Business Innovators Radio - Dr. Joe Vitale – Bestselling Author – Mark Stephen Pooler – Dr. Rhonda M Wood

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

From homelessness to President of the Napoleon Hill Institute, bestselling author of over 90 books (including The Secret!), star of 30+ movies, and a musician with 15 albums – Dr. Joe Vitale’s journey is truly remarkable.Recipient of the US President Lifetime Achievement Award (2024) and the Los Angeles Tribune Lifetime Achievement Award (2021).Get ready for his own movie, Zero Limits, releasing this summer!Dr. Vitale has guided millionaires, billionaires, royalty, and presidents to break through their limitations and achieve the impossible through his Miracles Coaching. He’s not just a mind expert – he’s also a strongman who can bend steel and even started MMA training at 71! 💪Don’t miss this powerful discussion on how to thrive in the world of business and beyond!Follow Dr. Joe on Instagram & Facebook: @drjoevitaleSource: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/dr-joe-vitale-bestselling-author-mark-stephen-pooler-dr-rhonda-m-wood

Welcome to Business Innovators Radio, featuring industry influencers and trendsetters, sharing proven strategies to help you build a better life right now. To Brilliant Business TV, conversations with leading experts in business. I am your host, Mark Stephen Booler. We have an incredible guest on the show today, Douglas Lokes. Douglas is a New York Times bestseller. and I'm really looking forward to a conversation with him. I just want to make an official shout out to our show sponsors, Dreamweaver Artist Ranch. We are streaming live on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube. We're also on the E360 TV network under Fresh Takes, going out to Apple TV, Fire TV, Android, Roku, and many more. We're also streaming on MSPNewsGlobal.com and we're also on business innovators radio network.

So let's bring in our incredible guest for an incredible conversation. Douglas, welcome to Brilliant Business TV. Hey, Mark, thanks a lot for having me. That was quite an intro. I really liked that graphic at the top. That was hip. I almost started dancing. No, Douglas, we've got a really.

interesting conversation today. You've got such an interesting story, your career, so I'm really looking forward to having a really interesting conversation. So my first question, tell us how you got into the CIA and what that was like. Yeah. So I am a former undercover CIA operative. You had mentioned I had wrote a book. That's what that was about. How I first got in is always somewhat surprising to people is that for any federal government job in the United States, it has to be done now online because of something called a FOIA, Freedom of Information Act. So they want to keep records digitized of everything. That includes even our most secretive organizations like the NSA, FBI, CIA.

The initial process has to be initiated online. And so when I tell people, I applied online, just like you did with LinkedIn or Indeed or Monster, you have to apply on the CIA.gov website and you fill out the initial applications. Now thereafter, you know, there's personal meetings and phone calls and everything like that. But everyone kind of is always shocked when they go, man, I really want to work there. What do I do? What's the first step? Go apply online. So that's always a jaw dropper.

And you must have done some pretty interesting cases while you were doing that kind of work, dog. Yeah. As I mentioned, I was a case officer. Sometimes it's referred to as undercover operative. Hollywood would have you refer to it as spy. So if you've seen Homeland, the character Carrie, her official title, and they got it right in the show as case officer. That's what a spy is really called. And, you know, you guys have them too with MI6, their case officers. And my career took place the majority of the time in the Middle East in Afghanistan. And so I did several tours in Afghanistan, learned the language, worked undercover there.

And then my final tour was in the Middle East, working with the Syrian Civil War. Why did you leave the CIA dog? Oh, you might imagine that when you're working undercover against terrorist organizations, you're burning the candle at both ends. And I know it gives off a more wonderful glow, but it's difficult, you know, and to continue with that analogy, it can burn you out real quick. and so after about a decade of that,

it was just time to, you know, kick my shoes off and maybe take a breather for a moment because it's obviously, as you might imagine, a very intense job, an extraordinarily dangerous job. I hear you. Yeah, it can take a lot out of you. So I thought it was time after a decade to hang up my cleats. To then go on to get a New York Times bestseller. So you recently released hashtag one audiobook series, which we will come back to. But tell us a little bit about the New York Times best-selling memoir, dog.

Yeah, the title of that was Left of Boom, like an Explosion Boom, because that's what I primarily dealt with in Afghanistan, where IEDs improvised explosive devices. So the book largely focuses on, you know, starting out about the time I'm in college, realizing that it actually is an option to join the CIA, because initially you don't even think that's a possibility. That's the same as saying, oh, you could be an NBA star, Doug. Well, I'm 5-11, so I don't think that's in the deck.

Anything's possible, Doug. Yeah, exactly, but not something you kind of focus on. And then, you know, as far as like CIA spy, what? impossible, but learning that I could and then attempting to do it and then doing it and then following through, a lot of people like that part of the book. And then the rest focuses on like my deployments and working against the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and ISIS. And, you know, it ends with my resignation. And when I left, I was pretty much in the cold. And there was really, I didn't know how to transfer those things that I learned and that skills that into a new occupation. And I thought,

you know, maybe it's worth writing about this very unusual career that I used to have. So I took a crack at that. And lo and behold, a few years later, it was a New York Times bestseller. I mean, congratulations on New York Times bestseller. That is a huge, huge achievement. Just out of interest, Doug. When you were in the CIA as a special, by did people around you just in your network friends know what you were doing and how did they react because I can imagine some people might not take good to that kind of thing they might be scared to tell you things. Yeah. So no one in my life knew while I was doing it what I was up to. So for 10 years, not even my parents knew. And I'll put an asterisk to that and say that one person did

know, and that was my brother. He knew only that I worked for the CIA, but he did not know what I did there. And the reason I had to tell him was in the event I was killed in the field, somebody had to be alerted and notified. So that was my brother. But he just knew CIA, and then we stopped there. No more questions. So shortly, I think maybe like five days before the book came out, I went back home to my parents' house in the Midwest in the state of Ohio and had a reveal to them that, hey, not only was I not in sales for the past 10 years, I was working undercover in Afghanistan. And I wrote a book about it. And now everybody's going to know what I've just told you here in five days. So that was a lot for them to deal with.

and, you know, my girlfriend and everyone else that I wanted to notify before my book came out because I did a lot of publicity on our big, you know, television networks here like NBC and Fox and CBS. So they were going to know. So I tried to tell those I felt needed to know most before it came out. But a lot of people learned after the fact and were pretty shocked when they flipped on the television and saw me on there with CIA and big bold letters. That guy? I watched the New England Patriots with that guy. What? You know, so, yeah. So you had to be good at keeping secrets, which I suppose goes hand in hand with being a spy as well. Now, you recently released a hashtag one, number one, audio book series on Audible at the beginning of 2022 about the infamous black.

Dala, murder. Please tell us about that. Why and who? And did you solve the case once and for all? Yeah, everybody wants that smoking gun. That was a big shift too. After I wrote the book, I started writing for television and wrote some shows that certainly were also in the UK on Discovery Channel.

So I did that for a little bit. and then got involved in the podcasting realm and realized that that was an avenue to tell this story about the Black Dahlia murder, which very quickly was a very, very infamous murder that took place in Los Angeles in 1947 due to the brutality of the murder, number one. And number two, it's never been solved. And there were lots of suspects. There's been a lot of books written about, in fact, a British author at Pew Eatwell, wrote a, New York Times bestseller about the case as well, which did quite well, Black Dahlia Red Rose. And I went in and started conducting an investigation back, and goodness, would have been 2013,

did that for eight years, and then I took it to Amazon and said, what do you think? I've recorded all of these interviews. Let's turn this into a podcast series. And we did over the course of the next year. and it ended up being number one when it was released. And so that was pretty incredible. And to answer your final question, did I solve it? Going into that for eight years, my goal was never to solve the case outright.

It was to determine if somebody else had solved the case because there were 30 different authors with 30 different opinions of who the killer was. and I said, okay, either one of them is correct and the rest of them are all wrong or all of them are wrong, because two of them can't be right. It can't be two separate people. One person committed this crime, which one of these 30 was it or it was none of them and we haven't figured it out? And through the research and the interviews, I believe I've found the one individual who did have it right. And so I support that throughout the series. interesting and the discovery channel is an incredible channel as well Doug and what you're just telling me

as well you could have done that with Jack the Ripper as well Doug it's very similar yeah yeah they those two cases draw a lot of parallels again because there's a lot of suspects for Jack the Ripper the brutality of the crimes that he committed and also sort of like the conspiracy theories that surround it. There's a lot surrounding the Black Dahlia. Some have said, like, oh, Jack the Ripper was royalty. Okay, that's a conspiracy theory. Well, with the Black Dahlia, people have said, oh, it was this famous senator,

or it was this famous mobster Bugsy Siegel, and this, no, it wasn't, you know. But a lot of folks have written about Jack the Ripper as well. So that is a great parallel, great analogy. It seems everything you touched Doug turns to gold, number one podcast, New York Times bestselling author. I'm really inspired by you. You have also created and starred in two television shows. Tell us about that. Your show, Finding Escobar's Millions, was ranked in the top five in the ratings in the UK for all six episodes.

Yeah. I should thank everyone listening for that. It actually did better in the UK than anywhere else in the world. As you know, Discovery is an international network, international. I mean, I got it when I was living in India. So, yeah, it did really well in the United States. It was always in the top 10 for the six episodes in the UK. It was in the top five.

And I believe the finale was number one in its time slot. when it debuted in the UK. So I was very happy about that. And I did another television show that I starred in, which was on the Bravo channel. And it was a great show competition. To put these contestants through the ringer to see if they had what it takes to be a spy.

And so that was thoroughly enjoyable for a guy like me to be on the other end and push people to their limits because I had it done to me tenfold. You must have a lot of satisfaction looking back, Doug, at all these achievements and experiences through your life. So my next question to you, what are you working on right now? With all of these things that you have already done,

what's new? What are you working on right now? Great question. So I'm working on a second book. I got really excited in the true crime genre with regards to what I did for Amazon and Audible with the Black Dahlia. And I came across another case that I've been looking into. It took place in Australia. I'm not going to say too much about it because I'm still trying to figure out if we, in fact, want to change it from a book into a documentary.

A lot of people can probably figure out a famous murder that still hasn't been solved in Australia. But I'll just leave it at that. But I am working on that. That's in development. And I currently have a documentary on the international film circuit, on the festival circuit. So that's been doing pretty well. I won a few festivals for Best Feature Documentary. And that takes up a lot of my time.

So that's what I was doing mostly through 2022. And we'll focus on this Australian project for probably the majority of 2023. But, yeah, a lot of options. out there. I'm having a lot of fun. You must not get a lot of time to yourself, Doug, doing all of these projects. Now, you did a controversial interview where you debunked a lot of the myths about the CIA and even called some former CIA officers out for promoting and profiting from these myths. Tell us what happened and why.

Yeah, generally speaking, you don't want to piss off the entire CIA community. No, that's a scary thought. Yeah, unless you are one. And so I know which interview you're referring to, and it's still, you can find it online. But someone asked me what I thought about these other individuals who, I can only guess that, yeah, they were in the CIA. I don't know what they did. but based on the things they say, it's pretty clear they weren't doing what I was doing. And, you know, to each his own, but don't put out patent lies, you know, like don't say it's green when it's actually red.

And if you don't know, just say you don't know. You know, don't put something out there as an expert. And then two to three million people watch your YouTube video. and you're talking about how a CIA spy is superhuman like they are and Jason Bourne when in fact we're not. So it's like, I get it. You want the accolades and you want this audience to fall in love with you and think you're James Bond or Jason Bourne or any of the other famous films. But real life's a lot different than television and future films. So I kind of felt I needed to put that out there.

Obviously, I'm doing it again here with you, and I'll probably get some blowback, but I don't really care. As long as I don't come after me, dog. Yeah, they're not going to come after you, trust me. It's more like, hey, what's the deal? What are you doing? Why'd you say that? But I don't name names. It's fine.

If everyone wants to, you know, get their piece of the pie, I suppose that's all right. But, yeah, that interview definitely got me a lot of, as the kids call it, DMs on my Instagram and Twitter and everything. So, yeah, I'll refrain from saying any names that go around. No to misinformation and the truth is always enough. And the truth is always the best policy as well. Doug, I've really enjoyed having a conversation with you. Before I let you go, can you just share with our viewers, our listeners, how they can connect with you? Tell them a little bit about your memoir and how to get a hold of it. Yeah, if you want the memoir, it did come out in 2016. It's still obviously relevant because we only just recently left Afghanistan.

So if you want to behind the scenes look at what that was like, especially from a CIA perspective, especially from a terrorist perspective, because I was the guy talking to all of them in the field. It's unique and you might enjoy it. So you can get that on Amazon in English. It's got an accompanying audiobook if you're more into that. that we have out there. You can get on Kindle or any of the devices. It's all available.

And outside of that, I can see it scrolling. Any handle on social media I have is always at Doug Loutk CIA, so whether it's Instagram or Twitter or YouTube or any of those. And I do have a few videos. Stanford University here in California interviewed me a few years back and asked a lot of specific questions about how you become. the CIA officer as well as, you know, what skills would be required. What can people do now who are in college thinking about applying? Just a lot of good useful information. So you can check those out,

too, if you're interested in the CIA or MI6 or anything like that. Yeah. Doug, I have thoroughly enjoyed having a conversation with you today. Thank you so much for being my guest on Brilliant Business TV. Mark, I enjoyed it and I'm hoping your outro is as energetic as that intro so I can dance off set here. I don't think you'll be disappointed, Doug. Thank you everyone for watching Brilliant Business TV, conversations with leading experts in business. Until next time, bye for now. Innovators Radio. To hear all episodes featuring leading industry influencers and trendsetters,

visit us online at businessinnovators radio.com today.