Former CIA Spy Reveals How They’re Controlling You! - Andrew Bustamante

the majority of people they're still seeing the world through a lens that was built for them and they want more they just don't know how to do it so what I teach which is what CIA teaches is how to see the world in the way it really is here's what I'm going to tell you andreon is back a former CIA officer and founder of everyday spy a company on a mission to help you get anything you want in life with the skills the CIA taught him we don't know the recipe for Success our society doesn't

teach us the plan the framework the process that's what CIA did for us they just taught us a simple system and one gentleman one of the Frameworks that we taught him helped him get a $32,000 raise we had one person say I followed your framework I wenton over the interviewer now I have this job that I would have never gotten otherwise but I'm not surprised when they happened because of course the recipes work because they were refined in the center of CIA so first we have an exercise called get quiet and in a get quiet

exercise all you do is just the reason that we do that is because we have the informational Advantage going into any situation interesting then there's the four seas of building influence rapidly so if you want to build influence the first thing we have to do is and now you actually take the action to get what you want so what about persuasion then how do I persuade somebody persuasion is a process that's much easier it really is as simple as finally the secret sauce at CIA that we know that most people don't understand is that now

you can do whatever you need to improve yourself and your life the DAR a raffle is about to close anyone that subscribes to the D Co before we hit 7 million subscribers which is probably going to be in a couple of days time you will be included in the raffle and on the day we hit 7 million subscribers we are giving away a lot of money can't buy prizes to all of you so hit the Subscribe button get in before 7 million and I'll announce the prizes and the winners in the comments below when we

hit 7 million subscribers Andrew what is it you're doing in this season of your life you know it's an interesting question I actually just lost my grandmother recently in the last week or so and my grandmother was one of the two women that raised me I didn't have a father I mentioned that to you the last time I was here um and it was a moment that struck me because mortality became very real it makes everything clearer it makes you realize what actually matters and what doesn't matter it it shows you that the days that

we have aren't actually guaranteed to us even though we take them for granted every day I don't know I don't know if my flight home is g to actually happen I don't know if I'm going to step out of this studio and get hit by a car I don't know if my child isn't going to get hit by a car playing in the driveway tomorrow because life is so fragile and we don't think about it until we watch its fragility dissolve in front of us we hear about tragedy but tragedy is always happening somewhere else

it's it's so real and yet we don't realize it every day it's a good thing we don't that's that's the truth that's how it feels right now for me as well I kind of wish I could go back to being ignorant again it's that Matrix red pill blue pill moment where I kind of wish I could go back in and forget the reality and and forget that mortality is reality and so does that change your your priorities in life in any way it does like the biggest way that it's affecting me right now is really

with business because you know we had a conversation not too long ago where I was very focused on trying to Triple the size of the business this year because we had been tripling the year before and we had tripled the year before that and it became this arbitrary number this this scorecard where I wanted to continue having this achievement and then what I found is that scaling a business is no easy thing and the struggles that come from scaling were consuming the majority of my focus all the time until this moment happened with my grandmother

and then all of a sudden I realized I have a team of people who can scale the business I don't have to scale it I just have to empower the team to do what the team does and my job is very different my job is to enable Empower encourage direct lead manage their efforts but it's their job to grow it I can take some of that time and put it into the people that matter to me the people that surround me the people who have made me who I am the people like the woman on

the couch that I was visiting in her death bed the business you're referring to is called everyday spy right yes sir what is everyday spy what is the mission of that business the mission of everyday spy is to use spy education to break barriers for everyone willing to learn and what is spy education spy education is anything from specific spy skills cognitive skills physical skills it can be breaking myths about what spies are and what spies are not B bursting conspiracy theories teaching spy uh processes and Frameworks to everyone from entrepreneurs to business owners and

CEOs so that they can use those same Frameworks to improve their leadership to improve their sales to improve their revenue or their organization do you um do you do you ever have a bit of a you you're a guy that thinks quite big picture about things um and sometimes think are Level above everybody else do you um do you think the people you teach these things to know what they're looking for in life do you think they actually know what they're aiming at no I don't and I'll tell you why because I don't think that

the majority of people who learn from everyday spy see the world in the way it really is I think they're still seeing the world through a a lens that was built for them have you ever looked through uh a window in an old cabin or in an old house it's kind of hazy it's uh maybe it's stained or it's dirty or the dirt is so thick on it that it doesn't wash off have you ever seen a window like that yeah my old shed at home when I was a kid growing up so you're inside

the shed M and you're looking out onto a sunny day and you know it's a sunny beautiful Forest on the other side of the window you know it is but that's not what you see through the window I feel like that's how many of our high achieving brothers and sisters feel they know it's a sunny forest on the other side but school and University and working for somebody else and growing their business has created this hazy glass and you can't trust what you see through the glass you know that what the glass is showing you

isn't real but you also can't prove it because you can't step outside of the glass you're inside the shed so a lot of what I try to do with everyday spy is just shatter the glass because you don't need the glass to be between you and the real world and that's what it felt like for me when CIA trained me how to be a field officer I don't feel like they took me out of the shed I don't feel like they cleaned the glass I feel like what they did is they just shattered the glass

and there I was looking at the world for what it really was and it all made sense until I started meeting other people who were still looking through the glass and there's no way to teach them otherwise or there's no way to convince them otherwise the only thing you can do is teach them to break through the barrier themselves so that I can understand that can you tell me what your perspective of the world was before and after the shattered glass when I was growing up uh all through high school I went to the Air

Force Academy which is a a military school that you have to get accepted on scholarship to go to even getting accepted to CIA itself every step of the way I believed that achievement came from doing what you were told better than anybody else so that you could be empirically better than the competition like that's what I believed but what I found along the way was often times that was true but often times it wasn't some sometimes people who had no business being next to me in a race at the Air Force Academy on the college

teams at the CIA sometimes the people to my left and to my right had no business being there they just were the son of somebody influential they were the daughter of somebody important they had money they had opportunity they were a foreigner who knows but it wasn't always merit-based but everything had always taught me that it was merit-based that the best Jobs go to the people with the best scores who go to the best universities like that's what I was taught but that wasn't really the truth the richest people weren't the smartest people the most

successful people weren't the hardest workers and that was when as a kid even I started feeling like there's a forest on the other side but all I see is this picture that doesn't seem to make sense so then when I got to C and CIA put me through their their field tradecraft course FTC which is often referred to as the farm what they did at the field tradecraft course is they said Society is conditioned to believe a certain way because Society needs to be a giant economic machine we all live inside of a giant machine

we are conditioned through the education process through the the industrial process through the church process to fall into a hierarchy that we believe is meritorious that is a meritocracy so that hard work and obedience and loyalty gets rewarded because the only way that the government stays in power of a large group of people is if there's a predictable system is if they believe there's a system and since a system is really nothing more than a belief system all you have to do to step outside of the system is Stop Believing or believe in a different

system so what CIA teaches us to do is find the people who question the system enough that they're open to being taught a different system and then we teach them the system of Espionage or treachery so they they chose you because you were a bit of a defiant personality or thinker I would say or on the cusp of or potential of being I would say a differently only because Defiance as a as a term by itself means that you just reject everything instead it was more of like a curiosity I was still very loyal very

loyal to my country very loyal to the idea of some sort of authority figure I was still an individual that had a history of childhood trauma that turned me into a person that needed external validation but I also chose where that external validation came from so I was It was kind of the right amount of trauma to be able to make me loyal to a specific organization whereas some people who are truly defining aren't loyal to anyone right they defy everyone so the CIA told you that the world is predictable but also way that you

explained it made it seem like it was a bit of a conspiracy not a conspiracy but absolutely a system you got to a conspiracy means that there's some sort of a conspiracy insinuates that there's some sort of negative intention there is no negative intention in order for there to be a society at all in order for there to be structure and lawfulness there needs to be a system and in order to create the system we have to intentionally continue ually repeat and program the system what is a business a business is nothing more than a

series of predictable reinforced processes and systems that yield a predictable outcome why do we think a government is anything different why would we think that Society is anything different if you really look at what the church does if you really look at what Harley-Davidson does it's essentially the same thing find people who believe in an ideology bring them in give them a framework to believe in that ideology the church is good and evil Heaven and Hell Harley-Davidson is freedom and individuality and then you just give them a system to think about it one wears crosses

one wears Eagles one meets on Sundays one meets on Tuesdays at the local Road bar one goes on you know civic duty to collect trash the other goes on multi-hour road trips but in in all cases they mark it to the young they mark it to the age they Market to the very old their senior members bring in junior members they have clubs they have everything right they're two separate subsections of society which is why we call them subcultures so now I understand that there's a system that I'm part of and it's again it's not

malicious in terms of its intent it just is what it is it's how the world functions it's how the country that I'm in um operates and it's required for there to be stability now there's awareness but is there is there any benefit in me doing anything about it is there anything I can do about it to to make my life better there's absolutely things that you can do about it you you skipped over the awareness part as if it wasn't substantial the first thing I would say is awareness of the system is quite a substantial

step because most of us are not aware of the system I was certainly not aware of the system I suspected something was different I suspected maybe there was more than I understood that's the whole idea of looking through faded glass at a clear Forest you know there's a forest but you don't know how to get there MH and you don't know why everybody else is standing in the shed if there's a forest right out there there's just this there's this in this discomfort because you're like there's there should be something more I feel like there's

something more but everybody seems so happy right here except me I'm looking out this window feeling like there's something more the reality is most people don't look out the window what is it that everybody in the shed believes that's what's so interesting I think most people in the shed believe that the shed is a good thing we need the shed the shed keeps us warm when it's cold outside it keeps us cool inside when it's hot outside it protects us from the rain it keeps the wind away we need the shed that's what most people

I think start to believe about whatever shed they're born into I need this church I need this neighborhood I need these friends I need to be popular in school like because everybody else is after the same thing I need good grades why do you think you need good grades cuz my mom said I need needed good grades well we don't question it any further than that we don't question why do you think your mom thinks you need good grades right and when you look at the hierarchy of society there's there's an actual anthropological pyramid that

defines Society right and it breaks into three levels individualism at the bottom level tribalism in the center level and then the state at the top level because the most advanced version of society is the state it maximizes the contribution of each individual by forcing shared policy down all the way from top to bottom so all people have to obey the state but in exchange for their obedience the state provides resources to all people like clean water and loans and uh car loans and business loans and police forces and public schools so we are we believe

that this cabin is needed it's the best cabin it's the only cabin is that wrong I think if you look at the world as it is there's a lot of different cabins out there our cabin is quite different than the China cabin China cabin is quite different than the Russia cabin right the UK cabin is very different than the American cabin so if you follow Logic the fact that different cabins exist at all would suggest that there is no best cabin and then if there is no best cabin then do we even need a cabin

or perhaps there's a different option that's better is there a different option that's better in your opinion I haven't found one yet outside of living in a cabin and being the one that understands there's more because then you get all the benefits of the cabin but you're also the one that knows that sometimes it's worth it to step outside yeah I in your analogy I was thinking in fact it's okay for there to be a cabin because I kind of need there to be a cabin because you know what I like roads and Healthcare and

police but but if you can be one of the people that realizes you are in a cabin and that the rules of the cabin aren't actually rules law they're just made up rules then you can bend them in certain ways to live the life that you want to live and I think in many respects entrepreneurship is kind of one of those things because some of the narratives that you described there of thinking grades mattered were the narratives that nearly held me back in my life cuz I was not doing well in school my brother's where

everyone else was and I nearly fell into the Trap which you learn in the shed which is the people that get A's are going to be rich and happy this is the like unspoken word and then if you get like an E and A D you're going to be poor and probably not that happy and probably going to live in a small house and you're probably um going to struggle and that's like a narrative and through labeling Theory you can come to believe that as the truth and then play that out in your life but

I always think the biggest harm of I now and I had a suspicion back then that the biggest harm of getting like an e in my exam was believing that I was an e and they're two very different things like I can get an e but it doesn't make me an e but in the in the shed it does make you an e it's hard to because everybody else labels you by what you perform inside the shed that defines them and then I self-label I then start to tell myself in my self-esteem that I am

an eggr and then I show up like an e-grade which they've proven through labeling Theory you can tell someone there's something or you can remind them of a stereotype that applies to them and they'll immediately perform worse on a test whatever that stereotype relates to so but entrepreneurship for me was saying do you know what I'm going to drop out of I'm going to get leave school I'm going to drop out of University and I'm going to try and like send a bunch of emails and figure out life myself outside of the system because the

system was never going to get me where I needed to go if if I had followed the system I would still be working in the call center that I was when I was 19 you know and basically have no free time working till midnight at night and just getting [ __ ] from a boss that was an [ __ ] to me and you just described the feeling of 80% of the population they feel like they've never gone past the call center that they worked at when they were 19 the vast majority of people out

there feel like they stopped developing at about 27 what is the difference though what is the difference between the people that kind of get out the shed and pursue their dreams and build the business or whatever and the people that are still in the call center I'm not saying call center is a bad lesson I learn a lot of school from call centers that I loved but it sucked compared to what I do now um what is the F so the first thing you're talking about shattering the glass the first thing is awareness yeah you

have to be aware that you're in a shed that you're in a shed and you have to be aware that you're choosing to be in the shed right you can always leave this is an argument I have so often with people who are trapped in in the wrong mindset right I don't even know what the right psychological term is because I don't live in a world of academic psychology but there are people who believe that they don't have a choice and in the United States for example we have 50 states there are some people in

the state of Florida who feel like they can't leave the state of Florida because they they think it's because they don't have enough money they think it's because it's it's the drive is too far there isn't a support network on the other side the bureaucratic hurdles of trying to change your residency and get a new driver's license is too much the taxes are too high to pay to move from a non-state a non- tax state to a state tax state so they all have reasons and the reasons are grounded in fact but the value that

they put on the fact the the value of the challenge is greater than the value of the reward in their point of view in their perspective and in reality it's the other way around you um you just reminded me of a video that changed my life I'm going to play this video for you okay um it's a very very short video but when you talked about people living in a state or living in a situation where they don't think they can leave this video came to mind they just get an an and you can do

this with basically any small creature and you get a brro or a pen and just draw a circle around it and it will not it will not leave the the circle and I watched this video many years ago of just this ant trapped in the circle and they the guy drawing the circle around the ant just makes the circle smaller and smaller left there and it will basically remain trapped and it was in when I watched it I thought you know I'm doing that for myself in my own life so the ant remains trapped they

make it smaller the ant won't um leave the circle but what's interesting here right is the ant is just eventually figuring out that the it's just a circle that it's just a circle that it's like just a shed and when I saw that the first thing I asked myself was in what ways have I drawn an imaginary circle around myself I think the more important question is often times when did the imaginary Circle start who drew the first Circle because it wasn't you if you've ever seen a child if you've ever seen an infant a

toddler they are Limitless they they know no bounds they they don't understand anything about the world around them they they don't know how their body feels so they don't know whether they're hungry or whether they're gassy or whether they're urinating they cry at everything and they're constantly squirming they have no context so all the context that they gain they gain through absorption we create the context for them we create the idea of this is bedtime we create the idea of this is what a healthy habit is brushing your teeth washing your hands whatever else we

create this is home and this is where you can walk around openly but once you go out this door into the front yard the front yard is not home anymore and now you can't you can't go anywhere you want you have to stay here so somewhere somebody started drawing circles before we ever drew them all we started doing was then believing that the circles were more permanent than they really were and the way to understand that it's not permanent is to step out to step out but stepping out does two things to us simultaneously one

it feels uncomfortable because nobody else is stepping out and two it feels wrong why does it feel wrong because we've been conditioned to believe we have to stay in the circle this is why I love my company this is why I love our mission of teaching spy skills to break barriers because everybody loves the idea of a spy but when you think about what a spy does nobody actually likes what a spy does nobody likes the fact that spies steal nobody likes the fact that spies lie but for some reason they still like the idea

of a spy and that's why James Bond and Jason Bourne and and Spy shows are so popular what's happening is we come we come into this place where what we want and what told we're supposed to want Clash because you know what we really want is an opportunity and we want an opportunity so bad that we're willing to cheat to get the opportunity but we don't want to admit that we're willing to cheat to get the opportunity we want an advantage but we don't want to believe that our advantage hurts other people so somehow we

want to all move forward with with equinity and everybody does better and that's just not the way that anything in nature actually works and what entrepreneurs figure out when they're successful is that you can cheat and you can get away with cheating and when you get away with cheating it just gives permission to everybody else who was too afraid to cheat and then you have first mover advantage in the marketplace and they copy you and all of a sudden that isn't cheating anymore and cheating in the because cheating can you know it's a bit of

a loaded word right what do you mean when you you talk about choosing in the context of business I'm talking about like an unfair advantage of any sort right think about when do you remember when MP3s first came out yes well I I had one when I was a kid so an MP3 player yeah yeah yeah so MP3s as in music files I remember when they first came out it was the the market went chaotic because you could get them off of the internet for free which meant that the musicians didn't get paid for it

and that turned into I think it was called nabster Napster yeah lime Wire yeah yeah there were so many of these different databases where you could just pull free music and it it was crazy before that there were CDs there was even a brief period where there were mini discs 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 how did they get access to a new form of Technology because they got investors well 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 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 so 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 and your life so I'm in the shed and I've just I've listened to you so I realized that I am in a shed and that the rules I've been

conditioned to believe aren't necessarily um they're rules but they're breakable rules and I have every right to break them what is what do you think is step one Beyond there beyond the aarness I'm going to give you two answers because there's the reality of the answer but then there's my preferred response right the 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 it everyday spy learn a framework that you and I talk about put it into exercise if it works you just tested something now 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 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 they don't ever teach you to test or question the facts and we we know at our age in 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 where people can 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 what we call information information and knowledge exactly right okay so information is what what someone might say to you but then knowledge is what you actually know

to be true correct there's a fly wheel 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 so 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

int Ence cycle works but what happens in society what happens in a in a state system that requires people to become predictable and obedient and and respectful and uh collegial is they skip the experience part they say this is information this 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 um 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's that typically helps people to change their life in the most profound way as it relates to business sales their career whatever one of the ones that jumps to mind right away is the it's a simple framework about perspective versus perception and we may have mentioned this actually in our previous conversation Stephen uh 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'm across a table from you you're at the center and everything in this room is built around you you mhm 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 how do you train that can you train someone's have both points of view absolutely so here's here's how I mentioned that awareness is is the first step right really we have a three-step process at CIA that we use when we teach spy skills to Future spies because that's all CIA is 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 to share with uh with decision makers on the hill right 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 so 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 learned 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 like understand the other person's perspective and the way that you're seeing the world absolutely so we had a whole conversation before the cameras turned on yeah 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 because we're talking about absolutely it's private stuff but tell me okay um we're talking about your relationship things you're going through at home you said that in the last couple of days Everything's changed because of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump we talked about you used to live in an RV for a while and you've just recently moved um Across America to to a new place place you mentioned your kids as well give me specifics oh god um you said that you used to live in the RV

with your kids and there's a they're varying ages I think I think one of them is did you say three years old close one of them was three years old or something five in one when we Liv in the [ __ ] yeah five and one you you did great right those things that you were that you recalled you recalled those from what's known as your paleo melean brain the back part of your brain passive learning part of your brain mhm 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 a spy does is when they talk to you they turn on they turn on the prefrontal part right away and they start paying attention to all the details right away because the way that you gain 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 you're sitting here in socks you're sitting on your leg you're very comfortable you're messing with all of your Tech technology you're fighting with your technology because it's not exactly the way you want it to be like this is 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 because I'm trying to gain as much perspective as possible before I sit at this table with you in the cameras turn on and we're on a one-way trip mhm because I only get one chance so I want to have as much information on my side moving

forward so you as a podcast co 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 mhm I know that your partner is thinking about babies MH 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're thinking about getting pregnant which makes me wonder if she's more excited about pregnancy than you are I'm so [Laughter] [ __ ] oh pray the Lord she doesn't listen to this am I accurate so I do I can I match her EXC levels she's changed the entire house at home it's like she's expecting I don't know what you but like the entire like my shampoo is gone that's like her level of excitement about it um but and you know yeah

so obviously I'm excited about it but no of course I can't match her level of like preparation and Obsession about it no yeah but I'm paying attention to you and which is that's the only reason I even have the ability to ask that question right because I'm coming in and I'm trying to live in your shoes the whole time I'm here I'm trying to live in your shoes even as 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 if 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 sensory organs your eyes your ears your feelings your taste buds your your nose your old factory 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 it's kind of like cleaning your pette before you try a certain ice cream right the reason that we do that is because we want to gain as much prospective 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 right you are a coffee shop well there's 500 other coffee shops there's five other coffee shops just in 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 we roast it here and it smells great and whatever else or you think my building is better because we have we have local artists on the wall and we play local musicians like right like 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 why 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 uh 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 practi iCal things that you do so that you can really tune into someone's perspective is the most important one just listening yes 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 mon I hint at 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 the

same thing happens in a normal conversation right you can 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 so if I'm trying to buy if you're a car salesman and I'm I'm a customer and I want to buy a car what kind of questions would you start asking me to I love this I love this exercise cuz I actually just had to buy a car after we moved and I was shocked at how horrible my car salesman was because he he did not think this way right why do people buy a car I'm I have I'm going to let you practice your perspective on me when I moved

to Colorado Springs in May why did I have to buy a car because you have kids nope you have two kids oh because um you have to well is you mentioned Colorado Springs so I suest Rec I I guess that's pretty pertinent your answer but you have to travel a lot around Colorado because it's quite um quite vast isn't it you need a mode of transportation MH 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 MH so you can kind of make those assumptions if you practice perspective when they walk in and 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'm a 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 ER 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 it's what's the salesperson going to do like 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 the law of averages and it's like I need to make a 100

calls to convert 12% that'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 the um 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 but I I ask 99% of guests when we sit down um

and it's what's front of mine few at the moment and for me the reason I asked that question is because um kind of what you said because people come here and I I 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 with Simon cynic and because I've spoken to Simon cynic three times on the podcast I didn't like have research like we've talked about everything so I sat down and I had to Fig sit down and figure out where the conversation was going to go for the next three hours and so my opening question to him was really broad it was um 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 when 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 um 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 and then to try and

follow them like wherever they might take you well that's what's what's interesting is that one of your super hours 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 synic 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 you practice what is called courage and courage is courage is a word that is definable and 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 of 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 trust comes into this right because um part of the reason that I can sit down with someone for three hours and not necessarily have a I've never had a question written down but not even have an idea of where the conversation's going to go is because I have so many case studies that it's been fine in the past and it's it's 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 they go off about loneliness and we spend three hour talking about loneliness but that comes from that initial Trust I think I think trust is a good word trust is self trust I'm trying yeah yeah self trust or or confidence those are good words to use but I would almost challenge that what you're really talking about is you're 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 make the score doing an amazing movement that's what we all remember when they miss the shot doing the amazing movement nobody remembers that right nobody remembers how many basketball shots Dennis Rodman didn't make right they just remember something else about Dennis Rodman Arnold Schwarzenegger has his famous quote where he he 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 even though he also did Kindergarten Cop I mean that that's quite a good um 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 this show that we were talking about correct you're 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 how 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 MH that's what they do with every dollar of their life my 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 [ __ ] 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 and that yield is usually very very low but that was her preferred investment vehicle so for the 69 years or the or the uh 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 that's why she bought her first CD at 16 years old was 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 in these certificates of deposit which is not a lot of money really yes because it doesn't grow whereas I invest in my company and my return has been 300% M 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 everyday spy there's a lot of people out there who already who right out of the gates had a circle drawn around them that CIA is some kind of deep state conspiracy kills Americans sells children steals drugs kind of organization are they wrong [Laughter] maybe 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 and there's even there's for every one of those threads there are also threads that talk about how I'm a plant how I'm still a CA 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 no it doesn't it doesn't matter if you get if you can take the information and test the framework and get ahead

does it matter well actually maybe if the fra okay you said you're the right point there you said test it myself because you could be teaching me things that are going to just keep me trapped in The Matrix because you know but I don't want you trapped in The Matrix but 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 right whether what you're teaching me is positive or

negative productive or not productive correct and that's 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 it's very different than being a superpower why does it matter 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 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 and 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 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 there's an uncertainty that comes as a 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 you 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 God 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 right because what does altruism mean for anyone that doesn't know so altruism is is this idea that you care about other people or that you care about a common good right I I don't care about a common good care about other people I care about some other people your 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 just I prefer I like the fact that you're honest so I mean that makes me trust you more so I appreciate that yeah 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 when you were a Nazi in 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 at fall of Soviet Union the you in that War I was watching a documentary about it the other day it was interesting because I watched both the sort of Soviet Union rush into

Berlin and I was America rushed into Berlin they kind of they both um took different parts of Germany and then once they taken down the Nazis they kind of went to war with each other correct because they then were trying to figure out who was in charge of Germany and how they were going toct divy 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 as our Pacific forces kind of work their way up through Japan there became conflict in

the east as well right so transition periods where nearer countries or where countries become near-peer competitors that's not people don't stop competing as the competition increases like what's what's happening in the world right now in Ukraine and Russia in in Israel with Hamas with the houthis and with the Iranians like 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 [ __ ] gets messy the bullies make posies the Posies have to fight with each other other more people get hurt more Rabel rousing happens in the playground than when there's just one bully so for me the United States is the bully on the playground and I as an American citizen am living in a place where it's pretty good to be on the bully 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 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 you've got Ukraine is actually the USA and Russia is actually kind of China to some degree so I would say it's not kind of a proxy war it's a full-on proxy war you're you're 100% right I didn't even know what proxy war is

I just use that term because it sounded smart well it does sound smart it is smart proxy war is a Doctrine it's an actual military doctrine that says that you create what's known as interstate conflict which means conflict in 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 the 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 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 the conflict that you're talking about is 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 and then NATO

is 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 Two have then 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 right 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 Xin ping understands that what he wants for China is for China to be an a net exporter of high technology who's

the only other high ex net exporter of high technology the United States the United States makes electric vehicles China makes electric vehicles 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 so 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 here's what I'm going to tell you I had this thought last night and I was going to make it a video for my own channel but

my channel is nowhere near as enjoyable as your channel you 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 it's only one that can win and that's Michelle Obama I did think this because I mean I would say Barack but obviously he can't because he's done his eight years but Michelle I I I do agree and she doesn't want anything to do with it she said 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 have a pullitzer prizewinning photo already floating around the internet with this guy on it right everything 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 and maybe in July 3D 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 G to rise to the occasion how is she gonna 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 were on the fence voters that are looking for any alternative

to Donald Trump or Joe Biden they 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 you do you do you think that's possible absolutely it's possible I don't think it's probable okay 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 do 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 brings manip 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's having an economic recession right now at 4.5% growth GDP we 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 grew at 5% so when it goes from 5% to 4% it's a big deal for people our model is already broken our 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 four years in the house he's only got four years in the white house and he knows it so he's not out there to Revolution America he's not out there to revolutionize the United States like he'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 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 paring the Joe Biden and Barack Obama School of thought what would what do you think she would need to say to meet America's ideology right now I think she could Define America's ideology right now I 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 to 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 like that's what we've been looking at that's that's been the choice doesn't really feel like it's a choice anymore it's no because after Trump got shot in the ear I think I mean I watched those scenes as well and I thought yeah this guy's won he won and that's the he 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 his 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 if you knew it was going to hit his

ear and you in his marketing team you would have shot him in the ear that day like if I 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 I'll tell you how a CI officer thinks about this right if you wanted to Stage an attempted assassination if that's what you want to do was stage an attempt at assassination you would never shoot at the person who was the principal you would

shoot away shoot up in the principle the principle 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 give 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 and 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 at the Donald Trump rally in Butler Pennsylvania if you wanted to Stage an assassination you would shoot 3540 de 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'd still be all the same news worthiness without the risk of killing somebody and if you really really wanted to make it like so it it made headlines you could even potentially stage some kind

of cut that's covered up with a small skin colored Band-Aid so that when the shots go off you can wipe off or pull off the Band-Aid and then there's going to be active red spots right 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 there and I I I was in an office the other day one of the companies that I'm involved with and there was a group of people C gathered around a laptop watching the footage and half of the people thought it was some kind of conspiracy and that maybe he fell down and then like cut his own ear and then the other half of the people thought that 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 and then immediately following the factual thing there's a lack of information inside of that lack of in 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 specul ation 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 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 so 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 who 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 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 for a conspiracy there's facts a lack of information speculation and somebody's closing the story Loop and all these different spires 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 Corps of a 20-year-old shooter holding a high powerered 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 uh 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 that'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 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're they feel like the grounds are safe there'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 ft is a long difficult shot empirically it's a long difficult shot even though the newspapers come out and say it's a turkey shoot or 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 and you have to have a high-powered rifle built for that kind of distance to shoot that length so there's all kinds of misinformation that's going around as people try to spin up a story so for me it was a real assassination attempt

by a real person whose motives are still unknown I was I was listening to something and the person was saying that maybe this you know the CIA or some somebody infiltrated this young man and you know encouraged him over a period of time to get up there on that roof and all these kinds of things the the heart of the problem here is we don't we don't we're quite distrusting and we don't have answers and most of us aren't informed so 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 or 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 illuminarti 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 strr approach to anything that happens and we go government Matrix conspiracy um and you know the C CIA does have history of doing things like this true true

we we're coming into a a conversation that's twofold one we're talking about a pre- 911 CIA pre- 911 post 911 is important to to create a distinction for CIA because prior to September 11th CIA was a small highly funded organization with very little oversight they could come up with crazy stuff like trying to you know trying to poison Fidel Castro so his his 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-

911 unsupervised Wild West kind of CIA post 911 the 911 Commission written in 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 if 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 Edward Snowden all the way to aldri GES 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 how 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 was thinking we probably wouldn't be sat here now because there probably would have been quite bit of unrest potentially potentially I don't know I don't know like I it it would have I think we would have still been sitting here I was wondering I would have gotten my ass on a plane to come sit with you at least right so you never know how these sort of domino effects can happen and people can break out on the streets and you know cuz what might happen let's just play out the

scenario Donald Trump gets shot then some crazy right-wing person comes out and shoots someone else and then and then the streets of LA look very different to the streets of LA today and we sat here in La so do you know what I mean that's kind of the domino effect that was playing out in my mind there'd be some kind of Revenge right well I 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 caring remarks about Donald Trump nobody would be talking about him as crazy or whatever else he'd go down as a hero following the Democratic process for something he believed in history would have been written a very different way oh I don't know because I think if Donald Trump had

been hit I mean this is just from chilling on Twitter if Donald Trump had been hereit 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 and they found the kids hard drive and he was planning it there's a group of people that still would have believed that Absolut like because there's a group of group of people is you know that believe 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 you know gone they would might have been they might have gone to a left I don't know black uh event festival and done something and then you have the the ti for tat I don't I don't disagree that it's a 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 yeah right because I mean think about the alternative

the alternative is is the streets of you name the conservative State Texas Florida whatever Pennsylvania maybe a giant parade Fit For A King right parading Donald Trump through the streets something that and and Donal 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 end 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-up violence you're right again I think all of those things are possibilities but it is also Al 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 person's 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 of 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 bend 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 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 uh 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 911 as a simple example after 911 President Bush declared war people were immediately deployed to the mountains of Afghanistan and 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 and execution and also understanding that there is a paradox with perfection so 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 ctim millionaire client that I work with frequently and he was talking about this idea of centimillionaire I've never had that term before I know what it is yeah yeah I have a ctim millionaire client who who was working with me on a on a process to try to resolve some of the challenges that he was having from from the trauma that he was wired that was wired in him as a kid right and 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 by 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 when in fact you can also just go around the mess and you can go right to the point and you you don't have to heal you just have to accept understand recognize and move forward and so what did

he do so he he was trying to overcome his trauma what how did how does he go around it 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 and once he made that connection he was like oh well [

__ ] I'm glad my mom cheated on my dad because now my daughters are taken care of my sons are taken care of my wives are taken care of like my I've got 500 employees that are taken care of I do business in four different countries everybody's taken 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 18mon year old son in April and you know it's hard to in that situation go

Francis Inu he's a UFC champion um Harding that situation to try and find a way around it it's a couple of months ago there's no there's no way around tragedy that's that's loss that very few of us will ever know thankfully what I 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 happen in the past well

actually funny enough cuz I cuz I mentioned the loss of a son I had a guy s called Mo Gat who was the ex- head of Google X and his son passed away in a routine operation that should have taken 10 minutes but killed his son and 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 um now he said no like if you could go back and well I'm sure he bring

back his I think what he's saying to me is that if he could go back and um 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 do you think some people are wired for Success absolutely I think people are wired for Success what does that means in real terms 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 you know Dave that's listening to this now or Janet um how do they know that if they 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 who are living in a shed looking through a window and realize there's something else on the other side you can't cre you can't find a happy person living in ignorance in their shed and 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 a an asset in the field is somebody who believes that there might be something better a a 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 the spy in the field who's who's 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 and 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 for I'm thinking now I was in a Black Cab the other day in London and there's I have so many conversation with conversations with black cab drivers in London because they a lot of them obviously because their the nature of their work they listen to podcast and the radio and such and so sometimes they recognize me and they'll say I was you know listening to podcast I

love it Etc um and 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 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 cuz 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 go [ __ ] that's me when you

are conditioned when you're a when you're a s 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 road map a recipe a plan to get there so 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 what that black Hab 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 dude there's this heartbreaking story for me it's a business heartbreak breaking story I 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 everyday spy everyday spy was was two years old 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 he lived with four roommates he drank beer every afternoon starting at 2:00 funny [ __ ] guy really funny dude to hang out with but he had no goals no 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 in 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 F could take care of their 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 he 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 stopped 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 to follow the simplest recipe what is your favorite case study of someone that followed the recipe and changed their life in my company yeah my 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 I have uh 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 5 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 but then he started practicing one of our Frameworks and nine months later was promoted asking which framework he didn't tell

me which framework oh he told me it was coming from our ma we have a master course called operational thinking and inside that we teach many influence Frameworks so it was clearly a 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 a exercise scientist come in I even had a recently I had

a great friend of mine who's an emm award-winning journalist an investigative journalist 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 um he was a Puerto Rican guy his name is Emanuel Emanuel if you're listening I love you brother but Emanuel 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 and 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 I 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 W over 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 I have my customer service team and and even my executive team we don't see all the testimonials that we get because they've we'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 the 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 um I mean for me to be good at something I mean 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 that had this idea implanted into my head that I always have repeated I'm 31 now and I think I've definitely repeated this this sentence

or this 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 sales person is just a bunch of people like very early on I had the 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 proverbial City so when you talked about this influence framework I

thought maybe that's the most important thing to talk about because a do you agree with what I said as like a foundational seed in your mind that it's just people um and then B I'd love to talk about how we influence people so yes I agree with you that people are all that stand in the way and we have to remember that we ourselves are people yeah so we're part of the problem yeah um 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 there's foundational Frameworks there's twep Frameworks and then there's 12ep step Frameworks right the thing to understand is Frameworks all fit within each other they fit like nesting dolls like Russian nesting dolls so when you learn any kind of framework that has to do with influence what you're 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 influen is what you have when you're not talking so I can sit here and try to persuade you to come with me to dinner mhm but that's not influence that's persuasion influence is what happens when something happens in the world and 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 influence is 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 within Frameworks that I'm happy to teach if you want to go through those yeah 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 MH as a umbrella there's a sub frame work 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 that's the whole goal of

sense Mak so that's why we we are starting at that framework inside sense Mak if you imagine it like a cup MH right sense Mak is like a cylinder and just like you fill a cup with water you'll fill this cylinder with scense 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 it's the 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 so 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 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 all together the last third is called compliance the whole reason that you compete is to have someone come out with compliance and compliance is the part where the power Dynamic is is identified right 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 M 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 but 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 put all this energy into me and now we have a dynamic between us from once there's sense once we understand and remember this is if we agree to disagree then that's we've made sense of our relationship is mutual peers on this particular topic politics that 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 right 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 that'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 um 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 this avoidance competition compliance sense making process because as soon as

you discover something new it's new so 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 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 you 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 [ __ ] at each other about politics you

still like Friday night going to the bar 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 so because you like me enough to be with me there will come a time where I win your trust in some in some area maybe it's trust because I'm the only person who drinks with you so 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 that's natural to human beings that we hate about ourselves is 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 think 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's going to you know 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 it's fascinating because we usually think of trust as only being a positive term trust is an ambiguous it's it's a it's a uh it is an agnostic term it doesn't mean good things or bad things it just means a predictable outcome

do you know the lens I was thinking about as you were speaking I was thinking about randomly I was thinking about like personal branding and LinkedIn because I was thinking about like personal branding strategies people go on LinkedIn and they have all these hot takes and I was wondering through the context of what you were saying does it matter if people like what I'm saying you know 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 you know personal brand strategy that's going to ultimately build more influence Ence I 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 create draw or appeal which is 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 on Facebook on Twitter or whatever who are out there screaming something they're they're making a point and they're being drowned out by all the other people who are out there making a point Pi Morgan Elon Musk you know those are those are people who already have influence okay part of part of how well like in the case of P Morgan part of how he he's got his influence is by being polarity by being y standing for something very and not being scared of the fact that

people 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 have 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 they 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 in defending you so they're going to trust you even more and when that group of people trusts 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 there a way to stand for something correctly and is there a way to badly stand for something and I

say this because as you were speaking I was thinking about my friend my friend is really really bad at um LinkedIn and he comes to LinkedIn with like very inconsistent takes on the world I'm going to give you an example for for many years for many years he's um had a narrative about alcohol being 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 um perspective that says alcohol is bad so he was like people should be allowed to to binge drink if they want in the Middle East but then his other perspective has always been that alcohol is bad and like why do people binge drink and so the inconsistency has really [ __ ] 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 St like somebody who who rallies behind him like it sounds like when you were telling the story to

to a certain extent you were like proud of him when he was like originally yeah when when he was clear what he stood for but it's it's every day is a different take I'm like and that's what cost that's what costs you your your 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 because somebody chimes in and talks [ __ ] about something it only instigates more people to come in and leave a comment and guess what YouTube wants comments they just want engagement 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 right so you can't be afraid of being polarizing and 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 be Traders or whether they are staunch supporters and nationalists but 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 you know there's a lot of Brands out there that have done really really well for by standing for something by being polarizing okay and it was it was um Jane waren on my podcast that talked about her brand dermal 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 um to like you she goes that's not a brand you need them to love you or hate you she goes that's a brand it'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 mhm but either way they're in the trust part of no like trust I was a kid in my bedroom that was building my business all on my own one of the websites I used religiously was a website called Fiverr Fiverr spell f v r r and FIV have just released a Tor that I think is a game changer for anybody that's looking for Quality freelance support when you're building a product when you're building a company when you're building a project and it's called Neo you

can have a conversation with the AI agent called Neo tell it about the problem you have and it will help you find the solution I.E it will help you find the perfect freelancer to write a brief for that perfect freelancer and all you have to do is communicate exactly what your needs are it will select them it'll bring you together it will update the search results based on your conversation as it evolves and a couple of days ago when I needed a graphic designer for a project I used Neo and it got me the perfect

freelancer in a fraction of the time go and check it out right now go to fiver.com diary and you can check near out for yourself so what else do I need to know about influence and influencing other people um you know you said persuasion is not the same uh as what was the other one influence influence yeah persuasion and influence are two 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 persuasion is what happens when you watch a commercial persuasion is what happens when you try to convince your kids to brush their teeth at night or one day you will convince your children to brush their teeth T night that's all persuasion because you're you are creating an emotional message it's a 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 emotion 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 so 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 uh to buy from your sales funnel immediately instead of wait until your third email in your welcome series it'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 uh you and I are trying to sell um what about this whoop on my wrist hasht add hash investor hash sponsor what about this from Mar all right you understand how woot Works what is it tell me what it is um it is a it's a fitness tracker but it's a sleep tracker it's a stress tracker tracks my heart rate variability um so it's biodata yeah it it

syncs your biod dat in one convenient place yeah and I can see my friends biod dat as well if they 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 Community Etc yeah right so if you want to persuade people to buy your hashtag spons # product # investor what's it called whoop whoop yeah we want people to buy a whoop whoop.com yeah so so SL do perfect so if we want people to buy a whoop we don't tell them bi

a whoop because it's an awesome biot tracker that tracks your heart rate and tracks your sleep and tracks your body temperature we 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 oh God what every man wants to be able to read her mind now people are feeling something right says that's amazing say that again down the camera so 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 whoop makes married couples a team again I love that so you can now what we're doing is we're 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 making 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 Telecom team right if we were to do that what's the logical rational outcome that any male in a serious heterosexual relationship is going to land on they take the 30-day free trial that that's exactly what they're going to do that's exactly what they do with high probability that is empirically sound that you can measure through clicks open rates and view time because you've crafted a persuasive message and what do people typically do they typically Brands will typically

come out and say something like oh it's a they'll sell 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 we what you and I are talking about but they won't systematize it they'll let it be accidental You' you've heard of like I'm I'm shocked how often advertising agencies create failed ads like bad ads because they're just 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 that'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 right they're not that's not what they're thinking they're thinking what if we just talk about this what if we just talk about this this 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 myopically focused on their product that they forget that there's four Ps for marketing product is just one of the four right 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 doesn't really matter what you price it at doesn't really matter where you put it and it also doesn't matter what the product is people will buy it because there's a market for everything so the place where people

go wrong isn't that they're 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 a interpersonal relationship context where I'm trying to you know 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 what do you think every interviewer is looking for some someone well okay so I've got two answers to this a someone to do the job uh and then B 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 in that regard a little bit but you're so right it's heavily about if you like the person well guess

what I just taught you a framework for how to get through getting someone to like you m right so without a doubt we agree well that was to get them me influenc the framework wasn't it no like trust we went through we went through the sense making framework yeah 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 interviewers 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 bet 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 I mean like I don't consciously know that but I totally believe it because when you see someone who has who reflects elements of you yeah you immediately go through the sense making process and you flip to like and Trust interesting so 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 yeah but there's other parts of you that you trust to be good at the job and that's what you shoot for yeah 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 some 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 and terrible and and hard and painful that's what they don't like and most of the time the people interviewing are not actually the people who will be

the supervisor for the person that gets hired often times they're just an intered medary 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 what can I do to make sure that say that you were interviewing me or say that let's do the other way around I've got the job um that I'm looking for looking to fill and you've come for an interview today

so I'm going to do I'm going to go through the sensemaking 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 non-verbal 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 from my environment I see that you're using an iPad I 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 are 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 short much you've got the job youve got the job no I don't need to himar it's yours but I'm going to pull from all of this for the competition phase of the sense making process because 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 with a winner and a loser I hear competition I hear arguing 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 uh favorite soccer team where like the the red shirts play the green shirts but it's still the

same football club right they and they have spring training for 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 right 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 sensemaking 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 and 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-ended questions it makes the person you're talking to feel like they're interesting feel like they're important feel like they're special and 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 met on the phone I would say Stephen 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 it's kind of both we do we all of the above paid marketing all kinds of marketing which one is your favorite

my favorite's uh 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 uh yeah and also I just think I 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 we focus I also think it's the future and I spend so much time on social media and I 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 I completely agree so um and then so then I'd start asking the questions and would you 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 what do I come away feeling you tell me what does it feel like when people ask you

questions feels like you're building a relationship feels like you care feels like you've thought critically before you came here yeah feels like you prepared feels like you're curious and the oppos well there's two opposites one opposite is I just pepper you with questions and then you leave um and the other opposite is that someone that just talks the whole like you pepper 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 I 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 um I didn't say anything in the whole in the whole hour and do you know what I came away feeling I came away feeling that if that's what the job working with them is going to be like I don't want to work with them because for one hour I sat there and this this person just like at me and now you say it now I kind of understand why I felt that way because you you

do want people to ask you questions and you it's 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 ear or is it just the ego part where I'm just like be interested in me I don't know or is 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 I was giving short answers

this 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 were our our inter they asked me zero questions and when I said to them if you got any questions You' like to ask me they asked me one but that was actually just tearing them up for another 20 another 20 minutes and I 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 and this particular role is working with alongside me personally every single day and I just thought gosh I'm not going to get anything done but maybe that was a prefrontal cortex 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 experience a lot so if people ask you questions how do you feel at the end of those calls

I feel like the person I 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 not ask the person questions you're also making a commitment for your entire life to this company this job to this person you want 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 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 yeah 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 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 and word vomits 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 I don't know what my probability is to you have a solid predictable 30% chance of winning this interview it 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 of their speech reflect that back to them and then use this 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 and even in the context of an interview I notice it sometimes now um can you explain what the framework is before we start talking about it CU you're better 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 R 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 so 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 strongest you said reward was the third strongest and and

coercion was the weakest yes sir I know this because I did a a tour and I played your you saying that in every country that I went to on stage for about 2 minutes so I know this really this [ __ ] really well my memory is not that good I've been I've been talking about this about 35,000 people in Australia and everywhere I am flattered to have traveled with you all over the world well yeah I've got some photos I'll show you later but um as 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 terms that I use 1% I use this term all the time to describe marginal gains and this sort of marginal process of improvement and so I would come to

interviews and I I started to notice that people were like repeating my ideology in business back to me in those interviews and it [ __ ] worked even though I knew even though I knew it um and one of the things I did actually is I um I went back through my own personal history and I looked at Key moments where my life had changed so in 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 all my mission and then this is the email that got me the camera equipment which helped me launch the marketing of my business it got me 10,000s of pounds about about £10,000 worth of free camera equipment and these were both C 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 ego 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 video can um can take a look at this email if you want to see what I was like when I was that age I want you to tell me how good I did in terms of reward ideology coercion and ego and I'll put this on the screen if you want to because it is screen recording you can Circle okay the parts you're referring to so everyone else can see hello sir my name's so my names did I spell it wrong that is awesome so my name's Steven Bart and I'm you definitely

I can see your I can see why you are struggling academically yes I 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 and I was given a few nice things along with that but that doesn't really mean much to me this is embarrassing for the last four months me and a friend friend have been working tirelessly

on an exciting new project that I want to share with you I've this 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 reaching after this person at all is because you already know that your story

mimics his story correct he he um he actually had started a pretty similar student website in the same city it had gone so well it had been sold and he now lived in Monaco and was like a super rich 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 up front 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 they're going to benefit from it I made I 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 deloaded

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 M 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 and after reading through your website I believe you are that person kind regards and thanks for your time Steven Steve Bartlett so it's interesting to me because you made a very strong ego play with referencing all of his success yeah

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 Res resonate 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 a son or a sister or a brother who struggled in school because your

typos are really quite significant there'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 so you may have really struggled you may have accidentally some 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 are 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 what what millionaire out there what decillionaire or centimillionaire 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 website in the same city at roughly the same age so there you go you 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 what about the other email so there's another one on there which is here just take a look at it if you could this one yeah so this was the email that I sent I sent 10 of these emails out to every C

camera company I could Samsung Panasonic um ET Etc and within 48 Hours of Panasonic receiving that email a guy called leot 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 Lee that used to work at Panasonic um for giving me a shot Lee from Panasonic responded to that email that you have in front of you and said what kind of cameras do you want we've got some returns I'll send them to your doorstep within 40 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 Steven 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 we are now a few months from launching the website we have received so much support from company such as dominoes 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 [Laughter] 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 it includes the univers I ities 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 you 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 it wants to be side by side with Subway and dominoes especially in 2012 when both of those companies were pretty strong leaders in their 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 V would be kind enough to donate one in return we would feature V on our website as a sponsor we would also promote the camera and vho 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 was was not really you focused on reward rather than ego because you didn't know who Lee was so it was a bit of coer in the one that I sent to the investor wasn't there because I said um we've had some offers from Venture cap capitalists which is kind of saying that I have other offers kind of but I'm that's not coercive coercion coercion means that you are leaning into the shame the guilt some sort of negative feeling competition is not a negative feel

really competition is how we build trust okay so me mentioning that I have other opport unities isn't Co you should always mention that you have other opportunities even if you don't okay always it's one of those areas where you 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 C and the rice frame framework in emails like this yes 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 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 coercion 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 to the cage they're going to run out and never

get back in the cage you talked about these four C's of influence have we covered that four C's that we're talking about are the four seas of building influence rapidly specifically building uh building influence in a workplace environment right it's consideration is the first C consistency uh collaboration and control those are your four C's uh 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 cooworker 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 so if I if I consider your point of view faster than you consider my point of view I have the advantage that's what the first see is consideration that's really 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 uh consistency is the act of being consistent what's powerful is that very few people are actually consistent most 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 to burn your persuasive ability and burn your 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 like consistency is what breeds comfort and confidence in people it's what builds influence because when the when the rubber hits the road when 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 like third C 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 want 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 that's a [ __ ] 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 with the what the popular public narrative is is that we need a government that compromises well [ __ ] a government that compromises is always losing a government that collaborates rates is always gaining so the third C 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 C 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 sees and now you actually take the action to get what you want you ask for the for the cameras you ask for the opportunity you ask for the interview you ask for the favor right 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 and you cycle back to the fact that you've done the other three C's right and you're doing it in a way that exercises your control over the situation the four C's 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 we don't call it influence inside the walls at Langley we call it Social Capital where's Langley Langley 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 C's 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 IUS 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 C's of building influence through

social capital is 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 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 100 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 nobody 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 that does all these other things they're super considerate of other people they 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 are you a coward no I wouldn't say that you're a coward because remember cowardice is the opposite of courage and courage is defined by showing courage or showing 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 inspire others to follow even if they don't like you even 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 are the sort of core components of a great leader leader you must you go to a lot of companies you speak to a lot of Executives leaders what are the ones that you respect the most whether they're clients of yours or people you've seen within history there's an element of honesty that's critical to a leader like 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 ignite 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 of Courage because they're always doing something that they're afraid of they're always taking the next risk they're always challenging the the dis

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're not completely in line with the vision that you're trying to 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 sometimes 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 for forever that's the unfortunate fact of being a leader there it's lonely at the top and every General has talked about it every president has felt it there's a reason presidents go gray

Michelle Obama will look very good when she's gray but 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 I do walk through life seeing people as worthy or unworthy Investments interesting where because especially like 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 and 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 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 so many people are trapped in relationships where they don't have any return on investment from that relationship or even worse they keep investing in the relationship and

it's a money pit and it just keeps taking and taking it 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 they feel abandoned if I had to pick between being somebody who literally looks at everybody as a win or lose 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 looked at every real what people will be

thinking they'll be thinking oh God Andrew that's a sad life that's a sad life just to see everything as a transaction it's 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 an OP as some sort of return on investment I don't see time with my wife as some sort of return on invest 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 and affection and we will build positive memories for the future it'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 like 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 going to 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 like 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 I see a lot of life that way but I don't see all of life that way and the parts of life that I do see as transactional I 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 as just thinking about the relationships that are really doing nothing for you I've got a couple relationships like that that really probably aren't doing anything for me and it sucks even at our level it sucks because you still see yourself doing it yeah like like why am I yeah why am I doing this like shouldn't I know better by now and inevitably like you come back it's like getting drunk I guess you don't know what it's

like to do that most people know what it's like I used to get drunk 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 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 like go for lunch and brunch and like the 2hour phone call and the small talk on WhatsApp just for nothingness said pouring

all of their life into these nothing relationships these sewers these leeches of relationships if they don't recognize that it's a transaction and they ask themselves 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 um you've got a book your new book that 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 U once 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-order will be available maybe by the time this episode comes out if that's the case we'll link it below oh that would be exciting the pre-orders absolutely um very exciting what

is the book about the the book is finally my wife and I get to releasee 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 uh and the team that we built around us it was all very unique at the time and uh 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 everyday spy is the key place to go to the website everyday spy.com absolutely everyday spy.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 everyday spy you Channel I really love it I appreciate it um 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 [ __ ] with you there's very little um virtue

signaling which means that we can just be growing ups and talk about the reality of things we don't have to fluff around things so it's really 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 like you people love you people in our comment section obviously you get the conspiracy the lot I think you're still like

part of the CIA or whatever but side of that people are so so so um happy and they do appreciate the work you're doing because it really it does help people change their lives because as you said so many people are trapped in that shed and as you said they know that there's something out there better but and they've tried a bunch of [ __ ] and they're still in the shed and you give them a rubric a framework to start to run tasks in their life to see if um if there's a a way

out the shed and it's not going to be simple and it's not going to be easy because if it was it wouldn't be worth it but there is a way and that hope alone I think can really get people off the soff and towards the life that they that that they deserve so thank you Andrew we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next question left for you is presumably you either do or don't lean 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 [ __ ] up is if that was proven definitively wrong I would probably still challenge the proof it would be hard to let that go it would be hard to trust proof you know I guess the answer then to my

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 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 I don't think it I

think it's because it would create such a a a sense of dissonance in my head because I've I've believed it for so long and now it's definitively proved wrong it's not like you can just flip a coin and be like oh I was wrong but in in this example you would basically be there you'd be proven I know so you'd be you'd be convinced so you wouldn't actually be interrogating it because that's what you would believe so so I guess you're right if if the if the 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 um I think I would probably be that much more cautious careful with the life that I have to know that there is no Second Life there is no SEC there'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 shitty answer I would 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 body bodily risks I 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 afterlife and I Skydive 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 I think it was Ricky J said this once I was how did you

feel 100 years ago I want I want us I want us to have a beer 6 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 or else you have a much happier partner because children's change children change everything too children change everything when it comes to your tolerance for risking yourself I I know you're telling the truth a because I believe you be 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 Stephen and he's um he's I think he was Investment Bank for 12 years actal scientist so literally his job was to like assess probability probability Super Genius at maths um 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 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 willing to get on a plane with your kids aren't you afraid it will crash and 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 [ __ ] 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 it because I know the probabilities of planes I know they're safe because this makes no sense but this is how I feel I don't want to get on a plane

and come to unless my kids are on the plane with me wow and I thought that makes no sense to me the way you've R 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 or maybe not I mean and 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 that'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 and say exactly that they're going to agree with you so Andrew 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 Stephen 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 dude it's easy to have a good time with you perfect Ted has quite frankly taken the nation by storm a small green energy drink that you've probably seen popping up to a Tesco or to a waitrose they've grown by almost 10,000% in a very short period of time because people are sick and tired of the typical unhealthy energy drinks

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