The Bossticks - The Psychology Of Persuasion & Strategies Used To Influence & Control People Ft. Former Corporate Spy Robert Kerbeck

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

#571: Today we're joined by Robert Kerbeck, former corporate spy, and author of RUSE, a true crime memoir that describes how he created a career out of being a successful con artist in Hollywood. Today we're sitting down with Robert to discuss all things corporate espionage and social engineering. He also dives into his celebrity stories, specifically how he met OJ Simpson right before he was wanted for murder, how Kevin Spacey made a move on him, and becoming acquaintances with Paul Newman. He lastly gives us tips and tricks to getting what you want in any situation, how to always get a response from somebody, and the art of eliminating resistance.   To connect with Robert Kerbeck click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE Subscribe to our YouTube channel HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential This episode is brought to you by Wella Wella Professionals just released its most luxurious hair care line; Ultimate Repair. You can purchase The Ultimate Repair Miracle Hair Rescue at Ulta stores, or go to wella.com to learn more. This episode is brought to you by Cymbiotika Cymbiotika is a health supplement company, designing sophisticated organic formulations that are scientifically proven to increase vitality and longevity by filling nutritional gaps that result from our modern day diet. Use code SKINNY at checkout to receive 15% off your purchase at cymbiotika.com This episode is brought to you by Hiya Health Hiya Health fills in the most common gaps in modern children's diet to provide full-body nourishment our kids need with a yummy taste they love. Go to hiyahealth.com/skinny to receive 50% off your first order. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business. Go to squarespace.com/skinny for a free trial & use code SKINNY for 10% off your first purchase of a website domain. This episode is brought to you by Topgolf The Topgolf experience has a vibe – it's all about play and having fun. Download the Topgolf app today & book a bay. Produced by Dear Media  

The following podcast is a dear media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you alone for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her.

When Tom Brady left the New England Patriots, they haven't been to a Super Bowl since. Tampa Bay got him. They won a Super Bowl. And corporate America is the same way the talent is critical. What we are tasked with doing is getting secrets from Wall Street firms about their top people, what they pay their people. You know, this information is incredibly valuable. I'm very happy to say that I never went to jail, which I like to think means I was a pretty good spy. Ideally, as a spy, you don't get caught spying.

If you get caught, then, you know, you're either unlucky or you weren't maybe quite good enough. Welcome back to the skinny confidential him and her show. Today we're sitting down for the first time ever with Robert Kerbeck, a former corporate spy, a topic we've never talked about before. What goes on in the world of a corporate spy? This is a topic we definitely have in touch on this show. But it is wild. He's got stories with Paul Newman. He's got plenty of stories about being a corporate spy, what people should look for when they're being spied on, what it takes to actually become a spy, social engineering, how to become more aware of scams, how to get information out of somebody. It's really a psychological episode from the perspective of somebody who's in a way taking advantage of people over the years and gotten them to tell them things that they maybe shouldn't be telling. Really fascinating, crazy story. And I think you're going to like this one. So with that, Robert Kerbeck, welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. This is the skinny confidential, him and her.

I don't even know where to begin with this one. I got to be honest. I was reading your bio, your brief, all the things you've done. And there's, we could go all over the place. to begin. How do you introduce yourself at this point? What do you tell people that you do? Yeah, I say I'm a former corporate spy because I don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm still spying because I wouldn't be a very smart spy if I wrote a book about spying and then continued to spy. But how do I know you're not just saying that to me?

Well, that's true. That's true. When you walk into this office, is there stuff that you look for as a spy right away? For sure. Tell me what you look for. Well, I mean, first of all, I'm looking at your people. And I'm seeing, you know, theoretically, if I were here a spy on you and get secrets about your business and your business process, I would try to make friends with someone. So Carson is the person that I think I would be taking advantage of. Carson. Because he's so nice.

Oh, so you think. You never know, Carson. No, Carson is he's falling victim to the ruse. I'm telling you right now. And that's what you do as the spies. You read people. And what you're really looking for is someone that is super nice. Okay, so you look for the nicest person in the room.

The nicest person in the room because they are going to, what are they going to do? They're going to be nice. They're going to try to help you. And they're going to tell you whatever it is you want to know about a company, their processes, you know, how they pay people, who their contracts are with, who their clients are, you know, are they expanding, are, you know, anything that that you want to learn so that you can sell that information to that company's top rival. So I'm essentially a spy with my husband. All spouses are spies on each other, I think. I'm always collecting information and data. Sometimes I store it away for later.

Yeah, but Lauren, you're not the best spy because I know you're doing that all the time. No, you don't know all my secret. With a spy you're not supposed to know, right? So, okay, let's go back with you. How does one even go about going into the profession of being a corporate spy? Yeah, that's right. There's no advertising for it, right? I wanted to be an actor.

I moved to New York to be an actor. I didn't know anybody that had been an actor. I didn't know anybody that had been a performer. You know, I knew one person in New York City when I moved there. And he was my college roommate's brother. And he had this job. And he mentioned it briefly. And then he shut up right away.

Like he knew he had been told, don't tell people about this. Don't talk about it. And I said, dude, I'm broke. I need a job. Help me out. And so he very reluctantly got me an interview. I go to the Upper East Side. Upper East Side's kind of old money, very wealthy New York.

Go up to the penthouse department in this building. with a doorman. I was living in hell's kitchen and going to this apartment that's the nicest apartment I've ever been in. So right away, I know the woman who's, you know, business this is, and I still don't know what the business is, I know her business is lucrative. She's making a lot of money. And I have a very strange interview. She doesn't ask me anything about my skills. She doesn't tell me anything about the job. She sends me on my way. I kind of think I blew it. What are some of the things she's asking you? She's asking me about my relationship with my father, because my father had a car dealership and I was supposed to take it over.

You know, my last name is Kyrbeck. The Kurebec name is very well known in the Philadelphia area. My cousins sell Maserati's, Lamborghinis. If you're looking for a deal, tell them I sent you. I walked away from that business. So she was asking about that. And she was very concerned about my relationship with my father. You know, and I just am looking for a survival job.

But she was asking a lot of, and of course, now, in retrospect, I know she ran a spying firm. And so she was spying on me in that interview. She gave, and that's what spies do. They give no information. She didn't tell me anything about the job. She didn't tell me anything about what we were going to do. And she was learning about me. She was learning about me.

And that's what a good spy is, you know, ideally you're doing is I'm getting all the information from you. You're getting nothing from me. Yeah, but what if you come across someone that starts asking you the questions? That's great. I mean, then we have a real, you know, now it's, you know, spy versus spy. So Michael, it's spy versus spike. Go on. So I don't think I got the job. My buddy calls me. He says, you're hired, but don't get too excited because no one is able to do this job. So this is, you know, early 90s, New York. To have a job where you could kind of work from home, you know, we live in this obviously post-COVID era where, you know, everybody works remotely. But back in the day, nobody had a job like that. And as an actor, you know, you needed a job where you could work, but go to auditions, you know, you know, work and go do a play. And so.

So this job was flexible, paid well. And so I get hired and then, you know, I start training the next day and I begin to learn that what we are tasked with doing is getting secrets from Wall Street firms about their top people, you know, what they pay their people, you know, what their plans are, what their strategies are. And of course, at the time, I didn't realize how valuable all that information was. I was just a young guy needed a survival job. But of course, over time, I began to realize, you know, this, in the time, you know, this,

information is incredibly valuable. And later, you know, I was doing this across industries. And, you know, you think about, you know, if you could, you know, learn the names of the early designers of the iPad before it was the iPad, before anybody knew it was the iPad. And then you were able to steal one of those designers from Apple and bring them over to your firm, which happens all the time in corporate America. And that's how, you know, people are basically stealing secrets. Is they're finding out who were the people that have that information. Can I get them on my team? You know, I always go with sports. You know, Tom Brady, when Tom Brady left the New England Patriots, they haven't been to a Super Bowl since. Tampa Bay got them. They won a Super Bowl. And in corporate

America is the same way, the talent, you know, is critical. I have maybe an ignorant question. Is this legal? I'm sorry, what was the question? I think the answer is no. We met with an attorney back in the day who said what you what you're doing is in the gray the very dark gray so yeah so we had a lot of close calls with the authorities i'm very happy to say that i never went to jail which i i like to think means i was a pretty good spy because you know ideally as a spy you don't get caught spying you know if you get caught then you know you you're either unlucky or you you weren't maybe quite good enough and you're out of a job what's a job in the early days that you remember the early early days that is like such a crazy story okay

One of the first assignments I ever had was researching defense firms. What's that? So basically finding out who were the people in charge of secret weapons programs? Oh, great. Exactly. For $8 an hour, I was doing that. Okay. So if I had been caught and if I had been selling that information to the Chinese,

that would have been treason. I could have gone to jail for the rest of my life. Sure. Right. But because I was selling it to the rivals of those companies that we were finding out the information on. You would take two U.S. companies that were bidding for that job or that contract and you would basically try to find out information over the others that the rival could beat them. Correct. Yeah, correct. So that they could get the contract. They could make the billions. I was researching and getting people inside defense firms who have top secret security clearance

to tell me anything that I wanted to know via the telemark. telephone. And this couldn't be important. It was only the telephone. We did in the beginning go in person. We did. We would go to events. We would go to bars.

We would, you know, do these things. But what we learned very quickly was that we were actually able to get far more information using the anonymity of the phone call. Because if I call you, and by the way, the social engineering phone call, but I call the ruse call, you know, hence the title of my book, Ruse, the social engineering call today is having a huge comeback, right? Because there's so much. stuff with fishing now that everybody's gotten used to getting fished with email and text. But you get the phone call and a good spy is going to use call spoofing.

So the number is going to appear as some sort of number that you recognize. You know, maybe it looks like a number within your company, a different office. You know, maybe it's an office in one of your foreign locations because, you know, firms have offices all over the world. And so now you believe, and of course we would be impersonating real people. And so now you believe it really is, this is Gerhard calling from the office in Frankfurt, Germany. We have the European Union regulators here.

We need some information from the states. Oh, hey, Gerhard, buddy. So they recognize Gerhardt's name. And what are the odds? Somebody's calling and putting on a German accent to get information. Right. And so all of the spies that, you know, the woman that hired, she only hired actors because she needed people

that could create these characters. could imitate people's voices. You know, we would call and we would listen to your outgoing message. And it would be like, hey, this is Rick Jones in text. I'm not here right now. Leave a message. And I'd go, I can do that voice. And so the next thing you know, I'd be like, hey, it's Rick Jones and tax.

And so all of a sudden now people are like, oh, it's, I got Rick on the phone. So when you start asking questions about the operations of a company, the numbers, the data, the secrets, the passwords, are they going to say no to Rick Jones who heads the tax department? No, they're not. Are they going to say no to Gerhardt, who runs European compliance? No, they're not. They're going to tell you whatever you want to know.

So you would find people that were maybe lower in the business but had the information and go in as an authority in that business. Exactly. I'm going to pin call spoofing to my Pinterest board. I'm going to need you to tell me how to do that after. That's a good one. To call from a number that you recognize and then use their voice. We used to do it with a, but there's this Arnold Schwarzenegger.

We used to do prank calls. Not on this level. We weren't corporate spying. We were just prank calling. Okay, I want to go back even a little bit further with you. What was your childhood like? And why did you not want to follow a successful family business? That's a great question, especially since, you know, my great grandfather sold horse carriages

before automobiles weren't invented. And he was one of the first automobile dealers in Philadelphia. My grandfather took over that dealership. My father took over that dealership. I was supposed to take over it. I was the oldest. The placard on front of the buildings had since 1890. And I went to work for my dad briefly after I graduated college.

because I just, again, scared to move to New York. The idea of trying to be an artist seems so daunting. I worked briefly from my dad, but there was something about the trickery of car sales that just didn't feel right to me. No, be a spy, tricked that way instead. I know, which turned out to be pretty ironic. Pretty ironic. Meaning you just didn't feel good about maybe. Yeah, and I think the big difference was, you know, when you're selling cars to people, and look, this is no disparagement on.

salespeople because when you sell, what's the purpose of selling? You're trying to sell your product for as much money as possible. Right? And hopefully you have a product that you love and you believe in, but sometimes you don't, but you still have to sell it because that's your job. I think the difference was when you were selling cars to people, first of all, it was face to face. And sometimes you were selling cars to people that didn't have a lot of money. They weren't wealthy people. They were just average people. Or maybe they were somebody that was poor and this was their like, you know, a big, huge expense for them. And so I didn't want to take advantage of them. And this isn't to justify my corporate spying, but the reason that I kind of was okay with it was that I'm like, it's corporate America. These people

are making insane amounts of money. You know, Goldman Sachs, like boohoo for Goldman Sachs. That was kind of my rationalization. No, it's very different. Very different. But it's kind of in a way, you have to be a salesman in a different way as a spy by changing your voice. So it's kind of like it's underlining tones of that, but without your right taking advantage. And when you decide to leave the family business, I imagine that wasn't the easiest conversation, especially with a legacy like that. No, my father was devastated. He really was devastated. And I felt bad about it because, you know, I loved my father and I liked the business, but I knew that if I had stayed there, I would have had trouble in life. Like, I wouldn't have been happy. And so then because I wasn't happy,

maybe I would have been doing things that I didn't want to do like drinking too much or, you know, doing drugs or partying or, you know, because, you know, that's what happens when you make choices that you regret. Yeah, that's self-aware, I think, too, to be that young and to know that. So when you start to become a spy, you mentioned something early on, but as you go on, what are some things that some stories that you can tell us that are just like crazy? I mean, I'm reading this brief. It's crazy all the different people. Like, what are some stories that you look back on? We had this crazy thing happen in 2008, which we had the greatest crash since the Depression, right? We had the Great Recession, and that was the, you know, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

In the run-up to the crash of 2008, you know, I told you, I started at $8 an hour. And, you know, as the years went on, basically starting in the late 90s, 2000, my income just started to grow exponentially. And is that because you're getting this firm a bunch of results and you're just, I guess you're becoming a better and better spy. Yeah, and the words getting out on me. The words getting out that this guy can find out anything about any firm, Apple, Goldman, giant pharmaceutical companies, defense companies, you know, industrial behemists,

anywhere in the world, Russia, Japan, China, I could find out anything about any firm anywhere. As a matter of fact, I'll tell you right now, 45 minutes. That's how fast you could do it. 45 minutes. You were like really funny. So maybe there's not examples you can. share, but are there some things, I guess some wins you start to put on the board where people start to say like, hey, this guy, this is the guy. Yeah, well, and, you know, so as we're in the run

up to the crash, but before the crash, you know, it's go, go, go, right? There's money, money, money. And so firms are looking more and more until one of the assignments we got. It's right one question. Is the firm hiring you directly or do they go to this employer that you met? Michael, that's a fantastic question. Corporations, if they're smart, they never hire a spy directly. It's always through an intermediary. So they're hiring me through a consulting firm or they're hiring me from an executive recruiting firm, but they're never hiring me directly. Now, I have personally presented my extracted data directly to people who today are one step from being the CEOs of some of the largest firms in the world, publicly traded companies. And I handed them the data and they said,

boy, Robert, this is actionable, which is about the highest compliment you can get from a major, you know. At one point, again, in this run-up before the crash, we were tasked with finding out this eight-person team at Morgan Stanley that had made the firm $1 billion in a trade. Now, you say, he said, well, how hard could it be to find the names of these eight people? Well, I'm here to tell you, it's impossible. You know, this is pre-linked in, and a lot of firms wouldn't even list their top people in the directory. Steve Jobs was legendary for he did not want his designers listed in the directory because he didn't want anybody to know about the people that were designing the iPhone, the iPad.

It makes sense when you're talking about it, no? Yeah. And of course, Apple is one of the greatest companies in the world for keeping secrets. They're phenomenal at it. Most firms are terrible. So we were tasked with finding out the eight-person team. And of course, I found out the eight-person team. And my client then stole some of the people on the eight-person team.

And so you say, well, how much money was that worth to them? Some portion of a billion dollars, because that's how successful these people were. And that's the stakes that, you know, are involved with this corporate spying is that the information you get can be worth, forget about millions of dollars, tens of millions, in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars are involved with the information. Are there any spouses that come to your agency to hire you for people thinking they're cheating on? You know what, with all due respect, that would not pay me enough money.

You know, I mean, unless it was like Jeff Bezos or someone, you know, then maybe. it just wouldn't be financially worth it. Did you ever come across something that you would say you were like looking right and then you found something that was completely left out of like out of left field? Yes, all the time. Like give us an example. Well, you know, we would be on the phone with somebody and they would be telling us what we wanted to know and they'd go, well, you know, that executive's in rehab, right?

You knew that. And I'd go, oh, yeah, of course I knew that. Yeah, definitely, yeah, it's bad, you know, blah, blah, blah. We know what to do we. God, we hope nobody finds out our. stock price, you know. So here I am finding out that a major executive at a firm has basically, you know, completely, you know, supernovied and is in rehab, but they don't want anybody to find out. So I would find out things like that. We'd also find out salacious information about people, you know,

senior executives that were having affairs with junior people, which again, you know, that could really do severe damage to a company stock price. I personally was never going after that information. I was never hired to go after that information. So that was, wasn't really, you know, that was never part of my corporate buying gig. But, you know, we would stumble upon that because when people are talking, they tell you stuff. And, you know, one of the things, and especially with young people in the workforce today, is they've grown up in an era of digital transparency where there is no privacy. And so sometimes young people don't understand. And so I'd have a younger person on the phone and they would just be telling me stuff. Because, you know,

when you're in a house, you're in a company, you know, people know what's going on in a company. They know so and so didn't come to work the last two weeks. And they go, where are they? And they go, well, they were drunk driving and they had a terrible accident and da, da, da, da, da. And then you're like, oh, man. So this guy that's on CNBC just had this accident, which has not hit the news. Nobody knows about it. You know, if somebody's trying to cover it up.

And so, you know, like, imagine what you could do with that information if you wanted to do something with it. I never did that because I was making plenty of money from just, you know, straight, straight up corporate spying. And so are you able to. able to come in and be like, listen, for me to keep taking on these jobs, this is my rate. You know, the more information you find, you keep, you know, pumping up the rate a bit. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and it, you know, again, you know, 2005, 2006, my income was basically doubling every year. And so by the end, right before the crash, I was making $2 million a year. Wow. Wow. There's going to be a lot of people who try to go in the spy business.

I know. Well, it's funny. I'm here to tell you, corporate spying is alive and well. If anybody's listening and they want to pivot to a new career like everybody else in America, they can find they can reach out to me. I'm easy to find on social media and I will I will do my best to steer you in the right direction. What are some little tips, tangible takeaways that you can give the audience of things that they can do to be more aware of phone calls or being out on the feet? Like, what are things that they can do? And that's what I spent a lot of time doing now is talking about that, going to conferences, you know, coming on shows like this. You know, the first thing is everything is always an emergency. I need this right now. There's a problem right now. You've been hacked right now.

You know, there is, right, it's right now. And so anytime there's an emergency and you get a text that says, click on this, you, you know, you get the email. You must, you know, your accounts are in danger. You know, I tell people, you know, remember when we were kids, we had the five second rule, you know, the gum fell on the ground. But if you picked it up in five seconds, you could put it back in your mouth. So I'm like, okay, you know what? We're older now. How about a 30 second rule? 30 seconds. When you get the crazy email, the funny text, the strange phone call, you don't do anything. You don't click anything. You don't forward anything for 30 seconds. And you just think about it. Because as soon as you think about it and you just take a little bit of time, all of a sudden you go,

oh, yeah, this doesn't look right. This is wrong. You know, and then you check the email or the spelling or something about it just isn't right. And you had that instinct right away, but we're so busy that we're like click, click, click, click forward, forward, forward, you know, and you just have to slow that down. So that's, those are the kind of couple of the tips I give people right away is, you know, if it's, if it's time sensitive, don't fall because that's what, you know, spies, hackers are, they want to push you and get you to do something right away. And once you've done it, it's too late. I recently went on a vacation. And I was, you know, using this product in my bun. So I would do a slicked back bun after I got out of the shower,

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this tastes like a treat. Symbiotica.com slash skinny for 15% off sitewide. That's symbiotica.com slash skinny for 15% off sitewide. I have a reverse question of that. When you want information from people, what is the best way to get it? Maybe a darker question. Yeah, right. I think what you want to do is you want to be someone's best friend. You want to be someone's best friend.

What's that law and 48 laws of power? Pose as a friend, act as a spy. Yeah, yeah. Well, I would always say to people, you know, like my way of working as a spy is I'm your best friend. or your worst enemy. So I'm your best friend if you're helping me, but if you start to give me a hard time and you're not going to help me,

I'm going to remind you that, you know, I'm the executive vice president of compliance. And I have an emergency. And this is serious. And we're all in the same boat here. We're all in the same team. We're supposed to be helping each other. We work for the same company.

And you are giving me a very difficult time right now, and I am not happy about it. And I cannot tell you how negatively this could impact. So what if someone says no, sorry? People said no all the time. And so you'd go to a different outlet. Correct. Correct.

And so we had a technique for that was when somebody was standing up to me and they were going, you know what, I'm sorry, but I don't believe you and I'm not giving you this information. And I'd say, you know what? Would you like me to email it to you? Well, yes. I asked you that. Okay. I will email it to you.

I will email it to you. It'll come, you know, well, better come from a company email. Of course it's going to come from it. I'm going to email it. Give me an hour. I will get it together. It will say everything I'm doing exactly. exactly why I'm doing. Oh, okay. Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to give you such a hard time. But yeah,

if you get me that email, it'd be fine. Okay, I'll have it to you within an hour. Worst case, and all right, by the end of the day, you'll have it. Okay. Okay, great. Thanks. You know what? I got a couple of fires I got to put out. Worst case in our first thing tomorrow when you come in, you're going to have that email. Now, what have I done? I've calmed that person down. They're waiting on an email. Is the email going to come? No, the email's never going to come. But now I've bought myself time that they're not, you know, sounding the alarm in the corporation. They're not calling compliance. They're not calling legal.

They're not calling HR going, look, somebody's calling for this information. We need to spread the word around the company. So now they're waiting on the email. And meanwhile, now I've bought myself two hours, three hours, four hours to find somebody else that's going to give me information. When you're studying this kind of stuff, are you studying any kind of human psychology? Is there any training? Do you have mentors?

Are you learning on the go? Like, how do you learn to get good at something like this? I think a lot of it for me was two things. One, I came from this car business family and my, you know, my ancestors were all entrepreneurs. So there's something about the entrepreneurial mind that you're always kind of problem solving, right? You're always kind of thinking outside the box and how am I going to do what I need to do. And then you combine that with acting training, right, which is so much about, you know, as actors, we think about, you know, actors having the gift of gab and actors, you know, speaking well. But in this job, and in acting, I think more important the skill is listening.

And I could hear in your silence whether you were going with what I was saying. I could hear in the silence on the line, I could hear, I go, they're not buying this. And so sometimes if I could hear it, before they could even begin to object, I would, again, pull out of that call. I go, oh, hey, you know what, I've got another call. Let me call you right back, which is very common with executives, right? I got another call. I got to take this right back.

oh, I got an emergency. I got to call you right back. And so they're like, oh, boy, that big executive, that was kind of weird. Well, whatever. Anyway, and they move on, right? Because I could just hear. I think listening is a really important skill, and that's something that actors, good actors, develop pretty quickly. On the other hand, what's the skill of the person on the other line to know that you're bullshitting? What do you think that their, their, like, background is? What do you, what differentiates a person who knows that you're bullshitting to someone who falls for it? I hate to say this because, you know, but it's just the truth. You know, nine out of ten people are going to give me the information.

Really? Nine out of ten. And if we took ten people from the street right now and we told them, would you give this information, nine of ten would say never. No, I would never do this. There'd be one person and go, yeah, I'm kind of gullible. I'd fall for it. So nine out of ten don't think they give up the information and nine out of ten do give up the information.

So people are not self-aware. They're not aware. And corporations do a terrible job of training and educating their employees. They spend a tremendous amount of money and for good reason on the technology, the network, the server, the encryption, the firewall, right? All of that stuff to prevent cybercrime. But they don't train their people. And at the end of the day, the weakest link in cybersecurity is always the human being. You know, if I can hack your people, I don't even need to hack your systems.

You know, I can get them to tell me their passwords, you know, and do it for me. It's almost like having a castle with a moat but with no crocodiles in it. Yeah. You got to train the crocodiles. Yeah. Or a very shallow moat. Right. Like, hey, I'm just going to wait across this moat.

What was the most difficult job that you ever did that ended up being really great, but it was so hard? Technology. Researching the big Silicon Valley tech firms was really intense because, again, you know, the industries that hire spies the most have the most money at stake, right? And so you think about the money in tech, right, especially in the last, you know, 20 years, tech is just boom isn't even a strong enough word. But, yeah, so, you know, you know, you're going into Google and you're going into Facebook and you're going into, you know, Apple. You know, these firms are, you know, fortresses. And they're designed to not release information and not give up information. You know, Apple, they have certain floors that, you know, you can't even go to and you're an employee.

Like you don't even have access. Those firms were really challenging. What was your last job and why was it your last job? Why did you decide to pivot? There was a certain point where my kid was eight and my kid heard me on the phone one day and said, Dad, are you a hacker? I said, no, no, you know, I get information and, you know, a lot of times by information, people get better jobs out of it.

And, you know, and I did this whole rationalization song and dance thing. And my eight-year-old said, but it's dishonest. Whoa. And I went, yes, yes it is. And that was the moment where I was like, I got to get out of this. How does your eight-year-old even like know that? They know. They can just feel the energy.

They know. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. And that was the moment when I'm like, okay, it's over. I'm done. I got to, you know, and I had kind of been winding it down anyway.

You know, and this is all part of the book. I've been winding it down anyway. But that was really the thing that was like the, you know, the final straw. How accurate are all these movies on spies? I know that the author of Catch Me, if you can, wrote you a testimonial on your book. How accurate are all these movies that are based around spies? Do you see a lot of things that are wrong or is it pretty accurate? Well, you know, corporate spying, there really has not been a movie on corporate spying.

Right. And that's why, you know, the publisher, you know, Penguin was excited about this book. They said, you're the first corporate spy that's ever written a book about corporate spying. Wow. So I haven't really, I don't really have a lot of experience in terms of seeing TV shows or movies on this subject because there really haven't been any. Okay. So after you stop doing the corporate spying, what's next? Because you've, you have a full life.

Yeah. So now, you know, I just write, you know, I write books and. But is there a gap between, obviously, because I'm, and we got to get into this story, that you worked with O.J. Simpson the week before O.J. was arrested. Yes. Where does that play into all of the. Yes. Because that's obviously before the crisis, right? Yeah, so the book is, you know, I like to say, you know, it's like, hey, buy ruse.

It's like two for one. It's a book about corporate spying, but you also get all these crazy Hollywood stories because I was a working actor. You know, I did 50 major TV shows. I, you know, I'm a lifetime member of the actor's studio. You know, I start in plays in New York and got rave reviews in the New York or in the New York Times. So, you know, I was a working actor. And at first, this was just a survival job.

And then at a certain point, like a lot of actors, you know, you kind of make it big or you don't. and I didn't. But were you doing the acting simultaneously? Or was it before? It was simultaneously. Simultaneously. Okay. So tell us about, it says here, drinking with Paul Newman, taking J-Lo to the Dodgers game,

touring ET sets with George Clooney, peeing next to Al Pacino. Kevin Spacey hitting on you. And like Michael just said, O.J. Simpson, the week before he became America's most notorious double murder. First, you have to start off with drinking with Paul Newman. Oh, yeah. Well, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward are two, you know, legends and amazing people, too. Yeah, so I became a member of the actor's studio and I got hired to do a play at the actor's studio.

And I do the play, you know, we're doing the run of the play. And all of a sudden, backstage one night, this guy comes backstage and it's Paul Newman. And he comes out to me and he says, nice work, kid. And his eyes were so piercing blue, I couldn't even look him in the face. He slaps me on the back and leaves. And I'm like, wow, Paul Newman just came back to. to say that. It was really amazing. And then, I know if it was the next day, a couple days later, Joanne Woodward called me. And she said, hey, will you come over to our place? We're having a

reading here. You know, we'd love for you to come. And so I said, oh, wow, that's really amazing. I was a little kind of bummed out because they were inviting me to the reading, not to be in the reading, but just to, like, watch the reading. But then I get there and she hands me a script, and she says, you're in the reading. You're reading the lead part in this movie about a race car driver, but I didn't want to tell you because I didn't want you to get nervous. And so now I go into this room with all these well-known actors. And Paul Newman is the Sunday morning at 11 o'clock. And he's sitting in a chaise lounge drinking beers.

He's got a six pack of beer at his feet and he's drinking a beer. He loved beer, huh? He loved beer. He only drank beer, right? Yeah. I read that somewhere. I forgot. Maybe in his autobiography.

He loved, love, love beer. Yeah. He was a big beer guy. And he was kind of joking with a little bit of an edge that, you know, he was like, you know, why am I not reading this part? And Joanne Woodward was like, because you're too old. Paul. And so here I am reading this part, you know, in front of Paul Newman and all these people. And that project, I think, later turned into, I think the movie was thunder. What was it,

Thunder? Days of Thunder with Tom Cruise. Yeah, so that was the Paul Newman story. And they were really great, great people. But the OJ story is a pretty disturbing story. Starts off kind of funny. You know, again, I'm an actor. I need a job. And my manager calls me one day and he says, hey, they're doing this exercise video. You know, would you like to be in it? And I said, you know, I'm like the worst dancer in the history of mankind. I'm like, no, no, no, no. He's like, no, it's not dancing. It's an exercise video.

You know, it's O.J. Simpson. I said, O.J. Simpson. I love, oh, yeah. Okay. You know, no dancing, right? No, you can push up, sit-ups, calisthenics. It's, you know, for guys. So I show up to the set to do this exercise video,

and I get introduced to the choreographer, and it's in a studio with the dance floor, and there are these women in aerobics outfits, and all of a sudden, the choreographers claps his hands and lines everybody up, including O.J. they do the sequence of moves. And I'm so bad at the sequence of moves that the choreographer comes over and he's like, how did you get hired for this job? You know, and, you know, you can't dance at all, right? And I said, no, I can't. And OJ says, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no, you can't get rid of Rob.

You can't get rid of Rob. His dancing is so bad, it's making me look good. And it was, that's a really valuable lesson to learn, which is rule number one in Hollywood is make the star look good. Wow. And so my dancing was making OJ's dancing pass, right? And so somehow that bonded him to me. Somehow that made him like he was my best friend. And so, you know, the shoot was like three days. And every time we had a break, he was like paling around with me. And at one point he says, hey, do you want to see this pilot that I just shot for NBC? I think it's called SEALs, Navy SEALs. I can't remember the title. And he says, and this is the crazy, this is how crazy this thing. He goes, I play a knife expert. Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah. I play a knife expert.

expert in the show. I mean, you can't make that up, right? Then there's this beautiful blonde woman in the video. She's in the ex-so. She's one of the dancers. And he starts hitting on this woman in the most obnoxious, horrific way you can ever imagine. And I pull her aside and I said, hey, you know, we can call the Screen Actors Guild and we can get somebody down here to stop this because this is, you know, blah, blah, blah. Like what was he doing? It was like smacking her ass. He was saying, I mean, you know, I guess we can say these things because by the way, you can Google OJ Simpson exercise video outtakes and this stuff comes up on YouTube because, you know, it was all being filmed. He was saying he was looking at her doing everything but licking his lips and he would say,

ooh, ooh, how many children are we going to have together? You know, what time are you coming over later tonight? You know, I did what I could do. And of course, I understood she didn't want to rock the boat, you know, she didn't want to maybe get fired. So she didn't say anything. Well, of course, in retrospect, and obviously I didn't know this at the time, I didn't know who Nicole Brown Simpson was, but in retrospect, right when the murders happened and they flashed Nicole Brown Simpson's face on the TV screen, she was shockingly looked like the dancer, the actress in the exercise video. That's what, Faye Resnick wrote a book, who was best

friends with Nicole, and she said that every single woman that he would hit on looked just like Nicole. Yeah. Yeah. And it was striking and it was disturbing. And I'm like, oh my God, you know, you know, so he had a type. Obviously, you know, when that type didn't respond the way he felt they should respond, then he had issues and, and, you know, so I saw that and, you know, people would say later, you know, did you know that he was capable of murdering somebody? Did you know that he had these issues? Well, in the moment, no. But when you look back on it and it was clear as day. And it happened a week after you met him. Yeah. So you're sitting on the couch watching the news and you see this on the news a week after you met him.

Correct. And I realized I was never going to be in the Navy Seals show. I saw my job on the 405 freeway, him driving the white Bronco down the freeway going, well, that shows not happening. That's crazy that that happened a week after. What about taking J-Lo to the Dodgers game? What's that story? You know, that's not super exciting. I mean, it was exciting for me. I mean, if you asked her about it. it, she would probably have no recollection. You never know. Maybe. I don't think so. The line I have in the book is that, you know, for a moment, I thought she was into me,

but she was really just into baseball. What about Kevin Spacey hitting on you? Tell us that story. Kevin Spacey, I was at a barbecue once, and I told the story of Kevin Spacey hitting on me and this other guy that I didn't know said, oh, my God, Kevin Spacey hit on me too. And another guy went, hey, Kevin Spacey hit on me. and then somebody else went, Kevin Spacey hit on me too. I actually swore my life knows someone that hit on, that Kevin Spacey hit on.

Like, I know someone well. Yeah. So I think every, a man or a woman? It wasn't you, Michael. A man. Yeah, I think every straight actor in New York and Hollywood got hit on by Kevin Spacey. That story is not that special, but it was quite disturbing because he did it in a way, because, you know, Kevin was closeted because he was becoming a successful actor.

And, you know, and I understand why he didn't, you know, he didn't want to come out as being gay, because he felt like he couldn't be a leading man. So he was completely closeted. So he had to basically try to trick you into coming over at his place. So he would portray that he was going to help you with your career. And he was like, you know, I'm Robert. I'm going to help you with your career. You're so talented.

You know, do you have a big agent? And at the time, I had either no agent or some tiny little agent. And he's like, oh, you know, my agent at ICM or wherever his big agency was. You know, I want to introduce you. You know, we're going to talk. about your crew. I want you should come over to my place, we'll sit down, you know. And I was like, well, you know, why don't we just talk over the phone about it? You know, like, why don't just give me your agent's phone? No, no, Robert, that's not how these things were. And of course,

in my head, I'm like, I know how this is going to work. So you didn't go to his house. I did not. Did you know anyone that went to his house? I did. And what happened there? They got fed popcorn by Kevin Spacey's fingers. They got fed popcorn by Kevin Spacey's fingers. They got fed popcorn, but what does that mean? In other words, Kevin Spacey was made some popcorn, I guess, and was basically feeding them with his hand. Oh, I thought that was like a sexual thing that he was feeding them. I think it was intended to be a sexual thing.

Yes, I think it was step one or actually probably step four, you know. Is there a story behind peeing next to Al Pacino? Oh, yeah. Did he feed you popcorn while you were. No. Well, it was just, you know, I'm getting ready to do that play at the actor's studio. And it was opening night. You know, opening night actors are incredibly nervous.

It's the actor studio. And, you know, and I know, I didn't know Paul Newman was going to be in the audience. But, you know, they're big people opening night, actor studio. And so right before I'm about to go on, you know, they're like, okay, you know, five, five minutes to go. And then they're like, okay, you know, one minute to go. And all of a sudden, I have to go to the bathroom because I'm so nervous. And I said, hey, you got to hold the curtain, hold the curtain, hold the curtain. I got to go to the bathroom.

So I run down the stairs. And the actor's studio actually only has. a bathroom that the cast uses and the theater patrons use, you know, because it's not a big theater. And so I go into the bathroom, you know, and I go to pee, and there in the urinal is Al Pacino in the urinal next to me. So now I know Al Pacino has come to see me in this play and is going to be watching me perform. Ooh. Yeah.

That's some pressure. Yeah, that was some pressure. And so clearly I was unable to pee. I could not handle that pressure. Did you shit your pants? Because you're so nervous. Forget the pee. Yeah.

So I was literally looking over at him. I'm like, oh my God. So, you know, it went from bad to worse because you're already nervous, you know, and now you're really nervous. Quick break to talk about higher health. It is no secret that Lauren and I are extremely into health and wellness, proper supplementation, getting the right vitamins, getting the right minerals. But what's often overlooked is making sure that our children are getting the right vitamins.

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at topgolf.com slash Tuesday. That's topgolf.com slash Tuesday. Looking back on your spy career, you know, I read you said you had no regrets because you felt that there was no victims or what you're calling a ruse. Why do you feel there's no real victims? I, no, I actually, no, I do regret it. You do? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I do. You know, I'm not proud of it. You know, I didn't, I didn't feel bad for the corporations, but at the end of the day, you're tricking people that work for corporations. And so one of the things I tried to do, and again, this is just a justification and a rationalization. It does not make it right.

But I was always trying to target when I was rusing executives. I tried not to ruse assistants and receptionists and junior people because, you know, they're, you know, they're being duped, you know, and I felt like, you know, if I'm going to call, you know, Joe Blow executive and go bro to bro. which, by the way, I found to be far more, I was very successful going bro to bro, executive to executive, and got far more information than the assistants

who are trained gatekeepers. You know, assistants, receptionists are trained not to release information. But, you know, I'd get the guy on the phone and he'd think I was some executive in Germany or London or wherever the heck, and he'd be, you know, just giving me whatever I wanted to give him.

So again, not a justification at all, but that was how I rationalized it. I bet it's harder to spy now because if you tried to call my assistant, there's no phone to call her on. You'd have to email her. So what would you do with email? Well, but what I would do is I would get people's cell phone numbers. But what, like, what if she didn't pick up? I feel like this generation's so into email. What would you, how do you do it now? Well, I have tricks to get people to pick up. You do the, what is it called call? Call spoofing. Another really great trick. This is, here's a simple one. This is, this is the first thing you do is you call someone, right? And it rings and rings and they don't pick up. And you hang up. and you call right back. And a lot of times people will see an unknown number or a number they don't recognize

and they won't take it. But you call them right back again, they go, uh-oh, something's, there's a problem, there's an emergency. Something's going on. I better take this call. Let's say that an audience member

suspects that their partner is cheating on them. What is the kit, the Robert kit that you're giving them to catch? I mean, I think it's pretty easy to catch somebody cheating nowadays because, you know, you just got to get access to their phone. I don't think anyone can get away with it anymore. Here's my thing. Just like break up. Just break up because you're going to get caught. I think they should bring back cheaters. The show cheaters, remember Q the song. They still have that show. No, bring it back, but like fresh 2003 because how everyone, you're going to get caught. You know, but it was juicier back then because like you didn't have, I mean, it was so connected. Like now everybody's filming everything. There's no way to get in. And you can also see what people are searching.

you can see what's populating on their for you page. You can see all the things. So, but if someone were to want to catch their significant other, what are little tricks? People who are being cheated on sort of know it, right? You kind of, you kind of, you know, and so I always encourage people in life, you know, trust your instincts, right?

Your instincts are telling you something. And so many times we either don't listen to our instincts or even worse, we kind of deny our instincts. So I think when you have that instinct, You got to follow it. You don't deny it. Don't say, oh, no, I'm being paranoid. No, you're not being paranoid.

You know, you're reading something, right? Remember we talking about me with the spying? Like, it's not just talking, it's listening. And same thing with reading someone. Like I read that Carson's a nice guy. So Carson's going to be my go-to guy to get the cell phone number for your assistant to get through to you when I shouldn't get through to you, right? And Carson's going to give me that cell phone number.

And I'm going to have it now. You've got to read people. And so when you're in a relationship with your, partner and the signs are funky, you've got to read it and you've got to accept that you're reading it accurately because your partner's going to tell you, oh, you're paranoid, oh, you're crazy, oh, you're, you're, you know, you're too sensitive. That's the biggest thing is most people just don't want to accept that they're reading it correctly. That's right. I think it sounds like a lot to being a spy and actor is to be intuitive. I mean, that's a big, that's a, it sounds like

you're very intuitive person. You said you could read the silence. Yeah, but, you know, but I honestly think that I develop those skills over time, and I think anybody can develop those skills. You know, I mean, look, we all have instincts. We all have, you know, what do you call it, that spiky sense where you know something's not right? You know somebody's lying to you. You know, somebody told you something that's not, you feel it. You feel it. You just feel it. And I think so many times we just don't want to acknowledge it, right, because it's painful. And we're like, well, maybe I'm wrong and maybe they're not. You know, maybe they still love me. and so you kind of keep kicking the can down the road,

and eventually it usually doesn't work out. When you come out with a book like this and you start to share that you had this profession, is there any fear? Is there any like, oh, I got to be careful. It's going to be some real upset people. Or is it you were so anonymous at the time that there's no real repercussion.

Well, the first thing I did is I waited for the statute of limitations to expire on any potential crimes that I may or may not have committed, right? Okay. The other thing I did was that I changed the names of the firms in the book. because even though I can prove that I spied for XYZ company,

because I have the data and the emails and all that stuff, at the end of the day, you know, XYZ major publicly traded company could sue me into oblivion with their armies of attorneys. So I changed the names of all the companies to kind of mitigate that. Okay. I have to ask you about Malibu Burning.

This is super interesting. Malibu Burning, the real story behind LA's most devastating wildfire. Tell us what happened. Yeah, so that's my previous book. And again, that's a true story as well. I live in Malibu. As your audience may recall, we had a horrific wildfire a few years ago.

It kind of burned down half the town. My neighborhood, we lost two-thirds of the home. My street, 17 of 19 burned to the ground. And my wife and child and I fought the fire, and we saved our home at great peril. It was obviously a pretty horrific experience. and then the LA Times asked me if I'd write an essay about that, which I did. And then a publisher read that essay and said, hey, will you write a book about the Malibu fire? And so I wrote this book, Malibu Burning.

It's been a real, you know, I can't say it's the greatest thing to happen to me in my life because meeting my wife and marrying my wife obviously be number one. You better say that too. My child 1A, you know, or maybe, you know, depending on the day they switch. But it has, the writing this book has been one of the best things that ever happened to me because, you know, when people have a tragedy like that, people die, thousands of homes were lost. And, you know, a lot of people have this impression that everyone in Malibu is rich and famous. And I'm here to tell you that that's not true, especially, you know, we have the Pacific Coast Highway that goes down Malibu.

And, you know, everybody that lives on the ocean side of the Pacific Coast Highway, maybe those are all rich and famous people. But if you live on the land side and you're up in the hills and the nooks and crannies of the canyons, you know, you're not super rich and famous. and all of the homes that were lost were the homes of those people. You know, and the book is just, you know, I'm fortunate I've won a couple of national book awards. And, you know, Governor Newsom wrote me a letter thanking me for writing the book. And L.A. Mayor Garcetti wrote me a letter for, you know, a whole bunch of celebrities came out to events. Pierce Brasman, Sam Elliott, Priscilla Presley, you know, just a, you know, just been a really incredible thing. When you say you fought the fire, what does that mean?

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, and this is this is all in the book. And the book is it's 22 different chapters. The first chapter is my family and then we come back at the end. And then the other 20 chapters are the fire from all these different perspectives, you know, elderly couple in their 80s fighting the fire with their boots, with their feet. Firefighters, you know, doing incredible things to save people's homes. Some firefighters sitting in their engines with the air conditioning on refusing to fight the fire,

which was one of the big controversies of the fires. Why did these firefighters, you know, refuse to fight? the fire. What was the reason that they found? You know, it was complicated, but a lot of it was the firefighters were not going to put their lives at risk. So they made a decision that if it was just your home, they were not going to do anything to try to save it. Because if your life was not at risk, the firefighter wasn't going to put their life at risk. Correct. If you save your home, that's right. If you were, if you were in the house, they would come in and save, save it. And of course, there were many firefighters that were livid about that because, you know, the firefighters that I know

were warriors. And they were like, what the hell? Like, you know, I mean, and there were, and there's a chapter in the book where one of the firefighters is screaming at another firefighter, you know, like one captain screaming in another captain, like, how are you sitting in your truck? You can walk up and save these houses. You're not at danger. You're not at risk. You know, there were Malibu locals that stayed behind with no training, no equipment, saving entire neighborhoods by themselves. How do you save a house? Like, do you take a hose? Well, there are a lot of ways. You know, what we did is we, you know, we live, you know, you know, Malibu is prone to wildfire. So if you're going to buy a house in Malibu and much of Southern California and much of Northern California and much of the world these days, you need to be

aware that, you know what? We could have a fire. And so what do we do to be safe? And I'm here to tell you that there's a lot of things that you can do pretty easily to protect your home in a wildfire. Now, what we had is we had a pump and we had a chemical called Foschek, which is what the firefighters use to drop. You know, you see it when you're watching, you know, that they drop the aerial and it has like a red tint to it or a pink tint to it and it's basically marking that this stuff has been dropped. And so the fire won't burn in those areas. And we had that material, just a liquid version of it without a color in it. And you spray it on your, your house. It's called gelling your house. And it creates a barrier that basically makes it much more

difficult for flames to catch your house on fire. And it used to be back in the day that, you know, when there was a fire, you know, there were two things you could do. One was leave, evacuate, and the other was stay and defend. Well, obviously staying and defending is dangerous as if you read the opening chapter in my book, you'll see. Well, nowadays, you can gel your home and leave because the gel stays on there for quite some time. And so that's something I really recommend. to people now. And there are all kinds of other things you can do. You know, so many homes burned because one ember, one ember lands on a cushion. You're outdoor furniture, catches the cushion on fire. Then the cushions catch on fire. They catch your deck on fire. And then your deck catches on fire

and your house burns down. So, you know, basically when you're in a wildfire situation, you know a fire's coming because usually you have notice. It's not like it starts and it's there in 10 minutes. We had eight hours notice before this fire came over the hill. So you have a to move anything that's flammable away from your house or put it inside your house. And now the science has gotten really good about creating these buffer zones around your house, a five foot buffer zone, nothing within five feet of your house that is flammable. Because, you know, and then you've, you know, there's all kinds of things like this. And I give all these tips in the book to prevent your home from burning down because I'm

here to tell you, you know, people are like, oh, well, everybody in Malibu's rich and they just can rebuild their house. I'm telling you, on my street, forget about the whole town. out on my street, there are at least three homes that are exactly the way it was the day the house burned down. They have not gotten their permits. They didn't have enough insurance and they have not been able to rebuild. Yeah, we grew up in San Diego. So, and we see all the fires all the time. Well, my dad on his property, he has this well. And what he did after, because we had that crazy fire in San Diego, like maybe like 20 something years ago. That was a huge fire. Yeah, if you remember that.

Yeah. Burned like all through Escondido and everywhere. And he installed this like, crazy sprinkler system on top of the house and basically built this perimeter for one that happens again because it happened again, I think even in 2007 or eight. And like he had to turn that whole thing on. It was crazy. But yeah, that's a problem over there. Yeah. Yeah. And now, you know, I speak, you know, I'm doing it. There's a play in New York. I'm not in New York in L.A. It's called Sintilla. And it's a play set in Northern California. And it takes place during a wildfire and they're having a panel after one of the performances to talk about wildfires and climate change. So I guess a week from Sunday, I'm going to be on the panel. So I still talk about

wildfires a lot because, you know, there are a lot of people that maybe they know the science of wildfires, you know, or they have experience with it, but they're not a lot of people that have actually fought a fire and then wrote a book about it. There are people that have written books about wildfires, but they didn't also fight the fire to, you know, to survive. Well, Robert, now that I've had you on, I've realized I got to think about the entire company here and thinking who the weekling, I feel like I got to do a whole training session. I feel like there's a lot of A lot of people giving up information here probably. Carson's not.

I don't think Carson is. Carson, are you giving up information? Poor Carson. I've thrown them under the bus. No. Where can everyone find your book, your Instagram, all the things, both your books? Oh, thank you. Yeah, you know, I always just guide people to my website, Robert Kerbeck.com, you know, K-E-R-B-E-C-K.

And there's, you know, you can buy both books there. There's also a bunch of, you know, essays and short stories I've written. There's a trailer for Rooze, so you can kind of get a sense of what a TV show might look like. And Instagram, same thing, at Robert Kurebeck. And if anyone wants to be a spy, they can DM you on Instagram. They can DM me. They can email me directly from my website, you know. And like I said, and by the way, I have had people reach out and ask me.

And I say, the first thing is, you know, obviously, did you at least read or listen to the book? Because the book's on Audible. You got at least read or listen to the book because the tips are in there. And then I say, okay, here's what you do. Do you have to develop accents for this? You know what? I have an accent. What's your accent. No, you have an act. Do your exit. No, do your accent. All right down here,

boys. All right, here we go. Is that like a other one? Yeah, it's like, I can do, I could do that one. It's so worse. I could do, she's put me on the spot. I could probably do some other ones. Yeah. Really? I got to work on my German one. Your German one kills it. The German one, like all the spies that trained me, we all had our go-to, right? There was this woman. She's in the book and hers was Irish. And then my buddy, he was British. And, you know, Mine was German, you know. And so sometimes I would try to do the British. And, you know, it wasn't bad.

But, you know, you all had, you had one that was like your wheelhouse. Your German is your wheelhouse. Yeah, that's your best one. Yeah. Germans, good one. That's a good one to have in your real house. Robert, you guys, go check out his books, Ruse on Amazon and also Malibu Burning on his website, too. And DM of it, if you want to be a spy or you think your significant others cheating.

I hope not. We hope not. But go ask him for tips. so much for coming on. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode with Roberts. It's so much fun to hear about the life of a spy. If you like this episode, make sure you've rated and reviewed on iTunes. And also, you can watch our show on YouTube. So check it out. And on that note, we'll see you on Monday with an insane episode.