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- [00:00]
Raj and Noah
Hey, it's Raj and Noah.
- [00:02]
Raj
And we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.
- [00:08]
Noah
Because we're still doing a lot of stuff wrong.
- [00:11]
Raj
But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.
- [00:19]
Noah
We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right, so the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.
- [00:28]
Raj
Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:36]
Noah
And for the first time ever, we're going to have full video episodes on YouTube. Because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're going to be right here to help you do them better.
- [00:44]
Melissa Banishai
Love you.
- [00:46]
Raj and Noah
Hi, I'm Melissa Banishai, CEO and co founder of Baked By Melissa. As a mom, I find deciding what to make for dinner the hardest decision of my day. That's why I'm partnering with Blue Apron to to bring you delicious and nutritious dinners that are quick and easy. Like your mom. Just kidding. Your Mom's amazing. Get 35% off your first order at Blue Apron with promo code Melissa. Terms and conditions apply. Visit blueapron.com terms for more. Okay, love you.
- [01:14]
Robert Kirbeck
Bye.
- [01:15]
Melissa Banishai
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- [02:42]
Robert Kirbeck
Subaru. So there was a team and there were eight people on this team that were kind of the pioneers of doing these trades with mortgage backed securities. Nobody knows who's on this eight person team. No one can reach them because the firm knows people are trying to find out who's on this team so they can steal them. And so when I got eight names, seems like nothing. It's just eight people's names. Those names somebody said to me, how much were they worth? How much were those names worth? Some portion of $1 billion. And I like to tell people that I wasn't the first one to know that there was going to be a financial crisis. But I'm pretty sure I was the first actor to know there was going to be a financial crisis.
- [03:35]
Julian Morgans
Hey, I'm Julian Morgans and you're listening to what It Was like, the show that asks people who have lived through big dramatic events what it was like. Foreign. So let's start this episode by talking about the mood, you know, kind of like the mood of the month, the mood of January 2026. So I think if you're in the west, the mood right now seems to be violence, a bit of racism and just way too many billionaires. So many billionaires. I don't know when this feeling quite settled on me, but. But it just seems like I no longer buy things from corporations. Instead, I'm just kind of living inside their systems. You know, it's always about Download this app, join the rewards program. Download via our portal, Upload via this QR code. Contact us about your policy. Pay here, pay now. Reset your password. Anyway, it is this frustration that has led me to both of our stories for this week. So, so in this episode I'm going to speak with a man named Robert Kirbeck who in the 1990s and early 2000s, stumbled into a very strange line of work. He got a job in corporate espionage. He'd trained as an actor, so he was very good at impersonating people. And then he got employed impersonating senior executives to convince ordinary employees at companies that he didn't work at to hand over sensitive corporate secrets which he then sold for big money. I think it's just a great spy story. There's subterfuge, there's lots of sneaking around and there's some genuinely Impressive performances because Robert still does quite a few of the voices, and I asked him to do them, and I was like, wow, that's. That's pretty good. But I think this is also just a story about the moral quicksand of modern capitalism, making a fortune by. By lying for a living, and what that does to you over time. And then in our subscriber episode, we're going to stay in the same world, but we're moving a little further up the food chain. So I'm speaking with a man who runs a concierge service for billionaires in Vegas, and his job is to design fun weekends for the ultra wealthy. So think private access, backstage doors, the best and the worst that the city has to offer. And I think this. This is just another peek behind the corporate curtain, you know, another glimpse at the mood of our times. Okay, so that's our subscriber only episode, but first we're going to hear from Robert. And to be clear, he wrote a book a few years ago called Ruse. You're going to hear him mention it a few times in the interview today. And he's basically here to give us his story of being in an aspiring actor who got a job stealing secrets that became very rich in the process. So here is Robert K. Robert, welcome to the show.
- [06:32]
Robert Kirbeck
Julian. Pleasure. Thanks for having me.
- [06:35]
Julian Morgans
The pleasure is all mine, my friend. It's all mine. Let's start with your upbringing in Philadelphia. I understand your dad was a car salesman, and you were expected to sort of follow the family tradition. Do you want to just set the scene for me?
- [06:51]
Robert Kirbeck
Sure. Well, you know, my dad was. He. He was a car salesman, but he was also a car dealer, a new car dealer. So I was expected to take over that dealership. And instead, I went down this crazy road where I became an actor. And. And then a couple other things that I think we might be talking about today.
- [07:13]
Julian Morgans
I think you're right. I think we might be talking about them. So you wanted to be an actor. How was that received in the family? Was everyone like, yeah, cool, Robert, you should be an actor.
- [07:23]
Robert Kirbeck
No, no, no. You know, my poor father, I mean, he thought it was ludicrous. He thought it was stupid. And I think he also knew that I was. I would be good in the business. And there was a time where I did work for him for a brief period of time, and I was good at selling cars, but it just wasn't for me. It just wasn't for me. And that, of course, becomes ironic when I didn't like the idea of Selling cars to people because it felt a little, you know, gross isn't quite the right word. Because sales, you know, we all have. We all do sales to some, you know, form in our lives, right? But selling cars, you know, you're trying to sell them for the most amount of money. And, you know, all of that, you know, and so that just kind of just didn't feel right for me. And then it. It's just a little ironic when I stumble into the career that I later stumbled into.
- [08:17]
Julian Morgans
Yeah, well, let's. Let's jump cut to you stumbling into that career. How did this opportunity first appear?
- [08:24]
Robert Kirbeck
Well, you know, I moved to New York to be an actor. And my college roommate's brother, I was hanging out with him and he kind of mentioned this job that he had. And then he shut up right away. Like he'd been told, don't talk about this. Don't tell anybody about this. And I said, dude, you know, I'm broke. I need a job. You gotta help me. And so he very reluctantly got me an interview with this woman. And I went up to her penthouse apartment on the Upper east side. And so I take the elevator up to the penthouse, and she ushers me into this apartment, which was definitely the nicest apartment I'd ever seen. And everything was white and pristine. It was white carpet and white paint on the walls and white furnit. And she sits me in this chair in the middle of the white carpet in the middle of the room, and she starts asking me about my father and about the car business. And she was. It was almost like a therapy session. And it was very strange. She doesn't say anything about the job and she sends me on my way. And I was pretty sure I blew it. You know, I was like, wow, you know, that was. That didn't go well. And I get out of there, and at some point later, my buddy calls me and he says, you got the job. And I started to get excited and he said, don't get excited, he said, because no one is able to do this job. And I still had no idea what the job was. And the next day, I got sent out to Brooklyn to work with the woman that was the trainer for the woman who had this firm. And it was there in her apartment that I began to learn that what we were doing was high level corporate espionage.
- [10:04]
Julian Morgans
Okay, what does that mean?
- [10:07]
Robert Kirbeck
Well, Julian, if I tell you, I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to shoot you. Take you out and all your listeners too. No, no, you know, we. We were you know, the woman only hired actors. So this woman is training me. And I quickly learned that we are using our acting skills and we're using the good old anonymity of the phone call, the telephone call to get people inside major corporations to tell us things that they should never, ever tell us. And then that information. So I'll just give you an example, and this is just made up. But like, let's. Let's say back in the day, we were going to get hired by Apple, and then Apple would hire us, and we would spy on Google, and we would spy on Microsoft, and we would spy on, you know, whatever companies Apple wanted information about, right? And we would get all of this information that then they would utilize to improve whatever it is that they were trying to improve, learn whatever it is they were trying to learn. A lot of times it was to poach top talent from arrival. So they wanted to know not only who was working at the company, but who the rock stars were at the company. Almost all companies have some sort of rating system or ranking system or metrics that they use to basically grade and rank employees. Well, we would have the metrics, so we would know who really the top people were. And you can't imagine how valuable that is to a corporation, because every company, when they steal someone, they only want to steal the top people from their rivals. Your listeners will probably know Tom Brady pretty well, right? Tom Brady was this great American football player, quarterback, and he won many, many championships. And when he left the New England Patriots and he went to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Tampa Bay team won the super bowl that, you know, because they got top talent, right? And the Patriots, their team has been terrible, terrible, terrible. And now this year, they finally turned it around, right? And that's just a little example of, of. Of what talent does. And it's. It's true in football and it's true in business that when you get top talent, your company excels.
- [12:26]
Julian Morgans
Okay, so is it primarily a tool for recruitment, or are you also sort of spying on other people' development as well?
- [12:35]
Robert Kirbeck
We would get anything and everything that a client would want to know. And most times they had a laundry list of things that they wanted to know. So they wanted to know, is a company having trouble? Is the company expanding? Are they opening other offices? Where are they opening those offices? What are they going to be paying for the lease? Are they buying the property? You know, all of these things that on the surface, sometimes seem very technical. Sometimes they might even seem sort of dry. But you combine that with the personnel Stuff that we talked about. And you begin to get this complete picture of a corporation that a rival can then use to emulate or be strategic. You know, again, going back to the football analogy, we were tasked with getting the playbook on our clients, rivals, they wanted the playbook. They wanted to know everything that this company was doing, their products. Right. If you could find out stuff early in the. Early in the. In the pipeline, how valuable was that to arrival?
- [13:41]
Julian Morgans
Hugely valuable. Okay, so tell me about a day in the life of a corporate spy. You know, are you going to go and work from this woman's office or what does your life look like?
- [13:52]
Robert Kirbeck
Well, you know, that was the great thing about it, is that it was a perfect job for actors because, you know, we had auditions, you know, and you'd have an audition at 11 and you'd have one of three. And so we had the flexibility with this job, which was what made it great. So I mainly worked from home, even though my boss wasn't really crazy about that. But that was one again, one of the benefits of this spying job, because all you needed was a phone. I mean, there were times I would be on a trip and I would pull over, this is how long ago some of this was, and I would pull over on the side of the road and use a payphone. And standing up on the payphone, I would call some corporation and I would get somebody to tell me some secret that would pay for the trip.
- [14:37]
Julian Morgans
Wow. So how would you do it? I mean, why would people give up this, this really delicate, precious information to you, a total stranger that they've been.
- [14:46]
Robert Kirbeck
Trained and told not to do that? You know, people of corporation trained.
- [14:51]
Julian Morgans
Totally.
- [14:52]
Robert Kirbeck
So what we have to do is we have to use the power of persuasion and then we have to use the cudgel of the corporate hierarchy. So, Julian, you're a young associate, you're a young assistant, you're a young analyst, you're two months with the firm, two weeks with the firm, four months with the firm, and all of a sudden this guy calls you and says, julian, it's Tim Smith, the senior vice president of operations. How are you today, Julian? And you say, oh, Mr. Smith, I'm doing great. How are you enjoying working for us? Right, because now I've done some legwork on you and I know you're a new person. I know you're a junior person. Oh boy, Mr. Smith, it's a real honor and pleasure and I'm really enjoying with it. Well, great. Well, that's great. Look, you know, now, you know Me, We've spoken on the phone. If I can ever do anything for your career, young man, you don't hesitate to reach out. And by the way, I'm actually off site at the moment. We got a little meeting over here with the US Regulators, and we've got a little bit of a crisis. And so I'm going to give you an opportunity to help me out here, Julian. I need you to look up something for me on the system. And now all of a sudden you think you've got this major executive on the firm. I'm using a real person's name. I've called and I've listened to their voicemail. Hi, this is Tim Smith. I'm not here right now, so now I know what his voice sounds like. And I'm an actor, so now I'm going to imitate his voice so that if the person maybe knows him a little bit, they're going to. It's going to be close enough that they're going to go, oh, yeah, that's Tim Smith, the head of operations, right? In this scenario, you just know his name because he's a big executive. You've heard his name. You haven't spoken to him because you're just a little lowly analyst. But what do you want to do? You want to make a good impression, right? You want to be a good teammate, right? That's what they teach in corporations, you know, to be a good teammate, you know, be a good, you know, team player. And so now you're going to help the senior vice president of operations with whatever he needs. And now I'm using you as like a mole to go into the system and do whatever it is I want you to do for, for me right now. I'm going to get a bunch of information from you. Maybe I'm going to get some technical information. Maybe I'm going to get a password, whatever I'm going to get from you. And then there's going to come a point where you don't know some of the things that I'm asking for. You say, boy, Mr. Moore or Mr. Smith, I'm so sorry, I don't know that. I've only been here. I don't know how to do that. And I'm going to say, that's okay, Julian, that's okay. Can you do me a favor? Who would know that, that, you know. Oh, well, you know, my, my. My buddy, you know, he. He's been here for two years and he's in the tech department. And he. Yeah, he'd Know how to do that? I say, can you do me a favor? Put me on hold and call him for me and ask him and get the answer for me and then come back with the answer, right? So now I've made the internal employee spying for me, because when he calls his friend, his friend isn't going to be suspicious of him. He knows him. He knows he works for the company. So now he's going to get whatever information it is that I want, and then he's going to come back with that information for me.
- [18:20]
Julian Morgans
Wow, that's so devious.
- [18:24]
Robert Kirbeck
Yes, it is. Very devious. Do you like that? That was my devious laugh right there. Yeah, it was.
- [18:29]
Julian Morgans
Yeah, it was maniacal. So was this strategy taught to you? Was this like a training thing?
- [18:36]
Robert Kirbeck
You know, every spy, every one of the corporate spies had a different technique. They all had something that they did. The women, the one woman that trained me, everything she did, she had a slight Irish accent. And the Irish accent would go in and out because it wasn't the best accent, right? And she would only call people that had an Irish name. So she would look for people that were Irish. And she would play like, you know, I'm a young girl from Ireland, and I'm here in New York. I've only been here for a month. I've got this job, and I messed up somehow, and I need this information or I'm going to lose my job. And at first I thought it was ludicrous that because of this Irish thing that she would get this information. It worked all the time because she knew something about the Irish, that they want to help out a young, you know, Irish girl new to New York who's struggling and in trouble, like, because Irish people are very nice and very friendly and warm, right? So she knew that another girl, another woman that had the job, she played the dumb secretary, and she was as smart as smart can be. And she was always playing the dumb secretary that messed up. Their boss was yelling at them, and she would only call other secretaries. And so the secretary would go, oh, my boss is a jerk, too. Your boss is yelling at you. Relax. I'm going to help you. What do you need? I'm going to get you out of trouble. What do you need? Right? So everybody had their own thing for me. I used. I am more senior than you, not just a little bit more senior. I am way up the food chain. And you, you have two choices right now. I can be your best friend or I can be your worst enemy. So help me with what I want. And you're going to have a friend in the corporation at a very high level. And that was. You know, I had another guy, one of my buddies in the book, his name is Pax. He was tech. It was always tech. He always had some tech angle that there was a tech crisis. And he was very technical, and so he would explain things and people on the other end of the line would get confused, and they were. They would get so confused and discombobulated that they would just give up and go, okay, well, what is it you need? You know, like, how can I help you?
- [21:06]
Noah
You know?
- [21:07]
Julian Morgans
Yeah, yeah, make this stop.
- [21:09]
Robert Kirbeck
They had a headache from his thing, you know, because. And he had this circular language he would do. He'd go, yeah, you know, we're doing this thing for compliance and we've got to make sure that the records are updated. And they'd go, what records? And he'd go, the compliance records. And they'd go, well, what are the compliance records for? Well, as you know, we're required to comply. Yeah, no, I know we're required to comply, but what are the records for? They're for the compliance, you know, and he would do this thing and he'd be saying the same three words over in different orders, and eventually people go, okay, what do you need? And so that was the fascinating thing about this job is we all developed our thing on our own. There was no training for this. And that's why most people that tried to do this job failed. I mean, I'm telling you, like I just told you, four people that were. That were successful. They were the only four people in the entire time that I worked for this woman that were able to. To do this job. And every actor in New York wanted this job.
- [22:10]
Julian Morgans
Did anyone ever get suspicious when you're on the line?
- [22:14]
Robert Kirbeck
All the time. All the time. Because remember, these people are told not to do this stuff. They're told, do not give this information out. And so people would get suspicious all the time. And sometimes we would use the suspicions against them. They would say, you know, who are you? And I'd say, I'm so and so, and who's your boss? And most times we would do research before we made a call. We weren't just picking up the phone and randomly calling. So I would know Julian Morgan's. You're an analyst. You're in XYZ department. And the head of that department is, you know, John Regan. And so I would say, well, I spoke to John earlier about this and he said to reach out was John Wrong. And now I know who your boss is. And by the way, not just your boss, but like two levels above you. Right. It's a very powerful tool.
- [23:09]
Julian Morgans
You've got to think pretty fast on your feet. You were a good, fast bullshitter.
- [23:15]
Robert Kirbeck
Yes.
- [23:15]
Julian Morgans
Was that an acting thing or had you always been like that?
- [23:20]
Robert Kirbeck
I have to admit, I think I always, you know, that that's just in the DNA. It's just in the DNA. And it helped with acting and it helped with this job as well.
- [23:30]
Julian Morgans
To what degree was the fact that you're an actor like this? Interplay between prior experience acting? To what degree was that helpful?
- [23:38]
Robert Kirbeck
This is Gerhardt calling from the office in Frankfurt, Germany. We have the European Union regulators and we need some information from the States. Right. And you see how you're smiling and laughing. When I would do that German accent, people would smile and laugh and they go, oh, my gosh, Gerhardt. Oh, I think I've heard your name. You run compliance for Europe, right? Yeah, I run the compliance for the Europe team in the Frankfurt office. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Well, what's up, buddy? How can we help you here? And you know, what do you need? And then because of that accent, I've disarmed them and they're smiling and laughing and then sometimes I would, I go, yeah, so, so, oh, forgive me now I am speaking the German to you. Oh, boy. You know, like, so English was a bit of a challenge. And you know, and so they would laugh and they would give me whatever I wanted to know.
- [24:30]
Julian Morgans
Could you just go through a quick Rolodex of your favorite, like your top, top three favorite accents?
- [24:36]
Robert Kirbeck
Well, you know, it's funny you say that because we all, you know, I mean, I could do like, you know, hello, it's Jonathan Croswell calling from the London office. You know, but the German one was such money that I stopped using the other ones because the German one was just, it was just money in the bank. Just like the Irish one worked for the young woman that trained me. Like, you know, she could do Jamaican accent and, and, you know, she could do German and she could do, you know, southern. You know, sometimes I. Yes, Reed Johnson calling down from the Albany plant in Georgia. Yeah, but, you know, but the German one was just as soon as I hit on Gerhardt or whatever the German name would be, I just stopped using the other ones because the success rate with the German one was like 98%.
- [25:24]
Julian Morgans
Hey, we're going to take a quick ad break, but stick around because we'll be back with more what It Was Like.
- [25:36]
Melissa Banishai
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- [26:06]
Raj and Noah
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- [26:28]
Raj
Hey, it's Raj and Noah and we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.
- [26:36]
Noah
Because we're still doing a lot of stuff wrong.
- [26:38]
Raj
But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.
- [26:47]
Noah
We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right so the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life they throws at us.
- [26:56]
Raj
Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [27:03]
Noah
And for the first time ever, we're going to have full video episodes on YouTube. Because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're going to be right here to help you do them better.
- [27:12]
Melissa Banishai
Love y'.
- [27:12]
Robert Kirbeck
All.
- [27:13]
Raj and Noah
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- [28:20]
Julian Morgans
Okay, so you were making pretty good money from this. Can you give me a sense of, you know, what was your weekly wage and what was your lifestyle during this period?
- [28:29]
Robert Kirbeck
Well, we started out at $8 an hour, and by the time I was done, I was making $2 million a year as a corporate spy.
- [28:39]
Julian Morgans
And what did your young life in New York City on $2 million a year look like?
- [28:43]
Robert Kirbeck
Well, when I was making $2 million a year, I made it out to LA. So I was out in LA. But it was pretty nice, you know, you're not thinking about money anymore. You know, you're going on vacations. You know, I bought a convertible. I bought a house in Malibu. It was pretty. It was pretty sweet. And all along that I was doing this job, you know, I don't want it to sound like I didn't have moral reservations about it, because I did. And the way I justified these moral reservations was that I was only doing the job temporarily because I was going to be a successful working actor. And as I said earlier, I was a working actor and I was making money as an actor, but I was never able to get to the level where I was really. You have to basically get a TV series. You have to book a TV series and be the star of a TV show. And so I booked like four or five pilots over the years, and those pilots never got picked up. They never went to series. And at a certain point, you know, I was, you know, at this point, and maybe in my mid-30s, late-30s, and all of a sudden I went, whoa, maybe I'm not going to get a TV series. Maybe I'm not going to have this big TV film career that I thought I was going to have. And I got to make sure that I can provide for my family. And the only thing I had was this spying. And we live, at least in America, in a capitalist system. And I just said, well, you know what? We're in a capitalist system, you know, and that again. And that's a rationalization. But that was the rationalization. I used to do this corporate spawn.
- [30:24]
Julian Morgans
How did you feel about that? I mean, it seems to me that you avoided working for your dad's Business because you had some qualms about selling cars. But then I guess when the big dream doesn't work out and you find yourself getting corralled into this other thing that has its own sort of sticky ethical considerations, I mean, how did. How did you feel about that?
- [30:47]
Robert Kirbeck
You know what? I think it's a great question. Really great question. I think, to be honest, I was bitter. You know, I was. I was angry that, you know, I had worked so hard as an actor and studied so hard and, you know, really went at it. And I had all these amazing reviews, amazing plays, did some pretty big stuff in the TV and film world. And yet, at the end of the day, it wasn't really going to be enough to support a family, certainly not to buy a house. And then I was like, well, that's ridiculous. You know, like that. You know, like, it shouldn't be that hard for an artist to make money, you know, because I was working, you know, and so I think I was like, well, you know what? You know, f the man, so to speak, you know, so be it, you know. And I remember when I was first dating my wife, when she found out what I did, she really wasn't fazed by it, which surprised me because many people are. And it was because she came from. She was a punk rocker, and she came out of that punk world where it was, you know, you know, like a rebellion against society, against establishment. And she later, you know, helped me develop the business. And the two of us ran this incredibly successful corporate spying firm. And. And it was only when, you know, we had a. We had a child. And one day my. My kid heard me on the phone doing my rusing. And my kid said, you know, dad, you know, what are you doing? Like, you know, are you a hacker? You know, and I forget, they were seven or eight. I said, no, no, no, I'm not a hacker. No, you know, I'm just getting information, helping people get better jobs, you know, helping corporations improve their, you know, whatever. Whatever story I gave my child. And my child looked at me and said, but, dad, it's dishonest. You're right, it is. And that was the moment when I said, I have to get out of it. And then I. And then over the next maybe two years, I began figuring out a way to extricate myself, which of course led to me writing this book. And one of the funny things about the book is when the book came out, now I'm not spying anymore, and I have stopped. And I cannot tell you how many corporations called me after the book came out, after I outed myself as a spy, how many corporations said, hey Robert, we read your book, will you come and spy for us?
- [33:24]
Julian Morgans
Wow.
- [33:25]
Robert Kirbeck
They didn't care.
- [33:26]
Julian Morgans
Yeah, yeah, they really picked up on the, on the finer details there. The, the motifs. Damn. Okay, so that's, I mean, that's a great sort of encapsulation of your story that your career as a corporate spy. Let's, let's dip back into a few of the details in there. So could you tell me what was the, like the single biggest corporate secret that you ever extracted from someone?
- [33:48]
Robert Kirbeck
Well, there were so many. There's so many. But I mean, I'll give you one that, that again, sometimes people struggle to understand how valuable this information was. But remember, we're living in the time before LinkedIn and before the Internet. So people didn't know who worked at a corporation. They didn't know, you know, what the corporate organization structure looked like. And in around 2005, 2006, there was a team at a major investment bank and they that year made $1 billion for the firm trading products which later were the reason for the crash of 2008 that caused the greatest global financial crisis since the Depression.
- [34:39]
Julian Morgans
Wow.
- [34:40]
Robert Kirbeck
And these are the same products that were featured in the movie the Big Short. Right?
- [34:47]
Julian Morgans
Yes, I remember. This was subprime mortgage stuff.
- [34:51]
Robert Kirbeck
This was exactly. This is mortgage backed securities.
- [34:54]
Julian Morgans
Right.
- [34:54]
Robert Kirbeck
So there was a team, and there were eight people on this team that were kind of the pioneers. Nobody knows who's on this eight person team. Their names are taken off the corporate directory. They're not listed anywhere, no one can reach them because the phone firm knows. People are trying to find out who's on this team so they can steal them. Somebody said to me, how much were they worth? How much were those names worth? Some portion of $1 billion? Oui.
- [35:25]
Julian Morgans
Damn. But I mean, you talk about ethics. I mean, these are the architects of a giant financial crash. And yet somehow they're sort of rock stars in this particular industry. You know, they were never held accountable for all the millions of jobs that they personally helped to destroy. You know, like they, in some ways, these aren't good people.
- [35:46]
Robert Kirbeck
No. And you know, again, full disclosure, you know, I don't, I don't have much of a leg to stand on. But again, that was part of the thing for me is like, wait a second, if I was making $2 million a year, they were making $20 million a year. Right. And I'm like, you know what? Screw you. You know, like, I'm going to get this information and I, the artist is going to make some money off of Wall Street. And I was getting more and more money for this job. These corporations were throwing money at me and they specifically, more than any other area, wanted to know about the mortgage products area, all of the derivatives related to that industry. And I knew something was wrong. And what I just find to be ironic is here all I was is an actor and I could see that there was a crash coming. And, and I like to tell people that I wasn't the first one to know that there was going to be a financial crisis, but I'm pretty sure I was the first actor to know there was going to be a financial crisis.
- [36:51]
Julian Morgans
That's a good way of framing it. What was the most conflicted that you ever felt on a phone call? You start the book by talking about calling up this woman who admits that she had cancer. You know, in moments like that, you know, how do you feel?
- [37:08]
Robert Kirbeck
You know, it's, it is, it's, it's really difficult. The woman, that woman who starts the book and she ends the book. Because I would call her over and over to get information because we had developed this relationship where she assumed I was someone that I was not. And she trusted me and so she was giving me all this information. And at one point she said to me, and of course I've never met her, this is a phone relationship. But at one point she says to me, you're my favorite person at the firm. You're my favorite person at the firm. And the first thing I thought is, wow, corporate America is pretty. That's pretty sad, you know, if your favorite person at a firm is someone you've never even met. But yeah, I mean, it was really intense. It was really intense. And. But at the same time, I would listen to her and I would talk to her and I would ask her about how she was doing and how our health was and how our prognosis was. And she would share with me and we would have these, you know, we would have half hour conversations, 20 minute conversations where we would talk, be talking about what's going on. And, and, you know, obviously I must have been a pretty good listener and been pretty empathetic because she's saying, you're my favorite person at the firm. Because maybe nobody else was asking her about this stuff. And maybe no, you know, so, yeah, that was the most morally challenging thing that I ever had to deal with in all the years of corporate spying. And I wanted to be honest and say, hey, you know I put that out there, that here I am comforting this woman while at the same time everything I've told her is a lie. So that's, that's a pretty, you know, messed up situation and, and something I'm not proud of. And, you know, I'm certainly not proud of being a corporate spy. Now I will say it's a hell of a crazy story.
- [39:02]
Julian Morgans
I mean, yeah, I was wondering about this before, the legalities of what you were doing. I mean, how did you, how did you sleep at night during this period?
- [39:11]
Robert Kirbeck
Well, when we, when we first got the job, at some point we hired an attorney because we were nervous, you know, and the attorney said to us that what you're doing is in the gray, the very dark gray. And he explained to us that there were a lot of charges that a corporation could come at us for. And those charges, you know, were typically, in America, it's wire fraud because you're using the telephone for fraudulent purposes. And not only could we have gone to jail for decades, but there were also significant financial penalties as well. So, yeah, it was intense. You know, it was intense. And of course, in the beginning we just justify, hey, we're actors. We're getting $8 an hour. It's part time job. We're going to be famous any day. We're going to stop doing this job next, tomorrow, the day after. And it kept going and kept going and kept going. And then at a certain point, the money, the money was just too good to look away from.
- [40:14]
Julian Morgans
Hey, we're going to take a quick ad break, but stick around because we'll be back with more what it was like.
- [40:24]
Raj and Noah
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- [41:48]
Julian Morgans
So you had this, this really amazing bird's eye view over corporate America for quite a long time. And I'm just wondering what you. What you learned, like, just about the mechanics, maybe the morality of corporate America. What were some of your takeaways?
- [42:04]
Robert Kirbeck
Can I say, I think it sucks. I. I think corporate America is really horrible. And I could tell this because, you know, when I was, you know, when I would talk to people, the easiest way to get information was to bond with people. And the easiest thing to bond over was about how terrible the company we work for is. Hmm. And so again, I would use that all the time. I would say, this company, blah, blah, blah, you know, this company, blah, blah, blah. People go, yeah, I know. I missed the. You know. And then they would air their grievance, and then I would air my grievance, and then we would bond and they would tell me whatever I want to know. I mean, most people that I talked to were miserable. They were miserable. And. And that was the thing about it that was really depressing and demoralizing because, you know, that was something I didn't want to do. I didn't want to do a job in life that I wasn't happy doing. And that's why it didn't work for my dad, because I just had a feeling that I just, at the end of the day, I wasn't going to be happy in the long term doing that. And so when you're talking to people on the phone that are working jobs that they hate, working for a company that they hate, I felt sorry for. Most of the people that I talked to on the phone I felt sorry for. I really felt I had a lot of empathy because they just didn't seem happy at. In that corporate world.
- [43:38]
Julian Morgans
That's really sad, isn't it?
- [43:39]
Robert Kirbeck
It is. It's really sad. It's really sad, you know, and it makes me happy that I, you know, took the path I did. And I just lucked out in some weird sort of way that I was able to get a job where I made a lot of money sort of off the backs of corporate America.
- [44:00]
Julian Morgans
All right, so I've got this question here that's a little unformed, a little unfocused, but I'll. I'll just muddle my way through and we'll see how it comes out. And it's. It's this. So you say that for the average person, corporate America sucks. But I think. I think the big thing that's promised to people in America is this idea of the American dream. You know, if you've got a dream, you can achieve it. If you want to start a business, you can start it. If you want to be an actor, you can be actor. You know, like, it's the American dream that keeps everyone hanging on. And I'm wondering through your experience of chasing this thing that didn't quite work out for you, and I'm wondering what you learned about the American dream or that promise of. Of a better life.
- [44:44]
Robert Kirbeck
You know what? I've done maybe 200, 300 different forms. Media interviews, podcasts, TV shows, radio, you know, and that's the first time anybody asked that question. So kudos to you, because that's a great question. And I think we're seeing now with young people that they. I mean, I'm not going to say they've given up on the American dream, but. But they sort of kind of have, you know, and I think it's because two things. One, it seems so daunting. Seems so daunting. And two, even if you decide to go for it and go down this road, and I'm gonna work in corporate America, and I'm gonna work my way up the ladder, and I'm gonna become a senior vice president, a managing director and executive vice president, a CEO. The amount of work you have to do and the amount of shit you have to eat and the. And how shitty you have to treat other people, you know, all of that stuff, I think young people are like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. And so we have a generation of young people, my daughter being one of them, that they're a little checked out. You know, they're a little checked out. Either they. They don't have jobs or they're, you know, and I. I don't know how else to describe it. It's to say, I think there's been a real. With younger people, they. They're turned off by that part of the American dream, that, that. That the chase is so unpleasant and requires so much stuff that you don't want to do. And, you know, and. And when I say don't want to do not, not the work part of it, but the way you've got to treat other people and the idea that you got to stab somebody in the back to get the promotion and you gotta talk behind someone's back to, you know, to sabotage their chance at the, you know, all of these things that I personally witnessed. And I think that that's, that's where the American dream has taken a bit of a hit.
- [46:47]
Julian Morgans
If you had your time again, I mean, knowing what you know now or what, believing what you believe now about the American Dream, what. What changes would you make to your life?
- [46:58]
Robert Kirbeck
You know, I, I wouldn't make any changes. I wouldn't. And that's, again, that's not to say that I'm proud of what I did, but the journey that it took me on now and who I am as a person now, you know, I had to go through all of that to get to where I am, you know, and, and look, I could even make an argument. You know, one of the things about working for my father is, you know, I don't know that that would have ended up well for me because I think I would have been miserable. And people that are miserable do things that aren't good for them, whether it's they drink too much or they do drugs or they have, you know, mental health and depression issues. You know, when you're doing something that isn't feeding you, you find something else that can feed you. And a lot of times those other things are, are not good for you and not healthy. And I think if I'd stayed working for my father, I, I don't. I don't think it would, it wouldn't have ended well.
- [47:57]
Julian Morgans
Yeah. I mean, that reminds me, did you. Do you feel like you gained your father's approval when you were suddenly making loads of money by being a corporate spy?
- [48:08]
Robert Kirbeck
Well, you know what? My father, it was one of the most incredible transformations. You know, he didn't want me to be an actor and he didn't support the idea of being an actor. But then all of a sudden later, when I was doing all these TV shows like Star Trek and Melrose Place and NYPD Blue and, er, and, you know, my father became my biggest booster and he unfortunately died young, so he really wasn't around for the affluence of the corporate spying. But there was one moment we were sitting at the kitchen table in the house I grew up in, and I kind of came clean to him about this job and what I did, and he was Very concerned about it, and he wanted me to stop doing it. And, you know, which was interesting, you know, because he was like, look, that, you know, that's dishonest. You can't do that, you know, and. And, you know, and again, like, I'm not saying salespeople are dishonest because, you know, you know, I mean, it's a. It's a very. It's. There's like a line there. You know what I mean? But. But, yeah, my father was very concerned. He was very, very concerned, and he wanted me to quit this job and stuff.
- [49:20]
Julian Morgans
That's so interesting that you each made judgments about the other's vacation, and in the end, he wanted you out.
- [49:27]
Robert Kirbeck
Yeah.
- [49:28]
Julian Morgans
So that kind of leads us all the way full circle, I think. I'm curious, where is corporate spying at right now? Does this industry still exist?
- [49:37]
Robert Kirbeck
Oh, my gosh, yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, because we have things like LinkedIn now and Google Search or whatever, you know, it's easier to find out who works at a corporation today. No doubt about it. But still, you don't know who the top people are. And it's funny, I got a text right before this podcast. I got a text from a major executive at a firm who said to me, hey, haven't spoken to you a long time. Are you still doing what you do? I got something for you. Right. So here I am, you know, you know, years out of the business, and people are still reaching out to me because they were want to know things about their rivals. And that is not going to change. That is never going to change. And so corporate spying is alive and well. You know, I had somebody ask me, do most corporations hire spies today? And I said, no, most corporations don't hire spies. All corporations hire spies today. You know, wow. And a number of the people that I work directly for for are today CEOs of the largest companies in the world.
- [50:46]
Melissa Banishai
Right.
- [50:47]
Julian Morgans
Jeez, it's. I mean, it's fascinating, it's exciting, but it's also very depressing.
- [50:53]
Robert Kirbeck
Yes. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I had a major depression when I got out of this business because I. It had just taken a toll on me and what. What had I done with my life and blah, blah, blah. And that's when I circled back into writing and found myself again. And. And it was at a writing conference when I wrote something on corporate spying, and it was very short, it was only a page or two. And the people at the conference freaked out, and they said you were a corporate spy. We never heard of such a thing. This is unbelievable. You got to write a book about this. You got to write a book about this. And I said, oh, this is interesting. And they said, yes, it's interesting.
- [51:31]
Julian Morgans
Tell us about the book. Where can listeners find it?
- [51:34]
Robert Kirbeck
Sits anywhere you. You buy your books. Obviously, the easiest place is Amazon. You can also go to my website, which is just, you know, my name www.robertkirbeck.com. but I think the audible version is kind of my favorite because it's me. You get to hear me and you get to hear the accents and that kind of stuff.
- [51:55]
Julian Morgans
Fantastic. Well, Robert, thank you so much for telling your story and giving us your time. Really appreciate it. It's been amazing.
- [52:02]
Robert Kirbeck
Well, thank you for the great questions. Like I said that American dream question, man, that was good.
- [52:10]
Julian Morgans
What it was like is produced by Rachel Tuffery. This episode was edited by Ellie Dickey, who also does our research. Our cover art is by Rich Akers. Our theme music was produced by Jimmy Saunders. And this whole thing has been a super real production.
- [52:40]
Raj
Think Verizon is expensive? Think again. Anyone can bring their AT&T or T mobile bill to a Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal. So bring us your bill, walk in, run in, pogo stickin', teleport if you can ride on the back of a rollerblading yak or fly in on the wings of a majestic falcon anymore. Any way, you can bring your AT&T or T mobile bill to a Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal on the best network based on RootMetric's best overall mobile network performance.
- [53:04]
Melissa Banishai
US second half 2025.
- [53:05]
Raj
All rights reserved.
- [53:06]
Robert Kirbeck
Must provide very recent postpaid consumer mobile.
- [53:07]
Raj
Bill in the name of the person redeeming the deal. Additional terms, conditions and restrictions apply.
- [53:10]
Raj and Noah
Hey, it's Raj and Noah.
- [53:11]
Raj
And we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.
- [53:18]
Noah
Because we're still doing a lot of stuff wrong.
- [53:20]
Raj
But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that that we could all use a little helping hand with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.
- [53:29]
Noah
We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right. So the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.
- [53:38]
Raj
Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing it wrong, dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [53:45]
Noah
And for the first time ever, we're going to have full video episodes on YouTube. Because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're going to be right here to help you do them better.
- [53:54]
Melissa Banishai
Love you.