March 2, 2026 – Hacking the Human Mind MichaelAaron Flicker and Business Beyond Borders Dean Foster

0:04 Intro 1 : Broadcasting from am and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration award winning school for startups radio where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion. Jim Beach,

0:26 Jim Beach : hello everybody. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for startups radio. I hope you’re having a great day out there riding the roller coaster life of being an entrepreneur, the ups, the downs, the fun, the twists, the spins, all of that. We got a great show for you today, two fantastic guests that I am excited to share with you. First up, we have Michael Aaron flicker. He is talking about hacking the human mind, which I love. That topic, the idea that we can change, improve, be different, be better, is one of my favorite topics. And so I just can’t wait for you to hear Michael Aaron. We also talk about pareidolio, which we end up looking up during the middle of the show, because it’s my new favorite word. I don’t know if we have used that word much my favorite word used or words used to be veritable plethora. That was my favorite, but now pareidolia is my new favorite word, and it’s well, you’ll listen, hear it in the show. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but get ready to learn a new word. If you don’t know that one, then dean Foster is with us. He is our international expert on the show. Has been all over the world, done business in 100 countries, and has written a new book on some of his great stories, that some of the things that happened, we get into it talk about the good countries and the bad countries. And yes, I do believe that there are bad countries, countries that I will not do business with. Again. You might think it’s racist. I don’t care. I know that I’m not going to do business there anymore, so that’s just the way it is. Got a bunch of great stuff coming up the rest of the week too. We’re going to be talking about passive income investing in a whole new way, a way that you’ve never heard of before. We’re going to talk about being more strategic and the difference between strategy and plan. We’re going to talk about high altitude entrepreneurship. We’re going to have a really heartfelt conversation on the homeless and the morals of that. We’re gonna have fun at work, and we’re gonna get some more Latin American talent for your outsourcing. Great shows all this week. Thanks for being with us. We’ll get started in just a second,

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3:11 Jim Beach : We are back in again. Thank you so very much for being with us today. I’ve got another great guest to introduce. Please welcome Michael Aaron flicker. To the show. Sorry about that. Michael Aaron flicker, he is an American entrepreneur and a behavioral science strategist. He is the founder and CEO of Xeno side adventure adventures, which is a brand incubator. He has a book out called hacking the human mind, which is, I guess, about hacking the human mind, which I want to do, my mind needs hacking. And so we’re excited to welcome Michael. Aaron, well, how you doing? Thank you, Jim, great to be with you. Likewise, likewise. So you’ve worked with 17 of the world’s best brands. Tell us some of them. Who do we recognize? Well, from the list, you

4:02 MichaelAaron Flicker : may have heard of names like Apple Dyson Guinness beer, Apple pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks, Kraft macaroni and cheese.

4:13 Jim Beach : What kind of service do you provide for Kraft macaroni and cheese? I mean, they’ve been around forever. Yeah.

4:18 MichaelAaron Flicker : So actually, what we did, we advised many of the world’s largest companies, but what we did in this book was we looked at 17 of the world’s best brands, and we said, what have they done in the world that we could analyze through the lens of behavioral science? And when we looked at these brands, there was 1000 things that made them successful, but we found some of the biggest efforts that they made, and we looked at it through the lens of behavioral science, which helped us understand why it was effective in the market. And so we use academic studies to explain why pumpkin spice latte, for example, is so compelling. Or why craft macaroni and cheese breaks through at the shelf, and then we break it down so that any small business owner, any entrepreneur, can learn lessons from these big brands and take them and use them in their own businesses today.

5:16 Jim Beach : All right, so what lesson do we learn from Kraft mac and cheese?

5:20 MichaelAaron Flicker : So, you know, Kraft has got a ton of very interesting stories behind it. I’ll start with a very small one. If you look at the craft macaroni and cheese package as you’re walking down the shelf, you might notice that the elbow the macaroni elbow, is turned to shape upside down to make it look like a smile, and that’s actually a behavioral science insight called pareidolia. And pareidolia is the human instinct to find faces and things where they might not otherwise be, and so craft intentionally turns the elbow of the macaroni and cheese to look like a smile, and that has been shown to stop people walking down the aisle and interrupt them. I’ve got the academic studies behind it, if you think that the interesting Jim, but really it’s about trying to get a little bit more of an edge against all the other macaroni and cheeses on the aisle, and that’s really been very effective

6:24 Jim Beach : for them. Two comments. First, there are so many millions of kids in America that when you give them high quality macaroni and cheese with four different cheeses, they go, what’s this? Give me some crap they hate. Did you notice this? I have noticed that, yes, they just don’t want the upgrade. And secondly, pareidolia, I thought that meant seeing anything in a place where it might not be. If you look at the ocean and see a Egyptian pyramid on the bottom of the sea floor, isn’t that pareidolia also, it’s not just the face. Is what I’m asking

7:04 MichaelAaron Flicker : well, you know what you may know. You may know better than me. I believe that pareidolia is your brain’s ability to recognize patterns, and so we’ve used to specifically talk about recognizing human faces in churches, in the clouds, in the sky. But it may be more, it may be more broadly understood to also include seeing, for example, the Egyptian pyramid somewhere. I’m not sure. But that may be true.

7:32 Jim Beach : As a matter of fact, if you look it up in the I just pulled it up, the number one thing that comes up is that face on the on Mars. On Mars is their number one example. So there you go. It’s seeing recognizable images, comma, especially faces, comma. So we’re both right. Yeah, both right. There you go. Put that pie. I’ve been obsessed recently with Egypt, and just the general study of archeology, and especially 30,000 years ago and stuff with all of these ruins, there was pyramids all around the world that are basically the same, and so I learned that word in my Egyptian pyramid late night. YouTube addiction. I love it. That’s a damn good S, A, T, word, though,

8:33 MichaelAaron Flicker : try to say it three times fast and spell it, ooh,

8:37 Jim Beach : I don’t know if I could do that. Paradolia. Pareidolia. Pareidolia, P, A, r, e, i, d, o, l, I, a, there you go. You got it. I’m learning so much, all right, and I love the craft idea with the mouth. Amazon also has a mouth, or their little arrow is smile like as well, isn’t it?

9:01 MichaelAaron Flicker : It sure is, and you might notice that it starts at the A and goes to the Z when the when the designers created that logo, they wanted to imply that Amazon’s got everything from A to Z available in their stores, just a fun little nod to the graphic designers who made that, but yes, Amazon’s also using that, that same upward, upward

9:26 Jim Beach : parabola, and is the most famous of all of these, because my eight year old knows this, the FedEx arrow in the negative space on the logo there, right

9:39 MichaelAaron Flicker : when you once you see that FedEx in between the D and the E, or is it between the E and the X has an arrow pointing you can never unsee it. Jim, exactly correct.

9:53 Jim Beach : Well, my kid, one knows that one. So let’s go through some of the other companies. I. I don’t like Starbucks, so we’re going to cross that off the list.

10:03 MichaelAaron Flicker : What about Guinness? We can do apple? Yeah, Apple is a fantastic example. So let me tell you a little bit about the story from the moment we took about Apple and then the lesson that it teaches entrepreneurs. So the moment that we’re focused on for Apple is when Steve Jobs stands up on stage and for the first time ever, pulls out of his pocket the iPad, I’m sorry, pulls out of his pocket the iPod. He pulls out the iPod. And when he stands on stage, he holds it in his hand and he says, imagine 1000 songs in your pocket. Now, this was revolutionary at the time, because he was not the first company to create mp three players. There was lots of competitors in the space, but he was the first person to say, it’s not five gigabytes of storage. You know, 512 kilobytes of different audio tracks. It doesn’t mean anything. It said he’s having you visualize 1000 song in your pockets. And that pulls on the insight from behavioral science called concreteness. Here’s where the study that backs it up. Ian Begg, 1972 The University of Western Ontario. He recruits 25 students and reads them a list of two word phrases, words like impossible amount, Rusty engine, white horse, subtle four, subtle fault. So he gives 25 students these lists of 22 word phrases, and at the end, he asked them, How many can you write down and remember? So the students, on average, recall 23% of the terms, not bad. But here’s the striking observation, people remember just 9% of the abstract words, things like impossible amount, but 36% of the concrete terms like white horse or rusty engine. So there’s a four fold increase when you use words that you can visualize in your mind. And that’s exactly what Ian Begg argues that if you could picture something in your mind, like a white horse, you’re much more likely to hang on to that thought, and that is very helpful for entrepreneurs. Think about Eminem melts in your mouth, not in your hand, Skittles, Eminem, the candy. You were this close, but I’m sure Eminem, in a lot of his rap lyrics, uses concrete images to keep them in our minds. And so many brands you do the same trick. So for those listening, if you can make your your tag lines, if you can make your advertising concrete, it’ll be much more memorable than if you use abstract phrases.

13:06 Jim Beach : I lived in Tokyo when Sony came out with their Walkman that they were so proud that would fit into your pocket, your shirt pocket. And of course, it came out years later that they had to make the pocket bigger for that to work, they cheated. So that was a great idea, too. It’s so small it fits in your pocket.

13:29 MichaelAaron Flicker : That’s it. Same insight. And everybody will remember popping this a little bit outside of your pocket. That’s what they remember. And it gives you an edge in the marketplace Sony, and edge against all of those Walkmans apple and edge against all the mp three players. Same concept.

13:47 Jim Beach : They were having a problem with British UK kids bringing toys to school, and so they made a rule you couldn’t bring anything bigger than a matchbox. And so the car company resized their cars so that they would fit in a matchbox, and that’s where the car name came from. I didn’t know that Jim

14:06 MichaelAaron Flicker : fascinating, but yeah, see, when you have these type constraints, you can get a lot of ingenuity out of it.

14:14 Jim Beach : Yes, there’s nothing better than a good constraint. I went to architecture school before I got kicked out. That’s one of the things they beat into our head that a challenge is an opportunity, so that also fits in with entrepreneurship. Haagen Dazs, please. Haagen Dazs, me,

14:31 MichaelAaron Flicker : yes, Haagen Dazs is, doesn’t it? Well, they were actually in New York, where, when they first created Haagen Dazs. And you know, Haagen Dazs is a story about the power of names, so I’ll take you on a little on a little journey about Haagen Dazs. So originally created by a originally created a. Originally created by a man and wife over 100 years ago, they became famous for trying to create a premium ice cream product in the market, and one of the ways they did that was they implied it was from Denmark. They used a map of Denmark behind the word Haagen. Dazs, they put an umlaut that’s two little dots above the A in Haagen, even though that’s not Danish. That’s not actually how the Danish write. But they had all these signals to imply the quality of the brand being an international brand, being a very premium ice cream. And we can talk about the we can talk about the ethics of that, but the Insight is really helpful for us today. The power of even a single word can really make a difference in the mind of the buyer. The study that we use to show this came from 1974 Elizabeth lost fifth and John Palmer were at the University of Washington. And here’s the very simple study they did. They had a clip of a car crash, a video clip of a car crash, and they had lots of participants watch the film where the cars were hurtling towards each other, and then it crashes. But here’s the this the flip in the experiment when they asked the participants to guess how fast the cars were moving, sometimes they say, How fast were the cars moving when they smashed into the wall, when they collided, when they bumped, when they hit or when they contacted so they changed the verb to describe how fast the car was going. And just by changing that one word, if you said, how fast are the cars going when they contacted each other, that was guessed at 31.8 miles per hour. But if you had said, how fast are they going when they smashed into each other, they guessed 40.5 miles per hour. That’s a 27% difference in the speed they estimate by just changing one word. And so the power of words are very commonly underestimated by entrepreneurs, by marketers. They think that because they love their brands and they know so much about it, everybody else will just hear what they’re saying at face value, but even a one word change can make a huge impact on how their products and brands are

17:40 Jim Beach : received in the world. And what are your thoughts about the morality of that name? You know, with the water companies now, we’ve had a lot of water companies get in true or get in trouble because their name is not representative of the spring that it came out of, or whatever. I think that’s happened. You know, a lot more recently. What are your thoughts on the morality of Haagen Dazs, especially considering that people are getting off about water games now.

18:07 MichaelAaron Flicker : Well, you know, they’re not alone. Atari, which is the Japanese word to hit a target made in the 19 it rose to popularity in the 80s and 90s. Was not from Japan. It was from Sunnyvale, California. Bergen Haas, which it sounds like a Premium German brand actually made by two Brits in northern northeast England. Even Starbucks found it in Seattle, Washington implies Italian heritage with their grande trenta venti style sizing, even though they’re not from Italy. So we follow a principle. We’d recommend entrepreneurs use a principle, we call the publicity principle, if you would be embarrassed by having your tactics put on the front page of the newspaper and your grandmother reading them, then you might want to take pause so Haagen Dazs might cross that line, but it was a different world in the 1940s when they first created the Brand, versus today, you might give Howard Schultz, the CEO at the time of Starbucks, a little bit of the space to get inspiration from the Italian coffee makers in the 90s. So I think there’s that publicity principle if you feel you can justify it, if you feel that you’re not appropriating culture, but rather being inspired by it. We can all, we can all find that line that makes sense and makes and works for the brand

19:49 Jim Beach : Kentucky Fried Chicken. Please,

19:53 MichaelAaron Flicker : a delicious next choice for us to talk about here. So Kentucky Fried Chicken is. Is really an interesting case study here, because they use a number of different behavioral science insights to guide their work, and one of the most interesting ones was something we call the information gap, where there’s a gap between a discrepancy between what one knows and what one wishes they would know. And so KFC keeps their recipe for their fried chicken a notorious secret. If you go into their stores, they talk about their secret recipe, their 11 secret spices, and by by saying that no one else in the world has this full recipe that it’s so hard to get, that only one copy sits in a safe in the KFC headquarters that has the 11 vials of their herbs and spices that only them and one other person know about it, and then those two people are never allowed to travel on a plane together. Those types of mythology making desirability things is what help keep that information gap so big between KFC and the world, and it creates a lot of intrigue and a lot of excitement around

21:23 Jim Beach : the brand. My mother’s tennis partner was the guy who invented Diet Coke, the husband, I’m sorry, my mother’s tennis partner’s husband was the guy who invented Diet Coke in terms of putting the chemicals together, and he eventually became the vice president of quality control at Coke, and he was the guy with the formula. And the CEO did not have bodyguards, but he did, and he coincidentally, because my mother knew the mother or the wife, we had a wedding shower at his house, and he made every person’s Coca Cola product from scratch. At that party you want a Diet Coke, he would make it by hand, not like a soda jerk, you know, from the 50s, but actually pour the chemicals in and then give you a fresh squeeze Diet Coke or Fanta or whatever it was. Could you tell the difference? They weren’t as good. They weren’t cold. Yeah, there’s something about the bottle. You know,

22:29 MichaelAaron Flicker : it’s the whole brand experience. Jim,

22:31 Jim Beach : yes, it is. It is. All right. Michael, Aaron, how do we take this knowledge now and apply it to us entrepreneurs? How do we use this information? Do we go and pick one of the methods of one of the 17 in the book and copy that? Well, we,

22:49 MichaelAaron Flicker : first of all, we would always recommend learn from others, copy everything that you can. I know that’s a theme on your show, Jim, and we believe that 100% let the 17 of the world’s best brands make the mistakes, learn from them and take that so at the end of every chapter in our book, we have three key takeaways that from the brand, from the behavioral science that we extracted, that entrepreneurs can use, and they really are cost free in many instances, meaning you don’t need a Super Bowl ad spot to take advantage of them. So I’d say that’s number one. And number two, we would encourage all companies to have a culture of testing and learning. One of the biggest problems with getting behavioral science into the market is that everybody feels the work is so precious, we only have one chance to do the thing right. And what we’d like to teach marketers, brand owners, entrepreneurs, is that by lowering the stakes, by having things you can put in market and test, you have a better chance to learn from those experiments and continue to optimize and change and try new things. So we want to teach a culture of testing and learning in our entrepreneurial companies. And if we can do that, we can put a lot more in market and learn a lot faster.

24:13 Jim Beach : I love it. Very good advice. All right, I heard you wanted to play our little game, the quick 10. I’d love to are you currently sober? State law requires that I ask, are you in New Jersey or New York?

24:26 MichaelAaron Flicker : Right now, it is a massive snow storm. I’m in New Jersey.

24:31 Jim Beach : Okay, so Governor Mike Sherrill requires that we find out, are you currently sober?

24:37 MichaelAaron Flicker : I am currently sober at 10 o’clock

24:39 Jim Beach : in the morning. Okay, do you want to stop and change that and play the game after we don’t hear we’re like the the Emmys. You’re allowed to get trashed at our parties.

24:50 MichaelAaron Flicker : Then we can play another

24:52 Jim Beach : time after five. Oh, okay, ah. Do you want to accept the standard wager? The standard wager? Do? What is the standard wager, the bet that everyone else made? Let’s do it. There you go. Number one, your favorite creativity hack from before,

25:11 MichaelAaron Flicker : what we were saying, Never underestimate constraint driven thinking, a tight brief forces sharper strategy and better ideas.

25:20 Jim Beach : Number two, favorite bootstrapping trick, start with

25:24 MichaelAaron Flicker : the outcome, find the best value prop, and then work backwards into a solution once you have buyers.

25:30 Jim Beach : Number three, name your top passions, my

25:33 MichaelAaron Flicker : family, scuba diving, reading autobiographies, consumer psychology and building businesses.

25:40 Jim Beach : Number four, the first three steps in starting a business are define a

25:46 MichaelAaron Flicker : customer’s real pain precisely. Number two, validate that they’re actually willing to pay for whatever you think you’re going to solve. And number three, design something as simple as possible that solves one and only one problem

26:03 Jim Beach : exceptionally well. Number five, the first way to get your first real customer

26:07 MichaelAaron Flicker : is show them how you’ll solve just one thing better than anyone else.

26:13 Jim Beach : Number six, your dreamiest technology is

26:17 MichaelAaron Flicker : AI needing note takers. They’re not sexy, but man, have they saved 1000s of hours for me.

26:23 Jim Beach : Number seven, best entrepreneurial advice.

26:27 MichaelAaron Flicker : Obsess over cash flow and customer value, everything else is noise.

26:32 Jim Beach : Number eight, worst entrepreneurial mistake, going

26:35 MichaelAaron Flicker : too far without Validating my concept.

26:38 Jim Beach : Number nine, favorite entrepreneur and why Reed Hastings

26:43 MichaelAaron Flicker : his Netflix culture deck literally changed my life, and I give him extra points for having the courage to continually pivot Netflix as he

26:52 Jim Beach : needed to. And number 10, your favorite superhero, Batman, no superpowers.

26:58 MichaelAaron Flicker : He’s just got discipline execution and a lot of

27:01 Jim Beach : passion and some cool toys. Yes, where’s your favorite scuba dive?

27:08 MichaelAaron Flicker : My favorite scuba dive was in Turks and Caicos.

27:12 Jim Beach : Ah, what was there reefs? They

27:16 MichaelAaron Flicker : had reefs, but they had a drop off. And as a new scuba diver. You swim, swim, swim, and you look over the hang, and he just goes into into nothing, and you’re looking at this beautiful, deep drop off. And that made me feel very small.

27:33 Jim Beach : Jim, all right, while we calculate your score and find out the winner of the wager, how do we get in touch with you, find out more about you. Get a copy of hacking the human mind,

27:43 MichaelAaron Flicker : as you might expect, hacking the human mind.com. Is the book’s website. We’re available on Amazon and where all books are sold. And to learn more about the work we do in behavioral science, we partner with brands and companies. It’s the consumer behavior lab.com

28:01 Jim Beach : Fantastic, fantastic. I’ve just kind of paused. Oh, this is so sad. Michael, Aaron, I’m sorry for you. You got a 94 which is an excellent score. We have to have a 95 to win the wager. Apparently, was a judge from a different exit in New Jersey. You know how those exits, exit 19, I think it was so unfortunately, you lose the wager, and you owe us a Tesla. You owe us a Tesla.

28:30 MichaelAaron Flicker : This was a game I was not prepared to play. Jim,

28:33 Jim Beach : hey, that’s what happens. You know. Michael, Aaron, great stuff. Congratulations on a 65 five star rated book on Amazon, selling very well, and we’d love to have you back. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Jim, and we will be right back. Oh

29:01 Intro 2 : my gosh, I’d love the opportunity to do this. Thank you. Wow, that’s, that’s, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question. And, and I don’t have a great answer, that’s a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question. And that’s actually a really good question. School for

29:18 Intro 2 : startups radio,

29:22 Jim Beach : we are back and again. Thank you so very much for being with us. I’m very excited to welcome back to the show. Dean foster he is an international business expert. He’s been on the show two or three times before, and we have talked about doing business overseas. And all of that implies he has just published a new book called business beyond borders, stories, tales and lessons learned from working in 100 cultures around the world. He also has a podcast called oops your culture is showing which he explores the quirks and surprises of working across cultures. He has appeared on all of the networks, the NBCs, the. CNN, CNBC, the BBC News Week, USA, today, etc, etc. Dean, welcome back to the show. How you doing, Jim?

30:07 MichaelAaron Flicker : It’s a pleasure to speak again. Thank you very much. I’m doing fine. I hope you are as well.

30:11 Jim Beach : I am having a good day. Are there certain cultures? You know, I used to teach international business, and the book that I had to teach said, all cultures are the same. We must be globalist, and we must not look down on any cultures. Yes or no. Your thoughts, well,

30:29 MichaelAaron Flicker : I think all cultures share very common human goals, yes, so that we all want to succeed. We all. We all want the things in life that are important to us. We all want to find ways to survive and to thrive, but how we do it is precisely what makes us different. And every culture does try to achieve these goals in different ways. Now, by the way, the ways, the different ways that they try to achieve these goals, are all common human behaviors and sets of common human values. So we can all behave just the way others behave, but it’s very, very likely that our culture has influenced and preferenced certain ways of thinking and behaving for us, and that’s where I come in, and the work that we do,

31:20 Jim Beach : all right, I have done a lot of international business, and let me tell you this, I will not do business with Pakistan if I learn through the course of a negotiation that you are Pakistani. We are done. I’ve just had 10 run ins with Pakistan’s Pakistani. I’m sorry. I know that makes me sound racist, but I ain’t ever going to do business with another person from Pakistan. Your thoughts? Well, I

31:44 MichaelAaron Flicker : think you know if that’s if that’s how you feel, then that you’re perfectly entitled to do. So sounds like you’ve had some really lousy interactions with them. And why would you want to go through that again? That is perfectly understandable. I feel that way about certain other cultures, myself, my own personal experiences with them. Yeah, you know, I always get the question, you know, which cultures are the most difficult to work with? Which ones do you never want to work with again, and which ones would you love to work with? And it comes down often for me that, you know, it’s a personal decision, and if it doesn’t match my style and the way I like to think and the way I like to do things, then maybe I have to walk away from it, and that’s okay. And I think if you’re doing business, you really should go into your relationship with with the other culture, with your eyes open, and maybe make that kind of decision and say, Look, I don’t want to do this again. I disagree with you more profoundly and fundamentally than I then I’m comfortable with and that’s perfectly legitimate. And I think businesses also have to make this decision because there may be things about the culture that they’re working in that are reprehensible, that are go against all their values. And if that’s the case, then they need to make the decision about walking away before they get involved. However, if they choose to get involved, then they must understand that culture, because they’re not going to change it, but they are going to have to manage it, right?

33:22 Jim Beach : So I would love to hear places you won’t work if you are willing to share. Also China. I’ve dealt with a lot there, and I’ve you sort of still have to do business with China, but for manufacturing. But I would advise everyone to think really hard about it because they’re they will copy you. It’s just too. Many of the stereotypes have been true, proven true. You’re not going to get you’re never going to win a court battle in China. You’re never going to have legal rights in China, in my opinion. So I’m sorry, go ahead. Absolutely true, yes. So you know, there’s my bias again. I feel like, you see, here’s the thing, I like Chinese people, and so I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, and then you get screwed. That’s happened three or four times where people I like screwed me. I don’t dis I’m sorry I disliked Pakistani people all I was just That’s how racist I am about Pakistan. Never met a single one man or woman that I would want to deal with ever again. But the Chinese are quirky, because I like the food like most of the people that I meet. But then you get screwed in the end, you want to reprimand me.

34:34 MichaelAaron Flicker : No, not at all. These are your personal decisions, and that’s fine and and you’re entitled to them, and everyone is entitled to their to their personal decisions. You’ve had some bad experiences. You know, the culture that that’s really difficult for me, that is very hard for me to manage, and I think it’s just my own personal reaction to it is Russia and Russian culture. I’ve had many Inter. Actions there that have been difficult, and I think it is a challenging culture. If, however, I choose to do business there, then I’m then I have to know, remember several things. This is their way of doing things, and I’m not going to change it. I don’t get paid to change it. I get paid to succeed with them, and so I have to go into it with my eyes open, and I always have the choice of not going into it. And that’s always a choice that we all face, right?

35:31 Jim Beach : Yeah, so I used to live in Japan. I used to work for the Japanese government. I worked for Coca Cola in Japan. Worked for the government for many years. And, you know, I like the Japanese, but they have so many cultural quirks. I’ll tell you a story. Dean, I was with my two bosses in Atlanta in a Japanese trade office, and my boss is all of a sudden switched into Japanese and started talking in Japanese, and I made the mistake of laughing along with them. In other words, I could understand everything they were saying, and I laughed when they laughed and they they went pale because they didn’t know that I knew that much Japanese they know. They thought I knew a little. I knew a lot. I have a master’s in Japanese linguistics. They didn’t remember that. And boy, my relationship went backwards a year with them, when they learned that I was understanding everything they said, right,

36:26 MichaelAaron Flicker : they were probably surprised that the gaijin, you, the non Japanese, understood what they were saying. I’m not sure. I don’t know if they were actually saying anything, quote, unquote, behind your back that they didn’t want you to know because they were probably more likely just speaking Japanese, because it was more comfortable for them to do so with each other. But was surprised when you showed that you knew some of what they were saying. I don’t know that that should have set things back, necessarily. It did, but perhaps, it did okay,

37:03 Jim Beach : yeah, they were really, really taken back because they were talking about something. They didn’t want me to understand. There’s another thing, you know, Japan, they have this habit of not wanting to say no. So they will say, Let me think about it, which means no, but they weren’t honest enough to just say, No, can I take Friday off? Let me think about it, better be at work on Friday, right?

37:29 MichaelAaron Flicker : The Japanese communication style is and many Asian communication styles, but Japan is probably the most excrete. Extreme example of it is very, we say, indirect, particularly when it comes to conveying any kind of bad news or problems or something that might make either one of you feel awkward. So instead of being direct about it, they imply it. Now they grow up with this. And for them, when you say these kind of indirect things, instead of just coming out and saying no, for them, it has nothing to do with honesty or dishonesty. This, in fact, is trying to save your feelings and to create a more harmonious environment so that we can finally find a way to solve a problem. But it is very challenging for Westerners, and oftentimes Westerners do interpret this as being dishonest, not saying what you really mean. In fact, the intent is quite different, but we’re unfamiliar with this style, and so it’s often easy for us to make judgments about it that are not correct, but it’s really a way of trying to save face, which is the deeper issue in Japan, and which is a way of maintaining harmony between people, so that indirect ways of solving problems can can finally occur.

38:57 Jim Beach : I went and got a haircut one day in the middle of the day, because that’s when the haircut guy was available. And I stayed until 678, o’clock every night. I knew not to leave until my boss left. But then the junior guy, this is another Japanese method. The junior guy came to have a little talk with me. The boss would never confront me with it, but sort of the the youngest guy was sent to tell me that I’m not allowed to take haircuts in the middle of the day. So I said, Fine, I’ll lay five from now on and but it was very interesting that that middle person was sent to berate me. They wouldn’t do it themselves. What about That’s right, what about the Philippines Dean? I’m having huge success with filipini workers, and they are amazing. And it’s not just the English language ability there, but they also seem to really appreciate the fact that we saved them in World War Two, maybe, or something. But Philippines are the best I’ve ever workers, I’ve ever found. Are your thoughts there?

40:01 MichaelAaron Flicker : Well, it’s not surprising, because if you look at Filipino history, there’s a long history of relationships with us Americans and Filipinos, therefore, in their culture, have integrated a lot of us values and ways of doing things, and so there’s great familiarity we don’t Westerners and us Americans particularly do not usually find Filipinos behavior to be strange or different. So it’s kind of working with people who work like you do. And therefore, no surprise here. You know, Philippines was a US colony for about 100 years. And so the US presence in the Philippines has is substantial, and there’s a long, long history. So they understand Americans and American ways of doing things, and they’re quite comfortable with it. So you as an American walk into doing business with them. It’s it’s not going to feel that different. Tell us about the book. Well, the book is called business beyond borders, and it’s stories, tales and lessons learned from working in 100 cultures around the world. And you know, I’ve written five books before this, and a lot of those books were international business books around culture. So this is what you do in China. This is what you don’t do in India. This is how you negotiate in Brazil. This is how you run a meeting in France, etc. This is what you don’t do with Germans and don’t do with Mexicans, etc. But I never really told my stories. You know, I’ve been doing this work for 35 years. We started our business back in the 80s, and we’ve been we’ve been telling this story, and I’ve been telling my stories in my presentations and in the work that I personally do, but I never wrote them down in a book. And so it was time to tell my stories and share some of the lessons that I learned working in over 100 cultures around the world. And so that’s what we do, chapter by chapter, story by story, some of the stories are, I hope, so universal in the way that anyone can experience them. I mean, the very first chapter tells the story of what happened to me when I tried to order a croissant with some marmalade in India at a hotel. But there’s a deeper lesson to that, and the deeper lesson is to understand Indian culture. So that should you work with India? These are important things you need to keep in mind and and and at the end of every chapter, I summarize what those important lessons are. So I had fun writing it. I had to choose which stories I wanted to include and which ones I didn’t. And there were a lot of them for 35 years worth of work, but I think I chose the ones that that a reader would find entertaining, and also most useful. Should they do business in that country?

43:06 Jim Beach : All right, I love doing business in India. And I have given many, many speeches there been there 10 times or so again to bash the Pakistanis. If you want to do well in India, bash the Pakistanis. The biggest standing ovation. When I told a Pakistani story, they applauded for three minutes. I bet

43:28 MichaelAaron Flicker : everywhere around the world, if you’re a friend, if you’re a friend of the enemy’s enemy, then you’re a friend of them. Exactly. You can make that work for you.

43:37 Jim Beach : Well, even in this you know, here in Georgia, we make fun of Alabama, and you in New York make fun of Jersey all the time, so we even do that inside the states. All right, let’s go through some of the book. I will give you a topic, and you tell me the story. So managing the clock across cultures. Give me the story that is in chapter two and some of the learning points.

43:58 MichaelAaron Flicker : Yeah, well, you know, it was about a trip that I made to Havana, Cuba, seven years ago, and it wasn’t for business, obviously, because Americans have frequented from doing business there, but it was a fun trip. A friend that was able to arrange a New Year’s Eve celebration for us in Havana, and so we went and of course, the clocks don’t work, because time is secondary to everything else in Cuba, as is the case in much of Latin America, not all of Latin America, but much of Latin America. And so this chapter is really all about the lessons that are important to learn when working in cultures where time and time management and being having to make decisions according to the clock and the calendar and deadlines and things like that is really a secondary concern or a tertiary concern. It’s may not even be on the table. There are far more important things that affect decision making in these cultures and and one of the lessons that you need to. Know about that. What are the things that you can do to manage it? Should you be doing business in Latin America, in other parts of Latin America where you can do business as a US American? And so these lessons are again, based on the fact that you can’t change the culture that you’re choosing to work with. That’s not your job, and it’s a long process to try to do that, but you can manage it and manage it for success, and so that’s what we talk about in that chapter.

45:30 Jim Beach : I was in Nicaragua a couple of years ago visiting a roommate from my MBA. I did International MBA, and he ended up moving to Nicaragua, and I found it amazingly easy to do business there. The culture was very receptive, and as long as you don’t talk about the noriegas people love you there, and culturally, though, no business really happens until eight o’clock at night. You know, I thought that was when business started in Nicaragua. So very

46:06 Jim Beach : interesting, I think, business wise, yes,

46:09 MichaelAaron Flicker : that’s right, there’s an important need there that’s that supersedes the clock or calendars. And that need is to build a personal, trusting, a relationship. And the way you do that often is over the table, dinner, over drinks, get to know each other and one on one, the ability to rely on each other in order to get things done. And that can take whatever time it takes. So master that skill, and you’re on your way to success in Latin America.

46:43 Jim Beach : You know, that’s just such an obvious one that we should all do wherever you are, isn’t it? Isn’t that just a best practice we should all do because, you know, us Americans are so bad at that, but we’ll tell you about our sister’s deepest secrets on the subway if we meet

46:58 MichaelAaron Flicker : Right exactly. Well, that’s one of the lessons learned, that maybe there’s something of value in the way that they the other culture does it that I can learn from and that I can benefit from. And I think that’s probably the ultimate lesson to learn when working with other cultures, is that you don’t have to like them. You’re not going to change them. But there may be something about the way that they have lived their lives and decided to figure things out for them that can benefit us

47:30 Jim Beach : and not everywhere, but in some places, you have a chapter called making an ass of yourself. Beyond cultures, I feel like I have the ability to make an ass of myself regardless of the culture. Dean, but what are your thoughts on chapter 17?

47:47 MichaelAaron Flicker : I have to write that chapter because I’ve made an ass of myself many times, and I’m supposed to be the expert, you know? I’m supposed to be the one who knows about this stuff, and can and can, can navigate through it perfectly, but I’m just another human being, and there are times and I’m a human being, a US American. My cultural being is a US American from New York, and that’s who I am. And I can’t change that, and I will change that, but what I do need to do is remember that that’s going to be perceived as different in many places, and it’s something that may be different from the way, from the behaviors of the people that I’m with, and so I need to be aware of that, and that’s something that I should excel at, because that’s my job To go to know what those differences are, and to then to navigate through them. But there are times that I did then I didn’t, because I can’t know everything about every culture happening inside, it being from the outside. And so that chapter tells about all of the faux pas. Well, not all of them, but the major ones that I’ve brought upon myself, and the best way to manage what happens when that happens, because it will happen, because, if you’re not of the culture, there are things that you still will never really know, and when, when you put your foot in it, what are you going to do about it? And that’s what that chapter is about.

49:20 Jim Beach : First time I went to Spain. I was 14, and my parents put me on a plane by myself, and I went by myself. I had a family that I was going to stay with, but I had arranged that myself. I didn’t go through one of the programs, high school programs, and I knew about the two kiss thing, but I’d never really done it in the first time that my family introduced me to a young woman my age, she came up to do the double Bezos, dos, Bezos on each cheek, and I just flat out kissed her on the lips, because I didn’t know what to do. But what did she run far and fast?

49:57 MichaelAaron Flicker : No, right, and you were safe in that you had. The privilege of extreme youth, so on your side, so adherence was allowed, but, but that’s a perfect example of not knowing what to do, but, but fortunately for you, there were no consequences. I didn’t get imagine. Well, imagine if that would have happened in a business meeting. That would have been something else. Yes, yes.

50:26 Jim Beach : What about some of the nonverbal communications?

50:30 MichaelAaron Flicker : You know, there are areas where it’s really easy to see the differences in culture, like your example of greetings, and in Spain and for much of the Hispanic world, the idea that there are two kisses and more than just the Hispanic world, how we greet people, how we dine and socialize with each other, all the dues and taboos, don’t pass your food with your left hand. In the Arab world, don’t sit in front of a statue of Buddha in Thailand with your feet showing to the to the statue an endless number of differences around the world. Around these taboos and nonverbal behavior is one of them, you know, making the okay sign in the US with your thumb and your forefinger is really a vulgar symbol in place. In many places around the world, like Brazil, it doesn’t mean okay. It means just the opposite of okay. So if you do this, you know, in business, you’ve just signed the contract, and you splash the okay sign to your Brazilian colleague across the table that’s going to really turn things down and turn things sour really fast, probably rip off the contract. But those are obvious things that are easily learned quickly. And I think it’s the more subtle things. It’s the stuff that almost unconscious, the assumptions we make about how we’re supposed to negotiate with each other, or how honest that other person might be or might not be because of what they’re saying or doing. That’s the stuff that trips us up, and that’s the stuff I think that it’s hard to really learn and it’s hard to put into practice, but that’s been the core of our work for 35 years.

52:30 Jim Beach : Fantastic Dean. Great information. And this is a book that I will have to buy, because, you know, I consider myself an international person too, and so I will be buying this one, and congratulations on it. It is five star rated on that Amazon place. How do we find more about you? Follow you online and get a copy of the book, please, sir, sure.

52:51 MichaelAaron Flicker : Well, if you want to listen in on our podcast, it’s oops. Your culture is showing and available wherever you get your podcasts. And we have a lot of fun with culture. We talk about all the cultural mistakes that we all make and and how to avoid them, and any other information about me, just go to my website. That’s Dean fosterglobal.com Dean fosterglobal.com and it talks about all the work we’ve done, and you get lots of culture quizzes and lots of ways you can test yourself to see how how knowledgeable you are about cultures and and hopefully, if we can help in your work where that’s what we’re there for. So look forward to hearing from everybody and hearing about your adventures as you try to do business around the world.

53:36 Jim Beach : Fantastic, Dean, thank you so very much for being with us. We’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot.

53:41 MichaelAaron Flicker : Anytime, Jim, a pleasure to speak with you once more, and we’re out

53:44 Jim Beach : of time. But you know we do. That’s why we come back to more, be safe, take care and go make a million dollars by now.

53:49 Dean Foster : Yes, thank you.