CIA Spy: "Leave The USA Before 2030!" Why You Shouldn't Trust Your Gut! - Andrew Bustamante

1. 0:00 – 2:47

   Intro

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante0:00

      For seven years, (instrumental music plays) I was working undercover as a spy. And I needed to know how to manipulate, how to live and operate without ever being detected, and how to collect secrets.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:10

      Okay. I've got so many questions.

   3. ABAndrew Bustamante0:12

      Andrew Bustamante... He's a former CIA officer... Who uses spy skills... To teach anyone how to master their mind, talent, and potential in business and everyday life. When I left CIA, I realized that I could use CIA skills to succeed in business. But one of the first things you should want to learn is how do I know if I'm being lied to? As an example, bad liars. That is one of the biggest tells of an unskilled liar. Next, people have four basic core motivations: reward, ideology, coercion, and ego. And if you can speak to somebody through the lens of their ideology, you can get them to do incredible things.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett0:46

      Inception versus perspective. What's that?

   5. ABAndrew Bustamante0:48

      90% of the people out there, they're all trapped in their own perception, in thinking emotionally. And emotions are very likely wrong. So CIA trains us to recognize and distrust our perception. And there's two really quick things that you can do. Next, SADRAT. It's an acronym. And all of our marketing, all of our human interaction falls into the same SADRAT process that I learned at CIA, because the human condition is so predictable. So SADRAT stands for ... And it's the reason my company has grown 300% every year for the last three years.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett1:22

      I wanna know more. Was there any situations where you felt your life was at risk? What do you think about what's going on at the moment with geopolitics? Do you think we're already engaged in a form of World War III? And then, why are you gonna try and leave America in 2027? It's absolutely crazy to me that so many of you have decided to watch our show, um, and so many of you have decided to subscribe to our show. We now have five million subscribers on YouTube, which is a number that I just can't comprehend, and it's a dream that I absolutely never could have had. We started the Diary of a CEO just over three years ago now. And in my wildest expectations, we might have had 100,000 subscribers by now. So you can imagine how shocked I am that so many of you have chosen to tune into these conversations every week, um, and spend some time with us. So, thank you. And I made a deal with you. I made a deal that if you subscribe to this show, that we would continue to raise the bar. And in 2024, we're gonna raise the bar like never before. I've been working for the last nine months on a surprise for all of you that have subscribed to this show, and I'm very excited to deliver that for you. The production's gonna change. We're gonna go even further with our guests, and we're gonna tell even more global stories. So as always, if you appreciate what we're doing here, the simple, free favor I'll ask from you is to hit the subscribe button. Let's get on with the episode. (instrumental music plays)

2. 2:47 – 3:15

   Your Time At The CIA

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:47

      Andrew, you're well known for your time in the CIA because people are so intrigued and compelled by it. How long were you in the CIA?

   2. ABAndrew Bustamante2:56

      I was actually in the CIA for a comparatively short period. I was only in for seven years. Uh, many people make a 30 or more year career out of CIA. So, it was really quite a small blip in terms of my overall life. I wore, uh, the US military uniform for seven years before that as well. So 14 years total spent in service to the United States.

3. 3:15 – 3:57

   What Is The CIA?

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante3:15

   2. SBSteven Bartlett3:15

      And what is the CIA?

   3. ABAndrew Bustamante3:17

      So the CIA is, uh, the United States' intelligence, foreign intelligence collection, uh, platform. Their primary agency deemed with collecting foreign secrets that have any kind of impact in American national security. So if you think about it, uh, there are multiple what's called intelligence agencies in what's known as the intelligence community or the IC. CIA is just one of those 36-ish, uh, community members in the IC. However, it is the one charged with centralizing all of the intelligence collected, hence the Central Intelligence Agency. So it's the hub in a large wheel of intelligence collection.

4. 3:57 – 6:43

   You've Got It Wrong About Spies

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante3:57

   2. SBSteven Bartlett3:57

      Is that what a spy is? Is it the same thing as being a spy?

   3. ABAndrew Bustamante4:00

      So I'm gonna... I'll geek out with you a little bit here, because terminology is really very important. So, uh, there are spies, and spy is a vernacular that's used in common, uh, conversation that doesn't really have a definition in terms of the intelligence or espionage profession. You have handlers, you have assets, in terms of traditional espionage. Handlers are officers who collect intelligence. Assets are foreigners who provide intelligence to the handler. So a CIA officer or an MI6 officer, a Mossad officer, an MSS officer, depending on the country, these are officers who collect secrets. They are therefore handlers.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett4:40

      Mm-hmm.

   5. ABAndrew Bustamante4:41

      And then all the people who provide them secrets are considered assets. Traditionally speaking, when you talk about a spy, some people think a spy is an asset or a handler, either someone who provides information or someone who collects information.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett4:55

      Okay.

   7. ABAndrew Bustamante4:56

      Uh, and, and the term spy is just, uh, just confusing enough that oftentimes people will project their own opinions on top of that word, because they don't understand the real nuance of espionage.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett5:09

      So I thought of a spy as someone that goes to another country and collects information secretly and then sends it back to the country they came from.

   9. ABAndrew Bustamante5:17

      So technically, that is an intelligence operative-

   10. SBSteven Bartlett5:19

       Okay.

   11. ABAndrew Bustamante5:20

       ... or an intelligence officer, uh, also known as an operator or, m- in media, an operative. Uh, sometimes it's also called an agent, right? An intelligence agent. Uh, these are all kinda terms that get nebulous. But what you are describing is a intelligence, a trained intelligence officer. No matter what country you're in, whether you're in... uh, th- it doesn't matter what intelligence profession you're in either, and there are multiple types of intelligence. There's human intelligence, signals intelligence, measurements intelligence. Anybody who travels to collect secrets on behalf of their country is an intelligence officer.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett5:54

       Is that what you were?

   13. ABAndrew Bustamante5:55

       That's what I was.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett5:56

       You started a company after leaving the CIA called Everyday Spy.

   15. ABAndrew Bustamante6:00

       Correct.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett6:02

       For someone that's just clicked on this podcast now, who's trying to understand the value that they're gonna get from you by understanding the work that you do at Everyday Spy, what are they gonna get from this conversation?

   17. ABAndrew Bustamante6:13

       This conversation is designed to, for me, to be able to explain how spy skills have a very real value in breaking everyday barriers. And that's the mission of my company at Everyday Spy. We use spy education to break barriers; social barriers, financial barriers, educational barriers, cultural barriers, language barriers. If there is a barrier in life, I have made it my mission in my company to break that barrier using a proven real-world skill or technique from espionage.

5. 6:43 – 8:13

   Applying Real Spy Skills To Overcome Any Barrier In Our Lives

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante6:43

   2. SBSteven Bartlett6:43

      And what sort of means is that t- to what end? So if I'm, you know, the average Joe listening to this now, when you say break barriers, what are those barriers that I- that I'm gonna be able to break in my life?

   3. ABAndrew Bustamante6:53

      So I- I intentionally use the term breaking barriers because we all have different barriers. What the reality of life is that we all come into barriers that are similar but we come into those barriers at different times. For some people, there's a barrier in income that they're born into. For other people, the barrier that they're born into is that they don't have a father. For other people, they come into a financial barrier when they're 18 and they have to leave home. Some people don't ever know financial barriers, but they do know educational barriers because they suffer from dyslexia or they suffer from ADHD. There are people who have barriers that are due to anxiety. The reality is, there's really 12 or so barriers that we will all experience in our life, but we will experience them at different times. For some of us, it won't happen until we become parents. For others, it happens as soon as we hit adulthood. The idea is that CIA is extremely familiar with barriers. And what they teach us as officers going through their training programs is not just the details of tradecraft, but it's really to understand that any barrier that we as individuals face, they can get us through. But we can also predict barriers other people will run into. And if you know somebody else's barrier and you understand their barrier better than they do, when you help them through that barrier, they will tell you secrets.

6. 8:13 – 18:15

   How To Manipulate People

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante8:13

   2. SBSteven Bartlett8:13

      They will tell me secrets. As part of your training to become a CIA officer, you must have learned how to manipulate people. That s- seems to me, from what I know of spies, pretty foundational to what it is to be a successful spy and to get information from someone else. In this conversation today, are we gonna learn how, through your training, you were taught to get information from people and make them do what you wanted them to do?

   3. ABAndrew Bustamante8:42

      Yes. And I'll- I'll be very frank here. I try to exercise something called radical transparency. If you want to manipulate people, you will learn that from this conversation. If you want to manipulate people, I will teach you how to manipulate people. In- in just a simple conversation, you can learn those skills. But the thing to understand that's the most important is that whether you want to manipulate or not, others are manipulating you just because you don't know what they're doing, right? The problem with being an intelligence operator is that to achieve the things you have to achieve, you sometimes have to do things that you don't wanna do. In being a business owner, what I've discovered is that many business owners struggle because they feel like they have to do things they don't wanna do. They feel like they have to be sleazy, they feel like they have to be tricky, they feel like they have to mimic, you know, shyster, bad guy business owners, right? The flip side, if you think of a coin, one side of that coin is manipulation. And that is a- that coin has value. Manipulation has value. But the other side of the same coin is motivation. If you can get people to do what they want to do, then you have motivated them. And that is worth just as much as getting people to do what you want them to do, which is manipulating them.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett10:04

      We'll get into all of that, but I wanna understand where you came from, because I think this is quite pertinent to both your work as a CIA officer, but also there's, um, really interesting sort of psychological elements to why the CIA ch- chose you-

   5. ABAndrew Bustamante10:17

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett10:18

      ... that are deep within your childhood story. Going right back to the beginning of your life, what is- what is the most important context we need to understand to understand you?

   7. ABAndrew Bustamante10:27

      I think the most important thing to understand from my childhood is that I was raised by my mom, uh, my father died, my father was killed before I was born. Uh, he died in a violent crime in California. I didn't know him ever. And my mom had to start life with a newborn son, not just as a single mom, but also as the single mom of a man who was killed in a crime. Um, so it was my mom and my grandma that raised me from very young. My mom is, uh, a woman of color. She's- she's Latina. My father was American Indian. So they- there was, uh, an element of racial diversity in 1980 when I was born that also kind of played a role in all of that. And the reason that that's important is not because of what happened in the past, it's because from that foundation, my mom married a Caucasian man who became my stepdad, uh, who became my adopted father as well. And I had to kind of learn how to come of age, or literally come of age, in a household where I didn't know my father, I had a stepdad who was Caucasian with two half-sisters who were Caucasian. And my stepdad's whole goal was to just pull my mom as far away from her roots as possible, because he didn't wanna deal with all the drama that comes from being part of a Catholic Latin family. And my mom was all for that, but nevertheless, like, that was- that was the kind of soup that I came out of.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett11:55

      What were the needs that were going unmet in your life at that point?

   9. ABAndrew Bustamante11:59

      (exhales) You do not ask easy questions, man. So, uh, uh, I was not...I, I did not feel loved. Growing up, I did not feel loved. My mother loved me. And I know logically and rationally that she loved me. But my mother was a cold woman. She was focused on career success, she was focused on feminism, she was focused on other things. I, I ... As an adult now, uh, my sisters and I often, uh, reflect on the fact that we think our mom was the kind of woman that didn't want to be a mom. But it was expected of her to be a mom, so therefore she became a mom. So there wasn't a lot of love, there wasn't a lot of emotional support. There was plenty of academic support, and it was always hard because the academic support came, I think, as a way of making sure that they didn't have to provide the other support. 'Cause if you have an academically successful student who turns 18, they can get the fuck out of the house and you can have your life back. And I think that was the mission for my mom, was just academic success, academic success. Be successful so I don't have to take care of you, because I'm not really good at this whole hugging, loving thing, uh, and I just want you gone. So I feel like that was, that was my mom. My dad and my mom, I think, had a marriage that was based in a common set of objectives more so than shared love, and, uh, and they were just kind of pursuing those objectives. And, uh, and I was fortunate because from that, I was cultivated to be a hard-working academic success, and that led to a full ride scholarship, and that led to, you know, success in other parts of life. But for sure, it was, it was an un- ... It left behind a trail of always wondering, "Who, who, who loves me in my family? Is love even important in a family? Does it matter or am I being too focused on this whole love thing?" Uh, as an example, I tell this story because it's totally normal to me but a lot of other people find it surprising. There was a day where my mom pulled me aside. I was having an argument with my stepdad, and I went to my mom looking for support. And I asked her to support me. I, uh, you know, I was like, "Do, do you love me?" Right? "Do you love me or do you love dad more?" And she looked at me and she was like, "Of course I love your dad more than I love you. Because you're my son, I have to love you. You were born to me, I must love you. But it's a choice to love your dad, so I have to love him more because it's a choice." And for me, I will never forget that conversation. I'll never forget the look on my mom's face. It was so simple and so academic and so clear to her, uh, and it's never been something I could ever actually accept. And even now, as a husband and father myself, I don't understand how that was logically sound to her. I don't know how you could ever actually prioritize who you love.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett14:54

       All of that, as you've said, is the result, resulted in your academic success and your, your focus and all those kinds of things. But at what cost?

   11. ABAndrew Bustamante15:04

       I mean, it makes you kinda fucked up, man. It makes you feel like... First of all, it makes you feel like your secrets are justified. It makes you feel like you must have secrets because there's nobody that you can talk to about certain things. I, I, I remember for many years, y- you can't take, you can't take your love life to mom and dad. You can't tell them the girl that you think is cute, you can't talk to them about not getting picked to go to the prom dance or anything like that. You can't talk about that with them 'cause they don't care. And you can't trust your, your sisters, you can't trust your mom, you can't trust your dad. You can't trust the people in your own house. So because you can't trust them and because you can't take certain things to them, you must keep secrets. And since you must keep secrets, you must be allowed to keep secrets. There must be secrets that are totally acceptable that they are also keeping from you. So I grew up in a world where secrets were something that was very normal, and then from that, you start to learn that if secrets are normal, then lying must also be normal and totally acceptable. So there's a level of sociopathy that develops when you feel like you're on your own. Uh, and that's something that most people out there who are loners, who have grown up in that world, they, they learn to understand that there are certain elements of social behavior that are not culturally acceptable. But as long as you don't talk about them, you can practice them. So that was, uh, that's a big part of what I learned personally, was that secrets, how to keep secrets, that secrets are normal, how to lie, how to lie without being caught, and more importantly, that, that there is a very real difference between the people (laughs) the people who are raised in a world where they trust people, they trust others. And because they trust others, they have a built-in vulnerability, a built-in deficiency of compared to the people who are raised in a world where they don't trust others. Because when you're raised in a world where you don't trust, you can always learn to trust. But when you're raised in a world where you trust first, it's very difficult to train that person to know when to not trust someone else.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett17:12

       How do you feel about that wiring that you have because of that experience?

   13. ABAndrew Bustamante17:16

       I mean, it's sad. I'm doing everything in my power to not wire my children the same way that I was wired. So I do believe that there is a faulty wiring that happened. But at the same time, it's been very valuable to me. It's been very productive and valuable in terms of what I've been able to experience, what I've been able to see and do financially, economically, relationally. I, I, I benefit in value, and this is a big challenge that I have, is as much as I sit here telling friends and, like I'm telling you, secrets, because this is what happens, we tell people secrets when they trust you. When I share with you the challenges of growing up, it's important to me that I don't sound like I'm complaining or whining because I had a fantastic foundation for success after that. But I define success in all the ways that I was trained to define success. Financially, economically, empirically. Not based on how I feel internally.

7. 18:15 – 21:13

   The Psychological Profile Of A CIA Agent

   1. SBSteven Bartlett18:15

      Have you had to do a lot of work to, uh, counteract the potential consequences of that wiring as you become an adult and a father, and all of those things? It's something I think about a lot. I think I've got my own pretty, uh, fucked up wiring, and I'm scared now because I'm on the f- footsteps of becoming a dad myself.

   2. ABAndrew Bustamante18:33

      (laughs)

   3. SBSteven Bartlett18:33

      You know, I've- I'm with a partner, been with her for four years. We're talking about kids right now. And I think, "Jesus Christ, like, there's a really..." You almost can foresee that there's a really high possibility I'm gonna fuck up as a dad, because my brain is wired towards, like, validation-

   4. ABAndrew Bustamante18:48

      Mm-hmm.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett18:48

      ... and c- work, c- career success, and I'm a bit of a workaholic. And so have you had to do a lot of work on that to-

   6. ABAndrew Bustamante18:54

      A- absolutely. So the first thing I'll say is, you will fuck up as a dad. We will all fuck up as parents. The question is, how big will we fuck them up? And I'm working very hard to make sure that the way that I fuck up my kids is in small ways that they can fix in small ways. But I already know, like, the sins of the father pass on. So I'm just trying to minimize what I pass on that's negative, and maximize what I pass on that's positive. The, the additional layer that's, that is unique to myself and all s- uh, professional intelligence officers is that w- when we are recruited into intelligence service, specifically when CIA recruits field operators, it's fairly transparent. They tell you that you were recruited because you are a little fucked up. They tell you that you are... You were recruited because of a certain psychological profile that makes it so that you pragmatically view things like secrets and lies. There's a few different terms. We call it, uh, moral flexibility. Depending on the situation, there are some things that I would deem immoral, but to do them in a different situation is totally acceptable. And that's just something that I'm wired to be... That's, that's been wired in me since I was a kid. But CIA understands how to take advantage of that, how to use that in a way that benefits American national security. There's also an element of high performance that comes from being wired a certain way. So there is a tie between childhood trauma and high performance. It's a well-known, it's a documented connection, but CIA has learned, as has MI6 and Mossad, and all the other intelligence services of the, of the world, they've learned that when you train someone who has just the right amount of childhood trauma high performance, when you get your hands on them at the right time in the right period of their life, they can be trained to become extremely loyal, highly productive field operators that, that end up spending 30-plus years in service to their nation.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett21:00

      When did they get their hands on you?

   8. ABAndrew Bustamante21:02

      They recruited me when I was 27 years old, uh, coming out of the military in 2007. Uh, I was looking for whatever the next step was gonna be, uh, and that was when I was approached by a CIA recruiter.

8. 21:13 – 23:15

   I Held The Key To Nuclear Missiles

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante21:13

   2. SBSteven Bartlett21:13

      I heard that you got a pop-up on your computer screen.

   3. ABAndrew Bustamante21:16

      Yeah. Back in the day, that's, that's, uh... I was actually applying, I was a nuclear missile officer for the CIA. Or excuse me, I was a nuclear missile officer for the Air Force. And a nuclear missile officer in the Air Force controls nuclear ICBMs. So I wore the, the little ring, the-

   4. SBSteven Bartlett21:31

      Wait, wait, wait, wait. What's a nuclear i- ICBM?

   5. ABAndrew Bustamante21:33

      So a nuclear ICBM is a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile. So the large missiles that carry nuclear warheads for mutually assured destruction, nuclear war type of stuff.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett21:43

      So you controlled the nuclear missiles?

   7. ABAndrew Bustamante21:45

      I was half of who controlled them. I wore one ring, somebody else wore a different ring, and that was, that was how a nuclear missile got launched.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett21:52

      W- what's, what does the ring do?

   9. ABAndrew Bustamante21:54

      So the ring is a key. On the end of it is a key. And when you get, uh, when you get a nuclear code that comes in, the code, you put it into a old-school computer system, and the two of you take your key ring and you insert it into the, the silo operating system, and then you turn in unison. And when you turn in unison, it launches a nuclear weapon.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett22:14

       How did you get yourself to the point in life at 27 years old where you're holding a nuclear key (laughing) around your neck?

   11. ABAndrew Bustamante22:22

       (laughing) I would love to say it was a series of good decisions, but, uh, but it wasn't. I just, I was, I did what I was told. That's how I got there. I did what I was told when I was in high school, and I got good grades. And then my mom told me that the best school of all the universities that chose me, the best school I should go to is the Air Force Academy. So then I accepted a full ride scholarship to the United States Air Force Academy, where I did what I was told, and I graduated as a lieutenant. And then I followed what the Air Force told me to do from there. And they, they told me to learn how to fly, and then they told me that they needed me to work in nuclear and space weapons instead. So then I went to that school, and I did well at that school. And, and I ended up just kind of climbing the ladder. I, I, I did what I was told. And, and then one day, I was... I found myself 100 feet underground, miserable. (laughs) It's, it's a horrible job.

9. 23:15 – 25:00

   It Was A Horrible Job

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante23:15

   2. SBSteven Bartlett23:15

      Why?

   3. ABAndrew Bustamante23:16

      You're, uh... So in 2007, when I was a nuclear missile officer, you sit in a s- in a launch control capsule, an LCC, uh, that sits 100 feet underground. And you sit there on a 72-hour shift with one other person, the other person who holds the other key. And then you are one nuclear crew of maybe 30 different nuclear crews who are all on deployment at the same time. So at any given time, in one air force base, there's 60-ish people underground for 72 hours at a time. And then in a different missile base, there'll be a different 60 people underground. And your whole job is just to sit there and wait for nuclear war to break out. And obviously, nuclear war hasn't broken out, and hopefully it never will break out. So as you sit there, underground, not seeing sunlight, and as you sit there in a, in a capsule with one other person that you very rarely ever like, you have a lot of time to reflect on, "What am I doing? What am I doing with my life?" I, I'm a redundancy of a redundancy.... of a scenario that we all are working very hard to make sure never happens. Is this a productive life? Like, am I, am I making a difference? Am I leaving a mark in history sitting here not launching missiles? Waiting for a message to come in that I already know isn't gonna lead to nuclear war? It, like, it's- it- it's a very difficult and thankless job that's ... Even right now, as you and I are having this conversation, there are some 200 Americans sitting underground doing that exact job. And that's just in the United States. Every country that has nuclear weapons is doing the same thing.

10. 25:00 – 27:18

    Would You Have You Pressed The Nuclear Button?

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante25:00

    2. SBSteven Bartlett25:00

       If an order had come in that instructed you to launch a nuclear weapon, would you have done it?

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante25:06

       Absolutely. That's what you do. The other thing that's important to understand is we're redundancies of redundancies, so we don't know if an order says to launch nuclear weapons. We just know that an order comes in that says to insert the keys and turn them. And if it's a valid order that comes in, then the machine will let us insert our keys. We will turn our keys and then the machine will do what the machine does. Sometimes that order that's coming in is saying, "Launch nuclear missiles." Sometimes that order that's coming in is just a drill to make sure that the two people in the capsule turned their keys.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett25:38

       Oh, really? So you never know the difference?

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante25:40

       We're just a redundancy of redundancy, man.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett25:43

       It- it seems hard to me to understand how someone would stay in that job for a long period of time, so they must have, like, really high attrition.

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante25:49

       They have, they have shockingly low attrition because they do such a good job of psychologically, uh, identifying the right people for that job.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett25:58

       Were they scouting you, do you think, from a very, um, early age to eventually go into the CIA?

    9. ABAndrew Bustamante26:04

       No. I don't believe so. I think CIA is far too practical to do anything that requires scouting people from a young age. I think what more realistically happened is that they had a very simple algorithm that they had applied to every government website so that when people of a certain, um, profile applied to a job on a government website, then they'd get a flash on their screen, just like I did, that said, "Hey, we appreciate your application. We'd like to have a different recruiter contact you for a different opportunity."

    10. SBSteven Bartlett26:35

        What were you applying for on that government website when that pop-up came up?

    11. ABAndrew Bustamante26:38

        Yeah, I was applying for the Peace Corps. I was trying to get into the US Peace Corps. Because after spending (laughs) two years underground, uh, waiting to launch nuclear missiles, I thought that it'd be great to get out of the Air Force and go do the exact opposite. Kind of like if you've ever had a really bad breakup-

    12. SBSteven Bartlett26:54

        (laughs)

    13. ABAndrew Bustamante26:54

        ... you go looking for the exact opposite of the person you just broke up with. That's- that's how I felt.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett26:59

        And the Peace Corps does sort of humanitarian work around the world?

    15. ABAndrew Bustamante27:02

        Exactly right. I mean, I was looking to teach children English in Africa, or save orphans, or do microfinance, or build huts. Like, I was looking to- to do something that built the world up instead of just waiting to tear the world down.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett27:17

        You get

11. 27:18 – 29:13

    The CIA Message That Changed My Life

    1. SBSteven Bartlett27:18

       this pop-up as you're applying and it says, um, "We- another recruiter wants to speak to you," or something, words to that effect. What happens then?

    2. ABAndrew Bustamante27:25

       So that's when being a 27-year-old single guy kicks in and you think to yourself, "There might be something better." So once you think to yourself, "There might be something better," it's really easy to say, "Yes. Like, I'll wait." And that's all the- that's all the screen was asking me to do, is just pause my application for 72 hours. So it's easy to click Yes, and then you fall out of that website, and you're just on hold for 72 hours. Either a better opportunity is gonna happen and someone's gonna call me, or no one's gonna call me and I can come right back and finish my application. But just to say no means to miss the opportunity, and that wasn't, that wasn't me.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett27:59

       And then within 72 hours, you get a call, presumably?

    4. ABAndrew Bustamante28:01

       Within 24 hours, I got a call. Yeah. I got a call from an unlisted number. It just said, "703." And, uh, there was a woman on the other end of the line. Uh, she gave me a first name, but I don't remember what her first name was. Uh, and she basically, you know, confirmed who I was and confirmed that I was applying to the Peace Corps, asked me if I'd be open for other government opportunities, and then she said that there might be opportunities in the national security sector that I'd be interested in, and she'd like to send me an airline ticket and a hotel reservation and a rental car reservation to come up to DC to hear more about the job.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett28:33

       What did you think at that point?

    6. ABAndrew Bustamante28:34

       I thought it was a prank call. I thought, I thought that the- the call wasn't real. Uh, I thought that the call was ... maybe it was some kinda gimmick or maybe it was something else, or ... It just didn't sound real, uh, especially not when she said she was gonna, like, send me a paper airline ticket and she was gonna send me all this stuff in the mail overnight, FedEx. Uh, but then it showed up, and then when it showed up, again, that 27-year-old single male kicked in, and I was like, "Well, now I have a ticket. Let's see where the ticket goes. And let's go to the reservation counter at the rental car desk, and is this a real rental car reservation? It's a real reservation. Is there a real hotel?" And then you just kinda follow the breadcrumbs.

12. 29:13 – 31:31

    The Interview Process For The CIA

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante29:13

    2. SBSteven Bartlett29:13

       The rental car reservation's real. The airline ticket's real. You fly out there. You land.

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante29:17

       Mm-hmm.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett29:18

       What happens next?

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante29:19

       Uh, you get another phone call that says, "Hey, did you get in safe?" And then they tell you the address for where you're supposed to show up the next day. Uh, and then you go. It's a nondescript building, and you walk in and, uh ... For me, I walked in. There were 10 or so other people in the waiting room. None of us really knew what we were there for. We all knew that we were there for something related to a government job. Everybody's dressed essentially the same way. And, uh, you know, you find out that this person's in finance, and that lady came from social work, and whatever else it might be. And then you- eventually, somebody comes out and calls you into a room, and then you go through the first- what we call the first round of interviews. And it's just kind of like a- a fit to see what you're interested in, what you're not interested in, et cetera. And it was at the end of that first interview that the lady said to me that, uh, I might be a good fit for the National Clandestine Service at CIA, which I didn't know what that was at the time, and then she basically broke it down. And she was ... Just like you and I did at the beginning of this conversation. She's like, "Essentially, we want you to be a- a field officer, or what you might know from the movies as a spy." And of course, for me, I was ...... I mean, my seven-year-old self was like, "I'm gonna be a what? Like you want me to be a spy? You want me to, like, drive fancy cars and wear tuxedos and always have a beautiful woman on my side? Like, sign me up for that! I mean, s- starving children in Africa can wait."

    6. SBSteven Bartlett30:36

       (laughs)

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante30:36

       "I wanna do that." But then of course comes the, the byline afterwards, where she's like, "You can't tell anybody that this is what you're now applying for. We're gonna move you on to the second phase of interviews. We need you to, you know, go back to your hotel and go back to Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana and live your normal life. And if anybody asks you why you're out here, just tell them that you came out here applying for a government position and you don't know whether or not you're gonna get it. And in the meantime, we'll be in touch."

    8. SBSteven Bartlett31:03

       And then they get in touch again?

    9. ABAndrew Bustamante31:04

       And then they get in touch again. And then you go through multiple m- more rounds of interviews. So, they fly you usually back to the DC area, and then the interviews just get m- kind of more intense. You go from a fit in- interview to a, kind of like a, a, a test, like a, um (smacks lips) interview that's more of like a test with somebody else. They ask you scenario-based questions. They give you puzzles. Uh, they ask you some light psychological

13. 31:31 – 33:54

    How Did You Feel When You Received That Letter?

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante31:31

       stuff.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett31:31

       When you got that letter in the post saying that you'd been offered a, a role, how did you feel?

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante31:35

       Great.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett31:36

       Yeah?

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante31:36

       Yeah. I felt like I had done everything right, right? I felt like... I mean, there was a part of me that says, th- that, that says, and I still kind of follow this mantra, like, "Who gets to do this?" So, that felt amazing. And then there was a ton, to use your word, a ton of validation of qu- and, like, now I get it. Now I know why I went to a college I didn't like. Now I know why I put up with a stepdad and listened to my mom and... Like, I don't need love, and you don't need support, and you don't need a family that cares about you as a person. All you need is to check the fucking boxes, because this is where you get to go when you check the boxes. And now that I've checked all the boxes, I'm free. Except it doesn't really work that way, because when you're hired because you're, you check boxes, it just, the boxes just change. But you still have to check the boxes.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett32:27

       And at that point, it goes from interview to, I guess, training?

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante32:29

       Correct.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett32:30

       During that whole interview process, you're not allowed to tell anyone, I'm guessing.

    9. ABAndrew Bustamante32:34

       Right.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett32:34

        Even your family?

    11. ABAndrew Bustamante32:35

        Nope.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett32:36

        So what, what'd you tell your family that you've been up to during that period?

    13. ABAndrew Bustamante32:39

        So this is what's nice about their recruitment process. Remember, I told you earlier that I, I accepted as a child that there are times that you have to lie and there are secrets that you have to keep. This was just a secret I had to keep and a lie that I had to tell. So, I told my family that I was looking at getting out of the Air Force, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. Maybe I'd go work for the government. And I was going to DC to do some government interviews. I was never close to my family. From the time I left for the Air Force Academy at 18, I mean, I went home maybe once a year. Every time I tried to go home, it was always a kerfluffle because my parents didn't wanna buy the airline ticket 'cause it was expensive, and I didn't have money to buy an airline ticket, so I had to ask them, and it was the same song and dance every Christmas holiday, right? Like, "I'd like to come home. I don't have any money." "Well, we don't have any money either. Maybe you shouldn't come home." So, it was really easy to be 27 years old, almost 10 years after that, I'm not really close to my family. So, I tell them as little as possible. I had a girlfriend at the time. She was a great girlfriend, but she wasn't as great as being a CIA officer was gonna be, right? I had friends at the time, but they weren't as cool as being a CIA officer would be, right? So, it was really easy to just start just cutting off the branches of my social tree, because I was gonna go do something awesome. I didn't need anybody

14. 33:54 – 34:44

    Did The CIA Tell You To Cut Off From Your Social Circle?

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante33:54

       else.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett33:54

       Did the CIA tell you to disconnect from these people at all?

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante33:57

       They told you that y- you would have to eventually, and, you know, they, they explain how you're gonna go into covert service. If you're gonna go into clandestine service, you can't take a whole Rolodex of people with you. So, one of the things that they asked during our psychological evaluation was, you know, "How much do you need close relationships and close peers? And how do you feel about severing ties with what we sometimes call, like, secondary or tertiary relationships? Friends, college friends?" Like, a primary relationship is your spouse. A secondary relationship is all your close friends. A tertiary relationship is somebody who you work with. So, like, "How do you feel about cutting off all those not so important relationships?" And for me, it was easy, right? I was like, "Let's, let's go. I'm gonna go do something amazing. I don't need college friends to go do something

15. 34:44 – 36:03

    Your Ethnicity Factor To Be Recruited By The CIA

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante34:44

       amazing."

    2. SBSteven Bartlett34:44

       Do you think your appearance and ethnicity factored into the CIA's decision to recruit you?

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante34:49

       Absolutely. In 2007 ... So, just to take everybody back, 2007 was six years after 9/11. It was, uh, three years after the CIA 9/11 Commission, or the US Government 9/11 Commission came out, which basically said that everything CIA had been doing up to 2001 was wrong. They were focused in a Cold War era. They were not focused on terrorism. They were focused on, uh, you know, Ivy League, Caucasian graduates as being the next generation of CIA officer instead of diversifying for a diversified world. So, without a doubt, they were looking for different people. They were looking for young people, colored people, you know, LBGTQ+, people who could connect with the modern-day threat around the world. And then, I think on top of being brown and ethnic, I also came with a huge government file 'cause I had been part of the Air Force since I was 18 years old. So they knew everything about my health, everything about my mental health, everything about my, you know, academic, athletic performance in college. They knew everything about me. Uh, and I think that's part of why my onboarding process took about nine months, where the typical onboarding process takes about 18

16. 36:03 – 37:14

    Do You Have To Change Your Identity?

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante36:03

       months.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett36:03

       How do they train you to become a CIA agent?

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante36:06

       So, a lot of the training part is classified still, so I can't talk about it. But, uh, but there's a school that we go to. Uh, it's fairly publicly known, but I can't acknowledge what it is and isn't. And we go there for many months, and we basically were, were pulled out of everyday life and were put into a controlled simulated world-Um, and inside that simulated world, they kind of control what's happening around us. So, uh, if you can imagine almost like going from, uh, being taken out of your apartment where you live, and now you're put into a different apartment, but the apartment that you're put into is part of a giant game. And somebody else controls the, all, the game. So they control the news that's on the TV, and they control, you know, the, the cars that are on the road and, and they control everything except the weather basically. So they can create multiple different types of scenarios where you exercise the skills that they taught you, from driving, to first response, first aid response, to lying, uh, living and working under alias identities, all that stuff. So, you're put into a very controlled environment for a long period of time where they can test all of your, uh, your

17. 37:14 – 37:21

    How Expensive Is To Train A CIA Agent?

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante37:14

       trade craft that you're taught.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett37:15

       It's very expensive. It must be very expensive for them to train a CIA agent.

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante37:19

       Right. That's why they train us in batches.

18. 37:21 – 38:04

    What's The CIA Training Scheme?

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante37:21

       So, uh, there's generally a, uh, two to three batches a year that go through different types of training. And there's different classifications of officers too, right? So your analysts are different than your, uh, technical officers, who are different than your field officers. So what they'll do is they'll batch you into... Or at least what they did in 2007 is they would batch you along with your discipline and then send a batch to training, and then everybody goes through the same lectures during the day, just like university. And everybody goes through a series of exercises at different times of the day and different times of the week. But essentially everybody goes through the same curriculum and everybody has the same grades, and then those grades are all measured against each other, and the bottom performers are cut out, and the top performers get to stay.

19. 38:04 – 39:06

    Do They Show You How To Kill?

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante38:04

    2. SBSteven Bartlett38:04

       That curriculum, what is involved in that curriculum? You mentioned a few things there. Is, um, learning how to kill people involved in the curriculum?

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante38:11

       No, that is not involved in the curriculum. Not at the basic training level.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett38:14

       Do they teach you that?

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante38:15

       Uh, they teach some people that, but they don't teach everybody that. It depends on the discipline that you're part of. If you're a paramilitary officer, you need to learn how to kill.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett38:23

       Mm-hmm.

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante38:24

       And you need to learn how to kill in different ways. Kill quickly, kill quietly, kill with blunt weapons, clear with bladed weapons, or, uh, kill with bladed weapons, kill with projectile weapons. So, kill with explosives, you know, de-arm explosives. So it all depends on the, the caliber or the level of officer that you're kind of put, put into. So paramilitary, they must learn that. But your standard human intelligence field collector, they need to learn how to live and work without being caught. So if you kill somebody-

    8. SBSteven Bartlett38:54

       Hmm.

    9. ABAndrew Bustamante38:55

       ... it's a big deal. You might get caught. So it's much easier to teach that person how to manipulate, how to collect secrets, how to live and operate without ever being detected. Whereas a paramilitary officer doesn't need to learn

20. 39:06 – 41:00

    How You Teach The Art Of Lying

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante39:06

       all that.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett39:06

       They taught you how to lie?

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante39:08

       They teach you how to lie.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett39:08

       How do they teach someone how to lie?

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante39:11

       It starts with a foundation of making sure that you recruit people who are already liars. And then once you... When you're sitting across from a liar, you can start to understand if they're a good liar or not very quickly. You've probably talked to people who are bad liars.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett39:27

       (laughs) Yeah. Talked to everything.

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante39:31

       (laughs)

    8. SBSteven Bartlett39:31

       Yeah, yeah.

    9. ABAndrew Bustamante39:32

       So you know when someone's a bad liar, so from that, you can identify people who are good liars. And then when you do find a good liar, you start to teach them what they already naturally do that makes them a good liar. And then you start to teach them how to refine that skill, and you start to teach them how bad liars operate and how you can detect a bad liar and how you gain advantages, you know, with lies and, and how to handle lies. As an example, 'cause I promised you skills, bad liars talk a lot. Good liars talk a little. Because the more you talk, the more you run the risk of undermining your own lie. Bad liars make a lot of statements. Good liars ask a lot of questions. Because if you ask questions, you're not really disclosing anything about yourself. So if you've ever had, if you think back and you, if, if you remember ever going to a party or ever having a date or ever being in a social environment where there was somebody there that made you feel so interesting but you didn't know anything about them, you were talking to a very good liar.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett40:35

        What about body language? Is that a factor in lying?

    11. ABAndrew Bustamante40:38

        Absolutely. I mean, body language is a factor in everything, but body language is especially a factor in lying. Because, again, going back to the idea of a skilled liar versus an unskilled liar, a skilled liar knows how to appear like they are telling the truth with their words and with their body. Whereas an unskilled liar often has a disconnect.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett40:57

        Yeah.

    13. ABAndrew Bustamante40:57

        Uh, and their body will say a different message than

21. 41:00 – 42:46

    Body Language & Lying

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante41:00

       what their mouth is saying. Consider your, your stereo-, uh, stereotypical jock. Your standard European footballer or your American jock, a lot of times they'll be portrayed as like somebody who, like-

    2. SBSteven Bartlett41:11

       Yeah, yeah.

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante41:11

       ... they sit bigger than life and all this other stuff, right? Their, their body shows confidence and openness. But then when they talk, they sound like idiots, right? "Uh, I don't, uh, mm, sure. Like, you know, totally. Like, dude, that lady, like, whatever." They are... There's a disconnect. Their voice does not demonstrate the same confidence that their body demonstrates. So you know that that person is lying. What they're lying about is not necessarily just the content of what they're saying. But they recognize they don't... They can't cognitively accept the fact that they are in a position where they are telling an untruth. And that untruth, at a minimum, is that they are not super confident and super comfortable. They are actually uncomfortable, and they are not feeling confident, and that's why they're stammering over themselves.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett42:01

       So when you were lying to someone, um, based on your training, would you think a lot about your body language?

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante42:05

       Yes.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett42:06

       And what would you do... What would you... What w- what... The principles of making sure your body language wasn't letting the cat out of the bag, per se?

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante42:13

       S- so one of the first things to do when you're, when you're trying to lie to somebody... And again, we're, we're now talking about how to lie to somebody.You shouldn't want to learn how to lie to somebody. You should want to learn how to know if somebody is lying to you.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett42:25

       Mm-hmm.

    9. ABAndrew Bustamante42:25

       But we always start this way, where we want to, w- we're afraid to ask the real question-

    10. SBSteven Bartlett42:29

        Yeah.

    11. ABAndrew Bustamante42:29

        ... which is, "How do I know if I'm being lied to?" 'Cause that shows vulnerability. But if you wanna learn how to lie to somebody, the first thing you do is you mimic the person. Look at you and I right now. We are mirrored.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett42:38

        Mm.

    13. ABAndrew Bustamante42:39

        Are your hands con- connected under the table?

    14. SBSteven Bartlett42:41

        Yeah. (laughs)

    15. ABAndrew Bustamante42:42

        So are mine. Are your feet crossed under your- under your seat?

    16. SBSteven Bartlett42:44

        Yeah.

    17. ABAndrew Bustamante42:45

        So are mine.

22. 42:46 – 45:44

    Demystifying Lying Signs

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante42:46

       We are mirrored right now, which means when you look at me, subconsciously, you see yourself.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett42:50

       Mm.

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante42:51

       I want you to see yourself in this exercise, because if you see yourself, your initial instinctive response is going to be trust. Because who do you trust in the whole world? You trust yourself. So, the first step to being able to lie effectively is to be able to mirror the person you're lying to. If I was coming at you like...

    4. SBSteven Bartlett43:13

       Yeah. (laughs)

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante43:14

       You know, right away, you're gonna be like, "I don't know who this guy is," right? And- and similarly, if I was to be like...

    6. SBSteven Bartlett43:19

       Just for people that are on audio, he's just, like, doing different postures and body languages, so that- that are far away from my own.

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante43:26

       (laughs)

    8. SBSteven Bartlett43:26

       Like putting his hands on the table, et cetera. So, okay, makes sense.

    9. ABAndrew Bustamante43:29

       So, we wanna mirror first.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett43:30

        Okay.

    11. ABAndrew Bustamante43:30

        And you mirror because mirroring creates a foundation of trust. Subconsciously, it creates a foundation of trust. And then, once you have that foundation of trust, you just start kind of pushing the envelope more and more with the untruth, or with the fabrication that you're creating, the lie, right?

    12. SBSteven Bartlett43:47

        Is there anything else on the subject of telling a lie to someone that's believable that we- we need to be aware of, in terms of skills?

    13. ABAndrew Bustamante43:53

        Yes. So first, the whole idea about, there's- there's two important ideas that get glorified in social media that are just inaccurate. And the first is called eye movements. You can't actually tell if somebody's lying to you based on where they place their eyes. Because while there are certain elements of eye movements that have biological relevancy, there's many, many more things about eye movements that don't have biological relevancy, right? So, what I mean by that is, if I ask you, uh, "What's your oldest memory?" You just look to your left.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett44:29

        Mm.

    15. ABAndrew Bustamante44:29

        It's natural to look to your left when you're from a Western country, because chronologically, timelines start on the left.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett44:38

        Mm-hmm.

    17. ABAndrew Bustamante44:39

        So, when you ask somebody a question about time and they look to the left, up, down, or in the middle, generally speaking, that has biological relevancy. So, it's a low probability that they're lying, but they still could be lying. When you ask somebody a question, they look to the upper right or the lower right, or wherever they might look, if- if there's- there's not necessarily biological relevancy, because they could be looking up and to the right because down and to the left, it's too bright.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett45:04

        Mm.

    19. ABAndrew Bustamante45:04

        And they could be looking in any number of directions because maybe they have, you know, a- a- a headache, or maybe they have something else going on. The- the ability to create some sense of probability about why they're making the eye movements they're making is too difficult. So, you can't assess someone's honesty or dishonesty based off of eye movements, even though you're gonna hear that you can from Instagram influencers and, you know, Discord, and- and everywhere on the internet, you're gonna hear that there's some connection that you can make, justifiably. It's not true. The same thing is also true, so it is also an untruth that you can rely on something known as micro-expressions. Micro-expressions

23. 45:44 – 47:34

    How To Tell If Someone Is Lying

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante45:44

       being the number of times your eyes blink, or the twitch in your face, or if you're sucking on your lips, these ideas that get glorified through social media as indicators of- of deceit. The truth is, you don't know if someone is lying to you until you have had enough time with the person to establish what's known as a baseline. A baseline means what's normal for you. So, I'll just use you as an example. 10 minutes before the camera's turned on, you were a totally different person.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett46:15

       Mm.

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante46:15

       Your energy is different. You're so much more conversational. Like, you are just, you're an awesome, friendly guy-

    4. SBSteven Bartlett46:23

       Mm.

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante46:23

       ... when the cameras are not on. But you turn into an interviewer when the cameras turn on. Totally rational, totally logical, makes total sense. That doesn't mean that you're lying now-

    6. SBSteven Bartlett46:33

       Mm-hmm.

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante46:33

       ... and you were telling the truth then. It means that the environment has changed, and nobody would know that if there wasn't a baseline.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett46:39

       Mm-hmm.

    9. ABAndrew Bustamante46:40

       Most people that watch you don't ever know what you're like outside of this baseline.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett46:45

        So, you have to get to know the person and then understand the variance that's unusual to understand if they're lying to you?

    11. ABAndrew Bustamante46:50

        Exactly. We call it time on target. You need time on target so that you can understand the delta, the change, between their baseline and whatever pressure you're putting them under.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett47:00

        Was there any sort of tr- uh, consistent telltale signs that someone was lying to you in an interaction? Like, do you know what I mean? Where, you know, certain, you know, nervous things that they do? Change ... You know, what are those variances that you might see that you go, "This person's now lying to me"?

    13. ABAndrew Bustamante47:15

        Yeah, so with unskilled liars, it becomes much easier. 'Cause a lot of times, with skilled liars, with people who have either learned how to lie through formal training or people who have learned how to lie through the school of hard knocks, when there's people who are skilled liars, it's difficult to find generic tells.

24. 47:34 – 50:32

    Human Psychology

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante47:34

       With people who are unskilled liars, it's much easier to find generic tells. There are people who ... You've heard of being on the hot seat?

    2. SBSteven Bartlett47:41

       Mm-hmm.

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante47:41

       It's a- it's a phrase we use in Western culture pretty often. Like, when someone is under pressure, we call them being in a hot seat. When you've got an unskilled liar, they can't stop moving their body. Like, they're just, they're always uncomfortable, and they just keep moving and they keep twitching and they keep fidgeting, and it's like they're sitting in a hot seat. That is one of the biggest tells of an unskilled liar. And again, anybody who's ever had, like, a- a six-year-old or an eight-year-old or a 12-year-old try to lie to them, they know what that looks like. They can't make eye contact. They do a lot of, like, verbal, uh, noises that aren't actual words. They can't get comfortable. They keep moving around. They keep shifting. Shifty.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett48:22

       Mm-hmm.

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante48:23

       Those are all- all those words came from real world examples of an unskilled liar trying to lie. But you don't need micro-expressions of the face or to know which way their eyes are tracking in order to pick up on that.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett48:35

       Going back to your training then, what were some of the other most important transferrable skills that you learned throughout that process?

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante48:40

       The most interesting and useful things that we learned during training actually had to do with the psychological processes that people go through, and being able to understand the process and then predict and identify when the process is happening. Those are the things that really make a huge difference. Yes, it's cool to learn how to do a dead drop, and yes, it's cool to learn how to detect surveillance, uh, or how to drive a car through a roadblock, right? Those are all very interesting things. But the most useful things are the things that you can use all day every day through multiple types of interactions. Uh, and there are a series of processes, a number of processes that we learned that had to do with human psychology. One of those, uh, processes is understanding the idea of core motivations. Core motivations are... remember how we talked about manipulation and motivation are two sides of the same coin? When you understand all the different options of the currency that you're working with, you can work with it more effectively. So people are generally, despite age, race, creed or religion, people have four basic motivations, and we call those four basic motivations RICE. R-I-C-E stands for reward, ideology, coercion, and ego. Reward is anything that you want: money, free vacations, pat on the back, uh, women, alcohol. If that's something that you want and me giving it to you gives you what you want, then that's a reward. People do lots of crazy things for rewards.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett50:09

       And these rewards change over time?

    9. ABAndrew Bustamante50:11

       And by... based on person.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett50:12

        Okay.

    11. ABAndrew Bustamante50:12

        Right? The second primary motivator is ideology. Ideology is the things that you believe in. People do crazy things for the things they believe in, whether it's their religion, whether it's their country, whether it's family, whether it's what they believe is morally correct, right? So if you can assign... if you can speak to somebody through the lens of their ideology, you can get them to do

25. 50:32 – 52:09

    The Essence Of Manipulation

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante50:32

       incredible things. C is coercion. Coercion is all the negative things: guilt, shame, blackmail. Anything that you do to force someone to take certain action by leaning into the negative elements of motivation, which is also known as manipulation, that falls under the C or coercion. And then E, ego, is everything that has to do with how the person views themselves. So oftentimes, ego gets oversimplified into thinking that it's just people who have a big ego, right? Somebody like Donald Trump, who has a big ego, or you name the famous actor who has a big ego. Ego is also people who don't have big egos. Mother Teresa had an ego. She wanted to sacrifice for other people. She wanted other people to see her sacrificing for other people. That is also ego. So with these four core motivations, you have a rubric, a process, to understand why other people do what they do. If you understand why other people do what they do, all you have to do is connect what they care about with what you want them to do, and you just increased the probability of them doing what you want them to do.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett51:42

       Of these four core motivations, are... is there an order of the strength that they have over people? So if you were really trying to get someone to do something, you'd focus on this core motivation over that one?

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante51:54

       Yes, absolutely. Ideology is the strongest, ego is the second strongest, reward is the third strongest, and coercion is the weakest. This is one of the things that movies get wrong. Movies try to make it look like you can blackmail somebody or hold a gun to their head and get

26. 52:09 – 56:12

    How To Find Someone's Ideology To Manipulate Them

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante52:09

       them to do what you want them to do. In the real world, once you hold a gun to someone's head, they never trust you again. You can never get them to do something twice. Whereas if you appeal to their ideology, "Doing this is good for your country, doing this is good for your family, doing this is good for your health," if you can appeal to someone's ideology, they'll do what you tell them to do for a long time because they'll trust you.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett52:33

       Is this really the, the essence of manipulation then?

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante52:35

       That is the essence of motivation and manipulation, the same coin. You'll hear me come back to this, because one of the things that people really struggle with outside of intelligence is they feel like they have to label things as good or bad. When you have moral flexibility, you take away good and bad. Everything just becomes a question of utility or productivity. If it's- if you need someone to do something and you can motivate them, then you should. But if you need someone to do something and you can't motivate them, that's a green light to manipulate them, because you still need them to do what you need them to do. If you feel bad about manipulating somebody, you are not gonna do well in the intelligence world.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett53:19

       How might you... so you said the ideology is the strongest of the four, of core mo- of the core motivations. How might you go about finding out someone's ideology in the context of business and life?

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante53:30

       A lot of times people will volunteer it to you. There's- there's two ways. If you're a keen observer, people will volunteer it to you. You've already volunteered that you are ideologically predisposed to fatherhood. You've already talked about it. The reason that you're worried about fucking up your kids, that you don't even have yet, is because you're thinking about fatherhood. So clearly, you are ideologically predisposed to what it means to be a responsible father. You want to be seen as a responsible father.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett53:54

       Mm-hmm.

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante53:55

       That plays into your ego as well.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett53:56

       Mm-hmm.

    9. ABAndrew Bustamante53:57

       So I'm sure when you're talking to your partner, if you guys are already looking at where would we go to school, where would we live, what kind of diapers should we use, if you're even thinking about that, you're thinking about it through the lens of the ideology of being an engaged, present, helpful, loving father. Right? So people will volunteer it. Your- your customer base will volunteer to you what their ideologies are. They'll volunteer their politics, they'll volunteer their- their pain from their childhood, they'll volunteer their pain from business.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett54:29

        ... if you listen.

    11. ABAndrew Bustamante54:30

        If you listen. The second way that you can get to understand the ideology of your customer base is through active marketing, the right kind of marketing. Not mass marketing, not the kind of garbage that you see on Instagram and, and YouTube about, you know, how to make people believe in your brand because you use the right colors. But actual marketing, where you present a message, and that message was crafted with an emotion behind it. People who respond to that intentionally crafted message are showing what their motivations are, because they were clearly motivated enough by the message to take action. You've heard a lot of people talk about narrative, especially in politics. There's, you know, oh, there's the, there's the liberal narrative, and there's the Republican narrative, and there's the conservative narrative, and the Church narrative, and people talk a lot about narrative. Narrative is not the power in influence. The power in influence actually comes from messaging. It takes two steps to get to a narrative. It takes messaging first, and then messaging builds a narrative. If you think about messaging, messaging is supposed to be an emotional thing. Just a statement, just a message, just like a text message, right? "Are you afraid of being the kind of father that isn't present for your kids?" That creates emotion in the right ideologically predisposed person. There's no woman out there who's gonna be motivated by that. She might be motivated to tell her partner about that, but it's not gonna s- it's not gonna resonate with her like it resonates with me, as a father of young children.

27. 56:12 – 1:00:01

    Have You Changed The Way You Look At The World?

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante56:13

       But that's just the message. Then, the narrative is not emotional in nature. The narrative is logical in nature, so you use an emotional message to communicate a logical narrative. "Are you afraid of being the kind of father that wasn't, that's not present for your child?" Oh, man, that just, like, that pulls at my heartstrings. Well, then all you have to do is sign up for this app that reminds you every Sunday to read your kids a story. You're like, "Oh, that makes total sense. All I need is a reminder and I'm gonna be a good dad."

    2. SBSteven Bartlett56:47

       Mm-hmm.

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante56:47

       And that's messaging a narrative. The same thing happens in politics, the same thing happens in geopolitics, the same thing happens the whole world over, because in the intelligence world, we understand messaging a narrative. We know how to use messaging a narrative. It's how you elect a president. It's the reason that, that Saudi Arabia went to war with Iran over Yemen. Like, it, it's, everybody understands at a national security level the idea of creating a message or a narrative using emotional messaging. But when it comes to business, people don't get it yet. They, they haven't learned that lesson yet, because they've all been taught through an MBA program or something else that you sell toothpaste by creating more toothpaste with brighter colors on more shelves.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett57:33

       Thinking about ideology has, and everything you just said there, has your experience over the last, I don't know, 20, 30 years, really made you rethink and look at the world entirely differently? Because if you are so focused and able to detect and understand messaging and narrative, you must just see it everywhere you go and everything you do.

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante57:50

       Right. So there were two big aha moments for me, and the first was in the very beginning parts of my training at CIA. I mean, when I went through all of the CIA recruiting process and, and all of my time in the military, I just felt like I was doing the right thing. I just felt like I was doing a good job. I felt like I was special, right?

    6. SBSteven Bartlett58:09

       (laughs)

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante58:09

       Like, "Wow, I must be super special 'cause I'm getting picked for the National Clandestine Service." So I felt like I was doing everything right. And then I actually ended up going through my training program where they confirmed that I actually was broken in certain ways. I was high performing because I had trauma as a child. I, I lie and I steal and I have no problem with sociopathy because I'm not mentally healthy, right? Like, that's basically what they confirmed. Like, "You're wired in a certain way that's really useful, but you're actually not neurotypical. You're not, you're not successful in the way that you thought you were successful, but you are still very useful. And oh, by the way, you're even more special because now you work for CIA, so don't ever stop working for CIA."

    8. SBSteven Bartlett59:06

       (laughs)

    9. ABAndrew Bustamante59:06

       Because they know that what drives us is our ideology, right? Our ideology and then our ego. So they, they hook us that way. So for me, that was my first big aha moment, because up until then, I always thought maybe I understood the world, but nobody else seemed to understand it the way I understood it. Like, I, I could see the hypocrisy in high school, and I could see the hypocrisy in my mom and my dad, and they would do things that were different than what they would tell me to do. And I don't understand, how is the customer always right, but then, like, sometimes the, the company wins the lawsuit? Like, it doesn't make sense. How, how, (laughs) how is there a legal structure, but criminals don't go to jail in, if there's a legal structure? Like, I remember seeing it all and thinking that it didn't make sense, but never actually being confident enough to say anything about it, because it was a secret, and

28. 1:00:01 – 1:01:59

    Perception vs Perceptive

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante1:00:01

       I didn't feel comfortable sharing that secret. CIA then taught me you're, what you're seeing is actually the world as it really is, and let's train you to show you and give you a vocabulary to understand what you're seeing. Let's teach you about human psychology so you understand why it works the way that it works, why everybody sees it and nobody talks about it, right? So that was my first big aha moment. And then my second big aha moment came when I, when I left CIA and I was (laughs) unemployed for, like, six months, living in my in-laws'...... converted garage with a one-year-old child, wondering how the fuck I did so many things so wrong that I couldn't get a job, even though I was just part of the CIA. And in that, in that time, feeling like just The world's biggest loser, the only skill that I could lean on was what the CIA had taught me to do. So then I lied my way into a Fortune 10 company, and all of a sudden, I wasn't a loser anymore. And once I realized that I could use CIA skills to succeed in business, that was my second big aha moment. So now, everything I see, I see through a lens of CIA skills in a business world.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:22

       Perception versus perspective was one of the other things that I've heard you talk about, um, was a, quite a big, sh- I guess shift in understanding, but something that the regular person doesn't really understand.

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante1:01:33

       Yeah, so the idea of perception and perspective, uh, I have to define them first, right? Perception is what you believe you see. Where you sit is how you perceive the world around you. Perspective is how other people see where you're sitting. So when I think about us right now across the table from each other, my perception is what

29. 1:01:59 – 1:03:25

    Leaning Into Objective vs Subjective Feelings

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante1:01:59

       I see of you. Your perspective is very different than my perception, right? At a, at a minimum, I'm looking at you with a background that's different than when you're looking at me with a background.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:10

       (laughs)

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante1:02:10

       So the benefit, the advantage that CIA gives its field officers is that it trains us to recognize and distrust our perception, because perception really only comes from, from one source, and that is your own five senses. You are the source of information for your perception. So for anybody who's ever seen, like, a little pile of socks in the lower left-hand corner, and they thought it was a rat, and they jump until they realize it's socks, that is your perception lying to you. Perspective means that you get data objectively from the world around you. So if you're in your room and you see a pile of black in the corner, your perspective tells you, "This is your room. There's never been a rat in your room ever before. That pile in the corner is probably something like socks." You know, perspective keeps things objective. Perception makes things very subjective or very emotional. So CIA trains us to lean into our perspective, gain perspective, think about things objectively, because if you lean on your perception, you're leaning on emotions, and emotions are very likely wrong.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:19

       How, how can I train myself to lean more on my perspective?

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante1:03:22

       There's two really quick things that you can do. The first

30. 1:03:25 – 1:05:54

    How To Train Yourself To Apply Rational Objective Perspective

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante1:03:25

       is, is immediately distrust your emotions. Know right away when you're feeling emotions. In other words, what I'm saying is don't trust your gut, which is the antithesis of what most people tell you to do. Most people say, "Trust your gut." I'm telling you right now, your gut is more often than not lying to you, because your gut is based in emotion. Your girlfriend's not about to dump you. Your boyfriend isn't cheating on you. You're not about to go bankrupt. Nobody cares about the zit on your nose, right? That is most likely true. There's a small chance that your perception is correct, but when it comes to gambling, are you gonna bet on the small chance or the bigger chance? You should always, you should always gamble on the bigger chance. The bigger chance you only really understand through perspective. If you have perspective on something, then you have multiple data points on something. So when you feel yourself getting emotional, stop and let your emotion happen for a second, right? "I feel nervous. I feel anxious. I feel doubtful." Okay. "I probably don't have to." You probably shouldn't, because whoever's sitting across the table from you, whoever's coming into the room with you, whoever else is on the bus with you, they are all focused on a thousand different things. And the things that they're focused on most likely don't include you.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:46

       Sounds easier said than done.

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante1:04:48

       Correct.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:48

       Is, is that a process of repetitions to train yourself to think like that?

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante1:04:53

       It is. It, it takes, uh, momentum. So what ends up having to happen is that you need to exercise it intentionally at first. And what happens is, as you intentionally exercise your perspective over perception, what will start to happen is you're, you will start to see that what you were worried about doesn't happen. And then once you see it not happen, once you see your perspective give you the correct information over your perception, once you see that happen once, then it starts to gain momentum. And then it happens again, and it gains more momentum, and more momentum, and more momentum, until the time comes that you realize it's much easier. But it is. It's a learned skill. You have to learn to think objectively instead of subjectively, think rationally instead of emotionally. And a big part of what helps you do that is understanding that 90% of the people out there, they're all trapped in their own perception. They're all

31. 1:05:54 – 1:09:01

    Your Business Success

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante1:05:54

       trapped in thinking emotionally. They don't even know that there's an alternative. Just think about this, man. The conversation we're having right now, the people who are hearing this conversation right now, who have never heard that there's a difference between perception and perspective, are already better equipped than all the other assholes who have never heard this conversation. They're already one step ahead of their competition. They're one step ahead of their, of their spouses, their partners, their bullies. They're one step ahead of everybody, because now they can use the words perception and perspective, subjective and objective, emotional and logical and rational. They can use these words to define how they want to think, even if they don't think that way yet. That's the huge advantage to what CIA calls the trained and the untrained.... trained people at least are aware that there's an alternative option. Untrained people aren't even aware that there's an option. The vast majority of people out there are what I call bobbleheads. They don't even know there's an option, they're completely unaware of an alternative solution, an alternative process. So they're trapped in their perception, they're trapped in their emotion, they're trapped in their subjectivity. And that makes it so much easier for people like you and me and everyone listening right now, to use rational, objective perspective to get those people to do whatever we want them to do.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:15

       You've had, um, a lot of recent success in business, you know, um, with your company Everyday Spy and other ventures that you've been involved in. What are some of the fundamental skills that, um, you find yourself transferring directly from your CIA experience every day when you're closing business?

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante1:07:35

       At CIA th- there's a saying at CIA that I realized is also a saying in business, that I didn't realize until afterwards, and it's called kissing a lot of frogs.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:43

       Mm-hmm.

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante1:07:44

       And it's a salesmanship term outside of CIA, where it means that you have to, you have to call a lot of leads, you have to shake a lot of hands, you have to make a lot of pitches before one of them turns into a prince, right? At CIA, we have the same concept, but for a different reason, because w- finding a person who is willing to tell you state secrets, willing to risk their life to give away the secrets that they were entrusted with, that's what a, that's what an actual asset does, right? When- when CIA sends a field officer to, you name the country, when they recruit an asset from that country, what they are actually recruiting is a foreign national who is a local of that country, who has access to state secrets, who is willing to share those state secrets in exchange for something else. Money, alcohol, pornography, you name it, right? Who knows what they're after? But your job is to find the person who has secrets and give the person the thing that they want in exchange for those secrets. Th- that is a rare person to find. It is hard to find a- a willing collaborator from a foreign country who has access to secrets and is willing to share those secrets with you

32. 1:09:01 – 1:11:07

    What Is SADRAT?

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante1:09:01

       in exchange for some kind of remuneration. Very, very difficult to find. But if you can find a spy, if you can find a traitor, you can make a sale, right?

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:10

       Mm-hmm.

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante1:09:11

       The two skills are incredibly, uh, interconnected. So what I found is that this- this, uh, the process and the skills that we use to find an asset translate immediately into business. Everything from how you talk to the person so that you can identify their core motivations, gaining perspective over that person's position in life. If you can gain the perspective of your customers, you already know what your customer's thinking. You already know what they want, you already know what their problems are, you know what their problems are going to be, because you can sit in their shoes. But they can't sit in your shoes, which gives you the advantage. So the- the process in espionage is a process called SADRAT, S-A-D-R-A-T. Very similar to the- the RICE acronym I gave you earlier. SADRAT is a process of human intelligence conversion or collection. The SADRAT process is actually the foundation to my company's sales process. All of our marketing for digital sales, all of our human interactions, all of our, uh, upselling and everything else, all falls into the same SADRAT process that I learned at CIA, only we use it for sales and we use it for marketing.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:22

       SADRAT.

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante1:10:22

       SADRAT stands for spot, assess, develop, recruit, handle, and terminate. That's what SADRAT stands for. Uh, and in classic, uh, classic US government acronym jargon, HANDLE starts with an H, but in the acronym we use the letter A. Spot, assess, develop, recruit, handle, terminate. Spot means you find a potential client, right? Recruit means you sell that client on your product in exchange f- your product in exchange for their money, right? Assess is a step that we use at CIA to determine whether or not somebody will be a good, productive client.

33. 1:11:07 – 1:13:13

    Change The Game When Selling Your Products

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante1:11:07

       Oftentimes in sales, people skip that step.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:09

       Yeah.

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante1:11:09

       They don't think about a good, productive customer. A good, productive customer has lifetime customer value. A good, productive customer turns into referrals, turns into positive reviews and positive ratings. They have infinite value more than just the money they give you in exchange for your service. Assess is a critical piece in the CIA recruitment process. It's also a- a very important piece in my company.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:34

       I'll t- I'll tell you something which kind of validates that from my own experience before we continue on that point of assess. Um, in the first couple years of my first company, we would just take i- any customer, and when we looked at our, um, financial record for the previous year, what we noticed was that there was a cohort of customers that were e- exceptionally valuable, and even though we'd won business with this other set of customers, we were actually losing money because they were only lasting for a month.

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante1:11:55

       Yep.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:55

       So we made this sort of, um, framework to determine the customers that we should actually say no to, basically, as- as you say, based on their lifetime value. And we figured out that there's a certain type of brand that has a certain size budget, that has a certain number of employees, that is trying to solve a certain type of problem that would be exceptionally profitable for us. So when we got the inquiries coming through our website, we were now looking at the inquiries through that lens and measuring them through that lens, because it became so clear that all of our best customers fit into the sort of top right of this- this sort of Venn diagram. And that's what I hear when you say assess, and it was absolutely game-changing for our business. But most e- entrepreneurs will just take every customer and they think of all of them as having the same potential and lifetime value.

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante1:12:38

       Exactly. You just nailed the word, game-changing.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:40

       Mm-hmm.

    9. ABAndrew Bustamante1:12:40

       You can play the game by just selling to anybody, but if you wanna change the game-... you have to make sure that you're selling to a very deliberate cohort of customers, because those customers not only yield more revenue per customer, but they bring in more customers like them-

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:56

        Mm-hmm.

    11. ABAndrew Bustamante1:12:57

        ... which is where you get an exponential level of not revenue, but profit.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:01

        Mm-hmm.

    13. ABAndrew Bustamante1:13:02

        Just like you said, you, you talked about a very profitable-

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:05

        Mm-hmm.

    15. ABAndrew Bustamante1:13:05

        ... group of clients, not a high revenue group of clients.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:08

        Mm-hmm.

    17. ABAndrew Bustamante1:13:09

        So when you focus the conversation on profit instead of revenue, and you

34. 1:13:13 – 1:14:08

    What Is Espionage?

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante1:13:13

       focus it on the right customer instead of just customer, it, it's game-changing for your company.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:18

       So you would assess targets in the CIA for, using the same sort of framework?

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante1:13:23

       Yep. Using the same framework, because in, in recruitment operations, what you're looking for is people who will be good assets. In the business framework, what you're looking for is people who will be good customers. An asset and a customer are almost the same thing, right? A, a customer is the most important asset of a company. And what does a customer do? A customer provides something of value in exchange for something they want. What does an asset do? They provide something of value in exchange for something they want. So it's really a one-for-one comparison, as, as long as you understand the language of espionage and the language of business. So what we did in espionage is, every time you're, you're trying to develop a source, you're always asking yourself the question, "Will this

35. 1:14:08 – 1:18:16

    What Is Our Secret Life?

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante1:14:08

       source be a good, reliable asset in the future? Will they do what we tell them to do? Will they be able to provide information in the long term, not just once or twice, right? Is the information they provide high value information?" It's the same thing you're doing with a customer. "Will this customer do what I tell them to do? Will this customer provide high levels of value? Will this customer last for a long time?"

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:32

       You used the word espionage a few times there. W- what is the definition of the word espionage?

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante1:14:36

       Espionage is defined as the stealing of secrets. So espionage is always illegal. There's no country in the world that says that espionage is legal. So espionage is, it's, uh, when CIA commits espionage, when MI6 commits espionage, they have a, a carve-out in their law as it pertains to their own undercover or clandestine services so that y- a American can conduct espionage overseas and not be prosecutable for that espionage under US law, if they're part of CIA. Same thing is true in the UK. An MI6 officer can commit espionage overseas and not be held accountable for it under British law. There, a, it's a carve-out. Otherwise, if you're a British citizen committing espionage anywhere, in the UK or abroad, you are punishable under UK law.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:28

       I've heard you say that espionage really is about getting people to let you into their secret lives.

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante1:15:32

       Correct.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:33

       What is our secret life?

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante1:15:35

       So, uh, you know, the, I, I, if you go back to an earlier part in our conversation, we were talking about how when you trust people, you'll tell them your secrets, right? When you help people, they'll tell you their secrets. There are three lives that any- anybody lives. We have a public life, a private life, and a secret life. The public life is the life that we're all very familiar with, right? It's the life that you live for everybody else to see, not just the people who watch your podcast and the people who, you know, work for you in your company. But your public life also includes what you show your friends. It includes what you show your church. It includes who you are when you walk down the street. The clothes that you choose to wear are a perfect example of your public life. It's what you want people to think of you. Remember the E in RICE. Mother Teresa wanted people to see her a certain way. That is her public life. When you're in espionage, the goal is to get away from the public life, because if you want someone to give you secrets, you can't get secrets from somebody who's in their public life, because they're protected in their public life. So you have to move them from public into secret. And the middle step between public and secret is private life. So you have to move somebody from public life to private life. Private life is the life that your partner knows. Private life is the life that your closest friends know. Your mom and your dad may know it. It's the people who know that your feet secretly stink. It's the people who know that you don't really like to eat oysters, because whatever, they give you gas. Th- that's all stuff that's private. Your business partners don't know that. Your customers don't know that. The people who watch your podcast don't know that. And it makes the people in your private life feel like they know you, and it's what makes it so that, for you, in your public life, you feel like you have meaningful relationships. Because instead of 200 people who you kind of know, now you've got 15 people who are in your private life. They know your home address, they know your birthday, you know, they know your favorite ice cream. It makes you feel good. Inside of someone's private life, they will share sensitivities, but they may still not share secrets. Because it's one thing to secretly tell somebody that you're worried about your business, you're worried about the next revenue cycle, you're worried about maybe your wife is having an affair. Those things are uncomfortable, but you'll share them with people in your private life. But you would never tell someone in your private life that you're having an affair. You would never tell someone in your private life that you hit your child. You would never tell someone in your private life that your parents sexually molested you or whatever else. Those dark, deep secrets only

36. 1:18:16 – 1:23:33

    How To Enter Someone's Secret Life

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante1:18:16

       live in your secret life, the life that's so secretive that you don't even share it with the people in your private life. What we're trained to do is to follow a process that allows us to meet somebody in their public life, get them to let us into their private life, and then get them to let us into their secret life. Because it's a very, like, simple psychological process to get into someone's secret life. Because secretly, we all want somebody in our secret life. We all want to have someone we can tell our secrets to. We just...... don't trust anybody in our private life enough to get there. So if you know how to leverage perception and perspective, use the four core motivations, when you know how to leverage SADRAT to, to create trust, you can actually cut into someone's secret life. And once you're in someone's secret life, they never stop trusting you. They never let you leave, because it was so rare and so hard to find you, from their perspective, they don't ever want you to leave. So even if you, even if you break their heart, even if you, even if you lie to them, like their trust in you is so great and so strong and so subconscious, that you don't ever leave their secret life.

Episode duration: 2:02:19