EverydaySpy Podcast - Say This CIA Phrase To Make Anyone Trust You Instantly (Even If You're Lying)

Episode Date: September 20, 2026

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Discover coffee plus on nispresso.com. What the tactic of two questions and a confirmation or a validation, what the tactic does is it builds an artificial relationship. It manufactures trust between two people because it shows that one person's in control, but it also shows that the one person who's in control is actually interested enough that they're contributing, they're participating in the conversation. Which makes the person answering questions feel like they're special, makes them feel like they're being listened to. It makes them feel heard. It makes them feel validated. right? And that is a natural human response to being in a community where you are valued and where you are an equal player. So this idea of ask a question, ask a relevant follow-up question, and then volunteer a congruent fact to validate the person is just a constant snowball that builds more and more momentum that makes the target feel comfortable.

I will sometimes retain journalists and be like, how can I improve my own? interview technique. And I did that in years past especially. And what's funny is they go, well, this, it did work when I listened to it. However, at ABC, we were trained to only ask questions. So when you do an interview with them, if they ever interview, we'd do like mock interviews, I'm just like, this is weird. You're just asking me questions. You're not adding to this at all. And occasionally on YouTube, someone will be like, I'm a journalist and I want to help you get better at this interview thing. And they're like, never talk about yourself. Never add anything. They just, they're like, just stick to the questions.

And it's always kind of funny to me because I'm thinking, this is like how to make your show exactly like anybody else and make yourself totally replaceable and uninteresting 101. Yeah. Like, never add anything. Well, what's funny is like, journalists don't realize that the medium of a podcast is not anything like journalism, right? You can say that again.

Yeah, right? It's completely different. It's a whole different media platform, which is why podcasting is so popular. and journalism is going the way of the dodo. Not to mention the fact that when a journalist interview somebody, it's because they want the attention to be on the subject and they're trying to inform the public about the subject.

With podcasting, what you're trying to do is you're trying to create a relationship between the guest and the audience. Yes. And the host is just the conduit to represent the audience to the guests so that the guest always feels like they have a conversation with, or the audience always feels like they're having conversation with the guest. That's the difference between the two platforms. And for me, it speaks to why podcasting is not going anywhere anytime soon.

Yeah, there's some nuance in here that isn't worth discussing, I think. But you're largely correct. By the way, I want to stick up for good journalism. I think it's one of the most important things in the world. There's a reason it's called the Fifth State or whatever. I think it's super important. But you're right. The journalistic sort of interview, there's a reason those things are five, ten, two minutes.

Because that's as long as people want to hear somebody be grilled about, I don't know, their new music album or whatever. You have to have a conversation if you want to keep people interested. It's just how it goes. And I also, I will always stand there for good journalism. Unfortunately, good journalism is getting harder and harder to find. It is. It is. I wanted to go back to one of your earlier points about creating relationships.

I love the idea that this is, you said, effective at sales. my previous company I sold probably tens of millions of dollars worth of services essentially, but I'd so much trouble hiring someone else to do the same thing. And part of it was because I was not good at all at training them on how to do this thing that we just discussed. I never really thought about it even until recently as question, follow-up question, maybe third follow-up question, and then a share or a confirmation, as you called it. So this is a high-ticket item I was selling me as like a large seminar, six to $8,000, and this is a decade and change ago, so that that was real money.

It is still real money. But I spent months just talking to people, and it would be like, oh, I got a check-in call with this person. Hey, man, how did that thing go that you were doing? Did you end up switching companies? Oh, man. Oh, did you break up with her? Oh, finally.

She was driving you nuts. Okay, well, I got to run, man. Are you still thinking about summer of next year when you get your new job and you get your bonus? Cool. All right. Well, I'll talk to you in a few months. No ask, just like moving things along.

kind of one increment at a time. And then one day I would call and go, ready man, time to pull the trigger. And they go, here's $10,000. And then I remember people seeing those closing calls and going, how did you do that? Well, 18 months ago, I started this train, this freight train moving.

Because it looks like magic. If you just look at the last phone call, it's like you just called that person and they gave you $8,000, $10,000. How did that happen? But it was like making friends, having them tell me big problems they're having in life, and then being like, here's a solution that I will sell you for a reasonable cost relative to the scale of your problem. Right.

And the end. Correct. I mean, what sales should be that so few sales people understand is sales is just a relationship. It's a relationship where you're trying to find the right balance of what we call rapport and leverage. rapport is the back and forth exchange of things that are not sales related that build momentum for what feels like trust right and then once you have the rapport in place you have built leverage the leverage is what you need in order to get the person to take the action that you want when you think about manipulation versus motivation manipulative leverage is something

everybody wants to avoid because it feels gross and it feels sticky yeah motivation leverage people lean into. Like, we all love it when our close friend is like, dude, you need to get into the gym. We should start tomorrow. In fact, I bought you the first month at my gym. Yeah. Let's go work out in the morning together. We're like, hell yeah, let's go. That's motivational leverage. Works better than, hey, you're so fat. No one's ever going to love you, right? That's not, that one of those is going to be more effective. Yeah, or I bought you your first month and you owe me, right? It's just, it's not the same thing. So with what ends up happening is salespeople think that it's like this process of calls and getting enough information and yeah and like understanding the product details like the features and benefits features and benefits they don't realize features and benefits don't equal purpose right the features and the benefits are there to complement the purpose of the sale altogether right I need a car I don't really care if the car has all weather tires and leather interior right I don't care that it comes with a warranty what I'm What I care about is the purpose of the car, which is transportation that keeps my family safe and is healthy for the environment and can go a long distance on a small thing of gas, right?

Whatever it might be. This realization was so huge. This type of thing was so huge for me early in my sales career because it was just like, I remember closing people and processing their payment. And they would go, wait, what did I just buy? I don't even know. And I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, you're going to get this and this and this. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but what else? And I'm like, and you list the thing and you go, wait a minute, you just gave me all this money and you didn't even really know what it was.

And I remember being kind of confused. And then I asked some of my sales mentors and they're like, no, that means that this person trusted you so much that it didn't even really matter. Yeah. They just knew that you weren't going to screw them over, that you had a solution to their problem. The details were just not even at the front of their mind. They had to call you back or email you to get the brochure that they never looked at. and you just start to realize like, wow, this is kind of a superpower if you get good at it. We call it in the espionage world, we call it selling yourself.

Like, they sell themselves. And when you have a really good, well-developed, appropriate intelligence source, and you go to actually pitch them on this idea of espionage, they sell themselves. And you're like, hey, I think that you have, I think we have an opportunity here for your secrets to make a difference in your financial life and in the future of your country. And they're like, yeah, I thought I might have that opportunity. And I think I'm really, as long as I work with you, I trust you, and I think I'm ready to do this thing. And then you're like, I didn't even make a pitch. I just said, I think you have an opportunity.

And they're like, yeah, I'm ready to do this thing. Does the CIA ever use, like, celebrities to get something out of folks? Because it seems like someone with massive status would, in some cases, do really well. The problem is people with massive status are unpredictable. Oh, that's, yeah. How do you get them to keep a secret? How do you know who's watching them and who's not watching them? How long before they brag about whatever else?

Like the problem with celebrities, the celebrities to gain celebrity, and you know this too because you yourself are a celebrity. There's a certain element where you have... I see what you did there. But you have to value yourself. Whereas the best intelligence officers, they are sacrificial. They're like, the best thing I can do is die for my country. You don't think that at all.

You don't think the best thing you can do is die for the United States. Me right now? Yeah. Exactly. So that's why, like, if they want it, When you want to train somebody to be a secret operative, a clandestine operative, you want them brainwashed to use your term, in a way where they believe the best thing they can do is sacrifice. Yeah, no, if they'd caught me, if they'd actually caught me at age 25, totally different story.

They would have a, yeah, no, I have a, honestly, before getting married plus kids, there was a chance. Not that they were trying by any means. But once you're married with kids, yeah. Once you see what it's like to have people who unconditionally love you, There's no way to, like the service to your country never compares to service to the people you love. Yeah, I think it's quite fascinating. I've heard you say anxiety is a superpower. Obviously, it keeps you alive.

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So, I mean, yes, there are a lot of Jewish people in CIA. Yes. Yes, there are a lot of Mormons at CIA. Okay. And there was something else that we mentioned earlier, but I forget what it was. Oh, there's also a lot of law school grads at CIA. Yeah, yeah. So clearly a very anxious group.

Yes. But my point is CIA recruits knowing that they're looking for people that have the right balance of anxiety and risk tolerance for most of their positions. Because remember, most positions at CIA require heavy analytical thought, heavy learning, heavy repetition or training, attention to detail. All of those skills are built into somebody who has anxiety, right? Anxious people with their natural paranoia, their natural introversion, their natural distrust, their natural research curiosity are a fantastic fit for that kind of work. It's really only the field officers who have to go around the world and travel and try to meet people. Those are the only people where anxiety could potentially be a detriment. And even then, you want them to have some anxiety because you want them to always remember.

They always need to have the gift of fear. recognizing that they're on the edge of getting caught at all times. Yeah, that's... Weirdly, my anxiety works its way out socially. Like, if I'm home, that could be bad. But if I go to a party, I'm like, God, I feel so much better. And it's almost like I'm working my anxiety out by having a conversation with somebody.

It's very odd. It's probably a flow state type of thing where I don't even have time to deal with it because I'm, like, really enjoying this, for example. But if I were having, if I had background stress, like a lot of it, after this episode was over or after we stopped hanging out, I might be like, oh, crap, here's the anxiety monster once again. You know, it depends.

But it's something I've learned to tame on it awkwardly, maybe, unusually through this, the work that people are experiencing right now. I find you to be a fantastic example of this, right? Because look at what you've accomplished. even before you were accomplished in business, you were being assessed for work in a secret intelligence agency. Then you built a massive business. And then even after the previous podcast changed,

you rebuilt another podcast. Right? Like how... Keep fluffing me up. I'm here for it. But think about it for a second. Think about it for a second. How does somebody achieve all of that?

And then you also know that person, has anxiety. Oh, no, it's the anxiety is the superpower, man. Yeah, I'm telling you, I agree with you. I think it's so fascinating and I think it's such a detriment that socially we make anxiety out to be like a bad thing. Like, we publish news articles or medical articles that say that 25% or 30% of Americans have anxiety. Like, it's a bad thing. Yeah, I guess it depends on the level of anxiety. But I will tell you, now that I'm 44, family men, more chilled out, my growth, the growth of the business has slowed. And I like it that way. The people that I know that really are like at the top, top, top, busting their ass, all that, they're miserable. But they are, they could be a

billionaire one day. Good for them. I wouldn't trade lives with them. I'll tell you that. Certainly not. But I just, I just want to make, like, to me, it's, I loved working at CIA with such amazing people. And so many of those people had anxiety. I bet. And watching how capable and talented they were at what they did, and then coming into the outside world where somehow people with anxiety felt ashamed and they felt like they were lesser or inferior, it's just heartbreaking because how much productivity and talent is being underutilized because we're letting people believe that anxiety is a weakness when in fact the people without anxiety are the ones who have less capability to really make a massive splash. Is there anything you learned at the CIA that the American public doesn't

know that you think was like disturbing or shook your worldview. Obviously, you can't share what it is, but I'm curious, because, you know, I feel like I ask a lot of these folks, and they're like, eh, you'd be surprised how boring it is back there, but you kind of, you know, unique access. Yeah, it is really boring out there, but I will also say that there are absolutely things that I learned that shook me and that I am certain would shake the American public. In fact, before CIA, I used to be one of those people that was like, oh, the American public can handle anything. Like, trust them and just tell them the truth. And then I got to CIA and I was like, do not tell the impact of public the truth.

Like, if my mom or my sister or my brother-in-law learned about this, they would lose their shit. And then they'd all have an opinion about what we should do about it. And then they would all start to like join communities of people who thought of what we should. And then all of a sudden shit would just fall apart. Right. It's so much better to keep people who do not need to know, keep them blind and focused on the things that they can control. And that's really the important part here is there's so much they, you and I and the American public cannot control. And we have to learn to be okay with that

because we have a democracy that allows us to vote in the people that we trust to do the things that we can't control. The day that you think that you should be given access to all the secrets, that's basically the day that you stop believing in democracy. And you start thinking, I can do my job better than the people who are elected above me. If that's what you believe, than we are a long, we're a lot further away from our goals of successful democracy than we thought. Yeah, I could not agree more. I wonder, are the things that you learned, things that we will learn about in our lifetime, or is it just stuff that's probably going to get swept under the rug forever? I mean, it's probably stuff that's going to be swept away forever because it's just one of those things

that not in our lifetimes, unless something unexpected happens, but it probably won't, right? And it's secrets that, some of those are secrets that were there before I was even born. I was like, really? That's how that worked. And it's something. still works that way and it's probably never going to stop working that way. If you want a $3,000 a month payday for life, what would you feel free to do? Maybe take a long weekend, every weekend, or try a bunch of new hobbies. Would you feel free to upgrade and listen ad free? Don't worry, we get it.

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