EverydaySpy Podcast - Give Me 11 Minutes and I’ll Kill Your Overthinking (CIA Rule for Rapid Decisions)

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

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You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water.

The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. Do you guys study the concept of ego development, identifying where someone's own subconscious or cognitive development has, at what point they're at based on their value and belief system? Do you categorize people based off of that level?

How are you categorizing people? Can you pick up on a value system that they have? Have you ever heard of spiral dynamics? So I like where you're going with this, and I feel like it's a great chance to bust a myth about CIA, right? CIA specialize intelligence agencies in general that work in the field of human intelligence or human collecting secrets from human beings we don't focus on psychology like we we use tools that have been developed through the science of psychology but we don't get into the academic nature of psychology because everything we do has to be pragmatic and practical with an operational focus think of it like

applied psychology. And I think that's really important because there's lots of people who are interested in psychology. There's lots of psychology majors out there, right? And there's a reason that most people who have studied or mastered or invested themselves into psychology

don't do much with it because the focus around most psychology is academic. Fucking spiral dynamics. How do you turn that into money? How do you turn that into an advantage on the battlefield? How do you turn that into some sort of

competitive secret in business or in national security? You can't. And even like there's layer upon layer of psychological principle that is clinical, academic, medical, factual, but just not practical. So that's why you have the rice, the secret life. Okay. We have all these frameworks that we use at CIA that basically that pool,

that pool on the science but make it actionable. Yeah. Because even if you could, like just think about what you were talking about with categorizing egos. if you could categorize egos in a practical, pragmatic, operational way. Why? Why spend real tax dollars in real time categorizing egos at all? When all you want at the end of the day is for a person who has access to secrets, that advanced national security priorities, all you want is for them to give you those secrets. So do I need to categorize you as X, Y, Z, or anything else?

No. All I need to know is you have. secrets and you tell me those secrets when I help you get laid or when I help you get booze or when I take you away from your kids or whatever it might be right very very focused and pragmatic the movies make it look like CIA officers are like superheroes and super smart and special and talented and everything and we're not we're just normal everyday people who have learned a literal set of skills that we can use to get the kind of advantage that keeps America the world's only superpower that's a really good insight how it's like action-focused.

And they only take, and they only are going to train you on it if they have like a clear-cut, like simplification of it in a pragmatic situation. Yep. One of the biggest problems that happens outside of CIA is people get so into

trying to become a master of something. Like you see it all the time. Like how many people have you met that want to be entrepreneurs, but they never actually just take action? Do it. Yeah. They've got.

Most people. They've got business plans. They've got notes. They started the LLC. Yeah, they've got all this stuff. Yeah. But they never just tried to sell the product they had. They never tried to just take their product to market.

They watch every business podcast. And they spend tons of money. They'll spend money on books. They'll spend money on VistaPrint cards, right? And they'll have 6,000 cards sitting on their shelf, not getting handed out, right? Like they'll do everything except actually take action to do the thing they want to do. where in contrast, the vast majority of successful entrepreneurs I've ever met, never did any of the other planning.

They literally were just like, I think I could sell lemonade with grenadine in it. And then they tried it, and it worked, and then they sold. Now they have whatever, white claw. That's fascinating. I want to ask you how you have any advice for those people to start, to get past that. I do.

So, I mean, I love talking to entrepreneurs, because what's happening is something called analysis paralysis. It's a very real thing. It happens at CIA 2. You are trying to analyze a situation so closely that you lose track of understanding the high impact part versus the low impact part of your outcome. So when you're focused on an issue that has high impact, it's worth your energy because the outcome is going to have high impact. So is it worth it to change your product and physically try a new prototype? Yes, that's a high impact change. Once you have a working prototype, is it worth it to keep analyzing your working prototype and then improving it 5% and 10%? No. If you haven't discovered your natural-born spy skills, then somebody else might be using theirs against you. CIA teaches us that there are only three types of people in the world. Those who motivate, those who manipulate, and those who are being controlled by one of the other two.

I created a three-minute CIA-style quiz to help you unlock your secret psychological advantage. and identify your hidden blind spot. This test was developed to help you weaponize your natural-born gifts and use them to get ahead of 99% of people in power, wealth, and purpose. It was also designed to make sure that you can protect yourself against those who would use their skills against you. All you have to do is click on the first link in the description below or scan the QR code on your screen to start your spy quiz now. I want you to discover your secret spy superpower and use it for good

before somebody else uses their power against you. it's better to take your prototype to market and get people to start buying the early prototype. This is what your tech companies have done so well. This is what Android or Google and Apple and Samsung and Sony, the thing they always do and the thing they still do to this day that is so, so smart, is once they have a minimal viable product, MVP, they take it to market. Speaking my language. And once that MVP is out there, you're making money.

And getting feedback. and getting feedback, which helps inform how you're going to improve it in the future. But guess who gets to choose when you improve it? You do. So if you have something that's 85% good and it's got a 7% refund rate and it just keeps on selling, put zero fucking dollars into making it better. Just keep selling it because clearly people want it. Now, when your refund rate creeps up to like 30%,

and one out of every three that you produce gets sent back, now maybe it's time to peel off some of that marketing money and spend it on improving the product. But what ends up happening is people are like, oh, I've got a good product out there and I'm selling it and I've got like a 7% refund rate, but I'm still holding back to make it better, to make it better and better and better and better. You can't do that. The two pieces of guidance that I always give entrepreneurs is get to the MVP, sell the MVP. Marketing is MVP. So sell the minimum viable product with the minimum viable marketing. Your cost structure and who you hire and the business and everything is all MVP.

Everything is minimum viable to get it out there. And then once it's working, maximize sales and maximize revenue because you'll be able to turn that revenue into something else that makes the process of the product better, not the product itself. So first, get to the MVP of the MVP of the MVP. Second, understand that just by getting to the MVP, you're beating 80% of the competition that's out there. 80% of the competition won't even start.

So you've got to get to the MVP phase so that you can start making revenue in cash flow because once you're there, you have an advantage. You have a head start over the next person who's going to wake the fuck up and make an MVP of an MVP of an MVP. The only advantage you have over that person is how fast and how long you've been in the market. Another great example. iPhone was the first smartphone to market. It has lost a shit ton of market share to Android.

And it lost that, not at the beginning. It lost that even after having such a huge head start. in the smartphone industry. And that's because Apple had its own issues. But everybody remembers when iPhone was the only option. Everybody remembers when Android first came out and people were like, eh, like a Samsung phone that's on a different operating system. And now Apple has to compete to maintain its current market.

Especially different countries. Interesting. So I feel like for me a big problem is I always will come up with a story in my head of why something is like the right thing to do. and I'll think through the entire process, like this is going to be the best two-year strategy here. And then I just have, like, confirmed this, but then I'm constantly slotting in pieces of it

instead of, like, actually pounding through three months of the work that needs to be done. Yes. Is there any sort of framework that you guys have or that you had? I guess that doesn't necessarily apply to the CIA, but is there a framework in that field that you could think of that would help get past that? So it actually very much applies to CIA.

So it's essentially incremental improvement, but I'm forgetting what the spy. jargon is for it, right? But it's essentially the idea there's a quote out there by a famous general that says a good plan executed today is better than a great plan executed next week. And that's how we operate all the time. Because the market or the world will tell you whether or not your theory is correct very quickly. So when you first step out on a battlefield, you'll know very quickly whether or not your strategy is sound or not sound. Another saying that we have is great plans never survive first contact with the enemy. Have you heard of either of those? I've heard both those. So very, very true.

These are lessons forged under fire on the battlefield. Well, guess what the business world is? It's a battlefield constantly. And it has a million different variables. When you storm a beach, you've got to think about the weather, the day that you storm the beach, the weather the day after you storm the beach, if the weather's going to change, whether it's daytime or nighttime, what the enemy's capabilities are, what your capabilities are, what their tools are, what your tools are, where they're stationed and their locations are how you, like there's a million variables to consider. Are there trees? Is there sand?

Is it clay? Is it dirt? Like all this stuff plays into the calculation of how you attack a beach. The same shit is true when you launch a business. There's a million variables you can't control. What technology is dominant? What technology is emerging? What is the tax landscape? What is the currency landscape?

What is going to happen with geopolitics? What's going to happen with local politics? What if there's another coffee shop down the street that's going to open two days before you do? What if there's another copy street? The risk analysis. It's all there. You can't control it all. You can't assess it all.

What you need to do is understand that if you can be the first one to the battlefield to get the ground truth, with it in your mind that you're then going to change your strategy as soon as you get the ground truth, you have an advantage. Right? A good plan executed now is better than a great plan executed next week. Because the great plan executed next week is a full week behind where the battle is today. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank.