Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - 17 Years Undercover Then He Built a Business Empire | Mike Baker - Fmr CIA Officer & Portman Square Group CEO

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Lessons - 17 Years Undercover Then He Built a Business Empire | Mike Baker - Fmr CIA Officer & Portman Square Group CEO · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore how strategic visibility and unconventional thinking can
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  drive business growth, discover how media exposure builds credibility and scales of brand,
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  understand how fast decisions within perfect information create momentum,
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  and uncover why defining risk appetite and managing internal threats is critical to long-term success.
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  You know, it's interesting you keep mentioning your lack of basically business acumen,
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  but yet you've built a successful company, you work with Fortune 50, Fortune 100,
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  and you've probably marketed yourself a hell of a lot better than a lot of the people with
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  2000-person plus companies like how many of their CEOs have been on Rogan and Patrick
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  David's podcast and I'll throw myself in the mix even though I'm not on that level yet, but I
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  mean, so what do you think consciously or maybe now subconsciously is just thinking through?
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  What do you think differentiated you when it came to building the business, building a
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  personal brand, marketing yourself, and then I mean you're on TV too. You've done some very
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  strategic things that anybody else coming out of the agency, anybody else coming out of a military,
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  FBI, even police force, they have a story to tell, yay, you know, it's a little bit sexy,
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  but I mean FBI is sexy, you're up high enough in the military, you do some cool shit,
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  that's sexy too, you can build a brand around that, what made you different?
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  Yeah, I mean I think and some people have and they've done it very well, you know what,
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  I kind of blundered into if we just took it the media appearances, if we just talk about doing
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  talking head appearances for the news on national security issues or counterterrorism or whatever
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  the topic may be. I kind of blundered into it, it was, I had moved from London to the East Coast
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  to set up an office, we had just taken our first investors and they BGR, which is a fantastic
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  lobbying firm in Washington, DC, and so part of the agreement for the investment was open
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  in office there with them, co-locate, and at the time we were starting to build up a presence
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  in Iraq and this was early, early 2003, so very beginning of our first incursion there,
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  but we had been dealing with some of the infrastructure companies and so the point of this story is
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  one day Ed Rogers, great guy, terrific individual part of BGR and the
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  original founding partners, he came walking to my office, knocked on the door and said,
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  hey Fox News needs somebody to talk about Iraq, you know, head over there, it'll be fun.
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  You got to be, so I made it on the positive side.
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  Sure, you know, don't talk about anything stupid, but you can do it and the agency's always
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  been good with me that way. But so I went over, did the appearance and found out after the first
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  couple that, you know, honestly, as long as you don't say anything stupid and you don't fall
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  off your chair, right, you know, the news networks need to fill up a lot of time and I just happened
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  to have a lot of, you know, experience and background and certain areas and was willing to go
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  on and talk about that and so some of the outlets, including Fox, they were very good, you know,
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  they were very good to me and they were and then I discovered that I wasn't getting paid for
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  any of it, but what they would do is they would put the company name on the bottom, like, you know,
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  with with the company and I and once I realized that, then we were off to the races because like I
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  said earlier, there was no way we could have as a startup afforded that sort of marketing, it just
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  wasn't going to happen. And so, you know, I was, I realized that, you know, that was an edge,
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  right, we had an opportunity there. And then everything else just sort of kind of fell into place,
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  I suppose. You know, I was going to say it's amazing how, you know, to to have a good story,
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  you just have to have a cool career, do something incredible and then speak about it, but you'd
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  be surprised how many people just don't feel comfortable leaning into that and then you did.
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  Yeah, I mean, I think the agency again, because of what I was doing in operations and you know,
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  you do have a sometimes an overblown sense of confidence. And, you know, so I think that
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  that part of it never, and I genuinely like talking about issues of the day, I spent a great deal
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  of time focused on that. I have a lot of friends and a lot of different places and we end up, you
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  know, banging on about, you know, the current crises. There's never, there's never a shortage of
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  them and so. There's never a shortage. And so it helps if you find it all interesting, right? You
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  can't, you can't make that part of it. It's like, but I, you know, again, I think, you know,
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  luck kind of fell into it again. And then, you know, once I realized that it was certainly
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  beneficial, you know, it wasn't like I was going to turn down opportunities.
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  Yeah, no, no, obviously. Another one of the rules that you mentioned, which I thought was
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  interesting, it just in terms of velocity and getting shit done, it's, it's number four, it's
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  get off the X. Yeah. What does that, what does that mean exactly? Where does that come from in an
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  agency context? And then how does that translate into business start up entrepreneurship?
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  Well, in an operational sense, you know, not just the agency with military and other
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  organizations, the, the X means it is essentially an ambush site. So I mean, A, you don't want to
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  be on the ambush site to begin. Yeah, fair idea is you spend a lot of time training.
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  To recognize indicators of a potential ambush. And, you know, but if you do get on the X,
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  if you're unfortunate and for whatever reason you land on that spot, then you have to be able to
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  get off the X. You have to get out of there, right? And, and in operational terms, that's a tough
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  thing because everything starts locking up, right? And you're, you know, you start, you know,
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  getting blinders and, you know, you're hearing goes and, you know, in any, any difficult situation,
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  right? You have to start relying on big muscle memory. And so that's again, why training is so
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  important, why, you know, it's not enough just to do, you know, some training, you have to constantly
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  review it. But anyway, the point is in business, what it means is I think anyway, in my opinion,
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  this is what again, you know, there's no hard and fast, I suppose to any of this, but from my
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  perspective, it simply means knowing how to make decisions quickly with imperfect information.
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  Right? Because once you land in the, in the shit, from an operational perspective, right? You,
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  you just got to, you got to take action, right? You don't have time to sit around and hope that you
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  get all the data, you know, where, you know, where are all the hostile elements? What the hell is
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  happening? You, you have to start making decisions, right? And it's the same in business, right?
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  If you wait for all the data sets to come in, if you wait for all the analysis to be done on
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  whatever it may be, something bad's going to happen, right? Or the competition's going to have
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  you lunch, or you're going to lose the opportunity, or your reputation's going to be damaged, whatever
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  it might be. So it really comes down to how do you, you know, learn to, and also a lot of this is
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  about how do you impart that ability to your, your, your personnel to all the folks that are working
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  with you to make these decisions, again, within perfect information. And so when you're making these
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  decisions within perfect information, as, as a CEO, is that just, is that just being a leader for
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  a period of time, or is there, is there actual practice that you can do to make sure that when
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  shit hits a fan, you don't screw it up? Yeah, there's, I mean, there's, there's, there's a lot,
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  there's a lot to this. It's a, it's a fairly, I mean, part of it is not that complicated part of it
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  is, you know, knowing your risk appetite, which is another, you know, element. I was actually
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  curious about that one too, only because I thought that business inherently comes with risk. So how
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  do you not have a risk appetite if you're building something? Well, you'd be surprised. And even
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  I mean, it going back to, you know, the Intel community, Intel organizations, which, you know,
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  by definition are risk taking operations, they go through periods of time where they become
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  risk averse, right? It's because, you know, they've had blowback from, you know, some operation
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  or they've gotten their ass kicked up on Capitol Hill too many times. Yeah. And so, you know, suddenly
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  you've got a cycle where, you know, management is avoiding risks. And I've seen a couple of those
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  cycles sweep through the agency over the years. And that's a, that's a bad thing. But, and so, and
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  you have to understand what, and when you're understanding what your risk appetite is, it also
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  means you have to understand what your shareholders or your investors or your board of advisors risk
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  appetite is. You have to understand what the clients risk appetite is for sure when you're talking
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  about, you know, working for them and providing, you know, strategic intelligence or guidance or
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  due diligence or whatever it may be. And, you know, that's a, that's a key part of it. And that
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  informs a lot of other decisions that you make, including how do you, you know, again, make
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  decisions within perfect information. Another, you know, when you're talking about risk appetite,
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  I'm interested because you deal with businesses that are dealing with threats.
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  So, in a business landscape, advice for executive CEOs, founders, what are the threats
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  that you see really plaguing businesses right now? And I know there's, you know, there's
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  specific examples that would not transcend every industry or every category, but you see,
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  you see macro level. What are some things that people should think about?
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  Well, I think any company of any size, and it doesn't really matter how big it is because
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  small businesses can, can be damaged quicker and faster and, you know, more broadly than,
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  than large corporations at times, some of these. But the insider threat is always something
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  that we end up talking about. And the insider threat can mean a variety of things, right? It can
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  mean, it can mean within a pharmaceutical company, you've got somebody who has been recruited,
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  developed by a competitor to provide, you know, intellectual property or key information regarding
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  research and development. It could mean they could have been compromised by, you know, Chinese
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  intelligence service, right? I mean, that, that sounds, oh my God, that's spooky. But look,
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  yeah, no, that's happened to Dow, it's happened to DePont, it's happened to a wide variety of
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  companies, right? Where state-sponsored intel services have targeted the private sector,
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  gone after individuals who they've identified through the typical recruitment process or
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  recruitment cycle. And just, just like an intel service would, and go after these individuals who
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  can provide then inside information, economic espionage, basically. So that is, and so that's
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  an example of an insider threat, you know, insider threat can also be, you know, a disgruntled
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  employee who decides, you know, to do enormous damage because perhaps they work an IT or wherever
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  they may have access to very sensitive information, it could be an accounting issue, and finance.
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  So the insider threat is something that companies need to be focused on. Cyber security is
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  obviously a big buzz word and has been for a while, and that is a whole separate, you know,
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  conversation in terms of the ability of companies to understand what those threats are to stay
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  on top of those threats, to understand how to respond, when to, when to incorporate outside law
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  enforcement assistance, the FBI is working very hard now to try to establish better dialogue with
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  the private sector so that they can better inform the private sector where these threats are coming
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  from. And, you know, and it's, it's just, you know, the potential for damage to a company.
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  When we talk about, and you mentioned it early on, when you talk about like within operations or
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  within the agency, failure to do the right thing can lead to, you know, death or serious, you know,
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  go grow. Then, you know, I think with the private sector, you know, you're talking about the,
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  the crushing of a company, you're talking about the, you know, irreparable damage to a brand,
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  you're talking about, you know, massive losses, layoffs. I mean, there's all sorts of damage
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  that can be done through companies not paying attention. I mean, look at, you know, SVB,
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  Silicon Valley Bank, probably not the best example of like that, that sort of insider threat,
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  that seemed more like it was a bunch of tools trying to make decisions that were completely inappropriate.
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  The fools, yeah. Yeah. So there was, so, you know, you also have to worry about the insider
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  tool threat, apparently. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that
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  check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.