The Manipulation Expert: CIA Spy Reveals You're Being Controlled! "You're Being Manipulated Without Realising It"! Andrew Bustamante

24:59And that turned into, I think it was called Napster. Yeah, lime wire. Yeah. Yeah. There were so many of these different databases where you could just pull free music and it was crazy. Before that, there were CDs. There was even a brief period where there were many disks, right? People just kept making improvements. We call them disruptors now because we found a way to glorify the word cheat and make it into something good. So now there's disruptors. But all they were doing was taking advantage of something that other people weren't taking advantage of. A new form of technology. Well, how did they get access to a new form of technology because they got investors?

25:35Well, how did they get investors? They knew a guy who knew a guy. They shook a hand. Dad at the golf club maybe. They had five minutes with the right guy on the right elevator. Who knows? But the people who don't get investors look at the people who do get investors and say, that's not fair. That's just the way it is. That's the way life is. You know what's not fair? It's not fair that some people are born into a house where the cabin, where the shed that they're born into, is a $300 ,000 a year shed. And other people are born into a shed. That's a $30 ,000 a year shed. That's not fair. Nothing is fair.

26:10So once you accept that nothing is fair, that also means there isn't really anything that's unfair. You can do whatever you need to improve yourself in your life. So I'm in the shed and I've just, I've listened to you. So I've realized that I am in a shed and that the rules I've been conditioned to believe aren't necessarily their rules but their breakable rules. And I have every right to break them. What is, what do you think is step one, be on that? Be on the awareness. I'm going to give you two answers because there's the reality of the answer, but then there's my preferred response, right?

26:48The reality of the answer is once people, the reality is that most people have already thought about what I'm saying. I'm just giving words and authenticity and credibility to what they already believe. So they're ready for the next step and they just jump right in. They believe me. I appreciate it when people believe me, but I don't want people to believe me. What I want people to do is my preferred approach, which is to test the information, test what I'm saying. Learn a framework that we teach every day's by. Learn a framework that you and I talk about. Put it into exercise. If it works, you just tested something.

27:22Now you can believe something. Now you can change your mindset and change your framework. But too often people just believe I appreciate it when they believe me. It makes me feel good, but it's not what I'm trying to teach people to do. What I want people to do is actually test it, test it. And because if they test it, they make it their own. If here's the problem with every teacher I've ever had with the exception of two or three, they tell you something is the facts. And then you know that at the end of the week you have to take a quiz on what they told you was the facts. And then you know that at the end of the semester you have to take an exam on what they told you was the facts.

27:57They don't ever teach you to test or question the facts. And we know at our age and our success level that history is written by the winners. But there's always two sides to history. And then when you think about the political, the religious, the personal ramifications of everything that happens, you realize there's multiple different versions of truth. There may only be one fact, but there's multiple versions of truth. So how do we, we're not even conditioned to learn to question the truth to find the fact. Instead we're just taught that the truth that we're taught is the facts. And that's how we end up in a world like we have today.

28:30Where people can say whatever they want to say and people believe them. Instead of testing what you hear to see if it really is worth transitioning or transforming your belief system. It sounds like you're making a distinction between like knowledge and belief. What we call information information and knowledge exactly right. So information is what someone might say to you, but then knowledge is what you actually know to be true. Correct. There's a flywheel that we have in the intelligence world. And it's a triangle. And the top of the triangle is information. And then information flows into knowledge and then knowledge flows into experience.

29:06So what happens is you learn information from that information, you develop knowledge. And then you test that knowledge through experience. And what happens when you go out and take action in an experience. You get more information, which yields more knowledge, which you test through experience, which yields more information. And you have this very positive flywheel. That's how the intelligence cycle works. But what happens in society, what happens in a state system that requires people to become predictable and obedient and respectful and collegial. Is they skip the experience part. They say, this is information.

29:49This is knowledge. And here's more new information. And here's more new knowledge. And they never give people the opportunity to test the knowledge for themselves. So I'm breaking out the shed. And I'm going to try and test some of this information that I'm going to learn today and in this conversation. What is a good example of something that you've seen in your practice when working with people at the everyday spy has helped someone to change their life, like a framework that typically helps people to change their life in the most profound way as it relates to business sales, their career, whatever.

30:21One of the ones that jumps to mind right away is that it's a simple framework about perspective versus perception. And we may have mentioned this actually in our previous conversation, Stephen. Perception is what you believe to be true about the world around you. Perspective is what other people believe to be true about the world around them. So as I sit here looking at you, this is my perception. My perception is that I'm sitting in the center seat. And you're sitting outside of me and everything else is built around me at the center. Well, guess what your perception is? The same thing. I am across a table from you.

30:58You're at the center and everything in this room is built around you. So our perceptions are never going to be the same. So the only way that I can find common ground with you is to stop thinking about what's happening around me from my perception and start thinking from your perspective. Because then I get my perception plus your perception combined. I get twice as much information to think through this specific situation. Can you train that? Can you train someone's have both points of view? Absolutely. So here's how I mentioned that awareness is the first step. Really, we have a three step process at CIA that we use when we teach spy skills to future spies.

31:37Because that's all CIA. It's CIA is a giant training engine that's constantly creating new spies. And then spies just go out and spy. But what CIA really does is train spies who then steal secrets and combine and compile those secrets to share with decision makers on the hill. CIA's system of teaching is a system where you educate first, you exercise second, and then you experience third. Remember that flywheel. So you educate that's your information. You exercise that's where you turn information into knowledge and then you experience and that's where you actually go out and test the knowledge to see if the knowledge is still applicable in the world that you live in today.

32:19So those are the three steps. So whenever you're trying to get anyone to break a barrier, whenever you're trying to get anyone to transform, all you have to do is educate them, help them to exercise, which means practice what they learn in a controlled space, and then kick them out the door to go do it for themselves, it's like kicking a bird out of the nest. So if I can you make this very real for me because I want to I want to be someone that can walk through the world and appreciate my perception of a situation, but also the other person's perspective. So if we just put this in the context of me here as a podcast host, how would I be able to implement this to become a better podcast host, understand the other person's perspective and the way that you're seeing the world.

32:56Absolutely. So we had a whole conversation before the cameras turned on. Right. Can you tell me five things that you remember about me that I shared during the time before the cameras turned on? Yes. Go ahead. Okay. You want me to say them? Absolutely. It's private stuff, but tell me. Okay. We're talking about your relationship, things are going through at home. You said that in the last couple of days, everything's changed because of the assassination attempt on little Trump. We talked about you used to live in an RV for a while and you've just recently moved across America to a new place. You mentioned your kids as well.

33:35You used to live in the RV with your kids and there's a, they're varying ages. I think one of them is, did you say three is old? Close? One of them was three or something. Five in one. Five in one. You did great, right? Those things that you were that you recalled. You recalled those from what's known as your pale mammalian brain, the back part of your brain, passive learning part of your brain. Because naturally when you are untrained, when you're untrained to think like a spy, you rely on passive knowledge, you rely on passive observation to create prefrontal cortex knowledge. All the spy does is when they talk to you, they turn on.

34:20They turn on the prefrontal part right away and they start paying attention to all the details right away. Because the way that you game someone else's perspective is by listening to what they're saying and seeing how they're saying it. Because what happens now when I sit with people, I was just with a client this morning who made a comment on this, when you're trained and you sit with someone, you are always gaining more information about them than they are about you. When you know how to practice perspective versus perception, because from the moment that you came in and sat down, you were very much in your world.

34:55You're sitting here in socks, you're sitting on your leg, you're very comfortable, you're messing with all of your technology, you're fighting with your technology because it's not exactly the way you want it to be. Like this is Steve's world and there's not a single thing wrong with Steve's world, but Steve's world isn't as big as the world of Steve and Andy together. Whereas when I came in here just because of the way I'm wired, I'm paying attention to you, I'm paying attention to your producers, I'm paying attention to the set, I'm paying attention to the people who I've met from your team in previous calls.

35:25Because I'm trying to gain as much perspective as possible before I sit at this table with you and the cameras turn on and we're on a one way trip. Because I only get one chance, so I want to have as much information on my side moving forward. So you as a podcast host, your original question was how do I use this information, how do I use these frameworks to become a better podcast host. Every person who sits across the table from you came from somewhere and every time they leave the table you're sitting at, they're going somewhere. And they're bringing stress and they're bringing pain and they're bringing worries and they're bringing concerns with them and they're leaving with the same things.

36:01I know that your partner is thinking about babies. When you talk about it, that's how you talk about it. You say my partner is thinking about getting pregnant. You don't ever say we are thinking about getting pregnant, which makes me wonder if she's more excited about pregnancy than you are. I'm so fucked. I'm afraid the Lord is illicitabies. Am I accurate? So, can I match her excitement levels? She's changed the entire house at home. She's expecting, I don't know what you look at the entire, my shampoo is gone. That's like her level of excitement about it. Obviously, I'm excited about it, but no, of course I can't match her level of preparation and obsession about it.

36:49But I'm paying attention to you, which is the only reason I even have the ability to ask that question. Because I'm trying to live in your shoes. The whole time I'm here, I'm trying to live in your shoes. Even as I answer your questions, I'm trying to think, what can I do to bring value, to Steve, to the Diary of a CEO, to the audience that's listening? Because this is my only time to talk to you guys. So, what can I do to maximize that value? That's practicing perspective. So, when you do that to your guests, you're going to unlock a whole new level of podcasting from them. Instead of being frustrated or curious or wondering whether or not they're on track or off track or whether or not they're tired or not tired or whether or not you're going to get the best performance out of them.

37:31If you literally just took, I mean, we have an exercise. We have an exercise called Get Quiet at CIA. And in a Get Quiet exercise, all you do is just get quiet. You stop overwhelming your Sensatory Organes, your eyes, your ears, your feelings, your taste buds, your nose, your olfactory. You get yourself into a place where your sensory organs can take a break. Because what happens when you don't overload your sensory organs is your brain starts to index. And when your brain starts to index, it gives you a higher level of awareness, a higher level of observational skills. So, especially before you go into an area where you want to make observations, you want to quiet your sensory organs so that you can go in with fresh sensory organs.

38:15It's kind of like cleaning your palate before you try a certain ice cream. The reason that we do that is because we want to gain as much perspective information as possible so that we have the informational advantage going into any situation. Understanding that most people are coming in living in their own perception. Consider applying this to business. You are a coffee shop. Well, there's 500 other coffee shops. There's five other coffee shops just in two square miles of where your coffee shop is. So, when you think about your own product, you think, well, my coffee is superior. It's from Ethiopia.

38:51We roast it here and it smells great and whatever else. So, you think, my building is better because we have local artists on the wall and we play local musicians. That's what they think. That's what the owner of the coffee shop thinks. But they don't stop to think about the customer who buys the coffee. Because the customer who buys the coffee is coming from somewhere and then going to somewhere and the coffee shop is just one stop along the way. So, if you really want to become the coffee shop that everybody wants to go to, you have to think about life through their eyes, through their perspective.

39:28Why are they drinking the coffee? Oh, they're drinking the coffee because they're a new mom. So, then what else does a new mom need? What else does a new mom want when she goes to a coffee shop? Maybe she wants other moms to be there. Maybe she wants specials. Maybe she wants to find little things to buy her kids. Who knows what? You can change your shop to fit your customer if you're open to their perspective. Otherwise, all you're doing is creating your own little circle, your own little shed. So, in terms of practical things that you do, so that you can really tune into someone's perspective, is the most important one just listening?

40:07Yes, but there's a twist because you also have to dig for the information you want. So, you have to know how to ask questions. And you have to be willing to ask questions. There's another exercise that we have at CIA called Windows and Doors. In a conversation, people will open windows. Windows in conversation. Which means I might ask you one thing or you might ask me something. And then in my response, I hinted something else. That's a window, right? You started this conversation by asking me what season of my life am I in. That was a fantastic question to open windows and doors. Because you don't know what the answer is, but you're going to choose what you hear to decide where you go next.

40:49The same thing happens in a normal conversation. You can see windows and doors when they present themselves. When you are trying to cultivate perspective over somebody, you want to choose the windows and doors that you follow through in the conversation, specifically to collect the kind of information that you want to gain that perspective. So, if I'm trying to sell something to you, if I'm trying to sell something to you as an entrepreneur, I'm going to follow the windows and doors that open up in conversation, that take me to understand better what limitations or challenges you're having as an entrepreneur.

41:23So, if I'm trying to buy, if you're a car salesman, I'm a customer and I want to buy a car. What kind of questions would you start asking me to? I love this exercise because I actually just had to buy a car after we moved. And I was shocked at how horrible my car salesman was because he did not think this way, right? Why do people buy a car? I'm going to let you practice your perspective on me. When I move to Colorado Springs in May, why did I have to buy a car? Because you have kids. Oh, because you have to... Well, you mentioned Colorado Springs, so I guess that's pretty pertinent to your answer.

42:02But you have to travel a lot around Colorado because it's quite vast, isn't it? You need a mode of transportation. That's the only reason anybody buys a car. That's where you have to start because then you have to think, well, why are they here? If you're a Subaru dealership and somebody walks in, you already know that they've pre -qualified a number of things. They must be looking for a Subaru. They must be looking for a two -wheel car. They must be looking for an all -wheel car, or else they wouldn't be here. So you can kind of make those assumptions if you practice perspective when they walk in.

42:34And then when they walk in, that's when you find out, oh, they're a parent. So I'm looking for a mode of transportation. That's also safe. Because I'm a parent. I have a family of four. So I'm looking for a mode of transportation that's safe for at least four people. If you practice a little bit of perspective, you learn a lot more about the person that you're trying to close. So now I ended up buying a Nissan Pathfinder, a brand new Nissan Pathfinder. Not because my salesman was any good, but because I went to the Nissan dealership already wanting a brand new Pathfinder, just like you did. But I always go through this experience to see what's the salesperson going to do?

43:14Like, are they going to try to sell me something good? Are they going to try to sell me something wrong? Are they going to understand my specific needs? Or am I going to have to coach them through this whole thing? My company gets hired to give sales training to high -performance sales teams. And what I'm shocked at is how often, even with a high -performing sales team, salespeople don't practice perspective and perception. What they practice is whatever script they're supposed to read. And they practice empirical numbers, and they practice the law of averages. And it's like, I need to make 100 calls to convert 12%.

43:44That's what they practice. Instead of practicing something just a little bit more efficient, like changing your opening line to ask an open -ended question, just like you did, an open -ended question is a question that makes the person on the other side of the phone speak through the lens of their current reality. Do you know what? I've never said this before, but there's a question I ask every guest in the preamble. And I don't know if I asked you, but I ask 99 % of guests when we sit down. And it's what's front of mind for you at the moment. And for me, the reason I ask that question is because kind of what you said, because people come here.

44:22And I assume that there's something that happened when they woke up this morning, or there's something that's bugging them, that my research team wouldn't have been able to find on the internet, that they haven't yet said in an interview. And it's been so unbelievably amazing when you ask that question. And then there was one particular conversation I had, which was one of my favorite of all time, where it was Simon Sinek. And because I've spoken to Simon Sinek three times on the podcast, I didn't have research, like we've talked about everything. So I sat down and I had to sit down and figure out where the conversation was going to go for the next three hours.

44:51And so my opening question to him was really broad. It was, how are you and please give me the long answer. And you have to be honest. And he literally, for the first time ever in his life went, do you know what I'm feeling really lonely right now? And for him to say that, a guy like that to say that was like, whoa. And if I had sat down with my, okay, today we're going to talk about management strategies. I totally would have missed one of my favorite conversations of all time. But you have to have a lot of trust in yourself. This is what I've come to learn as a podcaster to be able to sit down without any questions written down here and to ask a really open ended question.

45:24And then to try and follow them, like wherever they might take you. Well, that's what's interesting is that one of your superpowers as a podcaster is that you have a plan. But you don't always stick rigidly to your plan. You go wherever the guest takes you. You go where Simon Sinek takes you. Right. I've taken you down this long path about living in a shed that I'm sure was not on your agenda. And I'm sure lost a good half of the people that we were talking to early on. But my point with all that is just to say, you practice what is called courage. And courage is, courage is a word that is definable.

46:01And people don't often take the time to really define what courage is. Courage is doing the thing that you're afraid of. That is courage. So going off script and asking a question coming in unprepared for a podcast. Those are things that cause you a little bit fear, a little bit of anxiety. You're like, I don't know how this is going to turn out. But you do it anyways. One of the major differences between entrepreneurs and aspirational entrepreneurs is that entrepreneurs have the courage to try. And aspirational entrepreneurs are always talking about the day that they will have the courage to try.

46:36Trust comes into this, right? Because part of the reason that I can sit down with someone for three hours, not necessarily, I've never had a question written down, but not even have an idea of where the conversation is going to go, is because I have so many case studies that it's been finding the past. And it's those case studies that have built up this sort of self -trust that enables me to sit down and go how are you? And then they go off about loneliness and we spend throughout talking about loneliness. But that comes from that initial trust, I think. I think trust is a good word. Trust is self -trust.

47:03Yeah, self -trust or confidence. Yeah. Those are good words to use. But I would almost challenge that what you're really talking about is you're gambling on odds that you've learned or in your favor. Right? It's kind of like when you think about a professional athlete. Professional athletes do some amazing movements. Sometimes they make the score and sometimes they don't. But what happens is when they make the score doing an amazing movement, that's what we all remember. When they missed the shot doing the amazing movement, nobody remembers that. Nobody remembers how many basketball shots Dennis Rodman didn't make.

47:42Right? They just remember something else about Dennis Rodman. Arnold Schwarzenegger has his famous quote where he made lots of movies. We all remember our favorite Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. But how many of his bad movies do you remember? Not many. And he knows that too. And that's one of the reasons that he said yes to so many movies was because he learned early on in his bodybuilding career that nobody remembers when you lose. But they always remember when you win. So he had no problem making a bunch of movies because the one or two or three or 12 or 18 that became blockbusters were the ones that defined him.

48:17Even though he also did kindergarten cop. I mean, that's quite a good concept to hold in your mind. If you're trying to weigh up any sort of risk in your life, like the risk of leaving the shed that we were talking about. Correct. You're taking a chance. You're taking a gamble. But here's the thing. We're conditioned in our shed. We're conditioned to gamble on the system. Right? If you're going to roll the dice, at least roll the dice that the system gives you. Right? Bet on the house because the house is going to win. What we really learn as entrepreneurs is to gamble on ourselves. Like bet on you.

48:56How many people take every dollar they earn and they invest it in a brokerage that's managed by somebody else that is targeting an 8 % return on investment. That's what they do with every dollar of their life. My mother -in -law just recently retired about three and a half or four weeks ago. She is, what do you have to be to retire? 69, I think. So she's 67 or 68 years old. She's worked her entire life. Her primary investment vehicles, I shit you not, are CDs. It's a device in the investment world where you basically put your money in for a certain amount of time and it guarantees you a certain yield.

49:34The yield is usually very, very low. But that was her preferred investment vehicle. So for the 69 years or the 50 years that she's been working, she's been investing in these low performance certificates of deposit CD. That is exactly the kind of thinking that was conditioned into her by the generation before her. That's where she learned about CDs at all. So she bought her first CD at 16 years old because mom and dad told her to do that. So here it is 2024. She's retiring and all of the money that she saved is basically ends these certificates of deposit, which is not a lot of money. Really? Yes.

50:10Because it doesn't grow. Whereas I invest in my company and my return has been 300%. And entrepreneurs, even entrepreneurs who don't grow quickly still see 12 % return on investment, 15 % return on investment, 20 % return on investment, which outperforms anything in the market. But you still have these people who don't want to gamble on themselves because they're afraid that the house will win. Who can't be taught the things that you teach in terms of the CIA skills and everything you teach within every day's buy? There's a lot of people out there who write out of the gates, had a circle drawn around them.

50:49That CIA is some kind of deep state conspiracy, kills Americans, sells children, steals drugs kind of organization. Are they room?

51:02Maybe there was a CIA that did that once. But my point is those people are never going to believe what I have to teach them. There are threads all over the internet about how I'm a fake and a phony and a fraudster and there's even, for every one of those threads, there are also threads that talk about how I'm a plant. How I'm still a CIA officer. I did read that in the comment section. Isn't that funny? Quite funny. So there's like, there's both sides. These are people who cannot, they'll never be open to learn. They're not willing to learn. How do I know you're not still a CIA officer? Does it matter?

51:33It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. If you can take the information and test the framework and get ahead, does it matter? Well, actually, maybe if the freight, okay, you're at the right point now, you said, test it myself. Because you could be teaching me things that are going to just keep me trapped in the matrix because the, you know. But I don't want you trapped in the matrix. I don't know that you could still be a CIA spy. I could be. But the key thing you said is that you're giving them to me to test for myself. So I get the results to check whether what you're teaching me is positive or negative, productive or not productive.

52:06Correct. And that's what really drives me. What drives me is this vision of a future that's good for my children. And the future that's good for my children is a future where the United States is still the most powerful economy in the world. Still the most powerful military in the world. And according to all reports, that is not what will happen by 2035. By 2035, we will be at parity with at least another country, most likely China. And as we reach parity, what that means is you reach equality. As you reach equality, your superpower status goes away. You are no longer a superpower. You are a near peer power or a near peer competitor.

52:48It's very different than being a superpower. What is it, Manta? Because when there's competition, there's more uncertainty. There's more unpredictability. There's more danger. There's more risk. There's less opportunity. Think about the starting quarterback for a football team. He's the starting quarterback. He is the person. He is the player that will start the game, that will have the football and nobody questions it. There's a lot of opportunity there for that person. But as soon as they start to be unpredictable, as soon as there's a new star, a new quarterback that comes in, and threatens the existing quarterback, now we don't really know who's going to start.

53:27And the team doesn't really know who's going to start. And then for all we know, the team is going to have two different quarterbacks that swap in and out throughout the entire game. And the whole team performs worse because they don't know how to predict the quarterback, because the new quarterback or the old quarterback isn't the one that's always throwing the ball. So there's an uncertainty that comes as competition arises. It's why business owners want to be in a business of one. It's why there's such a thing as a blue ocean marketing strategy versus a red ocean marketing strategy. Because when you're in a blue ocean, when you have no competitors around you, your business will most likely thrive.

54:04You have room to make mistakes. You can learn slowly. But when you're in a highly competitive red ocean, you don't get any of those opportunities. What does history tell us about how changing the changing of the guard as it relates to world power? What the dangers might be for the average person? It's a great question. And this is where I want to re -emphasize my lack of altruism. Because what does altruism mean for anyone that doesn't know? So altruism is the idea that you care about other people or that you care about a common good. I don't care about a common good. What do you care about other people?

54:43I care about some other people. You're a children. Correct. My family, my friends, the people that I think are making a difference. And that's just the way it is. Why will some people not be willing to learn what I teach them? Because they will disagree with my ethics and my morals about how I don't care about all people equally. Well, I prefer the fact that you're honest. So that makes me trust you more. I appreciate that. So if you look at history, Rome was really good for Romans for a long, long time. The fall of Rome was bad for everybody. The transition was bad for everybody. Coming out of World War II, right?

55:24When you were a Nazi and Nazi Germany, things were pretty good. Right? But then when Nazi Germany fell, it was bad for a lot of people. There was a lot of war, there was a lot of death, there was a lot of starvation. Multiple countries had been destroyed. There was a war. There was a transition of power. Same thing happened with the fall of Soviet Union. In that war, I was watching the documentary about it the other day. It was interesting because I watched both the sort of Soviet Union rush into Berlin. And I watched America rush into Berlin. They both took different parts of Germany. And then once they'd taken down the Nazis, they went to war with each other.

55:55Correct. Because then we're trying to figure out who was in charge of Germany and how they were going to divvy up land. So there was another war, basically, like a civil war following the... And the same thing happened in China. The same thing happened as our Pacific forces worked their way up through Japan. They became conflict in the East as well. So transition periods were near -pure countries, or were countries become near -pure. Competitors. That's not... People don't stop competing as the competition increases. Like what's happening in the world right now in Ukraine and Russia, in Israel, with Hamas, with the Houthis, and with the Iranians?

56:33Like what's happening is competition is on the rise. So everything becomes less stable. Things become more dangerous. When there's a clear bully in the playground, there's only one bully. And nobody has to mess with the bully. And it's a bad day for anyone the bully messes with. But for the most part, everybody else is good. But what happens when there's two bullies? Shit gets messy. The bullies make posses. The posses have to fight with each other. More people get hurt. More rabble rousing happens in the playground. They win there's just one bully. So for me, the United States is the bully on the playground.

57:09And I, as an American citizen, am living in a place where it's pretty good to be on the bully's side. So for me, pragmatically speaking, if I want the best for my children, what I really need is for the United States to remain the only bully. So then I can have some impotence, some confidence that their future will be secure. Do you think the war in the Ukraine and Russia is a symptom of the changing in power? Because it's kind of like a proxy war, right? Ukraine is actually the USA. And Russia is actually kind of China, to some degree. So I would say it's not a kind of a proxy war. It's a full on proxy war.

57:44You're 100 % ready to know what a proxy war is. I just use that time because it's on its mark. Well, it does sound smart. It is smart. Proxy war is a doctrine, it's a natural military doctrine, that says that you create what's known as interest state conflict, which means conflict internal to a state. And then external wealth parties fund the conflict in the state. That way the two external parties that are in conflict don't have to waste any lives. It protects them diplomatically, it protects them socially, it protects them militarily. They're only spending resources in an interstate conflict.

58:19The interstate conflict has always been inside Ukraine. Eastern Ukraine and Western Ukraine have always been in conflict. We just didn't realize it until Russia invaded it because nobody paid attention to Ukraine. Same thing in Israel. There's always been conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis. We just didn't really pay attention to it until until October 8th. So the conflict that you're talking about is not a symptom, it's a strategy. And the strategy is that the United States can drain Russian resources without draining American lives, which makes it easy for the United States to continue draining strategic resources from Russia.

58:56And then NATO's watching the same thing happen. And NATO's the one that has the most to lose if Russia is strong. So then that's why they also pile in support. That's the strategy. That has been the United States strategy since the end of World War II. Who rebuilt Japan? The United States. Who rebuilt the UK? The United States. Who rebuilt Germany? Who rebuilt France? All the United States. Is it any surprise that all of these countries since World War II have been close diplomatic, political and economic allies? No. And guess what they all have? They all have very similar sheds because we built their political systems from World War II based on ours.

59:37Right? That's the American model. That's been how America has grown economically so quickly all over the world. Guess who's mimicking that model now? China. The real conflict between the United States and China. Nobody can define it. Trump calls it a trade war because we have a bunch of cheap Chinese goods. That's not the problem. The problem is that Xi Jinping understands that what he wants for China is for China to be a net exporter of high technology. Who's the only other high exporter of high technology? The United States. The United States makes electric vehicles. China makes electric vehicles.

1:00:18The United States makes telecommunication. China makes telecommunication. That's the conflict because what China is doing is giving the rest of the developing world an alternative to the United States. Well, if just like any other business, if I make coffee and you make coffee, we're in competition for the person who wants to buy coffee. So now we're fighting over that person. Whoever wins that person wins more money. Whoever wins that person wins repeat buyers. And now I might lose my company. My coffee shop might shrink and your coffee shop might grow because this person is choosing your coffee when it used to be only mine was available.

1:00:54So who is better for America? Joe Biden or Donald Trump? Neither. They are both bad for America in different ways. Who is more likely to prolong American dominance? Donald Trump of the two. Donald Trump of the two. Here's what I'm going to tell you. I had this thought last night and I was going to make a video for my own channel. But my channel is nowhere near as enjoyable as your channel. And put it on yours as well. There is only one Democrat in the United States who can beat Donald Trump. Only one. Nobody else stands a chance. Democratic Party is struggling to accept that. Nobody can beat Donald Trump.

1:01:35It's only one that can win. And that's Michelle Obama. I did think this because I mean, I would say Barack, obviously he can't because he's done his eight years. But Michelle, I do agree and she doesn't want anything to do with it. She said in early July she wanted nothing to do with it. But what's happened since early July? There's been the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. The assassination attempt turned into this incredible media frenzy. Now you have this guy with blood on his face and a fist in the air and a flag behind him. You know, Pulitzer Prize winning photo already floating around the internet with this guy on it, right?

1:02:09Everything changed. There's no way Michelle Obama isn't sitting in her room multiple times a day. Asking herself the question, do I still want nothing to do with this? Or do I have to step up to the plate to do what I believe is the right thing to do because only I can do it? Think about the questions Barack Obama must ask Michelle Obama. Think about the silence, the pregnant silence around their kitchen table at night. Think about how heavy they must be thinking right now because they know what I just said out loud. That you knew yesterday, there's only one Democrat that can beat Donald Trump.

1:02:48And maybe in July 3rd, she said she wanted nothing to do with it. But now it's July 20th. And if she really believes in this country, how is she not going to rise to the occasion? How is she going to sit back and let the future of her daughters rest in the hands of somebody she doesn't believe in? Because the truth is if she were to run overnight, she would have the complete support of the entire Democratic National Convention. Every donor who has already donated money would let their money stay with her and probably donate more. Women voters, African American voters, voters that are on the fence, voters that are looking for any alternative to Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

1:03:29They would all get their answers given to them at once. Not to mention the fact that she's brilliant, she's esteemed, she's youthful. Like everything that America stands for is represented in Michelle Obama just as much as what we say America stands for is represented by Donald Trump. So if Michelle Obama is announced at the Democratic National Convention, I'm glad we had this conversation. Do you think that's possible? Absolutely, it's possible. I don't think it's probable. But I do think it's possible. And I can't help but have the hope in our country that the few who are willing to learn will step up and accept that they have to gamble on themselves.

1:04:15Do you think that Michelle Obama would increase the probability and the length of America's dominance versus Trump? Absolutely. It would just be in a different way. Donald Trump grows through bravado and bringsmanship. He grows like a bully grows. But what we've learned about the United States is that our bullish strategy, our bully strategy that we've been employing since 1950 is a game of diminishing returns. We invest a lot into it, but we lose influence. We lose global reach. We lose power. We're losing economic might. They say that China is having an economic recession right now at 4 .5 % growth GDP.

1:04:58We're at 1 .3 % growth GDP. Nobody's talking about our recession because our recession has been on so long. It's not a recession anymore. It's just the United States doesn't grow more than really 3%. China used to grow at 5%. So when it goes from 5 % to 4%, it's a big deal for people. Our model is already broken. Our model already doesn't work. So all Donald Trump is going to do is come in and double down on that model because he's only got 4 years in the house. He's only got 4 years in the White House and he knows it. So he's not out there to revolutionize America. He's not out there to revolutionize the United States.

1:05:31He's out there for Donald Trump. I think he believes he'll do a good job. I think he believes he's best for America. I think he believes that being a bully is the way to go, but that doesn't mean he's right. That doesn't mean it's going to be exponential return on investment. It could be a continuing game of diminishing returns. Michelle Obama has the opportunity to do it differently. As long as she doesn't come in just parroting the Joe Biden and Barack Obama school of thought. What do you think she would need to say to me America's ideology right now? I think she could define America's ideology right now.

1:06:07I don't think she'd have to meet it. I think America is lost. America has been looking down the barrel of the 2024 election for a long time knowing it was going to boil down the Trump versus Biden. Knowing that it was going to boil down to an octogenarian who can't form a sentence from a stage sometimes or a crazy ass businessman who, when he forms a sentence, it's a nonsensical sentence. That's what we've been looking at. That's been the choice. Doesn't really feel like it's a choice anymore. No, because after Trump got shot in the air, I think I mean I watched those scenes as well and I thought, yeah, this guy's won.

1:06:47He won. And everybody knows it. If you're not willing to admit it, that's fine. Everybody knows he won the election on that day. The day he survived that shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13th, he won the 2024 election unless something even more disruptive happens in the marketplace between now and November 5th. Michelle Obama has the power to do that. If you were in his marketing team and you were desperate, you would have shot him in the air that day, wouldn't you? No, no way. The risk is too great. I mean, if you knew it was going to hit his ear and you were in his marketing team, you would have shot him in the air that day.

1:07:28Like if I, because that was, as we both said, he won the election that day. Yeah. And he won the election because he, many people will now see him as some kind of hero. So I'll tell you how a CIFster thinks about this, right? If you wanted to stage an attempted assassination, if that's what you want to do was stage an attempted assassination, you would never shoot at the person who was the principal. You would shoot away. You would shoot the principal. The principal, the principal is the primary target that you're trying to support. Right? So Donald Trump was the principal. If I was trying to stage an assassination to get to win him popular praise, I would not shoot at him because the risk is too great that the shot would either miss and hit him, possibly hit him fatally, or it would miss him and hit someone in the audience.

1:08:16And then a rally member dies and now we have to account for why somebody at the rally died. Like people were killed and people were hurt at the Donald Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. If you wanted to stage an assassination, you would shoot 35, 40 degrees off target well away from anybody accidentally getting hit because what's going to happen, everybody's going to hear the gunshots. So the gunshots will still cause the panic. The secret service would still jump in. They'd still cover him. There would still be all the same newsworthiness without the risk of killing somebody. And if you really, really wanted to make it like so it made headlines, you could even potentially stage some kind of cut that's covered up with a small skin colored bandaid so that when the shots go off, you can wipe off or pull off the bandaid and then there's going to be active red spots.

1:09:01Right? You would never actually shoot at the principal. That's what people don't understand about conspiracies is that when you actually plan to carry out a covert action, you plan to carry out the covert action in the safest possible way. You don't run the risk of actually shooting the principal. So but let's play out the scenario that it was a conspiracy. So what could have happened then? I was in an office the other day, one of the companies that I'm involved with and there was a group of people gathered around a laptop watching the footage and a half of the people thought it was some kind of conspiracy.

1:09:32And that maybe he fell down and then like cut his own ear and then the other half of the people thought that was that was craziness. What side of the fence do you sit on? You think it was a real shooter? I think it was a real shooter. I absolutely think it was a real shooter. The the principles that CIA teaches us about how to analyze a situation are twofold. They teach us how to analyze a situation, but they also teach us how to predict a conspiracy and conspiracies have a very clear anatomy. They have a very clear process. All conspiracies start with something that is factual, something really does happen.

1:10:03And then immediately following the factual thing, there's a lack of information. Inside of that lack of ins of information, the third piece of the puzzle is speculation. Now speculation and suspicion are very close cousins. Suspicion is healthy, right? You've heard of healthy suspicion. Speculation is not healthy. Speculation is what it takes for you to create an answer to a story that's not based on facts, which is where the fourth element of a conspiracy comes from, a story that closes the loop. Because when there's information missing, it creates an open loop. Well, guess what human brains like conveniently closed loops.

1:10:46So we can't handle an open loop very well for very long. So then we start speculating on what might have happened until someone defines for us an answer and then all of a sudden you have an answer that closes the loop and you have a conspiracy. Conspiracies happen all the time. Conspiracies happen in your own home. Who's the last one that ate the last piece of bread? Right? Who's the one that drank the last bit of milk? How is there, how are there no more eggs left in the refrigerator? Right? It's lack of information leads to speculation and then we close a loop with a story in our mind. When you look at what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, there's all the elements for a conspiracy.

1:11:21There's facts, a lack of information, speculation, and somebody's closing the story loop. And all these different conspiracies are gaining momentum. But when you look at the factual analysis of what happened, there are pictures, there are diagrams, there's, there's a corpse of a 20 year old shooter holding a high powered rifle on top of the world. And there's a corpse of a 50 year old shooter holding a high powered rifle on top of a roof aimed at the stage. There's reports of local sheriff and local police officers being notified of that. There's bystanders who have reported that there's there's technology that's been that's been employed to verify that there's enough facts there to know that there really was someone who was young by name who took a shot at the president.

1:12:03That's what we know. Guess what happens tomorrow? We learn more. We don't have to know all the answers today. More information will come. Well, as soon as Donald Trump was shot, I called up one of my friends who's a who's a secret service, a retired secret service officer. And I said to him that from my point of view, from what I understand about close protection, everything was done pretty close to right. There's always gaps, always gaps at any kind of political rally. That's why they're dangerous. You can't make it 100 % secure. That's why there's snipers on the roof. There's not snipers on the roof because they feel like the grounds are safe.

1:12:42There's snipers on the roof because they know that there's gaps. There's not secret service on the sides of the stage carrying guns because they think that they're safe. There's secret service on the sides of the stage because they know that there's gaps. Of course there's gaps. You can't, you can't manage all risks. The person took a shot from over 400 feet. 400 feet is a long difficult shot. Imperically, it's a long difficult shot. Even though the newspapers come out and say it's a turkey shooter, an easy shot or a standard shot or a basic shot, it is not any hunter out there will tell you 400 yards is a difficult shot.

1:13:13And you have to have a high powered rifle built for that kind of distance to shoot that length. There's all kinds of misinformation that's going around as people try to spin up a story. For me, it was a real assassination attempt by a real person whose motives are still unknown. I was listening to something and the person was saying that maybe the CIA or somebody infiltrated this young man and encouraged him over a period of time to get up there on that roof and all these kinds of things. The heart of the problem here is we don't we're quite distrusting and we don't have answers and most of us aren't informed.

1:13:54So there's basically the small life that we live and then above us we see like billionaires and powerful people and we hear that they do and all have historically done very nefarious malicious things. And that becomes our sort of shed is that we are the average person and then up there outside the shed there's all these billionaires powerful illuminati and they are doing these really malicious things now in part that's true. But maybe only in part and we kind of assume this broad strokes approach to anything that happens we go government matrix conspiracy. And you know the CIA does have history of doing things like this true true we're coming into a conversation that's twofold one we're talking about a pre 9 11 CIA pre 9 11 post 9 11 is important to create a distinction for CIA because prior to September 11 CIA was a small highly funded organization with very little oversight.

1:14:59They could come up with crazy stuff like trying to you know trying to poison Fidel Castro so it was brewed here's beard fell out or trying to create the Bay of pigs invasion or trying to do all sorts of wacky stuff from you know MK ultra to whatever else that was a wacky pre 9 11 unsupervised wild west kind of CIA post 9 11. The 9 11 commission written 2003 highlighted that CIA failed to do its job for September 11th so now there's tons of oversight it's now a very large very fat well funded bureaucracy whereas before it was a well funded free for all if it was a conspiracy which department or which organization would be responsible in your opinion.

1:15:44If it was a conspiracy there would be no department in charge of the conspiracy so it would be something else correct right because when governments act when individuals in a government act in a conspiratorial manner it's not formalized if it was formalized it would be a policy right they act independently and there's all sorts of instances where people act independently from from Edwards node and all the way to older games right. There are people who actually carried out conspiratorial efforts to try to gain some kind of leverage that worked for them for a while and then worked against them if that bullet had hit Donald Trump in the head.

1:16:27How do you think the US would be different. I was thinking about this when I was driving down the street yesterday it's hard to define that really I think and we probably wouldn't be sat here now because they probably would have been quite a bit of unrest potentially potentially I don't know I don't know like it would have been. I think we would have still been sitting here I was wondering how would I gotten my ass on a plan to come sit with you at least for a while. I mean, you never know how these sort of domino effects can happen and people can break out on the streets and you know because what might happen let's just play out this scenario Donald Trump gets shot then some crazy right wing person comes out and shoots someone else and then and in the streets of valet look very different to the streets of valet today when we sat here in LA so do you know what I mean that's kind of the domino effect that's playing out in my mind.

1:17:14There'd be some kind of revenge right why don't know that's what's interesting so politically motivated violence is tough if Donald Trump would have been shot chances are the shooter would have also been shot. So from the eyes of the American people and for sure from the from the messaging that would have come from the White House. The threat was neutralized and it's a tragedy that we lost an American a former American president Donald or Joe Biden would have come out and would have made kind carrying remarks about Donald Trump nobody would be talking about him is crazier whatever else he'd go down.

1:17:44As a hero following the democratic process for something he believed in history would have been written a very different way or I don't know because I think if Donald Trump had been hit I mean this is just from chilling on Twitter. The Donald Trump had been hit regardless of whether that kid had been shot and regardless of whatever people would have believed that it was some kind of deep state CIA left wing Hillary Clinton involvement even if there was a body fingerprints they found the kids hard drive and he was planning it there's a group of people that still would have believed that apps. Because there's a group of people as you know that leave anything correct and that group someone in that group of people would have taken a retaliatory action and then that this this starts the stone throwing that I think so they would have gone there might have been a they might have gone to a left wing.

1:18:28I don't know black event festival and done something and then you have the the tit for tat I don't I don't disagree that it's a part it's a possibility. But the question is whether or not a group would have reached critical mass to take some kind of action okay right because I mean think about the alternative is is the streets of you name the conservative state Texas Florida. Whatever pencil van you maybe a giant parade fit for a king right parading Donald Trump through the streets something to key and Donald and Joe Biden. Happily endorsing the money for it to happen because he's an ex president and because that's showing like unity and nationality it could have been a chance to really bring the whole country together and and some of the bipolar division it could have there would have still been just like you said there would have been a group of people who believed in some sort of deep state action and there may have been follow a violence you're right again I think all of those things are possibilities.

1:19:26But it is also a possibility that it would have gone in the other direction there still would have had to be a new a new candidate identified by the republican national convention so things would have gone differently from that day very interesting so going back to the shed. The persons come out of the shed they understand this idea of perspective and perception I'm really what I'm really trying to get out here is I'm trying to help people get out of the life they're living that they hate and closer towards the life that is aligned in whatever way they define alignment as. So that they can live the life they want to live so they can start to kind of bend the world in their favor and I use this term bend the world intentionally because it's something that I've come to learn in the entrepreneurs that I've met and just the people that seem to have the most power they understand that the world they live in is malleable and maybe that's the analogy being able to break out of your shed but they understand that they can like have an idea pursue the thing and kind of convince their way to a goal.

1:20:19Bend the world out of their way and that's kind of what I want to equip the people that are listening right now with that ability to kind of bend the world out of your way or to the shape in which you want it to be. I've got two things that come to mind right the first is there's this lesson that I learned at CIA that I still teach now in my training with executives and individuals and entrepreneurs where CIA warns us not to get tracked not to get trapped in what's called the perfection paradox. And the perfection paradox is not the same thing as perfectionism the perfection paradox is the idea that you keep making incremental improvements to a plan but you never actually act on the plan so you're seeking perfection and you're making genuine improvements but you're not actually taking action so the impact of your improvements is not felt so they warn us against getting trapped in this perfection paradox because you can imagine if you're playing with the world you can't get it.

1:21:16So you're planning an operation for whatever it's very, very easy to just start how do we make it this 5 % better how do we make it 2 % better how do we make it 1 % better what if tomorrow's intelligence gives us new information what if intelligence the next day gives us better information so you get trapped in this paradox and instead what they tell us to do is engage in something called the called excellence through execution. Excellence through execution is the idea that by executing you will make mistakes and then you will improve upon the mistakes because you will execute again so your excellence comes from execution after 9 -11 as a simple example after 9 -11 President Bush declared war.

1:21:58People were immediately deployed to the mountains of Afghanistan Pakistan immediately. Did they plan an operation? Yes, in about 48 hours and then they were deployed and then you had paramilitary people on horseback with mules carrying stuff through the mountains. The only way that's possible is through excellence through execution. Get them on the ground and let them figure it out from there because the stakes are so high the impact has to be felt right now. So to your question how do we give people the ability to bend the rules, bend the world around them. It's understanding that there is excellence in execution and also understanding that there is a paradox with perfection.

1:22:45So if you want to feel the impact you can't keep planning you have to take action and you have to understand that the action you take may only be 20 % of what it will be one day. But today you take the lumps you make the mistakes and you get the impact that you need. The second thing that came to my mind is actually coming from a I have a centimillionaire client that I work with frequently. And he was talking about this idea of centimillionaire. How about time? I know what it is. I have a centimillionaire client who was working with me on a process to try to resolve some of the challenges that he was having from the trauma that he was wired into as a kid.

1:23:24And how that trauma has played out in his personal life and his business life and everything else. And he made this awesome breakthrough where he was like, you know, therapists and counselors and spouses because he's been married more than once. They all tell you to go through your pain, right? It's like, you've got to face your trauma, you've got to go through it, you've got to do the work, you've got to bear the burden so that you can heal. Whereas what I teach, which is what CIA teaches, is why would you ever go through something when you can go around it? So if you're trying to accept or recover or understand and heal the fact that your mom cheated on your dad when you were seven, you can't change it.

1:24:08By working through it, you might come to accept it, but what's the point? Instead, you can just go right around that pain and you can be like, my mom cheated on my dad. And because of that, this happened and because of that, this other thing happened and because of that, I became a self -sufficient, independent person who didn't rely on my mom or my dad. And now I'm very successful because all that matters is what's forward. I can't change what's behind. And he made this revelation on his own. I thought it was such a powerful visual because we so often think that the point from here to here, if there's all this mess in the middle, you have to go through the mess.

1:24:43When in fact, you can also just go around the mess and you can go right to the point and you don't have to heal. You just have to accept, understand, recognize and move forward. And so what did he do? So he was trying to overcome his trauma. How did he go around it in that specific example? Well, what he was so in that specific example, it was under he went back to the traumatic incident that he experienced. And what he realized is that if his mom hadn't cheated on his dad, then the domino effect that would have come after that would have probably never led to him starting the business that ultimately made him an ultra high net worth.

1:25:18And once he made that connection, he was like, oh, shit, I'm glad my mom cheated on my dad because now my daughters are taking care of my sons are taking care of my wives are taking care of like my I've got 500 employees that are taking care of I do business in four different countries. Everybody's taking care of does that require some time though between the thing that happened and where you are now because you know I was sat here yesterday with a chap who lost his son his 18 month year old son in April. And you know it's hard to in that situation go Francis and Garnie is a UFC champion. And how did in that situation to try and find a way around it?

1:26:00It's a couple of months ago. There's no there's no way around tragedy that's that's lost that very few of us will ever know thankfully. What we don't know is how that will shape him in the future. All we know is what that's doing to hurt him in the present right think about think about all the famous stories all the famous inspirational motivational leaders that you've met who had some kind of tragedy happened in the past. Well actually it's funnily enough because I because I mentioned the loss of a son I had a guy say he called Mo Gordat who was the ex had of Google X and his son passed away in a reading operation that should have taken 10 minutes of him killed his son.

1:26:44And then he quit his job at Google and went on search of what happiness is and if when I asked him on the podcast I said would you would you bring back your son. Now he said no. Like if you could go back and where I'm sure he'll bring back his I think what you're saying to me is that if you could go back and change what happened would he change it and he said no. It's important like it's important to understand when you are wired for success because not everyone is wired for success a lot of people are wired for mediocrity a lot of people are wired for basic survival. A lot of people are wired for pain and suffering but when you are wired for success you can't regret what's happened to you in the past because to erase it or change it would be to make you not the person you are now and the person you are now is successful.

1:27:37Do you think some people are wired for success absolutely I think people are wired for success what does that means in real times how do I know if I'm wired for success. I think empirically there's lots of proof that you're wired for success. But I'm talking about it. You know Dave that's listening to this now with Janet how do they know that if they're wired for success. So what what I have found pretty consistently not only in clients that I work with but also in the actual CIA field operations that I've engaged in right and it's important that the reason I compare clients to spies is because what spies are are people.

1:28:15People who are living in a shed looking through a window and realize there's something else on the other side. You can't create you can't find a happy person living in ignorance in their shed and convince them that it's a good idea to commit treason against their country. You can't because they're very happy once somebody's very happy and very like satisfied they don't aspire to anything so you can't go them into telling you secrets or pay them or trick them or force them because they're very satisfied where they are. So a spy is a asset in the field is somebody who believes that there might be something better.

1:28:55A actual client wired for success also believes that there is something better. The difference between the two is that this person can be manipulated. Which person? The spy in the field whose desperate to get out of the shed that person can be manipulated whereas a good client is suspicious and aware that people are trying to manipulate them. So they're looking for guidance they're looking for something they can test they're looking for something they can prove right so that's why I compare the two so closely. Both are wired to be successful because they already know that there is more than just the world around them they already know that there is something limiting them they already know that there's a barrier.

1:29:42And they by being aware that they that there is a barrier that makes them want to cross or break the barrier. That's what being wired for success means it means that you know that there's something holding you back and you want to overcome the thing that's holding you back. So I'm thinking now I was in a black cab the other day in London and there's I have so many conversations with conversations with black cab drivers in London because they love them obviously because of their the nature of their work they listen to podcasts and the radio and such and so sometimes they recognize me and they'll say I was listening to podcasts I love it etc.

1:30:15And I'm thinking of starting a business and I've got this idea and this idea and whatever. When you talk about them knowing that there's something more out there but there's something in their way can you speak to what that black cab driver is feeling in his life. I'm just using this as a random example but can you because I really want you to resonate with him so he knows you're speaking to him so whoever's listening to this now knows that they can they can ship that's me. When you are conditioned when you're when you're a when you're wired for success but conditioned in our western society especially then you know that there's more you want there to be more but you also believe that there has to be a process a road map or recipe a plan to get there.

1:31:01So you you've got this what we call a cognitive dissonance you don't believe everything you're hearing but you don't know anything else to believe so there's this dissonance there's this frustration so if you want to know that black cab driver feels they feel frustrated every day because they know there's more they want more they just don't know how to do it even worse they have probably tried. And dude there's this heartbreaking story for me it's a business heartbreaking story. I was in Portland, Oregon I was sitting with this 24 year old kid who worked part time at a brewery right I must have been 38 years old very young and in every day spy every day spy was was two years old at the time and I was sitting with this kid and he had no ambition he worked part time at a brewery and he was totally happy to do it lived with four roommates.

1:31:52He drank beer every afternoon starting at two o 'clock funny fucking guy really funny dude to hang out with but he had no goals no head no ambitions no aspirations and I was like what did your parents do and he was like oh my my mom ran her own business from our farm and whatever it was Idaho or something like that I was like oh what did she do and he was like well she only had her own business for a few years but she would cater to the other families in the other farming families so she would make five or seven dinners and then sell that to the other farmers families. So they would have extra food so that the wives of those families could fit could take care of their seven or 12 kids or whatever and I was like oh that's interesting why don't you want to be an entrepreneur if your mom was an entrepreneur and he was like oh well she was really inspiring to me and at first I thought I might want to be an entrepreneur but the thing was my mom never felt like a success because she failed.

1:32:43He was like my mom only was able to run her catering business for about three years before it failed and I was like well why did you say she was an entrepreneur and he was like because to me she was she started a business she ran it for three years doing what she loved she was an entrepreneur but then all that work she still failed in the end so his rationale was why even try but he still looked up to his mom as being an entrepreneur. So the thing that kills me is that there are so many entrepreneurs out there who are trying and failing and some of them after they failed two or three times they stop trying and they just accept the shed and they accept that this is the circle that's drawn around me and this is the way it has to be they don't even realize that one or two or three or four more attempts is going to be when they get their big breakthrough all they need is a recipe so I'm just my goal in every in life every day is just get one more person and I'm going to get one more person and I'm going to get one more person and I'm going to get one more person and I'm going to get one more person and I'm going to get one more person and I'm going to get one more person and I'm going to get one more person and I'm going to get one more person and I'm going to get one more person and I'm going to get one more person and I'm going to get one more person and I'm going to get one more person and I to follow the simplest recipe.

1:33:42What is your favorite case study of someone that followed the recipe and changed their life in my company? Yeah, my favorite case study is me. Yeah, because I'm the one that reaps the benefits of it every day. I have multiple people who have had some pretty awesome success. I have one gentleman who recently wrote to me who told me that for the first time in his life, I think he was in his mid 30s for the first time in his life, he has a six figure job now and he was an engineer and he wrote me to tell me that one of the frameworks that we taught him through our company helped him get a $31 ,000 $32 ,000 raise and a promotion to a senior level in his company where for the last five years, he'd been asking for a promotion, asking for a raise and his boss has always just told him no or he wasn't qualified or he wasn't fit.

1:34:29But then he started practicing one of our frameworks and nine months later was promoted without asking which framework. He didn't tell me which framework. Oh, he told me it was coming from our math. We have a master course called operational thinking and inside that we teach many influence frameworks. So it was clearly a framework of influence that he had tapped into. I also recently had we have this event in Las Vegas called the Intel Edge where we bring in a number of speakers from the intelligence world. I have an FBI speaker who comes in. I have a green beret who comes in. I have an exercise scientist come in.

1:35:03I even had a recently had a great friend of mine who's an Emmy award -winning journalist and investigated journalists come in. And we teach in Las Vegas. We teach hundreds of people at a time. We had one person who wrote from that Intel Edge event. He was a Puerto Rican guy. His name is a manual. A manual if you're listening. I love you, brother. But a manual just had a baby first baby with his wife. And within the first month of having the baby, his company laid him off. So he had all these life changes. A new baby. He was so proud and so excited to be a dad. And then he was facing unemployment.

1:35:40And he applied our framework, specifically our framework on mirroring and winning the interviewer instead of winning the interview. And about three months after he was laid off, he got a new job in a science lab that paid him more than he had ever earned before. And he came to the next Intel Edge event that we had. So we saw him in say October and he came back to us again in March, something like that. And he came back and he told us this story and the whole my whole team lit up. My whole team was like, because we had all seen him when he was when he was showing his pictures of the baby. And then we all saw the email from him that said my company laid me off.

1:36:17I don't know how I'm going to take care of my family. And then we see him again. And he's like, guys, you'll never believe what happened. Like I did this thing. I followed your mirroring example. I won over the interviewer. And now I have this job that I would have never gotten otherwise. These are the stories that I'm spoiled by. I have my customer service team and even my executive team. We don't see all the testimonials that we get because they've become a little bit desensitized to them because they happen so often. And I love it when they happen. But I'm not surprised when they happen because of course the recipes work.

1:36:52The recipes work because they were refined in the in the center of CIA. They've been working for ages. They just haven't ever been shared with the public. I think the reason why I loved those two subjects in school that I was really good at or at least that I enjoyed. Therefore I was better at. I mean, for me to be good at something. I didn't go to many lessons in school so I was bad at most things. But the two lessons that I went to were psychology and business. And at a very young age, I think maybe 14 years old. I had this idea implanted into my head. That I always have repeated. I'm 31 now.

1:37:25And I think I've definitely repeated this sentence or this phrase 10 times a year since I was 14. And the crux of it is that the only thing standing in my way of being the world's greatest entrepreneur, philanthropist, salesperson is just a bunch of people. Like very early on I had this seed in my head that the barriers to life, the barriers to riches to whatever you want are just people. So if you can understand people and how to influence them, then you hold the keys to the city, the proverbial city. So when you talked about this influence framework, I thought maybe that's the most important thing to talk about because A, you agree with what I said, there's like a foundational seed in your mind that it's just people.

1:38:09And then B, I'd love to talk about how we influence people. So yes, I agree with you that people are all the stand in the way. And we have to remember that we ourselves are people. Yeah. So we're part of the problem. Yeah. And influence frameworks are powerful frameworks for getting what you want. I think the place to start, because not all frameworks are simple. Remember how we were talking about this foundational frameworks. There's two step frameworks and then there's 12 step frameworks. Right. The thing to understand is frameworks all fit within each other. They fit like nesting dolls, like Russian nesting dolls.

1:38:49So when you learn any kind of framework that has to do with influence, what you also have to learn are the sub frameworks inside of it to be able to execute the whole thing. But the place to really start is understand that influence and persuasion are not the same thing. Right. Persuasion is what happens when you actively put energy into changing someone's mind or getting someone to take a certain action with active energy. Influences what you have when you're not talking. So I can sit here and try to persuade you to come with me to dinner. But that's not influence. That's persuasion. Influences what happens when something happens in the world.

1:39:37And I'm the one that comes into your mind and you're like, I wonder what Andy thinks about that. Which probably doesn't happen. But one day, hopefully it will happen if I gain enough influence. Right. That's the difference. Persuasion takes energy. Influences passive. It doesn't happen. It takes a lot of experience. It takes a lot of engagement. It takes a lot of assessment, energy, trust. It takes a lot of effort to get someone to a place where you have influence over them. But there's a framework for that. There are frameworks and frameworks that I'm happy to teach if you want to go through those.

1:40:08Yeah. Whatever you think is most useful for me and my audience. So I'll start with this. I'll start at the lowest possible place. Right. And the lowest possible place. If you if you think of influence up here as an umbrella. There's a sub framework inside of that umbrella. And then there's a third inside of that. So we're going to start with that one first and grow. And that framework is something called sense making. Because if I want to influence you or if you want to influence me, we have to make sense of the dynamic of our relationship. Meaning one of us has to be in power and one of us has to comply with the other person's power.

1:40:50That's the whole goal of sense making. So that's why we are starting at that framework. Inside of sense making, if you imagine it like a cup. Right. Sense making is like a cylinder. And just like you fill a cup with water, you'll fill this cylinder with sense. The bottom third of the cup is what we call avoidance. That's where every relationship starts. Every time you meet a new person, you try to avoid that person. So first thought you have, even if you don't want to admit it. No, I'll admit it. No, that's very much the nature of my life. That's the nature of every, that's human nature. We avoid what's new.

1:41:29So the first third is avoidance. So you've got to fill the water. You've got to fill the relationship. You have to put enough time and energy into the relationship to get past the bottom third. Now you're making sense. The next third is called competition. Competition is all about the exchange of information, the exchange of ideas, the exchange of energy. Because in an exchange, you're building a relationship. Even if you're arguing, even if you disagree, even if you hate the other person, and you're yelling in their face, you're still investing energy into that person. Whereas if you really didn't care about them, you would just avoid them altogether.

1:42:07The last third is called compliance. The whole reason that you compete is to have someone come out with compliance. Compliance is the part where the power dynamic is identified. So we've invested so much time in competition that now we're not arguing and fighting anymore. Now we're starting to make sense of our relationship. You've heard the phrase, we'll just agree to disagree. Essentially, that is the top of the sense -making cylinder. You've filled the cup. And where you land at the end is we'll just agree to disagree, which is kind of a mutual understanding of each other's position on whatever it was that you were competing over.

1:42:50But you're still a unit. You've still invested into a relationship. So sense -making is filling that first cup. Because now, what we know at the conclusion of this phase is that we're in this together. I've poured water in, you've poured water in, and if there's anything that human beings hate to do, it's waste their energy. So I've put all this energy into you. You've put all this energy into me, and now we have a dynamic between us. From once there's sense, once we understand, and remember, if we agree to disagree, then that's we've made sense of our relationship as mutual peers on this particular topic, politics.

1:43:31That doesn't mean that we're mutual peers in terms of conversations about family, or conversations about business, or conversations about you name it exercise. But we have a relationship enough that now we can talk about those other things. So if I want to build influence, or if you want to build influence, the first thing we have to do is not let people avoid us. We have to get past the avoidance. And then we have to compete with them to get them to invest their time and energy into our relationship. And then we have to get to a place where there's some sort of compliance, even if it's only the compliance to sit and listen to me when I share my opinion that you already know you're going to disagree with, that's still compliance.

1:44:04That's the foundational framework that feeds up into a secondary framework that we call no -like trust. No -like trust is something that actually exists in the social media world, which was a really awesome surprise to me to find it there. KLT, no -like trust, starts with discovery. If you don't know something exists, you can never like it, because you don't even know it exists. Once you know something exists, you have to decide whether or not you like it. Well, how do you decide whether or not you like it through this avoidance competition compliance sense -making process? Because as soon as you discover something new, it's new.

1:44:46So guess what you try to do? Avoid it. You see what I'm saying? So after you get through the end of the compliance phase of sense -making, you're basically you like whatever it is or whoever it is that you're dealing with. Maybe you don't like them like they're your best friend, but you've invested all this time and energy into them, so you do like them. The secret sauce at CIA that we know that most people don't understand is that you don't have to like something a lot before you start to trust it. You've heard the term falling in love. There's also a very real term called falling into trust.

1:45:27You just spend enough time long enough, and what happens is without even realizing it, you start to trust the person that you're with. That is the beginning of influence. Even if I'm wrong, even if you disagree with me every step of the way, even if the only thing you like about me is going out and having a pint on Friday night, where we debate and argue and bitch at each other about politics. You still like Friday night, going to the bar and sharing a pint with me. You still like hanging out with me when we watch our two different soccer teams play or football teams play. Because you like me enough to be with me, there will come a time where I win your trust in some thing, in some area.

1:46:12Maybe it's trust because I'm the only person who drinks with you. In a moment, you decide to tell me about how much you hate your boss, and now I'm the only one that knows you actually hate your boss. Whatever it might be, you will fall into trust. We all fall into trust. It's one of the things that's natural to human beings that we hate about ourselves as we trust the wrong people. It happens to all of us. So someone can trust you in terms of influence, even if they don't like you? Correct. Because they will be invested enough into you that they believe something is predictable. Think about somebody that you don't like.

1:46:44Think about somebody you really, really don't like. Yeah. Are there still things about them that you would trust them to do? Maybe not things they would do for you, but there are certain things that you would trust that they would do. I already know that person is going to say something stupid to my kid. I already trust that that person is going to put their garbage can at the end of my driveway. So it's fascinating because we usually think of trust as only being a positive term. Trust is ambiguous. It's a thing. It is an agnostic term. It doesn't mean good things or bad things. It just means a predictable outcome.

1:47:22Do you know the lens I was thinking about as you were speaking? I was thinking about randomness, thinking about personal branding and LinkedIn. Because I was thinking about personal branding strategies. People go on LinkedIn and they have all these hot takes. I was wondering through the context of what you were saying. Does it matter if people like what I'm saying? If I'm going on LinkedIn every day and I'm doing another hot take or sharing my opinion, can I build trust with my audience, even if they don't, even if there's loads of people disagreeing with me, or is there a certain type of content or personal brand strategy that's going to ultimately build more influence?

1:47:57I love the question because what you're getting at is a framework that we have called the power of polarity. If you want to create power, if you want to power, you have to polarize. You have to stand for something. Because if you don't stand for something, nobody really knows what you believe in. So you have to polarize. So to your point, there's lots of people on LinkedIn, there's lots of people on Facebook, on Twitter, or whatever, who are out there screaming something. They're making a point and they're being drowned out by all the other people who are out there making a point. P .S. Mugan, Elon Musk, you know.

1:48:37Those are people who already have influence. Okay. But in the case of Facebook, part of how he's got his influence is by being polarity, by being standing for something very and not being scared of the fact that people are going to tell him that they don't like him. Even better, I want people to tell me that they don't like me. That's even better because what happens is when you drive polarity, when you drive polar response, you create enemies, but you also create friends. And what do friends do when enemies attack? They defend, right? So when you stand for something, even if only a small group of people agree with you, they still defend you.

1:49:22They still support you. They still invest in you. That means they're moving from that avoidance competition compliance phase into no -like trust. And then when they defend you, they can't help but fall into trust because what are they defending? They're putting energy into defending you. So they're going to trust you even more. And when that group of people trust you and other non -competitive people, other observers watch that some people are attacking you and other people are defending you, it makes them feel like they have to choose between attacking you or defending you. Is that a way to stand for something, correctly?

1:49:55Is there a way to badly stand for something? And I say this because as you were speaking of thinking about my friend, my friend is really, really bad at LinkedIn. And he comes to LinkedIn with like very inconsistent takes on the world. I'm going to give you an example. For many years, for many years, he's had a narrative about our coping bad and he's been sober. But then the World Cup came around and he was, he posted on LinkedIn, the World Cup was in the Middle East, that the Middle East should allow people to binge drink and posting against the sort of religious perspective that says I'll call his bad.

1:50:31So he was like, people should be allowed to binge drink if they want in the Middle East. But then his other perspective has always been that I'll call his bad and why do people binge drink? And so the inconsistency has really fucked him up, I think. Well, that's showing why he probably also doesn't have much influence. Because people don't know where he stands. So there's nothing to stay. Like if somebody who rallies behind him, like it sounds like when you were telling the story, to a certain extent you were like proud of him when he was like originally and when he was clear, he's stood full.

1:51:01It's every day has a different take. I'm like, and that's what costs us. That's what costs you're influence. So he diminished his own power by not demonstrating polarity. He should have just stood a ground, even if the ground isn't popular, even if it's not popular or positive, if you stay in one place and you drive a clear polar message or polarizing message, some people will rally behind you, some people will attack you, either way you benefit from it. This is one of the things I love about YouTube. I'm sure you've discovered this too. For anybody out there who's trying to make money on YouTube or grow an audience on YouTube or do anything with YouTube needs to understand the best comments are oftentimes the worst comments.

1:51:43Because somebody chimes in and talks shit about something, it only instigates more people to come in and leave a comment and guess what YouTube wants? Comments. They just want engagements because engagement means people are on the platform. When there's a split between thumbs up and thumbs down, it means there's polarizing content, which means even more people are going to stay on the platform so they spread it even further and wider. So you can't be afraid of being polarizing. You have to lean into being polarizing. The way we use it at CIA is when you're talking to a spy, when you're talking to somebody and you want them to commit treason against their country, you have to be able to ask a polarizing question to find out whether or not they're going to hint that they would betrayers or whether they are staunch supporters and nationalists.

1:52:28But you have to test that barrier if you're ever going to actually develop the kind of relationship, the kind of power to convince them to commit treason. It made me think about brands as well because there's a lot of brands out there that have done really, really well for by standing for something, by being polarizing. Okay. I know it was Jane Warren on my podcast that talked about her brand, Demoliger, and she said to me, she said, you have to be willing to piss off the 80 % to get your 20%. She goes, you don't need people to like you because that's not brand. You need them to love you or hate you because that's a brand.

1:53:04It's genius. It's absolutely correct. She is talking about polarizing. She's talking about that no like trust process and getting people to go beyond like into love you or hate you. If they love you or hate you, then they are in the trust side of the no like trust process. They either trust what you say or they trust that they're going to hate what you say. But either way, they're in the trust part of no like trust. Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead. And over the course of my career, I've learned just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is net suite.

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1:54:25That's net suite dot com slash Bartlett. So what else do I need to know about influence and influencing other people? You know, you said persuasion is not the same as what was the other one influence? Influence. Yeah. Persuasion influence to different things. So what about persuasion then? How do I persuade somebody? Persuasion is a process that's much easier because it's really just a matter of triggering an emotional response and then guiding rational thought around that emotional response. Honestly, persuasion is what exists far more in the world than influence. Persuasion is what happens in advertising.

1:54:59Persuasion is what happens when you watch a commercial. Persuasion is what happens when you try to convince your kids to brush your teeth at night or one day you will convince your children to brush your teeth at night. That's all persuasion because you're you are creating an emotional message. It's a question of messaging and narrative. You're creating an emotional message that emotional message is designed to trigger certain emotion, emotional responses in the target that you're talking to. And then you change the message itself, but you hit on the same motion. And the reason that you do that is because after they've been hit with enough of the same emotional messages, they start to develop a cognitive rational narrative that they adopt personally.

1:55:46So the narrative of the deep state came from lots of emotional messages about why you can't trust the government. And then all those emotional messages turn into somebody or a group of people thinking, well, if I can't trust the government, what I can do is trust that the government can't be trusted because there's a shadow government. Right? So that's how you essentially that's how you persuade somebody. So if you want to persuade someone to buy from your coffee shop and not somebody else's coffee shop, you want to persuade someone to buy a Subaru and not a Nissan. You want to persuade somebody to buy from your sales funnel immediately instead of wait until your 30 mail in your welcome series.

1:56:27It's all a matter of being able to set up a series of emotional messages that drive a rational narrative that they decide for themselves, that brings them to a place where they take an action that you want them to take. Give me an example. Okay. So let's say that you and I are trying to sell. What about this we put my wrist hashtag out of hashtag investor hashtag sponsor? What about the street cameras? All right. You understand how we works. What is it? Tell me what it is. It is a fitness tracker, but it's a sleep tracker. It's a stress tracker. Tracks my heart rate for ability. So it's bio data.

1:57:04Yeah. It sinks your bio data in one convenient place. Yeah. And I can see my friends bio data as well if they accept so we can kind of compete a little bit. Ah, so it gives accountability and and a sort of shared mission. Yeah, and community, et cetera. Yeah. Right? So if you want to persuade people to buy your hashtag sponsor hashtag product hashtag investor. What's it called? Woop. Woop. Yeah. We want people to buy a whoop. We've got come here. So so. That's the only thing. Perfect. So if we want people to buy a whoop, we don't tell them buy a whoop because it's an awesome bio tracker that tracks your heart rate and tracks your sleep and tracks your body temperature.

1:57:46We don't tell them that because that's what there's other tools that do that. What we have to do is give them some kind of emotional message, right? So first, we're going to choose an audience that we want to create an emotional message for. We're both we both love the women that we're with. So let's talk about people who are in a serious relationship or a committed relationship. I very much care whether my wife is healthy, whether she's sleeping well, whether she's got high stress. So now I want to craft an emotional message about how whoop will help me make my marriage better because I'll be able to see what my wife is feeling without having to ask her.

1:58:22Oh God, what every man wants to be able to read her mind. Now people are feeling something. Right. Sales.

1:58:34So why let's come up with another message, another emotional message for the same reason, right? I really don't like bedtime because at bedtime, my wife always melts down and yells at the kids and she melts down because she's had a rough day and I'm coming home from a rough day and I have no idea how rough her day is and it doesn't matter because now it's bedtime. So if I had a whoop, what I'd be able to do is call my wife on the way home and say, Hey babe, it looks like you've had a rough day thanks to your whoop. Why don't you take 30 minutes go take a bath do your whole self care routine first and I'll deal with the kids and I'll make dinner so that you can calm down and then you can swap out and help me and we can be a team, right?

1:59:14Whoop makes married couples a team again. So you can now what we're doing is we're messaging to make husbands and boyfriends feel a certain way about I love her already. I want her to succeed and I also secretly know that if she succeeds, I succeed because guess who goes to bed with her at night, right? That's what we're taking them feel. So if we did four, three, four, five messages like that, even if they were bullets on a sales page instead of a phone telecontain, right? If we were to do that, what's the logical, rational outcome that any male and a serious heterosexual relationship is going to land on?

1:59:54Then take the Fenty Day free trial to work with her. That's exactly what they're going to do. That's exactly what they're going to do with high probability that is empirically sound that you measure through clicks, open rates and view time because you've crafted a persuasive message. What do people typically do? They typically brands will typically come out and say something like, oh, they'll set it on its features? Successful, successful brands, which is the only kind of brand that really exists because you're not a brand until you've had success. Successful brands will do what you and I are talking about, but they won't systematize it.

2:00:32They'll let it be accidental. You've heard of, I'm shocked how often advertising agencies create failed edits, like bad ads because they're just throwing spaghetti at the wall. They're not following a system. They're not following a process, like what we just talked about. Create a series of messages and then create a rational response. It's high probability and then find a way to measure it all and then systematize it and then scale your ad spend to match the thing that you just built. They're not what they're thinking. They're thinking, what if we just talk about this? What if we just talk about this?

2:01:02This just happened in the news. Let's talk about that. So they're not using a system. The place where most people go wrong isn't with brands. It's with young entrepreneurs. It's with young entrepreneurs who become so meopically focused on their product that they forget that there's four P's for marketing. Product is just one of the four, right? There's also price. There's also place. There's also promotion. Promotion is the one that I would say should be swapped with persuasion because if you can promote something in a persuasive way, it doesn't really matter what you price it at. It doesn't really matter where you put it and it also doesn't matter what the product is.

2:01:36People will buy it because there's a market for everything. So the place where people go wrong isn't that they're not trying. The place where people go wrong is that they don't realize that talking about the benefits, talking about the rational benefits of the product is not persuasive. Persuasion starts with an emotional message. How do you translate that then to an interpersonal relationship context where I'm trying to convince a, you talked about interviewing earlier. You said that one of your case studies is a guy that kind of learned how to interview. How do I translate that so that if I walk into any interview ever, I'm going to walk out with the job.

2:02:16What do you think every interviewer is looking for? Someone, well, okay, so I've got two answers to this. Hey, someone did you the job and then be someone they like? That's really what they're looking for. It's someone they like. I do a lot of interviewing. I spend a lot of my time interviewing. When I'm not doing this, I'm basically interviewing people. So I've come to learn my own biases and that regard a little bit, but you're so right. It's heavily about if you like the person. Well, guess what? I just thought you a framework for how to get through getting someone to like you. So without a doubt, we agree.

2:02:49Well, that was to give me influence. The framework, wasn't it? No, like trust. We went through the sense -making framework so that you could go from no to like to trust. So at the top of sense -making, that's when you're in the phase where people like or invested in you. What interview is really like isn't people that they like. It's people who are alike the interviewer. Really? So I guarantee you that the people that you have liked interviewing the most. I'm even willing to bed that you will admit in this conversation at some point. We'll put that on the line. That a big portion of your hiring is because you see elements of yourself in the people that you hire.

2:03:31I mean, like, I don't consciously know that, but I totally believe it. Because when you see someone who reflects elements of you, you immediately go through the sense -making process and you flip to like and trust. Interesting. We need to clarify this because when you say elements of myself, there's parts of myself that I'm like, I would never hire. Correct. But that's not the part of you that you like. Yeah. It's the part of you that you don't like. You trust that part of you to not be good at the job. But there's other parts of you that you trust to be good at the job. And that's what you shoot for.

2:04:05Yeah. Right? I'm also willing to bet that there's people that you hire because you know that they're good at areas that you know you're bad at. Yes. So that's all interviewers. All interviewers everywhere. What they dream of is that they walk into an interview and across the table is someone almost exactly like them. Who they enjoy talking to, who they can relate to, who they feel instant connection and chemistry with because then it becomes an enjoyable interview. Because what every interviewer hates is walking into an interview that is draining and terrible and hard and painful. That's what they don't like.

2:04:42And most of the time the people interviewing are not actually the people who will be the supervisor for the person that gets hired. Oftentimes they're just an intermediary interviewer. So all they really want is to just get find somebody who meets the qualifications technically but has some sort of common ground with the interviewer themselves. So how do I make sure I'm that person? You know, how do I, what can I do to make sure that, say that you are interviewing me or say that, let's do the other way around. I've got the job that I'm looking for, looking to fill and you've come for an interview today.

2:05:17So I'm going to do, I'm going to go through the sense making process. Okay. Right? As soon as I get on this call with you, I'm new to you. So what does that mean? I know. I know that you don't want to be on this call with me. True. Avoidance, I can assume coming in. So what I have to do is I have to keep investing enough to get through the avoidance phase. Well, what am I going to talk about? How am I going to invest in this conversation? I'm going to pull as much as I can from verbal and nonverbal cues that you give me. I'm going to look at the decorations on the wall behind you. Whether it's in person or whether it's virtual, I'm going to try to pull for my environment.

2:05:49I see that you're using an iPad. I see that you actually like to write on your iPad. I see that you use different colors when you write on your iPad. I also see there's a journal under your iPad. I can assume that inside that journal or handwritten notes that are actually done in pen and ink. Right? There's certain things that I can start to observe. You have a very clear, you put clear effort into the way that you shave your face. You have a very handsome look to your hair. You're so much. You've got the job. Look at this. No, I don't need to. He's a salesman. But I'm going to pull from all of this for the competition phase of the sense making process.

2:06:21Because all I need to do to get you to comply with my wishes, my wishes are to get the job. What I need to get you to comply with the wishes, I need you to engage in a conversation with me that is competitive, meaning you will invest in me and I will invest in you. Think about how, don't think of competition like a zero sum game. You're going to win or lose or I hit a competition, I hit oncuring. That's what most people hear. Most people think of competition as zero sum game. Somebody wins. Somebody loses the competition. Think of it more like a scrimmage in your in your favorite soccer team. We're like the red shirts play the green shirts, but it's still the same football club.

2:07:01Right? They have spring training for baseball in the United States. It's all the Yankees, but they're just playing the Yankees to practice with each other. What are they doing? They're competing. They're honing their craft through competition. They're investing in each other. They're pitching and batting and trying to strike each other out and trying to catch each other at the bases, but it's all for themselves. It's all to improve the whole of the team. That's the competition that exists in the sense making process. I want to invest in you with my thoughts and my ideas and my questions and I want you to invest in me with your thoughts and your ideas and your questions.

2:07:36And yes, sometimes they will be different, but in the difference, we will find the similarity and regardless of whether we find differences or similarities, we are filling the cup of investment to get towards compliance. Okay, so give me a specific example of how you might get me to go into that competition with you. Okay, so I'm going to start in an interview, most interviewees expect that the interviewer will ask most of the questions. Yeah. My, I would challenge anybody going into a job interview, ask more questions than the interviewer. Really? Ask more questions than the interviewer because when you ask questions, especially open into questions, it makes the person you're talking to feel like they're interesting, feel like they're important, feel like they're special.

2:08:15And guess what's not going to happen with any other interview that day? Nobody is going to ask them questions. So if you were interviewing me for a job, and we've been on the phone, I would say, Steven, thank you very much for making time to talk to me. How's your day today? It's been great. Thank you. I'm really excited for the job, but one of the things I have a question about right away is when I look you up online, it looks like a lot of what you do is marketing, but I don't know if it's like social media marketing or if it's more like an internet marketing like advertising, how would you characterize the core function of the business?

2:08:49It's kind of both. We do all of the above paid marketing, all kinds of marketing. Which one is your favorite? And my favorite is probably social media marketing, I think. Is it because social media is like so dynamic and always changing or do you like social media marketing for some other reason? Yeah, and also, I just think it's very much the future in many respects. So I think it's the fastest growing medium. So that's kind of where we focus. I also think it's the future. And I spend so much time on social media and my family spend so much time on social media that I really feel like if you want to connect with somebody, you have to be in the social media world because it feels like a simulated relationship.

2:09:23I completely agree. So, and then I'd start asking the questions. And would you would ask a question? And then I would answer your question, but I would still continue to show investment into you by asking questions. And what does that do? So I come away from that interaction and you've asked me a lot of questions. What do I come away feeling? You tell me. What does it feel like when people ask you questions? It feels like you're building a relationship. It feels like you care. It feels like you've thought critically before you came here. It feels like you prepared. It feels like you're curious.

2:09:54And the opposite, well, there's two opposites. One opposite is I just pep you with questions and then you leave. And the other opposite is that someone that just talks about, like you pep me with questions. I was in, I've had a couple of interviews. And two, I remember two last week. I, part of my feedback was I basically didn't say anything. And it's funny. I actually said to my chief of staff, I said, Oh, God, interview was an hour long and I go, gosh, I, I didn't say anything in the whole, in the whole hour. And do you know what I came away feeling? I working with them is going to be like, I don't want to work with them.

2:10:30Because for one hour I sat there and this person just like me. And now you say it. Now I kind of understand why I felt that way. Because you do want people to ask you questions. And you, it's, I think it's that. But also part of me was worried that every day this person is going to just like kill my eardrums. Or is it just the ego part where I'm just like, be interested in me? I don't know. It was it both. Well, first of all, I am not advocating peppering with questions. Yeah. So I want to make sure that we don't give anybody the mistaken idea that that rapid fire questions are the way to go. Yeah, I was giving sure answers.

2:11:08This is the problem. It's all good. Because what, what the core thing to understand here is you didn't like being spoken at. They were talking all the time, which means they weren't asking you questions. They asked me, we're in an hour interview. They asked me zero questions. And when I said to them, if you've got any questions you'd like to ask me, they asked me one. But that was actually just tinging them up for another 20 minutes. I walked away and logically I rationalized it to my team. I was like, I think that person would be quite difficult to deal with because I think they'd be quite distracting.

2:11:37And this particular role is working with alongside me personally every single day. And I just look, gosh, I'm not going to get anything done. But maybe that was a prefrontal court text. I think that your decision was 100 % correct. But what I want to do is I want to juxtapose that process against the person who would have asked you questions. Which I experienced a lot. So if people ask you questions, how do you feel at the end of those calls? I feel like the person, I feel like they're more thoughtful. And I feel like they're smarter. Because why the hell would you come into an interview and ask the person questions?

2:12:13You're also making a commitment for your entire life to this company, this job to this person. You want to make sure it's correct. So a smart person would be interviewing me as well because they value themselves. So if I wanted to win you as the interviewer. Yeah. And I wanted to win that by making you feel like you and I were similar people. Yeah, weren't yeah, exactly. What you just said is why the hell wouldn't you ask a bunch of questions? Which makes me think that what you believe is if you want to work for a company for the rest of your life, you want to go in there asking a bunch of questions.

2:12:42Yeah. So when somebody comes in, asking questions to you that checks the box of this person is thoughtful, this person is committed, this person is responsible, this person is doing what I would do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that means on the sense making no like trust framework, you're going to fall into trust for that person much faster than you're going to fall into trust for the person who comes in word vomit on you. And that's all we're doing. We're not saying that every employer is going to be the right employer for you. But what we're saying is if you want to take your probability of winning an interview from I don't know what my probability is to you have a solid, predictable 30 % chance of winning this interview.

2:13:26It really is as simple as going in there with the idea to win the interviewer. Read their body language, listen to their verbal cues, hear the things they talk about, reflect and mirror their behavior and their terminology, their tone of voice, how fast the cadence of their speech reflect that back to them and then use this process of asking questions, open -ended questions that give you more information that you can turn into knowledge that you can ask questions about to create that flywheel of information knowledge and experience that we talked about. This framework that you call rice reward ideology coercion ego, after you said that I started to kind of see it everywhere in my life.

2:14:07And even in the context of an interview, I notice it sometimes now. Can you explain what the framework is before we start talking about it because you're better at explaining it than I will be? So rice is a framework that we use to understand the core motivations that exist inside of all people. And it's an acronym. Our stands for reward, I stands for ideology, C stands for coercion, E stands for ego. And the idea is that the core motivation of all people to do anything that they would ever do, the motivation, not the manipulation, but the core motivation is tied to one predominant of those four core motivators and the other three are always still present but at a lower level.

2:14:48So just like you said, once you recognize that all people are motivated by these same four core motivations, you do see it everywhere. So in terms of strength, you said to me last time that ideology was the strongest. Correct. I think you then said that ego was the second strength. Correct, again sir. You said reward was the third strongest and coercion was the weakest. Yes sir. I know this because I did a tour and I played you all you saying that in every country that I went to on stage for about two minutes. So I know this really this year. My number is not that good. I've been talking about this to about 35 ,000 people in Australia and everywhere.

2:15:22I am flattered to have traveled with you all over the world. Yeah, I've got some photos I'll show you later but it is part of that I really started to see it everywhere else in my life. So I'd come to an interview with a candidate and the candidate would turn to me and I would hear them repeating back to me things that I've said in my book or things that I've said in an interview. So people know that I'm very pro like experimentation for example and I use like increasing my rate of experimentation, increasing my rate of failure at terms that I use. One percent I use this term all the time to describe marginal gains and this sort of marginal process of improvement.

2:15:55And so I would come to interviews and I started to notice that people were like repeating my ideology in business back to me in those interviews and it fucking worked. Even though I knew it. And one of the things I did actually is I went back through my own personal history and I looked at key moments where my life had changed. So in the first email this is the email that got me my first investor which took me from being this broke shoplifting student to being a business person and then sent me on my mission. And then this is the email that got me the camera equipment which helped me launch the marketing of my business.

2:16:28It got me 10 ,000 pounds about about 10 ,000 pounds worth of free camera equipment. And at these were both cold emails that I sent. And with your framework in mind I went back to kind of try and understand where I deployed these elements of reward ideology, coercion, me go. And I think they're quite present in my emails. So here's what I'm going to do. I've got the email in front of me. So anyone that's watching this on a video can take a look at this email if you want to see what I was like when I was that age. I wanted you to tell me how good I did in terms of reward ideology, coercion and ego.

2:17:01And I'll put this on the screen. If you want to because it is screen recording you can circle the parts you're referring to. So everyone else can see. Hello sir. My name's so my name's that I spent it wrong. That is awesome. So my name's Stephen Bartlett and I'm you definitely I can see or I can see why you're struggling academically. Yes. I can't stop. An 18 year old guy from the UK with an entrepreneurial head on my shoulders. I have ran several small businesses since I was 12 and made relatively decent amounts of money doing so. Last year I was featured on a BBC program here in the UK for being a young entrepreneur.

2:17:42And I was given a few nice things along with that. But that doesn't really mean much to me. Is this embarrassing? For the last four months me and a friend have been working tirelessly on an exciting new project that I want to share with you. I've this is really sweet to see the 18 year old you here man. I've been tuned into your blog for a long time now and I'm familiar with your story so I would love your opinion of what I'm doing. So this is really good stuff. Your blog, your story, your opinion. It also shows that you were researching him in advance which makes me feel like the only reason you're reaching this person and reaching out to this person at all is because you already know that your story mimics his story.

2:18:26Correct. He actually had started a pretty similar student website in the same city. It had gone so well. It had been sold. Anyhow lived in Monaco and was like a super rich but millionaire. Was this person also did they also struggle in school? I actually don't know. I don't know that much. So that's super interesting to me. Okay, I'm going to keep going. All the designs attached in the document are my own. That's interesting too. You're basically giving away IP upfront and showing that you prepared more than just writing an email which is again feeding into some of the ego and the reward because this person is whatever they see in that document, they're going to benefit from it.

2:19:13I made on publisher and at the moment I have no expertise in web design whatsoever. I'm at the stage now where I'm looking for a mentor investor to guide me in getting the website live. So please let me know what you think. This was super smart not asking for an investor but asking for a mentor because what that did is it deluded the pressure. So if they had read this far, if they got to this place, you weren't asking for money. You were potentially just asking for some attention and some guidance. Let me know what you think. Although we have had a few cheeky offers from local venture capitalists, we are still looking for the right person.

2:19:48And after reading through your website, I believe you are that person. Kind regards and thanks for your time. Stephen Steve Bartlett. So it's interesting to me because you made a very strong ego play with referencing all of his success. The ego was the strongest thing that you leaned on. Showing that you were aware, showing that you knew the person knowing that the story was going to raise a resonant with him. You may have accidentally also honestly, man, seeing the typos that are in here, you may have accidentally triggered a response inside him that was reciprocity. Either somebody gave him a chance when he didn't know if somebody would give him a chance or maybe he struggled in school or maybe he has a son or a sister or a brother who struggled in school because your typos are really quite significant.

2:20:42There's no way somebody would read this and think that you were a well educated 18 year old. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So you may have really struggled. You may have accidentally stumbled into something awesome. I would, I don't know if you're still in contact with this person, but I would ask that question. We've got four core motivators. Ego is very clear. Every time you talk to them or this person about them, you're stroking their ego and you're not doing it in a glaring way. However, ideology is the strongest of the motivators. When I see you say that you were an 18 year old guy from the UK, what I, what goes through my head is the ideology of who doesn't want to give a brave kid writing them an opportunity.

2:21:25What what millionaire out there? What decimillionaire or sent a millionaire or ultra high net worth? If they get the email at all, who doesn't want to at least give this 18 year old brave, brazen kid a chance? Because you know what? I would have done something like this when I was 18. Right? And now you could be tapping on ideology without even knowing it. Well, he did. He did. He started a student website in the same city at roughly the same age. So there you go. You already knew that there were going to be commonalities between the two of you. You were winning the interviewer just as much as you were leveraging the the rice framework.

2:22:05What about the other email? So there's another one on that, which is here. Just take a look at it if you could. Okay. Yeah. So this was the email that I sent, I sent 10 of these emails out to every cap camera company I could, Samsung, Panasonic, etc. And within 48 hours of Panasonic receiving that email, a guy called Leigh at Panasonic. I literally just because you were coming. I went on his LinkedIn to see where he now works. So thank you, by the way, Leigh, that used to work at Panasonic. Forgive me a short. Leigh from Panasonic responded to that email that you have in front of you and said, what kind of cameras do you want?

2:22:38We've got some returns. I'll send in your doorstep within 48 hours of that email, a big box of cameras, brand like they were brand new to me, brand new spanking cameras came to my doorstep, multiple of them. And that allowed me to do the marketing for my business at the very early stage. Again, it was just a called email. That's amazing, man. All right. Hello there. My name is Stephen Bartlett. I'm a 19 year old student and I'm part of an upcoming exciting student website. So in March last year, I began developing an idea I had that focused on bringing together the student community. Several months later, I have the backing and support of all the universities in the Northwest who are working with us every step of the way.

2:23:15We are now a few months from launching the website. We have received so much support from companies such as Domino's and Subway that we are now hoping you guys at VHO will be kind enough to help us out. I'm going to circle that for sure because you're triggering a little bit of competition. You wait till the end, which is really smart. And you're showing credibility with the backing of multiple universities. All right. Our team includes media journalism students who have media and journalism students who have a passion for producing media content. It also includes our web developer who loves building cool websites.

2:23:48It includes the universities and the university unions who are supporting us constantly and it includes our mentors who are social media and web experts. You are really hitting reward high here because you're basically saying all of these people are going to know that you're helping. Like all these universities, all these students media and journalism, guess what they both need? Cameras. So you're really leaning hard into the reward here and it's pretty awesome. You are also hitting on ideology because if it is a competitive business, it wants to compete. It doesn't want to be second to subway or dominoes.

2:24:23It wants to be side by side with subway and dominoes, especially in 2012 when both of those companies were pretty strong leaders in the industry. This is going to be a national student website and one feature of our website involves us producing our own video content from the student community. This can range from students interviewing famous people, students reviewing student events to student reporters covering news events. In order for this to be the case, we are in need of an HD video camera and wanted to know if Vihua would be kind enough to donate one. In return, we would feature Vihua on our website as a sponsor.

2:24:55We would also promote the camera and Vihua at the end of all videos that we make as a young group of students. This would really mean a lot to us and we would be sure to show our appreciation in every opportunity. Ideology again, talking about students and talking about the youth. There's no real coercion in this for sure. And I would also say that ego was not really you focused on reward rather than ego because you didn't know who Lee was. It was a bit of coercion and one that I sent to the investor, wasn't there? Because I said we've had some offers from venture capitalists, which is kind of saying that I have other offers.

2:25:34Kind of, but that's not coercive. Coercion means that you are leaning into the shame, the guilt, some sort of negative feeling. Competition is not a negative feeling. Really? Competition is how we build trust. Okay, so me mentioning that I have other opportunities isn't coercion. You should always mention that you have other opportunities, even if you don't. Always. It's one of those areas where you always have other opportunities. You could always take the opportunity of stop trying. So there's other opportunities always. Is there ever a place for coercion, which is the sea and the rice framework in emails like this?

2:26:10Yes, there's a place for it, but you have to use it gingerly because the problem with coercion is once you use it, you violate the trust that you've built. Okay, so you can basically use it once. Or if you, once you employ it, you essentially have to continually use it because once it's no longer useful to you, then the person that you're coercive, the person that you're coercing, is free again. Coerzion, if you think of coercion, it's like a cage. So you get somebody into the cage and then you have control over them in the cage, but once you open them, open the door of the cage, they're going to run out and never get back in the cage.

2:26:51You talked about these full seas of influence. Have we covered that? Four seas that we're talking about are the four seas of building influence rapidly, specifically building, building influence in a workplace environment, right? It's consideration is the first sea, consistency, collaboration and control. Those are your four seas. When you consider consideration, consideration means I put myself in your shoes, I consider what life is like for you. You're my boss, you're my coworker, you have a family, you go home, you have, you're trying to exercise, you're trying to make a living, you're trying to do all the same things I am.

2:27:30So if I consider your point of view faster than you consider my point of view, I have the advantage. That's what the first sea is consideration. That's pretty perspective again, right? It's perspective again, exactly. It's consideration is technically a legal term. So attorneys and lawyers all know what consideration is, but it's the rest of us who have not gone to law school that don't recognize that consideration is another word for perspective, but it's also a legal term that stands for the same thing. Consistency is the act of being consistent. What's powerful is that very few people are actually consistent.

2:28:04Most people are inconsistent. Think about the friend that you were talking about on LinkedIn who can't even have a consistent message, can't even have a consistent opinion about alcohol, right? The fastest way to burn influence, the fastest way to to burn your persuasive ability and burn your sense -making relationship with people is to be inconsistent, because nobody wants to invest relationship into an inconsistent person. Inconsistent in your perspectives, your values, your beliefs. Your actions, what you say, what you do, what you spend your money on, consistency is what breeds comfort and confidence in people.

2:28:39It's what builds influence. Because when the rubber hits the road, when bullets start flying, when all hell breaks loose, you want to know that the person that you believe will be there, will be there. And a consistent person is somebody that you believe will be consistent. Even if you don't like them. Even if you don't like them, right? My third seat is collaboration. Collaboration becomes really powerful because what most people are doing is they're trying to find some sort of compromise. And a compromise really just means you don't get what you don't, and I don't get what I want. And we find something in the middle that neither of us wants, but we'll both accept.

2:29:14That's a shit deal. What we really actually want is not compromise. What we want is collaboration. Collaboration means you bring your idea. I bring my idea. And together, we create a third better outcome for both of us. That's what collaboration is. That's what makes collaboration different than compromise. What we want from our government is a collaborative government, not a government that compromises with each other. And yet what the popular public narrative is, is that we need a government that compromises. Well, shit, a government that compromises is always losing. A government that collaborates is always gaining.

2:29:51So the third seat is collaboration. If you find somebody who is considerate, who is also consistent, and also collaborative, do you see what we're building here? We're building influence. And then the fourth seat is control. And control is the one that is super important. And control is the thing that people drop all the time when they're trying to build influence. Control means that you capitalize. You execute on all the social benefit that you've built with these first three Cs. And now you actually take the action to get what you want. You ask for the cameras. You ask for the opportunity. You ask for the interview.

2:30:30You ask for the favor. Or you go out and you tell the boss, I'm ready to be the one that gets promoted to the manager job. I'm the one that gets to go on vacation for Christmas. I'm the one that gets to do this. And then you cycle back to the fact that you've done the other three Cs. And you're doing it in a way that exercises your control over the situation. The four Cs are the tool to build influence in a professional environment. Because the actual thing that you're building, the term that we use, we don't call it influence inside the walls at Langley. We call it social capital was Langley.

2:31:06Langley, Virginia is the headquarters for CIA. Okay. So we call it social capital because just like real currency is capital. When you engage in the process of building influence using the four Cs, what you're actually building is a is a savings account of social capital. You're building reciprocity. You're building leverage. You're building favors. You're building IOUs. So when you have this pile of money, the only thing that you can do with a pile of money is spend it. So you have to spend it to get what you want. And that's what the control is. That's what the C is in the four Cs of building influence through social capital.

2:31:47Is that what great leaders do? What great leaders do is they find either they're taught a process similar to this or they learn the process over time. But essentially what the dark side to leadership that people don't like to admit to is that very rarely are leaders well liked. Leaders are respected. Leaders are trusted. But leaders are very rarely liked. They might be liked a hundred years later, like artists, but usually in the moment, they are not well liked. And it's because they know how to exercise control. Nobody likes to be controlled. Nobody likes to feel like they are under control. Nobody likes to feel leveraged.

2:32:33Nobody likes to feel sold. Nobody likes to feel pressure. But when you have that pot of social capital, when you have the leverage, when you have the power, you have to exercise it to prosecute the vision that you're trying to build. So if you're the type of leader that never does all these other things, they're super considerate of other people, they're collaborative, they're consistent. But you never exercise control. You're not a leader. What are you? You're an assertive follower. You're a reliable partner. You're a peer. You're a good friend. You a coward? No, I wouldn't say that you're a coward because remember, coward is the opposite of courage.

2:33:12And courage is defined by showing courage or doing the thing that you're afraid of. I mean, it takes a bit of courage to exercise control. Absolutely. But not everybody wants control. There are lots of people out there who don't want to be a leader. If you are a leader, if you want to be a leader and don't exercise control over the leverage and the social capital that you've built, you are not a leader. You are an aspiring leader. You are a developing leader. You are a hopeful leader, but you are not a leader. Because a leader has to be able to take action that inspires others to follow. Even if they don't like you.

2:33:52Even if they don't like you. Because here's the reality of it. A leader is not what you claim to be. A leader is what you demonstrate to be. Because a leader who leads an army of none is not a leader. And someone who is leading an army, but doesn't call themselves a leader, still a leader. What do you think make other sort of core components of a great leader? You must, you go to a lot of companies, you speak to a lot of executive leaders. What are the ones that you respect the most, whether they're clients, if yours or people you've seen within history? There's an element of honesty that's critical to a leader.

2:34:32Like you have to be honest and you have to be objective about what you see, what you feel, what you experience. Because true leadership means that you have to execute against a vision and you have to inspire people to follow you. If you're not honest about why you do what you do, if you're not objective about the current reality, then there's no way that you're going to be able to create to cast a vision that's realistic and ignites an audience of people to follow you towards that vision. So honesty is critical, objectivity is critical. Leaders also have to have an incredible amount of courage because they're always doing something that they're afraid of.

2:35:19They're always taking the next risk. They're always challenging the the diss, the misbelief or the incorrect information. They're always upsetting their spouse. They're always missing out on time with their children. They're always stepping on the toes of half of their company. They're always upsetting somebody. You can't be a leader without having the courage to hurt 80 % of the people that you talk to because if they are not completely in line with the vision that you're trying to lead towards, they need to be brought in line with the vision that you're leading. And that sometimes that means you're going to tell them bad news.

2:35:56Sometimes that means you're going to slap them over the back of the head. Sometimes that means you're going to cut them off and let them float. So you have to have courage, which specifically means doing the thing that you're afraid of to be a leader, which is why the, I mean, to me the most important component of being a leader is accepting that you will be lonely forever. That's the unfortunate fact of being a leader. It's lonely at the top. And every general has talked about it. Every president has felt that there's a reason presidents go gray. Michelle Obama will look very good when she's gray.

2:36:36But you have to be willing to be lonely. If you're not willing to be lonely, then you're not courageous enough to be lonely, then you're not fit to lead. You walk through life like seeing people, be honest, as kind of puppets. Not puppets. No, not puppets. I do walk through life seeing people as worthy or unworthy investments. Interesting. Because especially like it's to kind of bring in full circle back to losing my grandmother, we only have a certain number of minutes, seconds, breaths. So I feel like I was blessed and privileged to get the skills to rapidly identify the people who are worth my breath, the people who I can invest in with my words and my thoughts and my actions and my time.

2:37:30And those people will create an ROI that doesn't pay me back, but pays back my children and my children's children because the people who learn and who apply and who support the work that I'm doing are the people who will make the future, the world of tomorrow. And the world of tomorrow is not for me, the world of tomorrow is for my family. So I feel like, unfortunately, that is what a lot of my relationships boil down to and the people that I transactional. But all relationships are transactional. We just don't like to admit it. For me, I feel like because I already know all relationships are transactional, I now cultivate the transactions that yield the most rather than transactions that just happen where so many people are trapped in relationships where they don't have any return on investment from that relationship.

2:38:25Or even worse, they keep investing in the relationship and it's a money pit and it just keeps taking and taking it and never gives back. And they don't know how to get out of that relationship or they feel trapped or they feel lost or they feel abandoned. If I had to pick between being somebody who literally looks at everybody as a winner -loose transaction or being a person who's constantly investing in the wrong person, I'm very happy to be where I'm at on this fence. Does that change your life in some respects? Because if I look at what people will be thinking, they'll be thinking, oh God, I knew that's a sad life.

2:39:00That's a sad life just to see everything as a transaction. It's not a sad life. When seeing things as transactions is not the same thing as accepting that everything is a transaction. I don't see everything as a transaction. I don't see my children as some sort of return on investment. I don't see time with my wife as some sort of return on investment. I don't see it as a transaction. But I accept that what it is is a transaction. They want love, they want attention, they want affection. In return for that love time attention and affection, they will give love time attention and affection and we will build positive memories for the future.

2:39:40It's transactional. If I want my wife to be okay with me taking a 12 -day work trip, I have to put a little bit of time and effort into the 12 days before the 12 days that I leave because I have to build some goodwill. We understand that this is how it works intrinsically. We just don't want to accept that what we're talking about is a transaction. Go into the bank and saying, I'm going to take a loan in a little while so I need to fill out my paperwork and get pre -approval. It's the same concept. It's the same process. It doesn't mean I see everything through a lens of cold -hard transactional relationships.

2:40:16I see a lot of life that way, but I don't see all of life that way. The parts of life that I do see as transactional, I leverage that perspective so that I can maximize my investment in the relationships that I do not see as transactional. It's so true. I think the big takeaway for me and all of that as well is just thinking about the relationships that are really doing nothing for you. I've got a couple of relationships like that that really probably aren't doing anything for me. It sucks. Even at our level, it sucks because you still see yourself doing it. Why am I doing this? Shouldn't I know better by now?

2:40:51And inevitably, you come back. It's getting drunk. I guess you don't know what it's like to do that. Most people know what it's like. You get drunk. You get sick from being drunk. And what's the next thing you tell yourself? I'm never getting drunk again. It happens again. And you feel like an idiot. It happens in business. It happens in life. It happens. Some people do really waste their entire lives just like entertaining relationships that are doing zero for them. They go for lunch and brunch and the two -hour phone call and the small talk on WhatsApp just for nothing. I said pouring all of their life into these nothing relationships, these sewers, these leeches of relationships.

2:41:33If they don't recognize that it's a transaction, I think ask them so continually. What is this doing for me? Correct. And then you can't feel guilty asking yourself, what is this relationship doing for me? That is just you being objective. That is just you being focused on accountability and honesty like any good leader should be. When's your book coming out? You've got a book, your new book fact. You told me last time was on the way, but the CIA weren't approving it. Correct. They have, they have still not approved it. We are actually expecting by end of month this month to get their formal approval.

2:42:06Once it happens, I will let you know for sure because trust me, my publisher is also very nervous about when CIA approves the book. So the book is called Red Cell. Red Cell. Probably going to be released in summer 2025, but pre -orders will be available. Maybe by the time this episode comes out, if that's the case, we'll link it below. No, that would be exciting. The pre -orders. Absolutely. Very exciting. What is the book about? The book is finally, my wife and I get to release the details of our operational history together, and that is what the Red Cell is about. Oh, wow. It's about what we did together in the field as a tandem clandestine couple, how we operated, how we worked together, how we managed our marriage, and our operations, and the team that we built around us.

2:42:47It was all very unique at the time, and we're very proud of it, but it's sensitive and CIA does not like telling sensitive stories. For anybody else that wants to check out where you can support them in the meantime, every day spy is the key place to go to the website, everydayspy .com. Absolutely. Everydayspy .com. You can also find us on YouTube, on the Everyday Spy podcast, and of course you can find us on social media everywhere at EverydaySpy. If you're channel, I really love it. I appreciate it. I really love all the work that you do, and I think it's so important because you're so honest, and there's very little bullshit with you.

2:43:23There's very little virtue signaling, which means that we can just be grown up and talk about the reality of things. We don't have to fluff around things. It's really, really great to talk to you all the time, and I think that's also why you're so resonant because people, they trust you, and it goes back to what we were saying, even if they don't like me. Even if they don't like you, they trust you. I think people love you. People in our comment section, obviously you get the conspiracy theory law. I think you're still part of the CIA or whatever, but side of that, people are so, so, so happy, and they do appreciate the work you're doing.

2:43:57Because it really does help people change their lives. As you said, so many people are trapped in that shed, and as you said, they know that there's something out there better, and they've tried a bunch of shit, and they're still in the shed. You give them a rubric, a framework, to start to run tests in their life, to see if there's a way out the shed, and it's not going to be simple, and it's not going to be easy, because if it wasn't going to be worth it, but there is a way, and that hope alone, I think, can really get people off the sofa and towards the life that they deserve. So thank you, Andrew.

2:44:28We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next. Question of the few is, as you may believe, you either do or don't end toward believing in an afterlife, or something after death. If your belief were proven definitely wrong, how would it change your behavior today? So which one do you believe, I guess? I believe in an afterlife. Interesting. I believe in an afterlife. I don't think I can conceptualize what that would be, but I believe that there is something after we pass. And if that was proven definitively wrong, you know what's really fucked up? If that was proven definitively wrong, I would probably still challenge the proof.

2:45:14It would be hard to let that go. It would be hard to trust the proof.

2:45:21You know, I guess the answer then to the question is, how would my life change? I would spend a lot more time thinking and challenging the belief that I currently spend no time reflecting or thinking about. Does that make sense? So yeah, you'd spend more time challenging the belief that there's an afterlife. Yes, which is kind of crazy. I would spend more time and energy challenging the proof that proves my fundamental belief wrong. I would spend more time in that thought process than I spend in that thought process now. Why? To try and change it. I don't think it, I think it's because it would create such a sense of dissonance in my head because I've believed it for so long and now it's definitively proved wrong.

2:46:15It's not like you can just flip a coin and be like, oh, I was wrong. But in this example, you would basically be there. You'd be proven. I know. So you'd be convinced. So you wouldn't actually be interrogating it because that's what you would believe. So I guess you're right. If the question is assuming that as soon as the proof comes out, I accept the proof and I accept the new reality. Yeah. I can, I can, that's a fair question too. That's a fair interpretation. I think I would probably be that much more cautious and careful with the life that I have to know that there is no second life. There is no second.

2:46:52There's no after chance. There is no coming back and visiting your children, their dreams. There is no meeting them in heaven. There is no Nirvana. There really is just black after you pass. Would make me that much more invested in the moments that I have now because it's all I got. Would it change any decision you've made? In the past, yeah, just like the day -to -day decisions. Would you? Damn, it would. Hold this question sucks, man. Good question. Should the answer. If I knew that and I had to go back, I would change all sorts of things. I would take less risks, like less physical bodily risks.

2:47:33I would have never learned how to ride a motorcycle. I would have never skydived. I would have never learned a free dive. I would have never learned a sail. I would have never, I would have never joined the CIA. If I knew there was no chance that like that this is the one chance you get, I would probably live a very dull, boring and conservative life. Do you know what's interesting is I don't think there's an after -life. And I skydived and I think I take risks. But I'm okay with the fact that I don't think anything happens after I die. Yeah. Because I think I was totally okay. Someone said that it was Ricky Jivey said this once.

2:48:13How did you feel 100 years ago? I want I want us to have a beer. Six weeks after you have a baby and talk about this question again. Can we put that on a calendar? I guess we can't put that on a calendar yet. Or else you have a much happier partner. Because children change, children change everything too. Children change everything when it comes to your tolerance for risking yourself. I know you're telling the truth. A, because I believe because my brother, who's a year older than me, has three kids. And he said something very peculiar to me one day. I said Jason, why don't you fly to London and he goes to you and he's a, I think he was an investment bank for 12 years, actuarial scientists.

2:49:02So literally his job was to like assess probability, probability, super geniuses at maths. And he was like, I know this makes no sense. But I don't want to get on a plane if my kids aren't on it. I love this. I had such, I had a similar conversation with somebody recently. And they were shocked when I said almost the same thing. Because they were like, why would you want to get on a plane? If you're afraid of getting on a plane without your kids, it's because you're afraid the plane will crash. And I was like, correct. Well then if you're not afraid of your kids, aren't you afraid it will crash?

2:49:43And for me, I'm like, of course, it could still crash. But now I'm, I can be with my kids to comfort them in that moment. Rather than they have to live a life without dad's comfort and without dad forever. I don't know why it makes sense to me. But I know that it makes sense to me. And I know that half of the people I explain that to think it's really fucked up. Maybe people that don't have kids. But that's what my brother said to me. And I sat there because he's such a logical smart guy and he knows the probability. He said that he's, I know the probabilities are planes. I know they're safe because this makes no sense.

2:50:15But this is how I feel. I don't want to get on a plane and come to London unless my kids are on the plane with me. Wow. And I thought that makes no sense to me. The way you've rashed, you've explained it does help me to understand. So maybe six weeks after I have a kid, maybe I will be a bit more attached to some kind of afterlife or maybe not. I mean, I'm not saying, I'm not saying the afterlife. I'm saying that the reckless, like the fact that you take, yeah, you're not afraid of death right now. Yeah, I'm not afraid of death. No. I feel like when you have children it changes because now it's not just your life that you're impacting.

2:50:49That's so crazy. That's so interesting. And I know that there's so many parents that are about to DM LinkedIn me, Instagram me. And also you can say exactly that they're going to agree with you. So, and you thank you. It's been such an honor and I really, really enjoy speaking to you. So, um, thank you again for coming to do this. And thank you so much for the value you've brought to the audience because, you know, you're very much in every sense of the word one of a kind. So I appreciate you. Steve, I appreciate being here. Thank you very much for, for the friendship and for the opportunity. And, uh, and you always come so well prepared.

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