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Tom Hardin: The Bold Side of Redemption · The Bold Lounge

0:07
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Bold Lounge Podcast.
0:09
SPEAKER_01: My name is Lee Burgess and I will be your host.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: Every week we'll hear from someone who has taken the lead and embarked on an extraordinary journey.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
0:34
SPEAKER_01: Whether they faced challenges or doubts along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
0:46
SPEAKER_01: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be free.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: Today we have Tom Harden.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: Tom is a former hedge fund analyst who became one of the FBI's most significant insider training cooperators during the government sweeping investigation into Wall Street corruption.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: Known publicly as Tipper X, he wore a wire for the FBI and helped expose widespread misconduct in the hedge fund industry.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: He is the author of Wired on Wall Street, a firsthand account of ambition, ethical erosion, and the hidden pressures of the corporate world.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the bold lounge, Tom.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for having.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: It's a pleasure to be here, Lee.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: Well, let's jump into what your bold life looks like.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: But before we do that, what does being bold mean to you?
1:40
SPEAKER_00: For most of my life, I thought bold meant ambition.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: So we'll get into it.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: But I was an Ivy League grad, Wall Street, working at the hedge fund, always looking at the next thing, always trying to go faster.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: And that felt bold to me, but it turned out that that was just fear with a good publicist.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: And I think what bold actually means today is the version I had to earn in a hard way, we'll talk about is being willing to tell the absolute truth, the true story, and not the edited one.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: And it's really the one where you made the wrong call in my situation.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: I knew it was wrong.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: I did it anyway.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: And now I try to help people not make those same decisions pretty much every week.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: This is what I do.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: So that's how I feel about what is bold today.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's the don't do what I did kind of bold move, so to speak.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: So when you think about a time in your life that you lived aligned to that definition, tell us about that.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: So if you had to put in brief that big experience that you just defined, what would you describe it as?
2:36
SPEAKER_00: It's really another speaker friend described it to me.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: He said, So basically, Tom, you go around the world every week um talking about the worst thing you ever did, completely vulnerable.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: So other people don't make the same decisions.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: And I really can't think of a better, a better definition than that is terms of the life I'm living today.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't easy to get here.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: So most people would say, I don't want people to know the worst thing that I did.
2:58
SPEAKER_01: So you wrote a book about it.
2:59
SPEAKER_01: You go and around, like you just said, you go and speak about it.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: What's the why behind that?
3:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, the why is really a young uh Wall Street analyst uh during the financial crisis and working in in the hedge fund industry and knew at the time that people were basically breaking the law insider trading.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: I got caught up in it, made four trades I shouldn't have had.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh, my boss was saying, This is amazing.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: Don't tell me how you're doing it.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: FBI caught me, had me wear a body wire, which was crazy.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: And then they eventually uh sentenced me to no prison because I helped them.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: And then they invited me to speak and they said, Hey, Tom, what you could do with what your situation as a young professional is just go around and share that story.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: So that's really the why, in terms of just how easily we can rationalize the wrong decision and cross lines.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: And I felt that my kids were old enough now, they're both teenagers, that they could really understand the story and benefit from it in their own worlds as teenage daughters.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why I felt like it was time to write the book.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: And most importantly, Lee, my my wife was ready for the whole thing to be out there in the world because it's certainly not my story.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: Her story is such a big part of the book in terms of how she navigated this situation, which I brought into my family.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: It was all my my own fault that I brought us all into this.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: So so let's dig in.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: Take us back to where this all started, like set the scene, kind of where were you?
4:10
SPEAKER_01: What were you doing?
4:11
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: What was the actual vision you had for yourself?
4:14
SPEAKER_01: Not what happened, but what did you think?
4:16
SPEAKER_01: Like, where were you working toward?
4:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I really had just major ambition.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: I grew up a middle class kid in the suburbs of uh Atlanta, Georgia.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: So in the 1990s, going back.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, father worked at Coca-Cola.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: Wall Street was never on our map.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: They were hard workers, always watching money working hard, my parents.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: And I just really wanted to succeed and I really wanted to do well because of the sacrifices they made for myself and my two younger brothers.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: And I ended up back in the 90s.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: I tell people you only applied to three colleges, not like it's 20 colleges today.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: And I applied to a reach college and Ivy League college, got in and then got right into the Wall Street grind going back in sort of the mid 2000s, right before the financial crisis.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: And at that time, I was really just trying to what I thought would be the best version of myself in terms of just achievement.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: And I was really focused on engineering outcomes to have that achievement really at the cost of anything else, and had some blinders on, which we'll talk about, and just trying to succeed and and really make my parents proud and have uh, you know, that sort of feeling of uh being successful, having status, that type of thing.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: If you had to define success right then, what would you define it as?
5:22
SPEAKER_00: Being at the time, now this is different, but being thought of highly by my peer group, it was more about success meant to me having status and just being you know thought highly of.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: So having status meaning people think you're really good at your job and they tell you that and you get the raise, you get the promotion, those types of things.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: So very similar to you know, going through the corporate world and living in a space where other people tell you you're worth, other people tell you you're good enough, other people tell you you're smart enough, all of those things that we do.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: So when you think about the first time that you made a decision that wasn't actually the right one, is there any before the actual trade?
6:01
SPEAKER_01: So, as a leader, you think there's always steps to things, right?
6:03
SPEAKER_01: There's always, you know, here's what I did first, second, third.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: You go back and you're like, okay, where did I, where did I go wrong?
6:09
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever done that root cause analysis?
6:11
SPEAKER_01: Like, what was the root of this first decision where you decided to make an insider trade?
6:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I'll I'll set the stage for the environment and the culture plays a huge part.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: But as I do that, I'll make it clear that, hey, you know, cheating is a choice.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: And I did choose to cross the line.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: So there's always culture and pressure and that type of thing in any high-achieving career.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: So before that trade happened, I was 28.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: My mentor, my boss, is about 15 years older.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: And we had just started a hedge fund, which is an investing firm.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: And we were actually lee investing over a three-year horizon, like a little bit longer term than being short term.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: We lost money in the first quarter of this hedge fund.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: And my boss, um, I think he was talking to an investor, but he came into my office, he was sort of frazzled, beat red, and he was like, we have to start looking for shorter-term opportunities to make money every month.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: And the message was very ambiguous.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: So, for leaders listening, you don't want to have ambiguity in your instruction and leave your employee to kind of figure out what that means.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: And also, as the junior professional, like I didn't ask any clarifying questions.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: Are we talking about, you know, staying within the ethical and legal guardrails or are we going to quote do what everybody else is doing in the industry?
7:15
SPEAKER_00: Or it felt like, you know, at that time.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't really have the courage to push back because there was so much pressure to make money when I should have just pushed pause and not accused them of doing anything wrong, just saying, look, the way I took this was like you're really, you know, concerned and and flustered.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to make it clear or, you know, understand that you don't mean, you know, doing what everybody else does.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't ask those questions.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: So those plays that played a huge part in what happened next, um, where I received a stock tip from another investor I knew.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I bought a small amount of stock.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: I told myself, you know, I'm not going to make millions like these other people.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm just playing along small.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: And the deal happens.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: And my boss says, This is amazing, Tom.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: This helps us, but don't tell me how you're doing it.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: So he's being willfully blind, you know, to what I'm doing at that time.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: So that sort of sets the situation and the culture at our company.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: So it's almost, you know, culture plus pressure plus is it youth?
8:08
SPEAKER_01: Is it wanting again and you know, to be seen as someone doing a good job?
8:12
SPEAKER_01: There's just so many things that could go into that.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: And at 28, I mean, you're you're really still very young in your role.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: Is this your first role in this particular area?
8:21
SPEAKER_00: It's uh my second or third.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: So I, you know, 22 is when I started working out of college, but still jumping around, trying to find my feet, you know, in in my 20s, you're just trying to learn as much as you can, right?
8:31
SPEAKER_00: So still very early in my career.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
8:34
SPEAKER_01: So when did you know you'd made the wrong decision?
8:36
SPEAKER_01: Was it when the FBI showed up or was it before then?
8:40
SPEAKER_01: Did you have a gut feeling that this really wasn't the way you should be going?
8:43
SPEAKER_01: Because you ended up making more than just one of those trades.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: Right.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: So I placed the trade and the deal happened exactly as she said.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: It was perfect information.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: And I'd love to tell you that I freaked out and told my boss and said we better call the FBI, you know, self-report.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: It didn't happen.
9:00
SPEAKER_01: Like I was getting nervous reading the book.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: Like I was like, oh no.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: Please don't open that door.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, don't do it.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: Don't do it.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: Don't do it, young Tom.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
9:12
SPEAKER_01: It's so different when you're in it.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, if I had read about this in college, I'd say that's never gonna be me because I'm a good guy.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, well, we're all hopefully good people, but we could all make the wrong choice.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: And so to your question, I knew in my gut, as I mentioned in the book, the woman that called me was kind of shifty.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: Like I suspected that she was already doing this, but it was sort of like not my world until it very much was.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: And then when the deal happens, exactly like she says, you know, I actually had some adrenaline rush, like, oh my gosh, um, there was this group of people going back to status in my industry who had this status because they had this inside information.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't part of that group.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: And I was very much worried about, like I was so insecure about not being part of the N group, which was foolish.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: But hey, like you said, I'm 28, my brain's fully developed, I think at 25, right?
9:55
SPEAKER_00: So it's like not having the status of the N group as I was writing the book, especially more so than just talking about it.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: Like that was a big, a big part as to why.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: And then when I had the information, now to me, I told myself, now I have the status, you know, now I'm part of that group.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: Now I'll be accepted by them.
10:10
SPEAKER_01: You made it, right?
10:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, until the FBA walk walked in.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: So tell me about what it's like to be the youngest professional caught in the FBI's insider trading sting, and they walk up to you.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: So as I wrote the book, I'm I thought I'm happy this is all behind me.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: Like just talk about it, but it's yeah, it's crazy.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: So uh as you mentioned, it was three more trades, exactly like I described.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: Like she would call, I would buy a small amount of stock, just telling myself, oh, I'm I'm playing along, I'm not doing it as bad.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't even over$50,000 of gain that you had.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: That's gonna be probably shocking to readers, right?
10:41
SPEAKER_00: So four, four trades, seven months, you know, did this get this guy make millions, right?
10:46
SPEAKER_00: Nope.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: The punchline to your point was forty-six thousand dollars, which was the price of my career.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: I think I wrote in there, you know, the price of my professional suicide was forty-six thousand dollars at 29 years old.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: And seven months went by after the fourth trade.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: It was the financial crisis on Wall Street.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: So everything is very, you know, just sort of a terrible time now in history in 2008, and it's July, and I'm dropping off some dry cleaning, leaving my apartment in midtown Manhattan, and I step on the sidewalk and I hear my full name behind me.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: Are you Thomas Covey Harden?
11:16
SPEAKER_00: And Lee, the last time I heard my full name was my mom back in Georgia about to whip my butt.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't mom in Manhattan.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: So I turned around, two FBI agents, dark suits, wallets out, come sit down with us.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: We sat down in a wendy's next to the dry cleaner.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: He said, Look, man, we know about your four trades.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: We know that you were just down in Georgia visiting your baby nephew, and they knew his name.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: And my first thought, Lee, was, Oh my God, you know, my dad's gonna kill me.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: You know, what's he gonna say?
11:41
SPEAKER_00: That was just like as a young man, like I always think of my mom.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: I'm almost like, what would my mom say?
11:46
SPEAKER_01: You know, 100%.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: And that's actually a good thing before you make the decision.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: That's a good thing to think about.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's the double check.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, they don't know what a hedge fund is, they just know their son is, you know, but we all want our kids to do better than us.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: So they just know their son's doing well, he's on Wall Street.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: And even before the thought of prison or anything, it was like they're gonna be so disappointed.
12:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: And then I thought, you know, my wife's gonna leave me.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: She had no idea.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: You know, Lee, if I had told her before I made the decision, like I'm thinking about doing this, like she would have slapped me around.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: Great moral compass.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, she's gonna leave because you know, she had no idea she's gonna lose trust in the marriage.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: And I thought, oh my God, this might impact my career.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, I might go to prison.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: So I started telling the FBI everything, they were writing it all down.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: I had no idea what they knew.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: I was so scared.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: This was all in the Wendy's, all in the Wendy's.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: I think it was in my subconscious, like weighing on me a little bit because I wasn't gonna play tough.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, somebody asked me, Oh, didn't you know not to talk to the FBI?
12:34
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm not, I'm not saying, guys, let me call my defense attorney.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: I'll be I'll be right back.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, did you even think that that could happen?
12:40
SPEAKER_01: Because this could not have been in your vision of, I mean, your vision was most likely to be really successful on Wall Street, keep moving up, keep moving up, and you know, take care of your family and live a great life.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: That was it.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: And it was eight months after the fourth trade, so it was out of mind, sort of I wasn't losing sleep over it, and they brought it back into my face.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: And I just started confessing everything.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: It was kind of cathartic.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: And then uh the FBI said, We think you can help us out.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: And uh I said, How do I do that?
13:05
SPEAKER_01: How did you get on the radar?
13:07
SPEAKER_01: It seems like such a small amount, and you know, four is still more than one.
13:11
SPEAKER_01: I understand that.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: But like, how did you stand out?
13:14
SPEAKER_00: So the four trades are important, so it's the fact pattern.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't just one one-off trade, it was those four trades, which raises more red flags.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: And as I mentioned in the book, the woman who had tipped me was already a convicted felon that was a sealed case.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: So she was already on their radar.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: And when they saw her trading again, they knocked on her door and they said, You know, you're doing this again.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: It's unbelievable.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: But no, you know, for her to get credit, she had to give up names in terms of who she called.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: And apparently she just talked to a few people and she said, There's this young guy, there's this billionaire I mentioned, Raj Roger Ratnam, uh, who was the face of this investigation.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: And she said, There's this young guy in New York, Thomas Harden.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, Who the heck is that?
13:49
SPEAKER_00: And so they figured out who I was and then uh, you know, stopped me there on the on the street.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: And they said basically they had two great whites that were going after.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know the names on the paper, and I saw just thinking about it, I saw I was a minnow, you know, at the bottom with many minnows looking at these two great whites they wanted to take down.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: And I felt comfortable saying this in the book, and I still say it.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: They I said, should I talk to a lawyer?
14:12
SPEAKER_00: And they said, We'll let you know when you can do that.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: So they're gonna play by their own set of ethics uh in terms of how they built these cases.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:18
SPEAKER_01: So how does a 29-year-old even fathom that?
14:22
SPEAKER_01: Did you think you were like in a dream?
14:24
SPEAKER_01: Did you think this was a bad dream at any point?
14:27
SPEAKER_01: Especially, you know, once you're done at Wendy's, what happens next?
14:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we stumble down uh the stairs in in in New York City, Manhattan.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: The the restaurants are often two stories, so we're second story.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: We walk down the stairs.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm stumbling just out of it.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: Like when they were talking, it was sort of like the the old, if you remember the old peanuts cartoon of the teachers, like wa wa, wah wah.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: So it was wa wah, wah wah.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: And then I would come to, and then the the male, it was a male and female.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: So the male agent was playing sort of the bad cop role.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: We know where you were, and the female would say nothing, but she was just death stare right through me.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: And then right towards the end of the guy talking to me, I felt her hand on my hand, and I turned to her and she said, Tom, the FBI is here for you when you're ready to turn your life around.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: So you think about psychological tactics and in the games.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: But we we were walking out to the street, the FBI male agent called me a taxi.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: He said, You know, I don't want you walking into traffic.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: Not that I was suicidal, but I'm just in a daze.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, overwhelmed.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just mentally overwhelmed, like fight or flight had to kick in.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: You know, there wasn't like a lot of strategic thinking at this point.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: It was just like, what am I gonna do?
15:32
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: And I could only tell my wife.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: They said I couldn't tell anybody else.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I thought about how am I gonna do that?
15:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: So how did you tell your wife?
15:40
SPEAKER_00: So that was a Tuesday morning.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: I waited till Friday, and actually Tuesday afternoon, I violated what they told me.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: I went to St.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: Patrick's the Cathedral there in New York City, and I said it's time for a confession.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: And uh Tuesday afternoon, like there was all these people in line.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: I had gallows humor.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: Like, how many other hedge fund people are in line for their confession?
15:58
SPEAKER_00: But went to the priest and told him, and basically my penance was to help the FBI.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: Now I should have talked to a lawyer, but I still had to tell Sue my wife.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: And so Wednesday, Thursday, I'm having, I think, pretty much like panic attacks, like my side of the bed's like soaked.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: And so she knows something's going on, like what's going on with him.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: And you were going to work too, right?
16:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, still going to work.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: And so I would leave before she got up and I would get home before, you know, after she went to sleep and she would text me and said, My cover, it was a good cover story.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, the market's horrible, which it was.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm so stressed, I have a lot of work to do.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: It's a rough week.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: And so Friday, basically, if I felt if I didn't tell her, I'd be lying to her by you know, not talking about it.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, all right, I have to, I gotta figure out a way to tell her.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: And so Friday after work, and she had been working at Lehman Brothers, which is one of those companies that went to zero uh during the crisis.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: And so she was having a heck of a time at work.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: And so, young couple, New York City, how was your week?
16:47
SPEAKER_00: I said, Let me go first.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: And I just remember saying, Okay, just get to it.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: The Tuesday morning FBI approached me on the street, asked me about these four trades.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: And I remember saying, you know, Sue, I did it.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: I I made these trades.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: I can't make up any excuses.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: And she said, Can you say that again?
17:00
SPEAKER_00: And I said it again.
17:01
SPEAKER_01: Like, repeat that?
17:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, repeat that.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't what she was expecting.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: And as I wrote the book, she's like, I thought you were going to talk, say like that.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: I met somebody else, right?
17:09
SPEAKER_00: Like, what could it be?
17:10
SPEAKER_00: And then I said it again, and she then she paused and she said, Well, you know, you didn't do anything to hurt me.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: And if they're giving you a chance to clean up things, you should probably do it.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: As I researched the book, it's not a surprise that 85% of marriages will pretty much end right there, uh, where the the trust has completely lost, right?
17:25
SPEAKER_00: Understandably.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it feels like betrayal.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: Betrayal, yeah, exactly.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: Loss of trust, lie of omission, like lie of not talking about things.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: So when you think about that, was that your lowest point?
17:35
SPEAKER_00: That was not my lowest point.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: That was just the kind of the start.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Like the Wendy's was tough.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: Telling her, actually, telling her on that Friday was better because of the way she took it, uh, which was not it was not easy to get through, but just the way that she took it, like she felt she wasn't harmed.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: But hey, she's gonna be collateral damage, right?
17:52
SPEAKER_00: She's my wife and she married the future hedge fund manager, not the future FBI informant.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: So that actually a little bit off my shoulders, like now that she knew, but also she was gonna have to keep a secret uh about what I was doing with the FBI.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: And is she in the same field?
18:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she worked in finance uh at Lehman Brothers, which is one of the big banks that went bankrupt.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so she was having a heck of a time.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: And I told her I'd have to meet with the FBI on Monday.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: We had lunch.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: There was a small piece of metal on the table at lunch, and I said, What is that?
18:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh an extra BlackBerry battery.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: And they must have thought this guy is so naive.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: No, no, this is not so much a battery as it is a body wire.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: And I was gonna have to build relationships with people on Wall Street, very powerful people, and get them talking about stocks that they trade on inside information.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: So it was like, all right, you want me to meet people, build relationships, and then try to get them to talk about federal crimes.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: And they're basically like, yeah, okay, well, there was no training.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: It's easy.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, easy, easy, right?
18:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there is not wear or wire 101, you know, virtual death.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there should be in ethics classes, right?
18:52
SPEAKER_01: Was it now just do what they say, get through it, like do the steps.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: And did you ever think of calling a lawyer yet?
18:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: Is that hindsight you would have done that, or what would you do differently when it comes to that particular piece?
19:05
SPEAKER_00: So in that piece, I definitely would have talked to a lawyer in the beginning.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: You know, when I talk to these New York City firms today, uh I say, hey, you know, these are often fishing expeditions, where hopefully you didn't do anything wrong.
19:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, but they're gonna approach you on the street and try to get you in a moment where you, if you just start talking to them, you know, it's probably not gonna be a great thing because anything you say obviously can be held.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: Right.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: So I say, take their card, talk to a lawyer, you know, go through your options.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: But I I didn't, you know, I took their advice, don't talk to a lawyer.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: And to your earlier question, um, it was more about okay, what's the best decision I can make now?
19:35
SPEAKER_00: Going back, I made some poor decisions.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: What can I do now?
19:38
SPEAKER_00: It was like, well, I should probably take their orders and just do this.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: And but I was also scared.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: And so my editor said, Tom, you wrote like that.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: My hands were sweaty, my heart was racing like 15 times in the book.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, that's too house.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: Do you see it?
19:50
SPEAKER_00: So we kind of kept the same words in there the whole time because that's how I remember it.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: And the cover story was I would set up meetings with these people that were 20 years older than me.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: It might be a 48-year-old hedge from a ninja I wrote in the about in the book in Silicon Valley.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I'm a 29-year-old analyst in New York.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: My cover story for the meeting was, Hey, I want to see if you're hiring at your firm because I might lose my job, which was a decent cover story at that time.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: So I get the meeting at at Starbucks, and then I had to get to so by the way, you know, those those stocks you traded last year, you know, I had four of my own stocks just to show some empathy, like I'm on your same way wavelength.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: And then by the way, how do you get your information?
20:26
SPEAKER_00: And as I wrote, it was very sloppy in the beginning because I was so flustered and they would change the subject, and the FBI was always sitting next to me at the table, just making sure I wasn't, you know, showing them a piece of paper.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm wearing a wire, you know, don't talk to me, which is obstructing justice.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: So I didn't do that.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: They took the wire later, they would listen to it, and they say, Tom, you're doing such a terrible job.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Hey guys, it's my first time doing this.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: So again, like we were saying before, where was the training, right?
20:50
SPEAKER_00: There was no training.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and no empathy either.
20:52
SPEAKER_01: Like you're a cog in the wheel here.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: Like you are one, you know, like you said, minnow, and then we're going for the shark.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: So did you feel played at all, or did you feel like they're pawn and it was your real life?
21:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a great way to put it up, uh, a pawn in the bigger picture or kind of a notch in their belt in terms of their career, because they're not they're not going to be at the FBI forever.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: They have to build cases and then go get a better, right, you know, a bigger job in the private sector once they've served the government.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, by whatever means, they would also do that for themselves.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: And inherently you did something wrong.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: So they're doing their job.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: So when leaders are in these types of situations, so when from the perspective of your boss, like where is he in this at this point, or is it really moved on outside of where you were at the start?
21:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: So he actually he's not so much involved in this part.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: You know, I I worked for two years with the FBI in this capacity before my name was leaked to the press.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: But the first year of this wire wearing expedition, I was still going to the office and trying to play normal.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, my my performance was not great at work at all because of then the markets and because of this.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: But I was actually still trying to put on a regular face at the office in front of my boss.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: But um, I don't think he's suspected.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: This with the FBI, but he could see something was off with me because he uh I was gonna resign.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: He actually fired me the day before I was gonna resign.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: So that was a tough situation.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: But I was actually almost relieved not to have to keep, you know, putting on a face at work and trying to act like everything was normal.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: What do you think during that first year, like the toll that it took on you?
22:18
SPEAKER_01: Like what did it take away?
22:19
SPEAKER_01: Because I think sometimes people have so much ambition, and ambition isn't a bad thing, I don't think.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: I think there's positive and negative ambition.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: And there's a great book on it by Amana Alzheimer that really talks about specifically what ambition can lead to.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: And it's a good thing to have goals and to reach high and to stretch, but what's the difference between what you did and just the normal ambition that people would have in your role or any role?
22:44
SPEAKER_01: Like it's taken a toll.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: So the ambition is what I think was sort of masqueraded.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: Ambition kind of disguised as ego, is the way I think about it, wanting to have the status.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: My ambition was to really engineer outcomes at any cost.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: And then with my cost, it was all the way into committing actually a federal crime.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: And so I think there was no guardrails with that ambition.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: And I think it would have been helpful for me as I actually I didn't really realize this until I wrote the book that in my 20s I didn't really have any mentors.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, having somebody actually sort of check my ambition or, you know, what I was seeing in the industry or being able to just talk to somebody like a good mentor, yeah, I think that would have been maybe something that could have set me straight before this ever happened.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, hey, mentor, you won't believe what's happening.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: All these people are doing this.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: She just called me up thinking about buying a small amount of stock.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, the right mentor would have slapped me around.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: Why would you ever do that?
23:31
SPEAKER_00: Here's what you could make, the$46,000, you know, above the water.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: And here's that iceberg underwater, your career, your reputation.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: So, in terms of what it cost me, it's just the opportunity cost of not being able to work in that industry ever again, more so than, you know, I threw away the career for$46,000, but also that future potential was pretty massive.
23:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: Did you miss your own warning signs?
23:53
SPEAKER_01: Meaning, were there things that were happening that we can learn from in the sense of even generalizing them out, you know, further?
24:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: So I think the biggest warning signs were in the moment, my self-talk, my self-justifications, that wheel happening in my head, those rationalizations where I said, you know, it feels like everybody's doing this.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: That's that's probably the biggest rationalization where you say, well, everybody else is doing it, which is usually not true, right?
24:19
SPEAKER_00: If you have to tell yourself that, it's it's a good place to pause.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: And I said, What I'm doing is immaterial in terms of I'm just buying a small amount of stock, not like everybody else.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're trying to minimize your bad choice, that was also would have been a warning flag.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: And I think also just not having self-awareness in my 20s in terms of me being insecure about my competition, shooting to get ahead when I should have just been focused on myself, improving at the art of investing, or I think in any career can be generalized.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: Like just focus on competing against yourself.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: Don't worry if your competition is, in my case, breaking laws to get ahead.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: Because it's all going to catch up to them.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: Just focus on yourself.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: And so those are a couple of things.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: And then not asking my boss clarifying questions.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: That ambiguous messages from leadership are a big thing now in the work I do that actually can lead to trouble where the leader has this ambiguous message.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: And then when people question it, the leader says, Well, don't question my communication style.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
25:12
SPEAKER_00: And then you get a culture of silence.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: And eventually at my firm, we had this culture of silence where it actually wasn't checked.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of talk about psychological safety.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: So, from the perspective of the workplace and being able to question and kind of what you're getting at, right?
25:27
SPEAKER_01: Would you say that doesn't exist in your field?
25:29
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm in healthcare and you know, across businesses and finance and et cetera.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: So, but finance not on Wall Street.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: So, like, is that how it is in Wall Street?
25:38
SPEAKER_01: I mean, don't question, just do it.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: Do is it is it that way today?
25:41
SPEAKER_00: It's better today, but I worry that the psychological safety is more of a talking point, like uh, look what I say and not what I do.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that's still a problem on Wall Street where people think about okay, the culture is what the CEO is saying.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: And like, no, that's just like you know, tone at the top is a big buzzword.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: Like, that's just a signal.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: What behaviors do people believe will be rewarded and punished?
26:02
SPEAKER_00: That's your culture.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: And I've never really even seen it written that way.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: And that's how I do it today in my presentations.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: Like, this is what we're talking about.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: And I think unfortunately, it's more of a buzzword right now, still psychological safety than actually a practical thing.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: That, you know, do you really want the junior employee to speak up and actually challenge their boss and feel comfortable doing it?
26:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, they say it, they have posters on the wall now with these banks, you know, speak up, right?
26:23
SPEAKER_00: And then when I talk to the junior people, if the senior people aren't there, the junior people will tell me offline, yeah, Tom, uh, we would never speak up here because we never hear back and we worry for our jobs.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: So unfortunately, there's still a lot of you know companies like that.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: So when you think about going back, even before this happened, so when you were in school and you're, you know, going to the Ivy League and all the things, at what point did you start to compare yourself or you know, see the one-up game that was occurring, or does that happen instantaneously at an Ivy League?
26:53
SPEAKER_00: It's instantaneously.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: So it was always about in the big public high school in Georgia where I was from, where we really never really ever left the state, you know, just to be able to just get out of there and get in this Ivy League college was a big accomplishment.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: But then I was never satisfied with where I was.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: It was always what's the next thing?
27:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay, all these kids are like the valedictorian and all these big brains here.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay, how do I figure out how to study better than them?
27:14
SPEAKER_00: That was a process that took me a while.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: And then how do I one up them?
27:17
SPEAKER_00: And then I'm in the investment bank.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: Well, what's better?
27:19
SPEAKER_00: There's a hedge fund, and how do I get there?
27:21
SPEAKER_00: I never just was content with where I was, which I was in a great spot in my career, my life.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: And I was just always trying to compete and one up with other with other people.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: So it was there, I think, from the beginning.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's ingrained in you, and then it just grows.
27:34
SPEAKER_01: And the more you do and the more success you have, I gotta get bigger, I gotta get bigger.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: I see it all the time.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: I see it like in real life, and then you see it in social media, and that you know, it wasn't as crazy as social media is now in 2008, but it was still there.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: But I think you know, I see people saying, I did this, you did that, I did this, I did it 10 times.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: What is it about that that you think as we're growing up, and even you know, in our 50s, people are trying to one up each other.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: So I don't think it goes away.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: Do you think it goes away?
28:03
SPEAKER_00: I think it's human behavior, and now having this experience, or maybe just because you know it's 20 years, 15, 20 years after this happened, I just more attuned to seeing it.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: But to your point, I have you know, my daughters now are 16 and 14.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: So you think about you mentioned social media and what they see and how they compare themselves.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, and your books out now.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: So now even more people know.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's right.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: And so it's having those conversations with them.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you know, be your own person.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's sort of like don't get in the group, think, right?
28:31
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't want to wear that because I I'd stand it out.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, don't you want to be your own person?
28:34
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, I don't want to be my own person.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, I want to be like everybody else.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Like it's important to actually have agency for your own thoughts, right?
28:40
SPEAKER_00: And so we're still working on that.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: So I have a framework, so it's believe, own, learn, design.
28:45
SPEAKER_01: And that's you know, the bold acronym.
28:48
SPEAKER_01: So first starts with beliefs.
28:50
SPEAKER_01: So I think when you think about yourself and maybe potentially a belief you had about yourself that you now go back and go, I'm crossing that one off.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: What would it be?
28:59
SPEAKER_01: Like, I believe, and then at that moment, you believed what?
29:03
SPEAKER_00: I think I believed at the time that I was never good enough.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: Like there was always somebody better or more successful, whether it was in school or in my career or wealthier.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, well, newsflash, there always will be somebody better, whatever you define it.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: Like, of course there will be.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: But why don't you just be satisfied with where you are and just try to compete against yourself, Tom, and improve incrementally over that.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, when I got when I was left my firm and left Wall Street and was in this crazy sort of shame spiral, I got into running marathons and ultramarathons.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: And that was actually a good thing for me because that's where you compete against yourself.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: All you're just trying to do is, you know, improve your time.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: And so that was something that I didn't really think about or wasn't aware of in my in my 20s.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: So when you think about the not feeling good enough or wanting to be enough, do you have a moment where like you felt that the first time you said earlier you want to make your parents proud and you wanted to do the best for them?
29:56
SPEAKER_01: And and I can relate to that, you know, from from the perspective of you know, how I went into that phase of, you know, am I good enough?
30:02
SPEAKER_01: I want to make them happy.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: It was when my brother passed away, when I was six and he was 11.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: And so it was uh an accident, but it was like that's when I went into no one's gonna be sad or unhappy, like I'm gonna be the best at everything.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: But then what I found out, like in my late 40s, what it was never good enough for me.
30:19
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't them, it was me.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: Do you have a moment where you remembered, like, wow, I could have done better?
30:24
SPEAKER_01: You know, it could have been elementary, it could have been middle.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: I don't know where you maybe felt that.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think uh it was as I shared in the book when I applied to this Ivory League College and my guidance counselor said, Don't do that, right?
30:34
SPEAKER_00: You'll know it'll never happen.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: You'll never get in.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: Everybody has those stories, right?
30:40
SPEAKER_00: And then so when I was deferred, they told you you weren't good enough.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: Right.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: So I I remember reading that as I wrote, like just getting there in the kitchen.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: Oh my God, I'm not I'm not good enough.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you get deferred from the early to the regular, it was like a five percent chance of getting in.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: Basically, you're not getting in.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: And that was like, wow, maybe I'm just not you know cut out for this or I'm not good enough.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: But then it also lit the fire in a good way at that time, as I shared, you know, I talked to my teachers, we had a game plan.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's get Tom into this college.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: And they were inventing clubs for me.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: I was the press, whatever it took, but also in trying to engineer outcomes.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: And so it worked out that time.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: But that was my first sort of punch in the face.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, I don't feel like I'm good enough.
31:15
SPEAKER_01: All right, so take us back.
31:16
SPEAKER_01: So you're you're now, you know, you've quit your job.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: Are you still wearing a wire?
31:21
SPEAKER_01: Where are you in this whole saga of like we're ever thinking, when does this end?
31:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: So for two years, I'm in this wire wearing saga.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: The first year I'm still going to the office, and then on our Friday, I'm like, I just can't go to the office anymore.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: I cleared my desk out.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna quit Monday.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: And then that Sunday, I get an email from my boss saying you're fired.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, this is great.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to go to the office.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: And and so that happens.
31:42
SPEAKER_01: And then so he just fires you and you don't have to go back in or anything.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: See him just on email.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and Monday he's like, he's like, Where's your stuff?
31:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh basically, I'd already cleared my desk out.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: At least I got some severance, right?
31:52
SPEAKER_00: Versus quitting.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so that part worked out, and then eventually it was so weird because I wore a wire 48 times, and the FBI never really gave me feedback.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: So Sue would be like, How's it going?
32:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I really don't know.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know what's happening.
32:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so when does it end?
32:08
SPEAKER_01: Do you have any idea?
32:10
SPEAKER_00: So it was just two years into it.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: Sue, we we decided to go for it with our family too, which I wrote.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: Like, she was just so positive, you know, Tom, you got us into this, you're gonna get us out of it.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: Let's just continue with our family plan.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: So she had our first child in late 2009.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: And that week, you know, she was at home.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: I was we were taking turns with the baby.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then at 6 a.m., my phone rang and the FBI said, turn on CNBC.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: 20 guys from the industry were in those perp walks and handcuffs.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, the news camera just happens to be at their homes when they're being arrested, and all these 20 names are out.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: And there's one person in the middle, they were calling Tip R X, whose name was not public.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: And I quickly figured out, you know, I'm an analyst.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: Where's my name?
32:46
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, that's me.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: I called the FBI, my tip or X, and he said, Yep, you know, you should talk to a lawyer now.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: So that's when it all, that's when it all was stopped uh for me.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: I was still tipper X.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: And I I drew the line at two friends.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: So I know the some people are gonna read the book and be like, this guy was a rat.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: And you know, they can think that, but I did try to draw the line at two people who I felt were felt were very, very good men.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: They were both starting families, and and I just felt like I had to draw the line there with the FBI, and there was a code that I couldn't cross, or it would have kept going on for a long time.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: And the FBI said, Fine, we're done with you.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: Your name's coming out tomorrow.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: And so the worst moment, going back to the question about my lowest moment, yeah, was Sue was holding it together so well.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: She was just so, I think I would describe it as stoic, just focusing on what you could control.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: And Monday she's back to work from attorney leave.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: So she's back, but was sort of, you know, showing her colleagues the baby and sort of the pictures.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: And then Wednesday morning, Lee, two days after that, her husband's name is on the front page of the Wall Street Journal as the key FBI informant and the largest insider trading investigation of a generation.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: And so as I wrote the book last year and interviewed her, it was pretty surreal.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: I said, Sue, I thought that was months after you went back to work.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: She's like, No, Tom, I remember it was two days after I was back at the office.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: And so the lowest moment was it's a 24-hour news story, but there's so many phone calls and journalists and all this stuff happening.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: And she's trying to explain it to her colleagues.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: And she came home from work, and by then I was just basically a stay-at-home dad with a newborn.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: And I remember she walked in, tears were in her eyes.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: She took Molly from my arms, walked into the corner, and said, I can't believe you did this to us.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: And so, as a man, as a father, as a husband, I felt much lower than the Wendy's approach by the FBI because I saw my actions had consequences.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: When I told myself there were no victims for me buying these stocks or who am I hurting, it was right there on my face.
34:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: So that was the lowest moment.
34:28
SPEAKER_00: She finally broke, you know.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: Of course, I mean, she's a human and yeah, carrying the burden of this.
34:32
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, she loves you.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she chose you, and you chose her, and here you are.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: And for better or for worse, this is what's happening, right?
34:41
SPEAKER_01: You know, and you have a young baby, very, you know, new, and it has its own stresses.
34:46
SPEAKER_01: So she is such a big part of the book.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: When you think about her boldest move, what do you think that is?
34:53
SPEAKER_00: I think just being able to stay focused on, as I was saying, like what I could control, what we could control.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: We could never control if I'd ever work again.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: Because as I wrote in the book, like if you have to tell future employers, don't Google me, it's probably not good.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: So that wasn't gonna happen.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: She really kept me grounded.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: Hey, once we had our second child, you know, full-time stay-at-home dad, just focus on being the best stay-at-home parent you can be.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, as many stay-at-home parents know, like some days my job was just to pick up everything from the kitchen table to the front door, right?
35:20
SPEAKER_00: That's it, and over and over again, and do all that.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and do all that work, which was a job.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, it was a lot of a lot of work and just focus on that and try to find some pride in that, right?
35:29
SPEAKER_00: And so eventually I became a good cook and did all the things I was trying to do, you know, to just keep her happy and just focus on that.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: Eventually, I was reading so many self-help books, and I would not recommend self-help books to people because it actually got me thinking about myself too much, you know.
35:43
SPEAKER_00: When actually she was like, maybe just toss all those books back at the library and try to go to church at night and just be of service to our human concerns committee who was just doing like a clothing drive for Haiti and these type of things.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: And so I walk into church and this guy, Greg, is like, hey, nice to meet you.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: Here's a clipboard.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: He didn't say, Hey, it's Tip or X, everyone.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: Like he doesn't care, right?
36:01
SPEAKER_00: So he's like, just help us.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: And it's like shocking, but probably not.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: When you start helping other people, you start thinking less about yourself and your own trials and tribulations.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: And that was a huge reframe for me, uh, just to like focus on what I could control.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: And that was the only thing at that time.
36:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's great advice.
36:17
SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, when you get to a low point, the best thing you can do to pick yourself up is go help, go volunteer, go be in an environment where you are incredibly blessed and you didn't even realize it, you know.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: What did you not realize you were blessed with until you got to this moment where almost a lot of things were taken away?
36:38
SPEAKER_01: But the most important things, like your wife, your young child, now you have two girls.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: So, like, at what point did you feel like we'll figure this out?
36:45
SPEAKER_01: Like it's gonna be okay.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: Cause like this is when everything hits the fan, right?
36:50
SPEAKER_01: When your name's out there, and you know, now everybody knows.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: Right.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: And I'm still, you know, I'm a stay-at-home dad, but I have to, you know, we're I'm applying for jobs.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, we bought the house on double income.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: We were we were just too optimistic, and you're still living in New York.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
37:05
SPEAKER_00: So that wasn't a smart move.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: We have a house we can't afford.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: And and eventually it took several years.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: I was in such a shame spiral, and I think people know this, but you know, there's shame and guilt.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: There's a massive difference.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: Like, shame is I'm a terrible person who did a bad thing, and guilt is like maybe I'm just a regular person who crossed the line.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: And so I was caught in this shame spiral, like I'm a bad person.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: And then eventually, what kind of snapped me out of this was you know, I got really into this.
37:29
SPEAKER_00: I wrote like really into running ultra marathons, crazy stuff.
37:32
SPEAKER_00: But as I wrote the book and thought about it, Lee, I thought I was doing all these crazy hundred mile races, so I didn't have to actually deal with my professional future.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: So she would come home from work.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, how's the job search?
37:42
SPEAKER_00: Well, got to go for a run and have a race coming up.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: Like running is good for a lot of things, clear your head.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: But also, it was like a crutch to not have to deal with my avoidance.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: Avoidance.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: And again, what an amazing wife that she was going through all this.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's this version of Tom.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: Now his name is out there.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: He's not Wall Street anymore, but he's doing this.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: And then eventually I'm sentenced.
38:00
SPEAKER_00: It took seven years to be sentenced.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: We just kept waiting every year, every year, no sentencing.
38:05
SPEAKER_00: So I couldn't really move forward with any professional really opportunity.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: Like I'd interview at a company and say, I'm about to be sentenced for a federal crime, but it should be okay.
38:12
SPEAKER_00: Like, what's okay?
38:13
SPEAKER_00: We can't hire you.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sentenced to no prison because I helped the FBI.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: And then a year later, the FBI gives me a phone call and I thought, oh my God, what do these guys want now?
38:22
SPEAKER_01: And uh they said, Is that like a lifetime subscription to them?
38:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, basically, it's always the same unrestricted number.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: So people know it says unrestricted.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: Are they listening now?
38:31
SPEAKER_01: You know, uh I hope not.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
38:33
SPEAKER_00: But at the time, right at the time, we don't know.
38:35
SPEAKER_00: They're calling me, and Sue was sort of like, you know, like, what did you do now?
38:38
SPEAKER_00: I said, I don't know, was I watching like a movie on an illegal stream or something?
38:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: And then they invited me to speak.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: They said I was the youngest person, they charged the 81 people they arrested, and that 46,000 was the lowest.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, I thought they were rubbing it in.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: I said, I was trying not to get caught.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: They're like, that is the actual story.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: Come taught the FBI, go out and make limited limits.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: They called it just go share this story and try to prevent this behavior.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: And and that was a moment where I didn't even think about charging to speak.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: Like, what does that mean?
39:04
SPEAKER_00: I was gonna go to colleges as a pilgrimage and just see if like my therapy was actually starting to talk to students, and then eventually a company was like, How much do you charge?
39:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, for this, and they said, Yes, this is actually great training for my employees.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I quoted them, I think three thousand dollars and I got paid three thousand dollars, and that was the moment Sue was at a job now she hated, and she had been holding it together forever.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: I said, Sue, you don't have to work anymore.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: I just made three thousand dollars, you can quit your job.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: And she was like, What are you talking about?
39:31
SPEAKER_00: We're crazy, we're rich.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: I got paid once to speak, but also to your point, that's when I actually owned it.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean, okay, stop poor Tom, shame spiral.
39:41
SPEAKER_01: Like you took agency over your life.
39:43
SPEAKER_01: You're like, We're gonna, I'm gonna do this.
39:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: My wife's in tears again because she's on this terrible commute to New York City and her husband's in the shame spiral.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: All right, enough already.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: And I I listened, I don't know if you know that the name David Goggins, but he's uh yeah, yeah.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: So Goggins for the first time was on a podcast in 2017, like that voice where he was just like, What he says, and it was just I was on my run that morning and that came in my earphones.
40:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I just made three thousand dollars and I told Sue, I got it.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, Goggins said this, I made money, and she looked at me like I had three heads, but she's like, Oh man, I said, I have to do it, yeah, I have to make it work.
40:17
SPEAKER_00: And she's like, All right, if you're okay with it, I'm gonna she left her firm, and then I knew my back was up the wall, my family's relying on me.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: I have to own this, and that's when the speaking business started.
40:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you basically just bootstrapped it and said, Hey, you know, visibility is actually going to be the not cure, but maybe the antidote, you know, for shame, the antidote for you know, guilt, and you know, really was guilt most likely you were feeling, but you know, feeling shameful, I guess, in that sense.
40:45
SPEAKER_01: So your way of healing was sharing your mistakes, sharing what you could do better.
40:51
SPEAKER_01: Very few people share their mistakes, very few people talk about it.
40:56
SPEAKER_01: So, what would be your advice to someone who is, you know, out there in the world doing their thing, and you know, as entrepreneurs, as you know, leaders in the corporate setting, anyone, you know, they've made mistakes that they know others can learn from, or certainly they've learned from.
41:11
SPEAKER_01: What would you do to encourage them to share it?
41:13
SPEAKER_01: What's the power of sharing what went wrong?
41:15
SPEAKER_00: It's the vulnerability that is often talked about, like be vulnerable as a leader.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: But you know, I think that's more of a buzzword again, like psychological safety.
41:23
SPEAKER_00: Like being vulnerable is actually talking about now, hopefully, you know, you don't have to talk about federal crimes, or if you if you have those, you don't you don't necessarily have to talk about it.
41:30
SPEAKER_00: But most people don't, but just like that one mistake or that big mess up you had in your career, like sharing that as a leader, because people can learn from that.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: I always say, like, your scars can become your service, right?
41:40
SPEAKER_00: And we all go through something and we don't, so this to use a term, we don't drown in the water by falling in the water, you drown if you stay there, right?
41:47
SPEAKER_00: And there's no reason to stay there and share those stories because they help so many people see themselves and your own, you know, mishaps.
41:54
SPEAKER_00: And it's just, I guess, because I've been doing it for so long now and finally wrote the book, it's just maybe easier for me to say this than actual for people to do it.
42:01
SPEAKER_00: But there's so much power in that vulnerability.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: And that's for me, that's like being very vulnerable.
42:05
SPEAKER_00: If you talk about uh, you know, maybe it doesn't have to be the worst thing you ever did, like I do, but it could be just some version of a failure.
42:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
42:11
SPEAKER_00: And people learn from that.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's important to share those.
42:14
SPEAKER_01: What do you think you would say to someone said, Oh, I would never do that.
42:17
SPEAKER_01: I would never get to that point.
42:19
SPEAKER_01: I would never, I would never, I would never.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be people that read the book, and you know, there'll be somebody, hopefully a lot of people read the book, and there'll be people saying that would never be me.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: I would then say you're most susceptible to crossing your own lines and to have some healthy paranoia.
42:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's funny.
42:32
SPEAKER_00: I usually speak at companies and I think it they all go great, but I was speaking at a high school a few weeks ago and there was a student who said, Oh, I would never do that.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, all right, you're 16 years old, but let's not think like that.
42:42
SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, from the perspective of the pressure and the things that were on the inside, I think, you know, that's something that it's hard to say, right?
42:49
SPEAKER_01: To someone else when you don't know if you've walked in their shoes.
42:52
SPEAKER_01: And you know, I think from you know, talking about what you've done and obviously you've rebuilt your future.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: What's next for you?
43:00
SPEAKER_00: What's next for me is just to continue to share this story.
43:03
SPEAKER_00: My version of success today, I guess back then it was the designed by status or you know, future potential earnings.
43:09
SPEAKER_00: And today it's really just being the most authentic, true version of myself and being rich more in these moments when a client calls me and says, Wow, they can't stop talking about your presentation, Tom.
43:20
SPEAKER_00: And they're actually talking about their own near misses now in their careers, and that's because I came in and did this.
43:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:25
SPEAKER_00: That's like my version of success, just being my authentic true self.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: Whereas for years, in the middle of this and my ultra marathon shame spiral, I was just trying to cover it up and not really talk about, I'd say, don't Google me what happened.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: And now there's just so much, it's like it's so freeing just to talk about it now and not having to say I'm covering up anything.
43:42
SPEAKER_00: And and that's for me what I hope to do for a for a long time.
43:45
SPEAKER_00: I hope the book just lights a second chapter with my speaking business to get this into more places.
43:51
SPEAKER_00: I hope it finds its way into college ethics classes.
43:53
SPEAKER_00: I just think having this on a syllabus, uh, that I think the book's readable for even an 18-year-old freshman.
43:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:58
SPEAKER_00: And that's my longer term.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: Global by by writing it.
44:01
SPEAKER_00: Like I can't speak everywhere, but the book can be a lot more places than I can be.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: Right.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: It definitely spreading the word and getting it out there.
44:07
SPEAKER_01: And then also understanding, you know, from the perspective of our organizations and the spaces and places that we lead and build that your culture that you're building is where these types of decisions can get made, or feel like someone has no other choice but to make these types of choices.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: So uh we'll end with, you know, the importance of culture today.
44:28
SPEAKER_01: And what would you say is the most important thing within organizations around culture that supports employees and other leaders making the best decision, the right decision, the most ethical decision?
44:40
SPEAKER_01: What does the culture look like?
44:41
SPEAKER_00: There's a couple of things.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: I guess culture, I would tell every leader listening in their company is it's the behaviors that employees believe will be rewarded or punished.
44:49
SPEAKER_00: And so you think about the behaviors not the tone at the top.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: You also want people, because everybody's always been at that line in your career, some version, maybe not so explicit as my version, but there's always a point where you could go left or right.
45:00
SPEAKER_00: And it may not be a clear decision.
45:01
SPEAKER_00: And it might be like, okay, these are actually two good decisions, but what which is the better, which is the least bad?
45:07
SPEAKER_00: If you make that decision, are you personally willing to be held accountable with the outcome?
45:12
SPEAKER_00: And I think that is the most important question to ask yourself if you're not sure.
45:16
SPEAKER_00: If you go forward with it, would you be willing to be held accountable?
45:19
SPEAKER_00: Every company I speak of today has codes of conduct with they have like 10 questions to ask yourself if you're at that line.
45:24
SPEAKER_00: I was asking one of my clients, can I rip this up?
45:26
SPEAKER_00: And she said, No, the CEO is going to be there.
45:28
SPEAKER_00: Don't do that.
45:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, but from the tip rex experience, this is why you brought me in.
45:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
45:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh to maybe wrap this thing up and put one question in there.
45:34
SPEAKER_00: So I would encourage people to do that.
45:36
SPEAKER_00: And if if you're gonna tell people to speak up and you're gonna have psychological safety, you have to listen up.
45:40
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like today a lot of companies I speak at bring me in for a speak up program.
45:45
SPEAKER_00: But I'm like, guys, where's the listen up?
45:46
SPEAKER_00: Like, what?
45:47
SPEAKER_00: Like, no, you're telling your people to speak up and you're not listening.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: So let's have some balance there.
45:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
45:52
SPEAKER_01: I think we all probably at some point in our lives and our careers, we felt a moment of pressure where we knew if we did it, it might feel easier.
46:01
SPEAKER_01: And but if we don't do it, it's gonna be much harder.
46:04
SPEAKER_01: And I think people make those decisions every day.
46:06
SPEAKER_01: So I I appreciate you being a reminder and sharing your story and being vulnerable and putting yourself out there.
46:13
SPEAKER_01: And thank you to Sue, too, for you know, being your guiding light, it sounds like in the whole thing and being brave and bold as well as your daughter.
46:21
SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much for sharing your story.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: Please check out Wired On Wall Street, the rise and fall of Tipper X, one of the FBI's most prolific informants.
46:30
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Tom, for being on the Bold Lounge.
46:32
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: It's a pleasure of the year.
46:36
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge Podcast.
46:39
SPEAKER_01: Through the continuum of bold stories, vulnerability to taking the leap, you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
46:49
SPEAKER_01: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset.
46:54
SPEAKER_01: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.