Modern Wisdom - #063 - Robin Dreeke - How To Read Behaviour Like An FBI Agent

Episode Date: April 11, 2019

Robin Dreeke is the ex Head of the FBI's Behavioural Analysis Program and an author. Robin worked as a counterintelligence agent for the FBI recruiting spies, assets and gathering intelligence for 21 years. From being in the New York Field Office in Manhattan on the day of 9/11 to creating the FBI's elite Counterintelligence Behavioural Analysis program, he's had a fascinating career. Expect to learn the verbal and non-verbal cues which you can use to help earn trust and make your communication more effective with others. We'll also learn to be able to detect deception in others and hear some amazing stories from Robin's time in the most advanced intelligence agency on the planet. Extra Stuff: Robin's Website - http://www.peopleformula.com/ Check out Robin's book It's Not All About Me - https://amzn.to/2Z39wWY Follow Robin on Twitter - https://twitter.com/rdreeke Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends. Today my guest is Robin Dreek and he is the ex-head of the FBI's behavioral science division. Now that sounds like an incredibly secretive and exciting job to have and it really is. Today's discussion takes us through Robin's 21 year in-field career including when he was in Manhattan on 9-11. He was out for coffee with his friend as the first plane struck the North Tower and then back on the 25th floor of his department when the second plane hit. Apart from that, we're also going to learn the verbal and nonverbal cues that both you can use to help encourage trust and

make your communication with others more effective and also to be able to detect deception in other people. Robin really is the real deal. It's evident that he has a very terrifying and wide-ranging skill set of personal and interpersonal communication. I'm super happy to have him on. I'm not going to pontificate anymore. Please welcome Robin Drake. Oh yeah, PS. We did have some connection issues during this episode. I promise that any of the cuts I made weren't due to Robin giving away national secrets, and also the irony of a podcast about communication being beset with communication problems is not lost but there may be a couple of jumps here and there so just bear that in mind.

So Robin, is this the moment where the FBI burst in through the door of my bedroom and tell me that we need to stop this interview? Is that what happens? No, because I duck and weave really well. And you're on the other side of the screen, so you're going to be fine. Well anyway, thank you very much for coming on. Welcome to Monham Wisdom. It's a pleasure to have you here. Thanks, sir.

Thanks for having me and excited about it as well. It's going to be a great conversation. So can you tell the listeners at home what your job roles were, please? Sure. So I'll kind of give you a chronology from the beginning to the end without taking a million million at minutes to do this just because it's not boring, but it's good to frame the background of where I came from to where I arrived and where I'm still going to. And that is so my background is I graduated from the United States Naval Academy here in Annapolis, Maryland and from there I went

on to become a Marine Corps officer and from there there I joined the FBI, and I joined the FBI in 1997, and worked counterintelligence for my entire career. So I was assigned to the New York Field Office in Manhattan. From there I went to Norfolk, Virginia, from Norfolk, Virginia, I went into management, so I went up to the J.O.G.R. Hoover Building here in Washington, D.C. Also, they're not my entire career, I worked Russians. So that's kind of the new vote thing these days, although for 21 years, no one is listening to me. And so when I started running the behavioral now,

the program on headquarters, during my time in New York before I got there, I got on our behavioral analysis program for counterintelligence. And what the behavioral analysis program is, and a lot of people know about the profilers and the behavioral analysis program for counterintelligence. And what the behavioral analysis program is, and a lot of people know about the profilers and the behavioral analysis units from things like criminal minds and movies like that, those are the criminal guys,

the guys that work on criminal cases. My team, we work nothing but counterintelligence cases. And my team's whole strategy all the time was how are we going to create a good, healthy engagement with another human being? Whether you're trying to recruit a spy talk to someone interview someone whatever it is is we were always strategizing engagements and so From FBI headquarters

I I eventually escaped that God because I'm not a not a headquarters guy realized and That's been going down to Quantico where I taught counterintelligence I realized and that's been going down to Quantico where I taught counterintelligence Interviewing and sorcery recruiting and things like that and then I took over our behavioral team as the head of it back in 2010ish and I ran it for three or four years until sequestration Which was a big budget thing we had eliminated my team and a bunch of things and so I went back down to the street and I worked As an agent on a street working counterintelligence from the hospital years before we tired. So yeah, my entire career has been nothing about trying to recruit spice, catching spice, talking to sources, all nothing but intel all the time.

Right, I mean, that sounds like the stuff that novels are made of, right? There's a lot of sight kind of the typical spice sounds like the proper James Bonshire. It is, it is, you know, it's really funny. And I actually, you know, It's a lot of sight kind of the typical spice sounds like the proper James Bond shit It is it is you know it's pretty funny and I actually you know you'd be in the UK is really great I have a saying especially I was in New York. I love working with the queen because We worked with M.I.5 and M.I.6 a lot and I love them a lot because their funding was always better than ours And they're great hosts very very great hosts That's awesome. Well, I think the Brits are pretty well renowned for the fact we have good tea and the weather's not so good, but everything else.

That wasn't what we were drinking. Yeah, I bet it wasn't. So you've mentioned this, some New York field office in Manhattan and the J Edgar Hoover building. Those are places that I really only know as references for movies, but that sounds like a sort of place where there's an awful lot going on, a pretty big hub of activity I'm going to guess. Yeah, but I'm always, I'm just about this. People are generally under and pressed with their own jobs. It's always the outside topic. For me, it was my job. Basically, my job was to build relationships, to build trust. Yeah. I got you.

And so what was interesting was, a lot of people, so I wound up writing a bunch of articles and wrote a couple of books. I got another one coming out this week year. And my intro to whatever I'm doing to speak, a talk, you know, podcast or even in my writing, it always starts out with me kind of laying out that background of mine, which says, wow, this guy is a type a hard-charging guy. Okay. And I'll say absolutely right. The problem is if you want to recruit spies, you're going to fail majestically with that, with that kind of behavior profile. Wow.

Okay, so take us through what that means and why that's the case. Sure, well, and this is how I've related to business with all the companies I work with because I called my job the most challenging one in sales because it was literally the toughest sales job I think I didn't have. And that's what I have always,

when I transition and I talk to a lot of groups outside the FBI, and obviously that's all I talk to now. This is how I line it out, because when I was in New York, my job is to recruit spice. Here's what that meant. First of all, I'm selling a concept to someone from a foreign country. And the concept I'm selling is that helping the United States is really a good idea. And even though it might not be in your best interest for your country, it's in the best interest of my country.

So first of all, I'm selling a concept and idea that helping and cooperating with me is a great idea. So that's my pro. The second most challenging thing now is it's actually illegal for me as FBI to walk up and talk to a foreign diplomat because all the spies are foreign diplomats under diplomatic cover, and by treaty, it's actually illegal for me to approach them. So if my client that I'm trying to sell this product to, one, doesn't really care for my product, two, it's illegal for me to actually contact him about my product, that's your

first challenge. Does it kill me? actually contact him about my product. That's your first challenge. Does it come to the big barriers there? Yeah, really are. And the other thing, so if you can't talk to them directly, you're going to maybe try to sell through third parties, some of their contacts. And in law enforcement, I love to say this analogy because most people that work in law enforcement they say reason why people have to talk to them. They've done something illegal.

So there's a compulsion. Well, when you work in the world of counterintelligence, very rarely have people done something illegal. It takes spies for instance. It doesn't matter what country they're in. All they're doing is collecting intelligence and what generally is intelligence. Well, it's actually reading things in the newspaper,

hearing things on the news or looking at a blog or something like this. So you get information. And now your next job is to source that information to people on the know. So say they read something on newspaper, they read a blog, they see a posting. Well, now they're going to go to the president of a clear-to-funse contractor, another diplomat, someone from a think tank, that they can say, what do you think about this? Now they get their opinion on it. Well, now that opinion has sourcing, now sourcing becomes

intelligence. And none of that's illegal. And so there's no compulsion for them to want to talk to me because they've done nothing illegal. It's illegal for me to talk to them. They don't want to buy my product. And now I want to talk to people that are around them and the people that are around them that are talking to, they're not doing anything illegal either. And so, yeah, so I want to quickly realize, when you're in your late 20s and you have this hardcore type of personality,

is if you approach people with that kind of personality that don't have any reason why they should want to talk to you, you're going to get shut down really fast. And so that was my background. So luckily for me, though, I was on a squad of people that were my Jedi masters, you know, one of particular's names, John, you know, he had this art form down. And just giving example, you know, in my line of work or my previous line of work, getting, you know, actually recruiting a spy from another country to cooperate with us and give us all the jewels of the kingdom, it's like hitting Lotto. It's that rare and it's that beneficial when it does, you know, or winning, you know, winning sweepstakes.

Yeah. And when you do, it's extremely beneficial. So I always viewed my job every day is like buying a Lotto ticket. I create operations that give me our opportunity to hit a lot of or hit that sweepstakes. And you know, unbeknownst to me, one of the guys that I was working with that became my mentor guide and really my best friend. He had hit a lot of 14 times in his career. And yeah, no kidding. And it was really dumb found because I never knew that for years just because one of his great tenets of life is he lived with great humility and humbleness He never made it about him his desk at work had no I love me trophies or posters on it Um, it was always about everyone else but himself and that was really the key You know, I started modeling my behavior

I tried to after him and then when I started when people started asking me to teach this That was the first time I actually had to take my friend John's art form of interpersonal communication and make it a paint by number so it could be replicated. And that's where all the start of getting born. That's so fascinating. I mean, it very quickly goes away from being luck and goes on the skill when you win the lottery 14 times, right? Yeah, yeah. So there's no luck involved with this. Yeah, for sure. And it's full point, too.

Go ahead. Did you have a background in psychology or in any sort of behavioral sciences before you went to the FBI? No, actually, you know, my background was leadership from the Marine Corps. Without realizing, I was getting this art form better by the time I had gotten out, came in the FBI. And actually, it was very helpful because I had all these,

I probably had about 15, 17 years of field experience doing this before actually worked on my graduate work in organizational psychology. And so I started seeing the science behind why everything I was doing in the field was working. So instead of learning, so instead of having the education first and then trying to apply it in limited situations, I had, you know, over 21 years of experience of living this and now I was learning the, I call lens behind these actions behind it. So it actually was more reinforcing

and made a hell of a lot more sense to me afterwards. And so it was a combining of two. Matter of fact, when I would assemble a team to do a consultation for someone in the country, typically I put three, at least two or three case agents that had operational experience like I did. And I put them with, you know, and one of my organizational psychologists that actually could just validate the science

is solid by what it is we're trying to do. So the collaboration of brains and brawn kind of two degree, I suppose? It's always, you know, and at the root of everything that we're always trying to do is, and someone unsass me too, you know, so how do you recruit a spy? I said, well, first of all, you don't. And it's like with any individual and this is sales as well. You know,

while you're trying, all human beings are trying to do is they're trying to be affiliated and validated by people. And ultimately, human beings are exceptionally predictable. And here's how they're predictable. I can always take that face value that everyone will always act in their own best interests. We're genetically coded for it, we're biologically coded for it, and now my job is to figure out what you think your best interests are. And one way we do that is, and this is where we do all the time, is I have to figure out what your priorities are. Your needs, wants, dreams, aspirations, personal, professional, long-term, short-term. And now, once I figure out what your priorities are,

and I have resources that will serve those priorities, we're gonna align, and that's where sales comes in, and that's where collaboration comes in, that's where relationships build. And so what you're doing is, when you're talking to a new potential client, or you're trying to recruit a spy, all I'm trying to figure out is, what are your priorities? What are your goals and objectives?

And what resources do I have to get you to that point? So what do you want and what can I give you? Yeah, absolutely. You know with full transparency, you know the biggest thing too is you know I'm I am 100% anti manipulation or deception or pretext or any of these things because people can pick up on manipulation or attempts of manipulation or coercion very rapidly. It gives you that creepy feeling. When you meet someone, bad sales guy trying to sell you something, you pick up on it immediately. And so the best thing you can do is don't have deception.

I refuse to lie to you or deceive or you subdiffusion anyway, because it'll blow trust and once trust is blown, just give up. Amazing. So take us through the basics of the behavioral science as you were applying it in the field, if you would. Sure. So my five steps that I realized that I was doing, and here's where it came from, I was asked to do an article right before I got out.

And it was on, what does counterintelligence do? What does your team do? And I never really thought about it before. And because again, when you live something, you just kind of do an act. And so I took that step back. And I gave myself that optic of what am I actually doing in all these behavioral optic of what am I actually doing in all

these behavioral assessments? What I was actually doing in all these cases throughout my career? Whether it was a recruitment operation, an interview, a double agent operation, false flags, I'm all the fun, whokey spookies, pie stuff. And what I quickly realized was all I was ever doing was strategizing trust, because I was always trying to get, and hopefully have someone from move from point A to point B, hopefully point B would be a place that we could collaborate. And on the only way someone is going to move from A to B

and collaborate with you is through trust. And so when I took that step back and realized, wow, and everything I'd ever done in my entire career, and then for the larger optic in my entire life, and it's what we do with human beings, we're always strategizing trust and relationships. And so I broke it down to five really simple steps. It's what I call the elusive obvious.

So as you said, so here's the process. It's really simple. First, what's your goal? What is it you're trying to achieve? And then the second part of that, so why should they want to? Why should they want to be interviewed by you? Why should they want to co-operate with you? Why should they want to do anything? And at first, as surface as I got with it, thinking of myself, oh, it's a very short term goal. But then I asked myself,

well, why do I want to do that goal? Where am I trying to go with this? And ultimately, in my work, I was trying to protect national security. And ultimately, I came out with what I call the end goals and means goals. And interviewing someone or recruiting someone or selling a product, that's really a means to the end. And at the end goal, whether you're trying to sell a product, you're trying to honor the mission statement of the company. Me, I was trying to honor the mission statement of the company. Me, I was trying to honor, protect the national security of my country. And what was really fascinating was so many people and things have input on those means

goals. There's a lot of relationships that go into this, someone willing to cooperate and trust you. So what I started focusing was on the end goals first. So I reversed it. And the end goals for me are very, very simple and easy. My number one goal in every single engagement one is a healthy professional relationship because without a healthy professional relationship everything also fall apart. I have become so adamant about folks on relationships above all else that I'm, I preach at every

opportunity yet because the greatest analogy I always have with a group of 1,000 people or two people, I can always say I can guarantee you not one person who's sitting in this room as successful as you are without a relationship with at least one to ten people because nothing can happen from that. So I always focus on the relationships first. Second, under that, my next goal is open-on communication and transparency because you cannot have a healthier relationship without that open-on communication transparency. And my third anchor, my third angle I always focus on, is I make myself an available resource for the prosperity of others with no expectation of reciprocity.

And here's how that breaks down. Available resource for others. I once offered someone help and he thought it was condescending, that I was offering help. He thought I thought I was better than he was and so he took offense to it. So that's why I have available resources. Because human beings do not like being looked down upon, they want to be treated as equal, they want to be affiliated and valued. So I offer resources for their prosperity. Prosperity is a very open term, prosperity according to what they think prosperity is. And the last part of this is no expectation or reciprocity. In other words, I am being willing to give my resources to do you without an expectation or reciprocity. In other words, I'm not trying to do this to get something. Again, as soon as you do that, you start going into the realm of

manipulation. Shields go up and trust goes out the window. So those are my three anchors and that's step one. As long as I get set on those and I move forward, them are window. So those are my three anchors and that's step one. As long as I get set on those and I move forward, them are great. So step two, this is easy. Discover their priorities. Their needs, wants, dreams, and aspirations, short-term, long-term, personal, professional.

How do they be prosperity and success from their point of view? Because if you don't talk in terms of their priorities, you're wasting your voice, because everyone will listen to you if you're talking in terms of what's important to them. So step two is about them. Step three, understand their context.

How do they see the world to their particular optic without judging it? In other words, what's their age, their demographic, their ethnicity, their gender, socioeconomic status, all these things playing to how people see world to their particular optic. And that's generally also where we find places of affiliation and that we can build upon.

One of my favorite questions when dealing with lots of folks internationally is, would you mind sharing a favorite family holiday you had growing up? And again, you don't have to have the same favorite family holiday, but what you have is a favorite family holiday. Everyone has something they remember from their childhood. And when you share those kinds of things, well, look, I had a childhood just like yours.

We had something we enjoyed. We had a tradition. We had a meal, we have tastes, we have flavors, we have music, all these things are where we build those affiliations and we build that tribe because ancient tribal man, you know, tribe of 30, 40, 50, it was the first form of survival. If you were not part of a tribe, the likelihood of you passing on your genetic coding to others was slim to none. And so we're constantly seeking to be affiliated with meaningful people in our lives and be

valued by them. So this is the process by which we're doing that. So that's the third step. Four step. It's actually, this is where you're going to make sure you're talking in terms of them. I want to suspend your ego. And that is, you know, you got to put your own thoughts and opinions aside, you got to talk in terms of them and theirs,

and never argue context. In other words, if they have a certain point of view that you don't agree with, what's it going to cost you to not argue it? Second, be non-judgmental. You know, because people, I hear another guarantee in life, if you start judging them verbally or non-verbal, I guarantee you their shields are going up because you're basically saying, hey, you're not part of my tribe, and so people get defensive, and that'll get shields up. Honoring reason, and honoring reasons really where you want to make sure that everything you're saying and doing is congruent with what it is you're trying to achieve. Keep that thoughtful mind engaged, don't get emotionally hijacked, where you're going to let your emotions interrupt what's going on between your brain and your mouth. And so, honoring the reasons I'm always asking myself is what I'm about to do or say going to help

or hinder what is I'm trying to do? And ultimately, remember what I'm trying to do is create a healthy relationship. Fourth is validate others. Validation, this is just seeking to understand that a deep level is possible. It's not saying you necessarily agree with them, although agreeing with them can be validating. But just seek to understand, especially if you have a different political point of view on religion, anything it is, it's not that you're placating them or pacifying them. No, you're seeking to understand how it is they have a certain point of view. The key here is you have to be congruent with what's in your heart and what's coming out of your

mouth because if your body language and your verbals are incongruent, you just look like you're full of it. So you have to actually be honest internally about trying to understand them. And finally, the fifth step of step four is be generous, be generous for your time and be generous for the resources. And the finally fifth step is craftness engagement. How are you going to put all together to have a great meaningful, genuine, sincere conversation and dialogue. And so to do that, the first thing I always do is I'm going to state a very specific validation of a strength, attribute or action that I've witnessed. In other words, I'm going to,

it's always be seeking the greatness of others where their strengths are, so I can always start out with a conversation about, hey, when you did this last week, it had such a great result in this situation. Would you mind sharing me how you came up with that? Would you be willing to share it with others? And from there, we just have a great dialogue

and conversation. There's many other steps to that, but those are the five basic steps I used, what I call the loose of obvious, like how do you form a relationship of trust and health? That's it. I get it. So it sounds like steps one through four, setting the scene and coming up with what you're going to say, and then five is delivery.

Is that fair to say? Absolutely. And it seems like, I think, I'm sorry. Based on what I thought about behavioral analysis, I thought that it would be all step five. That's probably my romanticizing a little bit of the spy industry. And then a lack of understanding of just how much stuff probably goes on behind the scenes with counterintelligence and that the tip of the spear is exactly just that. It's the tiny little bit at the end that delivers the message or the blow or whatever it might

be as opposed to all of the work that's gone before it. You know, you did a great job summarizing it and you couldn't be more right. I mean, it really comes down to you have to be no people and how do you know people? And this goes back to a lesson I learned really early on in my career in the Marine Corps. I remember I got ranked last out of all these other officers and very humbling moment. And I go up to the guys for a meeting me and I said, all right, what am I doing wrong? As well, you just need to make it about everyone else but yourself and be a better leader. I go up to the guys for 80, and I said, all right, what am I doing wrong? As well, you just need to make it about everyone else but yourself,

and be a better leader. And I was like, well, I thought I was doing that. What the hell are you talking about? Make it about everyone but myself. How do you do that? What's the method? How do you make a conversation about everyone else but yourself? I didn't understand it.

This process, this is exactly this. This is how you make it about the other person. You're finding other priorities, you're finding other contexts, and then how do you put all these things together to talk in terms of them? And you know, you add these four things I love to throw into every state when I make is one, I seek their thoughts and opinions. I talk in terms of our priorities, I validate them non-judgmentally, and I give them choices. When I do one of those four things and everything, I say I write that entire conversation just as completely about them. I understand. And I'm going to guess that the science will say that that plays into

a sense of trust and safety and focus on them as an individual which I'll presume will probably lower barriers and stuff like that. Absolutely. So here's the science behind it. We know the sannic totally because when you say, hey, when someone's talking about things that are important to me, I love listening to it. And we all have experienced those moments where we've had these conversations where you said you had to go in five minutes, but you're there for 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes longer because you love the conversation, because they're validating you so that's behind it

They did a great study at Harvard back in the spring of 2012 Where they actually wired people's brains up and what they found was on average People spend about 40% of their day sharing their own thoughts opinions and ideas that they have and what they're doing is They're testing the environment around them saying hey, here's what I think, here's what I think, here's what I think, because we're seeking constantly to see if we can affiliate with tribes and affiliate with people. And what they found is when people were sharing their thoughts and opinions ideas, and those thoughts and opinions and ideas are being validated by others, dopamine was being released in the brain. So the pleasure centers, you know, we're firings, serotonin,

ocatosis, and a bloodstream, our pleasure centers are constantly firing when we're being accepted, non-judgmentally for those of the thoughts and opinions and ideas that we have, because we want to be affiliated with meaningful groups and organizations for survival. So that's the science behind why, when you structure a conversation, dialogue, and relationship like this, it's magic. And it's, and the greatest thing too, it's totally genuine. There's no, I'm anti-verbal judo and how to win an argument. I just, there's no strategy on how to do that. It's just like how do you get to understand a person

and make it about them? Okay. Okay. Okay. I get it. I get it. So the, the first four steps that are quite conceptual, I think must require a lot of research about the person, but to me just seem like spending time and attention, like work out what it is that the person wants and how you can speak their language and give them choices and don't judge.

But the fifth one, I imagine requires a little bit more skillfulness. Well, here's how I put it together. Here's a generally structure. I imagine requires a little bit more skillfulness. Well, here's how I put it together. Here's a generally structure. And this again, I don't have my notes in front of me going off top of my head. What I generally do is, again, step one, is I make a very specific statement of validation of a strength, attribute, or action. Now, that's if I know what one of those strengths are. If I don't, I'm going to be talked to a stranger, do a call. The first thing I'm going to validate is their time, because human beings do not have to give me their time. So I'm going to be extremely deferential and gracious for the time that they can give me. And all for also willing to walk away if they don't want to engage

me, because in order to make this conversation about them, you have to be willing to accept their denials of your time. So I start out with that. Next, I'm gonna see their thoughts and opinions about their priorities. That's step two of my how I strategize. Now, if I don't know what their priorities happen to be at this point, because again, I haven't had any research, because I do, I mean, we do this in sale

and I'll come and do lots of cold calls. But if you don't know what their priorities are, here's a general priority of every single human being on this planet. Safety is security and prosperity for them, themselves and their families, because that's survival. And so public safety is one that I'll always go to for the things I was doing, but safety is security and prosperity.

I work with financial companies all the time. That's sell insurance. Well, safety is security and prosperity for them and their families, that's a priority. So again, if I don't know what one specific of their priorities are, yet one that I can ask them about and see if and then seek their thoughts on opinions on is to save the security and prosperity for you and your family and important things you. And so that's step two. The third way I do this next is I'm going to validate those thoughts, opinions, ideas

that they just shared with me and validation to get it. If I don't understand exactly what they're saying, I'll die a little deeper so I can get a better understanding and now most of the time what we're trying to do is we're trying to inspire people to listen to our thoughts and opinions ideas. I know there was what we're trying to impart on them and I use that word inspire because that's really critical. Something I realized a number of years ago is that there's a big difference between trying to invent someone of something I want to listen because really you really can't convince anyone of anything because that's about you and parting what you want them to listen to rather than rather I think

of how can I inspire them to want to listen to me because if I'm thinking of inspiring you to action if I'm thinking of inspiring you to listen or do something in order to inspire you to do it it's got to be completely about you and your idea. So how do I inspire you to listen to my idea? This is easy. I'm going to ask you your thoughts and opinions and ideas about my thoughts and opinions and ideas. In other words, say someone has certain political point

of view and I say, no, no, no, I don't agree with that. Here's what I think. That's me trying to convince you of my point of view and you're not going to listen. As opposed to, they say the same thing. And I said, wow, I never heard it really quite put that way before. Help me understand how did you come up with that and they share the thoughts and opinions ideas and I say, wow, I appreciate that. I was curious, what do you think about this? And now I'm seeking their thoughts opinions about my thoughts and opinions.

I've always wanted to plant seeds with people by giving them thoughts. You don't plant seeds with people by telling them what you think. You plant seeds with people by asking them what they think. You plant scenes with people by asking them what they think. So that's where this part of the process is. I ask them their thoughts and opinions about my ideas. Finally, well, not finally. Next, I now ask them, hey, I understand their priorities. I've talked in terms of my priorities.

Now I offer them choices of overlapping priorities. I heard you say this, this, and this, and I thought this and this, this. Do you think we might be able to work on maybe X, Y, and Z? And now you're on a choice. And then finally, if appropriate, I empower them a choice about remaining in contact or of assistance. That's it. That's that's that's the fifth step. That's how I that's how I line it out. And so when I'm talking to someone live, I do it that way, or if I'm going written, I just make sure that at least every one of those things is in every single statement I make.

And now you've got yourself a spy. Now you've caught a spy in there, they're giving up all of the state secrets and you've got the Wi-Fi password and everything. Only if it's in their best interest to do so. Yeah, fair point. So I wanted to ask about specific techniques that you guys use in the field when time is of the essence. So obviously when we're talking about this kind of a situation, it's a, I'm gonna guess there'll be a word for it like a long, a longer game where you have time to prep

but there must be time, you know, you were in the service. I don't know what particular department you would have been in at 9-11, but you know, there's periods of time where you was right in New York City, darn it, yeah. Oh, wow. So, I mean, well, first off, can you tell us, can you tell us about that? What it was like in the Secret Service when that was that was happening? Yeah, it was pretty interesting. My next book starts out with my being right there during this our office in Manhattan was about five blocks away from the World Trade Center. Oh my God.

And I heard I was on the street with a friend of mine grabbing a cup of coffee and we heard the first plane hit the North Tower. We looked up and it looked so small compared to the size of building. We thought it was a small plane that hit. And immediately my mind and thoughts were going to bite there's no fog in the air there's the guy must have had a heart attack and I went up my my floor where I worked in the building was on a

25th floor and so I was up in you know in our office looking at the north tower again like five six blocks away the smoke kept getting larger and larger and spread out more. And finally, started seeing what you thought was debris coming down from the floors in the North Tower. And it was actually people jumping because you started seeing legs and arms flailing on the way down. And that's when the South Tower was hit by the jet coming from the South. And that fireball coming through as like you're watching a movie and you're right there. So, yeah, we, because again, I worked counterintelligence at the time.

And back then, we were all in the same division with the terrorism division. And the entire office, we worked nothing, but then terrorism from, you know, probably about, it was from right from September straight through to December. I think it wasn't until December of 2001 when we actually had our first day off.

We were on shifts of 12 hours on, 12 hours off, seven days a week for that entire time. And it was a war zone, that kind of exhaustion. Because again, that's 12 hours time, 12 off, that didn't count your commute time. And it was exhausting. But what an experience. My first night, you know, on 9.11, I go down to get my car to go home and I had an engine from the planet at the South Tower about 30 feet in front of me, because I did flown that far north before it hit the ground.

It's about easy. Yeah. It was. And so our entire time then was talking to absolutely everyone. You know, you just absolutely so many leads coming in and you just talk to everyone that might know something. I was I got involved in so many different interviews, so many different things during a time for time frame because every day it was a different day and never knew what you're

going to be doing. I was out of the fresh kills landfill with a rake raking for fingers and toes and body parts to try to give back the family members one day and another day. I'm out at John F. Kennedy Airport pulling someone off a British Airways flight that was a name had come in from India that they thought was a terrorist. I mean, you had no idea what you're going to do every day. Oh, wow. That is, that's like a, the equivalent, the secret service equivalent of being a dog's body, I suppose, that like, that you're not only washing the culturally one day and then you're delivering the drinks and then serving the queen and then doing everything.

Yeah, it was a jack of all traits for all of them. Absolutely. So with regards to needing to gain trust or be effective, rapidly, yes. So one caveat I'll put to it, any time you put a time constraint on having to do something and you're not having full disclosure of your time constraint, you will be manipulation. And again, that's just the name of the game. I think having a awareness what you're about to do

will keep things good for you so you don't start rationalizing what the relationship is. Because if you start using manipulative tactics, you don't have a healthy relationship. You have a very short term, you know, manipulation relationship. And so I, it's healthy for me to do that. And now, and I also caveat 99.99% of my time, I never had to do that, thankfully.

But when doing so, yeah, you can't, they're using the same methodologies that I lined out. They're exactly the same. Human beings will do exactly the same thing. Now, when you're gaining information, there's people ask me all the time about elicitation, how do you elicit information for people. One, you can't do anything without some semblance of trust,

and so you will have to develop some semblance of trust. Now, it's not going to be, it's going to be one side of trust, because they're going to be trusting you, and even though you're actually viewing them, not in the same view of, you know, not in the same relationship, but the human beings have this incentive need to be correct. I think one of the easiest, elicitation techniques there are that people use pretty frequently is what I call an intentional misstatement. So that is say something that you aren't quite sure of, blurred it out loud, ask them, you know,

make a statement and they will correct you. It's a guarantee, you know, whether you're trying to gain a data birth of someone, you know, just say, hey, I'm pretty good at this. What are you born in June? I go, no, July, oh, the 15th, no, the 22nd. I mean, and so right there, I got a data birth of someone, just say, hey, I'm pretty good at this. What are you born in June? I go, no, July, oh, the 15th, no, the 22nd. I mean, and so right there, I got their data birth while I even ask in a question.

I made a statement. Yeah, I can play that through my mind as well. I might desire to correct you's like coming up as soon. Absolutely. So, by doing that, you get a lot of people's priorities. You start understanding their intentions. So whatever tidbits of intelligence you've been tasked with getting, you create a strategy about how you're going to make an intentional misstip in about that specific type of intelligence

because most of the time when you're are trying to gather information, and whether you're trying to do, you know, gather corporate information, you know, for takeovers or, you know, to outdo the client, you know, or where you're trying to, you know, for takeovers or, you know, to outdo the client, you know, or where they're trying to recruit information for spies. You don't want anyone else to be alerted to the things that you're looking for, because I said, as I said it earlier, if you ask me a question, I guarantee you they're going to think about that question forever. It'll rat around in their brain. So the trick is, don't ask questions about the things that you care most of the finding out about.

Yeah, it's planting a flag in the ground to identify what your priorities are, which is not not necessarily what you were after you wanted theirs. Right. Right. So, but now I'll tell you, I my earlier years, I was more into understanding and exercising that. And what I came to find out was was I got better and better at getting that. And what I came to find out was, I got better and better at getting that, the stronger the relationship and the trust was. So I go for the rapid as fast as possible trust with full transparency, which gets that trust at that point. And then I just come right out and ask them

what I want and ask them to tell them why I need it. And you'd be amazed at how much easier that is. Can you give us an example? So I mean, just probably in my last couple of years before retired, we came up, and I won't give you exact details, but we came up with a situation where we identified an emerging threat, the public safety, and they said we need to find a source in this area. And I didn't know anyone, but I went to some of my guys that, you know, are my sources of information.

I said, hey, we need someone in this area. They said, I don't know, but because I have healthy relationships with them, and they have healthy relationships with others, about two weeks later, one of my contacts brings me a potential guy. You know, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't introduce me, but it gives me his website, gives me an email address, and I was like, ah, this guy might be right up the,

what we're looking for. And so what I did was, I looked at his industry, I looked at his background, and I strategized my, and I actually sent him an email. And in the email, I validated his time. Like I said before I sought his thoughts and opinions regarding this specific industry and the threat it might have the public safety but the same time wants to protect this

industry from being shut down if something from public safety went wrong in other words I talked in terms of his priorities I sought those thoughts and opinions and I said here's why it's important to public safety you know because we want to prevent x, y and z and I said would you be willing to have a conversation about this? If not, please let me know. And I'll leave you completely alone. Well, he called me about, I think 15 minutes. And I said, Hey, Mr. So-and-so, you know, if you wouldn't mind, he goes, Oh, I'd love to help out because of what you said. It makes a lot of sense. It's a great. Would you mind if I signed you up as one of our sources and put you in the intelligence

system and so that people can benefit from your thoughts and ideas and we can protect us people? It goes, okay. And there you go. That's as easy it is. It wasn't using any spy craft subterfugures like, hey, here's how you can be a source and here's how you can help protect people. Again, what are people's general priorities?

Safety protection themselves or families and their well-being? I like about the approach that you're describing here is that it does come from a place of virtue for the listeners who are regular. They'll know that we're big fans and as far as I'm concerned, truth is a superpower. One of the main reasons that I like trying to tell the truth as much as I can, although I'm not always perfect at it, is that by telling the truth, you never have to remember what you said. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I went through under,

I went through undercover certification course years ago and they said the same thing, you know, you have only so many lies you can tell and then you gotta keep, the more lies you tell about who you are, the more you gotta keep track of. Because once you're out of the bucket, you can't bring them back again.

And so I just got in the habit of not lying and it was so much easier. I just don't lie. Now if I can't share something with you, it's big difference between lying and not sharing something. And if I can't share something with you that you want to know, I apologize until you why I can't share, because again I have transparency. Yeah, there's a difference between, as Sam Harris describes it in his book, Lying, he says, there's a difference between lies of omission and lies of commission. And I think that's identified quite nicely there. So we've talked about being on broadcast,

what about when you're on receive? There's some strategies that people can use to identify people that are on trustworthy or people that have an alternative agenda. And you know, you watch these stories, these programs like Light, and stuff like that where you've got these incredibly proficient guys. For anyone who hasn't seen it, the main protagonist is able to detect a modicum of disgust

at his stepmother's death and that means that he did it because his eyes flicked up into the left and all of this kind of crazy stuff. I'm going to guess that the level of fidelity is not quite that high, but that there must be some sort of guys in the service who do have some pretty crazy skills like that. So, I'm very good friends with a few of them. One of my best friends is Joe Navarro, a world renowned body language expert, and he will be the first to tell you as well. You, the best people in the world, including Joe can only detect deception 50% of the time, 50% accuracy, using nonverbal detection alone, because it simply doesn't work.

Because what you do is, if you're going to use nonverbals, and I do, and what you're looking for, is you're not looking for deceptive indicators. You're looking for stress indicators, because line is stressful, but also remembering negative thoughts and events can be stressful as all. And so our non-verbals will indicate comfort from stress.

And so I'm looking for, am I causing comfort? I'm causing stress. But again, that's a whole separate topic to get into. So basically, as I heard you ask the question, I get the assess a lot too. How do I make sure I'm not being taken advantage of, or I'm not being manipulated or attempt to be manipulated? Correct? Yes. This one is really easy because I get this a lot. So someone will say to me, so, rather, what do you do if someone's trying to manipulate you? And my first response when someone asked me at the first time, it kind of befuddled me because I said to myself, wow,

it's never happened. And I said, well, how does it never happen? I said, well, this is easy because if I'm always looking for a healthy relationship and healthy relationships are based on open-aus communication transparency. If you are actually communicating something to me that I don't understand because there's omission or there's blank spaces. And I ask you a question for clarification, transparency, and you don't give it. I just stop engaging you because you're obviously not looking for a healthy relationship and it's okay with me. Again, I don't hold resentment against it. I just understand that, all right, your agenda

is different than mine. And if I'm looking for transparency, you're not willing to give it, then I'm not willing to keep engaging with you. And so my only advice to people is, don't be afraid to ask clarifying questions. If you don't understand something, if people are talking fast or they're using words in terms or situations you don't quite understand, ask for clarification. Apologize, self-deprecating humor, and ask for that clarification.

If they can't give it to you, I become skeptical of the priorities that they have, the goals that they have, I don't think they're gonna be really congruent with what came out of their mouth. Especially if someone gives you that creepy car salesman, you know, feeling, it's because they're incongruent with the words that are coming out of their mouth

and what they're actually feeling towards you. Yeah, I guess that's kind of like the canary and the coal mine for all of this, right? If there's just something that you don't understand, that's a byproduct of omission on their side or a lack of some sort of disjointedness within the conversation. And then that can be counteracted by you asking. And then if the follow up, it's like the little hurdle that you're asking them to step over.

And if they can't get over that hurdle, it's right. Probably because they don't want to, I suppose. Right. You stated it perfectly, absolutely. So I just don't engage with, because again, in that situation, I take people very specific, you know, doesn't mean I can't trust them another situation, but in this specific situation, other things that we're talking about, no, we're not going to have a healthy engagement here. So I'll just disengage. It sounds an awful lot like being quite frank

and quite upfront, like almost not blasé, but certainly very upfront and as transparent as you can be, both in terms of what you are trying to convey and what you do and don't understand, is forming quite a big basis here. And I suppose that the foundation for a relationship of trust is truth in two directions, right? In openness, yeah, you know, and because you said, you know, very frank and it is, it can

be very frank, but same time though, it's very extremely cordial because it's always about them. There's never me in flicking my thoughts and opinions on you about you. I don't judge you. I don't say, hey, I'm just being honest. You're an ass. That's not the thing you do. Being frank and open about what my intentions are and trying to understand yours.

That's it. Yeah, I get that. So, I wanted to pick your brains as far as the classified broadcaster will allow us to just get some stories from your time while you're in the service. And the first thing that's come to mind for me is who do you think on the planet has the best behavioral agents? Would you say that the US is really good, or do the Russians happen to be fantastic at it? Boy, everyone, you know, I wouldn't put it down with service because services across all countries have greatness and have inside each of those services that has the patience

and the focus of trust on and put the broader need of the country ahead of their personal need for self gratification and glory. And I've seen that in every service. I've worked with, I've seen some fantastic Russian officers, I've seen some harsh Russian officers, I've seen some fantastic American CIA and FBI agents and some horrible ones And age doesn't matter. It comes down to this person put in the mission of the country ahead of themselves

And do they have the patience to develop healthy trust in relationships? The people that can do that I don't care where you're from those are the ones that win Because they're winning for a greater cause. That's it, I've seen it everywhere. Yeah, I totally get that. So how about when... Oh, I'll give you one group that I was really, really impressed with. They were on the United States Army Green Berets.

I worked with them a couple of years back. And the most different thing about them is that they were very much like my career. My career was what it was not because of any, anything except opera, just chance. It really was chance. I worked operations for 21 years. I did the same type of operations for 21 years. You're going to either get good or get out. And a lot of times in all these other organizations, you'll do it for a couple years on a street, then you promote into management and up and up and up.

And so you're no longer doing the actual craft on the ground. And you're going to lose it because one, you never mastered it to begin with. And two, you don't do it anymore. I was very fortunate that I did it for a number of years. And you're going to lose it because one, you never mastered it to begin with, and two, you don't do it anymore. I was very fortunate that I did it for a number of years. Then I was on the team and ran the team for a couple of years, still doing it. And then I went back and did it for five more years before I retired.

I mean, it was non-stop, constantly strategizing, and strategizing learning about what, and that's why I'm so altruistic about this because ultimately came down to people just want healthy relationships so they can survive. That's it. Now how do I foster that? And so what I mentioned the Green Berets, they spend this one particular group, spend their entire career doing exactly the same thing. You're going to get mad skills at anything you do if you do it for that long. It's just services that allow their people to continually hone practice refine and get best at their craft over years. They're going to be the best you end up with some some real beasts at the end of the I suppose. Yeah, you really do and the greatest thing is the real is called the real beast.

The user ones that are actually the genuinely good people in life because they know the cause of the effect of behaviors, they know that it all comes down to relationships and trust. There's no, these are the ones that aren't playing games with people anymore. I know people every now and then will say, hey, when we're going out to dinner, why don't you talk to that waitress, get her date of birth and her pin number and I'm like, I just do you understand? I don't play with people. I just refuse to play with people. I honor people too much and I honor relationships and health and being a good human being too much to play with people. Are there some agents that you've met who are sufficiently talented to be able to,

like if they decided to put their foot to the floor so to speak, would be able to do some things like that and really use these to get some surprising results out of people. Oh, God, yeah. I mean, so I got a friend of mine, Chris Hagnaggy, social engineer, and actually I'm a board member on the Innocent Lies foundation with him. He uses all his technical and cyber skills to protect companies, and then we took it to the next level, and we're protecting human trafficking with children around the world. And years ago, we put together a social engineering course where he certified people as social engineers. In other words, can these people go in and hack information from human beings and get these, the type of information that can compromise companies so that we can educate that company on protecting themselves against

more runs like us that are actually having the various things in their minds because yeah, these skills used by the bad guys, that's why there are hackers, that's why there are data mines that get stolen all the time because it comes down to human beings and these techniques. And the difference is that those people are manipulating and have an agenda and generally agendas are on timelines. And so that's why I'm going to comment with choice about maintaining contact or assistance is all these, one of my fail safes, that make sure this is a manipulative.

Also, no expectation or reciprocity, that's my also one. But these people, the bad guys, they're doing exactly the same thing. They just have an agenda. The good thing is though, people with agenda tend to be much more impatient than people that are actually going for healthier relationships.

So in patients, you can see through in patients and very rapidly. That's so cool. I love the term social engineer as well. It really does sound like a hacker taken off the computer and into the real world. That's what they do. I mean, these guys are phenomenal. Chris and his team, you know, are phenomenal at this. And they have, they have competitions, you know, and when they go to blackhead every year, and it's just pretty fast. And when we had the classes out there, and Chris about to have another class now down in Florida, you know, we send people, you know, teams send people, teams out to engage people, elicit information and practice how to do this. Again, no personal identifying information or anything to be

compromised or anything like that, just how do you practice engaging with a stranger and developing rapid trust? Yeah, I guess watching those guys at work must be pretty Fascinating and terrifying in equal measure It becomes you know When you're in what it was come down to you're watching the elusive obvious what are they doing? They're making it all about the other person. It's really pretty. It's real pretty simple if you know how to get out of yourself and out of your own ego Yeah, so one thing that keeps on coming to mind for me as well is obviously you will have been a part of the agency through not quite through a digital revolution, but certainly through a digital surgeons, I suppose, did that and has that made a new body of information,

obviously, how much work is now done online and electronically versus face to face? That was huge. Government organizations are generally light years behind everyone else and ours was definitely one of them. But they're big and slow, they're hard to get moving, right? Like when you've got thousands and thousands of people that you need to drag along with you, it's going to take some time to get them up to speed. So we went over to a paperless system. 2011 to 2013-ish, maybe 2010-ish, and I thought this would never work. I mean, we were so entrenched with putting a hard piece of paper into a supervisor's inbox, the wait for a signature to get it back to put in a file way, which is nothing but a big fat thing of paper and a wall. And I said, this is another going to work. And I'll tell you what, by the time, you know, within a couple years, I mean, by the time I left, I'd never touched

a piece of paper for years. Everything was electronic. Man, it sounds so fucking prehistoric. electronic. Man, it sounds so fucking prehistoric. I know that you know, here's a thing that's going to happen and there's a guy with a pen and he's going to sign it. Like, you probably couldn't even find a pen now. I always carry one. Yeah. The other thing too was funny too. We moved on to, believe it or not, when I first came in, we used to sign time sheets and we used to have different colored pencils for the different kinds of hours we worked. And so we had to have the right colored pencil when we're filling our time sheet for the day. And that got taken by us. That's quite cute. Especially for the FBI. I wouldn't have thought that they would have had something like that. Yeah, time sheets. Yeah, time sheets are big. And they finally

get rid of that. And that one electronic too. Yeah, that was pretty funny. That's hilarious. So before we wrap up, Robin, I wondered if there were any stories that you have that come to mind that you think might interest the listeners, anything that you've been thinking about recently or any situations with other friends or with past experiences for yourself? Huh. Yeah, I think the world is a pretty interesting place right now. That's one thing. Moving forward, what do you think the role of intelligence officers will be as we go forward?

Oh, it's definitely continuing. It has to be. You can only do so many things through a computer, although using the same communication strategies through computers and emails, I do it all the time, and it's very effective. You're always going to need someone that's that tip of the speed, though, do you think? We're never going to be able to just run out of guys that are... Absolutely. ...months behind the screen.

Well, we have hundreds of thousands of years of evolution that say we developed trust in one way. It's not going to get wiped out in a generation that went cyber. It's genetically you can't have it happen. That's why you think about Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or any of these social media platforms. People are looking for likes. Well, why are they looking for likes?

They're looking for followers because that's validation. So my anecdote is that it probably takes you about a thousand likes equal, one person saying good job in life, in life presence. So again, these things are great. I gotta tell you, they're fantastic tools, and I love them to death. But still, one-on-one dialogue, communication, and trust,

and having a healthy relationship that way because you're able to look at everything that's coming at you, able to hear the words, the visual cues, the nonverbal cues. All these things become very congruent with and my form and a healthy relationship is this genuine. And you can do an awful lot without that, but you're never going to take it over an edge with it. That must be quite reassuring, I suppose, to a degree that there's this kind of like an upper ceiling. And I remember listening to Sam Harris talk about the impact, the upcoming impact that virtual reality will have.

And he talked about this kind of cognitive ceiling, you could argue as you've kind of alluded to there, where there's only so far in terms of persuasion that a flat screen in your hand or in front of you on a computer will be able to take you. However, the more immersive you make that experience, the higher that ceiling is going to become raised. So with things like VR and now these new programs where they can take like five minutes of you on me speaking and then completely recreate

whatever they want with the words and the phrases and the cadence that we've been speaking in, that's a pretty scary thought. It is. I'm not one of these guys that says, oh, it's always better the back this way or it was much, you know, the good old days kind of guys. I love watching the advances of things, but every time you have a new breakthrough in something, it can fuse things. Society will be confused because of our coding, our genetic and biological coding.

They'll jump to it, they'll seeking immediate gratification, intellectually from it in some way or whatsoever, and then the brain's going to get confused for a while until they figure out how to actually make it a functional tool that actually aids life. Because it takes a while, every time there's a new jump forward in anything, there's always a stumbling period with trying to figure out how to actually interact with this miraculous thing between our two years that is really the most advanced thing we'll ever see in our lifetime as this brain. It's pretty remarkable.

It's crazy, isn't it? I guess the pace of change as well, the fact is that society is able to move so much more quickly than our brains are. And the most stupid thing is that even if our brains were able to catch up, even if you gave it like a decade to catch up, it'd still be so far behind it would be almost pointless. You're like, I don't need you, like 10 years ago, I didn't need my brain to be able to use a file effects. I needed it to be able to use a blackberry. And in 10 years time, I won't need it to use Instagram. I'll need it to use whatever, whatever's coming next in a decade.

I still can't understand how I could get anything done 20 years ago. You know, with nothing but a pad of paper and a paper calendar, I'm at a desk. I have no idea how I live with a Google calendar or scheduling or or constant communication with the world. I have no idea how I got anything done before. And then you bring it up to now. I have no idea how I get so much done now because I could not have possibly done all this kind of stuff 20 years ago. What the hell did I do with all my time? It's fascinating to think about.

It must have felt like looking back on your career now and having seen both sides of this kind of digital surgeons' degree, it must almost feel like two different jobs. It's interesting. It does. And I'll give you an analogy. It's like a sense, you know, like one of our five senses. I remember I did a trip, but I won't say what country I went to because I don't want to spare anyone. But we did this overseas trip. And this overseas trip and we went into their command center where they have all their analysts sitting inside this command center and they had so much technological capabilities with following people in their own country, like despise in their own country. I remember one of them said that, yeah, it was a bad day if we only had 95% of this person's day covered or we knew what they were doing

95 they knew what this guy was doing 95% of the time because they're technological coverage and they asked and they asked us and I was like maybe 10% of the day we know what they're doing and but you know what the challenge was they couldn't recruit sources They had a very very hard time using interpersonal skills to actually get human bodies recruited. And so they were massively behind in a lot of areas because one of their senses was enhanced, the technological sense, but their other sense of interpersonal skills was completely thrown out because they relied too heavily on the other.

There was compensatory mechanism. Yeah. Right. And us, our in-person skills tend to be higher because our constitution keeps us from doing anything like that. When you're skinned, you need to rely on your skills. You can't be spending those things. Absolutely. Interesting statistic I was watching Amazon documentary recently. And they said that if you took the data that was collected on everybody on the earth and you printed it on an A4 piece of paper, double-sided A4 piece of paper, every day's worth of data that gets collected would go from here to the sun and

back four times. So the stack of paper of data that is collected on a daily basis. And most of it's just garbage, gobbledygook to do with like location data and how many bytes of this and what address was it sent to, so on and so forth. But that's the volume of data that's to the sun and back four times. I just thought that was unbelievable. Yeah, and then another statistic that they dropped was that the the matter's thing to do with how efficient it is, and you were talking earlier on about having the paper going in and out

and all this sort of stuff. If you were to remove all of the hardware and just have the electrons, so the actual atoms that are containing the information, that the internet and all of the collective human knowledge electronically is held on, it would be about the size and the weight of an orange. So you think you've got everything, everything, and all of the banks and banks of computers and the servers at Google and all

of this, even the hard driving house. And it's like just a orange. That's all you've got. Yep. And you're mumbling in it? Yeah, really. And then you compare that with to the sun and back four times a day. And yeah, I think it's probably a pretty big credit to yourself and also the guys that

you worked with that you were able to survive and adapt through that particular period because it must have been super turbulent. Um, and, you know, it's like anything you either get on board or you get out and it really, I really kept it, I really try to keep things as basic as possible and they did, there was, every day there was always, they're always, man, I'm so sick of that, systems getting updated and it usually, you know, I've got a credo in life. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, well, they held it. Nothing was broken. They fixed it every day anyway, drove me up a wall.

Yeah. Yeah. I bet it was. So Robin, can you tell the listeners about your books, please, and where they can find you online? Yeah, sure. So first let's do find me online. That's easy.

My website is www.peopleformula.com. All one word, people formula. I'm on LinkedIn obviously. Twitter is at our DREK, our DREK, follow me there. I don't post a whole lot. And I don't take, is there a thing too? I never take sides. I just take science and human interactions

because here's another guarantee in life. Take a side, half the world will line up against you. I don't like that. And then so my books, I have one, my first book came out years ago called, it's not all about me, the top 10 techniques for quick report and get on Amazon in any country. That's a short read, about 20,000 words. My last book that came out is called Go To Trusts, an American counterintelligence experts, five steps to leave and succeed. That's also all over the place

that was with St. Lawrence Press, great publisher I worked with there. And then my next book coming out, it's on behavioral analysis. And it's the six signs that you can actually judge whether you can trust some or not. Actually, and more likely, it's predict their behavior. And we're still working on the title right now.

It was, what's our current working title? Just slip my mind. We've had about three or four. I love working titles. I love the journey that things go through. Like when we were coming up with the title for this podcast, and I went through like this six month period while I was like pre-recording shows and doing things.

I want to look back, I went back through my notes and not so long ago. I'm going through and I was thinking, what the fuck were you thinking? Like just looking at all of these crazy names. And it's because after a while, it's kind of like the name of a pet, right? Like the book, your book names will roll off your tongue as if it was as if it was a

Child's name, but during the process you look at the words with such like high fidelity Like is that even a word anymore? Does it doesn't sound like a word? It doesn't look like a word Actually, I just remembered it's called sizing people up is what it's called right now. It probably will be to as probably what's going to want to be a sizing people up. If it changed and it will know that you've had a creative wobble. Another creative wobble, that's a good description of it too. Creative wobbles every day. Yeah, back and forth. Robin, it's been absolutely fascinating. I'd love to get you back on again soon because I'm sure that the list will be very interested

to see what comes out with the next book. And good luck finishing it off. Hey, thanks for that. Appreciate it, Chris, and thanks for all your time. Awesome. Thanks, man. you