EverydaySpy Podcast - The Master Spy Game You Never Knew

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

Operations do not run like everyday life... but you can make everyday life run like an operation. In this episode, Andrew talks about one of his CIA mentors and a secret game that mentor taught him about operational success. Learn the game for yourself and find out how you can use it to drive predictable outcomes for everything from your career to kids and family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, it's me, Andrew Bustamante. Look, I wanted to kind of take a second to let you know that in this episode, you're going to hear me talking a lot about something called Streetcraft. Streetcraft is my premier tradecraft training course. It's a live training course. And I'm super in love with this course. It's just a good time. But I wanted to let you know that you're going to hear me talk about that course.

If you're curious to learn more about that course, go ahead and hit Everydayspy.com forward slash spy. Just hit pause right now. and go to everydayspy.com forward slash spy, and you'll learn everything you need to learn about what streetcraft is and what we do, and you'll know it before you hear about it in this episode. So if you're curious,

Everydayspy.com forward slash spy, learn about tradecraft, hit pause, the sweet, sweet theme music will be ready for you when you come back. My name is Andrew Bustamante, and this is Everyday Espionage. When I was at CIA, I had this,

this awesome mentor. He was this old, grungy dude. I mean, nobody really liked to talk to him, maybe except me, which might be telling me something about myself that I never quite realized. But he and I, we got along because we both specialize in something that's known as hard targets. And hard targets are those human targets that are the hardest to recruit. The hardest to find, the hardest to develop, the hardest to recruit, because they have some of the world's deepest, darkest secrets, the best secrets that we really want. And what made this guy really stand out in my memory, why I still talk about him today with you, is because every desk he ever sat at, no matter where I saw him in the world, he always had this stack of dominoes. And it was just a small stack,

like seven, maybe 10 dominoes, but they went with him everywhere. And they weren't fancy. They weren't fancy, beautiful dominoes from like Russia or they weren't some gift set that he had like hand carved in Brunei, these were just your typical target brand off the shelf dominoes. And one day I asked him to explain these dominoes to me. And he basically told me that there's two types of people in the world from his point of view. There are trained people and then there are untrained people. And he would always grab these dominoes and he would use them as the example. And he would take his seven or ten dominoes and he would say that trained people, people use events in the day, events in an operation differently than untrained people.

And he would spread his dominoes out and he would say untrained people knock down one domino multiple times a day. And he'll stack and he'll lay out his dominoes and he'd stand them up in kind of like a half moon shape and he would just flip them over, right? He would flick one domino and say, that was the chore that I had to do in the morning. And then he would flick another domino. And he would say that was the chore I had to do in the afternoon. And he would flick another domino. And he would say that's the target that I had to call. And he would continue to do this until he basically flicked and knocked over all seven or ten dominoes. And he said, by the end of the day, you've done everything you need to do because all of your dominoes have been knocked over. And that's

how an untrained person works. And then he would collect all the dominoes and he would stand them all up again, but this time he would stand them up in a row. And he would say, this is what trained people do. And he would flick the first domino. And the first domino would knock down the second domino, and then the second domino would knock down the third domino. And you know how this goes. And he would look at me and he would say, how many times did the untrained person have to flip a domino over? And I told him many times. And then he said, how many times does a trained person have to flip a domino over. And I said once. And that's when it clicked. That's when it hit me. That what he was talking about wasn't just efficiency. It wasn't just about conserving resources.

What he was talking about was predictable outcomes. He was talking about how when you have 10 dominoes in a half moon and they're all individually stood up in no particular order, you can't guarantee that you're going to knock over the last domino at the end of the day. If it's a mission, you can't guarantee that you're going to take down the bad guy. If it's a day's worth of events, you can't guarantee that you're going to finish strong. If it's chores, if it's work related, if it's career related, if it's working out, you can't guarantee that you're going to finish the way you want to finish. That means you can't guarantee your outcome.

But when you line them up in a row and you only have to knock over the first domino, You guarantee that the last domino is going to fall also. That's the lesson that he was trying to teach me. And that's the lesson that I have taken with me to the very end. Because every spy, every covert operator out there wants to control the outcome. They want to come home. They want to come home safe. They want to steal secrets.

They want to recruit foreign assets. That's what every spy wants. It's the ultimate outcome. If you can't control the outcome, you're not going to make a very good spy. But the thing that's interesting to me is that every person, everybody out there wants to control the outcome. Not just control freaks, not just people that we judge as overbearing, but all of us want to control our outcome. We all want what we want, whether we want success, whether we want freedom, whether we want peace of mind, whether we want health and safety for our country. family, we all want to have a seat at the table. We all want to have some element of control and making

sure that outcome happens. But for many of us, we're chasing it the way untrained people flip dominoes, one at a time, one at a time. Instead of putting them all in a row, flicking in the first one, and then letting all the momentum and all the weight stack up for us and work in our favor. So here's what happened to me. I left CIA, and I took that concept of dominoes with me. I took it first into the corporate world. And what I found is that in the corporate world, everyone was chasing individual dominoes. They were trying to knock down the next big project. They were trying to knock out the next big hire. They were trying to finish end of year reviews. It was just one task after another, after another, and nobody was thinking about how to gain momentum over the long run. Then I transitioned

into the business world, into my own business and working with other businesses, and I found the exact same thing. People are chasing individual dominoes. They're trying to close out the last invoice. They're trying to make the next sale. They're trying to finish payroll. One task after another hoping for a predictable outcome in the end, but never knowing for sure whether or not it's going to happen. And then lastly, we see it in the everyday world, constantly, where people are chasing, individual dominoes, trying to take care of the kids, trying to take care of whatever's happening at work, trying to take care of the next chore, trying to take care of the next meal, not realizing that you could stack all the dominoes in a row and have them all work for you. So as I see this playing

out in the corporate world, I see this playing out in the business world, I see this playing out in the everyday world, I look at how I am handling dominoes in my own life. Now, for me, when I'm looking at what I want to do with the kids, I'm not looking at what I want to do with the kids. just in the next 10 minutes. I'm looking at what I want the end of the day with the kids to look like. I want the end of my day to look the exact same way as you want the end of your day to look with your children if you have them. I want kisses, hugs, smiles, and I want everybody to go to sleep. That's exactly what I want from my kids at night. But I'm not going to get them there as easily if I take the entire day one domino at a time. Instead, I've got to put dominoes in order. So I will

essentially make a blueprint, not a detailed map, not some kind of crazy calendar, but just a blueprint in my mind about all the things I want to do in the day to gain momentum towards the outcome at the end of the day that I want. I'm going to think about what will I feed them for breakfast, what will I feed them for lunch, what will I feed them for dinner? Not in great detail, just in big general swipes, right? I'm going to feed them a peanut butter sandwich for lunch. We're going to have a snack, that's an applesauce pouch, I'm going to give them breakfast that's eggs. That way, I know they have plenty of protein. I know they get some fruit. I know they get some fiber. That's all. It's just, it's just a blueprint. I know they're going to eat all those things. And then I put that blueprint in motion.

I set my dominoes in a row. And I let the day, I let the dominoes do the work for me. I know I want to get them outside because I know I want to get them to run around. I know I want them to have sunlight. I know if I give them space outside of the house, outside of the apartment, they're going to burn their energy down themselves. So I just put the dominoes in a row. Instead of fighting hour after hour or 15 minute increment after 15 minute increment, knocking one domino over at a time, what do we do we do with them now? Do I give them an iPad? Do I give them a TV show? Do I give them a coloring book? Instead of burdening myself with making a new decision every 15 minutes, I really just put everything in a logical flow and I let the activities roll on a loose blueprint that I know is going to

result in them being tired, happy, and well fed at the end of the day. I do the exact same thing in my business. I know there are sales that I have to make. I know there are clients that I have to call. I know there are emails that I have to answer. So how do I put them all in a row? I'll again, I'll make a rough blueprint of what I want my day to look like so that my day ends on time at the time that I wanted to end and so that I reach people at the time that I know they are most available. So for me, with my clients, very few of them are available to actually have a meaningful conversation before 11 a.m. But every single one of them is checking their email from about 6 a.m. until 11 a.m. So I structure my day with a rough blueprint the exact same way. First thing I do in the morning,

while I'm still hazy and I'm still groggy and I'm not very good to look at, I jump up. on email. Who's emailed me? What emails did I write yesterday that I want to make sure get sent today because I know people are checking their emails right now. And I'll send those drafts out the door. I'll send those contact requests and all of my cold call emails. I'll send all of them out first thing in the morning and then I'll eat breakfast. And then I'll have my coffee and my workout, whatever else I want to do. Because I know that from like 10 o'clock to noon, that's the end of one window and kind of the start of the next window. And now that all of my content, are no longer checking email after 11, right? Essentially, those dominoes have already been knocked over.

And now everybody's getting excited to take action on whatever emails they just read. You see where I'm going with this? So then from 11 until about three, my workday is all of those immediate, actionable calls that result in new contracts and result in inquiries about new sales products and whatever else. And all of those calls that end in closed product sales, all of those calls that end in closed product sales, all of those happen from 11 to 3. Why did those happen? Because I set it up via the email that morning between 6 and 11. And then what happens after 3? After 3 is when I do all of the other admin stuff that me and all of my clients hate doing, the stuff that you hate doing to in your small business. And then with admin stuff, it's easy to just turn it off, close the laptop for the day,

and then go and have fun with the kids at like 5 o'clock. So you can see how this whole thing flows. Instead of knocking over dominoes at random times throughout the day, oh, I Remember now I have to call this person and you call them and it goes to voicemail. Oh, I have to send this email and you send that email at 5 p.m. No one's going to check it at 5 p.m. And the next morning it's going to be buried under seven other emails that were sent by other people at 6 p.m., 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. So you can see how you're stacking your dominoes in your business world by simply putting things into a rough blueprint where they gain momentum.

They gain traction throughout the day. It's the exact same way in corporate America. Corporate America, everybody knows how corporate America works. It's a little bit different than the business world, but it's still very predictable. Everybody comes in at 7.30 or 8 o'clock. Nobody does any work. They all go and get their coffee. They all go and get their breakfast.

They stop at somebody's desk or cubicle, and they chat. Real work in corporate America gets done between like 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock. And most of that and a big chunk of that is all the people, the productive people who choose to eat lunch at their desk. They'll choose to have breakfast and coffee and kind of chit-chat until. 9 a.m. But they insist on eating lunch at their desk. So what you have is this weird period of time from 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock in corporate America where it's perfect for sending emails. It's perfect for sending instant messages. It's perfect for calling people at their desk, especially during

lunch because 80% of the lazy people out there are not eating lunch at their desk or they're not doing anything productive over lunch. And the 20% of people that are the hardest to reach, every single one of them, is available over lunch because they're all sitting at their desk working their tails off. So that's when you call them. And then after 3 o'clock, between 3 o'clock and 5 o'clock, nobody wants to stare at a computer, nobody wants to be on the phone, and they will take any excuse possible to sit down and talk in a meeting room or have some sort of brainstorming session, because it's the end of the day and they just want something to keep them awake. So there you go. If you want to brainstorm in the corporate world, you do it after 2 o'clock. If you want to brainstorm in the business world,

independent small business or growing business, you want to do it between 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock. And if you want to send emails, you can see how it's all different, depending on where you are, but it's always dominoes. It's always how do I set my day up? How do I put things in a specific order so that when I put the energy into the first domino, the energy of that first domino is what knocks over the second domino and the third domino and the fourth domino. And I know by the end of the day, all 10 dominoes have been knocked over. That is the concept behind dominoes. That's what makes this mentor of mine from the agency such a vibrant part of my memory. Now, I host a training course, a tradecraft course called Streetcraft. And Streetcraft is one of my

most popular courses. It's my absolute favorite course of everything I teach in Everyday Spy. I teach it to corporations, to their executive teams. I teach it to individuals who just buy it straight up through EverydaySpy.com. I even sell it to high net worth individuals who fly me to wherever they are in the world and they just want their family and their friends to go through this with them. Because streetcraft teaches you tradecraft. It teaches you genuine, honest to God, human intelligence tradecraft. Dead drops, covert signals, secret messaging, you name it. It teaches you surveillance awareness. It teaches you how to read a map and how to use that map to execute against operations. And the way that I structure streetcraft is it's all done in one day. It's basically

three or four hours of in-classroom training in the morning and then like a four or five-hour field exercise in the afternoon. And I have testimonials and positive feedback in droves. I have so much that I have not found an efficient way to actually share it with other people yet. But one piece that keeps continuously coming up is people are amazed by how much they get done in Streetcraft in one day. They learn all this tradecraft. They use all this tradecraft. And then they execute their own field operation successfully in the same day. And it kind of, it's something that you can see, the dissonance, the cognitive dissonance in their brains when they realize what they've accomplished at the end of the day. And when they come to me and they ask me how it all works, I tell them the same thing I just

told you. Streetcraft is set up like dominoes in a row. From the first thing that you learn in the morning, all the way to the last dead drop that you drop in the afternoon, every single task feeds off of the momentum and the energy and the knowledge that you learned from the previous task. So it just flows. And I want it to flow. I want it to flow for many reasons. I want Streetcraft to be a positive experience for the individual trainee, which means I need them to be able to be able to to feel like they know what they're doing, and I want them to have a positive, successful, predictable outcome. I know that if I set the dominoes in the right order, every student will have that positive predictable outcome. I also want to make sure that my students are safe,

and that the resources that I use for Streetcraft are sufficient to get them through the final objective. So I use the domino methodology the exact same way. I know that the resources I give them at the beginning of the day will be sufficient to get them through the end of the day. And I know that as the momentum builds from resources and the teamwork builds over the course of the day, that they will keep each other safe and that the other resources I have in the field watching them, surveilling them, are also going to keep them safe. So it's all just a matter of dominoes, setting things in motion, whether I'm teaching them tradecraft, whether I'm keeping them safe, whether I have my surveillance team observing them in the field, or whether they are

successfully able to identify the surveillance team chasing them in the field. Whatever's happening in streetcraft, it's all a series of dominoes, operational dominoes, just like my mentor taught me, just like I used in my own operations, just like I used to change corporate America and to build my own business, those are the skills that we're teaching in streetcraft. Those are the skills that everyday people get to learn through the lens of being a spy. Look, if you want, predictable outcomes at home, predictable outcomes at home, in your career, in your business, and you find yourself being one of those people who knocks over one domino at a time, you have everything you need to succeed right now. All you need to do is put your dominoes in a row. Don't stand

them up and knock them over one at a time. Put them in a row so that the first one you knock over puts the energy and momentum into knocking over the second one on its own. Whether that's how your email, whether that's which client you choose to call in which order, or whether that's how you set up your day with the kids. Whatever you're trying to accomplish, you're going to get there that much faster and with that much more confidence as soon as you put your dominoes in a logical row. It doesn't take a detailed grid. You can make one if you want to. It doesn't take a detailed schedule or a detailed agenda. You can make one if you want to. But it does take a little bit of deliberate thinking to put them in a row so that you recognized not just the efficiency

and not just the resource benefits, but that if you complete the first domino first, if you complete the first task, the first bit of energy that you put into your day, you see exactly how that first bit of energy flows through the entire day to help you reach a predictable final outcome. That is how the professionals do it. That is how we take down hard targets. is everyday espionage. If you're interested in finding your way into the next streetcraft course, visit Everydayspy.com forward slash spy, everyday spy.com forward slash SPY, and you'll see the next running of Streetcraft and be able to log in and sign up in time to be part of that action. I look forward to seeing you there.

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 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.