Tony skinner
Hi, and welcome to the podcast channel for www.podcastmybusiness.com.au and content made easy. And today we’re joined by Alan Stevens with one L. A n. And Stevens with a V instead of a p h.com.au. https://www.alanstevens.com.au/ How are you, Alan?
Alan
Pretty good. Thanks, Tony. Good to catch up again.
Tony skinner
Yeah, it’s been a while. Yeah, I mean, it’s been an interesting year here and we can get for that. Yeah, well, you know, I know you’re in Sydney as well.
Alan
Actually Newcastle.
Tony skinner
Okay, well, you’re still in the lockdown as well. So they’re here. Yeah. I regard Newcastle as Sydney.
Alan
We’re not really that far away. It’s, you know, your central coast and then Newcastle. We’re all pretty much connected by our houses and roads. So we’re not far away at all?
Tony skinner
Yeah, absolutely. I get to the Central Coast a lot when I’m allowed to. We’ll get there. And, you know, we’ve spoken before about faces. And look, faces are pretty important. And we just touched on online, and we want to revisit the online side of things and some other elements as well. But what I’m going to do, I’m going to pick on you and your face and your facial profile, because you still got the beard. And you’ve got the glasses that me in my sales training was taught someone with a beard and glasses, there’s an element of trust behind that.
Alan
With beards, there’s a whole bunch of different shapes. And it’s everything from the ones you don’t trust to the ones that you would put up in intellectual levels. If you think of Victorian times, some of the shape beards of the Gentry and the psychologists, the doctors, they all had those berries, and people looked at them as being the authorities.
Tony skinner
Right?
Alan
It depends on how you groom it.
Tony skinner
Is that how you’ve got yours groomed? And is that the reason why you got a beard.
Alan
The reason I got the beard was I’ve been clean shaven, pretty much of my life. About two years ago when right at the beginning of COVID. When we were in our original lockdown, I just got lazy. So I live on my own and I thought righty, I’ll let it go. And it’s it started to grow because of the group. I’m running outside of this a campfire project. Some of the people started calling me Papa Smurf. And then they told me why they were calling you Papa Smurf and what they thought of Papa Smurf and I thought, I kind of like that. So it’s sort of become the trademark. And they don’t call me Alan anymore. They just call me Papa.
Tony skinner
Papa. Wow, is that when you’re going to paint yourself blue?
Alan
That on some of the weather we’ve had lately? I don’t think I need to do any painting. It’s damn cold.
Tony skinner
It has the weather has come back to winter, and what have you as well. So the glasses have a impact because I believe that it’s little science that we look for. And those little signs can be hidden?
Alan
Well, if I’m looking at, say the facial features, like I’m looking at the shape of the eyebrow, for instance, if I can’t see that, because of the rim of the glasses, I’m looking at the rim of the glass is signing the shape of the eyebrow is because it’s hidden behind the shape of the glasses. As far as the only time you can’t really trust the glass, if you’re sitting inside with somebody who’s wearing shades, if they’re wearing sunglasses, it’s like unless they’ve got a serious condition with their eyes. You know, why are you hiding?
Because the eyes are the windows to the soul is a sight. And also the facial features become the windows to the mind how somebody likes to think and process. So the more I can see, the more I understand that person’s personality. And then by watching their behaviors, I can see if they’re operating within their personality, or operating outside. And if they are operating outside. are they telling me the truth or what’s emotionally going on here. And I can delve deeper to find the solution.
Tony skinner
Well, I’ve been watching you quite closely on the little bit that I can see on the screen. And I saw you using your forehead quite a bit then. Because I was going to say all the eyes sing to be predominant, but it’s actually the forehead that seems to take up a large amount of space.
Alan
But we emphasize a lot more with the because when a lot of skin up there that a lot of muscles. And so when we express things, we start doing that if I really concentrate and I’m on thinking about solving, the eyes will pull together they’ll come down at an angle which is also one of the directions of the eyebrows when somebody has got anger. But you’ve got to be able to see the other things around to go or is he angry? Or is he concentrating? Is there something else going on there so becomes the intensity. one trait on its own doesn’t define someone’s personality. But at the same time one gesture on it. So it doesn’t define the person’s emotions, right? So you look at things on
Tony skinner
And I can think of one or two gestures that would indicate something related to that.
Alan
Well, it’s first got an angry look on their face and they give me the bird or they got their fish. We are ready to go. Are you? Okay? So say you’re looking at things in combination. You’re looking to make clusters. Yeah, faces saying angry. The fist is saying angry. The body’s coming in. Okay, it’s time to get out of it.
Tony skinner
Yeah, yeah, that’s true. And, okay, so Papa, there’s something else I wanted to do before we get on to other things. And that is, of course, the fashion accessory de rigueur at the moment. The mask, of course, the mask does hide of large amount of the face. So we’re talking before about the forehead and the eyebrows on Yes, I’m adding hand movements to try to compensate a little bit perhaps. So how much more difficult does that make things?
Alan
Well, it just means there’s a few less things that you can pick up. So if you’re looking at somebody’s personality, the length of their lower face, the shape of their mouth, the corner of the mouth, etc, the, bridge of the nose, the shape of the nose, the air underneath, all of that gives you some information about their personality. But even somebody who’s wearing a burqa where you’ve almost got just the letterbox appearance, depending on how narrow they it is, you can still see the eyebrow so you can see whether they’ve got dramatic appreciation or aesthetic appreciation whether they have mechanical or design appreciation.
Yeah, you can see if they’re, how tolerant they are, how focused they are on things, you can see whether they need just the overview when you’re talking to them or whether they need a lot more information before they make a decision. So you’ve got a lot of micro expressions, you’ve got a lot of facial features as well. And yeah, if I’m looking at you, for instance, I know the shape your eyebrows being well, it’s about how things feel inside the city appreciation.
A little ridges above your eyebrows here told me that yes, you need more information before you make all the information it’s got to be there details got to be there. But in the actual eyelids themselves, I can see that you like more information to be able to analyze it before you make a decision. Now I’ve got a rough idea because of the mask and where I can see the pressure of your nose, I’ve got an idea where the tibia nose is, I can see the top of your forehead and I can see where roughly the look rounding of your changes. So now I know how much space you’ve got here in comparison, the overall height. So I know whether you’re focused on just give me that you’ve analyzed it got all the information. Yes, you’ve also found the errors and everything else. you’ve checked the detail. Once you’ve got that insight, just give me the best way to do it and get the hell out of the way and let me get it done. So I know you’re not going to faff around by looking at all the different options just kind of want the best one.
So I can work some things out without being able to see him because you know the mind all my brains are smart enough to see right there’s a bit of shading on the nose, I can see where the turn would be I can see that because of the mass the way you’ve been told before is left that shape. So I can still see through the mask without it being transparent.
Tony skinner
That’s interesting. And so I guess again, we’re talking about the forehead because again at the moment that’s what we’re going to get to see a lot of the lines on the forehead and the like now I reckon because the COVID we’ve all added a few extra lines to our foreheads. So the sets show up this stress and is it temporary or is a permanent,
Alan
It depends on where the stress is right like if we frown a lot because we’re unhappy. The end result is the muscles on the bottom part of our face here will become stronger and they shrink when you work on muscle it tightens up. So at rest, these get stretched in the mouth turns down so I can see straight away with a somebody has been unhappy. If you start watching comedies, you start laughing You spend time with people who really uplift you, and you’re smiling a lot more then you’ll build these muscles up in the mouth or turn back up again. So that’s a temporary one.
Tony skinner
So these muscles here the laugh ones
Alan
Yeah. And so if you articulate a lot then you’ll get these grooves and everything else where they’re going to stay. If you do this and you concentrate really deeply these little vertical lines like I’ve got, they will stay. Yeah, the only way to get rid of those is really cosmetic surgery.
But why would you want to they don’t change your personality. It’s like the ladies who worried about these lines out the corner their eyes, their laughter lines you the you only get those if you’re in really smiley have been really happy because what happens is in a social smile, it’s the mouth only. But when you’re really enjoying things, the cheeks raise up the muscles around the eyes go really tight and these little lines in form because of the crunching of the skin. Now with women I always say to especially mirror to mature age women if they don’t have those lines.
They use cosmetic surgery, or they’ve been unhappy most of their life, they haven’t had a lot of joy in their life. I mean, I’m talking to women I go, those that’s beauty lines, they have that beauty that goes all the way to the bone. It shows me somebody who’s been really happy. So even with the mask on, you can see that I know whether that person’s a jovial, happy type of person normally, and then I can watch the body language when they walk in and go all right now they’re not so happy. So it’s information as well.
Tony skinner
Is there such a thing as resting bitchface?
Alan
It ourselves every everybody has seen, I look at someone’s face, and they just don’t look, it’s not even a neutral face. Yeah, see, there’s a concentration be behind that that goes well, it just doesn’t look natural. Or they look angry. And that’s just the way it is. If you think ask that person and go right, when you had that expression on your face, what was going on, they usually deep in thought, Yeah, that’s true. And so if they deep in thought, this is how the facial features work. If you lift weights, like do bicep curls will build your biceps.
We also know that everything we feel inside, we express out with the body language, micro expressions, the you know, the longer expressions we have on our face. All of those are what we feel inside being shown outside. So you put those two things together. And if you concentrate new think really deeply all the time and you really focus down on things, you’ll actually pull the eyelids down, they’ll start to fold over the top of the the eyelash itself, you’ll get these vertical lines, you’ll build ridges up.
So that repetitive side of things builds the muscles in your face. And the face then becomes a history of how you like to think and process. So if we’re just, you know, in that neutral thing, we’ve got something on our mind will likely be pulling an expression. And a lot of cases and expression comes across as I say as red resting bitchface
Tony skinner
Okay, so something else I want to touch on. And it’s why not, let’s have some fun, I didn’t warn you. So face off, if I got a face transplant. Over time would my expressions now replace and go back onto the new face.
Alan
Now what you’ll find is the expressions you have, first of all, that see internal response to your your emotion scope being shown outwardly. So if you’re unhappy, it doesn’t matter if you’ve been blind from birth, or you’ve been living in a tribal village or capital city. If you’re feeling anger, you will have anger on your face.
What causes you to feel anger, anger is different to me and other people, different things triggers, but the emotion itself uses exactly the same muscles on the face. So as long as the muscle structure was the same underneath, like we were thinking about that movie face off, whether they changed faces on the two people, yeah, whatever they felt inside, was going to come out on the surface because the muscles underneath control that.
So I was small, for instance, a mouthful turn up. If they frowning and they you know, or they’re angry they are the eyes are going to come in like this, and there’s the tightening of the mouth and all the rest of it, that’s going to be there. But as far as the personality goes, their personality won’t have changed. Because we’ve got a certain number of traits that are passed down in our DNA from our parents. And that’s why we get children from the same parents who start to look different, they behave differently, everything goes.
Because it’s the memories the parents have got, at the time the child is conceived, get passed down, plus all the other indicators as far as hereditary diseases, you know, facial features of each parent, etc. And we were a composite of all those things. And so as we’re growing up, we’ve got those traits have been passed down from our parents, which we call the nature traits. And then in our response to our environment, we have what we call nurture traits.
So say for instance, if we were able to take someone’s face off an hour, an angry person to start with, and we put a happy face on them, well over a period of time, if they’re frowning and they’re angry all the time, those nurture traits will start to develop on their face. So it’s not the old ones coming back. It’s a new ones it created from continuing the behavior what they had before.
Tony skinner
Yes, interesting. So okay, so we were discussing before we started this call, the campfire project, which is a safe space for men, because let’s face it, men are not the best at talking. And talking about feelings, although I think COVID hopefully has given them a bit more permission to talk about things. So how does the campfire project help?
Alan
Well, it came about First of all, from the fact that all the men I was talking to in business, they were all telling me they didn’t They’re all in the home anymore because I thought it was to go out and provide a now they’ve been told they’re there emotionally or physically absent all the time, and how can we be in two places at once, there was all the gender equality issues that were coming up. And so many men who were on tender hawks have going,
Well, I used to talk this way, nobody take any notice. But now I’m going to really watch what I say. And there was second guessing what they’re saying and getting frustrated. Now, when people get frustrated, male and female, they’ll start to get angry. And in some cases, I’ll go to violence, because it just gets too much for them. And I thought, right, if we want to help men to have a better life, and for their partners and their families to also be the recipients of that was to help them in have a safe place where they can come and tell their stories.
And so it wasn’t a case of counseling them or telling them what they were doing wrong or anything else. It was just sitting there. hearing their story, showing them that there was somebody who actually cared was not judging, was allowing them to talk and share their story. Because while people share their stories, that’s when they find solutions to their problems as well. And they’re not being told what they should be doing, should be doing. But I had women in there from day one. And the purpose of that was so that the women could hear how the men could speak when they felt safe to do so.
I brought the right women in the ones I knew who would be respectful to the mouths that were wanting to find out how to mentor, how can they talk, and they feel safe to do so. And then when the men were ready, it’s like going to a motivational seminar, you get all hyped up, you go back home again, everyone toys, your wife work, and you wait for the next seminar. And you rush back to that. And I did not want that to be the case. I wanted the men to be able to talk to women straight away while they’re in the group. And realize, yes, they were working through their stuff.
Yes, they were being appreciated, talking and opening up and sharing their emotions and was acceptable and actually desirable. The women were actually seeing in their vulnerability, the strength that that takes to be vulnerable. So in doing that, I then found that we started interviewing a lot of men one on one, and I started bringing him into panel discussions. And we talked about pornography. We call it masculinity, femininity, drugs, alcohol. We talked about all sorts of subjects. And the women started sending me personal messages going we love these guys. I’ve never heard men talk this way before can we get involved with that was waiting for.
So they came into the one on ones brought him into the panel discussions. And we increase the range of things we’ve been talking about. We’ve talked about menopause, we talked about menstruation we talked about does size matter in the bedroom. And by the way, if anybody’s listening to this, and they want to know, you don’t have to come into the campfire project and listen.
Tony skinner
I am getting into that.
Alan
Yeah, but we covered all of these things. And over 400 hours, there’s been over 290 something one on ones, there’s been over 140 panel discussions. So around over 400 hours of conversations. We’re not once is there been any bigotry, racism or sexism? And not once Has anybody been rude to anybody else, proving that when you create a safe place, and you put the intention in place, men and women can really come together. And it’s under that hashtag we together.
Because we together, we’re looking at the problem shoulder to shoulder, we’re not looking at each other a separate group saying you’re the problem. Now you’re the problem. So there’s no fighting. And if we’re looking at how do we fix this problem that exists? No one’s pointing the finger and saying, oh, you’re responsible for that. We’re all looking and going, Well, how can we fix this problem? There’s no egos getting involved, there’s no self defense of worrying about what the other person thinks of you. Because the focus is on fixing the problem. Not pointing at each other as the problem. Right?
Tony skinner
Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much, Alan. Now, we’re up to almost 20 minutes. And that’s pretty good. That’s a good sign that it’s been another great conversation. And, yeah, being able to read faces, and body language is pretty important for any business owner, anybody in business at all. And you know, even for your personal relationships, it’s really important to be able to read what the other person was. I just sent a text to, to Gary all about billions at all. Look, you can watch it if you want to. And you know, as soon as you get that if you want to at the end. We all know what that means.
Alan
Questions will be coming back very shortly about what you thought of it.
Tony skinner
Yeah, exactly. Yes. If you want to. Yeah, but it’s on a text is something different. All right. Great. Well, thanks for your time Alan, that,s www.alanstevens.com.au. He has all sorts of courses and seminars that are highly recommend. And again, especially if you’re a sales professional, it’s fantastic.
Alan
On that website, put the forward slash and the word free, and you can download a free course so you can actually test some of the what we’ve been talking about now for yourself.
Tony skinner
There we go. Awesome. All right. Thanks Alan.
Alan
You’re welcome.
