THE ED MYLETT SHOW - The Secrets of a CIA Spy Will Transform Your Everyday Life - Andrew Bustamante

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

This former CIA Covert Operative is revealing MIND-BLOWING secrets that will drastically change the way you navigate life on a daily basis! I’m beyond excited to bring you this game-changing conversation with Andrew Bustamante, a former CIA covert operative and master strategist in human behavior. This is not your average interview—Andrew takes us deep into the world of intelligence, revealing the powerful tactics and strategies used by some of the world’s most elite operatives to navigate complex situations, influence others, and achieve extraordinary outcomes. In this episode, you’re going to learn how to harness these same strategies to elevate your performance in business, leadership, and personal growth. Andrew breaks down the psychological principles behind influence, teaching you how to subtly and effectively persuade others and the nuances of situational awareness—how to read a room, anticipate challenges, and stay several steps ahead of everyone else. Whether you’re leading a team, negotiating a deal, or simply navigating your daily interactions, these insights will give you a significant edge. You’ll also discover: The Power of Observation and Decoding Human Behavior - skills that are crucial in understanding people’s true intentions and motivations The Art of Negotiation - learned from high-stakes, real-world scenarios Techniques to remain calm and composed under pressure, just like the operatives in the field Strategies for building unbreakable trust and rapport The mindset shifts necessary to think like an elite strategist, making you more effective in all areas of life This episode is packed with exciting stories, actionable advice, real-world applications, and the kind of wisdom that only someone with Andrew’s unique background can provide. It’s not just about learning how to think like a spy—it’s about transforming your entire approach to life and leadership. Get ready to see the world through a different lens, adopt the mindset of an elite operative, and unleash your full potential. This is your blueprint for becoming the ultimate strategist—right here, right now, on today’s episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So hey guys, listen, we're all trying to get more productive and the question is, how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth based environment, that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down, growthday.com forward slash ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way the way he's asked me I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start he's got about five thousand ten thousand dollars worth of courses that are in there that come with the app also some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content and they're

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That's linkedin.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. This year Dell Technologies back to school event is delivering impressive tech with an inspiring purpose. Learn how Dell is helping computer aid whose work is helping equip solar community hubs with tech and AI literacy skills to empower remote,

displaced, or disconnected communities around the world. Help Dell make a difference and shop AI ready PCs powered by Snapdragon X series processors at dell.com slash deals. That's dell.com slash deals. That's Dell.com slash deals. This is The Admire Show. All right, welcome back to the show everybody. Hey, today's gonna be interesting. I mean really, really interesting. The man that I have on the show today is a former CIA officer.

He's a founder of a group called Everyday Spy, which is cool because what they do is they help everyday people learn the skills and strategies that you use in the CIA. You can be more influential, you read people better, you know whether you're being lied to, situational awareness, all the things I'm going to make him talk about today on the show. So Andrew Bustamante, first off, welcome to the show, brothers. Great to finally have you here. I'm excited to be here, Ed. Thanks very much. And man, just hearing you shoot through that bullet list of things we teach, I feel like I'm already talking to an experienced student. This is pretty bad ass. Well, thank you.

Thank you. Well, I'm certainly willing to learn. I can tell you that. Here's what we're going to do today, guys. First 20% of the interview, I want to talk about the CIA. When you got a guy here from the CIA, I want to do that. And then the remaining 80% will be tactics and strategies. Okay, everyone. So hang in there. If you're not a CIA interested person, it's not going to be that long, but I'm fascinated and I got

stuff I want to know. So that's where we're going to go. And we'll get into all the tactics strategy. First thing, Andrew, I'm gonna go right to the hard stuff. Did the CIA try to assassinate Donald Trump? No, this is, this is super interesting, right? And super important for people to understand. CIA does not have a domestic footprint post 9-11. After 9-11, the mission, the oversight, the values of CIA changed significantly. Now, before 9-11, back when you're talking about the years of Castro and the Iron Curtain and the JFK assassination, CIA was very much a different animal back then. It didn't have a lot of oversight.

It was kind of a dog off a leash. And that's who knows, nobody really knows what happened back then because they didn't even have to report everything they did back then, which is why there's so much conspiracy and so much mystery. But after the massive intelligence failure of 9-11, CIA became very much a dog on a tight leash.

So when I saw what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, I knew for a fact not only was CIA not culpable for that, but it was very likely that the threat itself wasn't even identified by CIA because it was an American citizen who was not showing any kind of ties to a foreign intelligence organization. What about the FBI? FBI doesn't, FBI is responsible for keeping people safe inside the United States and enforcing law inside the United States. But when it comes to close personal protection

for a high ranking or high profile politician like that, that's Secret Service's bailiwick. So FBI would have been in coordination with anything Secret Service was doing, but at the end of the day, just like we're seeing play out in the headlines, Secret Service really does carry the culpability for the event. Okay, I'll ask it a third way and then we'll move on. Do you believe that this kid acted alone or do you believe Secret Service, FBI, intelligence

agency, some other entity tried to take out the former president or this was just a breakdown in the Secret Service and local security there and won't happen again. So in the world of intelligence, we look at everything through a lens of probabilities, probabilities rather than certainties, right? I would say that it is highly not probable. So it is very low likelihood that organizationally, any federal organization worked in a conspiratorial way to

assassinate the president. That does not mean that there may not have been an individual inside one of those organizations who was speaking outside of school or taking some action on their own and abusing the rights and privilege of their office. That may still come out. And frankly speaking, Ed, if that is what happened, that's going to be one of those closely guarded secrets that the American public never gets to know about. But when it comes to the idea that some 20-year-old kid in glasses, no less, was able to climb up on a roof during a rally and and get eight shots off at the president, again looking through a lens of probability it's very low likelihood that he really could pull that off by himself if the machine was working the

way it was supposed to work. Gotcha. So it's difficult to determine. No, but I like the way that you phrase it probability wise because I asked this as a complete layman and just you you know, my logic test tells me, you know, why didn't they get the asset at least off the stage once they knew, you know, the things like that? Why was he not taken off the stage? And by the way, I'm not that political of a person. It's just, it fascinates me. Correct me if I'm wrong, by the way, we're almost moving off CIA to tactics in a minute, guys, but I want to ask a couple of these things. I think a lot of you are interested, even if you're a casual political observer, am I wrong that President Trump sort of privatized intelligence when he was the president? Meaning he was the first president to go, I don't trust the CIA and the information they're giving us anymore, so I'm gonna, I'll call it privatized. I don't know if that's the right term or not, but basically I'm gonna get my intelligence through contract work not through you guys

Now I've been told this multiple times. That's extreme to me. And am I wrong about that when I say it? No, you're actually exactly right about that Donald Trump was the first one to really turn on the spigot for privatized intelligence now post 9-eleven there was the beginnings of private intelligence because the 9-11 commission that the Congress put in motion essentially forced the United States federal government to hire at such a fast rate that they couldn't actually vet and recruit people themselves. So they had to turn to your Booz Allen Hamiltons and your CACIs and your Raytheons of the world to very quickly hire personnel who would work on contract.

So we developed what was called a contract or contractor cadre. But those contractors essentially were still people who worked for Raytheon. They just worked inside of the building under a CIA boss. What Donald Trump did is he said, I don't trust anybody at CIA because CIA is constantly digging into the Russia scandal. They won't let this go, right? They're supposed to serve me. And it's true.

CIA serves at the behest of the president. They serve the executive branch. So when Donald Trump decided to stop trusting in CIA, he actually started paying completely private outfits to collect foreign intelligence collect drug intelligence Collect military intelligence execute military operations execute covert action execute covert influence Like it was a massive upscale in in using private sources that again during the Biden administration was curbed and pulled back down Okay. All right last thing This is a broader perspective, not just CIA,

but just because someone with your background, your experience, and I have a friend, you know, that people, well, I have a friend who's a part of the organization as well. And I've asked him his viewpoint on the United States the next six months and the next five years. And, you know, when I step back as a, and again, as a hack amateur watching this stuff,

I watched an acting president of the United States walk out in a debate, to me looked like he was set up that night, whatever he normally was given to get ready for a debate. Medically, he wasn't given that night. Then the former guy gets assassinated. Then the existing president decides to withdraw, but he's still going to serve as president, but he's not going to run for president anymore. And I go, boy, this is going to get really heated the next six months in this country.

Not that it wasn't already. And I wonder your forecast for the safety of the country internally, the next six months, and right when November happens, and then maybe what you see the next three or four or five years here. It's a great question. And I think that your observations, what you're doing is you're reading the bones, right? You're reading the wall and the writing on the wall, Ed. The fact that we've seen what we've seen at the executive level, meaning that the commander in chief of the military, the president

of the United States, the senior diplomat for foreign policy, what we have seen from that position, not just in the last six months, but really going back to early Obama really, even all the way back if you want to, I have many peers that say, we really started to see a change in that office when Bill Clinton lied on the stand under oath about having sexual relations, right? So what we've seen is this transformation at the top of our food chain where integrity and honesty and courage

and conviction has come in question. And that's the leader of the land who is also known as the leader of the free world. So without a doubt, this transformation that we've all been witnessing is not anywhere close to over. I try to explain it as adolescence. If you think about the United States, we're still a young country.

We are not nearly as old as Russia. We're not as old as China. We don't have the cultural bones that you see in places like India or France or Germany or even the UK, right? We are young. And we're basically entering middle school right now in terms of our growth.

And middle school sucks, man. Nobody liked middle school. Your body changes, our growth. And middle school sucks, man. Nobody liked middle school. Your body changes, your voice changes, you smell bad, people are mean to you. That's where our country is going right now. And that is going to look like conflicts between parties and polarization, economic recession, all sorts of back and forth, developing conflicts with foreign nations, backing allies, changing allies, just like we're seeing right now with our work in Ukraine and Israel. And what does that mean?

That doesn't mean that there's going to be imminent physical threats in the United States. And I'll tell you why. Because most of the countries out there realize that the United States is still their bread and butter. They need American dollars They need trade with America. They need buyers and customers from the United States That's what makes the world run because we're a globalized world and we are the only superpower in the world so the chances of us having an invasion in the United States by Russia or A nuclear missile that goes off in Washington DC,

that's sent by China or North Korea. The odds are very, very low because the rest of the world wants to feed on us. We're their fat cow. However, that doesn't mean they're not gonna sit back and watch us kill each other from the inside and watch us undermine each other. It's really the next, for me, the next five to 10 years is going to be

shaped on the backs of leaders, entrepreneurs, and people who are smart enough to recognize that the socioeconomic divide in the United States is going to get bigger and more pronounced. And that means that the people on the top of the socioeconomic food chain, the people making $150,000 a year or more, the people who are in management or executive leadership or entrepreneurial roles, those people are going to have exponentially more impact in the future than they have right now. But we're going to be fighting a socioeconomic bottom class that is very similar to what happened in Venezuela. Yes.

Whereas the horror class is going to start to drive politics for the poor, instead of politics for the nation. Very interesting. Yeah, very interesting. Okay. What I've been asking you about, and now we're going to Tactics Strategies, everybody. So hey guys, I want to jump in here for a second and talk about change and growth. And you know, by the way, it's no secret how people get ahead in life or how they grow. And also taking a look at the future. If you want to change your future, you got to change the things you're doing. If you continue to do the same things, you're probably going to produce the same results.

But if you get into a new environment where you're learning new things and you're around other people that are growth oriented, you're much more likely to do that yourself. And that's why I love Growth Day. Write this down for a second. growthday.com forward slash ed. My friend, Brendal Bruchard has created the most incredible personal development and business app that I've ever seen in my life. Everything from goal-setting software to personal accountability, journaling,

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green light dot com slash ed That's green light dot com slash ed to try green light for free green light dot com slash ed What I really been asking you about is a form, I get metaphorically of situational awareness. And I want you to talk about this concept for everybody. You know guys, one of the main things I've noticed as I travel and I speak, if I'm being candid, is the lack of self-awareness and situational awareness

most people have. I think one of the most attractive qualities for me of friends of mine and people in my life and people I hire to come to work for me is self-awareness and situational awareness. And I'm blown away by the amount of people that lack both. They can't read the room, they don't know about threats and opportunities, they don't know how people view them, they're not cognizant of the energy they put off from what people are feeling, and they also don't read the tarot cards very well of forecasting the future for themselves in business, just like why

I just asked you about the country. So just I'll give you the floor on it, talk a little bit about those two concepts for us. Yeah, so when you talk about self-awareness and situational awareness, it's just super important and interconnected topics, just like you were saying. Self-awareness is basically an awareness of your own limitations, as well as your own natural strengths and gifts. You have to be aware of both. Unfortunately, what happens is many people become either ignorant of both or hyper-focused on one or the other, but not both

things simultaneously, understanding their gifts, but also understanding their limitations. When you talk about situational awareness, it's the exact opposite. It's about being aware of what's happening outside of you in your area. Anybody who's watched, you know, CNN or Fox News has seen a situation room. A situation room is very much a real thing in the intelligence world. Whenever an event happens that is catastrophic or dangerous, we call it a situation. You bring people together of different disciplines and you all have them pay

attention to the situation so that we can try to get one step ahead of cascading events. Situational awareness is what you can try to get one step ahead of cascading events. So situational awareness is what you can do to get yourself one step ahead of the environment around you. And there's a very specific framework and there's a very specific process that you can use to go through that and get yourself ahead of your environment. But it takes effort and it takes work, just like self-awareness takes effort and takes work. What is sad rat? Sad rat is a framework that CIA teaches to essentially take advantage of a process that is inherent in the cognitive building building blocks of

every human being so that you can create human assets, an asset being a person who is of value to you. So, Sadrat does, it's interesting that you asked this along with your situational awareness question because Sadrat takes advantage of people's inherent weakness for recognizing their own values and their own gifts and also exploits another person's lack of situational awareness. So when you're coming across an average person,

a lay person, a customer, a client, a competitor, when they are both ignorant of their own strengths and values and simultaneously not attentive to the situation around them, they are a prime candidate for being converted into a human asset using the situation around them. They are a prime candidate for being Converted into a human asset using the sad rat system and sad rat is I got it here. It's it's spotting Assessing developing recruiting agent handling and termination. So there's a process to this So I want to pick that apart a little bit

but I'm gonna shove something in there with you on it because I was like The reason I wanted you on I was like man, he says some stuff I've not ever heard before. And I love little micro distinctions. And so one of them for me was this difference between perspective and perception. And again, this is all still to me in the same family of situational or self-awareness to some extent. Like understanding the difference between these two things is profound. I don't think I even ever really even thought about it

until I was reading through your work. So let's go through that for a second. Perception and perspective. Absolutely. So perception and perspective, just like you said Ed, two words that oftentimes get used interchangeably. People don't stop to think about the difference between these two words. But just like we talked about situational awareness and self-awareness and the

distinction between them, the same thing exists with perception and perspective. Perception is about how you view the world around you. So where you sit and you look out on your bedroom and you look out from your front window of your house or you look behind the driver's wheel of a car, that's your perception of the world. You see a sunny day and you believe that a sunny day is a good day. And you look at the car in front of you

and it looks like it's only moving, it's moving at the same speed, right? It looks like there's that the car is not moving at all because the distance between you and the car in front of you isn't increasing or decreasing. So that's your perception. That's your perception of the world. Perspective is when you step out of your own shoes

and sit in somebody else's shoes and look at the world from their point of view. So when you step out of your shoes and pretend that you are the FedEx delivery guy for the day, what does that FedEx guy's day look like? Because from you sitting inside your house, you see the FedEx guy arrive, drop off a box, get back in the car and leave, that's it.

That's the only time he crosses paths with you in your day so you don't even think about him. You just think about whether your package got delivered. But in reality, that man or woman came from somewhere, is going somewhere next. You don't know if they couldn't find your box, if they dropped your box, if your box has been like under a stack of other boxes

that were heavier, but that person knows all that. So what ends up happening is you gain an advantage over everybody around you when you stop thinking about your perception and start thinking about their perspective because you're getting more informational data points about the situation, this is the current reality. Whereas the person who's trapped in their own perception, who's literally just sitting there thinking, when am I gonna get out of this meeting? What's my next cup of coffee? Who's pinging me on my phone?

That person is so trapped in their own world that they're losing all of the data, all of the information around them. It's just like you talked about the person who can't read the room, Ed. The person who can't read the room is the person trapped in their perception. Brother, this is it.

So here's everybody, stay right here, everyone. What we're talking about right now, look, in personal development or persuasion or self, whatever you wanna call it, self-improvement, there's very few new frontiers like work that can break open a new paradigm. And this is it. So brother, I did not know I was gonna have you on the show.

Last week, I put a podcast out called Change the Lens. I'll tell you what it was and I want to unpack this with you a little bit because this is, if someone can get their mind around this, it will literally change their life as you know. So I was at my mom's house a couple years back, like a year ago, and I went to just take a picture of myself for social media, which as a middle-aged man is weird in and of itself. I'm going to take the picture. So here's the phone, right? I go to take the picture, except the lens was flipped and it was, I could see my mom, not me. And this massive thing hit me. I switched the lens. I was not now seeing

it my way. I was seeing my mom seeing me. And it made me very emotional because I started to think about how much much what her experience of her relationship with me has been for the last 52 years, 53 years, and how many times I've walked in and gave her a kiss and then talked to my dad for three hours and left, or didn't ask her how she's really doing, her childhood, her life, her emotion. And then I started applying it to almost every relationship I've got. I've changed the lens to your point. And it made me realize I've actually always been pretty good at this, which

is why I'm persuasive. I don't see everything from my own perspective. I think I want you to elaborate and give us maybe an application of this. I think this is like the great blind spot for most people who are wondering why. I'm not moving forward and attracting the relationship I want in my life. Why am I not as persuasive as I should be? Why am I not closing the deals? Why won't I walk in a boardroom? Because everything's their own lens. It's like this hyper lack of awareness or situational awareness because they have not had the ability to switch these two lenses or to your point,

perspective and perception. So how can someone apply this? Where would they apply it? How would they reply it? I mean, you just rattled off a number of fantastic places to apply this concept. A job interview, a client briefing, a pitch, a negotiation. When you're on a date, when you're trying to get a date, when you're considering how to propose to a partner that you've been serious with for a long time. These are all excellent places to apply the perception and perspective framework. In your words, Ed, to flip the lens. Because if you can, in that moment, in just that five, 10, 15 minute window of time, if you can stop and think,

what does this moment feel like to them? Yep. You're going to have an advantage in being able to shape that moment even better in your best interests. That's right. Because you'll be able to think, oh, they probably want to hear me say these words.

They probably want to see me act this way. They probably want to understand that this this way. They probably want to understand that this emergency situation is taken care of, whatever it might be, there's something they're looking for. And until you step out of your perception and into their perspective, you won't know what it is that they want. Now you also asked that how do you go about actually changing this? One of the easiest things you can do, and we do it at CIA all the time, is a simple changing this. One of the easiest things you can do, and we do it at CIA all the time, is a simple like desktop paper exercise, right? Where you imagine anybody, anybody that you're close to in your life. You can imagine your child, you can imagine your boss, you can

imagine your coworker, your business partner, your spouse, anybody at all. You take a piece of paper, you draw a line right down the middle of the piece of paper. On the left side of the paper, you write down all the things you try to be for that person. You try to be reliable, you try to be honest, you try to be fair, you try to be timely, you try to be professional, whatever it is. On the other side of the paper, you have to do the exercise of saying,

okay, if I put myself in my son's shoes, what does my son see from me? I try to be patient, but you know what my son sees? He sees me lose my temper. Right? He sees me ignore his questions. He sees me get frustrated with his mom. He sees me work late. He sees me wake up early. He sees me leave for a business trip some days without saying goodbye. Well, what I find is that now on my side of the paper, what I think I'm doing is very different than what he sees me doing. And when you see that on a piece of paper, that's when it really starts to set in like, oh, I can do this in real time also. And you have to see the problem before you can be

aware of the problem in real time. That's what's so hard. That's the intelligence piece of it. Yeah. Last night I was in this room I'm in right now with my son and his very good friend who I love like a second son. And they're at this age now they're both in their twenties where they like want real feedback. They think. Right? So just they're sitting about 30 feet from where I am right now. And I call them boys, but they're in their twenties and both boys said, Hey, what do you think would hold me back dad, you know, or he calls me dad too, from, from winning. And I started to give them a real answer. And I started to watch the face of the other boy as I was doing it. And there was just a point in my feedback where I went over a line that was his comfort level for

what he was hearing. But because I've switched the lens and I was actually listening to that conversation from his perspective, I saw when that line got moved, where I'd crossed it and I was able to pivot and move it and bring him back up and build him back up again. This is a really important thing you guys and all of your relationships from your business stuff to everything that you do. It also just takes the pressure off you from seeing things from their perspective. I think the work that Andrew's doing on this stuff is like super cutting edge. I totally support it. I love it. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp everybody and I'm so grateful that we are because you know, I really believe in therapy and so many people ask me, what have all the people on your show have in common? Because I've had athletes, entertainers, you know, scientists, political figures, business leaders, self-improvement folks and what do they all have in common?

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ClassPass. That's code my let class at greenchef.com slash my let class to get 50% off your first box plus 50 free ClassPass credits. What I've been terrible at in my life, and I know there's no bulletproof way on this, but I've not been good at knowing when someone's deceiving me in my life. I've had a tendency like many people to project my own values onto the people

that I interact with and just assume that they think and operate like I do. So I'm surprised I've gotten as far, Andrew, honestly, brother, in my life and business with an inability, frankly, to detect deception, lying, or even someone's not great personal interest of mine. They don't have my personal interest. How can someone, this would be huge,

how do you know when you're being deceived or you can be tipped off to potentially you are being lied to? How do you know that? So I'm going to start by answering your question by telling you what is not reliable. Most of what you see online, most of what you see on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube about watching how people react in their face, what's known as micro expressions, most of that is absolute hogwash, just totally not realistic, not applicable to the everyday world. And here's why, it's not because those people

are phonies or liars. Many of them are legitimately trained interrogators and special operators, like they are correct that micro expressions are a tool for lie deception or lie detection. What they are leaving out though, is that you can only use those expressions if you are in a what's known as a constrained

or confined environment. When you control the environment and the asset or the target sitting across from you is a captive audience, when you control their environment, that's the only time you can rely on micro expressions. When they can just walk away, when you're talking to somebody on the street

or in the office or at the water cooler or at the coffee shop, if they have freedom of movement, all that micro expression stuff goes out the window because they don't feel under imminent threat. You have to put somebody in a confined environment where they feel the pressure of an imminent threat in order for their body to work against them like that. So that doesn't work. That doesn't work. So instead what the agency teaches us to do in the field because CIA operates outside of interrogation rooms. We operate on the street. We operate in the

trenches, you know, in the caves with terrorists. We need to deal with people on their home turf, which is really much more akin to everyday life. So what you're looking for for lie detection or deception in everyday life is you're looking for what's known as a baseline and then a deviation from that baseline. So let me give you an example, right?

You know your dentist. You see your dentist probably every six months or so. And you've gotten a cadence over the last two or three cleanings for what their mood generally looks like. You already know, you'd be able to tell if you sat down in the chair, your dentist came in and they were in a bad mood, because it's a deviation from their baseline. You can apply the same thing to people who are trying to buy from you. People who are trying to sell to you, people who are trying to, you know, gain equity in your business or people who are trying to borrow or lend from you. You need to measure them over time to see what is baseline behavior.

They normally Twitch. They're normally late. They normally talk fast. They're normally nervous. They're normally late, they normally talk fast, they're normally nervous, they're normally quiet. Whatever normal baseline is, you'll see that over time. Even if it's just over 60 minutes or so, because you do need an extended period of time to get a baseline. 10 minutes, not enough time to get a baseline.

Somebody can fake it for 10 minutes. It's hard for somebody to fake it for 60 minutes. That takes a lot of energy. So once you have a baseline, now you're looking for deviations from that baseline. So when you're talking to somebody, when you're buying a car and you're negotiating a price and they've been smooth talking the whole time,

and then you throw at them that you want 15% off the MSRP. And then they're like, the smooth talking ends. And they struggle to respond. And then they respond like, the smooth talking ends and they struggle to respond. And then they respond with something like, I don't think we can make that work. That's just too much. That's a lie. Because it was a deviation from baseline.

If right away they would have been like, oh, you know, I understand that 15% off is something you're looking for, but that is outside of the norm for our dealership. Chances are that's the truth. Because because it was very normal it was within baseline, but when you see people deviate from baseline that's the best way to tell whether or not they're lying to you in a moment. Or the reverse right if there's somebody who struggles to answer questions all of a sudden you ask something they pop right out that's a deviation from their normal

processing pattern they're probably lying because this was they were ready for the objection to okay. I got you. You said imminent threat earlier. I was wanting to ask you this. I've had good buddies of mine that have been on that, you know, or seals and whatnot. And one of the parts that I didn't know about the CIA, but I've learned through researching about you was that you guys do go through training on if you find yourself in an interrogation or torture situation. And I'm wondering what if anything somebody can apply in their own day-to-day life that you learn

there, meaning this in our own minds, and I'm not equating these things at all, but you know exactly what I mean, the world is caving in on us. I just lost my job, my spouse left me, both those things happen. Whatever it is, I'm going through my own form of internal torture. And I don't mean to equate the things. I just, I'm trying to delineate a lesson learned from the most extreme situation that we can apply in a less extreme situation in our lives. So what, what can be learned from what you learned about going through interrogation or torture that someone could apply in their own life in their own somehow small way when they're going through their form of mental torture or anxiety or worry? So there are two really powerful tools that we learned in our resistance training and resistance is what you're talking about resisting the fear of torture

because oftentimes when you're trying to forcefully interrogate somebody, it's the fear of the unknown that makes them fall apart. It's not actually when they're getting slapped or getting punched. It's when they're sitting in the chair and they don't know what's coming next. And that's what really gets into your head. And that's part of the psychedelic or the psychological manifestation of torture in advance of physical torture. And that's what, that's exactly what you're saying, Ed. When you say that the world is caving in upon us, what that means, you can relate to the person

who's sitting in the chair before the torture starts, where they're like, oh, what's coming next? The world is collapsing, I have no control, I don't know what's gonna happen. That's that feeling. So the two main tools that they gave us to cope with that sort of situation. And I have used these countless times in my own business,

man, because business is a wild rodeo of the world. The first is something called false dichotomy. False dichotomy. False dichotomy means you create a two scenario situation. False dichotomy, yes or no, on or off, red or green, you create a dichotomy. You force yourself to believe there's only two options. Even though there's countless options, you force yourself to believe two very fundamental options.

Let me give you an example from business. I remember when I was first starting out, when I first quit my full-time job, when I first started being full-time with my own company, Everyday Spy, I knew that to keep my family afloat, I needed $4,000 a month to keep my family afloat. But I didn't know every month if I was going to make $4,000 a month. Some months I made $2,000, some months I made $10,000. I never knew where it was gonna come from. So it would cause me great stress and I would lose sleep at night and I would wring my hands and I would worry about, am I gonna even, am I gonna have to go find a job? Am I gonna crash this business before it even takes off?

So I applied this false dichotomy where I would tell myself, it's either gonna live or it's gonna die. That's it. The business is gonna live or it's gonna die. That's it. The business is gonna live or it's gonna die, period. Once I said those are the two options, I had no control over those options. I didn't need to stay up at night worrying about

is this thing gonna sell? Is that thing gonna sell? Am I gonna get this client? Is that client gonna leave me? All of the what ifs went away because it's either going to live or it's going to die. The end. And that is something that we use all the time in the field because there's countless what ifs. But if you focus yourself on a basic dichotomy, very good. It shuts all those voices off. Very good.

That's funny. In my life, the things I've really feared and worried about were the unknown. I handle them very poorly internally. My anxiety, my heart rate, my stress level. What's most amazing to me is when the really bad things have actually happened, I've handled them very well. That's what's bizarre. And so to your point about the worrying of the unknown is so totally true because I'm processing all these scenarios. But actually when really bad things have happened last night inside story, I have a lighter for my cigars and I put the butane in it incorrectly where it like I didn't realize it, but it got all over the lighter. And I went to this is true everybody's just happened last night.

I went to light my lighter and it caught me on fire. And actually you can't tell today, but I burned part of my hair and like, you know, I don't know what I'm doing. You can't just pour water on the flame. And this is really, and after it happened, the two boys were here, I said, my heart rate didn't move a millimeter.

Like not a millimeter, I just reacted. It ended up being okay. And they're like, dad, your hair's on fire. I'm my heart rate didn't move a millimeter like not a millimeter. I just reacted it ended up being okay They're like dad your hair is on fire. I'm like really okay, and I put that but the point that I'm negative I'm fine. I don't even have any burns. It wasn't that serious My point is my heart rates gone Ballistically higher on things that have never happened in my life that are nowhere near as serious because of the unknown aspect of it So this dichotomy thing I'm like stealing that tomorrow, bro. That's that is killer. Is that why also I'm surprised? Let's see. I would say this or maybe I'm wrong that you didn't say it.

So correct me if wrong that anxiety is actually a superpower for someone. Correct. Yeah, that that is how's that true? It's true in a number of ways and nobody talks about it because people don't understand it, right? So anxiety true anxiety, which is different than the Anxiety that is tied to worry or the anxiety that's tied to the unknown, right? Like 25% of Americans suffer from anxiety. The people who truly have anxiety know Everybody else doesn't really know what it feels like. Okay, Because real anxiety comes from when you don't even know

what it is that you're upset about. Like that's the true anxiety. When something festers in your gut and you don't even know what's bothering you because it's almost on a six cents kind of a level. And there's still a large number of people who have that. But it's not the person, like when I get worried about payroll

at the end of the month, that's not anxiety. Okay. Right? But when I'm sitting there and I'm like, something doesn't feel right and I can't sleep and it's nagging at me and my stomach feels bad and I've got all this nervous energy and I'm just off center, there are a number of people who suffer that anxiety,

a number of very high performing people who suffer from anxiety. Because what's happening is cognitively, your brain is picking up on cues that your prefrontal cortex can't register. So it's almost like your monkey brain, your animalistic brain is seeing a threat that your cognitive brain cannot identify yet.

And that threat is being processed in the deeper parts of your brain and it's manifesting physiologically in your body. Now, when you hear about what is actually causing anxiety, you start to see why it's superpower because it's like a Spidey sense. Spider-Man doesn't even have to see what's going to happen before he knows that something's about to happen. And as a result of that Spidey sense, Ed, what happens is you naturally become more cognitively aware of the world around you. So your monkey brain turns on your frontal brain,

your human brain to a higher level. So now those are the people who are better at forecasting bad events, better at forecasting good events. They're easier at flipping between perception and perspective because their, their brains have been pressure tested, inoculated over time with the stress of feeling anxiety. And for that reason, it causes the, the lay person, the average person with anxiety struggles in life because they don't know how to turn this this perceived weakness into a power.

It's really good. What CIA does, CIA recruits us because we have anxiety. Really? And then teaches us how to tap into it and use it for what its purpose is. Really that's what makes them. You're telling me that that's a criteria that is looked for somebody with anxiety. That is a category that is an inherent skill and an eight skill that when it's identified,

it's dovetailed into very specific job categories. Got you. Do you believe that, I didn't know I was gonna ask you this today. Do you believe that you can cross a line with anxiety or worry and I understand the distinction between the two now that I didn't before, where, cause I am one of those people,

as are a lot of my mega successful friends. However, I've wondered in my life, because I also believe in vibrational frequency and energy, and I'm also a Christian, but I do believe in that, and I've wondered if I've created or drawn to me things I've subconsciously worried about or had anxiety about in my life that I otherwise would not have had come into my world had I not repetitively thought about it. Do you believe in any of that? And if so, do you think that someone should guard

against that if they're one of these worries or anxiety people? So what I am not a person who who tends to in much. I tend to take objective facts. I take objective facts and I try to synthesize it into knowledge that I can then use predictably. And what I've seen in my clients, as well as what you're saying right now about yourself and your own peer group has been really consistent. What I believe is happening is where people write books about vibrations and the law of attraction,

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe that's true. Maybe. But here's what I do know. I know that people who have a heightened sensitivity that causes them anxiety, those are people who have greater informational awareness of what's happening in the world around them. Because they have that greater informational awareness, they start preparing now for something that may not happen for another six months. And then when the thing happens in six months, they know how to deal with it. You just said it yourself a few minutes ago, Ed, when really bad things have happened, you've handled them really well.

For me, that's not a surprise. For me, that's because if you tell me that you struggle with anxiety and you tell me that you deal with bad situations well, it's because subconsciously you've been preparing for that bad situation for a long time. So then when it actually happened, you already had a process kind of in your brain

for how to deal with it. Whereas the average person who does not have anxiety, who does not prepare for a negative event, who is not even aware that things, bad things are happening around them. Their monkey brain is working against them. Yeah. So then when bad happens, they literally are deer in the headlights. I bet you don't have many deer in the headlights moments. Yeah, I don't.

By the way, this is such a great conversation, brother, but you know, I don't. I've always wondered those two things. Like, I definitely am a fearful, worrying guy, and I also have anxiety, and I understand the difference. Yet, maybe a lot of you relate to this that are listening, yet when crunch times come, You get it done. I'm pretty calm, and I execute, and that's really a fascinating description of why I am both of those people what you just said So if you think about it, right if 25% of the American population has clinical anxiety Which means some psychologist is giving them a drug to make them feel better

You and I now know it's not really 25% of the population that has true anxiety It's more like 12 to 15% that have true anxiety. And if you get your hands on those 12 to 15% and you put them in your business and you put them in your executive team and you put them in your national security infrastructure, those people are gonna deal with emergencies better than anyone else.

And guess what? The only thing guaranteed in life, man, is the unknown. So they might lose sleep, they might not eat well, they might gain weight, they might become reclusive, they might self-destruct by the age of 60. You don't know, but what you do know is that when the hits the fan, that person has got your back

and they are gonna be unflappable in that moment of of terror where other people will shut down quit give up or get rolled over yeah one of the most cool things ever covered on the show right now by the way if your parent listen this and you got a child who's got like real anxiety like the real one you ought to let them watch this because their future is brighter than they think their future is so bright they think. Their future is so bright, man. My wife, my wife is a former CIA officer just like me. We met at CIA. She's amazing. She's a badass. She has anxiety. And her anxiety drives her to stay at

home and her anxiety drives her to like be an introvert and just kind of stay away from the world where I put myself out there in the world. But I put myself out there to tell you that if you think I'm smart and if you think I tell you that if you think I'm smart, and if you think I'm impressive, and if you think I'm helpful, she is 10X me in every way because her anxiety has made her so much of a better fit for all of those tasks.

And the reason that our company still stands and continues to grow at an awesome rate is because when the hit's the fan, I have somebody who I can tap on the shoulder and say, I don't know what to do right now. And she's like, I got you. We got this. You guys, have you ever heard this before? Because I've never heard this before. And it's a first off at my age and people I'm just picturing in my life right now. It's completely true, by the way, other people I know, it's completely accurate. It's totally

true. If you listen to the show for a while, you've heard me and my guests talk a lot about how critical it is to have your wellness goals in order, especially lately with me, so you know how powerful visualization is when you visualize yourself one, 10, 30 years from now, you've achieved all your goals. Ask yourself this. Am I healthy at that point in your visions? Of course you are. But like anything else, without a plan to get and remain healthy, you can't hit the

goal and that's why I'm so thrilled to be partnering with life force. In your visions, of course you are, but like anything else without a plan to get and remain healthy, you can't hit the goal. That's why I'm so thrilled to be partnering with LifeForce. It's co-founded by my good friend Tony Robbins and Peter Diamanis. LifeForce is a leader in proactive care. The LifeForce membership includes everything you need to understand your wellness and help you make good decisions today to keep you on track in the future for your health. Listeners on my show get $250 when they first sign up for their membership by going to mylifeforce.com slash ed. That's my lifeforce.com slash ed. Take control of your wellness with LifeForce and see what the healthiest version of you actually looks like and is capable of. These products and statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. What's the I'm watching you talk. You're interesting because I've just had this very fascinating background. Your IQ is very high. You process information super quickly. But you're also like and I'm not just you're a great communicator. All these things are obvious to the people listening or watching what you're persuasive. What is a major mistake people make? Thinking they're being persuasive, but they're really not tough question. Yeah, you know, it's a great question. People often

misunderstand what persuasion really is, especially when they confuse persuasion and influence, right? Two very different things. Because persuasion has to do with the current moment and it has to do with creating emotional momentum. That's what makes you persuasive. If you can get somebody on an emotional drive, an emotional driver in the present moment, you can persuade them to take the action

you want them to take. And CIA is very, very focused on creating officers who can persuade in the field under pressure. Because we don't, I mean, we're not meeting with nice people in the world. We're meeting with terrorists and drug dealers and human traffickers and the scum of the universe, right? That's, those are the people who have the secrets

that we need. So those are the people who have the secrets that we need. So those are the people we have to sit across the table from, break bread and share coffee, right? That's where we operate. So we have to get, in order to get those people to take an action, especially an action that's not in their best interest, like espionage, you have to get them on an emotional tempo that gets them to agree with what you're

saying. So that's persuasion. Influence is what happens when you're not even around and they're reflecting on what you said and they're digesting the relationship you have with them. Right? Right now you and I are on this call, Ed, and if I'm getting you to agree with me, there's some persuasive energy there. But two hours from now when you're having lunch and you grab that fork and you stick it in your salad and you're like, that conversation, I'm still thinking about this topic.

That's influence. Dude, so good, so good. I'm just, when I do shows, I'm a little bit different. Like I process stuff in real time, nothing's sort of organized when I go. And that's the difference between a great show and an okay show. There are times where it's five hours later

and I'm still processing the person said, so they weren't just persuasive, they were influential. So good. Can you tell us, I wanna go back to the spy thing. You had some involvement with like a nuclear missile officer experience, right? What the heck is that like? What can you tell us about it? And what did you learn from it? Oh my gosh, I learned a lot about myself, man. I learned a lot about the world. So when I was with the, before

CIA recruited me, I was with the US Air Force. And I was a US Air Force officer, and I was assigned to a nuclear missile squadron as a nuclear missile control officer, which is if anybody speaks military, my Air Force specialty code was 13 Sierra. That was my job, was a nuclear missile officer. And that is the job that sits underground. That is the job that programs in the coordinates

for where your nuclear warheads are gonna land. I was in command and when I was underground, when I started my military career, I had 10 nuclear missiles. Each missile had 10 individual warheads on them. So there were a hundred warheads that I knew where those warheads would go if I pressed a button and turned a key.

By the time I left the military and got recruited to CIA, I had been promoted to be the youngest commander for the entire missile base. So I had four squadrons and each of those squadrons had 40 missiles and each of those missiles had 10 warheads. So you're talking about thousands of independently targetable warheads.

So the biggest thing I learned, Ed, the biggest thing I learned is that every single one of us is replaceable. Every one of us is replaceable. And I learned that because even in the missile structure, when preparing for all out nuclear war, you can't have a single point of failure. So the keys that I wear around my neck will launch my missile, but they will also launch the missile of every other capsule in my squadron.

So when I turn my key and you don't turn your key, if we're in the same squadron, it doesn't matter. Your missiles will launch because I turned my key. We don't even need you, vice versa. If I'm taking a dump when an all out nuclear missile war hits and I can't turn my key, but you turn your key, my missiles are gone. So I'm just a backup and you're just a backup.

And both of us back each other up, but we also aren't the single point of failure because there's also a command post that can turn the keys for all the squadrons. And then there's an aircraft that can fly overhead that can turn the keys for every squadron and every missile base all across the United States. So we are all backups to a backup to a backup to a backup. And I remember how how that struck me when I first started that job. I was like,

oh, I must be important and I must be well trained because I've got nuclear missiles that I'm responsible for. And so the time that I became the base commander and I was like, none of these people matter because I can launch all their missiles with the turn of my own key. And like an airplane can launch for me. And that, but it humbled me. It humbled me because anything I'm doing, you know, I am very aware every day. That while I live in a business niche, that's really just me. There isn't another former CIA officer teaching CIA skills that break barriers in everyday life. There's nobody that's not going to last forever.

Sure. Someday a competitor will emerge someday. Multiple competitors will emerge. Someday multiple competitors will emerge. And thank God I had that missile experience because now I am very aware that even when I could take my foot off the throttle, I keep pushing forward because the day is coming. I am replaceable.

And I need to get as much of a headstart today as possible because when the day comes that a threat arises, the only advantage I'm gonna have that day is my head start. So good. By the way, his organization is called Everyday Spy. You guys, you can already tell. The type of content you'd learn is not, well, here's why I like it.

One, it's different, and two, it's from real world application in an environment that pushes the theories to their extreme truth truth because of the nature in which the environment he learned these things in. Let me ask you this last question. First, I want to tell you one thing. I really enjoyed the day.

I really enjoyed the day. It went by very quickly. I don't always say this, but I'd love to have you come back on next year. Always waiting here, but I'd love to have you come back on because I have a million other things I'd like to ask you. I want to ask you this. My children are here on my island with me now and they're away, you know, often I'm not with them and someday hopefully I'll have grandkids. And I'm just wondering, as a man who was in the CIA, involved in the nuclear program,

whatever you want to call it, it's way above my pay grade. If we knew what you knew, if us all listening to this knew what you knew about intelligence around the world and how the government really operates internally and the border across everything in the world, would we feel safer than we all feel day to day in our ignorant situation? Or would we feel much less safe and more concerned? The short answer is that you would feel much less safe. You would feel much more concerned and you would lose a lot more sleep. But I try not to focus on that. That may be the fact of it, but I try not to focus on that because instead what we get the opportunity to do is look at the world around us, in the United States especially, look at the world around us and appreciate what we have today because it really could be gone in a matter of days. If we went the direction that some of these other countries have gone, look at Venezuela.

Less than 50 years ago, Venezuela was a version of the United States. And now it is a disaster. Look at Israel and Palestine right now. Look at what's happened with the historic locations in Ukraine. The world that we have built around ourselves as Americans in the United States, in the Western countries, that is a world that is always just a few degrees away from totally toppling over. And because democracy is such an experiment, where authoritarianism has been around for a long time, democracy is always going through these uncomfortable shifts. So sometimes the economy is good, sometimes the economy is bad. Sometimes we like our leadership, sometimes we don't.

Sometimes the court system seems sound, sometimes the economy is bad. Sometimes we like our leadership, sometimes we don't. Sometimes the court system seems sound. Sometimes the court system seems corrupt because we're still figuring it out, right? It's back to being that adolescent conversation again. Are you going to stay here? And if you don't stay here, let's say five years from now, are you going to stay in the United States? And if you don't, where would you go? I mean, it's a big, it's a great, big conversation we can have anytime, Ed, but I am, I plan to leave the United States.

I plan to leave the United States before 2030. I plan to take my children, my wife, my business and everything, um, overseas. Uh, some of them are the countries on my shortlist. I'm looking at Spain, Portugal, Costa Rica, uh, Australia, New Zealand, because what I see in all of those countries is a level of stability and a level of favoritism towards American citizens. And unfortunately, what that means is that

as our country goes through its struggles, your children and my children will have fewer opportunities in the country where we're from. But if we take our children and our citizenship, our passport, our US dollars to another country that is stable, our children will have exponentially more opportunities in that country than they do here. Just think about trying to get your kids into college

or trying to get your kids registered for summer soccer, right? Like, sometimes it's so difficult, even though you have built this amazing life, the bureaucracy of and the structure of it all makes it so that you can't get anything done. But if you go to a place that's just a little bit more like politically stable and a little bit more economically flexible. Now you can get basically anything done because your status and your influence matters more there. I hope you're wrong. I remain optimistic that it's just amazing that I'm sitting here at a time in my life

where someone is suggesting that Costa Rica or Spain could be a more stable political environment than the United States. That's just a stark deviation from what I grew up at least ignorantly thinking or maybe accurately thinking. So I hope you're wrong. I remain optimistic. I'm gonna have you back on. We ought to extrapolate that conversation a little bit more deeply. But I appreciate the honesty and the candor from your perspective very much. So I hope I'm wrong too Ed, trust me. I hope I am wrong too.

But for me, probabilities wise, I've got to consider all the options. I understand, that's why I asked you the question. Hey guys, this is a great ride today. You are welcome and I want you to share this show with anybody you can. Go check out Everyday Spy. That is also his Instagram handle as well and you guys just share the show. Fastest growing show in the world because you guys share it because of compelling conversations like today with Andrew. Thanks everybody. God bless!