← Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
Decoding Human Behavior with Secret Service Interrogator Brad Beeler #197
01:11:35
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome, everybody, to Unemployable. I am Jeff Duden. If you spent 25 years as a special Secret Service agent, conducted more criminal polygraph examinations than any other special agent in Secret Service history, honed your communication skills to understand that when people feel like they can tell you anything, they will tell you everything. And have shared his wisdom in his new book, Tell Me Everything, your name can only be Special Agent Brad Beer. Welcome, sir.
- [00:31]
B
Thank you so much, Jeff.
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A
Yeah. Congratulations on an incredible, incredible career. It's so great to have you on. Looking very much forward to our time together.
- [00:44]
B
Thank you.
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A
Yeah. All right, here is the opener, and we might as well get it out of the way because you know what's coming. Can you beat a polygraph?
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B
That's an interesting question, Jeff. And I get that asked every podcast. It's amazing.
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A
Let's just get it out of the way. Let's just get done with the best way, all right? Give the people what they want.
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B
So I tell you what, let's knock this out in two ways, right? Because when I travel with the Secret Service, I would always travel armed, and you'd have to check in with the pilot and they'd, hey, where you going? What you doing? I'm going to this city to do a polygraph. Polygraph, those things don't work and you can beat them, right? So I answer that a couple different ways. I start with the effectiveness level. Polygraph is a tool. When used at the right time, the right place, the right person, the right polygraph examiner with quality control and all these safeguards put in, it's an amazing tool, but it's just a tool. It's a tool that's 80 some percent effective, high 80s. If we do it in perfect situation, similar to, let's say, a mammogram. My wife just beat cancer after two, three years and the mammogram worked. That 88% was great. And it's the same thing with a tool. The polygraph is a tool as part of an investigation. Now, as far as if any listeners are out there saying, ah, I gotta apply for this job. I gotta take a polygraph. Can I beat it? What you see on TikTok, what you see on the Internet is the same thing that we see. And when I'm a Baker for 25 years, I'm a Secret Service agent for 25 years, or you're a podcaster or a business owner for 25 years, you're going to be good at what you do and you're going to know what's normal. And what's abnormal. So when somebody goes online and studies and tries to produce physiology, we're going to see it, we're going to see it's abnormal. It's going to be counterfeit, just like money. That as a Secret Service agent, we would, we know what genuine money is and we know what counterfeit money is. We know what genuine physiology is. We know what counterfeit physiology is. So if countermeasures worked, we wouldn't use polygraph. It's the same thing as tsa. If their magnetometer or body scanner didn't work, they wouldn't use it. And there's a reason the CIA, nsa, FBI, Secret Service still use polygraph because it works. And you can't beat it. But you can try to mess it up and you're just going to make a long day for yourself.
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A
Okay, so sitting on a thumbtack, adjusting myself on the tongue, that, that doesn't work.
- [03:06]
B
Yeah, I've seen people do it. I've seen people do X, Y and Z to try to throw it off. And once again, it's just going to make for a bloody toe or, you know, biting their tongue is going to make for a hurt lip. We're going to see it and it's going to be outside of your baseline, so it's only going to be detrimental.
- [03:23]
A
But what about a sociopath? I, I got involved with a client and I had found this particular client was trying to rip us off for some $50,000. And I, I, I, it was just morally the right thing to do. And when I did the research, I found out that he had been state to state defrauding people through lawsuits, through contractors. And it was just something that this person had done. And I was able to pull all the court documents and we brought him in for deposition. He had an attorney, nice attorney. We had our killer attorney and brought him in for deposition and went through all of his testimony that he had entered into the record. And then we just started laying out case by case where he had just, just lied. And this wasn't a perjury because it was only in a deposition. But I mean, I guess he was under oath. I don't know. You wouldn't know. So his demeanor did not change. He answered the questions as if they, I mean, it was unbelievable. I would have been on the floor in a puddle, I would have been red faced. I couldn't, I couldn't tell a lie like that. But this, this human was able to just absolutely go. It was like he answered the questions as if it was Just a, you know, the most normal question and that he wasn't shocked at all. Is, is somebody like that, Are there people that they, their baselines don't change, their discomfort doesn't change the explosion of emotion when people are questioned and they're, they're thinking about telling a lie?
- [04:53]
B
Yeah, outwardly I would say if you had him at a dinner party, he would be very good liar. And there's some people that outwardly you'd look at and think they're lying and, and they're not. They're just. Physiologically we're all different, we're all unique in that respect. But when it comes to polygraph, I would have to drill down and find out one specific thing that he did say. For instance, you know, in your business dealings, let's say he signed a mortgage application or a loan application or he signed up to be a tenant. I would ask on the polygraph, did you sign that paperwork or whatever specific thing it was, because he may not have guilt or she may not have guilt for what they did, but they know a specific thing that they did do. Okay. So I would focus on that. And so if I said, did you sign that paperwork? And they say no, their body is still going to be internally reacting. They just may manage it better than certain people. You've probably watched these cop shows where certain people get pulled over and they're chill and then other people, they get pulled over for a very minor traffic violation and they lose it. Right. The 16 year old that's afraid mom and dad are gonna yell at them so they get in a high speed chase. Right. So people do react differently to stimulus. But the question is they know that they did do it. So the cognitive load between what they know and, and what they're speaking, the intermediate between, between that. I'm going to pick those up in the polygraph components and after we do a practice test, after we get them dialed in, we are going to see variations. That's the beauty of polygraph is actually I'm going to be able to see a sociopath. Whereas if you were just speaking with them, they're not going to have a lot of outward tells because they're so. They have such a great mask that they're able to put on. That's why we are bad as humans at determining truth and fiction. I think the largest study that's ever been done was by Paul ekman in which 10,000 people were looked at and 54% accuracy across all the evaluators. So almost a coin flip and law Enforcement wasn't much better. The only group that was better were Secret Service agents. And Paul Ekman tried to determine, like, why is that the case? And it's because we look at people, we observe things, we watch people. And when you watch people that long, you see what's genuine and what's counterfeit. And even though we were much better, we were still only in the 60s. So it is very, very difficult determining truth and deception. That's why adding polygraph into your investigation can be a force multiplier.
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A
Yeah. Polygraph versus interrogation, in terms of means and methods, how do they differ?
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B
So the polygraph in and of itself is going to be three phases. It's going to be a pretest, where I explain the polygraph to you. I do a practice test, I obtain your story, whether that be an applicant, where we go over your application forms, or a criminal, where I go over what your alibi was. Then we're going to have the actual end test, where I'm going to be collecting your physiology based upon the predetermined set of questions that we both agree to. And then we're going to have a post test. That post test, if you passed, is obviously going to be different than the post test in which you had problems on the test. If you had problems on the test, the post test is going to be what a lot of people would consider interrogation. Now, my view of an interrogation is completely different than the media, the Hollywood view of an interrogation. If I'm speaking to you regarding your responses on the polygraph that you had problems with, I'm going to be speaking to you exactly like I'm speaking to you right now. It's going to be calm, it's going to be measured, and we're going to be focused on blame, understanding, diminishing impact, some of those things, to hopefully get you to explain why you had those problems on the test. And that. That may be against your self interest, because you know that you. You've. You've been dishonest up to this point, for whatever reason. It might be a small thing. It could be a major thing.
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A
I. I have a good friend who trains interrogators, and I don't know if you know Michael Reddington or not, but he wrote a book called. Oh, you know Michael?
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B
Yeah, I've seen. He's. He's got a podcast as well, I believe, but yeah, yep, yep, I've seen. I've seen his work, and I think. I don't know which outfit he used to work with. One of the companies up One of the larger interview interrogation companies.
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A
It was Wick Lander Zaleski out of Chicago.
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B
Very well respected. Yes.
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A
Yeah. And I met him, I think, when he was with them, and he was doing a training, and I was fascinated by it. And, you know, one of the takeaway. Of course, of course, you know, when I. When I try to pare it back to him, what I learned, he's like, well, that's an exactly. Right, Jeff. You know, it's like. Because every, you know, everything's about comfort or discomfort, but, you know, his method is going. His method is. It's peeling back the onion. And at the end of the day, I think the inflection point is if I believe that anybody faced with the same set of circumstances would reasonably behave the same way. I'd worked for this company for 20 years. I was having some problems on my mortgage. I took these things because I needed it. The company probably would have gave it to me if I asked. Then I just never really returned them. All right, well, that's theft. But in their view, anybody faced with those circumstances might reasonably react the same way, and then they're comfortable to confess.
- [10:26]
B
Yes. The analogy I like to give, Jeff, is a historical one. And a lot of times I'll say, imagine you were a colleague of Harry S. Truman after he dropped two atomic bombs. And how would you get him to open up about the fact that he had killed over a million people and that his actions, the firebombings that led up to that, so on and so forth. How would you get him to open up? And one of the ways we talk about is, and I talk about, in my book, the acronym buddy and I talk about the first is you blame with the B, who would we blame? We blame the Japanese because they bombed Pearl Harbor. Then what we would do is we'd understand, saying, harry, I understand you felt like you needed to do this because you saw what happened at Peleliu and, you know, Saipan and Iwo Jima. And then I would move on to the D would be diminishing impact. And I'd say, Harry, if you would have not done this, imagine how many more lives on both sides would have been lost. You actually saved lives. And. And then move on to the second D, where I'd start telling stories that have analogies and metaphors. And then I'd focus on the why, which is the why and not the what. And I'd say the why is because, you know, and I'd string all that together because so many times if you focus on the why as to somebody did it. And you focus on tactical curiosity and empathy. You don't come across as you're interrogating people. You come across as you're being a friend in a conversation.
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A
Right.
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B
And you're letting them tell their own kind of autobiography as to their life. They're choosing their own adventure. And we all have our Choose Our own Adventure book. I. I don't know your age. I think we're roughly similar in age. But when I was a kid, when I was. When I was a kid in, I don't know, middle school, you know, he had no.
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A
I'm actually a dyslexic. 57.
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B
I'm sorry, 57. We're close. Is that, you know, I had books in middle school where you could you fight the dragon, you could run from the dragon. And if you fight the dragon, you go to page this. If you run from the dragon, you go to page that.
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A
I remember.
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B
And I think that's a lot about the people that I talk to is their lives have been affected by. Did they have a father in the home? They didn't have a father in the home. Did they get their ged? Did they not get their ged? Did they, you know, have financial resources? Did they not. Did they have an addiction? Did they not? And all those things shape who they are. But they can also be used, for me, I'm speaking them to rationalize, minimize and project their behavior. And it's so important to do that is that if done ethically, if done effectively, if done not on juveniles, if done without making up evidence, I feel very comfortable that I'm not going to get a false confession. It's when people misuse that and use false evidence and talk to kids and interrogate people for 10 hours that you have to be careful of your end product that you get.
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A
Where are the gray areas in interrogation? We've all seen the movies and, you know. But ethical legal interrogation needs to be skillfully done with great intent, some integrity. But I imagine too that there might be false flags or things that you would put out there, tests that you have for a suspect.
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B
Yep.
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A
So what are some of the gray areas where you think it's. You think it's ethical. And then what are some techniques that maybe would make you uncomfortable?
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B
Sure. That's a great question, Jeff. Is that too many times the media thinks it's. I'm hovering over somebody and I'm screaming at them, I'm hollering at them. Most interrogations nowadays are video recorded, which I think is Great sunshine is the ultimate disinfectant. And it allows both sides to be able to argue in their day of court whether this was effective, whether this was legal, so on and so forth. So I think when you. We've gotten thankfully away from the days of, you know, torture that we, you don't see that.
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A
Right. But just because at least, at least, at least in the continental U.S. in.
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B
The continental U.S. is that, you know, we don't know what's happening off camera, but in the situations we're on camera, we feel very comfortable with that. Now. What, what can be an issue? And, you know, and thankfully, the days of, When I came to Chicago, Chicago was still reeling from decades of a lot of false confessions that were brought on truly by torture because of institutional or political pressure saying, let's bring the homicide rate down. And as a result, they found somebody that said, I think he's good for it. Under 15 hours of interrogation with multiple interrogators, and you feel like there's, you're drowning, you'll reach for a life preserver. And we've seen that in some very high profile cases. So in any case, I would love to have hold back information that only the guilty person would know about. So we, we definitely want to do that. We want to be very, very careful about minimization in an interrogation to the point where I'm talking to homicide and I'm, I'm interrogating them like this was a manslaughter or this was a, you know, an accident. And he bites off on that because, oh, well, that sounds great. But then we charge him for a murder. So you got to be very, very careful about promises, guarantees, quid pro quos, obviously, which seems self explanatory, but unfortunately it does happen because of lack of training.
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A
Would that be like, would that be like an entrapment? You mean you, you made this sound to him like it was not a big deal and he was, if he just confessed to this, he was gonna.
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B
Oh, yeah, the way you, you. I think you phrased it better than I did, Jeff, in that. You saw this in the Adam Crow case where you got a 15 year old that's accused of killing his sister and they're like, hey, we just want to get you home, we want to get you to sleep.
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A
Right?
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B
You know, it's not that big of a deal. You know, they reconstructed his dreams. They, they said they had evidence that they didn't have. And if you feel like, man, they've got evidence on me and there's no way out I know I didn't do it, but. Well, shoot, if, if I admit to it, then I won't get a murder charge. Under stress, people will make poor choices. There's been a lot of people over the years that have bought cars that the next day they had buyer's remorse. Right?
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A
Yes.
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B
Right.
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A
Well. And you have a three day. By the way, in that situation. Most states have a three day rescission.
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B
Yes. Which is.
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A
You can. Yeah. If I got pressured into it and I have second thoughts, I get to go back and we don't have that.
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B
We don't have that in the legal system. There's no. I got locked up in my. After my initial appearance, I tell the judge, hey, I didn't mean to say those things. Okay, maybe you didn't. So that's what we always have to be careful about. So there has been a lot of recency recent looking at the waveform, the peace model in Britain, Australia, some European countries. There's also been an increase in the strategic use of evidence, which is great if I have evidence. Meaning if I know that your phone was here, Jeff, and your DNA was here and your fingerprints were here, I can do an interview with you and I can say, hey, Jeff, I'm gonna shoot you straight. I've got your DNA, I've got your cell phone. I know you were here. So let's talk. What? Yeah.
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A
What were you doing here?
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B
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's great. When I have that. Unfortunately, in American society, we don't have cameras everywhere because we believe in privacy. A lot of foreign countries, their legal threshold for being able to get a search warrant on a phone and things like that are much, much lower than they hear in the United States. So a lot of times we do need to be able to rationalize with the person that we're talking to. But what we can't do is say that we have evidence that we don't have. That is a big, big problem. And that's over the line. That just needs to stop overnight here in America because there's no place for it. And that's where a lot of false confessions come. But just as much as we have those issues in the legal system, cross cultural witness identification, there's, there's other things that lead to false convictions as much or even more so than false confessions. The problem I think that you have in the research world is you're trying to take research from academia, which is, hey, Jeff, I'm going to take. You're an instructor, I'm going to take 20 year students and I'm going to pay them $20 if they can, if they confess and $40 if they don't confess or whatever the study is.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And they try to come up with something and say, well, with this method, this leads to higher amounts of false confessions. Trying to extrapolate that to the real world is extremely difficult. And as a result, a lot of practitioners don't buy it. They're like, ah, that's academia, I don't want to hear about it. What I'm doing is what I'm doing. So you got arrogance and you got, you got arrogance on both sides. You got the academia that's like, I'm academia, I'm the smartest person in the room. And then you got law enforcement goes, that'll never happen to me. There's something in the middle. Our practitioners need to evolve. Practitioners need to look at the science, but also the scientists need to understand that just because what they're doing in the laboratory may not perfectly fit and meld into the field. And once we can get practitioners that maybe have the academia, you know, that go back and get their PhDs, then we might have the right balance where the credibility is restored.
- [20:01]
A
What's the role of bias in false convictions? And I'm not, I thought about the question, hey, out of a hundred convictions, what's the chance that one or two are false? I'm not going to, I'm, I can, I won't put you, I won't put you there. Yeah, but, but bias, certainly people are on a jury, they all have a bias about it. There's only going to be a certain amount of facts that are, that are offered there. I mean, I have to imagine that there are some percent, absolutely some percentage, and it might not, it might not be repairable of all false convictions or things. And you would think in this time of DNA evidence, cell phone, like, I mean, if, if, if a reasonable person is thinking about committing a crime, I can't even imagine all of the things that you would have to clean up not to get caught. I mean your cell phone, your car, I mean every car. Now if you can probably go to the car manufacturer and it'll tell you exactly where that car was. Everything is listening to you, everything is tracking you. You don't even, we don't even know probably 99% of the stuff. And if people were able to get access to that information, I mean, you would have to go so low tech to probably get away with something. You'd have to strip everything down and.
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B
You Know you saw that in the Kohlberg case with the University of Idaho students, right. Is that he literally studied how to commit the perfect murder and yet they were still able to catch him. Right, Right. His leaving his phone, the lack of evidence was evidence because by leaving his phone, that's something he never had done before. So that actually became evidentiary as part of it. And then obviously the DNA on the sheath was huge. But as far as to answer your original question regarding cognitive bias, it's, it's amazing because if, if I as a, and I've fallen victim to this many times, if, if I think somebody did something, I'm going to have a certain focus. And one of the cases that haunts me and thankfully it was caught, was, it was a missing person case in Illinois in which we had a 1 percenter biker and then we had a hangaround. So you've got. I didn't know anything about biking bikers, outlaw motorcycle gangs, but an ATF agent where I came in to work on this case kind of told me a 1 percenter is someone that they, you know, 99% of bikers will do the right thing. They're law abiding. But 1 percenters, those are the law breakers. And this 1 percenter, they believed had killed people. And there was a hangaround that was just a wannabe nondescript, I mean 5, 8, 140 pounds, just looked like a normal person. They were both suspects, they were friends, but they were also both dating the missing female. And the belief was, is that the hangaround had potentially seen the 1%er kill, maybe assisted after the fact, whatever the case may be. So I decided I'm going to polygraph the hangaround first. And I asked him if he participated in any way in the disappearance. He failed. For about three hours. I was speaking with him, interrogating him and he kept saying that's not it. And my whole point was, hey, I think you saw something. You know, let's, let's get out in front of this. We can protect you. You know, I, I think you saw something and you were afraid, whatever. And he kept saying that's not it. He wasn't saying, no, he was saying that's not it. But my blinders were on in that there's no way this dude's a killer. Thankfully, two eagle eyed detectives were outside and they were watching this and they said, hey Brad, you mind if we step in for a second? They stepped in and here's what they said. Hey John, I'm using his name. I can't remember his name. But hey, John, you keep saying that's not it. Tell me what it is. Oh, I killed her. Cut her up in six pieces and threw in the river. Straight face, like that.
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A
Yeah, right.
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B
And I, I, my eyes just lit up. I was like, you got to be kidding me. My confirmation bias had kept me from viewing that as a potential opportunity. And it's the same thing if you look at famous cases like Amanda Knox. The Italian police see her being emotional with her current boyfriend, and they think, wow, your roommate's missing, you're being emotional with your boyfriend. That doesn't, you know, sound normal. So therefore we think you're the primary suspect. And then everything is viewed through that prism. And the next thing you know, she's falsely imprisoned for a couple years. So confirmation bias is brutal. We put horns and halos on people all too fast. And we do this in business, as you know, Jeff, is that you'll meet somebody. And what are the best scammers? The best scammers are one that makes good and first impression.
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A
Right?
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B
Right. You put a halo on them. Oh, my God, that's such a nice guy. And the next thing you know, they're scamming you. And with what's out there in social media now, I can glean so much about you. Let's say you were my mark. That if we met, if I created an orchestrated meeting, I would know what certain areas to touch upon, where I would create that metaphorical perfect Spotify channel, where I would have fine tuned information that I could talk about. And you'd be like, wow, because you'd be bathing in dopamine, because you're talking about something that interests you.
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A
Now we're talking to our shelf at that point. And we 100%.
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B
Yeah.
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A
We are our own favorite subject. So when somebody feeds, feeds us back ourselves back to us, we, we eat it up.
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B
Yeah. Dale Carnegie. Right. Be interested to be interesting. And that is, that just is so perfect. You know, that book's been around for 80, 90 years and yet it still holds true. If I can get you talking about yourself and your interests, you associate that good feeling that dopamine hit with me.
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A
Right.
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B
And then later I can prey upon that.
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A
Yeah. So Hallmark Channel marathon, cruel, unusual punishment.
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B
Okay.
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A
Over the line, gray area. Don't use it. You would crack me. You would crack me with that.
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B
Yeah. I don't know.
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A
My wife puts it on and I just, Yeah, I will, I will confess to anything she wants. Just turn it off.
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B
No, it's, it's, yeah. If there Are certain things that, you know, you saw that in the early parts of the global war on terror. I think, unfortunately, we were operating on an old playbook where, you know, positions of discomfort and heavy metal music or whatever the case may be. But that's not. You're going to confess, but you're going to confess to the wrong reasons. You just don't want to watch that anymore. You just want to go back to your sports center or whatever you want to get to.
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A
Well, the. What is it? The Branch Davidian complex? Yes, that incident. Yeah. I mean, what loud music, you know, day and night, night and day.
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B
And all that's doing, all that's doing is making agitating, stressed out. They're agitating people. And you're not going to make good decisions when you're agitated. So, you know, if. If you're the FBI hostage negotiator. I know Gary Nestner was working on that. I don't know how much say they had. And I think that's part of the issue, and I think that's what the FBI has learned, is to try to get more centralized control. Because when you have too many cooks in the kitchen is that you don't have that unified message. And when people are agitated, they're not operating. You know, I don't know how much sleep you got last night, but let's say you only got three hours of sleep last night. Are you going to make good decisions today or poor decisions today?
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A
I'm working on it.
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B
I'm working on it. Right. So, yeah, if I don't want the people that I'm talking to to not have gotten a lot of sleep. I mean, I think it's interesting if you look at the FBI interrogation of Sad Hussein, I think that is a great interrogation. You got Agent Pirro, who spoke the same language, she spoke the same dialect as Saddam Hussein had. I think he was from. He might have been from Lebanon or Palestine originally or his family was. But over the course of months, he got to know him and talk to him at a base level. This is somebody that was not, you know, public. He was public enemy number one to the U.S. right? But the agent was able to get past that and ultimately got Saddam hooked on his cookies that he was bringing over, I think from his grandma. It might have been baklava cookies. And Saddam cried when he got reassigned and they gotten what they needed. It just shows that you can get past that, you know, you can get those connections with people even if you don't like them.
- [28:21]
A
The Secret Service has an expanded Scope that many people may not be aware of. Of course, we think about protection and running alongside the President. I've been to the White House a few times and you know, it's obvious what the roles are there inside of, inside of that. But also financial crimes, homicide, children, children crimes. Can you talk a little bit about the Secret Service and some of the things that the Secret Service does that people might not be aware of?
- [28:54]
B
Yeah, it is, you know, everybody watches the movies and they see the Clint Eastwood or this, that and the other as far as the Secret Service. And then unfortunately, you know, it's a zero fail mission. So when you saw Butler and you see other things in the recent election cycle, you know, obviously with that zero fail mission, it gets, you know, blown up, is that we have to be perfect every single day. However we were started in 1865. It was one of the last things that Abraham Lincoln signed into law before he was assassinated. And ironically, it was because the Counterfeit States of America were conducting a huge counterfeiting operation because they were trying to undermine the US economy. Because if you don't trust the paper you're getting from other people, that breaks down as, you know, business. Right. If you can't trust, you know, that that's, that's a big problem. So what we did is we. They basically stood up a bunch of operatives that could work behind the scenes and shut down these printing operations. And then it wasn't until 1901 when McKinley was assassinated, where the Congress got together and said, hey, this is our third president's been assassinated. We need an organization that can come in and the men and women can serve as agents. And from that point on, we slowly took on additional roles. You saw after, you know, Kennedy, you know, things were changed as far as, you know, being in an open air car. Then you saw with his brother when he was assassinated. Okay, now we need to start taking on candidates. When you saw Reagan, the assassination attempt on Reagan. Oh, shoot. We gotta, you know, have covered arrival areas. So. And then obviously after Butler, there's been huge changes with how we communicate with the locals, how we communicate with our own agents.
- [30:32]
A
Yeah, that was, that was definitely, that was a bad look. I mean, it was, it was a.
- [30:36]
B
Bad, it was, it was a bad day. Right. And that what we are, you know, we have this dual mission, but let's be honest, the work we do combating crimes against children, the work we do with counterfeiting, the work we do with electronic crimes, it's all great. But at the end of the day, protecting the Leader of the free world is what we do.
- [30:53]
A
Yeah, there's one, there's one building. There's one building.
- [30:55]
B
Yes.
- [30:56]
A
Look, I mean, yeah, so not to harp on it, but hey, things happen. And you know, and the other side of it is, it's amazing to me. So I was at the, I was in NASCAR race last year and, and I've spent a good bit of time in Washington and whatever. I'm there with my son and all of a sudden, you know, there's a rumor that Trump was going to be there, and I am. And all of a sudden helicopters come in and some troops start sky rigging, spy rigging. You know, they're spy rigging in which is people hanging on ropes and then out of the bottom of helicopters and then they're on one end of, like in the, towards one turn, and the entire population of that racetrack is looking at these helicopters. Whatever. I'm looking the other way because I know that that's a distraction. Right? That's like, like that's, that's where everybody's going to look. And I do, I do believe. And you know, I've been in room, I've been, I was at, you know, I've been, I mean, I've been, you know, Ben Carson's birthday party. President Trump was there in a small room and, you know, a couple of, couple of beliefs. So, you know, I've read or heard or saw that, like, when you're looking at a crowd and you're looking for something that's out of the ordinary, you need to look for the person that's looking in a different direction than everybody else or moving in a different direction than everybody else. So, you know, or after an event or something like that. So, but, but now here comes President Trump walking down the track, walking down pit row in the middle of everybody, with the race car drivers, with the fans, with the pit crews. I mean, of course, you know, I'm interested, so I'm looking around for security detail. And it was certainly there. Right. But he was absolutely uncovered. I mean, he was, he was in the middle of a crowd. Yeah. So, like, I can't imagine your job in protecting somebody who wants to engage in that way, in that, in that it's unprotected. I mean, we went through a metal detector to get in, but, but it wasn't, you know, I could have got something in.
- [33:06]
B
Yeah. I mean, so the good thing about that is that's what's called an off the record movement. So, you know, there's two types of people there's hunters and there's howlers. The howlers are the people that talk about doing that bad thing. That's 98 of the people that are investigated. They. They have a bad day. They keyboard warrior. The hunters are the people you worry about because you don't hear from them, and those are the people that act. Right. But those tend to also be people that know about your known movements, whatever the case may be. So on an unplanned movement, we have the advantage of. You weren't expecting to see Trump that day. There might have been rumors, innuendo, but a very small group of people knew where he was, when he was going to be there. And it's kind of like when you go to the airport, one of the best places to ever arrest somebody is when they're getting off of an airplane, because they've been on TSA on the other side of the equation. So that's something that we. I always thought whoever was on transportation for presidential protection that day, they got to drive the limo. That would have been one of the greatest experiences in any career to be able to drive the beast around, you know, Daytona or Indianapolis, either one.
- [34:05]
A
Oh, we were in Charlotte. We were in Charlotte. I got you.
- [34:08]
B
Yeah, that. But great, great, great experience, you know, to be able to do something like that. So same thing. When he goes to the UFC fights and stuff, you know, he's. It's definitely creates a very difficult mission for that advanced agent, especially in light of recent events. In the spotlight that you're under is that what. One of the things that we saw and how it relates to communication. Jeff is with Butler was granted a number of things that went wrong and a number of things that went right, when you look at it from the standpoint of the adversary, but the compartmentalization and ste. Stovepiping of information and how it was asynchronous, meaning if. If instead of in the old days of me just calling you and say, how we looking here? What's going on? Oh, we. We have somebody in the crowd. We have this. Oh, shoot, where's he at? Can you stay with him? Now, everything's text driven, and it's in this one stream over here with the locals, and it may get kicked over at the last minute to us, but we feel safe by just sending a text, maybe a couple emojis, whatever. Instead of the old school, just jump on the radio and give me the information. And that wasn't the only problem in that case, but I think that was one of the biggest takeaways, is we need to be. We need to every once in a while, pick up the phone and talk to people and get away from this. Hey, here's my phone. Hold on. Here's what I got. That was a big lesson learned there.
- [35:25]
A
Yeah. I mean, iconic image created, but it could have been a different iconic image altogether.
- [35:30]
B
Yeah, One inch difference.
- [35:32]
A
Yeah. Near miss. So, you know, so talk to me a little bit about some of the work that you did in either financial crime or child. You had a different phrase for it. It's not child pornography anymore. But you called it something different. I heard you refer to it as something different.
- [35:52]
B
Yeah, we definitely call it child sexual abuse material. Now, this has been a recent change because these kids, you know, pornography denotes that there's some type of consent on both sides and there's no consent given. So child sexual abuse material. So in 1994, the Secret Service was basically congressionally mandated provide forensic support for the national center of Missing and Exploited Children. And since that time, We've done almost 9,000 polygraphs on cases in which either someone is downloading child sexual abuse material, or, you know, you've probably seen the To Catch a Predator cases, you know, Chris Hansen, those types of operations. So what we'll do is they'll show up at an operation, or we'll do a search warrant, and then after that, we'll conduct a polygraph to see if they're hands on. And sadly, about 50 to 60% of the people that we polygraph admit to being hands on. So it's not just, hey, I was thinking about doing it. It was not just. I was looking at images. It's these people have baggage of significant emotional harm and physical harm towards kids. So for me, the emotional impact of those cases was, you know, over time. I did it for 17 years, became a little problematic because when you're rationalizing with a pedophile or a hebefile, you're having to go to some dark places. Whereas, honestly, talking to a murderer, it was easier for me because it was very transactional. A lot of times you're dealing with a sociopath or you're dealing with somebody that, hey, they killed my buddy, and that's why I killed them.
- [37:21]
A
Right.
- [37:21]
B
Like, it doesn't make it right, but you can almost understand it.
- [37:24]
A
Yeah.
- [37:25]
B
Whereas you can't understand when somebody says to you, I molested those 30 infants.
- [37:29]
A
No.
- [37:30]
B
Like, your brain just cannot compute it. So to open that door to get him or her, I say him because that's 95 of the offenders I talk to to get him to talk to me, I would have to go to some very, very dark places. And then you come home to your house and that's that. That sometimes can be an issue because the cognitive dissonance between who you are and who you were, you know, in that interrogation room are two different people. And when you live two different lives, that's never a good thing.
- [38:01]
A
I'm come to believe that mental health is maybe our nation's greatest problem right now. If you look just. I mean, and it's segmented. Homeless people, law enforcement, ptsd, military children, social media, teens, self esteem, suicide. It's just, it is. We've never been more connected and we've never been more disconnected. How do you deal with stress? Family, your children, you have two children. What are some coping strategies maybe that you could offer to people that are struggling? Or maybe how can people compartmentalize some aspects of their life? You know, I've gotten this, you know, it's funny, I've really, in the last couple of three years, maybe it's doing the podcast, maybe it's who I'm hanging around with and what I'm doing. But like I've gotten very, very open minded over the last. And learned a lot over the last couple of years. And one of the things I've learned is, you know, two things can be true at the same time. You know, I used to be. Everything was binary for me. Oh, this person did this bad person, this person did this good person, you know, but it's not. Everything is, is shades and you know, and so how can somebody spend eight hours interrogating or polygraphing or interviewing somebody who, you know, did something to children that is so clearly broken and is so damaged and hurt so many people and then go home and take your kid to T ball.
- [39:48]
B
Yeah. So I try to focus on. You hate the sin, but you love the center in that. I look for the good in everybody I talk to. Maybe they were a veteran, maybe they serve their community in some other situation before things turned. Maybe something horrific happened to them that changed their life trajectory. Whatever it is, I always try to look for that something and dwell upon that, to give them that metaphorical hug so that they don't feel like that monster. But after doing that for. Especially when my daughter was three, four years old, I had a string there where I had about three or four in a row where the victim was roughly in the same age range as my daughter. And it was very, very difficult because you're almost, you're not excusing the behavior you're not agreeing with the behavior, but you're. The way you're speaking about it is to lessen the mental strain that that other person feels for having committed those acts. So you'd come home, and, you know, the next thing you know, the person you are at home is completely different. And what I found is that after a couple months of that intense workload, and it's even worse for our investigators that actually have to look at the images, because I only talked about the images. I would never look at the images.
- [41:03]
A
Yeah, I remember that from sound. Sound of freedom, Right? Looking at the images.
- [41:07]
B
Look at the images. And if they. Even if they had their audio on while they were looking at the images, then it just, you know, the. The virtual reality became reality in their minds, and it became a significant problem. So what I did is I sought out help. When I say help, I mean, most of the Internet Crimes Against Children task forces have mandatory, yearly, quarterly, monthly meetings. We've identified. There's an issue there. And it didn't hit me till I started getting in my government car or I was going for a flight, and, man, my heart rate's getting up. What's going on? And I would, you know, a couple. I went, got my heart checked out, and nothing's wrong with my heart. And I'd go again. I was starting to get panicky. I was starting to get almost panic attacks because my body did not want to go to those cases anymore. And we have to sit there and suspend the ego because so many people in law enforcement were big, burly guys. Whatever. We're fine. We'll sort through it. We'll go. So I talked to Dr. Stacy. Check out with Obsidian forensics. She's with the Washington Internet Crimes Against Children Unit. And don't want to. You know, I don't want to give her. I didn't want to throw her name out there, but she was so instrumental in me. And I did mention her in my acknowledgments of the book because she changed how I looked at things. When I came home from a case, I would play a game of risk on my phone in the driveway for 45 minutes. So the last thing that I did before I crossed into the house was why didn't I win that game? Or I won that game. It wasn't about the case.
- [42:32]
A
Right.
- [42:33]
B
And then I would go do the other love of my life, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, the next day, and I had to be present for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or somebody's gonna choke out.
- [42:42]
A
Yeah.
- [42:42]
B
And by being present, I wasn't thinking about that bad thing I just did. And then I would go to the office and write the report at the office. I would never do it at the house. I wouldn't make phone calls about cases at the house. I would completely separate that. And by doing that, I noticed a huge change in my mental health when it came to work in these cases.
- [43:03]
A
Yeah, the ability. The ability to rinse it out, you know, I'm enfranchising. Our owners get under stress. I take it extremely personally if somebody's struggling or. And what it is. And, man, I. I just. I lose sleep. I lose sleep over these people, you know, being okay. What can we do to help them? You know, who's. It doesn't matter whose fault it is. We. We've got to. We got to make sure that we get them on the right track. But, yeah, I mean, it's. And then you go home and I'm just, you know, why are you talking to yourself? Why are you talking to yourself?
- [43:36]
B
Why?
- [43:36]
A
You know, and you just walk around and you're. You're not present, your eyes are glassed over. You don't hear the last thing your wife just said, and it's. Yeah. I mean, so the ability to, like, I really like that. There was a story in a great little contracting book about the trouble tree where the plumber would stop by a tree and he would, you know, do this with the leaves, you know, and kind of touch the leaves, and he'd hang all his troubles on the tree. And then in the next morning, when he left the house, he'd pick him back up again and go back into work. But I think that's an important lesson is. Is, you know, being able to separate. And. And by the way, it's. And gosh, I. I say this in business, but it's not always true in your. In your career. You know, I tell our business owners that it's not fatal, you know, and so for us, it's just dollars and cents, but for you, it's life and death.
- [44:25]
B
Yeah, because you see that with the suicides, you see that with the broken marriages, you see that with kids that aren't getting the attention that they need from their law enforcement parents because they are distant. So I think it's. It's a hidden thing. I think. Luckily, though, there's been a lot of investment in that recently, and most Internet crimes against children task forces have mandatory look ins. But I always like to talk about it. And I appreciate you asking that question, Jeff, because I think in order. If anybody sees this and they know they're going through that, it's okay to ask for help. It's okay to go out there and say, hey, I'm not perfect. And when you talk about it, you leave it, like you say, on that tree right there, the trouble tree. I like that. And you need to also have somebody in your life that is in your workspace that you respect, and also somebody else outside of your workspace that can be that barometer for how you're doing, that can be that guardrails where they'll notice when something's not right. Because sometimes you don't see it.
- [45:26]
A
My greatest measure of a book is, does it give me tools? I've become a tool builder. If you told me, jeff, we need to write a business playbook, I would start by writing all the tools, and then I would just fill in between the tools with words. As I went through. Tell me everything, it was clear to me. A couple of things were clear to me. This was your work. This was unique work. It was original work. It was experience informed, and it is just one tool after another. Who'd you write it for?
- [46:02]
B
I wrote it for people like me. You know, selfishly, I wrote it for a law enforcement perspective. And then over years, I kind of realized, wow, I kind of do that in my parental life. You know, shoot. I think, you know, my teacher could do this. Oh, shoot, maybe Jeff could use this in his business. So I didn't start off trying to, you know, sometimes people water down their message to try to sell it to the masses. I originally wrote this book for law enforcement, and then the more and more I started looking at it, I think, and I sent it to my aunt and my aunt Jean. She's like, this is not a law enforcement book. This would have been two years ago. She's like, I can use this with my kids.
- [46:37]
A
Yeah.
- [46:38]
B
And I was like, wow. Okay. So I wrote it honestly for cops because I saw that there were too many cases that we were losing because we weren't detecting deception. We had confirmation bias. And then once we did determine detection of deception, that it was there. We didn't have the tools to get somebody to admit something against self interest, and we didn't have a way to do that respectfully. So that's what I hopefully brought to the table, was trying to, how do you pick the right time, the right place? How do you get yourself and the other person the right mental mindset? And how do you use all your senses to do that so that you can exchange Information more effectively.
- [47:17]
A
One of my least favorite definitions of leadership is manipulate, manipulation with good intent. But at the end of the day, you know, the tools that you have in the book here are about manipulating people to, to confess, to communicate. And I mean, even while. Well, I think, actually, I think truthfulness with our children is a huge indicator of their future success. I mean, how. Like, I've seen it and I. You only see these things in hindsight. But when I looked at parents that always overprotected and under informed their kids, the cat didn't die. It ran away. You know, I didn't run it over with the car. I mean, you know, being truthful to your kids because once they realize that you, they, you won't tell them to truth, you've lost them. They'll never believe you again. They'll never. There's no reason for them to confide in you. And I just did it because I didn't know any better. Honestly, it was the only way that I knew to be. But as I look at it in hindsight, I didn't handicap my kids by cocooning them in some false narrative and giving them an external locus of control where everything was already somebody else's fault. And if they didn't like the truth, they could just pretend it was something else. And I mean, but those things take real. The raising of our children, the development of our employees, our team members, our relationships with business partners. Your lessons in this book are they're really 360 degrees in your life.
- [48:56]
B
I appreciate that, Jeff. I mean, we as parents were torn, right? Because we have the Easter Bunny, we have Santa Claus, we have the Tooth fairy, right? At what age does that stop? Right? It has to be a healthy age. And then after that point, we need to start realizing that these kids are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. Wait, wait.
- [49:12]
A
What do you mean it has to stop? You mean there's. That's news to me.
- [49:18]
B
Yeah. These kids.
- [49:19]
A
You've ruined it for me.
- [49:20]
B
They, they. They can pick up these hidden emotions. I, I talk in the book. My best friend's deaf, and for 35 years, we've communicated as I've seen his ability to communicate, devolve a little bit is that we went from, you know, cave paintings and hieroglyphics to Shakespeare back to cave paintings and hieroglyphics, you know, as a society with emojis. But.
- [49:43]
A
Right.
- [49:44]
B
Growing up with him, I had to be present in the conversation. He had to watch me, I had to watch him. He had to read my lips I had to know, is he tracking what I'm saying? Then I picked up on sign language to kind of spice up our communications. But early on, like, he was the best communicator and the best at understanding hidden emotion because he always had to be present. And then over the years, that kind of devolved. Like, you know, the way we communicate is we have lyrics, the words, which are important. Word choice is important, but it's the least of importance. Then you've got, you know, the soundtrack, right? With how I say the words, did I use upward inflection? Did I lose lower inflection? Right.
- [50:25]
A
Tonality.
- [50:26]
B
And then it's how I look when I'm saying the words right. To me, that carries the day. Because if my wife, if I say, how you doing on a text and she says, I'm fine, I can't hear I'm fine, or I'm fine, and she doesn't put an emoji behind it, I'm screwed. Right?
- [50:43]
A
Yeah.
- [50:44]
B
So the thing I learned about that was, you know, I had to be present. I had to put all that package, all that up together to be an effective communicator. But. But now that I can text him and now that he can text me back, we've regressed because we don't speak with each other. Like you and I are speaking right now, Jeff. Like, I could look at you and because I've got one of these center mounted cameras, which is so important when it comes to video casting. Because if I'm looking up at the screen, I'm not seeing if you're, you know, picking up on what I'm laying out, laying down.
- [51:15]
A
Right.
- [51:15]
B
And if I'm looking at you, but I've got a top centered one, it doesn't look like I'm looking in the eyes.
- [51:19]
A
Right.
- [51:20]
B
And that's going to hurt competence and confidence. So I'm looking at you right now and I'm seeing, oh, you got those minimal encouragers. You're shaking your head, you're this. Or did I say something that caused you to furrow your brow and look like, oh, shoot, and too many times. We are stuck in our PowerPoints. We're not looking at the audience to see if they're. They're tracking. Our students are tracking, our business owners are tracking, or we have our message, and God damn the torpedoes, I'm going to put forward this word. And I don't care what your reaction is, we're not looping all that together because we're so stuck on these phones and we have the Ability now to have asynchronous communication. And hey, I'm going to text Jeff. It goes to Jeff. He has 20 seconds to look at it. What am I going to respond? And then we've got all this time where in real life you see these kids during job interviews now where you're asking them questions like we're talking right now and they're out of their depth because they've even gotten to the point now where, shoot, let me put this in chat GPT and get the perfect response. It's just chatgpt talking to each other. And when we're having genuine organic communication, their minds are blown.
- [52:28]
A
I think it's the, the dating scene, just how people interact in person. I mean, I, I, I say, I mean I don't, I guess I don't really know. I mean I'm, I, I'm in a cocoon. I'm in my echo chamber. You know, I run around with my team, my staff, my business owners, my friends and things like that. But, but I do occasionally get the opportunity to get outside and meet young people. I did, I coached over 30 seasons of my kids sports and, and I think today it's, and I, and you know, I do travel, I do get out and about. And I mean there are just some social, there's some social awkwardness out there that I just, and it's, you go to a mall. I mean the social awkwardness that's exhibited at a mall with you know, 80% of the people walking with their heads down in their phone. I don't know man. I don't know where it all goes but I know that there is no shortage of building capabilities in communication. I mean it's like you will, you will improve yourself. The people that can communicate, people that can engage, people that can lead. So you know, I really, I really appreciate. Anything else you care to share about the book. I, I love the titles or the titles of the chapters, you know, and I had one that I put a check mark by chapter seven that I didn't get to read. Aromas and Appetites. I'm a bit of a foodie so. But I'm assuming that's not a recipe.
- [54:03]
B
No, it's how you can, can really connect with people through one. Obviously how you smell and the dangers of if you do that poorly. Like my son in his high school years where he thought more cologne and more body spray was better. Okay. But yeah, it's the power of that. Meaning we focus so much on how we look, which is important. I mean in Covid, we've all taken a step back, but from our eyesight, because it travels miles. That's what we first look at as far as what's a threat, and then we'll look at hearing. All right, so those are the first two big things when it comes to first impressions. But what we fail to realize, especially in these longer communications, is what does touch, what does smell, what does taste come into that? And simple handshake. Right? We all mess up handshakes. I put antiperspirant on my hands, spray antiperspirant on my hands, so I get a dry handshake. I will be holding a cup of coffee so it's warm. Not this cold water bottle. It won't be wet, it won't be cold. It'll be warm, it'll be dry. It'll be at the perfect angle. And it's not a shake, it's a hold. That's what science says is the perfect handshake. So something as touch is important, and we lose sight of that. But I love to break bread with the people that I'm interrogating, and many, many times it's very diagnostic. Because if you're eating, Jeff, I know that your heart rate's probably below 110, because when you're anxious, what do people say? Ah, I don't want to eat, man. I mean, people lose weight when they're going through, you know, periods of anxiety. So I will know, hey, they feel comfortable. But also, it may be reciprocity, too. If I buy you a soda, if I buy you a drink, you know, some of the worst offenders that I've ever spoken with, I bought one of them McDonald's, based upon what was on their Facebook. All right, so I. Hey, what can I get you to eat? I was going to get some McDonald's. Oh, McDonald's is my favorite. I'm going to get a Big Mac. This, this, and this. Oh, me too. So instantly, reciprocity, likeness, all these influence principles by just breaking bread with somebody.
- [56:00]
A
Yeah.
- [56:00]
B
Plus, it obviously looks good in court when I'm providing somebody food, not, you know, holding that back from them. So all five senses can be leveraged in meetings, in interpersonal interactions.
- [56:15]
A
Yeah. I was listening to a podcast, and it talked about that study, you're probably aware of it, where they gave people a cup of coffee, either warm cup of coffee or a cold cup of coffee, and then they get those same people to read a small paragraph and then ask if they thought the people were the person in the story was warm, or they thought how they describe the person and the people that had the warm cup of coffee, you know, like over 80% of them described the person as warm and engaging and, you know, in a positive way. And the people that had the cold cup of coffee, you know, overwhelmingly in the negative way. So it's amazing. You know, we believe that we're in control and we're making conscious decisions about everything we do. But the reality of it is, man, we are highly programmed. We are highly influenced. Influenced.
- [57:03]
B
We're animals.
- [57:04]
A
Well, because we're highly programmed and we're highly influenced, that means we're highly programmable and highly influenceable.
- [57:12]
B
Yeah, well, well put. Is that. That we are animals and stimulus can affect us.
- [57:17]
A
Yes.
- [57:18]
B
And something as simple as. And I don't want to see people. I don't want to see people see me warming up my hands before I shake their hand, right?
- [57:24]
A
Yeah.
- [57:24]
B
But if I'm at a table and I know somebody's coming, I will be sitting on my hand and that's going to dry it off if there's a fabric that I'm sitting at and it'll warm it up. So something as simple as that. Now, when I present my hand, it's going to be warm and it's going to be dry, but, you know, to kind of cap off. You'd mentioned what else I like to mention you mentioned tools earlier, Jeff, and that I think that 8020 rule is so important in business, but it can also be extrapolated into so many other things. So, for instance, in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, there's hundreds of techniques. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has been around for 100 years. Came over from Japan as judo turned into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. There's hundreds of techniques, but when you look at the national championship every year, there's five techniques that finish about 80% of the matches. So if I'm trying to reverse engineer that, if I'm a new person coming into Jiu Jitsu, why would I teach some fancy thing to a practitioner? How about I teach these five things, both you doing them and defending against them, and you're going to level up tremendously. It's the same thing in business. Right. I would assume. And what you do is if you could distill your top performers and say, well, what five things does Jenny do better than anybody else? And what commonalities are those five things? Let's train the hell out of those five things, because I know the top five things that polygraph examiners do, or Secret Service agents that do or whatever that makes them effective. So I'm going to try to distill that down and train the hell out of that. Not just in the textbook, but in live fire exercises as close as we can get to possible. So I will have my students interrogate the wall. I will have them get in goofy words because to me, curiosity and being able to think on your feet and being able to improv on your feet is so important, so we're going to rep that. Preparation is so important, so we're going to rep that. Tactical empathy, so important, so we're going to rep it. So whatever business you're in, distill it down. What's the five most important things? And everybody says, make yourself well rounded. Okay, that's great. We don't have enough time for that.
- [59:27]
A
Right?
- [59:28]
B
What are the, what's the 80%?
- [59:31]
A
Yeah. First things first. Second things never. Lack of focus will lead to a lack of greatness.
- [59:38]
B
Yes. Well said.
- [59:40]
A
When did you first get exposed to Jiu Jitsu?
- [59:44]
B
It was about 11 years ago and it was strictly to try to deal with it. Made me feel so much better when I was working these cases involving these kid cases because, you know, especially when you're, you're rolling for on open mat sessions where you go for an hour and a half and it's just, you're drenched at the end of it, you're so tired you probably burn 1200 calories. But more importantly, it, it not only teaches you what I taught, like, you know, master what matters most, but it also lets you see in real time what's working and where are you progressing. Because I wish life was like this and that I can go out and I can try something and I get instant feedback and literally we're. You're operating at 100%, I'm operating 100% and I'm applying this technique. Oh, that didn't work. You know what? Next role. I'm going to try that again. That didn't work. Over time I'm going to realize that doesn't work. Wouldn't that be great in business if we could red team this 50 times in a simulator? And I know AI is going to maybe help that. But to be able to see in real world situations at low risk where I can just tap out to see if something's going to work.
- [60:59]
A
Right.
- [61:00]
B
And so that's what I've tried to apply to when I teach communication is how can I take that and rep it in as real world situation as possible and throw out what doesn't work.
- [61:11]
A
And keep what does Sport translates directly to business and directly to life. Business athletes train. I was teaching a training class. We had a training class. I do the first couple hours of training and I shared with these people. I said, you know, when I was playing college football, I trained 300 days a year, sometimes three times a day. Whether you, you know, film session, then weights, then practice, or, you know, weights, then agility, speed and conditioning. But 300 days a year, like you're training or something. So in that eight second broken play when you're in the back of the end zone and the ball's up in the air to win the game, like you, you have repped it so many times and you have the physical capabilities to go up and compete, to possibly, you know, be successful in that one moment. And, and then I'm like, and I'm like, you get into a business here and you're, you're, you're rolling your entire family on this business and you're giving 10 years of your life to it, and you don't even watch the video. It's like, how much, how hard are you willing to train, okay, to be a business athlete, to be the business owner that you want to be. And I mean, it's like you. And so the jiu jitsu. And, and by the way, I am now, my mind is just stuck on the five moves. Okay? One's got to be an armbar, arm bar, rear, rear choke.
- [62:35]
B
No, yeah, definitely rear choke. Rear naked choke.
- [62:38]
A
Check. I'm running out Kimura. Kimura. Okay.
- [62:45]
B
Surprisingly, bow and arrow choke.
- [62:48]
A
Okay, yeah, yeah.
- [62:51]
B
And then a cross lapel choke as well.
- [62:53]
A
Got it. I've done Brazilian, but just the wax. But anyway, I don't want to know just so well in it and you know, you know, but like training. So I just, you know, when I look to hire somebody, you know, I look for evidence of competitiveness. I look for evidence of, you know, and they don't. You know, I would take somebody that doesn't have the related experience, if I can see evidence that they attack problems, solve them, move on if they're willing to learn and to work hard. Now you got to be really careful with that. If it's a criteria critical role, you need somebody that knows what they're doing. But at the end of the day, the fundamentals of human achievement, I have become pretty clear on, you know, who we need and who's going to win. You know, when it gets tough, like, I mean, I've, you know, you're in business and you're up against it and You've got to make a play. And you've got your house, you get your kids, you got your college education, you got everything is bet on this business. And I look around the room and the question I ask myself is, am I willing to bet all of what I just said on this group of people right here finishing? And you better have the right people, because if they're, if they're weak and they don't care and they're clock punchers, like, they will let you down. Yeah.
- [64:13]
B
And there's not many athletes that have done those things. So I played college soccer, and one of the greatest things about soccer for me was learning that there's levels. There's always somebody better than you. Growing up in a small town, I thought I was the best goalkeeper on the planet, Right. Because I was the best in my small town.
- [64:30]
A
Right.
- [64:31]
B
And then I went to a very, very large nationwide soccer camp and a player took a shot that I don't even remember seeing. What was that? You know? And, you know, I'm sure it was the same way like that for you in football is there's always somebody that run a 4, 5. They ran a 4, 4, 4, right. Yeah. So there's levels to this. But the habits that you create in college sports, like you say, by juggling, you know, it might be different now in the nil world, but by being able to juggle your academics and being able to juggle your sports and your relationships and shoot, I wasn't getting nil money, so I had to work, too. So when you can do all that. Right. That's going to make you effective in whatever you choose to do. And also, one of the big things that I find, you know, you threw out a ton of skills for somebody that's going to be good, but for people that, you know, know that they don't, they don't know, everything that they're humble is there's too many people in this world that are ignorant to what they don't know. And they have that false confidence, that Dunning Kruger effect, that they think that they're a master at something and they're not. And that's, that's what I love about Jiu jitsu is because there's a lot of people that come in going, oh, man, I've been, you know, I see red, man, I'm gonna. I'm a street fighter. And they'll go against somebody that's been training for six months and they get tied up in knots. And then all of a sudden the world as they Know it has just been changed. And then once they, you know, my, my professor is a four time world champ and I'm only a brown belt, but I've gone against him a thousand times and I've never submitted him. How does that even happen? The worst player in baseball could hit off the best pitcher one time.
- [66:12]
A
Yeah, right.
- [66:13]
B
Never gotten lucky.
- [66:14]
A
Wow.
- [66:15]
B
Never gotten lucky.
- [66:16]
A
That's amazing. World champion.
- [66:18]
B
Yeah.
- [66:19]
A
Wow. Yeah.
- [66:20]
B
Gibson sa truly amazing Jiu Jitsu practitioner from Brazil and just happens to be lucky enough to be in my backyard. So I'm blessed.
- [66:29]
A
Well, for anybody out there who's looking to be a business athlete for who's looking to be a better parent, to just be a better communicator so that you can help people because at the end of the day, that's what we're all here for. And to the, to the better extent that we can be a great listener, we could be more perceptive and we can communicate the right people in the right way, we just help people get what they want and that'll help you get what you need and the world will go around. Tell me, tell me Everything should be part of your training regimen by Brad Beeler. So awesome. Well, this has been great having you on. I think we need to tug gently on the reins and turn, turn ourselves towards the barn here, Brad, if that's okay with you. But I do have perfect. Do a couple of things. I've got a curveball for you and then I've got a fastball right down the middle. But before we do that, why don't you tell people how to get in touch with you and as importantly, where they can get the book.
- [67:27]
B
Sure. Do a lot of stuff on LinkedIn and Instagram. BradBehler 1865 and because I'm doing a book, they told me I got to have a website. So by the time this comes out, BradleyBealer.com will be the best way to.
- [67:40]
A
Get a hold is 1865 is because then that's when the Secret Service was founded.
- [67:45]
B
That's correct. And I didn't want to go with some random other number. It's amazing that you know what, how many? I didn't know there was a lot of Brad Bealers out there. But when you try to get the website and all the other monikers, they're all taken. So yeah, 65.
- [67:58]
A
Yeah. Okay, here is the curveball.
- [68:03]
B
All right.
- [68:07]
A
How do I even phrase this to a special agent? Because usually I say gun to your head or something you care about held out the window, something dear to you. Okay. Gun to.
- [68:17]
B
Your daughter's been kidnapped.
- [68:18]
A
Okay. Gun to your protective detail. Target set. You have to start a business in the next 30 days. It can't be something that you're currently doing. This is a question about your perspective, your view of opportunities in the marketplace. And you've got to start a business because you've got to do something in the next 30 days. Where do you see an opportunity around your experience and the things you've done in the past where there's a problem that needs to be solved through a business. Got anything?
- [68:52]
B
Getting rid of decaf coffee in hotel rooms? Yes. Why would somebody ever have decaf in a hotel room?
- [68:59]
A
What is the.
- [69:00]
B
And it's not.
- [69:00]
A
It's not really decaf. It's not. It's not fully decaf.
- [69:03]
B
Anyway, I'm sorry, that's a total aside, but that's a pet peeve of mine, is why I'm not getting bad coffee. I'm only getting that for caffeine. So somebody, some business model that could hire ex special forces people to go in and replace all the decaf coffee in hotels and replace it with caffeine coffee. And also along those same lines, throw some type of mask device over people that talk too loud at airports, that basically let me in on all their financial decisions and communications and so on and so forth. Right. So, yeah, I. I think there's a business model there to be had, Jeff, is that I would pay money to. To. I don't want to say shut people up, but sometimes I just want to. I want to do my own thing, and I don't need to hear about, you know, your business, how awesome you are.
- [69:55]
A
Why don't we take those decaf coffee pods and shove them in their mouth.
- [70:01]
B
Like it'd be the two for one.
- [70:03]
A
You just did it. Okay, so that's it. That's what we got.
- [70:08]
B
You know what? Trade market. That's it. It's going to be a niche market, Jeff, but I'm going to make it.
- [70:12]
A
All right. Well, I. I somewhat believe in you. Okay. The. Here's the fastball straight down the middle. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?
- [70:30]
B
I mean, I would. And once again, I'd plagiarize Carnegie a little bit and say, you know, don't be the most interesting person in the room. Be the most interested person in the room. If you do that, your relationships will skyrocket. Your place in the workplace will skyrocket, because the dopamine that you will put in other people will be amazing. And what you will learn by shutting up. Right. Instead of always, you know? What are you doing this weekend? Oh, I'm running a 5K. Oh, I've run a 5K. Shut up. Let people bathe in their experiences and their life and their leisure activities, and then later hack that in there. You don't need to always one up, everybody. So I threw. I threw a couple of things at you there, but I think being curious to me is a superpower.
- [71:17]
A
Yeah. Perfectly said. Thank you so much for being on.
- [71:23]
B
Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate you having me.
- [71:25]
A
Yeah, yeah. This has been great. This is Jeff Duden. We have been on the unemployable podcast here with special agent Brad Beeler. Thank you for listening.