#91: Ex-CIA Spy: What They Don’t Tell You About Money, Success, and Power

25:34We're a democracy. It's about the people. It's not about the people. The government is focused exclusively on the continuation of the government. The United States isn't the 330 million Americans. The United States is the hierarchy of the White House, the institutions that back our democracy, the Congress, the House and the Senate, and the election process to bring people to be representatives of larger municipalities. That's America. That's how America existed as a small colony. And that's how America continued to still exist as a major superpower. That's what defines any country. North Korea is not North Korea because of the North Korean people.

26:18It's because the fucking fat psycho that runs the place, right? Russia is not the Kremlin because of the people. It's because of the fucking crazy guy who invaded Ukraine. We can see it when we look at other countries, but for some reason we think that we're like an exception, whether you are American or French or Spanish or British. In fact, your government is only there to protect itself. It sees you as disposable. It already knows you're going to leave one day. You're going to get sick and die. And then we need someone to replace you. And you replaced some other poor schmuck who died before you.

26:54and all you are is a tax paying kernel on a giant cob of corn sounds pretty malicious that's not malicious that's just fact uh yeah and i think what's interesting is is what where i'm and i guess malicious is interpreted interpreted right we're all perceiving something as what we perceive but if you're taking if you're applying what you've just explained here, they're masking it like the people matter and that's the messaging, but then they know that the people don't matter. And so they're promoting one thing to make people believe one thing, but they're actually doing it for another thing. And so in my eyes, they know that what they're saying is not what they're doing.

27:40When you advertise for your business, you already know that only about 20 % of all the people that hire you are going to have breakthrough success. the other 80 % won't so does that make you malicious in your advertising? no because you know that the people who come and do what you tell them to do and follow the instructions and pay the time and the effort and the blood sweat equity will have success the other 80 % are people who didn't pay the blood sweat equity didn't commit fully didn't show consistency that's on them the government is saying hey American people you are important to us and you are important to them because you pay taxes and you vote.

28:22If you don't pay taxes and you don't vote, you fall lower on the importance scale. If you don't own property, you fall lower still. If you don't create jobs, you fall lower still. So everybody does have a role. Everybody is important, right? We are a country of the people, for the people, by the people because the people decide who runs the country, but not all people decide. We are for the people, but not all the people. right we are by the people not all the people so it hasn't really lied it's just doing the same thing that you're doing in your advertising campaign yeah this is fascinating i want to talk just before you you were talking about uh how when you go down these rabbit holes in the line of work that you that you're in you come to conclusions with things and so you you understand all of this stuff and you make your own conclusions from those things uh there's that great quote the the more I learn, the less I know.

29:17Do you feel like coming up with conclusions is one thing, but you need to be open-minded and you need to have the humility enough to change those conclusions when new information comes in? Absolutely. So it's a great question because what I want to do is I want to take that quote, the more I learn, the less I know. And I want to use different vocabulary. I want to use more specific vocabulary because like all catch phrases, that is too generalized. The more I learn, the less I know. Well, what does that even mean? What is the definition of learn? What is the definition of know? There's all sorts of ways you can interpret it.

29:49What I'm saying and what CIA shows us is that you want to understand the difference between assumptions and assessments, because both assumptions and assessments can bring you to conclusions. The difference is that an assumption brings you to a permanent conclusion, right? I'm going to assume that I'll never get hired by NASA. That's a permanent conclusion. So with that conclusion, I'm not even going to try, right? Because I'm assuming they don't want me. They're not interested in people who don't have science degrees. They're not interested in people who don't have perfect PT records. They're not interested in 45-year-old guys with two kids.

30:27I'm just going to assume that that's true. Parts of it might actually be measurably true today, but they could change in two years, 10 years, five years, who knows, right? But an assumption brings you to a permanent conclusion in a dynamic information landscape that changes. What CIA teaches us to do instead is reach assessments. Assessments are still taking you to conclusions, but they're based off of current objective information that you can gather right now. So now when I conclude that NASA doesn't want to hire me, it's because I've looked at objective research that says they're not currently hiring.

31:03They are not looking for people with my educational background. They don't have upcoming missions that fit any of my skill sets. In this moment, I can assess and conclude I'm not a viable candidate right now, but I can check again in six months and I can check again two months after that and I can check again five years after that. So when I say that my worldview has brought me to different conclusions, what I'm saying is it brought me to different conclusions that I assess in the moment. And that serve you right then in that moment, but they're subject to changing on those conclusions based on new information that comes in.

31:37And it's not all information. It has to be information that's vetted and corroborated because as we've seen in our information landscape, there's plenty of fake and false, incorrect information that's out there. So the more I learn, the less I know. what I would say is the more information I receive, the more I can assess a conclusion. So if there's a lack of information, I can't really assess a meaningful conclusion. If there's an abundance of information, I can assess a meaningful conclusion that is temporary because more information will yield a different conclusion. Yeah. But then I guess it comes down to where you're sourcing the information.

32:15Is it just one side of it? Are you seeing it all holistically? The list goes on and on and on. I think ultimately though, we go, they're all coming, we're forming these conclusions, but perhaps it's still not a truth because maybe we don't know everything. Maybe it's all just perception. I feel like when we label things as truths and facts, they can potentially create imaginary ceilings in our mind and they can box us into things that maybe we maybe could be able to break out of that if we didn't have those perceptions of those truths. Correct. It was a truth that humans can't fly. It was a truth for a long time.

32:53And then it wasn't true anymore, right? And even now, there's a truth that people can't live on Mars. But that's going to change most likely. So we have to understand that truths are not necessarily false because they're true. Facts aren't necessarily something that are going to be proved wrong in the future, but they are temporary. Just like you say, a false ceiling, almost like a glass ceiling. If you assume people can't fly and you conclude that people can't fly because it's a fact right now that people can't fly, then of course you're never going to learn how to fly. But if you're the person who questions it and pushes it and explores it, you might be the one that finds a new fact that human biology can't fly on its own, but with assistance an external engine and lift, humans can fly just fine.

33:44I guess it comes down to curiosity, right? Are you even curious in the thing? Because if you're not, you're not even going to go down that rabbit hole in the first place. And there's a difference between being curious and being committed, right? Curious means you wonder. Committed means you try. And there's lots of people who wondered. People wonder all the time right now, but there aren't that many people who try. Curious and committed. yeah i guess curiosity is probably commit commitments downstream from curiosity because you've got to be curious to then embark on the journey and then commit and decide that you're going to do the thing exactly how many people do you know are still writing a book yeah how many people do you know are going to start a business how many people do you know have these plans for one day one day one day they're not committed but they're curious why do you think people live in that lens and do you feel like the lessons that you're teaching that you've learned from CIA allows people to break through those?

34:38People live in that lens because that's how they were conditioned. We covered this a little bit earlier in our conversation. The lens that we were given is a lens, the lens that we have to view the world is a lens we were given. It's a lens we were conditioned to believe. The reason we were conditioned to believe that lens is because it suited a larger purpose. Essentially, it suited the government's purpose. Social norms, social predictability, social elevation, social progress, and social productivity. So it's much easier to take every third grader and tell every third grader that you need to be average in math and average in reading.

35:18And one day you're going to have a really good job working for a good company. That's way easier than telling every third grader, you need to be entrepreneurial. You need to strike out on your own. You need to be innovative. You need to be a risk taker. Because if you tell every third grader that, who's going to fucking work for Ford Motor Company when they're 27 years old? Nobody. Because they're going to have a lens that says, I can't work for somebody else. I have to be innovative and entrepreneurial and I have to strike out on my own. So the structure of society brings us all to the lowest common denominator because they already know for the masses that's going to produce predictable productivity and there will always be the exceptions the outliers who either do incredible things or who become fucking homeless dregs on society there's always the outlier but they're looking to get the bell curve right in the middle so you just have to think through the lens of why does the lens exist at all yep and i I guess if every school taught entrepreneurship and only that, the society wouldn't operate.

36:27We wouldn't have cleaners for our homes. We wouldn't have people making our coffees. And I guess it kind of makes sense. It doesn't kind of make sense. It makes total fucking sense, man. And if you were a founding father of any country, you would say to yourself, day one, at the table where you're all signing the constitution, you know what? we kind of need the vast majority of people to not be motivated or inspired to do anything except wake up and farm and then take their produce to the market where they sell it at a lower than competitive price. Yeah. So there's a level of ownership then because the only reason people embark on this greatness journey anyway is probably because they've seen someone do something great and go, oh, I wouldn't mind to try that.

37:20And then we then inflate it with things like social media of like, oh, look how amazing having these cars are and having these homes are and living here and traveling here. So then we, we develop this desire to want to embark on that journey. And then it's like, because without any of that, like what's the drive to build another Tesla and build another thing without having like, I mean, we wouldn't have this drive to kind of be entrepreneurial. So if we think about when it all started, it just makes so much sense. And it's funny, you're the first person that said it to me around, like, you hear all these other people and they say, oh, this system's evil.

37:56It's this, it's, they're indoctrinating you and all of this. And you go, well, what's the alternative? Think about it. Do we really want the alternative? I don't think we do. And don't, I want to make sure that nobody mistakes Entrepreneurial Entrepreneurism, entrepreneurial drive Innovation With something that's a new concept Long before social media Long before printed media Long before the 24-hour news cycle Long before TV or radio There were people pursuing entrepreneurial ambitions There were Ben Franklin Was trying to find a way to make light bulbs work And electricity work, right? You had Abraham Lincoln trying to recreate how a country runs You have thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs who built everything that we take for granted now.

38:43And they didn't start by Instagram influencers. They had this curiosity that others kind of found crazy. Like Ben, how are you going to put food on the table, man? Like, I get that you want to make the whole light bulb thing, but the candle works just fine. And how are you going to make this thing work? You're kind of a dumb guy. And then, you know, Ben leaves the room and Tyler and John walk in and they're all talking shit about Ben. That's just how it worked for a long time. That's still how it works today. All that happened with social media is that now the ethical, hardworking entrepreneur becomes a bit of a minority because it's so much easier to succeed with unethical practices.

39:30businesses it's so much easier to rent the sports car take six hours of video of you driving the sports car splice that up and you know promote it over the course of six months and make everybody think hey you got a supercar when it's actually just rented from our enterprise it's so much easier to make fake proclamations to show fake progress than it was in the past because people believe what they see and they believe what they see the more frequently that they see it So when you were, you know, Bell Telecommunications and nobody ever saw Mr. Bell, but he was one of the wealthiest people in the world, right?

40:07When you're, when you're Getty, the guy who created the Getty Museum in California, he was the wealthiest man in the world in 1956. 56. And I'm willing to tell you, I'm willing to bet on right now, 90 % of people don't even know who Getty is. And he was once the wealthiest person in the world because he was an oil tycoon before oil tycoons were a fucking thing. That's an entrepreneur. Yeah. Something interesting, something made him committed. Some curiosity came up for some reason. He became so committed to that curiosity that it paid incredible dividends in the end. Yeah. So perhaps earlier on, back in the day, there was less desire for external validation.

40:55And now there's more desire to want to be externally validated because maybe what's deemed as successful is so inflated. And so you're just trying to constantly chase that. Correct. One of the things that we find out at CIA about people is that external validation has become a currency on its own, right? What actually makes you successful is the balance you have in your bank account. Well, if you have a balance on your social media network that's counted in likes and comments, but your bank account is still zero, people look at you and think you're a success because of what it's social status.

41:34That's not actual currency. It's a replacement currency. Used to be that you were successful based on how many bars of gold you had or how much the house was that you actually lived in. But now what we have is all these secondary indicators that people use to show you how successful they are. Look at how many subscribers I have on YouTube. Look at how many viral videos I have. Look at how many times I've been featured on Fox News. Look at how many books I have in circulation. Those are not actually indicators of success. What it all boils down to is whether or not you are financially successful.

42:06Are you financially able to support yourself? Are you financially able to invest in your own future? Are you financially able to guarantee the legacy that you leave your children, that you leave your, your dependents? That's the real definition of success. Otherwise we can all fucking walk around and be like, I'm successful. I am a successful plumber. I am a successful dog trainer. I'm a successful dog walker because I feel like I'm successful. And look at my reviews on Google. That shows that I'm successful. It's like, oh, but you can't afford a new pair of tennis shoes? No, but I have 500 five-star reviews.

42:40That's just a secondary currency. I guess the term successful is changing. And I mean, there's financial success if we isolate that in itself. Because for me personally, I look at someone that's financially successful, but extremely overweight. And I go, well, I don't actually see you as successful. I think if we can master health, time and relationships and have a really good balance between all of them and you could deem them all as successful, then overall you would be successful. But perhaps there's this desire to be viewed as successful and that will serve someone enough as opposed to actually doing the work and becoming successful themselves.

43:21How old are you? I'm 23. Are you married? No. Do you have any children? No. What the fuck do you know about success? I don't disagree that as a 23 year old unmarried man, you're like, Oh, what I need is time and relationships and wealth. Yeah. Once you have two fucking kids. Yeah. You're not going to have time, whether you like it or not. And all of a sudden you're going to be like, I need a whole shit ton more wealth to be able to make sure that these kids have what they need in the future. So I don't, I don't want you to feel like, I disagree with your concept that your perception of success is wrong because it's not it's your perception well we've been covering this whole conversation that perception doesn't mean dick all right your perception is different than somebody else's perception if you want to look at a 55 year old deck a millionaire who's got a pot belly and come to the conclusion that he's not successful but he's got three kids who adore him and a wife who has a major health problem that's fully taken care of by the medical insurance that's provided by the company that he built that guy is super fucking successful yeah i don't care what you have to say about his beer belly yeah and i guess i guess again it all comes down to perception and it's probably tying into that thing we said earlier around what's serving us in the moment to help us better our life in a sense and so what's the mental frame and and and having the humility to be able to change those beliefs but being well aware of the beliefs and going okay is this actually serving me right now because for me, the reason I say time is because something that's like to achieve the financial success and the path that I'm on, it is quite a challenging journey.

44:57And so in those tough moments, what are we leaning on to keep us going? And for me, the time one is something that's serving me a lot right now of just going like, it's not about having an empty calendar. It's about being able to choose the time for me. And this is something that I, it's serving me in this moment. And again, might get married, might have kids. It might completely change. You might find out you have colon cancer tomorrow. Exactly. It all changes. Yeah. Right? So that's why it's really important to understand that whatever you do to define success now, are you defining success objectively or subjectively?

45:31Subjectively, you can call it any fucking thing you want. I'm a success because I finally have the dreadlocks I've always wanted. That's fine. If that's what you define as success, that is not going to assure a legacy in the long run. That is not objectively demonstrable success, where financial success is demonstrably universally understood success. Whether you inherited that money, whether you won it in a lottery, whether you built it from the ground up, whether you made a couple of smart, lucky investments, nobody really cares. Because at the table of other wealthy people is the most opportunity for the future that you can find.

46:07When you don't have financial success, you are looking for opportunities, scraping for opportunities, hoping for opportunities. When you have financial success, you are literally picking opportunities because the other people that sit at the table with you, they all want to protect the financial success that they've all received, built, developed. So as you age, your other definitions of success change. but the financial definition of success only gains in terms of importance and value as you get older and older and older as you get older it costs more to just survive as you get older you have more people that you have to take care of as you get older you have less energy less capability to generate wealth so then the wealth that you generated in the past has to be what carries you into the future.

47:03Nobody tries to become an entrepreneur just because they want to help the world feel better. That might be where they start, but it doesn't take very long before you realize, fucking, I have to make some money. And then once you start making money, it doesn't take long before you're like, I need to find a way to make more money in less time. The reason that journey happens is because objectively we realize financial success is the real indicator of success. Yeah, I often just wonder though that if 20 million is any different to 100 million in terms of how it changes your life, because I understand that the things progress in terms of how much dependencies, people you need to help and the expenses increase as you get older.

47:47But I wonder if there's a certain point that you can get to where no more money is going to change the life for yourself or the people that you care about and the people around you. And I guess what I'm referencing is, is, is, is that point. Like I'm make, I'm under the assumption of, okay, no, I'm already going to, money's already sorted. Um, now we're, we're doing the money thing for the pursuit of the, the, the, the game and the progression that it gives me and the character that I can build along the way. Um, but, but yeah, I just think it's, it's not, if I just go, okay, it's only the money thing that's going to define my success.

48:21I, it doesn't really hold much wait for me and it kind of makes me want to go and seek a bit further out. And then you're welcome to do that. Here's what I've seen in my experience inside CIA and outside of CIA. Because CIA runs on money. And CIA runs on the backs of people who have money. Because it's the people who have money who kind of define, who become the legislators, who become the policymakers that drive CIA's policy. And then outside of CIA, when you start working with very wealthy people, you start developing a very different sense of how the world works. Anybody who has a, so first of all, money, as we define it, like money in your bank account, is essentially not worthless, but it's kind of a weak tool to measure success.

49:11What you really want to measure success by is called net worth. What is your net worth? Because net worth talks about how many total assets you have under your control, even if they're tied up in real estate or whatever else. If your net worth is under a million dollars, nobody cares about you. You are a cog in the wheel. Your primary purpose is to pay taxes and not break the law. Net worth under a million dollars. When you have a net worth between one and five million dollars, you're kind of in this sweet spot where people are curious about you. People will give you opportunities you didn't previously have.

49:46People will partner with you that would otherwise have ignored you. You have possibly passive investments that are paying into your net worth, but you're kind of at that drive train. Less than$1 million net worth, you're in first gear in a car, for those of you who still know how to drive a stick shift. When you're between one and five, you're in second gear. You could fucking drive yourself up a hill fast if you needed to, or you can just kind of keep 35 miles an hour without much effort. People who go from$5 million net worth to about $30 million net worth, this is like the low end of your decimillionaires.

50:23These are people who can actually pay other people to manage their money, pay other people to manage their companies, and all they have to do is think about 15 or 20 years in the future. So just imagine what happens when you no longer have to think about paying your mortgage. You don't have to think about how much gas costs. You don't have to think about grocery stores. You hire somebody to clean your house. You don't even think about it, right? But you can't buy a fucking yacht, right? You can't live in five homes around the world. You still have to think about money. You still have to check your monthly bank balance when you make$30 million a year.

50:59But then you've got the people who have a net worth between 30 and 150 million dollars. When you've got that group of people, by and large, they think about money once a quarter. They have accountants who run their shit. So why am I saying that? I'm saying that because it absolutely changes your life. And it's only people who don't have that much money who assume that having that much money doesn't really change your life. Because all the people who have that much money are like, there's no fucking way I'm ever going to go back. There's nobody who's got a net worth of$150 million who's going to let themselves go back to having a network of$20 million because they've seen the jump.

51:37They've seen the change. And then once you start getting into people who have over$150 million, there's still changes because you still can't really buy a yacht if you make$150 million, if you have a net worth of$150 million. But once you have a net worth of like$300 million, yeah, you're buying yachts, you're selling yachts, you're investing in racehorses instead of investing in a 401k. That's a completely different world, man. That's where you really have no concerns about anybody in your current family or anybody that's going to be born for the next two or three generations. That's a whole different way of seeing the world.

52:10So I want to caution anybody who thinks that money doesn't matter or that money isn't the most important thing or that money is the devil or that money is evil. Like if you want to believe all that shit, every wealthy person in the world wants you to keep believing that shit because all of a sudden, your talent, your skills, your innovation, your drive, you've just turned them off because you're pursuing something else. So go surf in Costa Rica. Have a fucking good time surfing in Costa Rica. And hopefully you break a leg and you're never going to compete ever at the big leagues. Yeah. I definitely am under the lens of money matters.

52:49In fact, it's a big motivator and it's a big driver and I consider I make a decent amount of money. I guess the thing is, I'm trying to strip it back to happiness, life fulfillment, the things that really excite me, like having that family and all of the pillars around that that encompass what I would deem for me as a successful life. And I just wonder if working to go from 20 million to 100 million is the thing that is going to be the thing that unlocks this more fulfilling life for me and more impactful life for me. And so I just wonder that and I just challenge it. And I guess I'm not at that point right now, so I don't know where it is.

53:34And how many people in your network are at that point? Yeah. You have to be able to ask them too. Yeah, for sure. So I was just in LA a week and a half ago. And I was at a table with two friends who have been close friends for 15 years. And one of them runs a business that makes$10 million a year. The other one runs a business that makes$300 million a year. And they're the best friends in the world. They have a whole hell of a lot in common. One guy makes$10 million a year. One guy makes$300 million a year. This is in their company. They both make enough money that they can't really talk to anybody else.

54:07Right? So the jump between$10 and$300 isn't that big in terms of you can't really trust anybody else. Everybody who's calling you, every text message, every LinkedIn message is some poor sap asking for help, opportunity, connection. It's a fake reach out. So they both feel very lonely, which is why they're best friends with each other still, because they've grown their businesses together, right? So 10 to 300 isn't that big a jump. However, the one who's making$10 million a year is constantly diversifying his investments. Commercial real estate, secondary third tertiary businesses, helping invest in other entrepreneurs, trying to find a way to grow his$10 million, because he has now seen how different life is making$10 million a year in terms of the company that he runs.

54:58The guy who's making$300 million a year, he's not trying to invest in anything, because there is nothing out there that will yield as much as him investing back in his own business. He's got an international business that's growing rapidly. He's basically got a whole market segment cornered. Doesn't make either of them bad guys or even between the two of them, there's no hierarchy, right? My business makes a few million dollars a year. I feel, in one way, I feel like an imposter sitting at the table with these guys, right? It's almost like I have to work to make the first digit of that guy's annual revenue.

55:35Just the first digit, right? But because we're all in the same boat, we all know what it's like to basically know that 90 % of the people who reach out to you are asking for something and that the vast majority of people who are asking you for something aren't really gonna be able to help you, but you still have to participate in working with most of the people that contact you because you never know which one of them is actually gonna yield a high return. So it's like a really awkward place to be. compare that to the person who makes$43 ,000 a year, who basically everybody they talk to can help them in some way.

56:07Yeah, for sure. And how does this apply for you? You mentioned off air that you're planning on moving out of the country, moving to a different place, whether it's Europe, Australia, whatever it might be. Does the same lens apply and the same drivers apply? And I don't know, do you think your life is going to change when you move to a different culture like one in Europe? Of course life is going to change. When you're looking, I think that the terminology that you're trying to use here is happiness. Do you think you're going to be happier? First of all, if you think your environment is what dictates your happiness, you're fucking lost.

56:41Your environment will change guaranteed. Your happiness has to come from within. You have to define your own anchor points for happiness. If you think that having a wife is going to make you happy, I promise you it won't. If you think having kids is going to make you happy. I promise you it won't. Once you have those things, you will discover how much new pain you have brought into your life, and you will discover the things that bring you joy that you never anticipated. And then it's going to be up to you to make sure that you weight the joy higher than you weight the pain. And that's how you will continue to be married or continue to have kids and not run away from them, right?

57:19So for me, I am planning on leaving the country for lots of reasons. I want my kids to grow up in a country that is other than the United States so that they can both learn to value foreign culture, but also learn to really fucking value American culture. The United States is a unique and special place that Americans by and large don't fucking understand because they've never left the United States. They don't have any concept, right? There There is almost no place in the United States where you can go, drink water out of the faucet, and then be poisoned by the water you drink. Pretty much nowhere in the United States.

58:00You can go to the nastiest gas station in the most podunk rural place, pull out a glass, turn on the faucet, drink the water, and be fine for the rest of the day. You can go to Beijing, China, the capital of China. And if you do the same thing, you're fucked. You're going to have water poisoning for two days. you might die depending on the level of resilience in your healthiness and your body, right? You don't learn how to appreciate the clean water utility of the United States until you get outside the United States. You don't learn to appreciate the traffic patterns. You don't learn to appreciate that even if you do pay 35 % taxes, that's still better than the 47 % tax rate in Australia.

58:40You don't understand these things until you get out of the country. So my children have been raised not just in the United States, but they've been raised in a household running a successful business in the United States where we have a YouTube studio in the house and where the people they hang out with on business, on my trips are decamillionaires. They don't understand not everybody has a giant pool in their backyard. They don't understand that Beverly Hills, LA is not just a normal place. Like they don't understand that. So I need them to understand that. So we're gonna take them out of here and show them real poverty, real challenge, real work, a foreign language.

59:18You can't just communicate with everybody in English. Here in the United States, we only have to have one language and we think that we're good. And then we think that there's something wrong with other people when they don't speak fluent English, not even realizing most people in the world speak multiple languages. Like you're the douchebag for only speaking English. It's not that they're the douchebag for trying to speak English with an Indian accent. Holy shit, right? So I need my kids to understand that. And then secondary to that, my wife and I just love the world. We didn't join CIA to stay in the United States.

59:53I didn't join the military to stay in the United States. I didn't work to become a millionaire to stay in the United States. I did it so that I could take my wealth, take my security and travel and see the world while I'm still young enough to enjoy it yeah it's just this perspective piece and uh in respect to your time i um i'll look to close this out but but i think if if we're hearing what you're saying here it's it's giving your your children perspective so that they can appreciate the things more and so realizing how beautiful and amazing america is is only going to be possible if you leave the fucking place and realize that okay we actually have it good here we're really good yeah we have it really good.

1:00:34And then just tying a loop on that happiness piece, I 100 % agree that the goal should not be happiness. That's a slippery slope. I think for me, I try and strip back this thing. Are you saying, okay, well, we get to a new stage where now we find joy in different things we didn't know we could find joy in. Didn't even know those things existed. Didn't know they existed. And then you want to maybe embark on that journey a bit more. You want to spend a bit more time doing that. And I guess to close us all out, there's probably a lot of people listening that might be in this space of their life where they're maybe in that system that was made for them and they are struggling to find any joy.

1:01:14They're struggling to find any peace. They're struggling to find any fulfillment in their life. They're just in this bit of a phase where they're not grateful. Maybe they haven't left. They're not grateful for what they have. They don't really know what to do. There's no progression. is there any key messages that you can leave to these people to help them kind of get out of that rut there are two types of people in the world there are people who are working for nothing and there are people who are working for something and when i use the word work i mean effort there are people who are putting their effort into nothing and there are people who are putting their effort into something.

1:01:53The person that you just described is someone who is immediately connecting with me. As I say, you are a person who is working for nothing. You're not getting any satisfaction. You're not getting any challenge. You're not getting any joy. You're not seeing any future. You're not pursuing the things that you care about, believe in, or value. The only difference between the person working for nothing and the person working for something is knowing that what effort you're putting into it is taking you to a better place. And that better place doesn't even have to be a measurable, objective, better place.

1:02:30It can just be a subjective better place. It can just be the hope of a better place. So if you're stuck in a shitty job with a shitty boss making a shitty paycheck and you think I'm stuck, you're working for nothing. But if all you do is change your mindset and say, I'm working to create an opportunity to get out of this shit. Now, all of a sudden, you're somebody who's working for something, right? And once you get on the track of working for something, opportunity is endless. Success is ahead of you. All you have to do is keep working. Here's the challenge. The challenge is that you've been conditioned to believe that when you put in more effort and see less results, you're doing something wrong.

1:03:17That's a condition that we're all put into because we are conditioned to live in a society where the reward and the award is external. So you do a little bit more and then your teacher compliments you. Oh, now you're doing something right. You do a little bit more and you immediately get paid more. Oh, now you're doing something right. You work a little bit more and your mom and dad are more happy with you. Now you're doing something right. We look for that immediate reward. That's how we've been conditioned. when in fact real success means you work without any kind of reward, any kind of compliments, any kind of pat on the back, any kind of success.

1:03:51You work for a long time because the only thing that separates people who find success from people who never find success, the only thing that separates them is the amount of time they can persist in their pursuit. If you persist for long enough, you are guaranteed to be more successful than the person who gives up. Yeah, it's taking those steps in the dark because a lot of the time the journey is uncertain, unknown, and being able to take those steps in the dark and just trusting that it's going to pay off in a sense like just don't quit. Correct. And I think that's that underlying message there.

1:04:30There's this wonderful visual that I heard when I was a junior officer at CIA. and they were telling us, you know, you get into a car on a dark day. You know the car is on a road and you know there's a road in front of you, but you just got into a dark car and you feel powerless. You feel at risk. You feel at a loss. You feel you don't know where to go. You're completely forgetting the fact that you are inside a 2 ,000-pound vehicle with 120 horsepower that could kill anything it runs into. So even if all you do is turn that car on and press the gas in the dark, you're going to do more damage than the damage you're going to take.

1:05:14And then you turn on the headlights. And now you feel comforted by the headlights. Even though the headlights only show you the next 10 feet, the whole fucking world is still dark. But you feel comforted by these 10 feet where you have a little bit of extra light. and that confidence from that small bit of light is enough to let you drive across the country at 70 miles an hour because you'll drive and all you see is the next 10 feet but at least you keep driving because you see that 10 feet in front of you. In fact, you could turn off the headlights and still drive at 70 miles an hour and will there be bumps in the road?

1:05:50For sure. But the things you run into are going to feel it more than you feel it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time today. I just think it's really inspiring to see someone like yourself. And we didn't get to unpack on this conversation around journey and what led you to going into the CIA. But I just think stemming down from this curiosity piece is so powerful of going like, even for someone to embark on the journey that you've been on, there had to be an extreme level of curiosity of what else is out there. And I think a lot of people do have that curiosity, but they just never have the courage to actually decide and go, I'm going to commit to that thing that I'm curious about.

1:06:31And I think on the other side of that commitment is this fulfillment, this successful life that we all really desire and want. So thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, man. And I'll leave all of your details in the show notes description below so you guys can go and check them out. Everyday Spy, how can they find you? You'll find me on my home site all the time, everydayspy.com. You'll find me on social media at Everyday Spy. Of course, all the links in the description will take you to the various projects that we're working on. And I have my own YouTube channel.

1:06:56That's always a safe place to keep learning from me. If you look at Andrew Bustamante. Thank you, Andrew Bustamante. Appreciate your time, man. See you, man. Bye-bye. I see you. Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney+. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet. Go, go, go, go! A true epic and completely jaw-dropping. This is the only pure thing in this world. Return to Pandora on Disney+. It will be an adventure for the whole family. And watch the Oscar-winning phenomenon at home. This is sick! Avatar Fire and Ash. Now streaming on Disney+. Rated PG-13.