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#066_ STORY INSPIRE: Former CIA Spy Warns: The USA Could Change Dramatically Before 2030 · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: For seven years, I was working undercover as a spy.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: And I needed to know how to manipulate, how to
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: live and operate without ever being detected, and how to
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: collect secrets.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Okay, I've got so many questions.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Andrew Bustamante.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: He's a former CIA officer. Who uses spy skills. To
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: teach anyone how to master their mind, talents, and potential
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: in business and everyday life.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: When I left CIA, I realized that I could use
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: CIA skills to succeed in business. One of the first
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: things you should want to learn is how do I
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: know if I'm being lied to? As an example, bad liars,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: that is one of the biggest tells of an unskilled liar. Next,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: people have four basic core motivations. reward, ideology, coercion, and ego.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: And if you can speak to somebody through the lens
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: of their ideology, you can get them to do incredible things.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Deception versus perspective.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: What's that? 90% of the people out there, they're all
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: trapped in their own perception, in thinking emotionally. And emotions
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: are very likely wrong. So CIA trains us to recognize
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: and distrust our perception. And there's two really quick things
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: that you can do. Next, sad rat. an acronym. And
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: all of our marketing, all of our human interactions falls
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: into the same SADRAT process that I learned at CIA
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: because the human condition is so predictable. So SADRAT stands
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: for systems. And it's the reason my company has grown
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: 300% every year for the last three years.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: I want to know more. Was there any situations where
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: you felt your life was at risk? What do you
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: think about what's going on at the moment with geopolitics?
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Do you think we're already engaged in a form of
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: World War III? And then why are you going to
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: try and leave America in 2027? It's absolutely crazy to
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: me that so many of you have decided to watch
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: our show. And so many of you have decided to
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: subscribe to our show. We now have 5 million subscribers
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: on YouTube, which is a number that I just can't comprehend.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: And it's a dream that I absolutely never could have had.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: We started the Diary of a CEO just over three
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: years ago now. And in my wildest expectations, we might
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: have had 100,000 subscribers by now. So you can imagine
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: how shocked I am that so many of you have
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: chosen to tune into these conversations every week. and spend
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: some time with us. So thank you. And I made
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: a deal with you. I made a deal that if
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: you subscribe to this show, that we would continue to
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: raise the bar. And in 2024, we're going to raise
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: the bar like never before. I've been working for the
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: last nine months on a surprise for all of you
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: that have subscribed to this show. And I'm very excited
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: to deliver that for you. The production's going to change.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: We're going to go even further with our guests and
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: we're going to tell even more global stories. So as always,
• 2:32
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• 2:35
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• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Let's get on with the episode. Andrew, you're well known
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: for your time in the CIA because people are so
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: intrigued and compelled by it. How long were you in
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: the CIA?
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I was actually in the CIA for a comparatively short period.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: I was only in for seven years. many people make
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: a 30 or more year career out of CIA. So
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: it was really quite a small blip in terms of
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: my overall life. I wore the US military uniform for
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: seven years before that as well. So 14 years total
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: spent in service to the United States.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: And what is the CIA?
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: So the CIA is, the United States is intelligence, foreign
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: intelligence collection platform, their primary agency deemed with collecting foreign
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: secrets that have any kind of impact in American national security.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: So if you think about it, there are multiple what's
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: called intelligence agencies in what's known as the intelligence community
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: or the IC. CIA is just one of those 36-ish
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: community members in the IC. However, it is the one
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: charged with centralizing all of the intelligence collected, hence the
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: central intelligence agency. So it's the hub in a large
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: wheel of intelligence collection.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Is that what a spy is? Is it the same
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: thing as being a spy?
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: So I'll geek out with you a little bit here
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: because terminology is really very important. So there are spies
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: and spy is a vernacular that's used in common conversation
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: that doesn't really have a definition in terms of the
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: intelligence or espionage profession. You have handlers, you have assets
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: in terms of traditional espionage. Handlers are officers who collect intelligence.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Assets are foreigners who provide intelligence to the handler. So
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: a CIA officer or an MI6 officer, a Mossad officer,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: an MSS officer, depending on the country, these are officers
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: who collect secrets. They are therefore handlers. And then all
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: the people who provide them secrets are considered assets. Traditionally speaking,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: when you talk about a spy, some people think a
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: spy is an asset or a handler. either someone who
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: provides information or someone who collects information. And the term
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: spy is just confusing enough that oftentimes people will project
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: their own opinions on top of that word because they
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: don't understand the real nuance of espionage.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: So I thought of a spy as someone that goes
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: to another country and collects information secretly and then sends
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: it back to the country they came from.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: So technically that is an intelligence operative or an intelligence officer.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: also known as an operator or in media, an operative.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's also called an agent, right? An intelligence agent.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: These are all kind of terms that get nebulous, but
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  Speaker 1: what you're describing is a intelligence, a trained intelligence officer,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: no matter what country you're in, whether you're in, it
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter what intelligence profession you're in either, and there
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: are multiple types of intelligence. There's human intelligence, signals intelligence,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: measurements intelligence. Anybody who travels to collect information secrets on
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: behalf of their country is an intelligence officer.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Is that what you were?
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: That's what I was.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: You started a company after leaving the CIA called Everyday Spy.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: For someone that's just clicked on this podcast now, who's
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: trying to understand the value that they're going to get
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: from you by understanding the work that you do at
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Everyday Spy, what are they going to get from this conversation?
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: This conversation is designed to, for me, to be able
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: to explain how spy skills are have a very real
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: value in breaking everyday barriers. And that's the mission of
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: my company at Everyday Spy. We use spy education to
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: break barriers, social barriers, financial barriers, educational barriers, cultural barriers,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: language barriers. If there is a barrier in life, I
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: made it my mission in my company to break that
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: barrier using a proven real world skill or technique from espionage.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: And what sort of means is that to what end?
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: So if I'm, you know, the average Joe listening to
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: this now, When you say break barriers, what are those
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: barriers that I'm going to be able to break in
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: my life?
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: So I intentionally use the term breaking barriers because we
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: all have different barriers. What the reality of life is
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: that we all come into barriers that are similar, but
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: we come into those barriers at different times. For some people,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: there's a barrier in income that they're born into. For
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: other people, the barrier that they're born into is that
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: they don't have a father. For other people, they come
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: into a financial barrier when they're 18. and they have
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: to leave home. Some people don't ever know financial barriers,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: but they do know educational barriers because they suffer from
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: dyslexia or they suffer from ADHD. There are people who
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: have barriers that are due to anxiety. The reality is
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: there's really 12 or so barriers that we will all
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: experience in our life, but we will experience them at
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: different times. For some of us, it won't happen until
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: we become parents. For others, it happens as soon as
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: we hit adulthood. The idea is that CIA is extremely
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: familiar with And what they teach us as officers going
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: through their training programs is not just the details of tradecraft,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: but it's really to understand that any barrier that we
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: as individuals face, they can get us through. But we
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: can also predict barriers other people will run into. And
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: if you know somebody else's barrier and you understand their
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: barrier better than they do, when you help them through
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  Speaker 1: that barrier, they will tell you secrets.
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  Speaker 2: They will tell me secrets.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: As part of your training to become a CIA officer,
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: you must have learned how to manipulate people. That seems
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: to me, from what I know of spies, pretty foundational
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: to what it is to be a successful spy and
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: to get information from someone else. In this conversation today,
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: are we going to learn how, through your training, you
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: were taught to get information from people and make them
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: do what you wanted them to do?
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Yes. And I'll be very frank here. I try to
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: exercise something called radical transparency. If you want to manipulate people,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: you will learn that from this conversation. If you want
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: to manipulate people, I will teach you how to manipulate people.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: In just a simple conversation, you can learn those skills.
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  Speaker 1: But the thing to understand that's the most important is
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: that whether you want to manipulate or not, others are
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: manipulating you just because you don't know what they're doing, right?
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: The problem with being an intelligence operator is that to
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: achieve the things you have to achieve, you sometimes have
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: to do things that you don't wanna do. In being
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: a business owner, what I've discovered is that many business
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: owners struggle because they feel like they have to do
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: things they don't wanna do. They feel like they have
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: to be sleazy. They feel like they have to be tricky.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: They feel like they have to mimic, you know, shyster
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: bad guy business owners, right? The flip side, if you
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: think of a coin, One side of that coin is manipulation.
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  Speaker 1: And that coin has value. Manipulation has value. But the
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: other side of the same coin is motivation. If you
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: can get people to do what they want to do,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: then you have motivated them. And that is worth just
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: as much. as getting people to do what you want
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: them to do, which is manipulating them.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: We'll get into all of that, but I want to
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: understand where you came from, because I think this is
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: quite pertinent to both your work as a CIA officer,
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: but also there's really interesting sort of psychological elements to
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: why the CIA chose you that are deep within your
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: childhood story. Going right back to the beginning of your life,
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: what is the most important context we need to understand
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: to understand you?
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I think the most important thing to understand from my
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: childhood is that I was raised by my mom. My
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: father died. My father was killed before I was born.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: He died in a violent crime in California. I didn't
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: know him ever. And my mom had to start life
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: with a newborn son, not just as a single mom,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: but also as the single mom of a man who
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: was killed in a crime. Um, so it was my
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: mom and my grandma that raised me from very young.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: My mom is a woman of color. She's she's Latina.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: My father was American Indian. So they, there was an
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: element of racial diversity in 1980 when I was born
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: that also kind of played a role in all of that.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: And the reason that that's important is not because of
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: what happened in the past. It's because from that foundation,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: my mom married a Caucasian man who became my stepdad.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: who became my adopted father as well. And I had
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: to kind of learn how to come of age or
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: literally come of age in a household where I didn't
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: know my father. I had a stepdad who was Caucasian
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: with two half sisters who were Caucasian. And my stepdad's
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: whole goal was to just pull my mom as far
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: away from her roots as possible because he didn't want
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: to deal with all the drama that comes from being
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: part of a Catholic Latin family. And my mom was
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: all for that, but Nevertheless, like that was, that was
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: the kind of soup that I came out of.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: What were the needs that were going unmet in your
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: life at that point?
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: You do not ask easy questions, man. So, uh, uh,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: I was not, I did not feel loved growing up.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: I did not feel loved. My mother loved me. And
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: I know logically and rationally that she loved me, but
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: my mother was a cold woman. She was focused on
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: career success. She was focused on feminism. She was focused
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: on other things. As an adult now, my sisters and
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: I often reflect on the fact that we think our
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: mom was the kind of woman that didn't want to
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: be a mom, but it was expected of her to
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: be a mom. So therefore she became a mom. So
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of love. There wasn't a lot
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: of emotional support. There was plenty of academic support. And
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: it was always hard because the academic support came, I think,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: as a way of making sure that they didn't have
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: to provide the other support. Because if you have an
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: academically successful student who turns 18, they can get the
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: fuck out of the house and you can have your
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: life back. And I think that was the mission for
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: my mom was just academic success, academic success. Be successful
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: so I don't have to take care of you because
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: I'm not really good at this whole hugging, loving thing.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: And I just want you gone. So I feel like
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: that was my mom's My dad and my mom, I think,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: had a marriage that was based in a common set
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: of objectives, more so than shared love. And they were
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: just kind of pursuing those objectives. And I was fortunate
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: because from that, I was cultivated to be a hardworking
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: academic success. And that led to a full ride scholarship
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: and that led to success in other parts of life.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: But for sure it was, it was an un, it
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: left behind a trail of always wondering who, who, who
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: loves me in my family? Is love even important in
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: a family? Does it matter? Or am I being too
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: focused on this whole love thing? Uh, as an example,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: I tell this story because it's totally normal to me,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: but a lot of other people find it surprising. There
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: was a day where my mom pulled me aside. I
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: was having an argument with my stepdad and I went
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: to my mom looking for support and I asked her,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: support me. I was like, do you love me? Do
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: you love me or do you love dad more? And
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: she looked at me and she was like, of course
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: I love your dad more than I love you because
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: you're my son. I have to love you. You were
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: born to me. I must love you, but it's a
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: choice to love your dad. So I have to love
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: him more because it's a choice. And for me, I
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: will never forget that conversation. I'll never forget the look
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: on my mom's face. It was so simple and so
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: academic and so clear to her. And it's never been
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: something I could ever actually accept. And even now as
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: a husband and a father myself, I don't understand how
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: that was logically sound to her. I don't know how
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: you could ever actually prioritize who you love.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: All of that, as you've said, as the results resulted
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: in your academic success and your, your focus and all
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: of those kinds of things. But at what cost?
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, it makes you kind of fucked up, man.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: It makes you feel like, First of all, it makes
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: you feel like your secrets are justified. It makes you
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: feel like you must have secrets because there's nobody that
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: you can talk to about certain things. I remember for
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: many years, you can't take your love life to mom
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: and dad. You can't tell them the girl that you
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: think is cute. You can't talk to them about not
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: getting picked to go to the prom dance or anything
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: like that. You can't talk about that with them because
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: they don't care. And you can't trust your sisters. You
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: can't trust your mom. You can't trust your dad. You
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: can't trust the people in your own house. So because
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: you can't trust them and because you can't take certain
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: things to them, you must keep secrets. And since you
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: must keep secrets, you must be allowed to keep secrets.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: There must be secrets that are totally acceptable that they
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: are also keeping from you. So I grew up in
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: a world where secrets were something that was very normal.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: And then from that, you start to learn That if
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: secrets are normal, then lying must also be normal and
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: totally acceptable. So there's a level of sociopathy that develops
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: when you feel like you're on your own. And that's
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: something that most people out there who are loners, who
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: have grown up in that world, they learn to understand
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: that there are certain elements of social behavior that are
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: not culturally acceptable. But as long as you don't talk
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: about them, you can practice them. So that's a big
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: part of what I learned personally was that secrets, how
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: to keep secrets, that secrets are normal, how to lie,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: how to lie without being caught. And more importantly, that
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: there is a very real difference between the people who
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: are raised in a world where they trust people, they
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: trust others. And because they trust others, they have a
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: built-in vulnerability, a built-in deficiency. compared to the people who
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: are raised in a world where they don't trust others.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Because when you're raised in a world where you don't trust,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: you can always learn to trust. But when you're raised
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: in a world where you trust first, it's very difficult
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: to train that person to know when to not trust
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: someone else.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: How do you feel about that wiring that you have
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: because of that experience?
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's sad. I'm doing everything in my power
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: to not wire my children the same way that I
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: was wired. So I do believe that there is a
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: faulty wiring that happened. But at the same time, it's
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: been very valuable to me. It's been very productive and
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: valuable in terms of what I've been able to experience,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: what I've been able to see and do financially, economically, relationally.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: I benefit and value. And this is a big challenge
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: that I have is as much as I sit here
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: telling friends and like I'm telling you secrets, because this
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: is what happens. We tell people secrets when they trust you.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: When I share with you the challenges of growing up,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: it's important to me that I don't sound like I'm
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: complaining or whining because I had a fantastic foundation for
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: success after that. But I defined success in all the
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: ways that I was trained to define success, financially, economically, empirically,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: not based on how I feel internally.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Have you had to do a lot of work to
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: counteract the potential consequences of that wiring as you become
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: an adult and a father and all of those things.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: It's something I think about a lot. I think I've
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: got my own pretty fucked up wiring and I'm scared
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: now because I'm on the footsteps of becoming a dad myself.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm with a partner, been with her for
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: four years. We're talking about kids right now. And I think,
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Jesus Christ, like there's a really, you almost can foresee
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: that there's a really high possibility I'm going to fuck
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: up as a dad because my brain is wired towards
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: like validation and work career success and I'm a bit
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: of a workaholic. And so have you had to do
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: a lot of work on that? Absolutely.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: So the first thing I'll say is you will fuck
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: up as a dad. We will all fuck up as parents.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: The question is how big will we fuck them up?
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: And I'm working very hard to make sure that the
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: way that I fuck up my kids is in small
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: ways that they can fix in small ways. But I
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: already know like the sins of the father pass on.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: So I'm just trying to minimize what I pass on
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: that's negative and and maximize what I pass on that's positive.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: The additional layer that is unique to myself and all
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: professional intelligence officers is that when we are recruited into
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: intelligence service, specifically when CIA recruits field operators, it's fairly transparent.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: They tell you that you were recruited because you are
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: a little fucked up. They tell you that you were
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: recruited because of a certain psychological profile that makes it
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: so that you pragmatically view things like secrets and lies.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: There's a few different terms. We call it moral flexibility.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Depending on the situation, there are some things that I
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: would deem immoral, but to do them in a different
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: situation is totally acceptable. And that's just something that's been
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: wired to me since I was a kid. But CIA
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: understands how to take advantage of that, how to use
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: that in a way that benefits American national security. There's
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: also an element of high performance that comes from being
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: wired a certain way. So there is a tie between
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: childhood trauma and high performance. It's a well-known, it's a
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: documented connection. But CIA has learned, as has MI6 and
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Mossad and all the other intelligence services of the world,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: they've learned that when you train someone who has just
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: the right amount of childhood trauma high performance, when you
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: get your hands on them at the right time and
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: the right period of their life, they can be trained
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: to become extremely loyal, highly productive field operators that end
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: up spending 30 plus years in service to their nation.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: When did they get their hands on you?
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: They recruited me when I was 27 years old, coming
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: out of the military in 2007. I was looking for
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: whatever the next step was going to be. And that
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: was when I was approached by a CIA recruiter.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: I heard that you got a pop-up on your computer screen. Yeah.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Back in the day, I was actually applying. I was
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: a nuclear missile officer for the CIA, or excuse me,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: I was a nuclear missile officer for the Air Force.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: And a nuclear missile officer in the Air Force controls
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: nuclear ICBMs. So I wore the The little ring. Wait, wait, wait.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: What's a nuclear ICBM?
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: So a nuclear ICBM is a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: So the large missiles that carry nuclear warheads for mutually
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: assured destruction, nuclear war type of stuff.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: So you controlled the nuclear missiles?
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I was half of who controlled them. I wore one ring.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Somebody else wore a different ring. And that was how
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: a nuclear missile got launched.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: What does the ring do?
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: So the ring is a key. On the end of
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: it is a key. And when you get a nuclear
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: code that comes in, the code, you put it into
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: an old school computer system, and the two of you
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: take your key ring and you insert it into the
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: silo operating system. And then you turn in unison. And
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: when you turn in unison, it launches a nuclear weapon.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: How did you get yourself to the point in life
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: at 27 years old where you're holding a nuclear key
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: around your neck?
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I would love to say it was a series of
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: good decisions, but it wasn't. I did what I was told.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: That's how I got there. I did what I was
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: told when I was in high school and I got
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: good grades. And then my mom told me that the
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: best school of all the universities that chose me, the
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: best school I should go to is the Air Force Academy.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: So then I accepted a full ride scholarship to the
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: United States Air Force Academy where I did what I
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: was told. And I graduated as a lieutenant. And then
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: I followed what the Air Force told me to do
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: from there. And they They told me to learn how
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: to fly. And then they told me that they needed
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: me to work in nuclear and space weapons instead. So
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: then I went to that school and I did well
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: at that school. And I ended up just kind of
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: climbing the ladder. I did what I was told. And
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: then one day I was, I found myself a hundred
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: feet underground, miserable. It's a horrible job.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: So in 2007, when I was a nuclear missile officer,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: You sit in a launch control capsule, an LCC, that
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: sits 100 feet underground. And you sit there on a
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: 72-hour shift with one other person, the other person who
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: holds the other key. And then you are one nuclear
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: crew of maybe 30 different nuclear crews who are all
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: on deployment at the same time. So at any given
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: time in one Air Force base, there's 60-ish people underground
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: for 72 hours at a time. And then in different
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: missile base, there'll be a different 60 people underground. And
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: your whole job is just to sit there and wait
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: for nuclear war to break out. And obviously nuclear war
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: hasn't broken out and hopefully it never will break out.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: So as you sit there underground, not seeing sunlight, and
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: as you sit there in a capsule with one other
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: person that you very rarely ever like, you have a
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: lot of time to reflect on what am I doing?
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: What am I doing with my life? I'm a redundancy
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: of a redundancy of a scenario that we all are
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: working very hard to make sure never happens. Is this
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: a productive life? Like, am I making a difference? Am
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: I leaving a mark in history, sitting here, not launching missiles,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: waiting for a message to come in that I already
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: know isn't going to lead to nuclear war? Like, it's
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: a very difficult and thankless job that's Even right now,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: as you and I are having this conversation, there are
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: some 200 Americans sitting underground doing that exact job. And
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: that's just in the United States. Every country that has
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: nuclear weapons is doing the same thing.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: If an order had come in that instructed you to
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: launch a nuclear weapon, would you have done it?
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. That's what you do. The other thing that's important
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: to understand is we're redundancies of redundancies. So we don't
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: know if an order says... to launch nuclear weapons. We
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: just know that an order comes in that says to
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: insert the keys and turn them. And if it's a
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: valid order that comes in, then the machine will let
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: us insert our keys. We will turn our keys and
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: then the machine will do what the machine does. Sometimes
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: that order that's coming in is saying launch nuclear missiles.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Sometimes that order that's coming in is just a drill
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: to make sure that the two people in the capsule
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: turn their keys.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, really? So you never know the difference.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: We're just a redundancy of a redundancy, man.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: It seems hard to me to understand how someone would
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: stay in that job for a long period of time.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: So they must have really high attrition.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: They have shockingly low attrition because they do such a
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: good job of psychologically identifying the right people for that job.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Were they scouting you, do you think, from a very
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: early age to eventually go into the CIA?
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: No, I don't believe so. I think CIA is far
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: too practical to do anything that requires scouting people from
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: a young age. I think What more realistically happened is
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: that they had a very simple algorithm that they had
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: applied to every government website so that when people of
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: a certain profile applied to a job on a government website,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: then they'd get a flash on their screen, just like
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: I did, that said, hey, we appreciate your application. We'd
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: like to have a different recruiter contact you for a
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: different opportunity.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: What were you applying for on that government website when
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: that pop-up came up?
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was applying for the Peace Corps. I was
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: trying to get into the US Peace Corps. Because after
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: spending two years underground waiting to launch nuclear missiles, I
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: thought that it'd be great to get out of the
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Air Force and go do the exact opposite. Kind of
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: like if you've ever had a really bad breakup, you
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: go looking for the exact opposite of the person you
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: just broke up with. That's how I felt.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: And the Peace Corps does sort of humanitarian work around
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: the world.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Exactly right. I mean, I was looking to teach children
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: English in Africa or save orphans or do microfinance or
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: build huts. Like I was looking to... Do something that
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: built the world up instead of just waiting to tear
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: the world down.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: You get this pop-up as you're applying and it says
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: another recruiter wants to speak to you or something. What's
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: to that effect? What happens then?
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: So that's when being a 27-year-old single guy kicks in
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: and you think to yourself, there might be something better.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: So once you think to yourself, there might be something better,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: it's really easy to say, yes, I'll wait. And that's
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: all the screen was asking me to do is just
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: pause my application for 72 hours. So it's easy to
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: click yes. And then you fall out of that website
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: and you're just on hold for 72 hours. Either a
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: better opportunity is gonna happen and someone's gonna call me
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: or no one's gonna call me and I can come
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: right back and finish my application. But just to say
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: no means to miss the opportunity. And that wasn't me.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: And then within 72 hours, you get a call presumably?
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: Within 24 hours, I got a call. Yeah, I got
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: a call from an unlisted number. It just said 703.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: And there was a woman on the other end of
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: the line She gave me a first name, but I
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: don't remember what her first name was. And she basically
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: confirmed who I was and confirmed that I was applying
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: to the Peace Corps, asked me if I'd be open
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: for other government opportunities. And then she said that there
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: might be opportunities in the national security sector that I'd
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: be interested in. And she'd like to send me an
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: airline ticket and a hotel reservation and a rental car
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: reservation to come up to DC to hear more about
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: the job.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: What did you think at that point?
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: I thought it was a prank call. I thought that
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: the call wasn't real. I thought that the call was
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: maybe it was some kind of gimmick or maybe it
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: was something else, or it just didn't sound real. Especially
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: not when she said she was going to like send
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: me a paper airline ticket and she was going to
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: send me all this stuff in the mail overnight FedEx.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: But then it showed up. And then when it showed
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: up again, that 27 year old single male kicked in
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: and I was like, well, now I have a ticket.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Let's see where the ticket goes. And let's go to
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: the reservation counter at the rental car desk and is
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: this a real rental car reservation? It's a real reservation.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Is there a real hotel? And then you just kind
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: of follow the breadcrumbs.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: The rental car reservation is real. The airline ticket's real.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: You fly out there, you land. What happens next?
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: You get another phone call that says, Hey, did you
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: get in safe? And then they tell you the address
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: for where you're supposed to show up the next day.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: And then you go, it's a nondescript building and you
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: walk in. And for me, I walked in, there were
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: 10 or so other people in the waiting room. None
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: of us really knew what we were there for. We
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: all knew that we were there for something related to
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: a government job. Everybody's dressed essentially the same way. And
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: you find out that this person's in finance and that
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: lady came from social work and whatever else it might be.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: And then eventually somebody comes out and calls you into
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: a room. And then you go through the first, what
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: we call the first round of interviews. And it's just
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: kind of like a fit to see what you're interested in,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: what you're not interested in, et cetera. And it was
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: at the end of that first interview that the lady
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: said to me that I might be a good fit
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: for the National Clandestine Service at CIA, which I didn't
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: know what that was at the time. And then she
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: basically broke it down and she was just like you
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: and I did at the beginning of this conversation. She
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: was like, essentially, we want you to be a field
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: officer or what you might know from the movies as
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: a spy. And of course, for me, I was... I mean,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: my seven-year-old self was like, I'm going to be a what? Like,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: you want me to be a spy? You want me
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: to like drive fancy cars and wear tuxedos and always
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: have a beautiful woman on my side? Like, sign me
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: up for that. I mean, starving children in Africa can wait.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: I want to do that. But then, of course, comes
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: the byline afterwards where she's like, you can't tell anybody
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: that this is what you're now applying for. We're going
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: to move you on to the second phase of interviews.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: We need you to go back to your hotel and
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: go back to... Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana and
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: live your normal life. And if anybody asks you why
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: you're out here, just tell them that you came out
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: here applying for a government position and you don't know
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: whether or not you're going to get it. And in
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: the meantime, we'll be in touch.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: And then they get in touch again.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: And then they get in touch again. And then you
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: go through multiple more rounds of interviews. So they fly
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: you usually back to the DC area. And then the
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: interviews just get kind of more intense. You go from
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: a fit interview to a kind of like a test,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: like an interview that's more of like a test with
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: somebody else. They ask you scenario-based questions. They give you puzzles.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: They ask you some light psychological stuff.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: When you got that letter in the post saying that
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: you'd been offered a role, how did you feel? Great. Yeah? Yeah.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: I felt like I had done everything right. I felt like,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, there was a part of me that says,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: and I still kind of follow this mantra, like who
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: gets to do this? So that felt amazing. And then
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: there was a ton, to use your word, a ton
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: of validation. Like now I get it. Now I know
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: why I went to a college I didn't like. Now
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: I know why I put up with a stepdad and
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: listened to my mom. And I don't need love and
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: you don't need support and you don't need a family
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: that cares about you as a person. All you need
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: is to check the fucking boxes because this is where
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: you get to go when you check the boxes. And
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: now that I've checked all the boxes, I'm free. So
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: it doesn't really work that way because when you're hired,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: because you're, you check boxes, it just, the boxes just change,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: but you still have to check the boxes.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: And at that point it goes from interview to, I guess, training.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: During that whole interview process, you're not allowed to tell
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: anyone I'm guessing. Right. Even your family. Nope. So what,
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: what'd you tell your family that you've been up to
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: during that period?
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: So this is what's nice about their recruitment process. Remember
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: I told you earlier that I, I accepted as a
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: child that there are times that you have to lie.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: And there are secrets that you have to keep. This
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: was just a secret I had to keep and a
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: lie that I had to tell. So I told my
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: family that I was looking at getting out of the
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Air Force. I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'd go work for the government. And I was
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: going to DC to do some government interviews. I was
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: never close to my family. From the time I left
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: for the Air Force Academy at 18, I mean, I
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: went home maybe once a year. Every time I tried
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: to go home, it was always a kerfuffle because my
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: parents didn't want to buy the airline ticket because it
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: was expensive and I didn't have money to buy an
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: airline ticket. So I had to ask them and It
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: was the same song and dance every Christmas holiday, right? Like,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: I'd like to come home. I don't have any money. Well,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: we don't have any money either. Maybe you shouldn't come home.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: So it was really easy to be 27 years old.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Almost 10 years after that, I'm not really close to
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: my family. So I tell them as little as possible.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I had a girlfriend at the time. She was a
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: great girlfriend, but she wasn't as great as being a
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: CIA officer was going to be, right? I had friends
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: at the time, but they weren't as... cool as being
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: a CA officer would be, right? So it was really
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: easy to just start just cutting off the branches of
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: my social tree because I was going to go do
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: something awesome. I didn't need anybody else.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: Did the CIA tell you to disconnect from these people
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: at all?
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: They told you that you would have to eventually. And
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: they explain how you're going to go into covert service.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: If you're going to go into clandestine service, you can't
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: take a whole Rolodex of people with you. So one
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: of the things that they asked during our psychological evaluation was,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: you know, how much do you need close relationships and
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: close peers? And how do you feel about severing ties
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: with what we sometimes call like secondary or tertiary relationships, friends,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: college friends, like a primary relationship is your spouse. A
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: secondary relationship is all your close friends. A tertiary relationship
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: is somebody who you work with. So like, how do
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: you feel about cutting off all those not so important relationships?
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: And for me, it was easy, right? I was like, let's,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: let's go. I'm going to go do something amazing. I
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: don't need college friends to go do something amazing.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: Do you think your appearance and ethnicity factored into the
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: CIA's decision to recruit you?
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. In 2007, so just to take everybody back, 2007
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: was six years after 9-11. It was three years after
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: the CIA 9-11 commission or the US government 9-11 commission
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: came out, which basically said that everything CIA had been
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: doing up to 2001 was wrong. They were focused in
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: a Cold War era. They were not focused on terrorism.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: They were focused on Ivy League, Caucasian graduates as being
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: the next generation of CIA officer instead of diversifying for
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: a diversified world. So without a doubt, they were looking
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: for different people. They were looking for young people, colored people,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: LBGTQ plus people who could connect with the modern day
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: threat around the world. And then I think on top
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: of being brown and ethnic- I also came with a
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: huge government file because I had been part of the
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Air Force since I was 18 years old. So they
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: knew everything about my health, everything about my mental health,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: everything about my academic, athletic performance in college. They knew
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: everything about me. And I think that's part of why
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: my onboarding process took about nine months, where the typical
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: onboarding process takes about 18 months.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: How do they train you to become a CIA agent?
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: So a lot of the training part is classified still,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: so I can't talk about it. But there's a school
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: that we go to. It's fairly publicly known, but I
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: can't acknowledge what it is and isn't. And we go
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: there for many months. And we basically were pulled out
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: of everyday life and were put into a controlled simulated world.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: And inside that simulated world, they kind of control what's
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: happening around us. So if you can imagine almost like
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: going from Being taken out of your apartment where you
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: live and now you're put into a different apartment But
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: the apartment that you're put into is part of a
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: giant game and somebody else controls the all the game
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: So they control the news that's on the TV and
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: they control You know the the cars that are on
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: the road and they control everything except the weather basically
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: so that they can create multiple different types of scenarios
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: where you exercise the skills that they taught you from
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: driving to first response first aid response to lying living
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: and working under alias identities, all that stuff. So you're
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: put into a very controlled environment for a long period
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: of time where they can test all of your trade
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: craft that you're taught.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: It's very expensive. It must be very expensive for them
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: to train a CIA agent.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Right. That's why they train us in batches. So there's
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: generally two to three batches a year that go through
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: different types of training. And there's different classifications of officers too, right?
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: So your analysts are different than your technical officers who
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: are different than your field officers. So what they'll do
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: is they'll batch you into, or at least what they
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: did in 2007 is they would batch you along with
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: your discipline and then send a batch to training. And
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: then everybody goes through the same lectures during the day,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: just like university. And everybody goes through a series of
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: exercises at different times of the day and different times
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: of the week. But essentially everybody goes through the same
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: curriculum and everybody has the same grades. And then those
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: Grades are all measured against each other and the bottom
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: performers are cut out and the top performers get to stay.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: That curriculum, what is involved in that curriculum? You mentioned
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: a few things there. Is learning how to kill people
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: involved in the curriculum?
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: No, that is not involved in the curriculum. Not at
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: the basic training level.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: Do they teach you that?
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: They teach some people that, but they don't teach everybody that.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: It depends on the discipline that you're part of. If
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: you're a paramilitary officer, you need to learn how to kill.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: And you need to learn how to kill in different ways.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Kill quickly, kill quietly. Kill with blunt weapons, clear with
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: bladed weapons, or kill with bladed weapons, kill with projectile weapons.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: So kill with explosives, you know, de-arm explosives. So it
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: all depends on the caliber, the level of officer that
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: you're kind of put into. So paramilitary, they must learn that.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: But your standard human intelligence field collector, they need to
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: learn how to live and work without being caught. So
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: if you kill somebody... It's a big deal. You might
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: get caught. So it's much easier to teach that person
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: how to manipulate, how to collect secrets, how to live
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: and operate without ever being detected. Whereas a paramilitary officer
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: doesn't need to learn all that.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: They taught you how to lie.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: They teach you how to lie.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: How do they teach someone how to lie?
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: It starts with a foundation of making sure that you
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: recruit people who are already liars. And then once you,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: when you're sitting across from a liar, you can start
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: to understand if they're a good liar or not very quickly.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: You've probably talked to people who are bad liars.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: I've talked to everything.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: So you know when someone's a bad liar. So from that,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: you can identify people who are good liars. And then
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: when you do find a good liar, you start to
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: teach them what they already naturally do that makes them
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: a good liar. And then you start to teach them
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: how to refine that skill. And you start to teach
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: them how bad liars operate and how you can detect
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: a bad liar and how you gain advantages with lies
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: and how to handle lies. As an example, because I
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: promised you skills, bad liars talk a lot. Good liars
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: talk a little because the more you talk, the more
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: you run the risk of undermining your own lie. Bad
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: liars make a lot of statements. Good liars ask a
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: lot of questions because if you ask questions, you're not
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: really disclosing anything about yourself. So if you've ever had,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: if you think back and you, if you remember ever
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: going to a party or ever having a date or
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: ever being in a social environment where there was somebody
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: there that made you feel so interesting, but you didn't
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: know anything about them, you were talking to a very
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: good liar.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: What about body language? Is that a factor in lying?
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. I mean, body language is a factor in everything,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: but body language is especially a factor in lying because again,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: going back to the idea of a skilled liar versus
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: an unskilled liar, A skilled liar knows how to appear
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: like they are telling the truth with their words and
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: with their body. Whereas an unskilled liar often has a
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: disconnect and their body will say a different message than
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: what their mouth is saying. Consider your stereotypical jock, your
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: standard European footballer or your American jock. A lot of
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: times they'll be portrayed as like somebody you like.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: They sit bigger than life and all this other stuff, right?
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Their body... shows confidence and openness. But then when they talk,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: they sound like idiots, right? I don't know. Sure. Like,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: you know, totally like, dude, that lady, like whatever. They are,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: there's a disconnect. Their voice does not demonstrate the same
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: confidence that their body demonstrates. So you know that that
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: person is lying. What they're lying about is not necessarily
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: just the content of what they're saying, but they recognize
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: they don't, they can't cognitively accept the fact that they
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: are in a position where they are telling an untruth.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: And that untruth at a minimum is that they are
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: not super confident and super comfortable. They are actually uncomfortable
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: and they are not feeling confident. And that's why they're
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: stammering over themselves.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: So when you align to someone based on your training,
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: would you think a lot about your body language? Yes.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: And what would you do? What would you, what were
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: the principles of making sure your body language wasn't letting
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: the cat out of the bag?
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. So one of the first things to do when
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: you're trying to lie to somebody, and again, we're now
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: talking about how to lie to somebody. You shouldn't want
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: to learn how to lie to somebody. You should want
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: to learn how to know if somebody is lying to you.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: But we always start this way where we want to,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: we're afraid to ask the real question, which is how
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: do I know if I'm being lied to? Because that
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: shows vulnerability. But if you want to learn how to
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: lie to somebody, the first thing you do is you
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: mimic the person. Look at you and I right now,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: we are mirrored. Are your hands... connected under the table?
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: So are mine. Are your feet crossed under your seat?
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: So are mine. We are mirrored right now, which means
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: when you look at me subconsciously, you see yourself. I
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: want you to see yourself in this exercise because if
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: you see yourself, your initial instinctive response is going to
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: be trust because who do you trust in the whole world?
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: You trust yourself. So the first step to being able
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: to lie effectively is to be able to mirror the
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: person you're lying to. If I was coming at you like,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: you know, right away, you're going to be like, I
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: don't know who this guy is.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: And similarly, if I was to be like.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: Just for people that are on audio, he's just like
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: doing different postures and body languages. So that are far
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: away from my own, like putting his hands on the table,
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: et cetera. So, okay. It makes sense.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: So we want to mirror first and you mirror because
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: mirroring creates a foundation of trust. Subconsciously, it creates a
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: foundation of trust. And then once you have that foundation
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: of trust, you just start. kind of pushing the envelope
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: more and more with the untruth or with the fabrication
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: that you're creating, the lie, right?
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: Is there anything else on the subject of telling a
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: lie to someone that's believable that we need to be
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: aware of in terms of skills?
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: Yes. So first, the whole idea about, there's two important
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: ideas that get glorified in social media that are just inaccurate.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: And the first is called eye movements. You can't actually
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: tell if somebody's lying to you based on where they
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: place their eyes. Because while there are certain elements of
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: eye movements that have biological relevancy, there's many, many more
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: things about eye movements that don't have biological relevancy, right?
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: So what I mean by that is if I ask you,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: what's your oldest memory? You just look to your left.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: It's natural to look to your left when you're from
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: a Western country because chronologically timelines start on the left.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: So when you ask somebody a question about time and
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: they look to the left, up, down, or in the middle,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: generally speaking, that has biological relevancy. So it's a low
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: probability that they're lying, but they still could be lying.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: When you ask somebody a question, they look to the
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: upper right or the lower right or wherever they might look.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: If there's not necessarily biological relevancy because they could be
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: looking up and to the right because down and to
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: the left, it's too bright.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: And they could be looking in any number of directions
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: because maybe they have a headache or maybe they have
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: something else going on. The ability to create some sense
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: of probability about why they're making the eye movements they're
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: making is too difficult. So you can't assess someone's honesty
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: or dishonesty based off of eye movements, even though you're
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: going to hear that you can from Instagram influencers and
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Discord and everywhere on the internet. You're going to hear
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: that there's some connection that you can make justifiably. It's
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: not true. The same thing is also true. So it
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: is also an untruth that you can rely on something
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: known as micro expressions. Micro expressions being the number of
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: times your eyes blink or the twitch in your face,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: or if you're sucking on your lips, these ideas that
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: get glorified through social media as indicators of deceit. The
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: truth is you don't know if someone is lying to
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: you until you have had enough time with the person
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: to establish what's known as a baseline. A baseline means
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: What's normal for you? So I'll just use you as
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: an example. 10 minutes before the cameras turned on, you
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: were a totally different person. Your energy is different. You're
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: so much more conversational. Like you are just, you're an
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: awesome friendly guy when the cameras are not on, but
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: you turn into an interviewer when the cameras turn on.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Totally rational, totally logical, makes total sense. That doesn't mean
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: that you're lying now and you were telling the truth then.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: It means that the environment has changed and nobody would
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: know that if there wasn't a baseline. Most people that
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: watch you don't ever know what you're like outside of
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: this baseline.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: So you have to get to know the person and
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: then understand the variance that's unusual to understand if they're
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: lying to you.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Exactly. We call it time on target. You need time
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: on target so that you can understand the delta, the
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: change between their baseline and whatever pressure you're putting them under.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: Was there any sort of consistent telltale signs that someone
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: was lying to you in an interaction? Like, you know
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: what I mean? You know, certain, you know, nervous things
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: that they do change, you know, what are those variances
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: that you might see that you go, this person's now
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: lying to me?
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So with unskilled liars, it becomes much easier because
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of times with skilled liars, with people who
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: have either learned how to lie through formal training or
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: people who have learned how to lie through the school
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: of hard knocks, when there's people who are skilled liars, liars,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: it's difficult to find generic tells. With people who are
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: unskilled liars, it's much easier to find generic tells. There
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: are people who you've heard of being on the hot seat.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: It's a phrase we use in Western culture pretty often.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: When someone is under pressure, we call them being in
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: a hot seat. When you've got an unskilled liar, they
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: can't stop moving their body. They're always uncomfortable and they
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: just keep moving and they keep twitching and they keep
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: fidgeting and It's like they're sitting in a hot seat.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: That is one of the biggest tells of an unskilled liar.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: And again, anybody who's ever had like a six-year-old or
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: an eight-year-old or a 12-year-old try to lie to them,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: they know what that looks like. They can't make eye contact.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: They do a lot of verbal noises that aren't actual words.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: They can't get comfortable. They keep moving around. They keep shifting. Shifty.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: All those words came from real world examples of an
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: unskilled liar trying to lie. But you don't need micro
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: expressions of the face or to know which way their
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: eyes are tracking in order to pick up on that.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: Going back to your training then, what were some of
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: the other most important transferable skills that you learned throughout
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: that process?
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: The most interesting and useful things that we learned during
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: training actually had to do with the psychological processes that
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: people go through and being able to understand the process
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: and then predict and identify when the process is happening.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: Those are the things that really make a huge difference. Yes,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: it's cool to learn how to do a dead drop.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: And yes, it's cool to learn how to detect surveillance
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: or how to drive a car through a roadblock. Those
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: are all very interesting things, but the most useful things
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: are the things that you can use all day, every
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: day through multiple types of interactions. And there are a
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: series of processes, a number of processes that we learned
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: that had to do with human psychology. One of those
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: processes is understanding the idea of core motivations. Core motivations are,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: remember how we talked about manipulation and motivation are two
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: sides of the same coin? When you understand all the
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: different options of the currency that you're working with, you
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: can work with it more effectively. So people are generally...
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: Despite age, race, creed, or religion, people have four basic motivations.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: And we call those four basic motivations. RICE, R-I-C-E, stands
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: for reward, ideology, coercion, and ego. Reward is anything that
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: you want. Money, free vacations, pat on the back, women, alcohol.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: If that's something that you want and me giving it
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: to you gives you what you want, then that's a reward.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: People do lots of crazy things for rewards.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: And these rewards change over time.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: And based on person.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: Okay. Right.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: The second primary motivator is ideology. Ideology is the things
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: that you believe in. People do crazy things for the
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: things they believe in, whether it's their religion, whether it's
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: their country, whether it's family, whether it's what they believe
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: is morally correct.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: So if you can assign, if you can speak to
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: somebody through the lens of their ideology, you can get
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: them to do incredible things. C is coercion. Coercion is
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: all the negative things, guilt, shame, blackmail, anything that you
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: do to force someone to take certain action by leaning
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: into the negative elements of motivation, which is also known
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: as manipulation, that falls under the C or coercion. And
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: then E, ego, is everything that has to do with
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: how the person views themselves. So oftentimes ego gets the
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: oversimplified into thinking that it's just people who have a
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: big ego, right? Somebody like Donald Trump, who has a
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: big ego, or you name the famous actor who has
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: a big ego. Ego is also people who don't have
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: big egos. Mother Teresa had an ego. She wanted to
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: sacrifice for other people. She wanted other people to see
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: her sacrificing for other people. That is also ego. So
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: with these four core motivations, you have a rubric, a process,
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: to understand why other people do what they do. If
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: you understand why other people do what they do, all
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: you have to do is connect what they care about
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: with what you want them to do, and you just
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: increase the probability of them doing what you want them
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: to do.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: Of these four core motivations, is there an order of
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: the strength that they have over people? So if you
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: were really trying to get someone to do something, you'd
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: focus on this core motivation over that one?
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely. Ideology is the strongest. Ego is the second strongest.
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: Reward is the third strongest. And coercion is the weakest.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: This is one of the things that movies get wrong.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Movies try to make it look like you can blackmail
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: somebody or hold a gun to their head and get
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: them to do what you want them to do. In
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: the real world, once you hold a gun to someone's head,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: they never trust you again. You can never get them
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: to do something twice. Whereas if you appeal to their ideology,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: doing this is good for your country. Doing this is
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: good for your family. Doing this is good for your health.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: If you can appeal to someone's ideology, they'll do what
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: you tell them to do for a long time because
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: they'll trust you.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: Is this really the essence of manipulation then?
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: That is the essence of motivation and manipulation. The same coin.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: You'll hear me come back to this because one of
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: the things that people really struggle with outside of intelligence
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: is they feel like they have to label things as
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: good or bad. When you have moral flexibility, you take
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: away good and bad. Everything just becomes a question of
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: utility or productivity. If you need someone to do something
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: and you can motivate them, then you should. But if
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: you need someone to do something and you can't motivate them,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: that's a green light to manipulate them because you still
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: need them to do what you need them to do.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: If you feel bad about manipulating somebody, you are not
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: going to do well in the intelligence world.
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: So you said the ideology is the strongest of the
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: four of the core motivations. How might you go about
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: finding out someone's ideology in the context of business and life?
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: A lot of times people will volunteer it to you.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: There's two ways. If you're a keen observer, people will
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: volunteer it to you. You've already volunteered that you are
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: ideologically predisposed to fatherhood. You've already talked about it. The
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: reason that you're worried about fucking up your kids that
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: you don't even have yet is because you're thinking about fatherhood.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: So clearly you are ideologically predisposed to what it means
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: to be a responsible father. You want to be seen
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: as a responsible father. That plays into your ego as well.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: So I'm sure when you're talking to your partner, if
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: you guys are already looking at where would we go
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: to school? Where would we live? What kind of diapers
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: should we use? If you're even thinking about that, you're
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: thinking about it through the lens of the ideology of
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: being an engaged, present, helpful, loving father, right? So people
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: will volunteer it. Your customer base will volunteer to you
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: what their ideologies are. They'll volunteer their politics. They'll volunteer
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: their pain from their childhood. They'll volunteer their pain from business.
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: If you listen.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: If you listen. The second way that you can get
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: to understand the ideology of your customer base is through
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: active marketing, the right kind of marketing, not mass marketing,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: not the kind of garbage that you see on Instagram
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: and YouTube about how to make people believe in your
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: brand because you use the right colors. But actual marketing,
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: where you present a message and that message was crafted
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: with an emotion behind it, people who respond to that
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: intentionally crafted message are showing what their motivations are because
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: they were clearly motivated enough by the message to take action.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: You've heard a lot of people talk about narrative, especially
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: in politics. There's You know, oh, there's the liberal narrative
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: and there's the Republican narrative and there's the conservative narrative
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: and the church narrative. And people talk a lot about narrative.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: Narrative is not the power in influence. The power in
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: influence actually comes from messaging. It takes two steps to
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: get to a narrative. It takes messaging first and then
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: messaging builds a narrative. If you think about messaging, messaging
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: is supposed to be an emotional thing. Just a statement,
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: just a message, just like a text message, right? Are
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: you afraid of being the kind of father that isn't
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: present for your kids? That creates emotion in the right
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: ideologically predisposed person. There's no woman out there who's going
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: to be motivated by that. She might be motivated to
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: tell her partner about that, but it's not going to
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: resonate with her like it resonates with me as a
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: father of young children. But that's just the message. Then
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: the narrative is not emotional in nature. The narrative is
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: logical in nature. So you use an emotional message to
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: communicate a logical narrative. Are you afraid of being the
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: kind of father that wasn't, that's not present for your child?
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: Oh man, that just like, that pulls at my heartstrings. Well,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: then all you have to do is sign up for
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: this app that reminds you every Sunday to read your
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: kids a story. And you're like, oh, That makes total sense.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: All I need is a reminder and I'm going to
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: be a good dad. And that's messaging and narrative. The
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: same thing happens in politics. The same thing happens in geopolitics.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: The same thing happens the whole world over. Because in
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: the intelligence world, we understand messaging and narrative. We know
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: how to use messaging and narrative. It's how you elect
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: a president. It's the reason that Saudi Arabia went to
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: war with Iran over Yemen. Everybody understands at a national
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: security level The idea of creating a message or a
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: narrative using emotional messaging. But when it comes to business,
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: people don't get it yet. They haven't learned that lesson
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: yet because they've all been taught through an MBA program
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: or something else that you sell toothpaste by creating more
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: toothpaste with brighter colors on more shelves.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: Thinking about ideology and everything you just said there, has
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: your experience over the last, I really made you rethink
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: and look at the world entirely differently? Because if you
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: are so focused and able to detect and understand messaging
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: and narrative, you must just see it everywhere you go
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: in everything you do.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: Right. So there were two big aha moments for me.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: And the first was in the very beginning parts of
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: my training at CIA. I mean, when I went through
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: all of the CIA recruiting process and all of my
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: time in the military, I just felt like I was
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: doing the right thing. I just felt like I was
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: doing a good job. I felt like I was special, right? Like, wow,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: I must be super special because I'm getting picked for
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: the National Clandestine Service. So I felt like I was
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: doing everything right. And then I actually ended up going
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: through my training program where they confirmed that I actually
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: was broken in certain ways. I was high performing because
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: I had trauma as a child. I lie and I
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: steal and I have no problem with sociopathy because I'm
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: not mentally healthy, right? Like that's basically what they confirmed.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Like you're wired in a certain way that's really useful,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: but you're actually not neurotypical. You're not successful in the
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: way that you thought you were successful, but you are
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: still very useful. And oh, by the way, you're even
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: more special because now you work for CIA. So don't
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: ever stop working for CIA because they know that what
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: drives us is our ideology. Right? Our ideology and then
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: our ego. So they hook us that way. So for me,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: that was my first big aha moment because up until then,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: I always thought maybe I understood the world, but nobody
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: else seemed to understand it the way I understood it.
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: Like I could see the hypocrisy in high school and
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: I could see the hypocrisy in my mom and my dad,
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: and they would do things that were different than what
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: they would tell me to do. And I don't understand
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: how is the customer always right. But then like sometimes the,
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: the company wins the lawsuit. Like it doesn't make sense. How, how,
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: how is there a legal structure, but criminals don't go
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: to jail in, if there's a legal structure, like I
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: remember seeing it all. And thinking that it didn't make sense,
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: but never actually being confident enough to say anything about
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: it because it was a secret and I didn't feel
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: comfortable sharing that secret. CIA then taught me what you're
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: seeing is actually the world as it really is. And
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: let's train you to show you and give you a
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: vocabulary to understand what you're seeing. Let's teach you about
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: human psychology so you understand why it works the way
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: that it works. Why everybody sees it and nobody talks
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: about it. So that was my first big aha moment.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: And then my second big aha moment came when I
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: left CIA and I was unemployed for like six months
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: living in my in-laws converted garage with a one-year-old child,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: wondering how the fuck I did so many things so
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: wrong that I couldn't get a job, even though I
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: was just part of the CIA. And in that time,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: feeling like just the world's biggest loser, The only skill
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: that I could lean on was what the CIA had
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: taught me to do. So then I lied my way
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: into a fortune 10 company and all of a sudden
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: I wasn't a loser anymore. And once I realized that
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: I could use CIA skills to succeed in business, that
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: was my second big aha moment. So now everything I see,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: I see through a lens of CIA skills in a
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: business world.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: Perception versus perspective was one of the other things that
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: I've heard you talk about was quite a big, I guess,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: shift in understanding, but something that the regular person doesn't
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: really understand. Yeah.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: So the idea of perception and perspective, I have to
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: define them first, right? Perception is what you believe you see.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: Where you sit is how you perceive the world around you.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: Perspective is how other people see you. where you're sitting.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: So when I think about us right now across the
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: table from each other, my perception is what I see
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: of you. Your perspective is very different than my perception, right?
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: At a minimum, I'm looking at you with a background
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: that's different than when you're looking at me with a background.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: So the benefit, the advantage that CIA gives its field
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: officers is that it trains us to recognize and distrust
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: our perception. Because perception really only comes from one source,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: and that is your own five senses. You are the
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: source of information for your perception. So for anybody who's
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: ever seen like a little pile of socks in the
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: lower left-hand corner and they thought it was a rat
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: and they jump until they realize it's socks, that is
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: your perception lying to you. Perspective means that you get
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: data objectively from the world around you. So if you're
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: in your room and you see a pile of black
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: in the corner, your perspective tells you, this is your room.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: There's never been a rat in your room ever before.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: That pile in the corner is probably something like socks.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: Your perspective keeps things objective. Perception makes things very subjective
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: or very emotional. So CIA trains us to lean into
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: our perspective, gain perspective, think about things objectively, because if
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: you lean on your perception, You're leaning on emotions and
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: emotions are very likely wrong.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: How can I train myself to lean more on my perspective?
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: There's two really quick things that you can do. The
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: first is immediately distrust your emotions. Know right away when
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: you're feeling emotions. In other words, what I'm saying is
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: don't trust your gut, which is the antithesis of what
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: most people tell you to do. Most people say, trust
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: your gut. I'm telling you right now, your gut is
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: more often than not lying to you because your gut
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: is based on emotions. Your girlfriend's not about to dump you.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: Your boyfriend isn't cheating on you. You're not about to
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: go bankrupt. Nobody cares about the zit on your nose, right?
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: That is most likely true. There's a small chance that
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: your perception is correct. But when it comes to gambling,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: are you going to bet on the small chance or
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: the bigger chance? You should always gamble on the bigger chance.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: The bigger chance you only really understand through perspective. If
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: you have perspective on something, then you have multiple data
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: points on something. So when you feel yourself getting emotional,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: stop and let your emotion happen for a second, right?
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: I feel nervous. I feel anxious. I feel doubtful. Okay.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: I probably don't have to. You probably shouldn't because whoever's
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: sitting across the table from you, whoever's coming into the
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: room with you, whoever else is on the bus with you,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: they are all focused on a thousand different things. And
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: the things that they're focused on most likely don't include you.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: Sounds easier said than done.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: Is that a process of repetitions to train yourself to
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: think like that? It is.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: It takes momentum. So what ends up having to happen
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: is that you need to exercise it intentionally at first.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: And what happens is as you intentionally exercise your perspective
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: over perception, what will start to happen is you will
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: start to see that what you were worried about doesn't happen.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: And then once you see it not happen, once you
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: see your perspective give you the correct information over your perception,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: once you see that happen once, then it starts to
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: gain momentum. And then it happens again and it gains
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: more momentum and more momentum and more momentum until the
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: time comes that you realize it's much easier. But it is,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: it's a learned skill. You have to learn to think
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: objectively instead of subjectively. Think rationally instead of emotionally. And
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: a big part of what helps you do that is
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: understanding that 90% of the people out there, they're all
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: trapped in their own perception. They're all trapped in thinking emotionally.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: They don't even know that there's an alternative. Just think
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: about this, man. The conversation we're having right now, the
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: people who are hearing this conversation right now, who have
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: never heard that there's a difference between perception and perspective,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: are already better equipped than all the other assholes who
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: have never heard this conversation. They're already one step ahead
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: of their competition. They're one step ahead of their spouses,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: their partners, their bullies. They're one step ahead of everybody
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: because now they can use the words perception and perspective,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: subjective and objective, emotional and logical and rational. They can
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: use these words to define how they want to think,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: even if they don't think that way yet. That's the
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: huge advantage to what CIA calls the trained and the untrained.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: Trained people at least are aware that there's an alternative option.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: Untrained people aren't even aware that there's an option. The
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: vast majority of people out there are what I call bobbleheads.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: They don't even know there's an option. They're completely unaware
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: of an alternative solution, an alternative process. So they're trapped
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: in their perception. They're trapped in their emotion. They're trapped
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: in their subjectivity. And that makes it so much easier
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: for people like you and me and everyone listening right
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: now to use rational, objective perspective to get those people
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: to do whatever we want them to do.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: You've had a lot of recent success in business, you know,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: with your company, Everyday Spy and other ventures that you've
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: been involved in. What are some of the fundamental skills
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: that you find yourself transferring directly from your CIA experience
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: every day when you're closing business?
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: At CIA, there's a saying at CIA that I realized
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: is also a saying in business that I didn't realize
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: until afterwards. And it's called kissing a lot of frogs.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: And it's a salesmanship term outside of CIA, where it
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: means that you have to call a lot of leads.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: You have to shake a lot of hands. You have
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: to make a lot of pitches before one of them
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: turns into a prince, right? At CIA, we have the
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: same concept, but for a different reason. Because finding a
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: person who is willing to tell you state secrets, willing
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: to risk their life to give away the secrets that
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: they were entrusted with. That's what an actual asset does, right?
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: When CIA sends a field officer to you name the country,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: when they recruit an asset from that country, what they
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: are actually recruiting is a foreign national who is a
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: local of that country, who has access to state secrets,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: who is willing to share those state secrets in exchange
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: for something else. money, alcohol, pornography, you name it, right?
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: Who knows what they're after, but your job is to
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: find the person who has secrets and give the person
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: the thing that they want in exchange for those secrets.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: That is a rare person to find. It is hard
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: to find a, a willing collaborator from a foreign country
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: who has access to secrets and is willing to share
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: those secrets with you in exchange for some kind of remuneration. Very,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: very difficult to find. But if you can find a spy,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: if you can find a traitor, you can make a sale, right?
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: The two skills are incredibly interconnected. So what I found
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: is that the process and the skills that we use
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: to find an asset translate immediately into business. Everything from
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: how you talk to the person so that you can
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: identify their core motivations, gaining perspective over that person's position
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: in life. If you can gain the perspective of your customers,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: you already know what your customer's thinking. You already know
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: what they want. You already know what their problems are.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: You know what their problems are going to be. Because
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: you can sit in their shoes, but they can't sit
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: in your shoes, which gives you the advantage. So the
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: process in espionage is a process called SADRAT, S-A-D-R-A-T. Very
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: similar to the RICE acronym I gave you earlier. SADRAT
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: is a process of human intelligence conversion or collection. The
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: SADRAT process is actually the foundation to my company's sales process.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: All of our marketing for digital sales, all of our
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: human interactions, all of our upselling and everything else, all
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: falls into the same SADRAT process that I learned at CIA.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Only we use it for sales and we use it
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: for marketing.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: SADRAT.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: SADRAT stands for Spot, Assess, Develop, Recruit, Handle, and Terminate.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: That's what SADRAT stands for. And in classic U.S. government
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: acronym jargon, handle starts with an H and But in
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: the acronym, we use the letter A. Spot, assess, develop, recruit, handle, terminate.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: Spot means you find a potential client, right? Recruit means
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: you sell that client on your product in exchange for
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: your product in exchange for their money, right? Assess is
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: a step that we use at CIA to determine whether
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: or not somebody will be a good productive client, right?
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: Oftentimes in sales, people skip that step. They don't think
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: about a good productive customer. A good productive customer has
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: lifetime customer value. A good productive customer turns into referrals,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: turns into positive reviews and positive ratings. They have infinite
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: value more than just the money they give you in
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: exchange for your service. Assess is a critical piece in
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: the CIA recruitment process. It's also a very important piece
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: in my company.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you something which kind of validates that from
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: my own experience before we continue on that point of assess.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: In the first couple of years of my first company,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: we would just take any customer. And when we looked
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: at our financial record for the previous year, what we
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: noticed was that there was a cohort of customers that
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: were exceptionally valuable. And even though we'd won business with
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: this other set of customers, we were actually losing money
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: because they were only lasting for a month. So we
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: made this sort of framework to determine the customers that
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: we should actually say no to, basically, as you say,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: based on their lifetime value. And we figured out that
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: there's a certain type of brand that has a certain
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: size budget, that has a certain number of employees, that
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: is trying to solve a certain type of problem that
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: would be exceptionally profitable for us. So when we got
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: the inquiries coming through our website, we were now looking
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: at the inquiries through that lens and measuring them through
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: that lens because it became so clear that all of
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: our best customers fit into the sort of top right
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: of this sort of Venn diagram. And that's what I
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: hear when you say assess. And it was absolutely game-changing
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: for our business, but mostly entrepreneurs will just take every
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: customer and they think of all of them as having
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: the same potential and lifetime value.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You just nailed the word game changing. You can
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: play the game by just selling to anybody. But if
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: you want to change the game, you have to make
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: sure that you're selling to a very deliberate cohort of
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: customers because those customers not only yield more revenue per customer,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: but they bring in more customers like them, which is
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: where you get an exponential level of not revenue, but profit.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: Just like you said, you talked about a very profitable
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: group of clients, not a high revenue group of clients.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: So when you focus the conversation on profit instead of revenue,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: and you focus it on the right customer instead of
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: just customer, it's game changing for your company.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: So you would assess targets in the CIA using the
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: same sort of framework? Yep.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: Using the same framework because in recruitment operations, what you're
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: looking for is people who will be good assets in
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: the business framework, what you're looking for is people who
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: will be good customers. An asset and a customer are
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: almost the same thing, right? A customer is the most
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: important asset of a company. And what does a customer do?
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: A customer provides something of value in exchange for something
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: they want. What does an asset do? They provide something
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: of value in exchange for something they want. So it's
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: really a one-for-one comparison as long as you understand the
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: language of espionage and the language of business. So what
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: we did in espionage is Every time you're trying to
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: develop a source, you're always asking yourself the question, will
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: this source be a good, reliable asset in the future?
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: Will they do what we tell them to do? Will
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: they be able to provide information in the long term,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: not just once or twice, right? Is the information they
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: provide high value information? It's the same thing you're doing
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: with a customer. Will this customer do what I tell
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: them to do? Will this customer provide high levels of
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: value will this customer last for a long time?
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: You used the word espionage a few times there. What
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: is the definition of the word espionage?
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: Espionage is defined as the stealing of secrets. So espionage
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: is always illegal. There's no country in the world that
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: says that espionage is legal. So espionage is, it's when
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: CIA commits espionage, when MI6 commits espionage, they have a
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: carve out in their law as it pertains to their
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: own undercover clandestine services, So that a American can conduct
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: espionage overseas and not be prosecutable for that espionage under
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: US law if they're part of CIA. Same thing is
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: true in the UK. An MI6 officer can commit espionage
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: overseas and not be held accountable for it under British law.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: It's a carve out. Otherwise, if you're a British citizen
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: committing espionage anywhere in the UK or abroad, you are
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: punishable under UK law.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: I've heard you say that espionage really is about getting
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: people to let you into their secret lives. Correct. What
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: is our secret life?
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: So if you go back to an earlier part in
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: our conversation, we were talking about how when you trust people,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: you'll tell them your secrets, right? When you help people,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: they'll tell you their secrets. There are three lives that
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: anybody lives. We have a public life, a private life,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: and a secret life. The public life is the life
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: that we're all very familiar with, right? It's the life
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: that you live for everybody else to see. Not just
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: the people who watch your podcast and the people who,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: you know, work for you and your company, but your
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: public life also includes what you show your friends. It
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: includes what you show your church. It includes who you
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: are when you walk down the street. The clothes that
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: you choose to wear are a perfect example of your
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: public life. It's what you want people to think of you.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: Remember the E in rice. Mother Teresa wanted people to
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: see her a certain way. That is her public life.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: When you're in espionage, the goal is to get away
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: from the public life. Because if you want someone to
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: give you secrets, you can't get secrets from somebody who's
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: in their public life because they're protected in their public life.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: So you have to move them from public into secret.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: And the middle step between public and secret is private life.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: So you have to move somebody from public life to
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: private life. Private life is the life that your partner knows.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: Private life is the life that your closest friends know.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: Your mom and your dad may know it. It's the
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: people who know that your feet secretly stink. It's the
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: people who know that you don't really like to eat
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: oysters because whatever, they give you gas. That's all stuff
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: that's private. Your business partners don't know that. Your customers
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: don't know that. The people who watch your podcast don't
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: know that. And it makes the people in your private
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: life feel like they know you. And it's what makes
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: it so that for you in your public life, you
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: feel like you have meaningful relationships because- Instead of 200
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: people who you kind of know, now you've got 15
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: people who are in your private life. They know your
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: home address. They know your birthday. They know your favorite
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: ice cream. It makes you feel good. Inside of someone's
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: private life, they will share sensitivities, but they may still
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: not share secrets. Because it's one thing to secretly tell
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: somebody that you're worried about your business. You're worried about
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: the next person. revenue cycle. You're worried about maybe your
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: wife is having an affair. Those things are uncomfortable, but
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: you'll share them with people in your private life. But
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: you would never tell someone in your private life that
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: you're having an affair. You would never tell someone in
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: your private life that you hit your child. You would
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: never tell someone in your private life that your parents
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: sexually molested you or whatever else. Those dark, deep secrets
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: only live in your secret life, the life that's so
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: secretive that you don't even share it with the people
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: in your private life. What we're trained to do is
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: to follow a process that allows us to meet somebody
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: in their public life, get them to let us into
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: their private life, and then get them to let us
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: into their secret life. Because it's a very like simple
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: psychological process. to get into someone's secret life because secretly
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: we all want somebody in our secret life.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: Life.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: We all want to have someone we can tell our
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: secrets to. We just don't trust anybody in our private
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: life enough to get there. So if you know how
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: to leverage perception and perspective, use the four core motivations,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: when you know how to leverage SADRAT to create trust,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: you can actually get cut into someone's secret life. And
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: once you're in someone's secret life, they never stop trusting you.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: They never let you leave because it was so rare
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: and so hard to find you from their perspective. They
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: don't ever want you to leave. So even if you
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: break their heart, even if you lie to them, their
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: trust in you is so great and so strong and
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: so subconscious that you don't ever leave their secret life.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: I'm very keen to know how you get into someone's
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: secret life and how they might get into your own.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: And we've talked about some of those principles earlier. But
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: I was wondering if one of the techniques you might
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: use is by sharing your own fake secret life with
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: them to create an element of comfort. I think I've
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: heard and I think I know from doing this podcast
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: generally that vulnerability creates vulnerability to some extent. If you
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: open up to someone, they're more likely to open up
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: to you.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: Correct. So you're getting into now a form of mirroring,
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: much like we were talking about physical mirroring. Now what
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: you're talking about is emotional mirroring. There's a nuance there
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: because you have to know when to mirror appropriately because
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: if you're mirroring somebody else and they know that you're
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: mirroring them, then subconsciously they feel like they're in control.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: Okay, interesting.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: So what you need to do is you need to
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: mirror just enough to get to the place where you
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: can get them to mirror you. When they mirror you,
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: subconsciously they know that you're in control. So once you
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: are in a position of power or control in a conversation,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: then you can use the ploy of feigned vulnerability, which
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't quite use it the same way you did.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't make up something vulnerable. Instead I would, we
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: call it opening a window or opening a window that
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: opens a door. So we have these windows and doors
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: in conversation. So opening a door means completely changing a subject. right?
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: So if I were to just say right now, I
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: don't really like French food, that's opening a door. You
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: as the interviewer can go through that door or you
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: can close that door because it's not relevant, right? But
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: if I open a window about how I have certain
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: digestive challenges that I don't like to talk about, that's
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: a window. You can always come back and push on
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: that window and get me to go through a whole
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: new door of conversation, right? So when it comes to
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: vulnerability and conversing with somebody about vulnerability, you want to
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: present windows and not present doors. So instead of saying
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: something that's a fake vulnerability, you would say something that's
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: a real vulnerability that may not be applicable to you.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: Like perhaps you say something like, you know, I have
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: been having massive arguments with my wife recently, and sometimes
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: it makes me just want to leave home. That's real.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: That's not saying I'm going to leave home. It's not
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: saying what I'm arguing about. But if I believe that
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: in your secret life, you are also fighting with your
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: wife and you're living in a different room and you're
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: not telling anybody about it, I want to show some
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: sort of bridge between us that gets you to admit
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: that to me. Because if you can admit that to me,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: maybe I can find out more about what you're doing
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: to cope with the fact that your marriage is falling apart.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: Maybe you have a girlfriend, maybe you're on Tinder, maybe
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: you're doing something else, right? Maybe you're drinking. Maybe you're
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: doing drugs. I don't know. But I need you to
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: let me into that secret life. So I'm going to
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: present a window and see if you go through that window.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: So say that I was the asset and you were
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: the CIA agent. You have more experience in that role
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: than I do. And I was sat in a bar
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: and I said to you, yeah, God, this week's been
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: really hard at home because my wife, she's annoying me. Well,
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: you were trying to get into my secret life. How
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: might you maneuver from there? Right.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: So there's a, the basic principle here that we would
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: use is called the two and one combination. So two
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: means two questions and one means one confirmation. So when
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: you present to me a topic that I want to
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: explore further, the most rudimentary of techniques out there is
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: you present to me a topic I want to explore.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: So I ask a follow-on question. You will answer my
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: follow-on question because you're predisposed to To answer my question.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: I will ask another follow-on question. You'll be predisposed to
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: answer that as well. And then I'll say something that
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: confirms what you're saying. That way it doesn't feel like
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: you're being interrogated. Instead, it feels like you're talking to
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: somebody who gets you. So I'll confirm what you say. Like,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, I mean, I had a girlfriend once and
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: her feet stank so bad. And man, it just made
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: me want to like sleep with her feet outside of
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: the covers. And then you just stop there. because you've
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: asked two follow-on questions in one confirming statement, the psychology
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: of the other person is going to be to continue
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: volunteering information. And then you just repeat the cycle. So
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: they give you another piece of information. You follow, follow-up question,
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: follow-up question, confirmation, follow-up question, follow-up question, confirmation. To you,
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: it feels formulaic. Listen, ask a follow-up question. Listen, ask
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: a follow-up question. To them, It feels like they are
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: talking to somebody who really, really cares. Just put yourself
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: in the shoes. Practice a little perspective here. Imagine if
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: you really were talking about something that was frustrating you
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: and the person sitting next to you at the bar
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: literally didn't do anything other than ask you follow-up questions
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: and agree with you. You're going to feel like, you
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: get me, man. Why can't my wife get me like
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: you get me? Like, you know what I'm talking about.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: I completely agree with you, man. Tell me more. Oh, dude.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: And then, and you can see how we'll just human
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: beings just fall right into the groove.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: The parallel here to business, but also the sort of
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: transferable skills here are quite clear. From what I heard,
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: when I'm doing an interview, when I'm meeting a candidate
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: for a job, when I'm trying to sell to a client,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: really my disposition should be to be doing exactly what
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: you said, asking them questions, confirming, asking them questions and confirming. Right.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: If you think about it, everybody's in a contest for control.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: Who controls a conversation? The person asking the questions or
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: the person saying the most words? It's always the person
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: asking the questions because the person asking the questions determines
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: the direction of the conversation.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: It feels the other way around though. It feels like
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: the person speaking the most has the most control.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: And what did I tell you about feelings? Don't trust them.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: Don't trust your gut. Don't trust your emotions, right? It
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: feels like the person talking the most is the person
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: in control.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: It is not.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: It is not. The person asking the questions is in control.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: Think about this interview right now. I will answer whatever
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: question you bring up next. If I don't answer the
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: next question you bring up, I will feel awkward because
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: you and I both know who's in control of this conversation,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: even though I'm the one saying the most words.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: The implications of this in sales, human resourcing, marketing, advertising,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: it's the reason my company has grown 300% every year
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: for the last three years. It's because the human condition
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: is so predictable. People just want to feel heard. They
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: want to feel listened to, and they want to feel validated.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: You can automate that. You can automate the process that
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: makes people feel heard, confirmed, and validated. You can automate it,
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: and then they will sell themselves. That's really good digital marketing.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: That's how it works. Really good Direct sales, that's how
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: it works. Really good salesmen have already learned this. Real
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: good salesmen understand that it's all about getting a lead
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: to talk about themselves as quickly as possible. And then
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: once they start talking about themselves, you just ask questions.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: Let them lead themselves through the sales process. The problem
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: is with most business owners out there who haven't been
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: trained in what we're talking about, they feel like they
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: have to talk the most. They feel like they have
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: to get the customer to understand the benefits of the product.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: I need to get you to hear me. I need
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: to get you to listen. I need to get you
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: to understand the value of what I'm offering you. That's
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: not what the customer wants. That's the salesperson's perception. What
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: the customer actually wants is a product that's going to
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: solve their problems and a salesman that's going to help them.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: What's the kind of person that helps you? The person
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: who asks questions.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: I'm really interested in this concept of change and how
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: the CIA drills into you that you need to accept change.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: Because in all of our lives, one of the things
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: that most of us are quite bad at is accepting change.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: We're very rigid. Again, maybe that's because of perception and
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: ego and these kinds of things. But when I was
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: reading through what they teach you at the CIA, they
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: change your relationship with change.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: They do. So a big part of the advantage of
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: having change is the fact that it's not natural to
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: accept change. So if you can adapt to change faster
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: than your opponent, you have a built-in advantage. You have
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: an edge. So these three principles, time, distance, and change
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: in direction, these three principles that CIA teaches as concepts
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: apply in multiple different ways. So as an example, time
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: means that you need to accept that things take time,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: that time is a resource for you to use. Too often,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: we feel like time is fleeting. Time is running out.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: We have to take action quick like time is against us.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: That's not really true. In fact, time is a tool
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: that you can use to break things down. Secrets don't
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: withstand the test of time. How long will it take
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: for you and I to get into each other's secret lives?
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: Nine months. That takes time. Not many people would wait
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: nine months for anything, right? But time is a huge
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: advantage that you have. If all of your opponents are
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: rushing and you're the only person who isn't rushing, time
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: becomes a huge advantage to you that nobody else has.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: Explain that in the context of business then.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: So in business, people are trying to make a rapid sale.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: Most people want an impulse buyer, right? What do I
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: have to say right now to get you to buy
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: my $ 7 thing? I don't really want you to buy
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: a $ 7 thing. I want you to buy a $ 97 thing.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: If it takes me three weeks to get you to
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: buy a $ 97 thing, it takes this other person three
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: minutes to get you to buy a $ 7 thing. Who's
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: the better salesman? Well, I would argue that it depends
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: on what you're looking for in terms of long-term. This
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: person selling a $ 7 thing every three minutes has to
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: find a new lead They have to find, arguably, if
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: they sell one out of every 10, if they convert
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: at 10%, they need to find 10 new leads every
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: three minutes to make $ 7. If I convert at 10%,
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: I need one person to buy a $ 97 thing every
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: three weeks. I have a much less demand on my
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: time to find new leads. And I can qualify my
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: leads better. And if someone's willing to spend $ 97 on something,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: guess what that tells me about that person? They have
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: more disposable income. The $ 7 person, I don't know anything
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: about their disposable income. Do they have some? Do they not?
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: Is that mom and dad's credit card? I don't really know.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: I'd rather spend three weeks of time cultivating a person
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: who buys a $ 97 something because then I can sell
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: them a.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: $ 297 something.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: And then I can sell them a $ 997 something because
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: I can test their threshold for price sensitivity.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: Was there any situations during your time abroad where you
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: felt like your life was at risk? or any sort
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: of really clear apparent threat?
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: Yes. There's one specific moment, which I'm actively trying to
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: get cleared by CIA to talk about, where I felt
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: like with high confidence that I had fallen under the
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: scrutiny of a local country's surveillance team. So I was
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: in a foreign country. I believed I fell under their
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: surveillance apparatus, and they were actively surveilling me. And the
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: country that I was in and the job that I
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: was doing in that country made me believe that if
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: I had a surveillance team on me, their goal would
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: be to apprehend me at a certain point in the operation.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: At a point where they could get the most propaganda
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: and political leverage, et cetera, et cetera. So that occurrence
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: happened in about 2011. And I'm trying to go through
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: a process now to get that cleared by CIA. Up until...
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: About nine months ago, CIA was giving me the thumbs
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: up that I'd be able to talk about it. But
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: then geopolitical tensions in the world changed and CIA changed
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: their mind along with that. So now I'm exploring what
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: avenues I have to get them to adhere to their
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: previous approval of letting me tell my story versus being
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: forced to adhere to my continued secrecy agreement.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: So you were in a foreign country. You felt like
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: you were under the surveillance apparatus of a foreign country.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: What gave you that impression? Was it looking over your
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: shoulder and seeing something?
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: It's the process that we're trained to use for surveillance detection.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: So we're trained in a process where you run what's
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: known as an SDR. And in that SDR, you have steps,
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: methods that you use to determine whether or not you
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: are being actively surveilled. And again, we use time to
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: our advantage. So it's not like something happened in five
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: seconds and I thought I was under surveillance. I intentionally
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: carried out a series of steps over, say, three hours
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: or six hours. And over that period of time, I
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: had enough information, enough data points to confirm with high
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: confidence that I would be under surveillance.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: SDR?
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: Surveillance Detection Route.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: Okay. And that could be like a car following you,
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: or it could be.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: A person following you, or a drone following you, or
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: your phone acting in a certain way to make you
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: believe that you're being digitally or cyber surveilled.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 2: Sexpionage.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: Everyone's favorite subject. It's a very real thing. It's a
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: very real thing that's used in different ways based off
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: of a country's civil rights. So in the United States,
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: we don't really use sexpionage.
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 2: Don't really.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: We don't really use it because it goes against the rights,
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: the individual rights of the citizen who works at the
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: intelligence agency, right? So if you tell a female intelligence
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: officer that they must sleep with this target in order
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: to get information... you're violating her rights as a US citizen.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: In China, that's not the same case. In Russia, that's
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: not the same case, right? In the UK, they're also,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: they don't subscribe to forced sexual acts in service of
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: collecting intelligence.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: Forced.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: Forced.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 2: But you can if you want to.
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: What ends up happening is you can if you want to.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: And for those people who do, they end up creating
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: what's known as an operational security risk. Because once sex
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: is involved... the power shift becomes untenable. So if the
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: whole goal of a handler is to maintain control over
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: the asset, once sex happens, it's harder for the handler
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: to maintain control over the asset in a objective relationship,
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: because now sex leads to feelings, like hormonally, it leads
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: to feelings. The act of orgasm releases certain hormones that
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: create senses of connection with another person, right? So when
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: that oxytocin drops, when that neuroepinephrine drops, your body starts
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: to tell you that you are connected to another person.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: That is the antithesis of a proper asset handler relationship.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: You fall in love with them.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: And we call that falling in love with your asset.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't ask you if you ever engaged in anything
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I appreciate that. I was fortunate enough that I
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: made all the connective hormones I needed to make with
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: my wife, who was also CIA.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: Disguises. Did you ever wear a disguise?
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah. Disguises are something that are much more common
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: than people would believe and much less quality than people
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: would believe.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: Really? Yeah.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: So most disguises, what we actually call disguises inside CIA,
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: we call them costumes. We don't really call them disguises.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: Disguises is a word that's used in pop media and
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: pop culture. In the real world, we call them costumes.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: And our costume departments, our disguise department, the whole objective
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: behind a disguise or a costume is just to make
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: you not look like you. Not to make you look
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: like someone else, not even to make you look like
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: a realistic person. It's just to make sure that you
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: don't look like you, right? So consider your picture, what
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: you look like. You have some very definitive features. your nose,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: your forehead, your beard shape, your hair, right? The way
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: that you hold your face, the neckline that you have.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: So if we wanted to change your appearance just so
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: that you didn't look like Stephen Bartlett, all we'd have
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: to do is take away those things that make you
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: you and turn them into something else, right? We could
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: put a nappy redheaded wig on you. We could put
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: giant oversized sunglasses on you. We could shave your face
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: or paint your beard gray or even put a fake
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: mustache on. We could put an oversized necklace around your neck.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: And now the picture of that is not going to
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: look like the picture of Steve Bartlett.
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: Those are all light disguises though, right?
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: Is that there's deeper types of disguises, right?
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: I've always wondered if they like plastic surgery and if
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: they give a spy plastic surgery and those kinds of things.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: So there's three levels of disguise. There are some places
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: that will go as far as permanent plastic surgery, but
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: most Western services won't do that because it's... It doesn't
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: help the officer. To have a permanent change to your
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: body made doesn't make you more effective at going undercover
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: because now you're just permanently changed. So you still look
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: the way you look. The value in a disguise is
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: being able to reset the disguise, to reset the costume
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: so that you don't look like yourself. So our three
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: levels are level one, level two, level three. Light disguise
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: is level one. Level two is long-term disguise. Level three
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: is something that we call prosthetic disguise. So light disguise
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: is what we talked about, oversized sunglasses and a nappy wig,
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you're a different person, right?
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: You're Loyola. You're not Steve Bartlett anymore. Phase two is
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: long-term disguise. Long-term disguise means it's still you, but we
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: change you physically for a long-term operation. So instead of
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: having short hair, we grow your hair long. Instead of
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: having a beard, we shave you clean. We lose some
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: of that hard-earned body mass that you have, or We
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: gain body mass that you don't really want, right? Maybe
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: we put some kind of fake but long standing tattoo
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: on you, right? We do something with you that changes
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: the way you look physically. It's still you. The reason
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: that's important is because you always have to ask yourself
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: the question, what will a police officer think when they
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: storm into your hotel room at night? If you're wearing
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: a light disguise and a police officer storms into your
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: room at night, they're going to ask questions like, why
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: do you have a wig? Or if you don't have
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: a wig, you just wear a ball cap and a hoodie.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: There's nothing for them to ask. right? They're basically saying, oh,
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: this is you, your license says it's you, and you
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: wear this ball hat, this ball cap, and this hoodie
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: all the time, whatever. You're not going to jail for that.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: So level one and level two disguise are very safe.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: It's hard to get someone arrested using those two. Level
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: three is what the movies are made out of. That's
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: your prosthetics. If we put fake ears on you, if
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: we put a fake nose on you, if we change
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: your eye color, if we put in a fake missing tooth, right?
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: Instead of a real missing tooth. If we do that
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff to you, police officer breaks into your
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: room in the middle of the night. Now they ask,
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: why do you have a fake nose that you're not
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: wearing right now? Why do you have fake eyebrows? Why
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: do you have fake ears? Why do you have a
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: blacked out tooth, right? Now they look at your ID
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: and you don't look like your ID.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: Much less common, I'm guessing.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: Very uncommon. Very uncommon. And you would use them strategically
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: at different times. But if you watch too much Mission
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: Impossible or Alias, you start to think that people wear
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: disguises all the time. There's so many problems to disguise.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: There's so many operational inadequacies to operational to disguise that
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: we could have a whole conversation about it, right? Like
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: things don't stick to your face in the extreme cold.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: Things don't stick to your face in the extreme heat
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: or when you're sweating your ass off in the Philippines.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: Things melt. Makeup melts. The adhesive that sticks a fake
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: mustache to your lip starts to disintegrate. There's all sorts
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: of problems with prosthetics in real life that Tom Cruise
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: doesn't have to worry about in the movies.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: When people think of spies doing espionage overseas, wearing disguises
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: and all these kinds of things, it does make you
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: think they must be exceptionally good at dealing with fear
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: because- A lot of people would be too nervous or
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: too anxious or whatever to not like crack under that
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: kind of pressure. If you're meeting the guy that has
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: the nuclear codes for Iran or whatever, and you've been
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: working for nine months to meet this person, you know,
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: you've got to have a good handle on your own
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: anxiety and your own fear. Do the CIA target people
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: that are good at that or do they train that
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: or is it both? It's both.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: It's a great question.
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: It's both.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: CIA wants people that carry a certain level of anxiety
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: because when you carry anxiety, you're naturally paranoid, which means
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: you have heightened observational skills. Most people who suffer from
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: anxiety feel like they're inadequate in some way. In reality,
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: they are hyper adequate. They are more than adequate. Anxiety
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: is a superpower through the eyes of the CIA. I
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: would take somebody with anxiety any day over somebody without
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: anxiety because anxiety keeps you alive. Anxiety keeps you sharp.
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: Anxiety keeps you learning. It keeps you attentive. It's a
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: good thing. But to your second point, you are also trained.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: You are trained to understand how fear works. And like
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: to oversimplify it, your brain has two hemispheres, right? A
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: left brain and a right brain. Your left brain is
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: your logical brain. Your right brain is your emotional brain.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: Because you have two different hemispheres and they operate on
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: two different bases, right? One is based in logic. One
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: is based in emotions. They actually operate and they process
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: at different speeds. Your logical brain processes much slower than
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: your emotional brain, which is why it takes you an
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: instant before you're scared, but it takes you maybe minutes, hours,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: weeks before you're convinced. So what ends up happening is
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: fear in an untrained person, going back to our conversation
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: about trained versus untrained, in an untrained person, fear is
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: an emotion that's processed by the emotional brain very quickly.
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: So then they react instinctively to their fear. That's where
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of people who suffer from anxiety get held back.
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: When you can train someone to understand that the same
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: thing that makes them emotionally scared is also being processed
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: by their logical brain. Your brain is actually going through
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: the process of determining how scared you really need to be.
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: If you can just slow down the emotional brain and
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: train the rational brain to work a little bit faster,
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: your whole relationship with fear completely changes.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 2: How do they train you to slow down your emotional
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 2: brain so that you don't react?
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: That's a big part of the reason why you have
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: a controlled training environment that lasts for multiple months. Because
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: what they do is they inoculate you. It's called stress inoculation.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: They inoculate you with scenarios designed specifically to trigger your
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: emotional response. Even though you have been trained to not
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: trust your emotional response... They inoculate you so that over
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: and over again, you have to go through the process of,
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: I feel fear. I have to not accept it. I
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: feel doubt. I have to reject it. I feel like
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: I'm being watched. I have to reject it. I have
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: to give my rational brain a chance to catch up
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: so that I can get objective facts about the scenario.
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: And there are some people who don't do it well.
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: There are some people who never inoculate themselves against fear.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: So then they end up getting cut from the farm.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: So for the average Joe that's listening to this now,
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: or Jenny, the average Jenny that's listening to this now,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 2: and they live a life that's held them back because
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: of their fear. You know, they don't take the risk.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: They don't raise their hand to do the presentation. They
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: don't lean into uncertainty. Based on your training in the CIA,
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 2: what would you suggest that they should do to get
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 2: over that fear?
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: So they need to inoculate themselves as well.
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 2: Inoculate means....
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: To fear. Very similar to the way you inoculate against
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: COVID or you inoculate against the flu. You expose yourself
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: to a strain that's weakened so that your body can
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: gain some sort of familiarity with it. You do the
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: same thing with fear. If you're afraid to give that presentation,
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: you're not ever going to change the fact that you're
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: afraid to give a presentation, but you will be able
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: to change something that you're less afraid of. If you're
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: afraid of going to the gym, if you're afraid of
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: eating at a certain restaurant down the street, if you're
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: afraid of stepping out of your front door, if you're
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: afraid of asking your friend their opinion about whether or
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: not you're overweight, find something small where you are less
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: afraid of this than you are of this other thing
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: and inoculate yourself with this. Like lean into the small fears,
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: the fears that you already know are kind of irrational
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: and simple. And if you can overcome those, what will
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: happen is you will start to gain momentum. And the
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: thing that you do to inoculate yourself is to know
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: up front. You know you're going to have an emotional reaction.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: You already know it. It's the thing that you're afraid of.
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: You can predict that. So you already know. I'm going
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: to ask my buddy Steve if he thinks that I'm overweight.
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: I'm terrified to ask him. He's either going to say
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: yes or no, or he's going to take some cop-out
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: answer and ask me what I think. But I already
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: know that it's going to feel uncomfortable. but he's my buddy,
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: it's low risk, let's see how it goes, right? So
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: you go and you ask the question, you put yourself
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: in the face of fear, you're still gonna have the
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: heart palpitations, the cold sweats, your emotional brain is gonna
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: take off and all of your physiology is gonna like
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: let loose. But then Steve is gonna tell you his
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: answer and it's over. And then all of a sudden
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: you're like, oh, that wasn't nearly as bad as I
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: thought it was going to be. And then when you
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: do the same thing with your friend Jenny and the
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: same thing with your friend Bruce and the same thing
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: with your friend Robert, By the time Robert tells you
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: his answer, your body's not reacting the same way as
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: it did when you talked to Steve. Small inoculations are
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: training your emotional brain to slow down and training your
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: rational brain to speed up. So then you move on
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: to the next most scary thing without going to the
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: scariest of things.
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: You know, I was thinking about that as you were
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: talking and I was thinking, gosh. I think a lot
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: of people know that. I think they know that the
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 2: way to get better at speaking on stage is to
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 2: go and speak on stage, but they're still held back by,
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 2: you know, God, if I do that, I'm going to
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: mess up. And then people are going to think I'm this, that,
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 2: and the other, and then I'll never X, Y, Z. Right.
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 2: So you can say that to someone, but getting them
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: to take that first step seems to be the impossibility.
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: And here's where the former CIA officer in me comes out.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: Because if you're too afraid to do that, good. I
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: don't want you to do it. Because you being unable
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: to do it gives me the advantage. The person who's
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: listening to this, who says to themselves, I'm scared, but
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: I'll do it anyways. That's the person who deserves the
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: opportunity to change their life. The person who's listening to
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: this that says, I'm too scared to do that.
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 2: Good.
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: I need you to stay exactly where you are. Because
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: in our world, the flat out truth is our world
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: needs cogs. Our world needs people who are trapped in
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: the consumer cycle. We need those people because the people
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: who are trapped in that consumer cycle, the people who
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: are prisoners to their fear are the people who run
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: the economy. It's the people who are willing to break
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: that cycle and capitalize on the fears that you can't overcome.
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: Those are the people who actually provide you the service
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: that you need because you can't do it by yourself.
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: So I want to encourage the people who are willing
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: to take the scary step. And I also want to
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: discourage the people who already know that they're too afraid.
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: We need both.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 2: As you know, we're a sponsor of this podcast and
• 1:48:04
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• 1:48:06
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• 1:48:10
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• 1:48:12
  Speaker 2: the theory of marginal gains, especially in health and in fitness.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 2: Seeing one percents and small improvements in my WHOOP data
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 2: be it with my sleep or my heart rate variability
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 2: or other health indicators gives me this incredible sense of
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: forward motion and over time the ultimate result of these
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 2: gains means a healthier and better version of myself in
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 2: the long run. My WHOOP, which is this thing on
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 2: my wrist, has really allowed me to understand actions that
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 2: I don't necessarily need to completely change, but things that
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: I can tweak in order to become the person that
• 1:48:40
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• 1:48:42
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• 1:48:44
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• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: for you. You met your wife while you were... an
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 2: undercover CIA operative.
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I am still to this day very thankful that
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: she is a poor judge of character.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: In 2014, you leave the CIA, age 34 years old.
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: You both resigned together?
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: We both resigned together.
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: It was mostly my idea. My wife had a stellar career.
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: We had a one-year-old child at the time. And We
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: were at a point in our career coming off of
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: very successful operations together right before that, where we were
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: both kind of middle management. And that middle management lifestyle
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: meant that we're spending 12 to 16 hours a day
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: on the job, just like most people. But the difference
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: is when you're spending 16 hours a day on the job,
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: it means that you're in a skiff somewhere. You can't
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: take your work home. You can't work from home. So
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: you're literally absent from the house. So trying to coordinate
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: two 16-hour schedules... along with a one-year-old, when neither of
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: us signed up to be that kind of parent, we
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: both wanted to be the kind of parent that was
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: present for our children. And instead, we're giving our child
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: to some daycare center and paying extra overage fees to
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: have that daycare center keep the baby for 12 hours
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: a day. It's a sucky situation. So for family reasons,
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: more so than for career reasons, we both decided, hey,
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: let's double down on family and let's see if we
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: can't start all over again.
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 2: Are you going to leave America in 2030?
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try and leave America in 2027.
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: I read that somewhere. Why are you going to try
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 2: and leave America in 2027?
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: So I think the United States is going through a
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: very difficult time right now. And I think most people
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: understand that. We are a young country. No matter how
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: much we think that we are the best in the world,
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: we are actually going through the early part of our
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: adolescence as a nation. And you can see it playing
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: out every day in the headlines. You can see it
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: in our in our role in geopolitical events, you can
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: see that we're suffering in terms of trying to identify ourselves.
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: We don't know, do we wanna be a real democracy?
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: Do we wanna be kind of a partial democracy? Do
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: we wanna treat everybody as equal? Do we not wanna
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: treat everybody as equal? We're struggling in the same way
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: that you and I did through middle school, right? My
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: children mean the world to me. And what I wanna
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: do is give them a life where they have the
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: choice to do anything they want to do. Unfortunately, I
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: don't believe our country for the next five to 10
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: years is going to be the kind of country that
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: allows children of today to choose and be whatever they
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: want to be. I think our country has some growing
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: up of its own to do before we really offer
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: people equal access to opportunities. So for me, if I
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: was my 11 year old son, when I turned 15
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: or 16 years old and I start to really care
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: about something, I would like to be in a place
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: where I can explore that thing. I don't think that's
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: going to be in the United States. I think that's
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: going to be in Europe. I think that's going to
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: be in the Middle East. I think that's going to
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: be in Latin America where he will have all the
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: advantages of the world outside of the United States.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 2: What do you think about what's going on at the
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 2: moment with geopolitics as it relates to like China and
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 2: the U S um, There's a bit of a power
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 2: struggle going on and there has been, but a lot
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: of people forecast that China is eventually going to overtake,
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 2: or maybe it already has, the US as the sort
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 2: of global economic force. Are you preparing for that? Do
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 2: you think it's going to happen?
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: I think that there's two realistic outcomes and there's one
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: less realistic outcome. The most realistic outcome is that the
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: United States and China continue to compete and reach parity,
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: equality with each other. That's the most realistic outcome. Maybe
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: the United States remains 10% bigger. Maybe China gets 2%
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: bigger economically. But they approach parity. They approach equality. I
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: don't want to live in the United States when it
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: loses so much status that another country reaches economic parity.
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: Think about that for a second. The world is accustomed
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: to one superpower. Once there are two superpowers... everything changes.
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: There's two massive languages and you're going to have to
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: choose which language you speak. There's two currencies. Which currency
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: are you going to save your money in? There's competing priorities.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: There's competing politics. There's equally massive, sophisticated militaries. When you
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: are in one of those two countries, at the moment
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: that they reach parity, you are in the most dangerous
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: position because the number one target for China will be
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: the United States. The number one target for the United
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: States will be China. Right now, there's not parity, there's
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: not equality. So the United States has to worry about everybody.
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: And China doesn't really have to worry about many people
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: at all. But as that equality gets closer and closer,
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: there's more and more threat. Think about it in business terms.
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: When you're the industry leader in your business.
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: Google.
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: You don't have to worry about much. You have to
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: worry about all the little guys, but nobody's really a
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: direct threat. But as soon as somebody else rises to
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: meet you, you have to worry about it. The leader
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: used to be Yahoo, right? Yahoo had to see what
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: it's like to lose and gain parity with Google only
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: to then be eclipsed, right? So most probable outcome, we
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: reach parity. Second most probable outcome is that China does
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: supersede us by small amounts, right? 5% GDP, 10% GDP.
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: And the United States has to regain its momentum to
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: try to gain back the edge. So now you have
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: this cycle back and forth, right? Where For five years,
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: China is the leading GDP. For five years, the United
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: States is the leading GDP. And you have this waffling
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: back and forth, which makes you even less secure than
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: if you were in direct parity. But that's a scary
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: place to be as well. You still have to lose
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: all the influence to get there. And when you're there,
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: you never know how long it's going to last.
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 2: Do you think we're already engaged in a form of
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 2: World War III?
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. I think World War III is already happening.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: I think World War III is not what people think
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: It was going to be. I think people were afraid
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: that World War III was somehow going to look like
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: another World War II. Instead, World War III is a
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: war of proxy nations. It's a war where smaller third
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: world countries are competing against each other and they're being
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: funded by larger countries that are actually in conflict with
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: one another. Ukraine and Russia. US is funding Ukraine. Russia
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: is obviously taking care of itself. But the real conflict
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: in Ukraine isn't about Ukraine. It's about the West versus Russia.
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: Same thing is going to happen with Taiwan and China.
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: When the time comes that China makes its biggest move
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: on Taiwan, it's already made the small moves on Taiwan.
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: When it makes its largest move on Taiwan, it's going
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: to become a question of China versus the West and
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: whoever supports Taiwan.
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 2: So going back to where we started then, the average Joe.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 2: The average Joe is listening to this conversation now and
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 2: what they really want is to make their life better
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 2: in whatever subjective measure that they consider better to be.
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 2: They want to start that business. They want to launch
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: that project. They want to get outside of this sort
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: of emotional prison that they live in where their life
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 2: is dominated by perception, what they think, their own sort
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: of confines of their identity. What is the sort of
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 2: closing argument and closing advice you give to the average
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 2: Joe to liberate themselves so that they can pursue whatever
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 2: they want to pursue?
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: So the most important thing is to take action. That
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: is the most, even if it's the wrong action, if
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: you take the wrong step, if you take the first
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: step in the wrong direction, the difference between you and
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: the person who doesn't take a step at all is
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: the world. You have to take the first step. You
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: have to take some kind of action. Just by taking action,
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: you show that you're not trapped by fear. You show
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: that you're willing to challenge your own perception of the
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: world and try to gain some perspective. It doesn't matter
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: what that action is. I don't care whether you read
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: a book, whether you buy a program, whether you sell
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: your first prototype, take some kind of action because nine
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: out of every 10 people are not going to take
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: any action. You already have an advantage just by trying.
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: And so few people understand that. They think there's some
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: kind of advantage in waiting. There isn't. The longer you wait,
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: all you're really doing is giving the other nine people
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: a chance to be the first one to take a step.
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: If you take the first step, you beat the competition
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: right out of the gates. And you know this as
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: well as I do. Even if your first three or
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: four steps are fumbles and trips and you fall on
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: your face, by the time you stand up, you're four
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: steps away from the rest of the competition. And you've
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: learned a lot in those first four steps. So my
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: suggestion is take action. Take action using the skills that
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: we talked about today. Take action using the skills that
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: you've talked about on some other podcast. Just take action.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: Identity. We talked about how the CIA kind of rewrite
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 2: your identity a little bit so that, you know, it
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 2: gives you some sort of cover. But one of the
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: things that stops us taking action is our own identity.
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 2: What have you come to learn? And what do you
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 2: think now about the role of identity, how it gets
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 2: in our way and how we can liberate ourselves from it?
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: The worst person to determine who you are is oftentimes you,
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: because you see it all. You live in your own
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: secret life. the rest of the world sees your public life.
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: Even if your public life is accidental, the world sees
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: you differently than you see yourself. So when you look
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: at yourself, it's like looking through a magnifying glass. You
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: see every wart, you see every crevice, you see everything
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: wrong because you have the magnifying glass. The rest of
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: the world, not only do they not have a magnifying glass,
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: but they're standing 10 feet away from you. So they
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: see something very different than what you see. So a
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: lot of times, Whatever you think about yourself is actually
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: inaccurate when you apply it against the test of perspective.
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: Because what other people see and what other people think
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: of you, you are usually very wrong from what they think.
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 2: We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 2: last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 2: knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. Now,
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: the question that's been left for you in the diary
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 2: of a CEO is very, very interesting. What is something
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 2: you used to strongly believe that you have fundamentally changed
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 2: your mind on?
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: I used to believe that people could be equal. And
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: fundamentally now, I know that people will never be equal
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: because equality is not really the thing that we're after.
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: What we're secretly after that we don't want to admit
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: to is we're always after being better, having more, being
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: in a better position than everyone else. So we will
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: constantly strive to take advantage of secrets, to take advantage
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: of opportunities, to find an edge that we do not
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: share with other people. But publicly, we will say that
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: we wish there was more equality and that we want
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: there to be more equality when secretly we don't. I
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: used to be one of those people that wanted everything
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: to be equal. And now I am one of those
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: people who is very happy in a world where things
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: are not equal.
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: Because I see through the noise. I understand that what
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: we want isn't what we actually say.
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: So these politicians that are saying, you know, maybe on
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 2: the left that are saying, you know, we want equality.
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 2: We want everyone to be equal. You think they're bullshitting. Absolutely.
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: That's not what they want.
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 2: What do they want?
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: What they want is more of the current status quo,
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: which is to have conflict with the opposite side. And
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: what they also want on top of that is to
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: be in a position where the masses trust the politician
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: to be in control over more aspects of the population's life.
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 2: Andrew, thank you so much. Thank you so much. I
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 2: feel so inspired, a little bit excited and energized by
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 2: this conversation. And I'm I think it's so incredible that
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 2: you've committed this sort of chapter of your life to
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 2: helping people unlock their full potential by knowing the way
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 2: that humans work and being able to use the understanding
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 2: of a human that was probably getting in their way
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 2: to free themselves and pursue whatever sort of goal they
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 2: have in their lives that they think will provide them
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 2: with fulfillment. Because that's really how I see what you're doing.
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 2: You're taking a skill set that's been exclusive and and
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 2: given to only a few and giving it to many.
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 2: You do that through Everyday Spy. Andrew, thank you so much.
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 2: It's been an absolute honor.
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, man. Thank you.