EverydaySpy Podcast - Consumers vs. Producers

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Human beings have an inherent desire to be useful, but people are not all useful in the same way. Maximizing your success requires that you tap into the usefulness of others just as much as you lean on your own personal strengths. In this episode, Andrew shares a powerful hack that CIA uses to get the most out of every officer and human asset they recruit. WARNING: You cannot unlearn what you are about to learn... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Andrew Bustamante, and this is everyday espionage. As I was prepping for our conversation today, I realized I had a lot that I wanted to share with you. So I'm warning you now that this episode is actually going to be a two-parter. To Be Continued episode that packs two independent tactics that you can use right away to win now, and then later on together as this super powerful one. to punch for your own success. Now, if you hate the idea of a two-part lesson, just get ready to be disappointed. But if you are open to trying something new, I am super excited to do this thing. Now, the U.S. military, in case you didn't know it, right now, is going through a major recruitment

crisis. It has seen the lowest volunteer recruitment since 1973. For those of you who are not necessarily familiar with history. 1973 was the year after the Vietnam draft ended. So in 1972, the military was actually mandating soldiers join the military. By 1973, we were officially in all-volunteer force. Last year in 2022, we saw the lowest recruitment numbers for the U.S. military since 1973, since the day after the Vietnam draft ended. To put that in percentage, we missed our recruitment goals by 25%.

The military missed its goal by 25%. Think about that. That's like your kid scoring 25% lower than they should have scored on a test. Or like your business coming in 25% less on its target annual goals or its current monthly or quarterly goals. That's one quarter of the entire package. That's a huge amount to miss. In fact, the military has been so just perplexed by this crisis that they're actually making moves now to accept candidates who fail to meet minimum physical or mental aptitude requirements. That's absolutely insane. The military now has a built-in fat camp and a built-in secondary school so that they can take unfit candidates and turn them into barely fit candidates.

that absolutely blows my mind. Now, veterans and non-veterans alike all know how the military works, right? The military has drills. They give you lots of responsibility. There's really no incentive to perform well, but there's plenty of punishment if you have any kind of mistake or any kind of error. In fact, the military even has their own legal system called the UCMJ, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So when you join the military, essentially you lose a everything and you're subjected to even more strict legal systems. So it's clear that American youth between 18 and 25 right now see the military as more of a risk than an opportunity. Even with record-breaking unemployment exceeding 18% in the same age group last year, it's easy to understand and criticize the military about their inability to find and retain talent. But the truth is that this isn't a crisis limited to the U.S. military. All across America, small, medium, and large businesses are seeing labor shortages, high turnover rates, and this phenomenon called quiet quitting. Quiet quitting is a situation where employees spend more time trying to get a

new job than they actually spend focusing on their current job. If you have seen quiet quitting, or maybe you've been part of quiet quitting yourself, then you know how real and how detrimental it has been to the current economy. Now, baby boomers and mainstream media like to accuse younger employees of being lazy or entitled or selfish, but the current recruitment and retention crisis actually has very little to do with the employees themselves. It has much more to do with a misunderstanding of core human behavior. and the need for government and business leaders to actually start treating employees more like spies treat intelligence sources. Now, all people break down in the eyes of CIA into two basic categories.

Consumers and producers. Consumers consume. That's what they do. They are the fuel that runs our economy. They usually earn a fixed amount of money, like a salary or an hourly paycheck. They spend more money than they earn, which is what actually drives the term consumer debt you so often hear about. Consumers avoid financial risks, and they like to make their money as employees working for someone else. Now, opposite of consumers are producers. Producers produce. Where consumers are the fuel for the economy, producers are the engine that drives the economy forward, right? Producers build businesses that create jobs for consumers to earn money, and they also create the products and the services that consumers buy to spend their money. Producers take big financial risks.

They usually carry very little personal debt because they prefer to use business debt instead, and they make their money turning ideas into reality. Now, CIA trains field officers very early on to spot the difference between a consumer and a producer. But more importantly, CIA trains us to understand and recognize that both consumers and producers have value for espionage. Let's look at producers first. Producers make the most valuable assets. They have the most important secrets, and they also have the largest professional networks. Consumers are also valuable in espionage because they make the most reliable assets. They're usually security conscious, they're predictable, and they do what you tell them to do. Now every asset, every asset is either a consumer or a producer. They cannot be both.

When you let yourself think that someone is both, you actually make a mistake that we call falling in love with an asset. You start to put yourself at risk of having your heartbroken because the asset is guaranteed to fail you in one area or the other. That's why we look at every asset as either a consumer or a producer, but not both. Now, when you start looking at people, including yourself, through this very simple lens of consumer versus producer, it gets a little bit uncomfortable. And that discomfort is exactly what makes this lesson so important, because here's the thing. People do not naturally do uncomfortable things. When you apply this tactic to yourself for your peers, your bosses, your employees, you actually gain an incredible advantage because you see them for what they are.

Valuable like a producer or reliable like a consumer. And while your competition remains blind to your knowledge, your purpose, and your mission, you have a very clear outlook on what they bring to you to help you gain an advantage. That gives you an incredible opportunity to maximize your assets, utility, and retention because you can use them the way they want to be useful. And it's a core human behavior to want to be useful. And that core human desire to be useful, to be treated as either a consumer or a producer, but not both, is what government and business leaders are failing to understand right now with both new hires and seasoned employees. They are trying to treat everyone like a consumer, trying to give them responsibility

without rewards, to add structure without flexibility. And as a result, the most valuable talent out there, those producers of the world, float around feeling lost, frustrated, or underutilized, capable of doing amazing things, but lacking the network and the connections to make those incredible things happen. So how do you unlock? the potential of producers while locking in the power of consumers? That is the question I want to answer in part two when we discuss the undeniable power of proper incentives. This first lesson was designed to give you something new. So if this taught you something new or rattled your comfort zone, you're doing something right. And I promise part two of this lesson is going to bring it all

together for you, because when you can get both consumers and producers to pay attention, get excited, and follow you, that is everyday espionage. Everyday espionage is dedicated to one thing, educating everyday people. I know that not everyone will listen, but those who listen will learn. If you learn something new today, click subscribe, review, and share the podcast with a friend. find me on social media at EverydaySpy or on my website, Everydayspy.com. If you are up for a special challenge, visit Everydayspy.com forward slash operations and join me for an authentic spy training mission. And above all else, remember that knowledge is freedom.