EverydaySpy Podcast - The Secrets of Sabotage

Episode Date: February 2, 2021

We all grow up loving spy movies and books for the action! Guns shooting, bombs going off, buildings being destroyed. And while the real thing is often just as exciting as a movie, it is very different in one powerful and important way. In this episode, Andrew shares a secret about intelligence operations that you can use to take control and gain leverage in any everyday situation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Andrew Bustamante, and this is everyday espionage. My son is in this place of childhood right now, where he wants to solve all the problems of the world by blowing something up or opening a can of whoop-ass, which he thankfully calls whoop-but. He's seven, so it's way more endearing to me than it is worrisome. But it makes it really entertaining to watch movies and cartoons with him, because he's like, like a living, breathing, personal version of my own Wiley Coyote with an unending box of TNT. This past Christmas, there was a suicide bombing that happened in Nashville, and my son was really confused, because when he discovered that the bad guy blew himself up, he didn't know exactly what the good guys were supposed to do next. Now, you all know me well enough that when I see

an instant of cognitive dissonance like this and my son, I have to jump on it. So I did. One of the biggest misnomer about CIA is that all of our ops include killing or assassination, sabotage, or some other form of violence so that we can destroy our enemies. Yes, those things have happened and they will most likely happen again, but these destructive operations really only make up a small percentage of all the ops that we execute at CIA, like maybe 2 to 4%. Every operation is born from one of two intents, either a destructive intent, like all the killing and blowing things up,

or a constructive intent. Destructive intent makes for great movies and TV, but it usually comes with high levels of risk, or very little long-term utility. It's like trashing your neighbor's car, with a baseball bat because their dog keeps pooping in your yard. Yes, it might feel good in the moment, but it's really hard to hide all that damage when the cops come around asking questions. Far more productive from our perspective, but admittedly way less sexy, are constructive

operations, operations that build or create something new instead of destroy. If you listen to my interview with Edie Savage in season three, she's a former, Australian Army Intel counterterrorism targeting analyst. Yes, that is a mouthful. But she had tons of firsthand stories that spoke to the power of constructive intelligence operations. Now, if you consider that same neighbor, the one with the perpetual yard bombing dog, where destructive ops might look like trashing the guy's car and then getting fined by police, constructive ops would look more like inviting the neighbor and his dog over for backyard.

barbecues or pre-football game chips and beer. Not only will the owner start to rein in his dog because he wants to save face in front of you, his very generous neighbor, but if you ever decide to turn to destructive ops later, now you have firsthand access to slip laxatives into the dog's treats so that the dog starts bombing his own owner's living room instead of your front yard. And at the end of the day, no police have to get involved. No, I'm not advocating poison or abuse. I'm just saying it does have a place after you exhaust every possible constructive option first.

That's the lesson that CIA taught me. That's the lesson that I still use to this day. You will get more nuclear secrets by taking a North Korean out to a good meal than by threatening their family. You're going to get better intel on troop movements by giving medical help to a ranking FARC general. wife than by seizing his offshore bank accounts. You really honestly do catch more flies with honey than you will with vinegar. In everyday life, people want their opinion to matter. That's why social media is so popular. Thousands of comments can flow from a single post. Millions of views and opinions can come out of a three-minute video. And if you want your opinion to count, if you want to be heard,

respected. And if you want people to act upon what you are saying, there is a way to do that. When you apply the Intel principle of constructive versus destructive operations to the way that you engage people, give your opinion, or leave comments online or in person, everything changes. Let me give you a few personal examples. I recently did a YouTube interview with the Concrete Podcast, and that interview picked up more than 50,000 views in the first two weeks after it was released. It generated nearly 500 comments. Now, most of those comments were negative. They were angry, destructive garbage that neither myself or Danny, the host and the producer of the podcast even bothered to remember.

But there were a few comments that were constructive, even though they were critical or negative feedback, those comments stuck with us, and they helped us shape our plans for future content moving forward. And they are comments that trigger a response from us personally. If you look at my AMA interviews on Reddit or my Facebook or Instagram posts, even if you look at my own YouTube channel, you see me constantly engaging those people that leave me constructive, thoughtful comments. They don't have to be positive. They are often negative. They are often questions. But they are constructive in nature. They are not destructive. You'll see me comment on constructive feedback just as much as you see me ignore all the people who are trying to tear down the house that I'm

building. When you engage a stranger or an intel target or even me directly from a place of constructive intent? I apply. I listen to your input and I even respond to you personally. But when people use destructive rants to try to persuade me or others to take any kind of action, it's a total waste. Well, maybe it's not a total waste because online search algorithms see all comments as the same as a sign of engagement. So even though a post might have a ton of negative engagement, the algorithms still put them in front of more people, so then the content still grows faster and further anyways. So that's the internet's way of taking destructive effort and still making it into constructive benefit. So it's a nice turnaround in the end. But I want to

I want to really bring this home. So let me get really personal and show you how important and impactful it is when you use constructive intent to get your opinions and your inputs and your ideas across. As of today, this podcast, the Everyday Espionage podcast, has a 4.8 star rating on most podcast platforms, and it has about 150 individual reviews. There are just over 30 written comments, 30 written reviews, where folks use constructive and destructive intent to try to influence me as the host or you as the listener. I want to share some of my favorite destructive reviews with you, now so that you can see for yourself whether this kind of destructive intent moves you to take any kind of action or influences you to be persuaded one way or the other. So the first one is from a person

named awfully self-centered and it's dated 120-2020 and the title of the review is doesn't sound credible and they gave me one star for this review. Now awfully self-centered says this. So far I am not grooving on this podcast. Maybe he and his guest really are what they claim to be. Maybe this is how they really talk. If it is, it sounds boring. This podcast sounds more like the presenter's fantasy, though. So much posing, trying to seem cool or macho or whatever, and he doesn't seem like a very nice guy, so wrapped up and how fabulous he is. The podcast where he advises you to get shot in the front of the head, instead of running away from a shooter, would make a mature sixth-grader cringe. So that was from awfully self-centered in January of 2020. When I read this review,

I had a moment where I actually visualized the author as a sixth grader berating me in public, and it made me chuckle. But then I thought, you know what? This would make a great topic for a podcast episode. So that's why we are here talking about this, because everything that awfully self-centered wrote to me was useless. Well, again, not totally useless because it did turned into the inspiration for this podcast episode. But none of what they had to say, none of their opinion actually impacted the way that I create content moving forward. So their opinion failed to persuade or influence really any kind of outcome that they were shooting for. Let me give you another example. Here is another review from Hans Mass, December 27, 2018. The title of

his review was waste of time except for the minimally experienced. Now, this multi-paragraph ignorance vent is way too long for me to read out loud over the airwaves. But you can check it out online and I encourage you to check it out when you can. I'm just going to give you my favorite bits here. So here is what Hans Mask had to say. I'm taking several minutes to write this review to try to redeem my wasted time listening to this podcast by persuading anyone, one like me not to waste theirs. If you are very poor at thinking logically or understanding people and suffer from a mediocre education without ever having had mentors to teach you about how to think well and understand people, and sadly there is a pretty hefty proportion of people like that,

then this podcast will likely be helpful for you. If you're an entrepreneur, businessman, writer, researcher, speaker, teacher, or leader of middling competence, this will not be anything new. The reason I gave this podcast two stars instead of one star are twofold. One, the material was well presented and organized logically and professionally produced. Two, this podcast could be useful to a certain segment of the population. P.S., I have no accredited college education for what it's worth. I'm still laughing. When I read Hans Mast's inputs the first time, I couldn't help but read out loud then either.

or I couldn't help it laugh out loud then either. Because worse than just attacking me, this person chose to attack everyone who listens. And he minimizes their intelligence. He accuses them of middle incompetence. And he did this back in 2018 with a little caveat that said, by the way, I'm not college educated for what it's worth. I had less than five episodes live when he left this review in 2018.

Now here's my point. Thousands of people have seen these destructive reviews. You may have seen them too, but how much do you respect these comments? How much do you respect these opinions? Do they actually persuade you not to listen? That is the problem with destructive intent. It doesn't have the persuasive relevance, the persuasive leverage that comes with constructive intent. Now let me compare these two reviews.

Let's compare these voices to different more constructive reviews, inputs that I have actually leaned on to help me shape the new content that I teach you season after season. So here's one from April 27, 2019, from Harry Be Good, and it's titled Good and Useful Information. Harry says, I'm really enjoying the content and the candor of its delivery. I find it to be revealing, useful, and enlightening, and I concur with another review that said this is up there with Ben Shapiro in terms of ranking. Texas Man X Ken, on January 19th of 2019, left me a review called An Excellent Review Resource to Develop Mindset for Use in All Warks of Life. Ken said, the information is presented clearly, intelligently, and there has not been a single episode that didn't have some information that, is not only relevant, but enlightening.

Third, Mitt and Lilly, on 5-6, 2020, left me reviewed that was called Just What I Was Looking for. And Lily says, been trying to find the podcast that fits me. Something interesting, intelligent, one that changes and challenges my thinking. This has great insights on myself and others, awesome, awesome, awesome. Thank you to Ken and Lily and everybody who left those kinds of constructive, useful, helpful reviews because that is exactly the kind of constructive review that gives me a chance to intentionally create content, content that I create because I want it to be timely and actionable

and tailored because that is what these three reviews and many, many more have told me is useful. I keep my episodes focused. I keep my episodes short, though I admit that this one is getting a little bit long, because I know that that's what you like. That's the feedback, the constructive feedback, the constructive intent behind the messages I'm getting tells me what I'm doing right. It tells me what I can be doing better. Some of you have even written to tell me what you want me to talk about, and I have created entire podcast episodes based off of what people have told me they want to learn. If you want something different, if you want something new, if you want something specific from me or if you want me to keep doing what I'm doing, press pause right now

and leave me a review of your own. Practice this skill right now. Hit pause, navigate over to your own favorite podcast platform. Give me a review. I don't care if it's one star or five stars or something in between. It doesn't matter to me. Leave me a comment, make it constructive, and help me build something that is useful to you. Because I know. No, we can build something better together than I would ever be able to build alone. That's the same way CIA works. That is the mission. That is the goal.

If you want to influence someone in your workplace, online, in your family, in your peer group, remember to start from a place of constructive intent, not a place of destructive intent. Because the fastest door, the fastest way to gain trust and restructive intent. respect, to get someone to listen to you, to get someone to take action on your opinion, is by helping them build what they are trying to build, not by tearing it down. CIA doesn't blow things up unless we absolutely have to. We win by helping others build the things that make our country safer and stronger. You can do the same thing in your everyday life, in your career, in your business.

business, in your relationships. And when you do, 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, 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.