Transcript for:
Insights from a US Secret Service Special Agent

being an interrogator and special agent with the US Secret Service I'm trained in the art of reading people's body language verbal cues I mean even written statements so you can figure out who's full of BS and who isn't no so one of the things I would see a lot of guilty people do is Evie pom porus former US Secret Service special agent who protected presidents worked undercover and trained in the art of lie detection human behavior and cognitive influence she's now on a mission to help us all benefit from the lessons she's learned along the way E I want to go into all of the techniques the life lessons the wisdom so what are the co components of how to get someone to do what you want everybody's motivated by something different what you want to understand is that person's motivational mindset but the biggest mistake people make is they what about when your boss or your colleague isn't listening to you what should you do so it's called par Linguistics everyone's so focused on what they say they don't think about the tone pitch of the voice but there are simple things you can do to make sure people hear you first you spent 12 years around people like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did you learn anything about lead ship they're not driven by emotion and the problem majority people have is they're bring their feelings into it you don't want to be an emotional decision maker it never goes well pull back and be objective Evie when you think back of your secret service experience was there ever a day when you thought the president's life was at risk do you know I don't think I ever talked about it but and then what was the scariest moment of your career there was another undercover case all these things are escalating back any second he's going to kill my partner and pull my gun out that stayed with me congratulations dcio gang we've made some progress 63% of you that listen to this podcast regularly don't subscribe which is down from 69% our goal is 50% so if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted if you like this channel can you do me a quick favor and hit the Subscribe button it helps this channel more than you know and the bigger the channel gets as you've seen the bigger the guests get thank you and enjoy this [Music] episode Evie if someone's just clicked onto this podcast to listen because they thought the title was interesting or the thumbnail was interesting with the understanding that we're going to talk about the work you're doing in this season of your life and who you're doing it for can you tell me exactly why they should stay and listen to this conversation I think for each person it's different but why should you listen listen at think cor we're always trying to become something better I wrote my book becoming bulletproof and I think the essence of that was I'm trying to become more than and how about this the day you think you know everything is the day you become obsolete I live by that because I am never at my Peak I am always becoming more so if you're looking to become more and you don't know what that is exactly then listen all of this information we're going to talk about today um the techniques the things you've learned the life lessons the wisdom where is it come from what is your if I looked at your CV what would I see I probably honestly came from probably comes from growing up in New York daughter of immigrants I think that there's one aspect there but I TR think I truly think the majority is when I became a New York City police officer and then I went to the US Secret Service and I went in young I was like 22 23 and so while everyone's out at that age partying doing whatever I went into this this field and I was around a lot a lot of other Elite performers and thinkers and I learned so much training how humbles you the the job humbles you and then also working in the White House being around other top performers top thinkers that really kind of not kind of I mean that really I grew up there I grew up in the white house I grew up in the US Secret Service that's how I grew up so I think that those things help shape me and mold me not just training but also the people I was around I learned a lot made many mistakes but I had really good I don't want to say Role Models because I don't like that word I don't look at anybody and say I want to be that no I want to be me but I can look at other people and learn and INSP get inspired from them and see what they do so I had those examples that guided me so I think that's the majority of where that comes from and then the practicing of it flexing that muscle it's like a workout you have to keep doing that and being honest with yourself you Secret Service nobody wants to hear excuses nobody cares how you feel I don't mean it in a mean way but they're like we have a job to do what is the Secret Service I really want to zoom in on your career experience to understand um how the wisdom you have was derived from different sort of seasons of your um experience so a lot of us have heard this term secret service agent but in but in reality if I look at the span of your career what did that involve specifically okay so Secret Service the United States Secret Service was actually the uh one of the oldest federal law enforcement train agencies in the US so they do two things the one thing that they do is they protect the president everybody sees it right everyone's like oh that's Secret Service that's all they do No in fact even that unit of of people that you see around the president it's very hard even to get in there you don't you don't automatically go and even if you want to go doesn't mean you're going to get it so you do protection president former presidents vice president first ladies even foreign heads of state so when the prime minister of the UK comes to the US he gets protection because we don't want him getting assassinated in the US so all these foreign heads of state so you're you're protecting tons of people and it doesn't matter who it is you're the job is I die for you period so that's one aspect of it so there's a very selfless aspect of that which goes against all your intuition right because even in law enforcement as a cop or police officer they teach you hey if you're getting shot at you make yourself small take cover then engage Us Secret services that all goes out the window it's no you're getting shot at you jump in front and then make yourself big even bigger to make sure the bullet hits you and not the person behind you so you have to really rewire like something that's instinctual that's protection the other aspect of it is investigations they work investigations fraud a lot of fraud a lot of complex crimes and today fraud is global so you'll be investigating somebody in Russia I remember there was one guy in Russia who's committing fraud here in the US um he was going into bank bank accounts of these very wealthy people so the US Secret Service and home Homeland and CBP Customs border patrol everybody got together because like we have to get this guy so they figure out okay he's in Russia so the US goes to Russia says Hey Russia uh can you help us get this guy can you know can you send him over and so Russia of course is like no we're not going to do it to be fair we wouldn't do it for Russia either so it goes both ways so then everyone had to get created how do we get this guy so they're like all right we're going to put a plan together to lure him into another country a neutral country so this plan goes into place it's not my case and it's probably Friday night I hear my boss calling from across the way he's like hey pom purus yes sir he's like what are you doing tomorrow I looked at him I'm like why don't you tell me what I'm doing tomorrow he said can you go to the Dr Dominican Republic I said sure what do you need he's like you need to do undercover okay what am I doing he's like we've got this guy in Russia we're luring luring him over from Russia to the Dr we want to get him and bring him to the US you're going to go with your boyfriend I'm like who's my boyfriend he's a detective from the L NYPD I think he was I can't remember what great he was you're going to be his girlfriend you're going to give him legitimacy you guys are going to convince this Russian to come to the US I'm like where are we going to do this he's like at a resort I said Resort I'm like what do I have to do he's like just make him look legit you mean hang out by the pool all day and just drink peina coladas he said yes as long as they're virgin I said no problem MH and so that's what we did we spent I don't know how many days at this Resort me and my boyfriend who was like 20 years older than me maybe 30 and dinners with the Russian talking to him and what we tried to motivate him by is greed come to America we'll sneak you in and you'll make a ton of money and because we knew what his motivator was more money so he's thinking about it he's thinking about it we're having a little bit of hard time with them then finally it's the day before we're supposed to leave on our private jet which is customs border Patrol and I'm talking to my boyfriend's detective I'm like you think he'll show he's like I don't know so we're waiting that morning it's like 5 minutes to 9: we're about to leave the resort and we're like he's not going to show 3 minutes before 9: he rolls up he's like I'm in so we board our plane it's our private jet it's Customs border patrol everyone's undercover we get on there's like alcohol I don't drink there's food he gets on the Russian we fly from the Dominican Republic to Miami we land in Miami do a refuel it's all agents they're watching but they're all you know reading newspapers everyone's undercover we get back on the jet we fly to New York and then we land in Long Island in a very in a remote area there's a limo there our limo my boyfriend's limo with I I don't drink again I it's like Jack Daniels Jack Daniels Blue Label which is like the fancy I guess a liquor we get in we get into the limo and then we drive so now we got them in the US we got them the was to bring him to Brooklyn to the Brooklyn Bridge and the takedown was I take a photo of my boyfriend and the Russian by the Brooklyn Bridge wearing their Russian hats cuz he brought Russian hats and that was my clear take us down it's safe and so I put the photo up the bridges in the back my boyfriend's like welcome to America we're going to commit all this fraud we're going to steal all this money the Russians super happy click everybody comes in we're all in cuffs that's an example of a case if I back up there you said that what he wanted was more money when when you're trying to understand how to get someone to do what you want to do what are the sort of core components of that I spoke to um Andrew Bustamante who's the former CIA agent and he's he said he's spent a lot of time undercover doing very similar work going to foreign countries getting people to like him to trust him and then to give him something and one of the things he said to me is you need to understand their ideology he says of all the things that make someone do something is understanding their ideology which is kind of what you're describing there I think there's ideology and the other thing he said this framework rice reward ideology coercion and ego and what you described I guess is the reward that that Russian guy wanted when you're thinking about how to get someone to do what you want what's the what's the kind of framework where' you where did you default to and I'm and here I'm thinking about business I'm thinking about sales I'm thinking about all forms of persuasion because that's essentially what you had to do you had to get this total stranger sounds like a stranger onto a private J to come with you to America so I'm going to shut up because I need to understand what you want the biggest mistake people make is they talk a lot Steph if I'm doing all the talking and you're doing all the listening right you're learning everything about me you're learning about what I care about my values my belief systems you're getting a good read on me and I'm learning nothing about you there's a myth that people think if I do most of the talking I have control it's garbage you have the power because you've got me now now so what I will tell you is and I know of Andy what you want to understand is that person's motivational mindset what are you motivated by so that is your value and belief system everybody's motivated by something different but I have to hear you and pay attention to you to understand what that is everybody's purpose is different the example I gave you with a Russian he's motivated by money how did you figure that out was there a certain question or was it just one his action showed it cuz he wants money and then in talking to him he had a I believe he had a wife home he had a kid home he grew up a certain way so you just listen here have a drink talk to me let me know if you give people enough space they will reveal themselves to you but we're so busy talking we're so busy making noise because we think everybody needs to hear me I'm identity everybody needs to know me me me me and you know what nobody cares is there something in that as well where when you listen to someone they like you more yeah they like you more because everybody loves to talk about themselves because everybody wants to feel heard now I'll tell you this though I'm going to push back on the little bit of the like thing because even in business people like I need people to like me I need people to like me that is a Trek for disaster because now you're focused on not what your goal is but I need to make somebody like me those are two different animals if my goal is to do a deal with you then I'm going to focus on what do I need to get this deal done if my goal is to get you to like me which is much more complex and much more confusing and also it's going to mess me up in trying to figure that out I say this don't focus on making people like you because you can do everything right and people may still just not like you instead focus on how about I'm going to be competent in what I do when I say I'm going to do something I follow through when I say I can do something I actually can do it when I say I'm going to be there at 9: I'm there at 8:55 in the US Secret Service we had a saying if you're on time you're late so I show you that I'm competent when you see that are you going to like me for that yes you are I'll respect you now there's warmth warmth is the other element here warmth is I show you respect so instead of me trying to get you to like me how about I just show you respect what does that look like in reality showing some more respect is that again the time keeping I'm listening to you I show up on time I follow through with what I say I'm going to do I'm also open and approachable I'm also non-judgmental that's a big thing everybody is kind of like throwing their weight around let me tell you what I think let me tell you what I think nobody needs to know what you think it doesn't matter if you're really trying to build a connection with a person then build it and let them tell you what they think because now I see the world through your lens not mine I always say when especially I do a lot of Keynotes and training for businesses you don't matter they matter what do they want what do they need what's important to them let them them tell you and then when they tell you instead of trying to guess how to enter a conversation because you're coming into the blind but what do I do I shut up I listen I let you reveal to me what matters to you what your values are and then I come in more intelligently into the conversation and I speak to you you have to know your audience but you don't know your audience if you're doing all the Talking everybody's motivated by something different if you take my motivational Factor growing up I was never motivated by money my russan was readed that's fair but I wasn't whenever I got a job I never looked at the pay NYPD I had no idea what my salary was um when I went to the US Secret Service I never once asked them what's the pay because I wasn't motivated by that I was motivated by the mission by the purpose but people will show you that so the recruiter that talked to me probably realized this woman never once asked me what her salary is going to be she's not motivated by that those are little things that people show you people will show you what they care about if we just hold back stay silent ask good questions and you know what we're genuinely curious I genuinely want to get to know you I genuinely want to understand you I don't genuinely want to tell you all about me that's different and the one factor that's really important is not having judgment being non-judgmental when you show judgment to another person they're going to filter what they say they're going to shut down they're going to hold back because nobody likes to be judged I would interview in the polygraph room people who committed really horrible crimes crimes against children a lot of people would say to me how can you sit there and listen to it and not you know tell them what you thought or not like ream them out I was like because my goal was to get information see where there other victims how did they do it I want to know what they did so that I can make sure that this doesn't happen happen again and that I do maybe get information so I can get a conviction and then I also want to know if there are other victims out there my goal is not to check somebody and put him in his place or her and tell them what I think of them those are two different things also in the room my goal was not to get them to like me my goal was to get them to feel heard to feel respected for me to be professional and I think we bring the wrong terms because it's confusing if I want you to like me too think of it this way then I'm going to think I have to be nice to him I have to be his friend and when you become you're in business you can be warm but when you start becoming people's friends that's when the lines get blurred and we get confused in fact there's research done by Susan Fisk and Chris Malone and they say be warm to people be open and approachable but if you're overly nice overly kind overly polite that's when you get rolled you want to find that beautiful balance where I'm a professional I'm warm I'm not judgmental come talk to me tell me but but at the same time I maintain my authority I maintain my boundaries what about when someone compromises your boundaries or disrespects you how do you react to that because I think I have a lot of um leaders around me in my various businesses and I see sometimes that some leaders struggle with confrontation they struggle with you know team member might disrespect them in some way or might disre might not deliver work to the right standard and they might struggle with like pulling that person in knowing how to do that and how to address that situation and the avoidance of that conflict obviously just causes a bigger future problem because you're setting a new you're setting a new boundary right you've let someone jeopardize or um cross a line and if you don't I'm assuming that if in the moment you don't address that they're going to cross it again in the future this is really about like conflict resolution interpersonal conflict resolution and when you've been disrespected how do you deal with that so the first I'm going to do is I'm going to flip it back what have you done to let people think that they can do that to you that's the first thing I'm going to say what standards have you created or what things have you set up to let people think I don't have to deliver on time I can't be disrespectful I can't show up late for work that's the first thing I'm going to say so I would ha it a guess that I did I in the past set a standard for this right in some way that I showed up in the past that's the first thing I'm going to do what is there something I have done to create an environment where a person thinks that it is okay to do these things that's f first why do you go to I because I'm the one who sets the tone for I I I I just interviewed a chief of station former Chief of station John franie he's former CIA and he managed a lot of people and a very strong a lot of strong personalities because you got officers and all these different people and he said to me you know what I learned he said it is easier to be more have boundaries and be a little bit more sturdy and more authoritative in the beginning and then pull back than to be everybody's friend and then try to put those boundaries in place the lad doesn't work he's like you do the first you let people know what you expect of them and then you can pull back a little bit but you always have to tow that line so that's what I'm going to say first and he's right what tone have I set in the environment that I'm working that people think it's okay to do these things that's one now let's say sometimes I have an outlier I have a person who does these things as soon as it happens you have to address it what people do is they don't address things they let it go it's small and then it happens again it's small then again and then we become resentful we become pissed why does this person keep doing it why don't they self-correct again it goes back to me why haven't I addressed it people are afraid of conflict conflict can be done in a great way you have to think of conflict as think of it as like I'm competing I'm I can speak to you not raise my voice not make it ugly and debate something with you in the in the the White House next to the Oval Office was the cabinet room the cabinet room is where the president would sit with all his heads you know Secretary of Treasury Secretary of Homeland Security and they would discuss and debate policies laws and they would compete one person would say I don't like this idea this is why another person would say well this idea doesn't work this is why you have to be comfortable in doing that most people are not they don't understand that you can sit somebody down and say Hey you know this happened can you tell me about that I had someone who worked for me and she had made a mistake on something and so it was a pretty big mistake so I I called her up and I said hey you know what this and this happened you know talk me through it and I let her explain and you know she said you know I'm sorry this and that uh there's a reason why but the one thing I did I said because I wanted to rectify it because I didn't want it happen again I was like is there anything I can do to help make your job better so you can be more successful at what you do because I want to hear is there something I'm doing or not doing that's impacting her decision making or the way she sees things so it's a twofold but you also do when it comes to respect and this is a whole separate thing you brought up with the respect part just make sure people are truly disrespecting you and that's not your ego that feels disrespected cuz sometimes people can't take somebody pushing back and if my goal is to make a great product or business deal or transaction then everything we do should be in furtherance of that but what happens is Stephen people are so afraid of hurting other people's feelings or stepping on other people's toes nobody says something and that's worse it's sometimes difficult to know the difference between whether this is a violation of my boundaries or this is my ego because you know I think of much of the reason why people won't confront something in the moment is because they start double guess whether they're in the right they're in the wrong this is acceptable this is unacceptable behavior and that kind of mental debate of um is that actually acceptable that they treat me like this or that they did this or am I just being triggered because you know of some kind of emotional issue that I have and that kind of conversation often results in them taking no action which means they tolerate that behavior whether they should or shouldn't and then it becomes the norm you know it's interesting so I'm a very um like a I'm quick too to jump and like I don't want to say go into attack mode but I I have it I'm Greek I group up in New York and queens it's like it's just on so I always have to my immediate response is like what internally inside voice uh I pause and I'm like hang on is this person telling me something or doing something that I should hear right maybe they're telling I made a mistake and they're trying to help me make something better or is this person crossing a boundary that I don't want them to cross so then I will sit that person down or have a conversation hey can you tell me about this what were you thinking when this happened walk me through it but I will tell you non-judgmental right you don't want to show it it's I call it the poker face just don't show it and let them talk and just see what they're thinking most people as they're talking to you Stephen they will on their own realize as they talk through it what they made wrong what they did wrong also you you lead by examples so sometimes I'll make a mistake I'll miss a deadline with someone I work with and I'll say listen I'm sorry I was traveling I own it tell me what I need to do to fix it and what I have found when I do that the people I work with when they make a mistake and I'm like hey what happened with this you know what eie I'm sorry I miss the deadline I own it I'll fix it they reflect back what I show them so I think it also shows in the behavior and and then there sometimes Stephen some sometimes you'll bring somebody in that just should not be there and then you also have to make that hard decision because that one person it will destroy the fabric of the group one person can do that because everybody else around now watches that interaction and they're thinking well Stephen doesn't care I was like he's letting this guy do this so I can do this right it's a I compare it to like uh when I teach so as I said I'm an agent Professor I teach College I teach undergrad CRI criminal justice first day class when they come in I tell them no cell phones I was like and the reason I have you do no cell phones is not because I'm I want you to respect me or this and that I was like I owe ow you an education I owe you an education I know some professors don't care but I tell my students day one I give a [ __ ] and because I give a [ __ ] I don't want to see the phone in the class however I do something else it's an influence strategy I give them autonomy I say however you can leave this classroom anytime you want to check Facebook go on Instagram I don't care you have that autonomy but in here I want you to respect the sanctity of the classroom because you deserve education and I owe it to you and I set that standard and side note there's a video clip that I showed day one and you're actually in it I didn't even know who you were there's a clip of you and some others it's a montage of videos together talking about social media and how it impacts you adversely and cell phones and cellone addiction and all that and I actually play that clip and can I tell you it resonates with everybody and I have no problems the rest of the semester but I set that tone and I tell them if I see the phone you're going home no hard feelings I'm going to pause class and I'm going to send you home and then if somebody violates it though I do it have you had to build up your how would I describe it mental fortitude um ability to be direct to look someone in the eye to stand up straight have you had to build that up over time because there'll be a lot of people who look at you and see strength and they see confidence and they see conviction and they'll Wonder Maybe she was just born like that or maybe there's something she did along the way that grew that it's a lot of mistakes and a lot of discipline and it's also the people you surround yourself with will set that example that tone for you if everybody around me is a mess or everybody around me when there's a stressful situation they fall apart and they're chaotic I'm going to be that even to this day Stephen I sit and I'm very aware of who I have conversations with whose energy I absorb whose problems I solve I have somebody I care about very deeply they're in a situation with someone a relationship with someone who is volatile chaotic they've come to me so many times I said you need to let go of this person I will I will they don't but what happens is they keep coming to me I'm having this problem and I put them on point I'm like I told you what to do now you have to sort that out because now what's happening is your stuff is coming into me and I can't have that cuz I have to keep this steady so sometimes even with pain in my heart I'll have to kind of move that person a little bit to the outer part of the circle does not mean I don't care or love them but it means your chaos has to stay there because it's going to bleed into my life you're unsteady I'm unsteady but everybody around me it's like a I don't want to say it's like a calculus problem but it's kind of simple math man look at who's around you you are them they are you and if you don't like what's going on with you pause and be like who am I exposed to the most sometimes the people we love they can be very difficult personalities but even with them you could say I can manage this I don't want to cut this person out but what do I do I just move them to the edge of the circle a little bit more and you have to make sure your core circle is strong and that's something you have to constantly reassess because sometimes in our lives this person is good here and then maybe 2 3 years later they're not good anymore but what we're tied to is that person who we knew back then well they're not the same person now if you have a [ __ ] show around you it's you because you're allowing it to exist so think about quietly how can I create these changes and quietly make these changes quietly make these boundaries because these are boundaries internal for you it's interesting I remember watching a video of Steve Jobs talk about how he built his career and he said in that video he said I built my career by surrounding myself and finding these truly exceptional people these a players and the crazy thing is when you find these a players they like working with other a players and it propagates but the opposite is also true right if when you build a circle of drama they'll invite more drama but if you I look at my own life and I look at my companies and it's almost this crazy sort of process of osmosis when we have chaos and we have inexperience and we have drama we end up hiring and inviting more of the same whereas when we made those step steps to bring in experience I'm thinking in my early my early career experience and maturity and composure and a certain yeah a certain psychological maturity then that's what we ended up bringing more of more and more in because like-minded people attract like-minded people and even in the context of our own lives our Circle will just you know the fifth person will become the sixth person if that makes sense yes it's like they rotate out and it's okay you know what's interesting too I'm wondering too because you do this podcast and you really try to you're warm you're open you want people to speak to you and I wonder if people that work with you outside of the podcast or people that work with you in your business see the Steven on the podcast and they think he's so warm he's so open he's so he's so flexible and they confuse that Stephen with the Steph who does business and there can be different versions of You Stephen so you could think of it and I do this all the time who I am here doesn't mean I'm the same person here so when I show up to work I bring in maybe a little bit more energy a little bit more directness or when i h when I hire people I'll tell people Hey listen because I want to be efficient at what I do sometimes I'll be very direct cuz I want to just get there don't get your feelings hurt if at any point there's something you're not sure about please tell me but because I need to get to there I may be just be direct so if you think it's going to be hard for you I'm not the person I was like but I will always appreciate you and I'm always here so I'll sprinkle in every now and then hey I appreciate you thank you for this this is great that way in the so there's my warmth so that in those months when I'm like hey this email you guys wrote this is we can't send this out this needs to be redone and so nobody's hearing like oh I'm stupid she thinks I'm done I did a horrible job it's like no the email just sucks change it and fix it so we can move on and do better but think about the versions you bring in cuz I'll give you an example who I am in the classroom is different than who I am on the podcast is different who I am when I do the news there are different versions of me and we have to weigh out those so if you're going into a business meeting or you're dealing with people who look to you as a supervisor a little bit of a different Steph so they feel it's not what you say to people Stephen it's how they feel around you and if they feel like he's not taking any of this they're going to know it it's the essence of who we are it's our ethos is a Greek word your your way of being we show we show people in the context of whatever environment we're in the version that we want them to see so that we can get the results that we want you spent much of your time around great leaders if I think about you know you were working for about almost 12 years around people like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and Michelle Obama did you learn anything about leadership from those individuals from observing them and seeing how they conducted themselves and how they communicated you know in the UK we see someone like Barack Obama is a really incredible leader for many reasons but I think one of the real standout reasons is his ability to communicate in a certain way which galvanizes people and we haven't really seen I mean one could actually argue that Trump has his own masterful communication skills it's very different but it seems to work you know did you learn anything from being around these presidents about leadership and communication so you learn you learn something from all of them to be president of the United States whoever you are I mean that's a feat and of itself so they're all they all have something so it's interesting the the one thing I learned is um resilience you'll be next to the president and this was every president a forers all of them I stood next to and you're standing next to them and they're about to go on stage or in a big meeting or they're talking to someone and you've got the news on and there's some political pundit on the news or channel talking about how stupid they are he's a dummy he's this he's that just shreding them and he looks at it yeah gets his stuff together gets his speech together gets on stage and delivers when the majority of the public would sit there oh my God I'm disrespected I'm this how can they say that nothing that was amazing to me so not only did the US Secret Service make me resilient but to see somebody just take such heat or hear such horrible things said about them on a consistent basis on such public platforms and you have the ability to wake up walk outside the White House your head up get in your limo Go on stage go do this press conference and you're like it's just going to happen there's no there's no school for that and so because I was around these these these these personalities I'm like yeah well if he can do it I can do it who was the most impressive I have to tell you they all were there was no one that wasn't like they all had their their gift you know and even Trump you brought up Trump before I think what people like about him he's just direct he's very direct and he just lands it he says what he says and he doesn't care there's a there's something and I'm Switzerland because in the US Secret Service we actually weren't even allowed to talk about if we voted for someone we were very apolitical um and I've always stayed that way but from an objective standpoint people just like the fact that he just says it and he doesn't care and sometimes I think people envy that did you did you see how they made their decisions did you ever observe them making tough decisions yes all the time you would be behind closed door meetings you would hear their ability give me an example of this I'm interested you know when the stakes are that high because a lot of us on a day-to-day basis are making fairly inconsequential decisions especially in the context of running the most powerful nation in the world so I'm interested when the stakes are that high when you've got to get Osama Bin Laden in a compound in Pakistan or you know there's a there's a terrorist attack how these individuals make decisions they're not driven by emotion they're very rational based decisions I weigh the pros I weigh the cons I look at the facts so you very rarely if ever and I could probably say I've never heard a US president yell ever I've never heard a US president lose his himself you know when you hear them debate or talk about things it's a debate I can look at you you can look at me I be like Stephen I don't think that this is right and you'd say EV well why isn't this right if we do it this way this way this way this is going to happen yeah but Stephen if you do it like that and what if this happens and these guys die well I don't see it like that well Sor I see it this way it's like we're going to have to figure it out but you're also with people who have the ability to sit and withstand their their feelings are not so fragile their ego Not So Soft that you can actually have this debate and that's important for you to have in your circle can you have these debates with people I would call them competing there's a two great researchers in the UK Dr Lawrence and Emily Allison and they architect people as animals and one of the things I talk about is someone who's in control and setting the agenda is someone who's lying I'm a liying and so sometimes we have to bring a little bit more line in with us or somebody who's competing is somebody who's capable of kind of debating with you but it doesn't have to be ugly I don't have to raise my voice or get in your face to break something down I can sit there and be rational the problem majority people have is they're so invested and emotional they bring their feelings hurt their feelings into it even something you just brought up Trump and you had like a little bit of a look like Trump because everyone's so emotional when they hear that name pull back and be objective it's like let me look at this from a factual standpoint I'm going to lay this out I'm going to lay this out I let let let this lay out when you can make decisions based on facts and rationality the go out the window you don't want to be an emotional decision maker it never goes well because you're not thinking clearly you're like just going with the wave and it's those moments when you say something you shouldn't say then afterward you regret it why did that person get me to say that I went in with this intention I got of got pulled in this direction this person got me to say that no it's always on you cuz you're the governor of you the first time you got exposed to a president um and you spent time around a a president were there any things that surprised you any things that before then you had a sort of Mis sort of ideas of what they were like and how they behaved that you realize suddenly were like popular misconceptions that most people believe about presidents and so on I don't know if this is a misconception but my first time they call it standing post um it was for President George W bush he's in office I'm standing post for him somewhere what does that mean oh standing post is when you're new you don't get into like the close close circle of the president it's Evie here's the door and the president's going to walk through this door in like eight hours from now we're going to sweep it check for bombs and everything and your job is to stand watch the store for eight hours nobody comes through right that's it that's called post standing you secure the perimeter it's mundane right but you do it it's part of the job especially when you start so I have my one of my first post standing things I'm standing by the door and the head agent the senior agent's coming around checking on us hey you okay you okay you need anything it's briefing us and then one agent comes and he's like you're new right I'm like yeah well I'm sort of new I mean I had start under Clinton but Bush was my real I don't know what but my real hardcore assignment and he's like where's your phone I said it's here sir he's like is that thing off or on silent I said yeah he's like don't let Bush hear your phone go off and I'm like what do you mean he's like if he hears your phone go off you're going home he's like he doesn't want to hear phones we want like a respectable environment a quiet quiet environment that thing goes off you're gone he sends people home and I was like what why would he get so upset with the phone I didn't quite understand it now I understand it because if everybody's doing this and distracted nobody's Focus there's things going on it's the energy the vibration he was trying to be a leader inste boundaries for the environment he wanted everybody present everybody's focused nobody's on their phones no shenanigans that really stuck with me and you better make sure I took that thing out put it all the way down I was like the president of the United States is not sending me home and they're like he does it so though that's something like I always remembered and it's it's a boundary and it's just something he imposed throughout the environment I remember thinking wow the president of the United States actually sits and I don't want to say controls something so minute but something so small can impact or create this ripple effect of the environment that he is trying to cultivate why did you get that job because when I was reading through the numbers around how many people sort of apply to do the initial training and then how many people ultimately get to be that that close to these major issues it seems like very few people get there could you quantify that for me how many people dropped out during training how many people passed and how many people how like rare is it to get to the position that you got to so they spend like tens of thousands of dollars maybe even 100 100K by the time you get hired on you so to understand how they select you once you get selected like you've gone through a rigorous process so for example I started in the NYPD when I went in it was, 1500 of us and people would just quit left and right and they wanted you to quit when I went to the US Secret Service Academy at that point it was like 54 of us but you were hand selected so one you apply and I think they only take 1% of all applications that they get which is like it's easier to get into Harvard than and it isn't get into the service so out of all the applications they only they only select 1% to even look at then they decide okay I'm going to put this person through the process then they make you fill in all this paperwork Stephen I can't even tell you the amount of weeks it took me write essays how you're going to handle problems hey they'll give you problem scenarios uh and they'll say you have this problem how would you handle this and they'll give be like you've been here what would you do here and they have you write out essays and break down what you would do then your paperwork so they take your paperwork they go through all that stuff then they do background checks on you criminal checks background checks they talk to all your neighbors um when I was in the USC when I was applying I had studied overseas when I was in college and one of the semesters I did abroad was in Italy they sent an agent to Italy to speak to my college professor in Rome to ask him what kind of student I was so they do such an invasive look into you you do polygraph you take a written test it's called The Tea exam I think they've changed it but it was like in the US it's like they call it the SATs it was the SATs on steroids that thing was so hard I thought for sure I failed it I was like there's no way I passed this thing I squeak through that and there's all these things so by the time you get offered they give you it's a conditional offer of employment Evie you've passed everything so we're going to let you try to go to training and then if you pass that then you go on probation for like I think it's 3 years and then you're good then you're truly in but they by the time you get to this process where you're actually going to training because they've dumped so much money in you they want you're at that point where you're typically going to get through it because they don't want you to quit because they've dropped a lot of money on you so at that point they've really invested in you because they believe that you can meet the standards and be part of a culture that they want so it it is hard but they do kick people out it happens all the time what is it about you then if you reflect in hindsight now and go the reason I got through all of that is because I am I didn't know any better I didn't know any better not to apply I didn't know any better to know that it's 98% men I didn't know any better to think that I couldn't do it my n my my naiveness as a young woman or girl that's what help me get through that job I didn't think about it I was like why not what were they looking for they look for a lot of different things I will tell you unequivocally they look for trustworthiness if you line your stuff and they catch you which later on I became one of their polygraph examiners and my job became I became the person to see if you were trustworthy if you had lied to us I was like the last layer of Defense um that was a big thing Integrity is a big thing cuz their mindset was if you can lie about your application form or something that happened to you when you're 1920 or something dumb you did then you're going to lie to us about anything cuz it's like if you can't own up to your stuff you're going to make mistakes here and we can't trust you so Integrity is a massive thing the other thing that really like they call it bqas but better qualified applicants that's what you get when they don't want you like hey we have better qualified applicants that competitive wise drugs was a big thing people using like so drugs played a big role when people had a lot of usage that would be or when I got on it was like barely nothing um that would be a quick thing to get you disqualified because obviously we work crime criminal cases so if I'm working a counterfeit case criminal criminals don't really stay in one lane they do counterfeit money and they do drugs and they do other things so they have to know that you can work these cases and they don't have to worry about you you said you were working in as an interrogator I read that you traveled the world for roughly about eight years for the Secret Service doing um polygraph tests and conducting interrogations as a polygraph examiner you're trying to figure out if people are lying you've got a machine in front of you right that's telling you giving you a bunch of readings and data on what's going on physiologically inside their body but then also you know in interrogations but as a polygraph examiner you you you're looking at them and you must have a bit of a sort of hunch based on like pattern recognition when you're looking at their body and how they're behaving do you think you can predict or do you think you can now tell if someone's lying to you or if they're being dishonest it happens a lot when you speak to people you can I guess you can look at it this way you can figure out who's full of BS and who isn't no one you feel it I think your intuition is a huge thing and we we dismiss it two people show you you create baselines on people so if I sit and I speak to someone and the whole time they're speaking like when you talk Stephen most of your your hands are usually here you go on the iPad you do this that's your Baseline right you do a lock ey contact I've got Stephen right now let's say I ask you later a question and maybe it's a question you don't like right I ask you like tell me about your employees at work or tell me about the most difficult employee you had and how did you deal with it and it's something maybe that affects you you don't want to talk about it you don't want to be honest with me you might be like ah you know I and you look down I'm like well you know I'll see a shift this whole time I'm talking to Stephen he's locked in with me he's got a certain posture I ask him this question he just showed me something different why that's it why and then now I know to be curious that when you're done asking or answering my question I come in with good follow-up questions because you're showing me something is happening here what most people don't do Stephen is they see something it registers and they let it go they don't follow up to with another question and then another question and then another question question you don't want to be nosy but you want to be curious who's the greatest liar you ever met can you recall an instance of meeting someone who was just a really great liar I had this one guy he was doing it wasn't a big scam but he was doing ATM fraud so you know how you go to the ATMs and you you you go you put in your card you take out money so he was going on to the ATMs and he would put us on a skimming device this is a very I don't want but a very primitive way to stealy so he would put on his own skimmer on the ATM so when you swipe your card you're swiping it on his skimmer so it captures all the info so this guy was just kind of like very lowlevel basic criminal he's going around to all the ATMs in Brooklyn and he's doing this skimming device so on the ATMs they take photos of you so I've got a photo of this guy I've got him he's got his hat on I think it was like a New York Knicks hat at the time he's got his hat on I've got his full frontal we found the guy we matched the prince to the prince on the ATM boom I've got my guy got my photo this easy day I put him in the interview room I sit him down hey you know I want to talk to you about this first I do like a a rapport building what's your name where you from talk to me's super nice super nice guy yes ma'am okay ma'am you know and he was from another country I remember so we're talking he's looking to me yes and he's very very um wants to help me yes I want to help you and I'm so you know yes of course like very Cooperative overly Cooperative so that's my red flag I'm this guy's trying too hard and uh sir I want to ask you about this ATM scam oh no I don't know anything I don't know anything I'm like no how about here and I just start revealing a couple of things and I've got my photo in my background I'm like I'm going to bust out this photo this guy's going to be like yep that's me sorry so as I'm doing this I'm hitting a wall no no no I'm sorry Mom I wish I could help you no no no so I got the photo of the guy do you know he showed up to my interview wearing the same hat M and I'm thinking I'm locked I'm tight pull out the phot phot and I'm like oh yeah then what's this put it down on the table he looks at it oh yeah that's me it looks like me but yeah wow I could see no it's not me it was him I got he me nothing nothing he I will never forget him just great liar most people waver this and that not this guy he was locked tight he suck to that story never gave a confession thankfully we had enough to charge him I it was ATM fraud but not looked at me I'm sorry and you know one one of the things people would do doesn't doesn't mean people are always lying when they do this but one of the things I would see a lot of guilty people do and he did this a lot I swear to God I swear to God God is my witness God knows that's not me and so we would call it divine intervention whenever you'd hear somebody do that you knew it's like okay there's a problem because it's kind of like you're saying why do you need God to come in to vouch for you or sometimes we actually have people come in with Bibles or rosary beads whenever you saw that in the waiting room that person coming in I was like I they'd be like don't even poly them they did it cuz they're trying so hard to connect to that I'm a religious person I would never do these things and that those were little red flags of course I would do my interview but in my back of my head I'm like he probably did it what about other things like um you're very good at keeping eye contact yes is there such a thing as too much eye contact it depends on the person but I think you also need to be you so I make eye contact here's the other thing when I make eye contact with you I show you one I'm confident in myself I also show you I deserve to make eye contact with you that I am relevant and I don't need to look away or hide because I deserve to be here and I deserve to be having a conversation with you right and that I matter that's one thing and I also convey Authority and confidence you don't have to say anything to people you show them I look at you I'm comfortable to look at you but I can also show you warmth right I can connect with you and engage with you and be present and listen to you the other thing eye contact does it also sends the message to you that you matter to me that I'm here and that I am present with you and that I listening to you that I see you and that I want to try to understand you so eye contact is wonderful because it does two things and make makes you real feel relevant and it makes me relevant also that I'm relevant enough to sit here and look at you when I speak and it's another way to convey my authority without having to tell you hey you know what I'm in charge I don't need to tell you I show you what about um body language you know because I'm thinking about people that I know that are particularly low in self-esteem and they struggle with eye contact but then also sometimes they it's it's almost like they make themselves smaller in their in their body language and stuff like that and I was just thinking like I I guess what I'm thinking here is can I trick myself can I trick myself and other people into thinking I'm confident if I'm not is you know because there's all this stuff about like the Superman posture where you can kind of make yourself bigger and look in people's eyes but when I reflect on my early years when I was least confident for some reason I couldn't get anyone I was pursuing so I remember there was these five girls that I over the over the course of about since I was from 14 to I'd say 23 that I was really into all five of them weren't interested in me that we would like we'd get a little bit far down the line so there was like a little bit of sort of initial um interest but then I would always lose them and I never knew why I never knew why but in but then it changed at about 24 and it doesn't correlate to like money or success necessarily it correlates to my opinion of myself and it was was almost like magic when I looked back and I thought [ __ ] hell like I got rejected over and over and over again and when I got to the point that I actually believed that I was good enough even though I read all the books I read up all the pickup Artistry books I read the game I read all of these books I had the tips tactics and tricks to fake it but I but it wasn't until I genuinely believed that I was high value that I had real success with the opposite sex and so it left me with this feeling that you can read the tips the tricks the eye contact the body language but maybe none of it works because there's a thousand other non-verbal micro Expressions that are communicating your low value you don't believe in yourself you're not worthy that overpower that that we can't really control and the reason it changed at 24 25 26 27 is because I genuinely felt like I was good enough for them like so you know this is why I reflect on this idea of like I know people would click podcasts like this because they want the the tips the tricks they want to get from a to Zed in 3 seconds no they want to get they want to get from low confident low self-esteem all that to at the alar with a king and they want to do it they want to know how to do it in the space of this conversation so that they can end this conversation and walk down the aisle tomorrow with their prince charming that's what people want they want to solve complex things with short Simple Solutions doesn't exist I know this book because I know that if I title this like if you title a podcast sixpack ABS in s minutes people are going to but if you titled it six pack abs in three years of work in diet restriction [ __ ] no one's going to click you know and it's the same thing for for here and life and I'm often wondering like how how does someone change the core of themselves whether it's as a as a leader a manager in a relationship that very core of you because in my life it was actually just this like long grueling process of building myself it was at the like retiring from caring so much about actually getting any of these people and just building up this real internal Fortress and then everything else took care the body language the eye contact the way I walk into a room it all took care of itself and you know but it doesn't sell books that like there's no one's going to buy that book you know what though it is all the little things we do that help us get there there's no magic thing that's why you're like it took me time and what it was is all the little things along the lines that that that came it's there's no magic thing people sometimes come to me and they're like every what's the secret and I tell them there's no secret the change that you want in your life it's all the little things that you do it's like think of it like compound interest right I do this and then I add this layer and then this layer and then this layer and then this layer it's like the sheets of paper you put one sheet it's light two sheets are light three sheets but you put a thousand sheets now you've got weight that's how we are we're layers and we have to add to to those layers there's no quick thing you know when you know you're going to get there when you're Sovereign when you feel like I don't need anybody it's wonderful to have human beings around me and I think connection is it's it's it's wonderful but if your goal is I need someone to complete me you're done and I think also it's so wild cuz I'm thinking about my youth as you're talking about yours when I became Sovereign like where I'm like I'm good enough I'm good as I am you become a magnet I became a magnet people like well I wanted that I want to be around that I want to be around her everywhere people like how do you it's like because I believe in me but it took time to believe in me and when you became Sovereign yes everyone was just like but how did your behavior change those micro behaviors I stopped chasing things and chasing people yeah I stopped looking for approval I stopped trying to people please right and I just TR I trusted myself I also stopped taking inventory from everybody asking everybody their opinion and I also though but I also had I dealt with a lot of rejection a lot of like rejection a lot of people not agreeing with me I gossip growing up there was a lot I took a lot of heavy hits and those things made me resilient those things taught me to like not you know to stay my course like you know and I've shared this before but when I became an agent or I put in for NYPD my the community of friends and people I had around me thought it was ridiculous they thought it was silly I remember after when I started dating after I became an agent there was one guy a friend of mine's a good friend of mine's brother she was trying to hook me up with him this before my husband my husband knows everything and uh uh so I'm like all right you know he was a nice Greek guy I'm Greek I'm stay I'm keeping it in the community cuz you're supposed to um so I'm talking to him and I'm like yeah and I'm thinking like I went through so much to become a special agent with the US Secret Service and do you know he said to me he's like so uh like when you get married are you going to quit that job and you know ditch this I mean like how long are you going to do this like he spoke about it like it was nothing like it was trivial and I heard that and I was just like wait what like dude you couldn't get into the Secret Service if like like with your like there's no like with all your might and when he was like said that to me and his job he owned the diner and he owned he owned a diner food his success was wealth and money and some cultures including mine and the community I was in they they measured success with money like what I was doing was not successful but I had the ability to be Sovereign enough to like not listen I was just like no that's not my belief system my moral compass and um I stopped caring then I dated another guy who knew I was in the Secret Service and I really like this guy it was this Italian kid and I'm thinking he's going to be so proud of me I got in and we went on this date and he had just broken up with someone Stephen like he was so uncomfortable around me why cuz I was an agent they that was like a freak show it was weird I think today's a little different maybe at that time and do you think men struggle with strong women I think certain men do I think I think men who are not confident in themselves if you're steady you don't care what somebody else is you're cheering for them I ended up dating an agent and marrying him so because my husband's so steady and Sovereign in himself I could do whatever and he'd be like you go you had your first child at 45 years old I had my daughter at 40 excuse me 46 my daughter's 18 months old your daughter gets to 18 and she's she's just she just can't get out of bed she's lazy she's blaming the world she's saying listen this is this person's fault and this person's fault and I you know I just can't be bothered where' you start well look if I've done a good job and my husband and I have done a good job and again it's it's not 100% us we should have hopefully by that point put in certain structures in place to prevent that I'll give you a small example I've never put an iPhone in front of her I have no working television in my house because I control what she absorbs not the internet and I'm going to hold on to that as long as possible because I've seen with these the cell phones I'm a grown ass adult and I'll look at stuff and it impacts me and I'm like I can't look at this or I'll unfollow things or I'll go social I don't want to see it I cover news I cover crime child I cover really heinous things and there are times where I do the news I do the news Stephen I don't watch it so there are little things that I can do so up until this point 18 months it's a lot more work for me and my family there's no social device there's no cell phone I control that I kind of look at it I want to know what what's feeding her mind the way I choose to make her food I choose what goes in the mind I control it and a lot of parents will come to me and I'll tell them if you're not comfortable dropping your kid in the middle of Time Square to talk to whoever then you get that thing out of their hands because now somebody else is putting ideas in your kid's head I have no control over that zero and that's powerful that's one and especially we see it affect little girls and again I'm a grown woman and social media impacts me and the moment I'm like I put that thing away that's one no TV in my house because TV is like when I was a kid you had cartoons Saturday morning that was it and you had to wait for those cartoons I mean I was like tomorrow cartoons so this instant gratification process that kids have that's that that's why you here like help me get to hear fast she's never going to learn how to work hard she's going to be lazy she's going to lay in bed she's going to get depressed quicker she's going to have anxiety so I'm doing everything I can to impact those things they're little seeds it's little things so that by the time she's 18 I hope in my heart I have done my best but I also understand I'm 50% she's 50% so as much as I try to help navigate her she's going to be her own person and I'm going to have to listen understand what her value systems are what she cares about but her exposure to them is reg I regulate that even the school she's going to go to I sit there I'm already thinking about where I'm going to put her to school and I don't I'm like do I want her in a public school I don't know I don't want her being like mom I want a Gucci belt and you know labels and all this stuff I was like I don't want her to think like that I want her to have a different mindset I'm like so I'm creating in my head how do I do that another thing I do super small I take her to gree with me every summer do you know where we go in Greece in the village Village I'm talking like bathroom in the back hardcore like rug in it my parents grew up in villages I grew up in that I lived in that in the summer June July August September I was in the village in fact the the bathroom was connected to the chicken coup Would You Let Her Fly business class no the only time I fly business class is when somebody else is paying why because I'm saving my money because business class is expensive because I work really hard and I'm okay to sit in the back so business class there has to be a really good reason why I'm going to dish out that money for business class for myself let alone my daughter economy economy my poor kid right she to grow up and M like you can keep all your stuff to yourself you um one of the things we we were chatting about before we started recording was that your favorite days are when you work out you go to the gym why why is that so important to you why is exercise so Central to to everything that you do in your mind there's I think that there's a school of like the mind and the body are two separate things and a lot of people be like I'm working on my mind I listen to podcast which is great but then they don't work out their body and and these things live together I learned this in the Secret Service like these things were they're married so if you're depressed and you're not getting off the sofa there's a problem your body needs help I work with uh I train out with Don saladino even me with all my experience like sometimes we need somebody to push us and accountability is a big thing so I always tell people if you're struggling have somebody be accountable for you Don who I work with and I train with he makes me take a photo of every meal I eat and text it to him he's like I want to see what you're putting in your mouth and every time I'm about to have something that I shouldn't I think to myself I got to send this to Don so he's going to police it so having somebody help you is also a good thing but your body is your temple you get one of these we take better care of our cars than we do this and then we wonder why am I depressed because you have to move this you have to take care of it everything in the US Secret Service was about performance this is your your this is your home it houses your mind it houses your soul and we treat it like garbage and we give it garbage when I run and I work out at night all the stress I'm like any other human being I accumulate stress people's anx stuff coming at me and I need a way to release it so at night I go run and I let it out there's been times in my life I could think of two distinct times I remember once and I don't remember what it was but I had such a stressful hard day see I went to the track to run I remember it was freezing it was Winter it was snowing and I was just like I was just like on the verge of just like just pure emotion and rage I started running I was like talking to myself I was running I'm balling my eyes are balding balling I look like a crazy person to the outside world but I ran it all out and when I was done I was back to me the the the physical element of our body is such an important thing and we treat treat them as two separate entities and and and they you have to take care of what houses your soul and your mind you strike me as someone that is pretty Fearless I I I say pretty because we all I think we all have fear in us I think fear is a useful natural emotion but you you're someone that clearly has built up an in uh a more productive relationship with fear than most people when you think back of your sort of Secret Service experience was there a day where you were more scared than another day IE what was the most scared you were during your time in the Secret Service do you know I had this one scenario and I don't think I ever talked about it I'm in downtown Manhattan I'm with my colleague and we're driving to a Secret Service uh meeting we were going to go arrest somebody the next day and we were going to the briefing with this other department we were going to do our our pre-arrest briefing about how we're going to go in tactically so we're driving to this meeting and as we're going to this meeting we're in downtown Manhattan and uh somebody runs out of a it was a jewelry store this man runs out of a jewelry store and these other people are out there running with him and they're yelling and they see us and I guess they realize that we were in a police car even though was undercover they just stand out they're like help help get him get him and the way they were acting you think he would have shot somebody shot somebody and we can see as you see them screaming and yelling help help you see this other person running away so my partner flips on the lights we start driving and we're chasing this person now I can't see this person I see their back they have a hoodie on they're running from the posture of it of it it looked like a male and it looked like a guy running so he's running lights on we get on the thing stop running stop running he's not listening to anything he goes he turns the black we're still chasing him then he turns into a a parking garage in New York City there there's these parking garages and they go all the way underground so he turns in so we can't go in with the car we're going in blind we pull up we get ourselves out and as we're going in we're clearing people out but you could also see people running out I guess they could tell something was wrong people are leaving and now we're thinking does this guy have a gun like what's going on cuz people are responding very agitatedly to the scenario we go in we pull everybody out everybody get out get out so we go to the bottom level of the parking garage where we believe he's at lights are it's dark and we go in police come out police come out he's not listening we're looking for him underneath all these cars and then I see him he's underneath the car and I I go to my partner I sing to my partner cuz he's like on the other side I'm like hey I'm like he's right down he's right there now we can't see him my partner's like I'm going to go around so my partner goes around and he he didn't listen to me my partner so I blame him a little bit he went too prematurely before we kind of figured out what what he goes to go grab him from behind so now my partner's out in the open this guy's out there I see him I don't know if he has a weapon we have enough to he ran from us right so these things are escalating let me see your hands let me see your hands nothing let me see your hands put your hands out I can see you I see you under the car let me see your hands cuz now I'm worried he's going to shoot my partner cuz my partner's out in the open trying to get to him let me see your hands so then I pull my gun out and I pointed at him let me see your hands let me see your hands and I'm thinking please show your hands because now I'm in this cross between if this thises guy have a gun and if he has a gun any second he's going to kill my partner and I had a choice where I was like do I do you shoot because I think he's gonna shoot my partner because he's not showing me his hands and he's fidgeting do I not shoot give him the benefit of the doubt and then he does shoot my partner and now I'm responsible for the death of my partner or if he doesn't have a gun am I responsible cuz now I just shot him and he didn't have a gun and you're doing this this thing in your head and there's no way to win and it's happening in seconds I couldn't see his hands I chose not to shoot I'm praying that he doesn't shoot my partner he has no gun he's not showing his hands and then I'm like I'm going to shoot you please show your hands show your hands and then my partner goes from behind and then the guy's like fine fine he's like put your gun away he's screaming he puts his hands out my partner pulls him up from the back and we get him then we come around I'm pissed I'm so pissed we sit him down we cuff him I pull his hoodie out 16-year-old kid I searched his pockets you know what he did he sold one stole one of those big gold crosses that is all he did cuz I pulled out his ID I checked his ID I was like do you know I almost shot you for this do you know we chased you down for this you almost died for this stupid cross so we call the cops they come that stayed with me because I almost killed an innocent person for what for nothing that was probably very powerful I was afraid I've been scenarios where the the death was on my receiving in and I was okay with that but I wasn't okay with this because I thought there was a split second where I was deciding do I shoot him because he's not following my instructions I cannot see his hand my partner's out there he could kill my partner I don't know if he has a gun I had all these escalating reasons to think that and I chose not to shoot what is your mental health like generally and throughout your career because people talk about mental health they talk about anxiety you know depression low moods and stuff Have you ever experienced what people describe as mental health disorders I I don't this is terrible I don't think so I think I'm trying to think I mean like any human being I go through moments but I don't let myself live there I guess I always feel like I'm the governor I will say this it is okay to be depressed it is okay to have anxiety it is okay to feel bad I think maybe that's the issue because we're in a space where oh you're depressed you there's something wrong with you you have anxiety whoa I had anxiety every day when I went to training I always had anxiety when I put my vest on and I was protecting the present I would carry my MP5 which is like this a weapon that basically like could it's go into automatic you could cause serious damage like that anxiety I'm like man is today the day those are okay things to have so I feel like maybe we should change the narrative and normalize feeling bad instead of making people feel like you're sad take this pill you have have anxiety something's wrong with that why is that bad why do I have to be like every ridiculous commercial a cuz in the US we we we advertise prescription medication where I'm smiling all the time and Happy my barometer for life is not to be happy the the moments that I've done the most amazing things in my life I've not been happy I've been fulfilled I've been like man I just did that when I woke up when I would wake up at 3:00 a.m. to go to the White House to stamp post for 10 hours outside the Oval Office in the freezing cold in the winter I wasn't happy I was freezing I was cold but you know what I was like man how did I get here was there ever a day when you thought the president's life was at risk and you were around him was there ever a moment where you thought you're every day but but was there a particular day where you thought no oh we're screwed or that he was going to be attacked was there ever a moment where you genuinely thought there was a genuine threat on his life just wondering yes and no yes in that like when you would do outdoor events like certain events where he was very vulnerable like he's speaking to a crowd of 10,000 people there's so many things that could go wrong right so those events like there was definitely that Threat Level was heightened um but we had just put to get man the agency was just such a competent agency and there were so many layers of security put in things that you don't you don't see but it's the snipers it's the counter assault team it's the air restrictions no planes flying above ground because we put those into place it's even rad radiation detection nuclear there's so many things we do that you the average person has no idea about all the the protocols we put in place so I can't say the president per se because I feel like he got all the bells and whistles but maybe there were times where it was hard to protect certain people and that that's where I felt it was harder when I protected bar Bush Bush's daughter when I had her that was hard because I did not have the resources that you would have for President and she wanted to be a young girl and go out and date and go to clubs and go to Coachella and do these things I had to take her to Coachella and I'm thinking I got to keep her alive and this you know it's Coachella and how many people are coal it's like T thousand hundreds I don't even know at this point so those scenarios were usually the most uneasy for me because I had limited resources and it was a very different environment and they want to live their life is there anything that you can't talk about because sure if you ask me something I can't answer I'll tell you but is I'm I'm interested to know what you're unable to talk about you can talk about the cars okay what the way that the cars work in the security systems yeah the weight technical mechanical things with the cars because you have to think of it this way anything I share here you're going to have people that follow you that listen but you're also going to have Bad actors who listen to these interviews to gather information CU they want to carry out an attack I always think like that so there are certain things you can't share I can't share certain things about Air Force One I can't share certain things about like how we positioned ourselves like even though you'll see agents around the president there's a schematic that we follow that the average person won't understand how we move our vehicles how they're positioned and why uh how we how we would fight an attacker like there's scenarios we play and movements that exist it's like a dance do you have to sign a form when you leave or before you start to say that I'll never speak about certain things do you know initially no there was no such thing cuz there was such a level of trust you didn't need it you didn't need it and then one agent and I love him he came out and he started talking about things he shouldn't have talked about um and as soon as he did that the ndas came which is a little sad because up until that point it was really just everything we did was based on the honor System did you ever have any form of imposter syndrome you know we talked earlier that when you joined the Secret Service there was what 98% men or something crazy it was and so as a woman in that environment I know that you underwent a lot of prejudice a lot of discrimination a lot of comments did that ever leave you feeling like you were somewhere you weren't supposed to be or what you know as they describe it as imposter syndrome so I hate that word mhm and I don't live it let it live in my head and it's like who invented that word I think there's like these two researches and I want to say I could be completely wrong so everybody be kind to me if I'm making a mistake but I had looked into it and I can't remember and I think it was two researchers who invented it specifically for women so I don't have imposter syndrome I earned to where I got I killed myself to get there so I always felt like oh wow how did I get here but I'm like I got here so I never let that live in my head and take up real estate so one is my NE my naiveness and my ignorance allowed me to get to where I was because I didn't have this narrative I shouldn't be there by whose standard that's one the other thing is I'm not going to dismiss and say that I did not endure difficult things of course I did I was a woman yes these things happened I remember once I was at a brief I was a brand new we're at this one briefing it's me and all these guys and then um there's a boss giving a briefing to everybody he locked eye contact with everybody except me he wouldn't look at me the whole briefing after every brief and then I ended having ended up having it for a boss for a lot of things it's like I wasn't there he looked at everybody else I knew intuitively it's like he feels weird looking at me cuz I'm a woman like okay I was like I still deserve to be here in those environments if someone's not if you feel like your manager or your your boss or your or the CEO or even like a colleague isn't showing you respect and I I I've read your story so I know that this happened multiple times in your life whether there' be someone around you that wasn't showing you the respect you deserve um and I have a lot of people that come up to me and they say I'm struggling because my boss is not showing me respect or my colleague this colleague isn't listening to me or all these kinds of things where where does your mind default to when I say that like where do you go to in your mind what's your like action a so with the last one you just said my my colleagues don't listen to me I would come back and I would say give me an example of where they don't listen to you right so I would say to you when you do speak do you look at people when you speak do you project your voice so it's called paralinguistics everyone's so focused on what they say like reading my notes or reading my agenda they don't think about the tone pitch of the voice how are you deling this are you projecting your voice do you do you talk like this when you speak I have a question I just want to share something people going to like glaze over I have a question or or even just the tone how you end hi am heavie hi heavie feels different mhm those are simple things you can do to make sure people hear you the other thing is I say this a lot when I speak to companies cuz communicate is a big thing don't just talk to talk there's this thing out there and especially with women where it's like make sure they hear you make sure your voice is heard at the table I'm fine with that do you have something beneficial to say or value to say because if you don't don't say anything half the meetings I go to I don't speak because I maybe I have nothing to say it's so interesting I am from being in many boardrooms for many many years probably 15 years being in marketing boardrooms not 15 years about 10 years is being in marketing boardrooms with CEOs with my team with lots of different people lots of different teams I've had thousands and thousands of meetings I eventually observe something in myself which is a bit of a Prejudice that I have which is the minute someone speaks based on their contribution score which is like a credit score based on all of the contributions you made in the past in those first couple of seconds if their previous contributions were all valuable everyone in the room would stop and look and lean in but if they if they developed a low contribution score because they' continually talked for the sake of talking i. they just like I'll give you an example um in my New York office back in the day there was this one one guy who we'd be in a brainstorm trying to solve a problem and he would start speaking and you you you'd see by the way he started speaking that had hadn't actually thought through what he was going to say and he'd go what about um if we put a I don't know like a popup and uh like maybe we'll do some Tik toks uh and so honestly what I then observed from that individual is every time they open their mouth people would instantly basically like dismiss the idea because they had such a low contribution score and like we all have a contribution score you have one I have one based on the last 10 years of when we've opened our mouth how valuable it was to the people around us like that individual whenever he spoke EV I would see the person sat next to him who I won't name almost like loky roll their eyes in the first five seconds and shut it down before he'd even got it out and then there was this other guy called in my UK office called Paul never spoke like never really said anything super mature super experienced guy the minute he said anything because every time he opened his mouth it was important and valuable and considered everyone went he could interrupt anyone the instant silence everyone stares over at this guy because when he contributed we all knew that he had something valuable to add and I so I would say to my team I said this to this team that we're here with us in New York like just make sure you project your contributions goore that I think that's such a brilliant way to say it yes you're prob yes it's like it's your score because people keep tabs on you yeah they know Stephen's going to say something he doesn't always speak but if he's going to say something every time he drops something he drops something of value where people think like I have to talk because everyone tells me I have to talk make my voice heard no shut up and if if you're silent then you're not of value that's what people think they think you didn't add anything right well you didn't take anything away either yes I will tell you this too Stephen when I go to meetings there sometimes I go to meetings and if I'm the dumbest person in the room I'm the happiest person MH that's the one time where I'm happy because I'm thinking wow look at all these smart people around me and I get to be part of this I get to listen I love to sit back and listen there's times I just had a meeting with like my scripted agent Sylvie with my manager about some TV project and I knew enough to know to say I they're like hey eie this and this and I said you know what this is space I don't know I'm going to follow your lead fill me in I'm taking a seat back you guys do the talking I'm going to let you in on a little secret what is in the Diary of a CEO Cup this cup that sits in front of me when I interview these people sometimes for 3 hours and sometimes three people a day and the answer is this perfect T I invested in the company on Dragon's Den and since then they've gone from an idea to the fastest growing energy drink in the UK it is a mature energy drink and it is absolutely delicious but that's not why I choose to drink it on this podcast the reason I choose to drink it is because it gives me what I call all day energy I don't get the same crashes that I used to get with other energy drinks if you're in the middle of a conversation or you're in the middle of a talk on stage or in the boardroom the last thing you want to do is have a crash you don't want Jitters and you need focus and that is why they now sponsor this podcast not only is it delicious but it gives me a significant competitive Advantage if you haven't tried it go down to a Tesco go to a waitrose or go online and use the code diary 10 at checkout and you'll get 10% off and when you do try it let me know how you get on you're someone who has a default to taking responsibility you know like the op the opposite I guess of taking responsibility is becoming a victim which we talked a little bit about before we started recording but people don't like taking responsibility it it it almost is like holding a mirror up to yourself it's much easier to go through life blaming the world blaming the government blaming circumstance luck parents the guy that did it to me my ex-boyfriend my ex-husband it's a much easier way it's a much more comfortable way to exist within your mind for most for most people for a lot of people I amum I sat with a guy called M that many years ago and he the first time he came on my podcast and he told me that when he writes a book he gets 500 people at random members of the public to go into a Google doc and kind of read through it and he goes for some reason when people got to the section about personal responsibility about 10% of people just click off because they don't want to read that because nothing's my fault they don't want someone to tell them that they can change their life and I've always found that really bizarre like people people don't want to know that they some people don't want to know that wherever they are now and where they want to be will largely be based in most circumstances not all be based on what they do now and tomorrow and the day after there's something about victimhood which both alleviates um blame from ourselves and makes us feel justified in our misery do you know I but some people want to live there it becomes their identity so I am this I am how I am today because of this thing that happened to me a long time ago I remember working with this woman there was a window during covid when people were writing to me and I was like it's quiet let me do consultations and I did consultation mentors and I had this one woman come to me and I would get people like what you're talking about every now and then usually when most people came to me though they knew what they were getting but I would have people come to me that just wanted me to validate that somebody else did this to you or you're okay to feel this way this one woman came to me she was a therapist and she came to me and she told me about some hardship she had when she was young I think what what she had was she grew up with no money was very traumatic she had to take care of her brother and she there was a term for it I forgot it was a clinical term and because of that trauma today she has all these issues and so she's like I have a hard time talking front of people I have anxiety and she was telling me this stuff I said why don't we leave what happen to you here here let's leave it there I said and let's look at what we're doing because you're telling me eie I want to perform in life but it's like you've just bought yourself this brand new Porsche and you're like this thing won't go past 50 or 60 why because I'm like cuz you have this big ass U-Haul attached to it and it can't so why don't we leave this back there and we'll move forward would you believe Stephen she lost her mind she's like how dare you how dare you dismiss what I've been through how dare you read the room I will never forget her and the thing was it was so part of who she was today it was her it defined her so much she didn't want to leave it behind she just wanted to talk about it more and so sometimes people why doesn't she want to leave it behind do you think because it's her identity it's who she is it's like people who have been through something um an experience I will give you another example September 11th so I was in the World Trade Center on September 11th I survived I was almost killed I lost colleagues and friends but I was also around other people who experienced what I experienced and different different people behave differently and there were some people that would reach out to me remember this one guy he was a medic and he saw what I saw he experienced what I experienced and he just couldn't recover and he would call me up he's like eie I'm struggling I'm struggling and I tell him I'm like I think his name was Jerry I'm like Jerry I'm like leave it it's done we're here it's like where we go and he couldn't and all he did was talk about it and the other thing he did is he went to therapy a lot of it and I was like dude I was like I don't think you should be going therapy about this stop talking about it I was like like you're reliving it every time like therapy is supposed to like it's a hypocritic oath Do no harm like therapy is supposed to help you move forward but if I was like if I went to therapy every week and I talked about 911 I'd be a mess I was like leave it let it be where it is in the past and like what do you do with what we experienced and how do we move forward and how do we help other people and I like that was a scenario where I was like if you keep reliving this trauma like you become it and it was him it was him he left being a medic he Lo his marriage he got a divorce like his whole life just fell apart but do you know he wanted to stay there he didn't want to leave it it was what it was it defined who he was I met another dude I shouldn't say dude but I met another man who I knew he was an iron worker nice guy he does a lot of stuff around 9/11 but I remember once I interviewed him for a news thing he didn't know anything about me this was strictly used as a journalist after I left the Secret Service and it was a 911 piece we were doing I didn't say anything cuz of course it's not about me it's about him I remember putting his mics on and doing stuff and getting ready to do my video thing with him he had like 911 tattoos all over his arms and like he had a 911 room he's like let me show you my room and again I said nothing I remember thinking I'm like I like I can't I would never tattoo the towers on my arms I was like I I can't I'm like what mental mindset are you going to be in and he had a room with all his 911 stuff I was like I don't I have a Valor W it's not it's under my bed I my dad had took it he hung it then when he passed away I took it and I put it I put it away again it's under my bed I think that these things like there are certain types of people Stephen that they want to be tied to this it's their story and when they meet you they're going to tell you about it oh do you know I would have been through I'm recovering from this I'm surviving for this you come across those folks because that's their identity it's become who they are and they don't know how to let it go and it's okay but that's for them it's not for me what is the what is the harm then of not letting go of our trauma and embodying it and allowing it to become our identity like what does it stop us from doing because I'm not a 9911 Survivor I'm heavy that's something I experienced one day in my life and you're going to tell me that one day finds who I am for the rest of my life [ __ ] no if it does what's the harm who's every going to become I'm going to be I'm going to be a mess I'm going to be afraid to go in a high-rise building I'm going to be afraid to get onto a plane 3 weeks after 9/11 I got on a plane I was like oh no no no no this is not kill fear fear while it's still small this is not going to become a monster I got my ass on a plane I was like I I can't na I can't control everything in my life but I can navigate the out come of my life to some degree not all I'm not going to be at the mercy of the world I I can take ownership to some degree Stephen but I have to choose to want it not everybody wants it but it's also I have to you and I or whoever has to have enough intelligence to see that when someone is like that just leave them they don't want you to fix their problems they want to be there let them be there however if it's someone you're looking to hire or date or hang out with now you decide is this someone I want to be around because it is not good for me those are two different things I want to come back to this 911 thing but I it reminded me of a conversation I had with someone recently where they were telling me about all the problems in their life and problems they were having with a particular job that they have and I remember asking them I was like did you you chose that job right and you can leave and they were so offended by the idea that they had a choice like and they they eventually they admitted to me that they could leave and they would be fine because they have enough money and that they interviewed for that job and went for it and they also could leave but they they weren't interested in Choice like I remember saying to like I've never this is a good friend of mine I remember saying to them like why don't you want power in this situation like why don't you want to be empowered you you're like I could observe in them that they wanted to be disempowered they wanted to be powerless they wanted to be a victim of circumstance they they didn't want to have a conversation about choices and the decisions they could make they were not interested and I Jesus Christ like what a way to live what a way to live to not want to you know because objectively bad things happen to people you know traumas they go through things which were nothing of their doing they weren't to blame but it doesn't mean right that we can't do something about it there's a very two different things like but you have to want it some people don't so I think what you'll do is you'll be able to people come to you in the say Stephen I need help or this and that but you'll be able to see who genuinely really wants to move forward who just wants to just tell you about it how do you how would you be able to identify the difference so people who are they call it's called being identity and I use this word before but more in a clinic not in a clinical but more in the the way that I've learned it through through training and my the research I also have a masters forensic Masters in forensic psychology when someone is identity um they use repeated you'll hear them say i i i i a lot you can even see this in an email um people who identity tend to be highly depressed have a lot of anxiety they're very self-focused when they're very emotional based so you can spot these individuals now look we all visit identity land from time to time like I may go through something difficult and have a moment in this identity space but then I'm like okay I have to recover but some people stay in this space it's like their predominant disposition so repeated use of I this I that I feel I want I went through that's one red flag the other thing is they very emotional uh you'll see they're linked there's links to depression they're typically depressed but they stay in the space the other thing is people like this who complain a lot do you know that when you relive a trauma or you complain or you have drama like you get those you get those cortisol hits you get also adrenal hit adrenaline hits you you get F3 it's your fight flight freezer response we we Peak and some people get addicted to that Peak I'm addicted to the trauma I'm addicted to feeling that it's like the last week I was racing a car I was at Porsche and I was racing cars for fun and uh when you're in the car you're in the present right I'm like sh look trying not to hit the cones doing whatever I'm there I'm in the moment but like my adrenaline's going up I'm peeking I've got my f3s on fire and I'm but I'm focused it feels I feel alive so for some people when they get into this state when they relive this stuff and they have these spikes or you see them very high conflict driven or high drama driven they get these spikes and it's when they feel in the moment they feel alive and that you become addicted to it it also becomes a habit I was thinking then about the this idea of identity and what what identity also sometimes seems to give people is it gives them a community and it makes gives them a sense of belonging and it gives them purpose which we're all searching for like if I'm a insert trauma then I instantly have a community of people that you know will make me feel like I belong and then that is something I don't want to give up if I give up my trauma I end up giving up my sense of purpose um my my community who I belong to the way the world understands me and uh and that's I guess another reason why it can be so sticky like our traumas can be so sticky because we we we build our whole like our social circle around them we go to events about it we we're in group little social media groups about it but I think today trauma has become like a badge of honor now in fact you hear people talking and it's like a competition about who has more trauma that's is it not that who has I have more trauma than you no I've had it harder than you like it's a comp a competition of who's had it the hardest and it's it's become like this this thing now to that we put on a pedestal I think it's just the new way to draw attention to our eles and to make ourselves relevant it's like ego and Status it is ego it is status and it's it's interesting the sense of belonging in group out group that's a whole other psychological thing if I'm in a group and I feel like it belong somewhere it's like how G I'm taking it back to Crime gangs or why people join terrorist organizations they join it because they want to be part of something it's not cuz they're bad people I want to feel like I'm part of a group and so this makes me feel relevant which is fine but to to agree you also have to have your your sovereignty as a person we want to be part of something cuz we don't want to be out there and alone out there but you don't have to be alone out there but we hitch ourselves to these narratives and now my identity is I'm a Survivor of this I am someone who's experienced this it's like no those are things that happen to me but they are not who I am I'm an evolving thing I called my book becoming bulletproof cuz I am always becoming I'm becoming more I'm evolving we don't stop I I don't want to stop I'm never going to get to a point where I know everything every day I learn something what was the most interesting day of your career when I say interesting the day that you think about and go Jesus that was like awesome or that was from a movie so I have I can give you a story which I don't think I've shared so a because I didn't look like an agent I would get pulled in for a lot of undercover stuff which I loved it was fun scary but because I never got pegged for an agent like I always felt super safe so I did this one thing where it was another undercover case where they came to me and we were working with NYPD it wasn't my case but they wanted me there was this organized crime ring I think they were Albanian and they were selling passports original passports and bth certificates to terrorists this is and so they're selling selling it to them to help them come into the US and to other other people who are Bad actors so we they the agencies get wind of this they want to get this these these guys this guy specifically with this organized crime ring they're trying to figure out how to get in because they were so good at what they did like you couldn't get them so they wanted me to go in undercover and pretend to be someone who needed paperwork so they're trying to figure out how do we do it so the the idea we came up with was I would be someone who had been sex trafficked from an Eastern block country cuz I I I can pass for it so um I started talking on the phone I was introduced him through another undercover and talking to him on the phone and I had to develop an Eastern black accent I need my papers they brought me here from you know my country uh because when they sex traffic people in the first thing they do when they lure you in is they'll take your paperwork from you and they and you can't even get a cell phone here in the US without paperwork so they take your stuff and then they put you either to do sex traffic you know sex work or work in strip clubs or a both um until you pay off your debt for them bringing to America so I pretended to be one of those so I you know under that premise I have no paperwork so I can't get an apartment I can't get anything I'm at the mercy of these traffickers which until I pay my my dues which you never do by the way they keep you locked in and then they make them afraid and they tell them if if you say anything they're going to deport you back which actually is not true however so I take on this role I start talking to this guy I need papers I please they take my papers um H much for new papers how did you line this accent did you just go I studied acting and then plus my parents are immigrants I grew up in New York and queens so I just picked them up but I practice it and uh I had to be good because if you're not good you get a bullet to the head when you meet this guy so you have to live in reality uh because my life is also on the line and so I have these phone calls with him he agrees okay I'll meet with you so my first meeting is passport photos I had to go get passport photos I go meet him and I remember when I met him at his I think he did construction was the outside uh thing he did we meet him I'm me I'm in like dress clothes I'm dressing like very as a very young woman but I also had to put on sneakers cuz I'm like hey if this guy has to do something I need to be able to run so I meet him I bring my my passport photos I go to this location that's a front hi I'm here to see I don't remember the guy's name they're like oh no he's not here you'll have to wait for him so they play with me for a little while you know everyone's watching me from the outside but I have no wire on and we debated whether I should have a wire or not or a gun and I chose to take nothing so I'm I'm I've got nothing with me which makes me more vulnerable but my concern was if they put me through a metal detector or they checked me that would be worse cuz now I'm in their home and like they'll just off me right off the bat so I'm sitting there and I'm waiting he finally comes then he tries to lure me into his car and uh I had been briefed whatever you do you don't get into a car with this guy uh so I don't get in the car and I'm like no no no no I don't get into car he's like no we need to talk private now I have eyes on me and I want to make sure the agents and everybody can see me so there's this back and forth where I'm like I please I fre I don't want to go into the car his has passport phos I give him I think it was 5gs I gave him an envelope of 5 grand here's the five grand he's like okay come back in like 2 weeks and he's like maybe you'll get in my car so I come back like 2 weeks later same story I meet him I get my passports he gave me a Polish passport I won't forget it was a a real authentic polish passport and and a certificate birth certificate and all that then I'm like the deal was though I needed more transactions with this guy cuz the more you get the longer you can put them away but he was so good we couldn't get anything that we knew he had done so I'm like hey I have more friends can I send you more girl girls I'll bring you more girls so oh yeah so then I start bringing him more girls who are these girls other Undercovers other undercover female agents uh and cops we had NYPD play and so we go in and we're doing this buying and selling transactions transactions till we got enough to get the US attorney to say yes we got him and then they went in and they um they took them down that was pretty interesting were you scared at any point I was not because I always felt safe in that nobody Stephen ever thought I was a cop nobody ever thought I was an agent I didn't look like one I didn't speak like one so I would I felt very safe on that point because you don't look like an agent I understand how that's useful for the for the going under cover but it it's it's got to lead people to underestimate you in your professional career mhm yes and a lot of people I've spoken to I was speaking at a uh a women's leadership conference about a week ago in London and lots of the questions from the audience were about that subject about being underestimated and how to deal with that it was a Dei conference so diversity Equity inclusion conference lots of people that are black lots of people that are women lots of people that are from different sort of minority groups and the com the question came up about like being underestimated because of your skin color because of your gender because of something else how do you deal with that and um it's something that I thought a lot about when I started in business at 18 years old as a university Dropout I'm going into rooms and I'm dealing with men that are all in suits and they're triple my age I'm 18 I know they're looking at me with my Afro my fake tie like my little cheap tie thinking who the [ __ ] is this guy like but have you have you seen your that underestimation of you as a disadvantage or an advantage it's how you choose to view it I remember once I was in Africa where was I batwan where I was born you were born in batswana yeah cabaron yeah I spent a whole month I've been to Africa a lot I loved batswana I remember I had to close the windows cuz at the hotel cuz they said the monkeys come in I was like monkeys I thought it was cool though I was like no I'll leave them open they're like no no you don't want the monkeys coming in your room so I spent a lot of time with batswana and I was there with um I I did a trip where I went from batswana to Tanzania and I was with Barbara excuse me Laura Bush the daughter President Bush's daughter she was doing some um some work there nonprofit work and when I was her it's called an assistant detail leader so I was kind of like her main person and then I had a team under me so I have my team and I'm I'm I'm holding a briefing I'm in charge and we're in the hotel room we're here there to meet before our our our trip starts so they sent me Agents from different parts of the world they come in and the first agent that walked in I was by myself in the room first agent walked in he's like hey oh hey hi how are you I'm like oh good how are you he said are you with the staff or you an intern because if the staff's office is down the hall if you want to go to the staff's office I'll show you where it is you know so I don't I don't show it so I keep my face and I said no I'm actually agent pomus I'm I'm the one who's holding the briefing hi good to meet you meaning I'm I'm your supervisor for this trip and he's like oh okay hi nice to meet you now I could sit there and be pissed about this or I can just leave it sometimes like Stephen like who cares like who cares I can't care so much there's some things you need to care about and some things you don't and as you were talking about you know who we are when I went to um poly School what's poly school I'm sorry polygraph school it's where I went to the Department of Defense to be trained to be an interrogator it was a really selective School and it was like the who's who of agencies were there and um we were all in the classroom and I remember I was walking with a colleague of mine we'll call him k um Kay and I are walking and we're walking back to our hotel it's just he and I and he was quiet I'm like K what's wrong and he's like he's like you know what he's like I don't know he's like it's just like the group of people and he was an agent he was a secret service agent I was like he's like did you notice like did you take toll of the room I'm like what about the room he said you know I'm the only black guy in the room and I was just like huh and I paused and we had been there like maybe a couple of weeks already and I'm like I stopped I said I had to do the mental like assessment I was like yeah K you're right you are and he looked at he's like you're the only female agent in the room too and I was like am I and I stopped and did a mental assessment I was like yeah you're right and it made me sad in that moment cuz cuz I'm thinking like look what K's thinking about and I hadn't even thought about it and what what ended up happening is like I I would invite him out I'm like hey come out we're going with the guys he's like but they don't invite me I'm like dude you don't need a special invite they don't invite me either we just go and because he built this narrative in his head cuz he thought he thought cuz he was different or I was different we weren't wanted like makes you show up different doesn't it you show up different and I and he was such a great guy such a competent guy and I would and I would actually sit there I'm like K I'm like nobody's thinking like that and there was a group of guys that were with us that came that were Secret Service guys and I was like I am telling you these guys are not thinking about you're black I'm a woman like I don't think they give a [ __ ] and he's like I don't know he's like I don't want to just show up I'm like I do I ask him every day what are we having for dinner I don't want to eat alone and I would have to go knock on his door and I remember it came to a point he's like I want them to invite me and I had to go to the guys I'm like can you guys do me solid can you invite K cuz he thinks I'm inviting him and I guess it's not enough to have the woman invite you I was like can you invite him cuz he feels like you guys don't want him and they looked at me like what I was like just go knock on his door tell him we're having dinner tonight but he had set himself up mentally in such a space and he lived there and I was like man I can't live here it's interesting because it begs the question sometimes what's doing more harm the Discrimination or the belief that you're being discriminated ated against sometimes it's you know I'm black you're a woman um I I often wanted this in my early CR you know I had a really adverse reaction one day when I saw this grant that they did I was 18 19 years old had no money and I saw that they were doing this grant for young black entrepreneurs and there was something about it which like just irked me I don't know why I've never really understood why but I wanted to be considered on my merits not my skin color so when I saw that they were giving out these grants to young black kids you would think I'd go amazing give me the but in my head I was like I hate that I hate that because it's a reminder that it's like it's like them thinking and I think this is a super complex thing right for me it was like they think I'm not good enough so they have to give me a foot up I know it's deeper and it's more systemic but I've always tried to stay away from that especially when I learned about labeling Theory which you see play out in kids in school when they get like an F on an exam the implicit sort of message to themselves is that like I am an f and when you when you overlay that with this the thing I was reading about called stereotype threat where they like remind a woman before a math exam they ask her to put her like gender on the math exam and then she performs worse or they remind a black person about their Race by asking them to tick a box with their race and then those people perform worse on the exam because we're reminded of our identity and we all of the identity stuff that you talked about we then perform worse I've always tried to make sure that I don't ever believe that my race is a is a reason not to show up and give everything I am in every situation and I I can see how for some people anything that someone might discriminate you for can also cause harm if you start to believe it you start to embody it you start to look for it yes and you let it become real in your mind this is not to say that objectively discrimination and Prejudice isn't real I'm I've always been well aware that it's real but as you said earlier I'm also of the mind that it's not my problem in that moment to try and change someone yes I and I get what you're saying label labeling the theory we use it in criminal justice too when you label somebody a criminal or an offender and you you put that label on them they are more likely to reoffend again cuz you're just reminding me that I'm just a bad person so if that's what I am that's what I'm going to think like and I will tell you every time somebody asks me like what was it like being a female special agent I always get like a teeny tiny Pang and I want to be like how many how many dudes do you sit in this chair and ask them I was it like being in an being an agent why do I get that I was an agent I earned it I earned it like everybody I I and I also had to perform like everybody and it's and it yes it implies like and you hear it sometimes or sometimes like maybe you'll read like I'll see an interview of mine and you'll see token higher female you know how however they word it like oh she you could tell she was a female higher and you just want to be like I'm not going to give the finger because we're being PG here even though we've cursed a few times but I just want to flip the bird it's like dude like you don't know what I went through to be that don't give me a hand handout I want an opportunity fine but I'm going to own it and even in training they had you know and I have talked about this before in training like I found out they had male standards and female standards for performance oh yeah military too there's different schools on this so I according to this I don't have to run as fast as a guy according to to these standards according to these standards I don't have to do as many pull-ups or push-ups I didn't know this when I got hired I find out later because some agent in training made sure that I knew hey just so you know uh you got special treatment to get here and I'm thinking what are you talking about they're like well the standards that we have to meet and that you have to meet are not the same clearly I'm not happy about this I find out I get the mail standards and I'm like I felt horrible I remember when they told me this I went to my room that night and I felt horrible about it and I'm thinking there's a part of me that's like [ __ ] these guys how dare you talk to me like that I have just as much a right to be here as you and then there's other part of me that's like well they're right so I was like well I was like I'm going to have to perform like they do and so I just started Stephen like working out like a maniac and I was like I don't want to hear anything from anybody and I worked out and I worked out and I worked out morning and night so I was like I'm going to be at their level I'm going to score what they score but I will also tell you cuz there were a couple of girls in my class like maybe another one or two I can't remember they didn't care they were fine with the female standards so I've seen both I've seen both I'm not judging them I chose my own path but I've also seen it where I've seen and I can I'm just speaking from the female standard standard where a woman was okay who is an agent not being able to do a pull-up and I'm thinking like that's no good either it's complex isn't it because it's when we have these conversations it always sounds like we're saying that prejudice and discrimination aren't very real things but what we're saying is we're like not going to make them our problem is not my identity yeah it's your problem if that's part of you that's you know and I'm not going to commit my very limited energy to fixing everybody I meet it's like Jesus Christ I've got enough stuff to be thinking about then fixing everybody and correcting everybody which some people fall into the Trap of that they go around their Liv trying to fix the world and you can't get much done how Tire how tiring is that how exhausting is that and how mentally draining and how even just emotionally like what does that do to your soul that you're trying to fix who are you fighting I guess that's who who are you fighting I'm not going to maybe if you're Sovereign and here and you know you show I feel like you show people I'm not I know those things exist I know my parents were immigrants my dad like he would always pick for Middle Eastern and he had a even though he was Greek and he had a really heavy accent I saw how people treated him even as a man but like seeing him like Middle Eastern dark tone tone heavy accent like my brother and I we'd go through like security at the airport he's like we always knew he was going to get pulled he's like who's going you or me and it would hurt my heart to see how he was treated but you can't sit and fight everybody like I I'm not the space you take up in the world is just and your time here man it's just so finite fight who you need to fight if you have to fight but like you have a choice and I'm just too busy like you I have things to do and I can't sit and waste my time on every buffoon that comes my way that's sinking and seeing me through a certain Les lens not my problem sometimes it is my problem and if it's my performance so like with the scenario I gave you before I get that I get what they were saying fair enough I'm not qualifying at the standards you are I'm going to do it but I don't want to hear [ __ ] from anybody once I do it but even then Stephen I still heard [ __ ] and that's when know you're the problem I'm not the problem at some point you have to be able to like write it off it's interesting because the you talked you did a little gesture then which was kind of it looked like you were making a little bubble around yourself and that bubble is in the way that I perceived it was like I'm going to just protect this space here because you thinking about the Border agent that like pulls you into the back room for four hours which happens to me quite a lot for a variety of different reasons I was actually an article about it like a couple of weeks couple of months back that I'd been pulled into this like back room that he threw airport over and over and over and over again in the moments when I fight that situation I do so much harm to my own energy I'm like letting resentment in and it's so tempting because it objectively probably is Prejudice or some kind of like Injustice but I have to be conscious as you always talk about like of that energy exchange it's it's almost impossible to like do a one-way transfer of energy it's always like a two-way transfer I think you can like I feel like it's your mental armor like bubble MH like you can Bubble Up yourself you can look at somebody and be like all right I know what I got I don't have time cuz I'm busy what do you need to ask me are we done okay because I do agree with you sometimes if you fight it their perception is going to be and I'm telling you because I'm former law enforcement they're thinking oh why is he escalating oh why is he this why does he have a problem but from your standpoint sure are they picking you for a specific reason chances are if it keeps happening to you over and over again oh yeah there's something there and there is something Sy there we're not I'm not dismissing that those things don't exist but it's also like how much energy are you going to put in and I guess is the energy you're putting in worth the outcome that's all becoming bulletproof life lessons from a secret service agent the quote on the front from Roger ton at the Daily Mail is part Memoir part hugely entertaining self-help manual for these tough times protect yourself read people influence situations and live fiercely become Bulletproof the paperback edition of this book is now available everywhere and I think uh anybody that's listened to this conversation should have enough evidence as to why they need to read this book because it's a really really accessible important book that's full of incredible actionable invite advice that we can translate to the boardroom to our relationships to our lives more broadly to enable us to become who we want to become we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for and the question that has been left for you inside the Diary of a CEO is What about your body Health have you struggled with the most and what did you do to fix it or improve it after I gave birth because it was such a my body went through so much trauma I had to leave it alone and let it heal oh you know what else I did when I was pregnant because I worked out my whole life the entire time I was pregnant I didn't work out so I guess listen to your body and give it what it needs it'll tell you Evie thank you so much you're a huge inspiration for so many people for so many reasons that I think i' I'd be here all day if I went through the entire list you're an inspiration because of your vulnerability because of the way that you articulate wisdom in such accessible relatable ways to people and really you know you said you don't really like the word but unfortunately you are a role model to many people for many many reasons because your life and your career are evidence to all of us that we can climb to the top of the mountain regardless of all of the hurdles and obstacles that are in our way and much of that comes down to the way that we perceive those obstacles and hurdles and and also from speaking to I realize that many of those obstacles and hurdles that are in our way as we journey up that mountain have been placed there ourselves by ourselves and I think that is an incredibly liberating thing your book is a must read for all people for both men and women that are trying to climb their own personal or professional mountain and become more as you said at the start of this conversation so thank you so much for your wisdom thank you for all the work you're doing and thank you on behalf of all the people you've helped thank you Stephen how many of you started thinking about your long-term Health when you hit 30 for me this was a wakeup moment of me thinking to myself okay I probably need to start paying a little bit more attention now I already felt a change in myself when I hit 30 with things like my metabolism my energy levels so this year is no different zoee which is a company I've invested in but also a company that are a sponsor of this podcast helps me to make smarter food choices all based on their world leading science and my own test results if I'm ordering food I know how to make my takeaway so much smarter by adding things like a side of vegetables to eat first or choosing the option with the most fiber Zoe helps me to make that choice it guides me and coaches me it's my personalized nutrition coach that I have on me 24/7 and to help you start your Zoe journey and start making smarter food choices I'm giving you guys 10% off when you join Zoe now all you've got to do is use code ce10 at the checkout when you sign up enjoy and let me know how you get on [Music] a [Music]