretty much the mo the cleverest ones, the ones that are doing some of the the shady stuff. And so, when **[01:00:00]** I saw in your post that it's a myth of number of cues, that really got me interested. Can you talk about why myths and and what some of these are. Yeah. Yeah. Another you're you're challenging me here. You're taking me places. Uh I I'm going through my own transition here. I'm I I've been in the business a long time and I learned a lot of wrong stuff. I learned a lot of myths and legacy practices that just aren't true. And the reason the stuff was done the way it was done and it's one of my most unf lines from government work is well that's the way we've always done it. Well sometimes that is not the best way to continue to do it. There are things that I've seen people do to one another that I don't want to do it that way just because that's the way it was done because it isn't right. And so I'm going through a huge transition in that regard. I've actually rewritten probably 90% of my curriculum uh and moved away from things that I had learned for 40 years because they are not good and they are not right. And so if you've read any of my recent blogs, uh I just did one this week uh on we need to change the way we do training. Uh I've become very uh mouthy in that regard. Uh because I've adopted what's called a science-based uh interviewing. I want to see the research that supports whatever is being done. And when it comes to that arena of research with regard to body language, what in the world is body language? I mean, number one, language is generally a way that we can communicate with one another because the **[01:02:00]** giver and the receiver understand that same dynamic. When it comes to body language, you can sit there and twitch and look to the left and and you know, move your feet and that can mean 50 different things to me. That's that's not a language. That might be an art form. It's not a language. So when it comes to this issue of body language, we have spent way too much time uh looking at that and I think number one, it's entertaining to talk about and it's entertaining to teach and that's why a lot of people are out there teaching it. They're also making a lot of money off of teaching it. So they keep on teaching it even though it has no validity in the world that we're in. Research studies that have been done show that we're about 54% accurate at detecting deception via body language. 54% is the best number I can give you. It's really more around 5051, which means you might just well flip a coin to determine whether you're right or wrong with regard to the issue of deception. So we but we keep looking at that and that's not how we're going to detect deception. We're going to detect deception about what you and I have talked about for the last hour, which is verbally communicating with that person. We're much better at detecting deception via what they say than what they do. So, I'm not going to stop looking at you when I'm interviewing you, but I'm going to listen to what you're saying, and I'm going to ask questions in a way that make you create your answers, which allows me to detect that deception. So, when I'm talking about the body language stuff, I'm talking about the **[01:04:00]** stuff that you just made fun of, which is the direction of eye movement, which is the the movement of the hands, which is whether you're twitching or not, or scratching your head. I mean, uh, that stuff can mean so many different things. I'm going to pay attention to it because it does indicate stress levels at times. So, I want to see what you look like, but I'm not going to I'm never going to look at you and say, "Oh, he moved this way. He must be lying." Because that is a lie to to do that. So, does that kind of cover that for you or followup questions because it wasn't clear? It was clear and it is I think culture comes into it too, right? Correct me if I'm wrong. It's cultural. Yep. Some some people in cultures that are different have different body cues. They use their body differently. So, you cannot assume, especially nowadays, that we're all just mixed together. And there's also the part of it's funny how you said it because you said I am going to look at what you say not at what you do and everyone's like no you have it's all about doing and not and I know it's a completely different context but in this context I think you're right you need to listen because they could do something to try to fool you. They could also say something to try to fool you. But if you're really listening, and I bet you teach this in your classes, you can set traps, if you will, for that manipulator on the other side of the table to fall into like a little honeypot such that you notice that you're being played. And so again, listening, right? Yeah. **[01:06:00]** Yeah. Absolutely. and and the way you ask, you know, how you elicit the information, how you ask the question becomes very important. Use a really simple example here because I know you have young kids and and I did have young kids at one time. Uh I I don't know, maybe your kids don't ever attempt to lie to you. If if that's true, you need to write a book immediately because uh I I don't mind. So uh you know, one of the questions we ask our kids all the time is, "Do you have any homework tonight?" You realize that's probably the dumbest question on the face of the earth because they've been conditioned to answer that no and not provide any information. So the question is how do we actually get the truth of what's going on with regard to the homework? We don't ask number one yes no questions because you can't detect detect deception and yes no questions. So the and I I picked my uh youngest son up from school a lot when he was in middle school and man he had a way of not telling the truth about homework. So the joke became how do you ask about it? Well, you ask questions like how many subjects do you have homework in tonight? From easiest to hardest, what are your assignments tonight? What teacher gave you the hardest assignment tonight? All of those questions force the child to create an answer. M and that's where you detect deception is the difference between creation and historically telling you what is the truth. Uh you make mistakes with regard to how you deliver the question and everything else. So we stay away number front one from yes no questions and ask for a **[01:08:00]** narrative and that's where just like you said that's creating that honeypot where the mistake is made and then you pick up on the mistake and you know they're not telling the truth. That's great example and that's a great way to fortunately my my two girls are really young one and three turning four okay so not quite at that stage but you see it I like I was saying our bodies are so so good at the detecting and and doing when even when a child is very very young when they start being able to deceive not because they want to deceive but because they they don't they think that this is a better outcome if they I don't know they they eat the cookie they'll turn a little bit or they'll try right so they'll do that even when they're really young because they wanted the cookie right or they wanted and so you you pick if you're listening if you're really watching then you can pick up on these cues again and so but I love the way you put the the questions we're going to definitely try that one out avoiding yes or no questions like many times in business but also So setting it up, framing it in a way where if they're just giving you the historical reference of what actually which courses gave them homework, they'll just tell it. Whereas the other way, if they're going to lie, they're they going to have to craft a response and so you're you're going to see their their wheels spinning. So that's a great one. That's amazing. That becomes very that be that becomes very entertaining too, Armando. It's kind of like you said, sitting in the conversation where nobody's listening to anybody **[01:10:00]** and they're just one uping the other person. It's fascinating to throw questions like that into the conversation and watch people fuddle around with them and and you know, it's one way to have cheap entertainment, I guess. Well, yeah, you have to have fun somehow, right? Yeah, that's that's what I say all the time, teachers. When this stops being fun, I'm done. You know, it's got to be a good time for me or I'm not coming and teaching. So true. So true. Mark, I really appreciate you coming on the show. It has been a blast. Uh if if we could do it another time, that would be great. We could go into deeper topics as well. Really, really interesting stuff that we talked about, but then just reading through your content, I'm sure I'm going to be reading more of your content. There's so much to learn on these subjects. Could you tell our listeners uh where they can find you and what uh yeah what's what services they can get from you whether they're in business or law enforcement etc. Just so that they know where they can find you and follow up. Sure. Uh but I guess the easiest one andersoninvestigative.com and there's a ton of free material on there. I've got videos on there. uh most the blogs that we've been talking about I I post both to there and to LinkedIn. Uh if you want to find me, I don't know if uh any of you are on LinkedIn. If you want to do LinkedIn, I'm pretty active on there. Uh and and I post the blogs on there. Uh if you go on my website, you'll see how to contact me via email. Um my telephone number's on there. If there's **[01:12:00]** any way I can help you, especially if you're a business owner or you're you know, you you're struggling with any of this stuff, don't hesitate to reach out. My first thought is not what do I charge you. My first thought is how do I help you? Uh, and we need to be consistent in what we say. And Armando and I have talked about this a bit. If you do right by other people of you will you will be rewarded in the long run. And and so my first concern is not to do that. My first concern on coming on here with Armando was to number one to meet him and number two to see what I could do to help him and his platform. Uh I think we need to think about other people that way. So if you have a question, you have an issue uh that you need addressed. Reach out to me and and you know I got a huge operation here. It's me. So uh it might take a day or two to get back to you, but I will get back to you. I I just like I did Armando. He he blind emailed me and I was so curious I had to get back to him. So my curiosity will make me get back to you one way or the other. Uh so those are probably the best ways to get hold of me. Thank you so much Mark. And for everyone I'm going to put links in the show notes. Uh so you can reach Mark as well, his website and LinkedIn as well. Thank you for coming on Mark. It was really really a blast and I hope we can talk again soon. Thanks everyone. Thank