02/07/2020
If you are reading this, you have some connection to me, Blake Eastman, creator and founder of the Nonverbal Group. You might have taken a class at the Nonverbal Group years ago or know me through School of Cards/Beyond Tells, or maybe someone referred you. Needless to say, I want to personally welcome you to the NEW Nonverbal Group. Let me get you up to speed.
——The Story (Our Past)——
In 2010, I started The Nonverbal Group, a behavioral research and educational training company in NYC. Since then, we have led classes to thousands of people, worked with some of the largest corporations in the world, coached some truly amazing people, and have done a lot of very weird and cool things. For example:
• Recorded, deconstructed, and reconstructed the facial expressions of executives;
• Created interrogation/interview workflows for interviewing financial controllers;
• Behaviorally observed M&A deals and provided feedback in real time;
• Led courses for members of the Army, Navy, FBI Counterterrorism and DEA in behavioral observation;
• Created behavioral reports of a company's culture as an undercover intern;
• Set up studies recording people during first dates and interviews; and
• Conducted hundreds of speeches and workshops on a wide range of topics (Sales, Presentations, Deception Detection, Leadership, etc.) around the world and in our office in NYC.
It’s a much longer story that I will eventually share, but in 2012, I started to question my approach. I was traveling for consulting/speaking gigs, teaching Psychology as an adjunct professor at the City University of New York, running School of Cards, and about to start a very ambitious project, Beyond Tells, the largest behavioral study ever conducted on poker players and the largest independent study of human behavior.
As a former professional poker player, I became a bit obsessed with the behavior of other players. The project was supposed to take three months, but it ended up taking six years — and it’s still going. When we decided to manually count over 550,000 blinks, we should have expected some delays in our timelines. : )
This study was very difficult, but it was also one of the most amazing learning experiences I have ever had. In a lot of ways, the Beyond Tells project fundamentally transformed how we will approach research at The Nonverbal Group.
Although the company has been around for close to ten years, this is essentially what I consider to be the beginning of The Nonverbal Group. We are going to change the world one person at a time, and if you are reading this right now, you are going to help us do that.
——The NEW Nonverbal Group (Our Future)——
The scope of what The Nonverbal Group will do is so large that it is often difficult for me to clearly articulate it. But in a nutshell, we are inventing a process that will fuel a revolution in how people communicate.
Ultimately, the entire company is driven by deeply researching human behavior. In 2020 we will start the process of creating the largest archive of recorded and coded nonverbal behavior. This will include setting up studies around the world in unique settings with diverse sample sizes and brand-new methodologies. We are doing this for several reasons, but our priority is the video.
It is much easier to teach people how to read a human face when you can show them thousands upon thousands of examples of the face moving in different ways. It’s much easier to teach people how to approach an interview when you have hundreds of video recordings of interviews.
This is our core process. We record, measure, and dissect human behavior for the sole purpose of teaching three specific skill sets. (You can learn more about it here)
Skillset #1:
The Ability to Read and Interpret the Behaviors of Others
Every single second, people are communicating volumes of information via behavior. They are showing you their intentions, emotions, and desires — and the average person completely misses it. This is NOT looking for someone to cross their arms or noticing when someone breaks eye contact. This is about establishing reliable frameworks for interpreting behavior in your everyday life. It is about seeing the world in high definition and experiencing all the life-changing benefits that come from being more aware of others. Yes, we are teaching observational powers that would even impress the great Sherlock Holmes.
Skillset #2:
The Awareness and Control of Your Own Behavior
Right now, as you read these words, do you have a good idea of how you are actually perceived? How would the average person describe you? What conclusions would they come to when they view your behavior? Most people have no idea because it's something we rarely get unbiased feedback on. When was the last time you asked random strangers, “Hey, when you first met me, what did you think?” How others perceive us is incredibly important. We have mechanisms wired in us for our survival that we aren’t even aware of. These tell us who is safe, who isn’t, who can be trusted, who should be avoided. All of this comes from our ability to process nonverbal behavior. And guess what? We can control it. We have full control over how others perceive us. It takes reflection and work, but once you have control you can fundamentally transform how others view you.
Skillset #3:
The Discovery of Mechanisms that Drive Our Own Behavior
This is the engine for all behavioral change. In order to change our behavior, we need the tools to dive deep into our own psychology and confront everything that is preventing us from being the most powerful version of ourselves.
Excited? I am. (I really wish you were in front of me when reading this. Gaze direction, smirks, squints, general movement — all of these would tell me how excited you really are. I have been writing for a LONG time, but I always feel at a major disadvantage if I can’t see you.)
——So what's going to happen?——
I am going to be sending you videos and sharing posts about the following:
🚀The Future of This Company: We have very big plans. Studies around the world, online and live courses, an insanely interesting YouTube channel, a dataset that will serve as the foundation for academic research on communication, a data-driven course on anxiety, and A LOT MORE.
🔎Behavioral Breakdown Webinars: Think of these as human behavior viewing parties. Basically, we will watch a piece of content, dissect it, and connect it to how we communicate in our own lives.
🛠Mental and Communication Tools: I like to view our content as a toolbox. We are simply teaching tools that allow people to communicate more effectively.
📕Stories. Lots of Stories.: Stories of my experiences working with some of the smartest people in finance, tech, medicine, poker and more.
🙋Access to Live Classes/Meetups: These will take place in NYC, Las Vegas, LA, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and London.
🔬Invitations to Participate in Our Research: We will be launching several studies this year in Las Vegas, NYC, Austin, San Francisco, and LA. There will be opportunities to participate in various capacities.
Also, if you have taken a live course I am very likely to remember you. I have two questions for you:
1. How have you been? (Feel free to give me the honest and authentic answer)
2. How can I help you?
Reach out and let me know. I read and respond to each message.
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