EverydaySpy Podcast - The CIA Hack To Achieve More in 1 Week than Most People Do in 1 Year

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

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He always carried them in his pocket. Whenever he got to his desk, he would stack them on his desk, two dominoes next to each other, and then two dominoes on top, right? So kind of like in a criss-cross pattern. And he always had them with him. Well, one day I was in there, and I sat with him, and I asked him, I was like, why do you carry these dominoes? Like what? It's extra weight. They're awkward. You know, they jingle when you walk down the hallway. Why would you

carry these things? And then he sat them up and he told me most people go through life knocking out tasks or to-dos like this. And he set each of the dominoes up facing him, but in a row from left to right. And then he flicked the domino on the left and knocked it over. And then he flicked the next one and knocked it over and the next one and the next one. And he knocked all four dominoes over with four flicks of his finger, right? He said, that's how most people go through life. If you want to succeed in espionage, he said, you have to stack the dominoes differently. So then he put them in a line the way that we all put the dominoes in line when we're kids, right?

One in front of the other, but all, but with only the first one facing him. And then he flicked over the first one and then the falling domino knocked over the next domino, which knocked over the next domino, which knocked over the next domino. So he was basically demonstrating how the average person will go through life using four times as much energy to get the same four tasks accomplished as a smart person who puts the things in the correct order. And a light bulb went off for me because in espionage, when you're spying in a foreign country, when you're trying to steal secrets that aren't supposed to be stolen, there's an

order that you have to accomplish tasks. You can either put a lot of effort into each step and then by the end of the operation, your resources are spent and you don't know if you're going to be successful. Or you can do things in a certain order where they grow momentum with each task. And then you're saving yourself energy, you're saving yourself resources, you're making momentum work for you. And ever since then, I mean, my operational, behavior changed, my operational tempo changed, my success at CIA changed. I took that same concept and brought it into the business world when I left CIA. And I mean, my business has grown 300% year over year for the last four years. And the only thing I can credit that to is I do the same

tasks that everybody else has to do. I just put them in a certain order so that when I flip the first domino, I get the momentum of each falling domino to help with my and goal. I really fun. I think that's amazing. I always, for some reason, I always, both my wife and I,

we always look backwards. We always think about, okay, this is the result. We have a million things going on. Just a result. So how do we get there? Blank space. Right?

Like completely, you got to go completely, you got to know the box, but then you got to be completely out of the box and observe it. No rules. let's say there's no rules, nothing,

but this is where I got to get to. So how are we going to get there? So I love what you're saying, really, you know, I always say, you know, she went to, like, Ivy League school, and I say, the Ivy League is mastering most of the time, you know, the book, the box. You got to do that, but then you also have to have critical thinking,

and that's why I teach my kids, who said so, in everything, right? constantly because that's what business is. You're constantly pivoting. But tell us a little bit about everyday spy. Tell us a little bit about your business. Yeah. So my business,

Everyday Spy, is my personal mission, right? And our mission is to teach spy skills that break barriers to anyone willing to learn. And I love that mission because it's specific that it applies to anyone

who's willing to learn. If you're not willing to learn, you can go to hell. If you don't like spy skills, you can go to hell. If you don't have barriers to break, then you're lying to yourself and you can go to hell. I don't have any time for people who aren't part of my mission. But when it comes to breaking barriers, the truth is that we all have so many barriers in so many different areas of our life that we oftentimes don't stop to realize how they're all related. In an undercover world, the most dangerous thing about an undercover operation is not.

the operation itself. It's not going in and taking down Osama bin Laden. That's not the most dangerous part. It's not the helicopter ride undercover of dark. It's not the underwater scuba dive ride. It's not the, you know, it's not the moment when you sit with the with the warlord at the jirga table. Those things are not the most dangerous part. It's everything else about living undercover. It's the risk of signing the wrong name on a receipt when you go out to dinner. It's the risk of of a cab driver finding out your home address. It's the risk of not tying your shoes the appropriate way. And then when you need it, they come untied and you trip.

That's the kind of stuff that is the most dangerous to us. Because we rehearse the operation dozens upon dozens upon dozens of times. Like it's incredible the amount of rehearsal that goes into a live operation. But there's no rehearsal that goes into waking up and going downstairs and stepping out and making a phone call and catching an Uber. there's no rehearsal that goes into that. So the probability of you making a mistake is so much higher in everyday life. So CIA spends 90% of their money in time training its operatives to handle everyday life undercover. And it spends 10% of its money in time training undercover officers to actually operate

because they know that the rehearsal and the practice and the rope memorization is going to make the operation of success. but that person is going to die, you know, crossing the street in Korea because they don't know to look both ways on the center lane, which is where the buses can drive without stopping. So they have to spend all this time training us about everyday life. And those skills are what transformed my career. And then those are the skills that when I left CIA, I was shocked to see people didn't know how to get a free cup of coffee. You don't know how to negotiate your bill.

You don't know how to you know make somebody disarm somebody from being defensive to being friendly Those are those are for me those are very natural basic skills so everyday spy is my outlet for teaching people all of the cool Not unclassified stuff that CIA did without having to Risk any of the actual secrets that keep us safe how do people learn like what's the actual process of look people learning their secret superpower I know you talk about that a lot yeah yeah yeah So CIA hires people because everybody has an inherent talent. There's something inside all of us that gives us an edge against other human beings. And that inherent edge is generally tied to your personality type.

And then from your personality type, it's then tied even further to your personal experience in life. So there might be multiple people who are extroverts, but one extrovert grew up in a rich family, another extrovert grew up in a broke family. Another extrovert grew up with no mom and dad. Another extrovert grew up with gay parents, whatever it might be. So it's not just about understanding your personality. It's also about understanding the conditions in which your personality was cultivated, was raised. So when everyday spy goes through the process of teaching people their superpower, what we look at is both how they respond personality-wise, but also how their personal experience,

their upbringing shaped their personality. And once you combine those two things together, you have a really solid idea of what strengths and what weaknesses an individual inherently has. And you also talk about that people should stop living by other people's rules, which I love. And I think that really takes courage. I mean, in society, how do you really get comfortable

being, I guess, your true self. So I would say you're, if you feel comfortable, you're probably not being your true self. Because we live in a world where conformity is king. If you want to get along,

like if you want to get ahead, we're a society that's built on you have to get along. The people who cannot get along and also get ahead are very few and far between. Right. And they have to have, some kind of superpower that allows them to step over the barrier of social rejection. But what I will say is this, if you feel uncomfortable and most people who who don't play by

the rules feel uncomfortable all the time, they go to bed with self-doubt, they wake up with self-doubt, they wonder if today is the day where it all falls apart. But they keep trying anyway. They keep trying anyway. And it's the courage. I mean, what is courage, right? Moshe, courage is doing what you are afraid of anyway. So you have to be afraid. Fear has to be part of the equation for courage to even exist. So when people feel like they look at somebody and that person is fearless and courageous,

you can't have those two things at the same time. That person has to be fearful in order to be courageous. CIA believes that all people are born with a spy, superpower. For some people that means they can win deals for others, they can spot liars, some can even seduce lovers. I built a free three-minute test to help reveal to you exactly what your secret hidden superpower is. All you have to do is click on the link in the description below. Take the test and start using your spy superpower to stay ahead of 99% of people. And what you're actually seeing is somebody who's able to take their fear, recognize it,

understand it and take action anyway. And that's what makes just amazing heroic people. So I was thinking about this, Andy, what's a practical tip if you're just meeting somebody for the first time to like really know more about them? So yeah, yeah, it's great. So body language is something that's that's super helpful, but also it can be misleading. So the first thing to understand is that there's two forms, two basic rudimentary forms. of body language. There's open language and closed language. So open language is what you are right now, Moshe. Your arms are open. You're leaning back, but your chest is exposed, your face is exposed.

You've got a smile on your face, like very open body language. Open usually means receptive or curious. But then closed body language, that's when you see people with their arms crossed or their hands closed together or their legs crossed, right? Or somebody who's kind of got a furrowed eyebrow or a frown. That's closed body language. That means somebody is inherently suspicious or trying to keep themselves distant. If you just understand those two basic rudimentary forms of body language, when you see open language, you can lean in with more aggressive or more penetrating questions.

When you see closed language, you want to talk less about, you want to ask fewer questions and instead talk more about yourself. Share more about your thoughts, your feelings, your views of the world. Because what you need to do is crack through their closed body language. And if you've ever had that moment where you've seen somebody relax because of something you've said, right? Like you said, oh, I'm a God-fearing man. And then all of a sudden you see the person uncrossed their arms and smile.

Or you say, I'm a dad of 11, right? I'm a dad of an army. And you see somebody chuckle and then open their arms. arms. Like you have to crack through that that closed body language. But what often happens is that people don't understand it. So they see closed body language and then they start peppering questions. And they don't realize what they're doing is they're just, they're just cementing that closed body language into place. You have to open the person up by talking about yourself and disarming them. I know that a lot of the consulting that you do with, it's like top CEOs, Fortune 10 companies,

right, which you talked about in the intro. what is what is there like the true like you peel the layers back what's the common denominator of of them like what's actually going on there because it's you know what's billions of dollars right yeah yeah yeah what's fascinating is when you start talking to the people who run multi trillion dollar multi billion uh companies when you start talking to the the upper echelon of everything they're all hired they all work for somebody else they work for a board of directors they work for board of advisors. They work for a CEO who is still overseeing things, or they work for an owner who's overseeing the CEO. So what I'm always shocked to find is that when you're dealing with

senior level executives, you really are dealing with people who are trying to please someone else. And their challenge is that they carry all this responsibility, all this risk, and everybody beneath them doesn't share that burden. So they feel pinned between a hierarchy of people who don't care as much as they do and an accountability board that isn't as well spoken or well versed as they are. So it's this place in the middle where they are carrying just tons of stress and tons of concern and tons of fear. And the common denominator between all of them is usually that even though they carry all that stress, they find some way to cope with the stress. And they recognize that they're coping with the stress. So what they want is healthy coping mechanisms. Because without knowing what the

healthy mechanism is, they will revert to coping in unhealthy ways. Yeah. I think right, they recognize they probably hit, I always talk about like the rock bottom moments. They probably had that and they're a very unique type of person. They can handle tremendous pressure. And, right, and there's tools, like you say, to do it, to do, they're doing it. They recognize it and just, it should be healthy, right? But I also want to highlight that the vast majority of my clients are not owners, their executives.

Yeah. When you start talking about the, you know, decimillionaire, centa-millionaire CEO owner, that's a person who's developed their own health. coping mechanisms to build their legacy. It's very, very different. Like your, your successful entrepreneur has like the sky is the limit. They can go anywhere they want. But when you start talking about the CEO of Google, the CEO of YouTube, the CEO of CVS Health, the CEO of Booz Allen Hamilton, those are not the owners. Those are not the people who found at the business. Those are career executives who were hired and vetted and now they are just carrying out another job.

What you do and what I do every day is most certainly not just another job, right? We are building a legacy for our children. We are wedded to this baby in a way that no CEO who was hired could ever be. And I assume that when you say the sky is the limit, you know, for a founder, an entrepreneur, I mean, I guess that, you know, they figured out their healthy coping mechanisms at some point. Well, they don't always, but they can. But the main thing that's magic about a founder is that we have the ability to turn ideas into money. There's nothing that stops us.

When you're a CEO that's hired, you can have all the best ideas in the world, but you still have to get the board to approve. You still have to get the owner to approve. You still have to get the attorneys to approve. But when you are the CEO, when you yourself are the owner-CEO founder, people can advise you against your idea all you want. And you tell them to go to hell because it's your idea. It's your legacy. It's your baby.

So what I find is that the people who understand and who want that freedom are destined for success. That's why the sky is the limit. Because they'll soar or they'll crash. And half the time after they crash, they'll get right back up and soar again. Whereas when you're a career C-O-O or a career CFO, one crash and your career's over. Amazing. So tell me, Andy, what is something today when you're looking back at your life, what is something that you're deeply grateful for? I mean, it's a long list, man. There's so many things to be grateful for. But the first thing that comes to my mind is that I'm grateful for my wife and I'm grateful for my children.

Because my wife is the counterbalance that kept me on a productive path. If you think about a sailboat, right, a sailboat has a giant sail. Well, that entire gigantic sail is controlled by one rope. And that one rope is either, they call it sheeding. You either sheet it in or you sheet it out. to gain momentum, to gain speed, to change the direction of the boat. Without my wife,

I was a sailboat with a giant sail and I was just blown in the wind. But when she came along and she sheeded me in, now all of a sudden I was an engine, right? I had an ability to produce something that I couldn't produce otherwise, plow through an ocean. So I'm grateful for my wife.

And then my children became my navigational guide. They became what I was working for. So now I had my wife to turn me into a motor, like turn me into a power force, and I had my children to show me the way where I wanted to go. Without them, I'd still be floating in the ocean. Big shiny sail, you know, and flopping around in the waves. 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.