Founders Versus Career Executives

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So kind of like in a crisscross pattern He always had them with him Well, one day I was in there, and I sat with him And I asked him, I was like, why do you carry these dominoes? Like what it's extra weight, they're awkward You know, they jingle when you walk down the hallway Why would you carry these things? And then he sat them up And and he he told me, most people go through life knocking out tasks or to dos. like this. and he set each of the dominoes up facing him but in a row from left to right And then he flicked the domino on the left and knocked it over And then he flicked the next one and knocked it over, and the next one and the next one. And he knocked all four dominoes over with four flicks of his finger, right? He said, that's how most people go through life If you want to succeed in espionage He said, you have to stack the dominoes differently. So then he put them in a line the way that we all put the dominoes in line when we're kids Right? One in front of the other all but with only the first one facing him And then he flicked over the first one and then the falling domino knocked over the next domino which knocked over the next domino, which knocked over the next domino So he was basically demonstrating how the average person will go through life using four times as much energy to get the same four tasks accomplished as a smart person who puts the things in the correct order and a light bulb went off for me because in espionage when you're spying in a foreign country when you're trying to steal secrets that aren't supposed to be stolen There's an order. that you have to accomplish tasks you can either put a lot of effort into each step And then by the end of the operation your resources are spent and you don't know if you're going to be successful or You can do things in a certain order where they grow momentum each task. And then you're saving yourself energy, you're saving yourself resources. You're making momentum work for you And ever since then, I mean, my operational behavior changed, my operational tempo changed, my success at CIA changed. I took that same concept and brought it into the business world when I left CIA, and I mean, my business has grown three hundred percent year over year for the last four years. And the only thing I can credit that to is I do the same tasks that everybody else has to do I just put them in a certain order so that when I flipp the first domino I get the momentum of each falling domino to help with my end goal. I really find. I think that's amazing. I always For some reason I always Both my wife and I we always look backwards What thinkking about, okay This is the result We have a million things going on just a result. So How do we get their blank space completely gott to go completely got toa know the box but then You gott to be completely out of the box and observe it No rules. Let's say there's no rules, nothing But this is where I got to get to. how are we going to get there? So I love I love what you're saying really, you know, I always say You know, she went to like Ivy League school and I say I League is mastering Most of the time The bos Yeah. You got to do that But then you also to have critical thinking And that's why I I teach my kid Wh said so in everything Constantly because that's what business is You're constantly pivoting But tell us a little bit about everyday spy. Tell us a little bit about your business. Yeah so my business everyday spy is it's my personal mission, right? And our mission is to teach spy skills. that break barriers to anyone willing to learn And I love that mission because it's specific that it applies to anyone who's willing to learn. If you're not willing to learn, you can go to hell If you don't like spy skills, you can go to hell. If you don't have barriers to break then you're lying to yourself and you can go to hell. I don't have any time for people who aren't part of my mission But When it comes to breaking barriers, the truth is that we all have so many barriers in so many different areas of our life that we oftentimes don't stop to realize how they're all related in an undercover world The most dangerous thing about an undercover operation is not the operation itself It's not going in and taking down Osama bin Laden. That's not the most dangerous part. It's not the helicopter ride undercover of dark. It's not the underwater scuba dive ride. It's not the, you know, it's not the moment when you sit with the with the warlord at the Jurga table Those things are not the most dangerous part It's everything else about living undercover It's The risk of signing the wrong name on a receipt when you go out to dinner It's the risk of a cab driver finding out your home address It's the risk of not tying your shoes the appropriate way. and then when you need it, they come untied and you trip. That's the kind of stuff that is the most dangerous to us because we rehearse the operation Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of times Like it's incredible the amount of rehearsal that goes into a live operation But there's no rehearsal that goes into waking up and going downstairs and stepping out and making a phone call and catching an Uber, there's no rehearsal that goes into that. So the probability of you making a mistake is so much higher in everyday life. So CIA spends ninety percent of their money in time training its operatives to handle everyday life Ucover and it spends ten percent of its money in time training undercover officers to actually operate. because they know that the rehearsal and the practice and the rote memorization is going to make the operation a success But that person is going to die crossing the street in Korea because they don't know to look both ways on the center lane, which is where the buses can drive without stopping So they have to spend all this time training us about everyday life And those skills are what transformed my career. and then those are the skills that when I left CIA, I was shocked to see people didn't know how to get a free cup of coffee. You don't know how to negotiate your bill. you don't know how to you know make somebody disarm somebody from being defensive to being friendly. those are for me, those are very natural basic skills. So everyday spy is my outlet for teaching people all of the cool not unclassified stuff that CIA did without having to risk any of the actual secrets that keep us safe How do people learn? like what's the actual process of people learning their secret superpowerers. How you talk about that a that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. so CIA hires people for because everybody has an inherent talent. There's something inside all of us that gives us an edge against other human beings. And that inherent edge is generally tied to your personality type And then from your personality type, it's then tied even further to your personal experience in life So there might be multiple people who are extroverts, but one extrovert grew up in a rich family, another extrovert grew up in a broke family. Another extrovert grew up with no mom and dad, another extrovert grew up with gay parents, whatever it might be So It's not just about understanding your personality, it's also about understanding the conditions in which your personality was cultivated, was raised So when everyday spy goes through the process of teaching people their superpower What we look at is both how they respond Personality wise but also how their personal experience, their upbringing, shaped their personality. And once you combine those two things together, you have a really solid idea of what strengths and what weaknesses an individual inherently has And you also talk about People should stop living by other people's rules which I love Um, And that really I think that really takes courage I mean, in absolutely in society How do you really get comfortable being I guess you're true Your true self So I would say're if you feel comfortable, you're probably not being your true self Because we live in a world where conformity is king. If you want to get along, like if you want to get ahead We have We're a society that's built on you have to get along The people who cannot get along and also get ahead are very few and far between And they have to have some kind of superpower that allows them to step over the barrier of social rejection But what I will say is this if you feel uncomfortable and most people who who don't play by the rules feel uncomfortable all the time They go to bed with self doubt. they wake up with self doubt They wonder if today is the day where it all falls apart. But they keep trying anyway. They keep trying anyway. And it's the courage. I mean, what is courage Mot courage is doing what you are afraid of. Anyway. So you have to be afraid. fear has to be part of the equation for courage to even exist So when people feel like they look at somebody and that person is fearless and courageous, you can't have those two things at the same time. That person has to be fearful in order to be courageous CIA believes that all people are born with a spy secret superpower. For some people, that means they can win deals for others, they can spot liars. Some can even seduce lovers. I built a free three minute test to help reveal to you exactly what your secret hidden superpower is. All you have to do is click on the link in the description below Take the test and start using your spy superpower to stay ahead of ninety nine percent of people And what you're actually seeing is somebody who's able to take their fear recognize it understand it and take action anyway. And that's what makes just amazing hereroic people Take your flexibility beyond the mat PayPal. Pay nothing at checkout. Then enjoy a flexible monthly payment plan that works for you. withith no sign upp or late fees. Find yours then, and an easy way to pay. With PayPal. D downownload the PayPal app to get started. Subject to approval. pay mononthly consonsumer loans made by Webank. available through PayPaling N ML nine one zero four fivety seven. Lear more at payPal. com slash pay mononthly. So I's think about this Andy practical tip. If you're just meeting somebody for the first time to like really know more about them. angu Yeah, yeah it's great. So body language is something that's super helpful, but also it can be misleading. So the first thing to understand is that there's two forms, two basic rudimentary forms of body language. There's open language and closed language So open language is what you are right now, Mosha. Y arms are open You're leaning back, but your chest is exposed, your face is exposed. You've got a smile on your face, like very open body language Open usually means receptive or curious But then closed body language, that's when you see people with their arms crossed, or their hands closed together, or their legs crossed, right? Or somebody who's kind of got a furrowed eyebrow or a frown. That's closed body language. That means somebody is inherently suspicious or trying to keep themselves distant. If you just understand those two basic rudimentary forms of body language When you see open language You can lean in with more aggressive or more penetrating questions. When you see closed language You want to talk less about, you want to ask fewer questions and instead talk more about yourself Share more about your thoughts, your feelings, your views of the world Because what you need to do is crack through their closed body language And if you've ever had that moment where you've seen somebody relax because of something you've said, Right? Like you said, oh, I'm a go fearing man And then all of a sudden, you see the person uncross their arms and smile orr you say, I'm a dad of eleven, right? I'm a dad of an army, and you see somebody chuckle and then open their arms. Like you have to crack through that closed body language. But what often happens is that people don't understand it. So they see closed body language and then they start peppering questions and they don't realize what they're doing is they're just They're just cementing that closed body language into place. You have to open the person up by talking about yourself and disarming them I know that a lot of the consulting that you do with it's like CEOs ortune ten companies, right, which we talked about in the intro What is what is their the true, like you peel the layers back. What's the common denominator of of them What's actually going on there ' it's, you know what's millions of ass. rightight? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's fascinating is when you start talking to the people who run multi trillion dollar multi billion dollar companies. When you start to talk that upper echelon of everything. They're all hired. They allll work for somebody else They work for a board of directors, they work for a board of advisors. They work for a CEO who is still overseeing things, but or they work for an owner who's overseeing the CEO So what I'm always shocked to find is that When you're dealing with senior level executives, you really are dealing with peopleeople who are trying to please someone else. and their challenge is that They carry all this responsibility. All this risk and everybody beneath them doesn't share that burden So they feel pinned. between a hierarchy of people who don't care as much as they do. and an accountability board that isn't as well spoken or well versed as they are So it's this place in the middle where they are carrying just tons of stress and tons of concern and tons of fear And the common denominator between all of them is usually that Even though they carry all that stress, they find some way to cope with the stress. And they recognize that they're coping with the stress. So what they want is healthy mechanisms becausecause without knowing what the healthy mechanism is, they will revert coping in unhealthy ways. I um I think right, they recognize they probably hit how to I always talk about like the rock bottom moments They probably had that in their very unique. person They can handle tremendous pressure And um Right. And there's tools, like you say to do it to do it. They're doing it, they recognize it and just it should be healthy Right. But I also want to highlight that the vast majority of my clients are not Owners They're executives. When you start talking about the you know, dec a millionaire u centim millionaire, CEO owner That's a person who's developed their own healthy coping mechanisms to build their legacy It's very, very different like You're your're successful entrepreneur has Like the sky's the limit. They can go anywhere they want But when you start talking about the CEO of Google, the CEO of YouTube, the CEO of of CVS Health, the CEO of Bz Allan Hamilton. Those are not the owners. Those are not the people who founded the business Those are career executives who were hired and vetted and now they are just carrying out another job What you do and what I do every day is most certainly not just another job. Right We are building a legacy for our children. We are wedded to this baby in a way that no CEO who was hired could ever be I assume that that u And when you say the sky' the limit, you know for a founder Um an entrepreneur. I mean, I guess that Uh, you know They they figured out There are healthy coping mechanisms at some point Well, they they don't always, but they can But the main thing that's magic about a founder is that We have the ability to turn ideas into money There's nothing that stops us. When you're a CEO that's hired You can have all the best ideas in the world But you still have to get the board to approve You still have to get the owner to approve. You still have to get the attorneys to approve But when you are the C when you yourself are the owner, CEO founder People can advise you against your idea all you want And you tell them to go to hell because it's your idea, it's your legacy, it's your baby So what I find is that the people who understand and who want that freedom destined for success. That's why the sky's the limit because like they'll full they'll they'll soar. or they'll crash. And half the time after they crash, they'll get right back up and soar again Whereas when you're a career COO or a career CFO, One crash and your career' over. Amazing Tell me Andy, what is something today when you're looking back at your life What is something that you're deeply grateful for I mean, that's a long list, man. there's so many things to be grateful for. But the first thing that comes to my mind is that I'm grateful for my wife and I'm grateful for my children because my wife is the counterbalance that kept me on a productive path If you think about a sailboat, right, a sailboat has a giant sail Well, that entire gigantic sail is controlled by one rope And that one rope is either they call it sheeting. you either sheet it in where you sheet it out to gain momentum, to gain speed, to change the direction of the boat. Without my wife, I was a sailboat with a giant sail And I was just blown in the wind But when she came along and she sheated me in, now all of a sudden I was I was an engine, right. I had an ability to produce something that I couldn't produce otherwise, plow through an ocean So I'm grateful for my wife And then my children became my navigational guide. They became what I was working for So now I had my wife to turn me into a motor, like turn me into a power force, and I had my children to show me the way of where I wanted to go Without them, I'd still be floating in the ocean. Big, shiny sail You know, and flop it. Hey, it's Ry Reynolds here from MitMobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited preremium wireless for fifteen dollars a month is back So I thought it would be fun if we made fifteen dollarars bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at midmobile dot com slash swwitch Upront pay forty dollars for months ninety dollars for six months are one hundred ninety dollars forelveth, reired fifteen doll for month equal to taxes bees extra. initial term only greater thanty gigabytes slow netork is busy terms. Around in the waves