Carl Allen delivers an intriguing and practical lesson on detecting lies during business negotiations, a critical skill for dealmakers. Drawing from his vast experience in buying and selling businesses, Carl shares essential insights into identifying deception during face-to-face meetings with sellers. By understanding how body language and eye movements reveal truth or fabrication, dealmakers can protect themselves from risky deals and gain a strategic edge in negotiations.

Carl explains the fascinating connection between brain function and eye movement. When recalling factual information, people instinctively look to the left (your right as you face them), accessing the logical, memory-driven side of the brain. Conversely, when imagining or fabricating, they look to the right (your left), tapping into the creative side of the brain. This subtle yet revealing cue is invaluable during critical discussions, such as evaluating a seller’s growth strategy, customer relationships, or operational challenges.

In addition to eye movement, Carl outlines other physical cues that indicate dishonesty. Frequent blinking, touching the face, deep breaths, and flaring nostrils are all signs that someone may be lying. These non-verbal signals, combined with careful listening and observation, can help dealmakers assess a seller’s credibility and intentions. Carl highlights the importance of face-to-face meetings—whether in person or via video calls like Zoom—to observe these telltale signs and build rapport with the seller.

Carl also recommends additional resources to enhance lie-detection skills, including the book Spy the Lie, authored by former CIA operatives, and the TV series Lie to Me, starring Tim Roth. Both explore the art and science of lie detection, offering deeper insights into human behavior and deception.

This lesson is more than a negotiation tactic; it’s a vital skill for evaluating potential business partners and deals. Carl’s recent experience, where he successfully identified deception using these methods, underscores the importance of staying vigilant and informed. By applying these techniques, dealmakers can confidently navigate conversations, safeguard investments, and make sound business decisions.

Full Transcript:

I’m gonna teach you really quickly how to find out that, someone is lying to you. Dealmakers, what’s up?

My vision is to completely and utterly disrupt the market for buying and selling small businesses all over the world.

Hey, guys. Karl Allen. Wanna teach you just a really, really quick hack. I’m just about to drive, back to my house from a meeting.

I just wanna, give you a really quick hack. So I’m gonna teach you really quickly how to find out that, someone is lying to you. And this is really, really clever if you’re in a settlement. Right?

So as you know, I always, coach you that when you’re talking with a seller about buying their business or building a relationship, always do it face to face. So never do it on a phone call.

Ideally, do it in person. But when we went through COVID and we couldn’t go and meet people in person. We all got onto Zoom and Teams, Google Meets, and all these different, products. So as long as you’re doing an online meeting, make sure you can see the person face to face.

And it’s important for reading their body language, and it helps you build rapport to physically see that person. But what’s really cool when you’re face to face with somebody, either across the table, in a meeting, or on Zoom, is I want you to look when you’re asking questions, I want you to look at the right. Right? So there’s two things I wanna teach you.

So the first thing is it’s all about the left brain and the right brain. K? So our brains, the left side of our brain deals with with facts. It deals with logic.

So all of your memories, which are facts. Right? It’s all the memories that you have in your life, are all stored on the left side of your brain. So if you ask somebody to recall something, say, hey.

Do you remember when we did this? Or do you remember that time? Or talk to your buddy and say, hey. Do you remember when we were playing golf?

Just rocks up at the house. Just gotta open the electric gates. Bear with me one sec.

I could actually call the gate. I’ve got this really cool system on my house, my estate that, I can phone the gate when I’m on approach and it opens. But because I’m on my phone talking to you guys, I can do that. So I just press the the the click of the buzzer, going old school.

So the the left side of the brain deals with logic and facts. If you ask somebody a question and you ask them to recall something that is actually true, then what’s really interesting is they their eyes will look to the left, and they will look up. Right? Because they’re assessing they’re accessing their their memories, which is stored on the left side of the brain.

Right? If you ask somebody a question, that they, have to use their imagination. So if you said, hey. Imagine if, your basketball team, won the championship.

Right? How would you feel? If you look at them, their eyes are gonna look up to the right because the right side of the brain is where we store our creativity, and it’s where our imagination is. Right?

So why is that important? So when you’re looking at somebody, you’ve gotta be looking for the looking left as you’re looking at them because it’s them looking right. So if you’re across from them, it’s them looking left. So if they’re looking to their right, which is you’re looking at them is going left, what that means is they’re lying.

If you ask them a question, hey. So tell me about this customer, or tell me what your growth strategy is for the next few years, or tell me who the best customer is, or tell me who the best employee is. I mean, do you have any bad customers? Do you have any terrible employees?

If they look to the right when they answer that question and they look up, they’re assessing their imagination. And if they’re assessing their imagination, it means they’re lying to you. Okay? So that’s why it’s really important to have these seller meetings face to face so that you can look at their rights.

There are a few other cues as well that you can tell if people are lying. Right? So if someone’s lying to you, there’s there’s a lot of tells. One is they’ll look to the right, which is if you’re looking at me now.

That way is my right, but it’s your left. And the other thing that they will do is they’ll blink. They’ll blink a lot. So if they’re lying to you when they answer your questions, they blink.

A lot of the time is they’ll touch their face.

They could be doing all three things. They could be looking upright. They could be blinking, and they could be touching your face. That tells you that they’re really, really lying.

And then what some people also do as well is they they breathe in and out. It’s like, oh my god. I’m about to tell a lie. Take a deep breath.

So look at their chest and then look at their nostrils as well. So those are just some really kinda cool hacks. And I I’ll I’ll tell you where you can even get more, kind of information on this as well. There’s a book that you can read called Spy the Lie, and Spy the Lie is written we’ll put the link into it in the comments below.

Spy the Lie is a book written by an ex CIA, operative, so he’d obviously honed a lot of these different things. But, also, there’s a really awesome, cool TV show that I think went for two seasons about ten years ago called Light Me. And the actor was a guy called Tim Roth. And you might remember Tim Roth.

He’s a British actor from London, and he was in the Quentin Tarantino movie, Reservoir Docks, right, which is really, really cool. So he’s a famous actor, and he was the actor. My wife’s waving at me through the window. Hello.

So Tim Roth, was also the star of Lie To Me, and he was, a lie detection specialist, and he would be brought in. It’s a drama series, a box set. He would be brought in by, the police and the CIA, FBI, and he could go and interview people and and tell if they were, they were lying. And, obviously, there’s a lot of other methods.

There’s polygraphs and, you know, there’s things where they yeah. All all that crazy stuff that the CIA do, but you don’t need to do that. Just look at their eyes. Again, let’s summarize.

If they look up and to their right, which is as you’re looking across for them, my right is your left. They’re lying. If they blink, they’re lying. They touch their face, they’re lying.

And if they breathe in, their chest lifts up, and their nostrils start to quiver, you can tell that they’re lying. So I hope you found that really, really useful. Reason I’m telling you this is I’ve just come from a meeting where I was asking somebody a question, and they were doing all those things. So I know well, I knew for a fact they were light, but the, the physical signs from the facial expressions and what was going with their eyes, you know, just confirmed that.

So use that in a seller meeting, guys. Really, really important.

So I’m gonna go. I’ve just my wife is frantically waving at me through the window. She probably got something to tell me what she’s made me eat my lunch, which would be very, very sweet and kind of her. So, I wish you guys a great rest of day, and I will see you guys soon. Till then. Bye for now.