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

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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