Top Interrogator and Body Language Expert Scott Rouse visits Fraud Busting. Our discussion runs from his hit Youtube body language group the Behavior Panel, to being on Dr. Phil to how entrepreneurs can raise millions by persuading investors differently in different parts of the country to his analysis of the Jon Benet Ramsey and the Tiger King cases and why women are more into true crime documentaries than men. Ah and also his research into the Liar’s Loop. Whew! You’ll want to be sure to get his new book Understanding Body Language and also his new video class True Crime Workshop.
Here’s the Transcript:
Traci Brown: Scott, thanks for coming on Fraud Busting! We have a lot to talk about. I think you are just awesome! I’ve followed what you’ve done for a long time, and I just never had the occasion to get in touch until now.
Scott Rouse: The same here. I always see you on LinkedIn, YouTube, and stuff. It’s one of those things where you go: Oh, I know who that person is! If were someone were to ask me, I’d say, I don’t know her, but I know who she is. It’s one of those.
Traci Brown: Oh yea. So now, we’re pals. We go way back now. (Laughing).
Scott Rouse: There you go.
Traci Brown: Here’s what I like about you, that I know the most, are you like the ringleader on the behavior channel or is it just coming together? What’s the story there?
Scott Rouse: What happened is we would hang out anyway. Mark was like, we should do videos. Then Chase was like, we should do a video. Then Greg and I are fairly tight, so we hang a lot. Greg said, why don’t we all just do one of these and record it? We’re like, yea, okay. He called me and said, let’s do that. I said hello on video to everybody, said, hey, let’s do this. They’re like, okay. So, we ended up doing Tiger King first. It was so fun! We were going to do it anyway, so we’re like, let’s just record them. Instead of just hanging around, let’s just start recording them. Because we were at home a lot. That’s when all of our speaking gigs went away.
Traci Brown: Um-hum.
Scott Rouse: They’re back now, but on Zoom.
Traci Brown: A little bit, yea.
Scott Rouse: We all had our speaking gigs disappear and we’re just dealing with, some of us are dealing with the criminal element. There was nothing fun because you couldn’t go out or anything, so we started doing that, and then we said, let’s just start recording them. Basically, that’s what happened. But it was Greg’s idea really.
Traci Brown: Oh, wow. Well, I’ll tell you what, it’s a good one because ya’ll are so professional, and with the way you do your analysis, I’m like, oh, these guys are the real deal. You’ve done Tiger King and also, I saw the one, I think it was this week, Patsy Ramsey.
Scott Rouse: Yea, we did that one.
Traci Brown: I am sitting right otherwise about a mile from the whole Jon Benet thing went down.
Scott Rouse: Oh, really?
Traci Brown: Oh, yea. There is so much around town about it. I bump into people all the time. I loved your analysis. People listening, you’ve got to go find the Behavior Panel on YouTube. Make sure that you watch the Tiger King analysis, Patsy Ramsey. I’m sure you’ve done a bunch of other ones that I haven’t seen.
Scott Rouse: Yea, we’ve done politicians. We run the gamut. We did Bob Lazar. You probably get this kind of thing too. We did Bob Lazar. We were like, hey, this guy is full of it. We got so much hate email and so many hate comments. It’s hilarious to go in there and see what they say. Then we did McCann, the one whose little kid was missing, got kidnapped one evening, and that’s the worst. I mean they call us everything from devil worshippers to working for the government to we’re on the McCann’s payroll. It gets crazy.
Traci Brown: Well, I think that’s what’s interesting in our line of work is that people see what we do and hear what we say through their filter. I’ve seen enough of you guys to know that you’re totally non partisan, totally professional with your analysis, don’t have an agenda, and I think that’s why I like you guys so much because you can see those hack body language experts as well. You can tell their agenda, and I have had people ask me about . . . they’ll send me something and then they’ll tell I’m on their side. I’m like, no, I’m not on anyone’s side. I’m telling you.
Scott Rouse: Exactly, exactly. As soon as you take a side, then you’re out. Half the people think we’re hard core Trumpers. Half the other think we’re hard cord Bideners. It’s just like, we never leaned either way when we are talking about either one of them or anybody politically. That’s a dang . . .
Traci Brown: It’s a nightmare.
Scott Rouse: Bear trap if you get caught in that.
Traci Brown: You’ve gotten the hate mail. I’ve gotten it. Tonya’s gotten plenty of it, I know.
Scott Rouse: Oh, yea.
Traci Brown: It’s just part of the lay of the land. I’ve even gotten to where I won’t even address politics in my keynotes. People ask me and I go, look, around the, what was the Kavanaugh and that whole thing with the Supreme Court . . .
Scott Rouse: Oh, yea.
Traci Brown: I just said, look, here’s the deal. I’m happy to talk about this, but we will be in the corner 15 minutes after I’m offstage, and I will tell you, and you’re not allowed to comment, be mad at me, or anything. I’m just going to tell you the deal.
Scott Rouse: I’m always honest about it, and this sounds horrible. It’s going to sound like I’m an idiot, then I’m an idiot, but I mean, it will put the stake in the heart of whether I’m an idiot or not, I really don’t get into politics. I’m so disinterested in all of that. I could not care either way about any of it. It’s one of those things where . . . umh. It sounds terrible because now both sides will hate me, but I just don’t care. It’s just such a mess. I just don’t care.
Traci Brown: I’m a non political person, but I feel like I get tugged into it from time to time. I really try to avoid it. Okay. Let’s talk about, what do you do all day? Because you’ve written a really cool book. You do Behavior Panel. What else goes on for you? You do some speaking. Tell me the range of things, because I know there are some things that even you may not be able to share because you’re kind of top secret, and that’s super cool. What’s at the forefront of your day usually?
Scott Rouse: First thing is I go through my email and check the phone to see if I’ve missed anything. Then, if I don’t have to go talk to somebody about doing something they shouldn’t have done, which usually that will take from the morning to the afternoon, or whatever time it starts. Then, and this sounds so bad, I’m reading a lot. I’m doing a lot of research. That’s so horrible. I’m not a nerd, but it sounds like I’m a nerd when I say that, but I really like reading about human behavior. I’m out looking for whatever’s new, what is the new research, what are the new studies. There are, I can guarantee you, where you live now, they’ll be somebody, the nearest university that hates my guts, and the word in the Neurology Department is they’ll hate me because I’m trying to call them all the time, trying to see if they’ve done anything new, if they’ve seen anything new. There are universities all over the U.S., that there is somebody there in the Research Department that cannot stand me, and they won’t take my calls anymore. They’ll take one, oh, yea, anytime, and I’ll call back like later that afternoon and say, what about this? Then finally when it’s the third or fourth call, they’re like, listen, you’ve got to stop calling over here, like something’s wrong with me. But if they’ll give up information, I’ll go until they quit.
Traci Brown: Wow.
Scott Rouse: It’s usually a lot of reading, a lot of research, and then I do a lot of interviews and a lot of podcasts. Like before, today, I was late getting here with you because I thought I was done for the day. I was like, oh, wow, I’ve got a whole day, and I thought you were next week, but you’re not. On my calendar, it says today, and I’m late, but I thought, oh, I’ve got a couple of hours. I’m out driving around, doing nothing, and going, oh, this is nice. I don’t get to go out much, so geez.
Traci Brown: Surprise!
Scott Rouse: Come home and get ready. A lot of times we’ll do the Behavior Panel and I’ll get stuff ready for that. Greg Hartley’s the one that finds the videos and goes, what about this? He’ll talk about it, we’ll throw together the other two guys, they’re like yes, no, or whatever. I’ll cut those up and get those ready. We do our show on Tuesdays and then let it go on Thursdays.
Traci Brown: Oh, okay.
Scott Rouse: Because I edit all day on Wednesday.
Traci Brown: Yea, that’s a lot of editing. You’ve got an hour show.
Scott Rouse: Yea, but the thing is, I’m so horrible at it, it takes me forever. If you saw what I had to do, you’d go, you’d probably be able to squirt it out in two or three hours, but I don’t know what I’m doing. That’s why sometimes there are mistakes on those things because I don’t know, I have no clue what I’m doing. I just got all the stuff you’re supposed to get on your computer to edit stuff. I was like, I’ll do it. I don’t know what I’m doing.
Traci Brown: I don’t know, I think you’ve got it dialed in pretty well. I do.
Scott Rouse: Well, if I have to do anything else but that, not going to happen.
Traci Brown: (Laughing). Too good. Too good.
Scott Rouse: It takes me forever.
Traci Brown: So, how did you end up where you are? People ask me all the time, how did you become a body language expert? What’s your story? Because no one, I don’t think, sets out to do this. I think it kind of shows up at your door. What’s your . . . ?
Scott Rouse: I set out to do it when I was six.
Traci Brown: Oh, you did?!
Scott Rouse: Oh yea. I’ve been in this my whole life. I’ve been . . . people get way into it for a while. It’s like when you first find out about psychopathy. Remember when you found out about psychopaths? You got into it hardcore for two years and everybody you know is a psychopath at that point.
Traci Brown: Um-hum.
Scott Rouse: People go through that phase in body language, and it lasts about a year and a half, two years, and then they get out. I got into it when I was six.
Traci Brown: Wow.
Scott Rouse: From that day on, I was . . . my dad is a doctor, and he got me into it by explaining the behavior I was seeing in people and I’d ask him about it, and he would bring me books and read me stuff, and explained things to me. That’s how I actually got started. I got way up into it. I learned how to present things to people from a body language point of view, get their brain open so I could put something in there and have them accept what I was talking about or wanting to do and been able to do that. I did that. I got in the music business for a long time. I was an interrogator at the same time, but I ended up going to Berkley College of Music. From there, I worked on a lot of. . . I became a record producer. I was a studio guitar player for a long time and then became a producer, all the while still being an interrogator and being into body language. The worlds never crossed much. If anyone in the world would say, did you do that? I’d go, yea. But nobody wants their interrogator to be their producer or to come play on their record, you know. No. Trust me.
Traci Brown: (Laughing).
Scott Rouse: I’ve been nominated for a Grammy, without winning one, more than anybody.
Traci Brown: Really?
Scott Rouse: Oh yea. Yea, since I was 19.
Traci Brown: How many times you’ve been nominated?
Scott Rouse: I stopped counting when I was in my late 30s. I’m 57 now, and I retired in 2011, retired from music anyway.
Traci Brown: Wow.
Scott Rouse: Every year, it would be one or two. Yea, but never, never . . . but I’m not bitter. That’s the thing.
Traci Brown: (Laughing). I can see that not bitter on your face. Right. Are you working, are you independent, are you with military police? Can you say?
Scott Rouse: Yea, yea. Oh, yea. I’m totally independent. That’s the first thing I say when I go in for an interrogation: I’m not a police officer. I’m not a cop. I’m just here to find out what happened. I’m here to talk about what happened. It’s the perfect opener because I can be honest. That’s why I’m there. That’s who I’m not. I’m not a police officer.
Traci Brown: Wow.
Scott Rouse: I train them how to run interrogations and how to interrogate.
Traci Brown: Two questions. You can weave them together if you want. What’s the craziest case you’ve worked on that you can talk about? Because I know there are some you can’t. And, what’s your tactic to get people open and talking to you? Because it’s all about information recovery, right, by the time you get there.
Scott Rouse: Some of the weirdest things, when you realize you’re dealing with somebody, and this isn’t funny, but I laugh about it because it is funny when I was going through it. There it is. When I was talking to someone who was schizophrenic, and I didn’t know it, and nobody else knew it either. As I’m talking to this person, as we went through the thing, I said, you’re getting towards what I’ll call “the end”, when you’re starting to put a little pressure on them, and this person had taken some money they shouldn’t have taken. I do a lot of embezzlers. For some reason, that ended up being something I was really good at. This person worked for a big company that you know the name of. The more I’d press on them, they started straightening up some. It was odd behavior I was seeing. Usually they’ll put their hands in their lap, they’ll start rocking back and forth, as you know, and then next thing you know, they’ll tell you everything. Then, I said . . . I got to the point where I said, you know, and you put your hand on them and you go, listen, it’s fine, man, we all. . . It was a woman. I said, we all make mistakes. Everybody does. I make them. Geez. I make them all the time. Did that whole thing. Don’t you think it’s time, you went ahead and tell me what happened and all that? She went like this, she goes, okay, yes Lord, yes Lord, then she told me everything. Obviously, they didn’t know she was schizophrenic.
Traci Brown: Yea.
Scott Rouse: But I was like, oh well, because I don’t think God’s going to come to her and tell her right then, and say, don’t do that, you know right before she did it. That was one of the strangest things that’s happened to me in that world.
Traci Brown: You didn’t figure out she was schizophrenic until then? Do you have a diagnostic tool that you use because it’s a hard one?
Scott Rouse: Oh, as soon as she started talking, as soon as she was listening to the Lord, that I knew He was talking to her, I had a pretty good idea at that point.
Traci Brown: Yea.
Scott Rouse: Because I didn’t hear Him, and I didn’t see Him, unless she’s got some kind of weird ESP or something. Don’t get me wrong. I believe in God. I’m a hardcore Episcopal. Don’t get me wrong, Jesus loves you, but I’m His favorite.
Traci Brown: (Laughing).
Scott Rouse: That’s my line of thinking. But when she started that, I automatically knew that was going on. After that, it didn’t take much to go, oh, I get it at this point. It was sad. It was really sad. But outside of that, that’s the only tool I had, was, this isn’t right, and I know what that is.
Traci Brown: So, other tools to get people to open up, what are you doing? How can people apply that to what they’re doing? Which is probably not schizophrenics, probably not a lot of interrogations in their life, but tell me that. What’s your go to?
Scott Rouse: One of the things I do is I train entrepreneurs and people in big companies how to pitch ideas. I was the Entrepreneur in Residence at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center from 2011 to 2017.
Traci Brown: Oh, wow.
Scott Rouse: So, when the new entrepreneurs would come in, we had this thing there where I started our Pitch Department there. They would come in, not knowing anything about pitching. They’ve never had a business before. They never done anything like that before, but they need to know how to pitch their product. I had this thing called How to Create an Investable Pitch. Just like you would train cops or anybody to do something, I trained them in that. The key was I would train them, the things you say and what you to do, to get that person you’re talking to, get their brain open, and you put that little idea of what you want them to do in there, and at a specific point you close that brain up. That makes them want to. . . the key was getting them to want to help you, not invest in you, but to want to help you. Because it’s not like Shark Tank and those pitches. At the end of them, they don’t go, okay, we’ll write you a check. That’s just the beginning. The end of your pitch is just the beginning because they’ll want to talk to you later and see who you are and check you out and all those types of things. It’s not that I did this and it went well. I’ve helped entrepreneurs raise almost a half a billion dollars. I’ll probably be over half a billion hopefully by the end of, I think, April, if everything goes well with this one I’m dealing with now, it be over a half a billion dollars. That was the key was showing them the things to get people to trust them. I had to deal with . . . I didn’t work with anybody that I thought I was iffy or that I thought any kind of con, or anything like that, or that I couldn’t trust. There were plenty that I didn’t, and plenty of people are mad at me for not working with them. But I would send them to my class, but when it came to the actual pitch stuff, to get them in, to show them here’s what you need to do, the higher up stuff, I never would take those people in.
Traci Brown: Oh, wow.
Scott Rouse: There are specific things you can do. One of the main things people don’t realize is watching the other person’s body language. When you’re pitching, let’s say you’re pitching to 15 people or sometimes we have them pitch to 500 to a 1,000 people at once on a stage, the people you would look for aren’t the people that are going like this. Anybody who’s smiling, they’re not thinking about you. You want somebody who’s frowning, not frowning, but almost. You want them looking at you. You want those eyebrows together, and it’s great if their hands are crossed.
Traci Brown: Critical thought.
Scott Rouse: Yea, up near their mouth, if their legs are crossed, you want everything that says, I’m not into this, that’s what you want to see because at that point they’ve gone inside and they’re running those numbers in their head. Is this going to work in three to five years? I’ve got to go tell my wife about this. I’m going to invest in this. I’m going to tell my husband I’m going to invest in this. I’m going to go back to our company and tell them that’s what I’m investing our money in. They’re thinking. Those are the people you want to focus on. Most people don’t even think that way. They just look at people smiling at them.
Traci Brown: Ooh, I love that.
Scott Rouse: Yea, I understand that, but that’s not where you get the. . . I used to video the audience as people were pitching. You’d think I’d be able to go, oh, this person is going to invest. I’d get really close. I only nailed two of them for sure. I said, this guy’s in. There was another that was a woman, and I said, this woman is in. Those two scored. The others, I got really close, but they would always have meetings with them later on, and I think there were more that invested, but not right after that like I had prophesied they would at that point because I was so committed to it. But now I’ve got more figured out, and I still watch those videos of those crowds of people, even if it’s 10 people or, like in some cases, 500 to 1,000 people, I would get the first few rows and be able to watch them. Those are some of the things that entrepreneurs aren’t aware. It’s not just their own body language but watching the body language of others. It’s not what you think it should be when you’re looking for someone to invest in you.
Traci Brown: Oh, yea. That is fascinating. I actually got a deal with a shark. I got a deal with one of the sharks.
Scott Rouse: Wow.
Traci Brown: I did get airtime on it, but yea, I got a deal, which failed, but I still got a deal, which is pretty cool. There is something to that. Do you have a system, like an opening one liner to get people to be open to you and your idea, or is it more than we can get into right now?
Scott Rouse: Here’s what I found. There are different styles of pitches for different places in the country.
Traci Brown: Oh, really?
Scott Rouse: Oh yea. Nashville has a completely different pitch style than in Austin, which is different than Silicon Valley, which is different in Washington, which is different than Boston. They’re all a little bit different. In Nashville, you open with here’s who I am and what I do and what we’re doing. Or, you say your name and then you move forward. Then at the end, toward the end, before you’re asked, is when you say, here’s everyone on our team, here’s what we know, here’s what we’ve got going. In Silicon Valley, that’s the first thing you say, is I’m so and so, and here are the people on our team, here are the people who are helping us with this, and here’s what’s happening.
Traci Brown: Oh, wow.
Scott Rouse: You have that way out there on the West Coast. Then you go to Washington. It’s so different than that. It’s sort of a combination of Nashville and Boston. In Boston, it’s more like. . . Nashville is mostly healthcare. This is the healthcare mecca here in Nashville. That pitch, that style, along with the style in Boston, is a combination, that is more personable. You’ve got to be more personable, whereas out in Silicon Valley, you save that personal stuff for afterwards.
Traci Brown: Oh, wow.
Scott Rouse: You save the get in and all those things for afterwards. Those are the ones that score the most out there, that get funded the most out there, from the people I work with and have worked with. There are different styles. There are different approaches to each one. But the main thing to do when you pitch, the first thing you want to do, people think you get up and smile, you are going to smile when you get in the room. That first six to nine seconds when someone sees you, as you know, that’s when you make your decision about that person.
Traci Brown: Oh yea.
Scott Rouse: You may not realize it. You may not say, I like that person, I want to invest. You’re not going to say that, but your brain will see them and go, okay, that person is okay so far. I don’t have any problem with that person. When you get up, you hit the ground running because when you enter that room, you don’t have to look at them, you don’t want one of those smiles that’s like really weird looking, but just a pleasant look on your face. We can go through the study they did at Harvard about that, but it would take too long. I know we don’t have a whole lot of time.
Traci Brown: Sure, sure. Now, that is fascinating. I think that’s super cool. It’s the same when we speak. When my audience is in the Boston area, they’re different that California. Nashville, I end up there a lot, or Texas, same kind of thing. They laugh at different things. They receive me differently. The ones that I have the toughest time with are New Englanders for whatever reason, just naturally, it’s just a little harder for me to connect with them.
Scott Rouse: I lived in Boston for a long time when I went to school up there, and that area is a little different. Where are you?
Traci Brown: I’m in Boulder right now. Boulder, Colorado.
Scott Rouse: Oh yea, they’re completely different than Colorado, so it’s a different mindset there. I always thought they were – they are nice, don’t get me wrong – but I didn’t particularly like living there as much as I like living in Nashville, living in the South, because they’re a little different. That part I understand. The humor is different. Usually things are different. The police departments are different there than they are in New York. You think the New York guys would be all these hard core – they’re the ones that laugh the most.
Traci Brown: Oh yea.
Scott Rouse: They’re the easiest to give the shits and giggles too because they need it.
Traci Brown: Oh, yea. It’s tough in the city. Yea, it is tough. Let’s talk about, you have two really cool things I want to talk about. One is your new book and the other is your – I think it’s genius, is your online program, True Crime Workshop, I think it’s called.
Scott Rouse: Oh, yea, yea.
Traci Brown: Yea, yea.
Scott Rouse: Greg and I put that together.
Traci Brown: Yea. True crime, man, people are like flies to honey. There are whole channels on true crime on TV. I’ll let you pick on what you want to talk about first. Oh, yea. There you go. True Crime Workshop. Yea.
Scott Rouse: Usually I have a sign up, but I didn’t put it up today.
Traci Brown: We got it now. Tell me, what’s in it? What do you do and how can people get it? What are they going to learn? The whole thing.
Scott Rouse: Greg Hartley and I started a course called that’s become number one online, a body language course called BodyLanguageTactics.com. We always add the .com at the end because that’s where it is. BodyLanguageTactics.com. When COVID hit, we sort of became the Tiger King of online course. Everybody came, all kinds of people. When we started having people, when they finished, they’d go, do you ever do anything about true crime? Most of them were women.
Traci Brown: Um-hum. Yea.
Scott Rouse: Let’s talk about women’s brains for a second before I move forward, and I’ll tell you why this is so important.
Traci Brown: Yea.
Scott Rouse: Men get a gut feeling, and women have women’s intuition. Women’s intuition, that is the most powerful thing. I’m all the time saying this, it’s the most powerful thing on earth because women’s brains take in information differently than men’s brains do. There are people that used to argue about this. We know it’s true now from research. But women can see so many different things that men just don’t catch because of the way that their brains are set up to take in information so they can communicate better and take care of children, see what’s going on around to keep the kids safe, and those types of things from the. . . whatever you want to call that. When women start saying, we want to learn about true crime, I like the stuff in BodyLanguageTactics.com, but what if you had something about that? We’re like, alright, we should do that. So, Greg and I talked and we came up with the True Crime Workshop. Before that, we had this thing called the Liars Loop, which is one thing we’re going to start training. We’re writing a book on it now. We’re going to start training law enforcement and the military. We’ve already started training them in this thing called the Liar’s Loop. Basically, it goes through, and we use this throughout the course, and once you learn this and you watch one of these true crime shows, you go, holy smokes, I know what this is. I know what this is. I know what this is. I see what’s happening. That guy did do it or that girl did do it, and here’s why I think so. Because the Liar’s Loop takes you through, for example, when you lie to someone, step one, or when you commit a crime, say you kill somebody, then that triggers you to say I need a story. So, you start creating a story and you go into fabrication. Then once you fabricate and create that story, you go into de-conflict. You have to de-conflict all the problems that your story is going to have, so you have time to go back and say, I can’t say I was there because this happened, and there was this on the wall so I’ve got to say that happened. You’ve got all this time to work these things out. Then you go into your pitch. Once you pitch, that’s your story. Here’s what happened. Then after that, people say, what about this? So, you have to defend that. Then you have to go back into fabrication most likely.
Traci Brown: Oh, wow.
Scott Rouse: So, in interrogation, in a nutshell, that’s what you do. Once they go through this loop and you have them keep going back to fabricating, add to it, then they go into the death spiral of a lie. That’s when you got them. That’s when you’ve got them boxed in. We’re showing them how to do that. Nobody’s really gone through it like that before, even in interrogation, as long as I’ve been into that, nobody has talked about that, but that’s exactly what’s happening. It wasn’t my – I didn’t go, here’s what I see. Greg Hartley is brilliant when it comes to these types of things. He’s the one that said it’s a loop, and here it is. I was like, geez, you’re right, man. We teach them how to use the loop, and we walk them through everything from the 9-1-1 call all the way down to the confession. Everything they see in these true crime shows, they’ll see, we go through in this course. For example, the 9-1-1 call, what happens after that? Then the next part goes through what happens when the first responders show up, what’s going to happen then? What is the body language of that person when they show up? The first responders, the ambulance, the paramedics and fire department, police, the first police officers that show up, what do they see and how do they know something’s not right here? Then after that you go through the first interaction with the detectives. What happens at that point? What are they doing with the detectives? What are they seeing? They go from there. We walk you through. There are other parts after that.
Traci Brown: Sure.
Scott Rouse: We walk you through every bit of that. There are nine modules. We say there are 30 videos, but there are like 50. There are a lot more. People go 50! I’m not going to do 50! But they’re all short. Some are three minutes, and some are seven minutes. We actually have one that’s nine minutes. But they’re really short so you can get through. A new module comes out every week, so you can watch those things all week long. At the end of the week, there’s a quiz. You watch these things, you learn it, and you take a quiz. Then we’ve already been getting our emails. I can’t believe I do this. I can’t believe I do that. They’re pointing out the things they’re seeing. Geez, it’s working. The True Crime Workshop is at TrueCrimeWorkshop.com. You can get there as well from BodyLanguageTactics.com, but the TrueCrimeWorkshop.com is where you go. We walk you through everything that happens in a true crime show so you can see what’s happening. It’s basically what happens in real life from the 9-1-1 call, from first responders to first contact with investigators, what happens with that. We just take from the beginning to the end, all the way down to the confession. We talk about interrogation, how to get through that. We have a couple of bonus things. One is on psychopathy, which is my favorite thing in the world, is psychopaths, but we aren’t talking about that. If you don’t want to, we won’t talk about that because I’ll talk to you about it all day long.
Traci Brown: (Laughing).
Scott Rouse: We have a module on that. I’m talking real fast and getting excited because it’s been so much fun to do so far and getting way up in there. The people that are taking it, we thought with our first, with BodyLanguageTactics, we’ve got actors, TV show hosts, we have all kinds of people who have taken this thing. Same thing for the True Crime Network, we’re getting a lot of actors in there. It’s really amazing the people that are coming through. I’m not going to tell you who they are, but it’s corny, but we’ve been on one of the TV shows. If you google us and see what TV shows we’ve been on . . .
Traci Brown: I saw you on Dr. Phil. Weren’t you on Dr. Phil?
Scott Rouse: Yea. We were on there. Maybe he’s the one.
Traci Brown: Ooh.
Scott Rouse: He watches. Anyway, he subscribes to our channel. He says he watches that all the time.
Traci Brown: Oh, cool.
Scott Rouse: Yea. What a great guy.
Traci Brown: He’s a very skilled interrogator himself. I have a lot of respect for him.
Scott Rouse: Let me tell you, he . . . one thing they asked us to do was look at this video of this guy who was a masseuse who had accused of molesting these women when giving massages.
Traci Brown: Right.
Scott Rouse: So I said, while we were talking, I said, hey man, why can’t we just talk to him? Can we just talk to him instead of watching these videos? He goes, yea, you want to do that? I’m like, yea. We said, here’s what we’ll do, we set up an interrogation situation so we would all three be in it. It would start off with, Greg Hartley would get up his hinny a little bit and get him kind of heated up, and then Mark Broadman would step in and kind of cool him out a little bit. Then I would come in. Say, I’m from Nashville, so he would think I’m friendly, then I would get him a little bit after that, then I’d get even more heated on him, and then we would throw him to Chase at the end, and Chase would be the closer, in other words, and say hey, man. Dr. Phil, he got it instantly. He saw it. He said, I see what you’re doing. We didn’t even have to talk to him much about it. We said, how does this sound if we did this, this, this? He said, great, let’s do that. We didn’t rehearse it or anything. We went through and got a whole lot of information that this guy hadn’t given up yet. If you watch that episode, it’s, it’s – what’s his name? Terry? I can’t remember his last name. Anyway, it was really fascinating. None of us could believe how knowledgeable Dr. Phil was about that stuff. He was . . . he was . . .
Traci Brown: Oh yea. He was a trial consultant for a long time, I think in Dallas.
Scott Rouse: Yea.
Traci Brown: Then Oprah hired him, and that’s how everything went.
Scott Rouse: He understood. There was nothing that he didn’t understand what we were talking about. It felt like he was one of us. We talked to him because we did a Zoom call with him a couple of days beforehand, just to talk. We said, hey, let’s talk. We’ve done his podcast since then. He knew it all. He was all up in it. He understood what we were talking about. He knew the different styles of interrogation. He got it all.
Traci Brown: Oh, yea.
Scott Rouse: He’s really . . . he doesn’t get enough credit for that, I don’t think.
Traci Brown: He doesn’t because, and this is my opinion. I don’t know, I don’t know him, but from what I see with the interviews that he does, I think that he knows that he has to want the next guest to come on the show. I know there’s a lot that he sees that he skips, and he doesn’t hammer people too hard. I think that’s the Hollywood part. I would do that too, if I were him.
Scott Rouse: Yea.
Traci Brown: That’s my thought on Dr. Phil, but yea, totally skilled from what I can tell. Yea.
Scott Rouse: He’s a bad ass, man.
Traci Brown: Oh, yea, yea. Okay, tell us about your book. What’s in the book?
Scott Rouse: Okay. It’s one of those books where you can . . . it takes you from the very beginning of understanding body language, hence the title. It walks you through everything from dating, what you’re looking for and what you want to put out, to business, to your meetings, to your interviews. It covers a little bit of everything. It’s one of those books you can just open it anywhere and no matter where you start reading, you’ll learn something because I start each section from the beginning. Sometimes I go back to some things that we’ve talked on before, but you can open it up and start learning right there. I’m really surprised how well it’s done so far. If you go to Amazon and in the search, if you put in body language, it’s like the first book that pops up. It’s bounced between one and three.
Traci Brown: Ooh. I love that.
Scott Rouse: The goal of the people who publish said, hey, look, we just want it to be on the first page of the search if you can do it. I was like, I don’t know how to do that, but I’ll . . . That’s what I said. I said, what’s good? What are we looking for? They said just on page one of the search in Amazon. Then it came up being number one. It’s gone between number one and number three, but it’s mostly number one. I’m really surprised by that, I think, and I think they are too.
Traci Brown: Oh, I wouldn’t be surprised with your level of knowledge. It’s a beautiful book. It’s color and a lot of pictures and really cool stuff.
Scott Rouse: Oh, yea. The artwork on that is a guy named Remy, and he is such a wonderful artist. He’s done such a great job with that. I would give them pictures from everything from people who are pitching their ideas, I’d say here’s what I want this to look like, to talk show hosts, and they’d send me the things. How does this look for this? I’m like, I can’t tell you, this is exactly what I’m talking about. These are perfect. He did such a great job on that.
Traci Brown: Oh, I love it.
Scott Rouse: Such a great job.
Traci Brown: Yea. I worked with a cartoonist on my book as well, and I send him some samples in. I loved to get the pictures back. Like, oooh, look, it’s perfect.
Scott Rouse: Yea. Yea.
Traci Brown: Wow, very cool. Alright. We don’t have a lot of time. I know you’ve got to go do some top secret stuff right now. If you had one tip that you could leave people with on how to read people or detect a lie, I’ll let you take it where you want to go, but like one final tip. What have you got?
Scott Rouse: This is my soapbox. I did a whole TEDx talk on this. There are no absolutes.
Traci Brown: Exactly.
Scott Rouse: By that I mean, just because, and I can talk about noses because I have a huge nose, just because somebody scratches their nose, it doesn’t mean they’re lying. Just because someone’s arms are crossed, it doesn’t mean they’re not into what you had to say or they’re turned off. There is a thing called the 70/30/55 role of communication. What you’ll see, you’ll people open up with that, and it says, and it’s not true, it says communication is 70% the words we use . . .
Traci Brown: Oh yea. That’s a bunch of crap.
Scott Rouse: and 70% is tone of voice, and then 55% body language. People hear that and it just pervade for years and years and years and years, and it’s not true. My thing would be, understand that there are no absolutes. You have to take what you’re seeing, someone’s body language, and take into context what’s happening around them at the time you see that. That’s the key
Traci Brown: Um-hum.
Scott Rouse: It’s not just looking at the one thing, the one shoulder go up. So what. It depends on what else is going on in that situation. I can be here talking to you and it goes up like that. I’m just giving you information. I’m not asking a question. I’m saying, here, check that out. It doesn’t mean it. There are no absolutes. You have to take into consideration what’s going on around that person in real time before you can start making decisions about what you’re seeing.
Traci Brown: Oh, very good. Yea. That’s awesome advice. I love that.