EverydaySpy Podcast - How Elite Operators Change Their Life

Episode Date: February 8, 2022

The greatest lessons you need to learn often get lost. People are either too successful to share their secrets, or they fail too fast and their experience is lost forever to history. In today's episode, Andrew give's you a peek into how one elite UK Royal Navy SBS officer has changed his life on his own terms. And how he views money in a way that most people do not... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Andrew Bustamante, and this is everyday espionage. I had an opportunity this week to sit with a good buddy of mine who's a former special boat service, SBS. That's not something you often hear about here in the U.S. But the U.K. Royal Navy, their special forces, their seal equivalent, is called the special boat service, SBS. And these are Tier 1, highly trained, awesome killer operatives, covert action, some of the best and most impressive people in the world, but also some of the most humble and some of the most friendly.

Like many of the Tier 1 operators that you may never get to meet, they're really just awesome people to be around. And my buddy James is no different. Now, James was one of the most elite special boat service helicopter pilots in the Royal Navy. He served in some of the nastiest parts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And he was in the U.S. and he was visiting Tampa and we decided to go out and have some coffee. compare notes, talk about business, talk about life, and just do what we do whenever we get together. And he brought up this concept that I thought was just, to borrow a British term, just absolutely brilliant. And I did not want to sit down and record this podcast without sharing with you this awesome idea that he just dropped in the middle of a coffee date together. So let me give

you some background here. Now, James wrote a book back. maybe five or seven years ago, where he was detailing his experiences overseas as a covert, elite helicopter pilot delivering kinetic packages throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan supporting the war. And when he wrote the book, he was still actively involved with the Royal Navy. He didn't want to get into the mess of trying to figure out what could and couldn't be shared and what he couldn't be reimbursed for because he was a public sector servant. So when the publisher came to him and gave him the proposal for the book, the publisher said that the book was estimated to generate somewhere between 20 and 50,000 pounds in terms of direct payment to James before royalties and before ongoing sales. Now, in the book publishing world, that's about average, right?

Somewhere between 30 and 80K is essentially what most former spies or former elite operators can expect in the bulk payment whenever. they sell rights to their book. So when James was presented with his opportunity, he actually decided to waive the written rights to his book and actually donate them to a charity organization that serves beneficiaries of fallen Royal Navy personnel. So just like we have a beneficiaries fund for fallen soldiers in the U.S. They have the same thing in the UK. So James wrote, all proceeds, all copyright, all everything to the beneficiary fund for the Royal Navy and kind of signed it off from there. And he said that the reason he didn't want to take any of that money himself, he wanted to donate it all, was because for him, 20 years into his career as a professional

tier one operator, $20,000 to $50,000, it just wasn't life-changing money. And that's the exact phrase that he used. That's the brilliant phrase that I want to talk to you about today. Because James made this decision that he wasn't going to change his life for money unless the money he was changing his life for was life changing money and 20, 30, 40, $50,000 is not life changing money. Now, for some people, don't get me wrong, for some people, $30,000 can change their life. But by and large, if you or I or the average, you know, mid 30, mid 40 year old professional, if you were to get a $50,000 windfall tomorrow, your life really wouldn't change that much. Maybe you'd pay off some of your mortgage, maybe you'd pay off some school debt, maybe you'd buy a new car.

That's not changing your life, right? So for James, when he was given this opportunity with the publisher, he decided, you know what, I'm not going to change my life with $50,000. But if I give this to the families of fallen heroes in the UK, this money might be able to change someone's life, not my own. So he signed it off and the publisher went to town and the book was published. Now, a year later, James didn't follow the book because he didn't maintain rights to it. He didn't really have any reason to track it from day to day. A year later, he gets a phone call from that benevolent fund, from that charity organization

that was serving the families of fallen heroes. And they invited him to come to an annual dinner. Now, James was not expecting that call. And he said that when he took the call, he couldn't help but ask why he was being invited. You know, he, he had never been invited before after a whole career as an SBS, you know, senior unit officer. Why was he getting invited now? And the person on the other end of the line said that he was being invited because he had made the single largest charitable donation ever made in the history of the beneficiary fund. And James said that when he first was told

that news, he thought there must be a mistake. And then the second thought he had is it's kind of sad that no one has ever donated more than, say, $50,000 to this fund. But he agreed, and he said that he would come to the fund event. A few weeks later, he got a second follow-up call from the leader of that fund who wanted to call to personally thank him for the largest contribution ever made. And James said that he was starting to laugh a little bit at it, and he couldn't help but ask, why is everybody so impressed with my donation? How much did I donate? How much did the book generate? And the person on the other than line, said that he had generated 770,000 pounds, three quarters of a million pounds from a book that was estimated to Rev only about 50,000 pounds at the time. So that was

why everyone was so excited, because when James decided not to change his life to pursue a $50,000 book, when he donated it to charity, the charity was able to turn that into 700,000. 150,000 pounds of charitable donations over time. And they did it through a number of clever ways. I'm not going to bore you with all those clever ways now. But James was super excited because not only was he able to change more lives for the beneficiaries of fallen heroes in the Royal Navy, but he was able to be a contributing member to something to a historical event for this charity and really show, really be a mentor and an example to future donors of what the charitable donation or what this charity could do to help fallen soldiers. And now, you know, James is also

very honest and very direct. So as we were sitting there talking, he was like, you know, if I would have known it was going to generate, you know, three quarters of a million pounds. That is life-changing money. So he would have most likely taken the 700,000 pounds for himself and then made a large personal donation of 50 to 70K on his own. But one way or the other, what's fascinating here is that we're not talking about money just as money, right? He's talking this successful tier one operator who is, who currently runs his own international business, who is a well-respected and well-known author. Now we're talking about the difference between changing your life for money and making life-changing money. Now, that conversation is so fascinating to me

because later in the day, after I had coffee with James, I came home, I hung out with my kids, I hung out with my wife. And we actually all took a family trip to go shopping with my father-in-law. And as we were going shopping, my father-in-law decided that he needed to fill the tank with gas. So he took us off the highway and took us out into this kind of roundabout drive so that we could come to a Sam's Club. Now, we got to Sam's Club, and I was a little bit surprised because that's not where we were supposed to go shopping. And my father-in-law said that he wanted to go to Sam's Club so he could buy gas as a Sam's Club member. And that it's cheap. It's about 10 cents a gallon cheaper to buy gas from Sam's Club.

So in the back of my head, just having my conversation with James, I'm thinking to myself that my father-in-law is about to fill his 15-gallon truck fuel tank with gas that's 10 cents cheaper. And he's driven about 25 minutes out of our way to get to this gas station. So for $1.50 in gas savings, he has essentially wasted 20 to 25 minutes of his. his day and our day just to get there. And then when we leave Sam's Club to go back to the highway, he's going to blow another 15 to 20 minutes. So almost an hour of everyone's life so that he could save a dollar 50 in gas. That, in contrast to what James was just talking about that morning,

my father-in-law was actually changing his life to save some money that was not life-changing money. And then it's even funnier that after he saved his dollar and 50 cents, he parked and we all went into Sam's Club and he decided to buy, you know, 20 times that amount in other junk, right? Bulk spaghetti sauce and bulk peanut butter. But that's the way it works. Now, fast forward a few days and I'm sitting with another friend of mine, a good friend of mine and a client who flew down from Minnesota. And he was down here in Florida enjoying a wet, cold and rare Florida evening because usually it's much nicer than that. And we're sitting there and I'm telling him the same story that I'm telling you. I'm telling him the story about sitting with James and having this life-changing money conversation

and then going shopping with my father-in-law later on in the same day. And he's chuckling, he's laughing with me. And he tells me this story that he's got from his own experience up in Minnesota. Now, he's from a part of Minnesota where people drive a long way to go anywhere. And he said that up there, he knows a friend of his and a business associate of his who actually will sell online, marketplace or or Craigslist or whatever, he'll sell bundles of used plastic hangers for $5. So, you know, he'll put up an ad that says 25 plastic hangers for $5. And he'll place this ad on Facebook marketplace or Craigslist somewhere on the, on the great interworld, the interweb interworld.

And somebody somewhere will actually drive out of their way to come pick up this bundle of 25 hangers for $5. And because they live in rural Minnesota, sometimes that person might drive from 30 minutes away or an hour away or 90 minutes away. And they'll drive 90 minutes to spend $5 on 25 plastic hangers and then drive 90 minutes to get back home. When they could just go to a local Walmart or a local target, which is basically for everybody in America almost, you can find one of the two of those things within 45 minutes. you go to a local Walmart or a local target and you can buy a bundle of 10 hangers for about $9. So the promise of saving $5 to $10 on a bundle of plastic hangers is enough to lure people on a three-hour drive out of their way just to buy this $5 bundle of hangers.

This is another powerful example, in my opinion, and my buddy saw it right away. Here's an example of people changing their life, right, wasting their time, wasting their energy, losing almost an entire day to drive out of their way to buy $5 plastic hangers, changing their life for money that isn't life-changing money. It's incredible. It's incredible to think about, but it's not that incredible. It's not that crazy to understand, right? Because it's easy when you don't think about it.

It's easy to get in the habit of changing your life for money that isn't life-changing money. It's the reason that you and I might buy a $2 discount steak at a grocery store, even though it's not the steak we went to the grocery store to buy, right? I went to buy a T-bone, but because the ribby's on sale, I skipped the T-bone. You've done that. I've done that in the past, right? It's the reason that we save 10 cents on cheaper gas, but we waste the time and effort driving to the cheap gas station. Or when you buy a knockoff brand on Amazon or online, just to save 5% or 10% compared to a trusted

name brand, even though you know that as soon as you use that thing, that jacket, that plug, that laptop, whatever it might be that you bought for a discount, you're hoping in the back of your head that the knockoff won't break when you need it. You've been there. I've been there. We've all been there. We know how it works. when you spend your time, effort, energy, or stress, trying to gain these small increments of money,

the truth is that you are losing. You're losing because you end up spending your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, your efforts. You're spending your most valuable resources on money that isn't life-changing money. Money that isn't significant enough. Money that isn't significant enough. money that isn't large enough to actually change your life. So I've learned from my elite friends, from elite people like James from the Special Boat Service or from James's Navy SEAL or Army Delta Peers, my ultra-rich clients, and now myself and my family,

we don't let money change our life unless it is life-changing money. Instead, we look for opportunities to make life-changing money. money happen, right? You can make life-changing money happen the same way that James makes life-changing money happen. You do it by investing your time, your money, your effort, your energy into learning new things, collecting new experiences, building high-value relationships in your personal life, in your professional life. You can do it by investing your resources in advancing skills you've already mastered. And even more important, you have to ruthlessly. cut out anything in your life and anyone in your life who wastes your most critical assets.

People and events and activities that waste your time and your energy and your effort. You can't get to life-changing money until you stop changing your life for small amounts of money. And that concept is not easy. That concept is not an easy thing to change. as you can I see it every day in my own family. I see it in my own friends. I see it in people who reach out to me as clients or people who want to work with me as as strategic partners in business. It is common. It is average for people to change their life for money that isn't life changing money. It's common for people to drive out of their way to save a buck, for people to try to

be unethical in business to save a little bit of money. For people who want to undercut price or low ball a bid in negotiation, that is typical. That is your 90% of society. There's nothing you can do about that. But what you can do is you can cut those people. You can cut those people, those groups, those activities out of your life and double down on saving your time, energy, and efforts so you can invest it into activities that will bring life-changing money, right?

I bet you know in your life right now, some corporate employee, who works more, sleeps less, and ends up gaining weight, busting tail so they can earn an extra $25,000 a year. You know that person. Maybe you are that person. That's an example of changing your life for money that isn't life-changing money. Or what about the business owner who sacrifice friends and ruins their marriage trying to grow a business 10% in a year, right? growing a business is good. Growing a business 10% at the cost of a marriage and family and children, that's changing your life for money that isn't life-changing money. Right? The dirty little secret you never hear from all the one-hit wonders and the world's biggest failures is that they all

let themselves change their life for money that wasn't life-changing money. Now, right now, you have the same choice. Today, tomorrow, and the day after that, you will be faced with these opportunities, these questions where you have to choose, do I change my life today for money that isn't life-changing money, or do I buy myself the nicer steak? Do I go to the convenient gas station, even if it is two cents more expensive? How do I spend my time, my energy, my effort? How do I spend these most important resources. Do I spend them learning new skills? Do I spend them having cool experiences? Do I spend them building a high value powerful network? These are all the things that I'm trying to teach you how to do that I want to do with you that I want to contribute to to help

you change your life so that you can build life-changing wealth. Right? That's the goal with this podcast. That's the goal with every conversation we have when we sit down together. But you're the one that has to make the choice. If you recognize your time, energy, and effort are invaluable, then recognize how much you have to gain when you invest those resources wisely, when you invest them in training, in education, in exercise, in unique experiences, right? My buddy James spends his life traveling the world. He owns a hangar full of high-performance aircraft in two different continents. And he plans. And he plans to retire and stop working forever three years from now when he's 52 years old. That's life-changing money. My goal is to learn from James and my clients like James so that I can hit the same goal

one year earlier than him. I want to stop working forever. I want to be retired and just focus exclusively on my family when I'm 45. I've got to do it in four years. He's going to finish in three years and if we're lucky, we're going to spend years together just hanging out on a sailboat in the Greek islands. You aren't that far from being in the same trajectory, being in the same world, having the same objective as James and me and all the elite, ultra wealthy, ultra rich people out that I get to hang out with. When you spend your time, energy, and effort the right way. Spend it like I spend it. Spend it like James spends it. Invest in yourself, invest in your training, your education, invest in unique experiences and high value relationships.

And ruthlessly, I hate to say it because it sounds so harsh, it sounds so cold, but there is no more accurate way to say it. You have to be ruthless about cutting out everyone and everything who is stuck in the cycle of changing their life for money. Because when you do, when you can rid yourself of the people who change their life for money, That's how you find your way to making life-changing money. And 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 learned something new today, click subscribe, review, and share the podcast with a friend. Find me on social media at Everyday Spy or on my website, Everyday Spy, or on my website, 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.