CIA Spy Reveals #1 Mind Trick Every Man NEEDS

0:00 I've heard you say that espionage really is about getting people to let you into their secret lives. >> Correct. >> What is our secret life? >> So, uh, you know, I I if you go back to an earlier part in our conversation, we were talking about how when you trust people, you'll tell them your secrets, right? When you help people, they'll tell you their secrets. There are three lives that any anybody lives. We have a public life, a private life, and a secret life. The public life is the life that we're all very familiar with, right? It's the life that you live for everybody else to see. Not just the people who watch your podcast and the people who, you know, work for you and your company, but your public life also includes what you show your friends. It includes what you show your church. It includes who you are when you walk down the street. The clothes that you choose

0:46 to wear are a perfect example of your public life. It's what you want people to think of you. Remember the e in rice? Mother Teresa wanted people to see her a certain way. That is her public life. When you're in espionage, the goal is to get away from the public life because if you want someone to give you secrets, you can't get secrets from somebody who's in their public life because they're protected in their public life. So, you have to move them from public into secret. And the middle step between public and secret is private life. So, you have to move somebody from public life to private life. Private life is the life that your partner knows. Private life is the life that your closest friends know. Your mom and your dad may know it. It's the people who know that your feet secretly stink. It's

1:31 the people who know that you don't really like to eat oysters because whatever they give you gas. That that's all stuff that's private. Your business partners don't know that. Your customers don't know that. The people who watch your podcast don't know that. And it makes the people in your private life feel like they know you. And it's what makes it so that for you in your public life, you feel like you have meaningful relationships because instead of 200 people who you kind of know, now you've got 15 people who are in your private life. They know your home address. They know your birthday. You know, they know your favorite ice cream. It makes you feel good. Inside of someone's private life, they will share sensitivities, but they may still not share secrets. Because it's one thing to secretly tell somebody that you're worried about your

2:18 business. You're worried about the next revenue cycle. You're worried about maybe your wife is having an affair. Those things are uncomfortable, but you'll share them with people in your private life. But you would never tell someone in your private life that you're having an affair. You would never tell someone in your private life that you hit your child. You would never tell someone in your private life that your parents sexually molested you or whatever else. Those dark, deep secrets, only live in your secret life. The life that's so secretive that you don't even share it with the people in your private life. What we're trained to do is to follow a process that allows us to meet somebody in their public life, get them

3:04 to let us into their private life, and then get them to let us into their secret life. Because it's a very like simple psychological process to get into someone's secret life because secretly we all want somebody in our secret life. We all want to have someone we can tell our secrets to. We just don't trust anybody in our private life enough to get there. So if you know how to leverage perception and perspective, use the four core motivations. When you know how to leverage sadrat to to create trust, you can actually cut into someone's secret life. And once you're in someone's secret life, they never stop trusting you. They never let you

3:49 leave because it was so rare and so hard to find you from their perspective. They don't ever want you to leave. So even if you even if you break their heart, even if you even if you lie to them, like their trust in you is so great and so strong and so subconscious that you don't ever leave their secret life. >> I'm very keen to know how you get into someone's secret life and how they might get into your own. And we've talked about some of those principles earlier, but I was wondering if one of the um techniques you might use is by sharing your own fake secret life with them to create an element of comfort. I think I I've heard and I I think I know from doing this podcast generally that vulnerability creates vulnerabilities to some extent. I if you open up to someone that they're more likely to open up to you. >> Correct. There's a So you're getting

4:35 into now a form of mirroring much like we were talking about physical mirroring. Now what you're talking about is emotional mirroring. the there's a nuance there because you have to know when to mirror appropriately because if if you're mirroring somebody else and they know that you're mirroring them, then subconsciously they feel like they're in control. >> Okay. Interesting. >> So, what you need to do is you need to mirror just enough to get to the place where you can get them to mirror you. when they mirror you subconsciously they know that you're in control. So once you are in a position of power or control in a conversation then you can use the ploy of feigned

5:21 vulnerability which I wouldn't quite use it the same way you did. I wouldn't make up something vulnerable. Instead I would we call it opening a a window >> or opening a window that opens a door. So we have these windows and doors in conversation. So opening a door means completely changing a subject, >> right? So if I were to just say right now, I don't really like French food. That's opening a door. You as the interviewer can go through that door. Or you can close that door because it's not relevant, right? But if I open a window about how I have certain digestive challenges that I don't like to talk about, that's a window. You can always come back and push on that window and get me to go through a whole new door of conversation. Right? So when it comes to vulnerability and conversing with

6:07 somebody about vulnerability, you want to present windows and not present doors. So instead of saying something that's a fake vulnerability, you would say something that's a real vulnerability that may not be applicable to you. Like perhaps you say something like, you know, I I have been having massive arguments with my wife recently and sometimes it makes me just want to leave home. That's real. That's not saying I'm going to leave home. It's not saying what I'm arguing about, but if I believe that in your secret life, you are also fighting with your wife and you're living in a different room and you're not telling anybody about it, I want to show some sort of bridge between us that gets you to admit that to me. Because if you can admit that to me,

6:52 maybe I can find out more about what you're doing to cope with the fact that your marriage is falling apart. Maybe you have a girlfriend, maybe you're on Tinder, maybe you're doing something else, right? Maybe you're drinking, maybe you're doing drugs, I don't know. But I need you to let me into that secret life. So, I'm going to present a window and see if you go through that window. >> So, say that I was the asset and you were the CIA agent. You have more experience in that role than I do. Um, and I was sat in a bar and I said to you, "Yeah, God, this week's been really hard at home cuz my wife, she's she's annoying me." What What And you were trying to get into my secret life. How might you maneuver from there? >> Right. So there's a the basic principle here that we would use is called the two and one combination. So two means two

7:38 questions and one means one confirmation. So when you present to me a topic that I want to explore further, the most rudimentary of techniques out there is you present to me a topic I want to explore. So I ask a follow-on question. You will answer my follow-on question because you're predisposed to answer my question. I will ask another follow-on question. You'll be predisposed to answer that as well. And then I'll say something that confirms what you're saying. That way, it doesn't feel like you're being interrogated. Instead, it feels like you're talking to somebody who gets you. >> So, I'll confirm what you say. Like, oh yeah. I mean, I had a girlfriend once and her feet stank so bad and man, it just made me want to like sleep with her feet outside of the covers. M

8:24 >> and then you just stop there because you've asked two follow-on questions and one confirming statement. The psychology of the other person is going to be to continue volunteering information and then you just repeat the cycle. So they give you another piece of information, you follow follow-up question, follow-up question confirmation follow-up question, follow-up question, confirmation. To you, it feels formulaic. Listen, ask a follow-up question. Listen, ask a follow-up question. To them, it feels like they are talking to somebody who really, really cares. Just put yourself in the shoes. Practice a little perspective here. Imagine if you really were talking about something that was frustrating you and the person sitting next to you at the bar literally didn't do anything other than ask you follow-up questions

9:11 and agree with you. You're going to feel like, "You get me, man. Why can't my wife get me like you get me?" Like, you know what I'm talking about. I completely agree with you, man. Tell me more. Oh, dude. and then and you can see how we'll just human beings just fall right into the groove. >> The parallel here to business, but also the sort of transferable skills here are quite clear from what I heard. When I'm doing an interview, when I'm meeting a candidate for a job, um when I'm trying to sell to a client, really my disposition should be to be doing exactly what you said, asking them questions, confirming, asking them questions and confirming. >> Right? If you think about it, everybody's in a in a contest for control. Who controls a conversation? The person asking the questions or the person saying the most words? It's always the person asking the questions.

9:57 Because the person asking the questions determines the direction of the conversation. >> It feels the other way around, though. It feels like the person speaking the most has the most control. >> And what did I tell you about feelings? Don't trust them. Don't trust your gut. Don't trust your emotions, right? It feels like the person talking the most is the person in control. It is not. It is not. The person asking the questions is in control. Think about this interview right now. I will answer whatever question you bring up next. If I don't answer the next question you bring up, I will feel awkward because you and I both know who's in control of this conversation, even though I'm the one saying the most words. >> Interesting. the the implications of this in sales, human resourcing, marketing,

10:43 advertising, it it's it's the reason my company has grown 300% every year for the last three years. It's because the human condition is so predictable. People just want to feel heard. They want to feel listened to and they want to feel validated. You can automate that. You can automate the process that makes people feel heard, confirmed, and validated. You can automate it and then they will sell themselves. That's how that's really good digital marketing. That's how it works. Really good direct sales. That's how it work. That's how it works. Really good salesmen have already learned this. Real good salesmen understand that it's all about getting a lead to talk about

11:28 themselves as quickly as possible. And then once they start talking about themselves, you just ask questions. Let them lead themselves through the sales process. The problem is with most business owners out there who haven't been trained in what we're talking about, they feel like they have to talk the most. They feel like they have to get the customer to understand the benefits of the product. I need to get you to hear me. I need to get you to listen. I need to get you to understand the value of what I'm offering you. That's not what the customer wants. That's the salesperson's perception. What the customer actually wants is a product that's going to solve their problems and a salesman that's going to help them. What's the kind of person that helps you? The person who asks questions. >> I'm really interested in this concept of

12:13 change and how the CIA drills into you that you need to accept change. Because in our all all of our lives, one of the things that most of us are quite bad at is accepting change. We're very rigid. Again, maybe that's because of perception and ego and these kinds of things. But when I was reading through um the what they teach you at the CIA, they change your relationship with change. >> They do. So a big part of the advantage of having change is the fact that it's not natural to accept change. So if you can adapt to change faster than your opponent, you have a built-in advantage. You have an edge. So the these three principles time, distance, and change in direction. These three principles that CIA teaches as concepts apply in multiple different ways. So as an

12:59 example, time means that you need to accept that things take time, that time is a resource for you to use. Too often we feel like time is fleeting, time is running out, we have to take action quickly, like time is against us. That's not really true. In fact, time is a tool that you can use to break things down. Secrets don't withstand the test of time. How long will it take for you and I to get into each other's secret lives? Nine months. That takes time. Not many people would wait nine months for anything, right? But time is a huge advantage that you have. If all of your opponents are rushing and you're the only person who isn't rushing, time becomes a huge advantage to you that nobody else has. Explain that in the

13:46 context of business then. >> So, uh, in business, people are trying to make a rapid sale. Most people want an impulse buyer, right? What do I have to say right now to get you to buy my $7 thing? I don't really want you to buy a $7 thing. I want you to buy a $97 thing. If it takes me three weeks to get you to buy a $97 thing, it takes this other person three minutes to get you to buy a $7 thing, who's the better salesman? Well, I would argue that it depends on what you're looking for in terms of long-term. This person selling a $7 thing every three minutes has to find a new lead. They have to find arguably if they sell one out of every 10, if they convert at 10%, they need to find 10 new leads every three minutes to make $7. If I convert at 10%, I need one person to buy

14:32 a $97 thing every 3 weeks. I have a much less demand on my time to find new leads. And I can qualify my leads better. And if someone's willing to spend $97 on something, guess what that tells me about that person? They have more disposable income. The $7 person, I don't know anything about their disposable income. Do they have some? Do they not? Is that mom and dad's credit card? I don't really know. I'd rather spend three weeks of time cultivating a person who buys a $97 something because then I can sell them a $297 something and then I can sell them a $997 something because I can test their threshold for price sensitivity. >> Was there any situations during your time abroad where you felt like like your life was at risk or any sort of

15:19 really clear apparent threat? Yes, there was there's one specific moment which I'm actively trying to get cleared by CIA uh to talk about where I felt like with high confidence that I had fallen under the scrutiny of a local country's surveillance team. So I was in a foreign country. I believed I fell under their surveillance apparatus and they were actively surveilling me. And the country that I was in and the job that I was doing in that country made me believe that if I had a surveillance team on me, their goal would be to apprehend me at a certain point in the operation at a point where they could get the most uh propaganda and political leverage, etc., etc. Uh,

16:05 so that occurrence happened in about 2011, and I'm trying to go through a process now to get that cleared by CIA. Up until about nine months ago, CIA was giving me the thumbs up that I'd be able to talk about it. But then geopolitical tensions in the world changed and CIA changed their mind along with that. So now I'm exploring what avenues I have to get them to adhere to their previous approval of letting me tell my story versus uh being forced to adhere to my continued secrecy agreement. >> So you were in a foreign country. you felt like you were under the surveillance apparatus of a foreign country. What gave you that impression? Was it looking over your shoulder and seeing something or >> It's the process that we're trained to use for surveillance detection. So, we're trained in a process where you run

16:52 what's known as an SDR. And in that SDR, you have steps, methods that you use to determine whether or not you are being actively surveiled. And again, we use time to our advantage. So, it's not like something happened in 5 seconds and I thought I was under surveillance. I intentionally carried out a a series of steps over say three hours or six hours and over that period of time I had enough information enough data points to confirm with high confidence that I would be under surveillance. >> SDR >> surveillance detection route. >> Okay. And that could be like a car following you or it could be >> a person following you or a drone following you or your phone being uh acting in a certain way to make you believe that you're being digitally or cyber uh surveiled. Sex pionage.

17:38 >> Everyone's favorite subject. It's a very real thing. >> It's a very real thing that's used in different ways based off of uh a a country's civil rights. >> So, in the United States, we don't really use sexion. >> We don't really use it because it goes against the rights, the individual rights of the citizen who works at the intelligence agency. Right? So if you tell a female intelligence officer that they must sleep with this target in order to get information, you're violating her rights as a US citizen. In China, that's not the same case. In Russia, that's not the same case. Right? In the UK, they're also they don't subscribe to forced sexual acts in service of collecting intelligence.

18:25 >> Forced. >> But you can if you want to. >> What ends up happening is you can if you want to. And for those people who do, they end up creating what's known as an operational security risk because once sex is involved, the power shift becomes untenable. So if the whole goal of a handler is to maintain control over the asset, once sex happens, it's harder for the handler to maintain control over the asset in a objective relationship because now sex leads to feelings like hormonally it leads to feelings. The act of orgasm releases certain hormones that create senses of connection with another

19:11 person. Right? So when that oxytocin drops, when that neuroepinephrine drops, you your body starts to tell you that you are connected to another person, that is the antithesis of a proper asset handler relationship. >> Fall in love with them. >> And we call that falling in love with your asset. >> I won't ask you if you ever engaged in anything like that. I appreciate that. I was fortunate enough that I made all the connective hormones I needed to make with my wife who was also CIA. >> If you love the Diver CEO brand and you watch this channel, please do me a huge favor. Become part of the 15% of the viewers on this channel that have hit the subscribe button. It helps us tremendously and the bigger the channel gets, the bigger the guests.