How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less

Think about the last time you met someone, at a new job, at a homeowners' association meeting, or in line at the bank. Before the person said anything important, you had already formed an opinion: friendly, closed off, trustworthy, strange. Nicholas Boothman starts from that common experience to defend a simple thesis: the first impression happens very fast, and people who learn to manage it gain a huge advantage in any relationship.

The book does not promise magic. It proposes that connecting with someone is a trainable skill, made of small, repeatable gestures, and not a gift that some people have and others don't. Instead of theory, the author offers a practical sequence: get your head ready, use your body in your favor, step into the other person's rhythm, and ask questions that keep the conversation alive.

The number in the title works more as a symbol than as a stopwatch. The idea is that the start of contact weighs heavily on everything that follows, and that you can learn to start well.

The first step of the method happens before you open your mouth: your state of mind. Boothman insists that your inner attitude leaks out through your body. If you walk into an interview thinking 'they're going to reject me,' your shoulders rise, your eyes drift away, and your voice shrinks, and the interviewer reads all of it without realizing they are reading.

That is why he recommends deliberately choosing the feeling you arrive with. Instead of preparing only what you are going to say, ask yourself how you want to feel in the first few minutes: curious, warm, relaxed. Picture the meeting going well, remember a situation where you felt welcomed, and carry that state into the room.

It is the same principle as taking a deep breath at the bus stop before going to ask for a raise. It is not faking a joy you don't feel, but choosing where to place your attention. Someone who arrives anxious and worried about their own performance barely pays attention to the person in front of them, and without attention there is no connection.

Boothman sums up the physical part of the method in a few signals that tell the other person, silently: you can come closer, I'm at ease. The main ones are eye contact, a smile, and open posture. None of them costs money and all of them take practice, because most of us act on autopilot, phone in hand and head somewhere else.

The author points out one detail: consistency matters more than order. A big smile with crossed arms sends a mixed message, and observers tend to believe the body more than the polite sentence. That is why he treats the three signals as a set, not as separate tricks.

Picture a clerk at a phone store who looks at the screen, says 'can I help you?' and keeps typing. Even if the words are polite, the message is that the customer is a nuisance. The opposite, stopping, looking up, and opening your face for two seconds, changes the mood of the whole purchase.