#89: How To Read People Like a Secret Agent with Intelligence Behavior Expert Chase Hughes

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I'm ready for my close up.

Hi, and welcome back. I'm so happy that you are here. Okay, so hopefully your 2021 is off to a fantastic start. Well, that's kind of funny because so many of us are saying, what are you talking about? 2021 is looking a lot like 2020. We thought there was going to be this big change. However, listen, I'm still broadcasting live from my kitchen, but there are some changes happening and I'm hopeful things will continue to get better this year and hopeful there will be live events hopefully by the end of this year. Okay, so there are some exciting things that I didn't know were going to happen.

Super exciting.

This week I got a text from a good friend of mine in California saying, hey, two, tune into Gary Vee's podcast that just dropped today. He has you in the best of the best for the new year. He featured you and I was so excited. I had no idea he was gonna do that. It's so crazy, you know, we never know what's gonna happen next. We never know what lies ahead of us in that next week. And when everything's uncertain, anything is possible. So I had no idea he was gonna feature me in his podcast. I was so grateful for that, obviously. So supportive. So grateful that he gave me the opportunity to be on his show, to come on my show, and now to feature me again in 2021 was. I'm super grateful. Okay. So you never know what's gonna happen. Stay optimistic. So this week I had some big meetings that I wanted to share with you guys and some learnings from each one of them as I've moved more and more into this virtual world and into the speaking business and into virtual speaking. I have been introduced to a lot of people through connections that I currently have and people that I'm working with. And I got introduced to a local person in Miami who is in charge of an entrepreneurial, a huge entrepreneurial group. And he was in charge of the South Florida chapters. And we get connected and he and I sit down to talk. And he's explaining to me some of the great people they've had come in and speak. Amazing people. What's gone well, what hasn't. So I was able to gather information so that I can make the best pitch possible on myself, of course. And so as he's telling me this, he. He's Mentioning that he needs to get more speakers. And he's telling me the kinds of speakers he wants. And immediately in my mind, I'm popping up. He was asking for Valentine's Day, who do I know could speak for relationships? And immediately I think of Elena Cardone. And then he was talking about issues with kids, and I think of my friend Amy Morin. And so as he's talking, I start explaining, oh, I know this person that could do it. I know this person that could do it. And he says, can you connect me? Will you introduce me? I said, sure. And while we're sitting there talking, he says, I really want to get into the speaking business myself, but I don't know how to do it. I said, well, I'll introduce you to someone that's going to help you and get you off the ground, no problem. So anyways, I lead this meeting that I was going to to pitch myself to land more speaking engagements with a laundry list of things that I need to do to help this man. Now, here's what I want you to know. Of course I pitched myself to speak. At the end. At the end of the meeting, I said, now listen, I'm happy to take care of this. I feel like your assistant with the laundry list that I have, I'm happy to do it. I said, but here's what I also want to do. I said, I'm a fantastic speaker, truly, you know, 100% money back guaranteed. I deliver fantastic results. I am speaking for a company very similar to yours this week, and I'd be a great fit for your organization. When can we go ahead and work out a deal to have me speak? And he said, okay, let's talk price. Let's talk dates. So he's like, end of February, beginning of March, he said, pick a few dates that work for you, and let's nail down the topic. So it worked out great. But what I did was I definitely put his needs and wants first. And I. I believe in any business interaction, if you do that, you will come out ahead. Conversely, let me give you an example of a meeting that didn't go well because someone else didn't apply that methodology. I get an email from someone that I've only spoken to once, and I don't really know that well, and that person sends me an email saying, hey, Heather, you know, cheers to 2021, Happy New Year, whatever. I hope you're well. Wanted to reach out. Saw that you had Gary V. On your show as a guest, and Sarah Blakely, can you go ahead and shoot Me the contact info for their assistance or make an introduction for me. I wanna have them on my show. That is funny, right? Because that was not using the methodology that I used in this other meeting. That works really well, which is find ways to support and help other people and put their needs first. And when you do that, people wanna help you.

Right.

They're more open to that. So I wrote back and I said, well, number one, you haven't listened to my podcast, I guess, because I walk you through how I landed both of those people on my show so you would know that. Number two. And I went into detail with how I got to Gary. I took out Google alerts on him. I reached out to his partners. I offered to help his partner with their business. I did help his partner with their business. And then he came back to me and said, how can I help you? And I said, could you connect me to Gary? Right. There was such a long. Was years in the making. And then the Sarah Blakely. The only way I got to Sara Blakely is I was hired to interview her for a speech live in Boston. And that's because I knew her husband and he approved to have me be the person, you know. So anyways, it wasn't like just sending an email was my point. And so obviously he walked away without whatever it was he was looking for. Me handing him these two people, which I just. It made me shake my head is what it did. I was just. I was pretty surprised by that. And I want to share it with you because there's always a better way to do it. Right? And so hopefully he understands that it's a lot of work to get to certain people and to try to get them on your show. It's not a quick email or it's a little bit more thoughtful than that now. Okay, I want to tell you about another meeting that I had this week. So I had a potential client, a coaching client, reach out to me on LinkedIn and say, Hey, I want to meet with you. I want to hire you. I need to increase my revenues for 2021. Don't know exactly how I'm going to do it. I need to get to the next level. I said, great, yeah. So I sent her a contract to work together. And she said, yeah, I want to. I'm going to fly to Miami and meet with you in person. And that has not happened for me since the pandemic. Right. I don't see people in person very rarely. And I live in the wild, wild west out here in Miami. I mean, people Go out with no masks. And it's really busy here, so you have to be very careful or I choose to be very careful. I should say it that way. And I said, okay, but you have to understand I want to be socially distanced. I want to wear a mask. If we're going to meet, we have to meet outside. She said, yeah, no problem. So I did it. And I was a little nervous going into the meeting just because I haven't met in person with someone I don't know in so long. And it worked out great. She was amazing. What a wonderful person. And it reminded me, you know, the time went by so much faster than it does on Zoom when you're in person with people. And it really made me long for the days of face to face meetings. I can't wait till we get back to that. It's just the energy and connection you have with people is so different from versus what you're limited to on a computer. One of the interesting things that came from that meeting was I always ask people, you know, to empty their glass. I want to hear everything. I want to hear, what is the current business plan? Share the numbers with me. What does the team look like? What are the challenges look like? What do you see as the opportunities? Run the numbers by me for the past few years, growth, trajectories, et cetera. And so she's emptying her glass to me and then I say, okay, now give me 20, 21. What is the total revenue number you're going after? Talk to me about the breakdown with the people on the team. And you know, I go through the whole thing. She didn't know. So it was such an obvious. And this is not the first time this happened. So I don't know what your business is or what your business model is, but you need to get specific. You need to have set numbers, you need to post set numbers, you need to own set numbers, and you need to tie people's why to the numbers, right? So if you know your client wants to to buy a home in Arizona, well, that's going to help you find ways why they need to spend more money to make more money so they can achieve their goals. Right? Start understanding on a broader perspective what's driving people. That's going to help prop you up for more success. So I gave her deadlines on everything. Deadlines are critical, and putting it in your calendar and being held accountable is critical as well. So we really built out this very specific plan with deadlines, with specific monetary goals, specific KPIs you know, we hashed this thing out and within an hour and a half, she felt so much better walking away, knowing she had the bones and the framework for a successful year for her. Now it's on her to go back home and sit with her team and get their buy in. It's on her to actually do the work that we laid out. But she has the framework now and she and I are meeting next Friday to see what she has delivered on and or what challenges she has, has come to face that we didn't realize she was going to have. And then we'll work through those. So it's really important, get specific, own the numbers, just go bigger, get aggressive, hold yourself accountable, give yourself deadlines and get people on your team to buy in. When you do those things, you're going to have a heck of a lot more success. Right. So I definitely do that for myself as well and hoping that you've got that same or similar kind of plan. Yesterday I had someone, I was on someone's podcast and after we got off the air, he said, heather, I'm doing really well financially and 2021 is a big year and I've got a lot planned and you know, I'm going to be making a lot of money. However, I don't really love what I do and I'd love to do something different. What are your thoughts on me quitting? And I said, listen, number one, sometimes you have to do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do. This person had a baby and bills to pay. And, you know, most of us just aren't born wealthy with buckets of money sitting around waiting for us to spend. So when revenue is something that's important and relevant to you, you want to continue to focus on driving that revenue while at the same time bridging that gap to get to your passion and your goals. This is my recommendation. I wish I had more clarity around this. When I was younger, I saw that idea that my passion and dream job was so far away that I didn't even work towards it. And consciously I never did because I just didn't think it was possible. I thought I had to do what I was doing and that that was all I could do to drive revenue. Wrong answer. So what I recommended to him is do your job that's paying you really well during the day, pay your bills, keep saving, you know, take care of yourself and your family financially. However, at night and on the weekend, and you gotta grind it. You need to start writing your book. You need to start working on your business plan. You need to start reaching out to other people and build this other business and start today. And he said, you do think I should write the book because I really want. I hope he's listening right now too. He says, I really want to make sure it's different and unique. And I said, enough. Hang up with me right now, open the word doc and just start writing. So many people want to get mired down in this. Oh, well, this is what I really want to do. Well, then go do it. You don't need permission from me. If you're looking for permission. Permission has been granted. Go ahead, write the book. Take it on. Do whatever it is that you want to do, because you can. Okay. You are going to freak out at how good my guest is today. I'm. I'm freaking out. I love this guest. I think this is one of the best interviews that I've had, especially over zoom. We were able to have such a strong connection. He's such a talented and amazing man. Chase Hughes retired from the US military in 2019 after a 20 year career. Chase now teaches interrogation, sales, influence and persuasion. He developed the 6MX system for intelligence agencies, which is now the gold standard in tradecraft. Chase is also the only trial consultant in the world who offers a whopping 300% money back guarantee. That's crazy. Chase is the author of the number one best selling book on behavior, profiling, persuasion and influence, the Ellipsis Manual. Chase is a total badass and you are going to love him. So hang tight. We're going to be right back.

Chase, thank you so much for being here with me today.

Yeah, glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Heather.

Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. And I can't believe. Featured with Elon Musk, top 20 CEO list for 2020. Are you kidding me?

I know. I still. It doesn't feel real at all.

I mean, do you get to hang out with him now? Like, what does this include?

I don't know. I've been waiting for some kind of an access card to Tesla or something. I haven't, I haven't gotten anything yet.

All right, well, hopefully, I hope Covid wraps up soon and they have some kind of awards ceremony that you get to hang out, because that is going to be an amazing day for you. It should be cool and much deserved. I mean, as you were saying? I mean, this was not something that happened overnight. You've only been living this civilian life for just the past couple of years.

Two years. Yeah.

The amount that you have accomplished in two years is mind numbing. What does that look like behind the scenes?

I write every day from 4 to 11am and I'm booked in 15 minute increments until 9pm after that on calls and stuff. And I take one day off a week, but I still write from 4 to 11. So 4 to 11 is the sacred writing time every day.

I would assume that the discipline comes from the military experience.

I think, you know, a lot of people assume that, but most guys in the military, I'll be the first to admit it, you're waking up early because you don't want to get in trouble. You don't want to get your ass handed to you. So you, you get up early. So a lot of what we think is discipline is actually habit.

So these are just habits you've created for yourself.

That's it? Yeah. So you just need a little teaspoon of discipline and then the habit starts. Like when, you know, you see somebody going to the gym, working their butt off every day, you know, you hear people say, oh, I wish I had that kind of discipline. That's not discipline, that's just a habit.

Well, a teaspoon. A little, a little bit.

It's a little bit just to get it started off.

Yeah, well, I'll take that kind of discipline. For me, writing a book was definitely not a 4 to 11am window. I feel like that your regimen makes a lot better sense to be consistent with it.

Yeah, I got that from Dan Brown, the guy who wrote the Da Vinci Code. That's his, his routine. So I just copied it. I figured if he can write a best selling book, then I'll do the same.

I definitely like that. And I'm going to have to try that next time too. I mean, don't reinvent the wheel people. If it's working for Da Vinci, I think I'm going to jump on that. All right, Chase, so what's so interesting to me is obviously the massive amount of success that you're having, it's mind blowing. But for people who don't know as a child and a teenager you were anxious or had social anxiety.

Tremendous. Yeah, I just kind of learned to mask it growing up. I got my start doing that in my whole career. Like some girl turned me down one night, I just asked her on a date and I went home and I literally typed into Google how to tell when girls like you and printed out a giant stack of stuff went down the wormhole and got addicted to reading behavior. And I got Addicted to behavior profiling. Because I could see people's insecurities, their fears. I could see all kinds of stuff way behind the curtain after a while, and I started realizing that everybody else is screwed up, too. Everybody's screwed up. Everybody's suffering, everybody's insecure. Then I'm like, oh, it's not just me. And I didn't feel superior to anybody. It was just. It made people more human. And I think it. It just injected some empathy into me that I think that's the number one thing that's lacking in people with social anxiety is that empathy factor that that guy's screwed up to. That guy, you know, has insecurities or that woman does just as well as anybody else.

I completely understand how you Googled, you know, how do you know when a girl likes you? Because I go everything. And I get that. But the fact that you took it down the rabbit hole, as you said, I mean, that's beyond. Where was that curiosity? Or do you just think this was what you were meant to do? You felt something different with this topic.

It seemed like a superpower. So I wanted to study reading people. And then once you can read people, you can persuade them on a completely different level. It's not just the normal, here's a persuasion technique. That technique becomes surgically sharp when I know the exact way that this person's brain works. So I wanted to compound this into a superpower, and I couldn't find it. So I wound up spending my life putting this stuff together and eventually started bringing this into intelligence operations and overseas interrogations. And I wanted to make this a tool to where it wasn't just something that I did, but something that was saving people's lives. And that's what really pushed me over the edge, to really get obsessed with this stuff because it was so effective.

That had to be intimidating, or at least it sounds intimidating to me, to think of making the leap of studying something in theory and then going into the military to the level at which you rose and actually implementing it.

It's hard only because they've got a we've got it figured out mentality. We've paid some guy a bunch of money, which means that your information, it's free, so it couldn't be very valuable, which is, you know, I was offering it for free. And at that time, there was a lot of budget constraints and things like that. But bringing it in, I only asked that you test it out. If it doesn't work, then. Then don't use it. I'll teach 10 people. And if it's not the best, then don't ever use it again.

And so clearly it worked.

It did and it does. Yes.

What are some of the things that you can teach us about how to utilize profiling and really help us understand? Because to me, it seems like a movie. It seems so far away from the natural teachings or things that we learn in school and day to day life.

One thing I think that's an essential ingredient in doing any of this stuff, surprisingly, is confidence. And I think that confidence is a manufacturable trait or skill, you know, whatever the heck label you want to stick on it. But it's so hardwired into us to feel unconfident because it's a default to safety. And if you go back 100 million years when our brains were, you know, evolving. Go back 200 million years, our brains were still evolving back then. You know, the average group of people was about 100 to 150 in a little tribe. And if you were overly confident and got smacked down, you had social consequences, which means you probably wouldn't have sexual or reproduce. Your DNA stops existing the moment you become too confident for your britches, we say in Texas. But that moment also happens when if I'm overconfident and I piss off the wrong guy now, I'm just dead. I get thrown off a cliff or I get my head smashed with a club. That was millions of years of that stuff happening. And so we have an existential fear that happens there. And it's the same part of our brain. If you stick your fingers in your ears, that's the part of the brain that we're working with. It's all in the limbic system. So all of our fear is right in there. And back in these, in this time a million years ago, if you didn't feel that fear, like if you're walking past a bush and a stick breaks and you don't care about it and it's a saber toothed tiger, it's kind of a big deal. Luckily, none of our ancestors died a virgin. None. So, you know, we, we all got that instinct passed down. So literally the exact same part of the brain that's afraid of a saber toothed tiger is the same part of the brain telling you, no, you shouldn't ask for a discount on that. Coffee, don't do it. So our brain is thinking, there's a tiger, I will get killed or I won't reproduce. So it's interesting in that regard, thinking of it from an evolutionary perspective, just understanding and just getting a grip on the knowledge that there is a little animal in there that's afraid of tigers. Standing with you in Starbucks and it's, it's trying to tell you like the tiger is going to get you if you ask for, I don't know, a discount on your coffee or whatever. And I think it helps to just understand that there's no tigers. There are no tigers. And just repeating that and understanding that there's a little piece of my brain, it's not my consciousness, human part of my brain that's doing that. It's an evolutionary holdover. It's a little residue from how we evolved. And just the knowledge that that is in there really does help to understand. Whoa. That thought wasn't real. And you had a quote in an interview, I don't remember where it was. I stalked you on YouTube, you know, before we did our recording here. But you had a quote. You said, fear is a lie or fear is a liar. One of those two.

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Oh it's from the Elvis Duran show. Yeah. Fear is a liar.

Yes.

Yeah, that really rang true because it's it's not a truthful fear that's going to represent I'm in some kind of danger. And what we're doing is like what we need to feel confident in these tribes when we're our ancestors are growing up is proof if this guy respects me. This guy's always respected me and everyone's always listened to everything I say. I have evidence and proof. Those are the two things that we're scanning for. And that gives me permission. And that's the key word. Once I see evidence and proof now I have permission to act a certain way, I can be more confident. But most of us, and people who lack confidence, of course me, on many occasions, we're looking and waiting for evidence and proof or permission that is never going to come. No one's going to come tap you on the shoulder and say, hey, hey, Heather, you've got permission to be confident today. That's never going to happen. And no one needs to. You can do that yourself. Or if you need it from me, you've got permission. And that's the thing that we need some kind of permission. And that's where the confidence ladder really starts. And it there's three things internally and two things externally in my estimation that happen when confidence occurs. We have an internally assumed permission to act. So I just think there's no tigers, nobody's going to give me permission. I'm going to start acting a certain way. That produces the next phase internally for us is a lack of reservation and doubt. So it reduces reservations, it reduces the amount of doubt that we experience. And the third thing is it gives us a sense of authority. And I want you to think of the word authority a little bit different. Like the first part of that word is author. I'm creating what's happening right now. I'm not responding. I'm involved in the creation of what's happening right now. And once you feel like the author of this situation or this part of your life, then it goes external and that there's an external acceptance from the other person. Because guess what, those other people around you, they won't act confident without proof either. So they will assume, automatically assume that if you're acting a certain way, you have proof. Other places you have already gotten proof from other people. If he's acting this way or she, they must be respected by everybody. So they automatically get something called social proof just from that confident behavior. And the true essence of confidence is the final stage here. So it started with internal permission and now we're passing the permission over to the other person to act in a different way. So the true power of confidence is in your ability to transfer it to someone else and not just possess it. If you go to the dark side of that, like Frank Abagnale, Capture Me if youf can, his true power of confidence was to give it to others. He made other people confident in him. And that turns into a chain reaction because the moment that it works just for a little bit, your brain collects a piece of data and we're looking for evidence and proof. And your brain starts to collect that from the first time that you just push yourself and get that done.

And collecting that data, is that what the profiling is?

Well, collecting the data is done on an unconscious level. Your brain is saying, well, you really pushed yourself out of your comfort zone, but it actually worked. So next time it'll be a little bit easier. You're not going to have to fight. The little kid in there worried about tigers anymore. He might still have a voice, but his voice is going to get quieter and quieter because we're looking for evidence and proof before we act confident, which is never going to come.

This is just so interesting to me because how you just described it, I've never heard confidence described that way. I agree 100% with everything that you're saying. And I mean the fear and I mean it can be visceral and feeling and I mean everything that you're explaining is so spot on. How did this become applicable in the military for you when you were just initially researching and learning about this? When it's starting with girls, I don't understand how that ended up taking you into the highest levels of government and military.

It started with a mentor I had who's a 72 year old intelligence guy, military intelligence guy. And I had bought this book. I won't say the name of it because I'm going to talk poorly about it, but it was on like these tactics to meet women. I was 20 years old, I was a naive kind of a douchebag. And I tell this guy, we're having lunch together and I'm a kid. He's agreed to mentor me. And I bring the book, I've got it in a bag and I'm telling him about this book. I'm excited about it. And he goes, do you have it with you? I said, yeah. He said, put it on the table. So I brought it up there, it's got a girl on the COVID And he said, I want you to flip through there and find one technique that isn't a way to fake or pretend like you have your shit together. And I couldn't do it. And at that point I was done. But I still understood that all those things in that book were if you have your stuff together and you work at a certain level, you are confident all Those fake things are just byproducts of a good person. So once you, you know, you level up, those things are just a byproduct of your personality or your character. So I started working in the correctional part of the military, in detention facilities, and I initially got on as a counselor and just talking to people and started seeing that this stuff is working. I'm seeing interrogators come in and out. And it got to a point where that stuff became, just for this one little facility, it became something that people started to use. And I thought, wow, I'm going to just figure out a way to package this up and I can replicate it to other people because it started doing a lot of good. And that's kind of how it came into the military side of it.

And that was you transferring confidence to them.

The whole transferring confidence came about when we had a guy who worked for me, and he was one of the guys who talked to these prisoners regularly. I'll just say that, but he was super confident. Everyone would describe him like, oh, he's extremely confident. But he didn't transfer it to anybody else. He was the guy that was confident and kind of pushed other people down. The more confident he was, the further down he made other people feel. So that's not.

We all see people like that, for sure.

Yeah. That's not confidence. So what you see in a situation like this is that person believes in themselves. They might have a high self esteem, but their confidence is low because it relies on the external world. So esteem and confidence, of course, you know, are absolutely different things. But the true power of confidence, the guys who did really well talking to detainees, the guys who do well in sales, the guys who are good therapists or good clergy or good parents, are very confident. And they, they make other people confident. So even somebody that's around you with social anxiety, we think, oh, if I just kind of crumble down a little bit, it'll make them more comfortable. But it works the opposite. You know, it makes them feel bad too. Now it's like double awkward. So somebody who has a natural confidence, even if they're around somebody that has social anxiety, they lift them up and they bring them up. So I noticed that that was one of the key things. And it wasn't just military. It took me a while to realize that it wasn't just interrogations or stuff like that. It was everything. And I realized I wasn't learning hardcore intelligence skills, I was learning human. This just applied to all humans. It took me a long time to figure that Out. But I didn't think anybody outside the military would ever be interested in this stuff.

Isn't that so funny? Whatever bubble we're immersed in, we only see within that lens and think it's so unique to that one little area when, thankfully, you were able to look beyond that and see that it's ubiquitous. I mean, it's unbelievable. And when you brought up just now, you were talking about when you try to shrink yourself down in order to make someone else feel better, whether they have social anxiety or whatnot. For me, being in a negative work environment and seeing that someone felt threatened by me, I tried that same tactic. Not aware of what you're teaching now that, okay, maybe that will make her feel more comfortable. And again, it did not work. You know, in fact, it actually made my situation much worse. However, still today, Chase and I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's just with women, but there's this sense out there or this understanding that isn't talked about, that if you appear too confident, it's a negative, or if, you know, you speak out about your success or you just are an open, strong person, that there's something that. Ooh, you might want to dim that down a little bit. It could intimidate others.

I think that that might be. I don't think they're talking about confidence. Because if confidence made you ruin relationships, Emma Stone would not be a badass. She's one of the most naturally confident people on camera, off camera, that I've ever met. And that's true confidence. So that doesn't. That doesn't need to put anybody else down. And I think the trouble comes when you have a confident person who is unconsciously thinking about status on a very regular basis. They walk into a new conversation, and they. They think, where am I? Am I on top? Am I a little below? They may not be trying to climb. They may not feel the need to be on top all the time, but they're thinking about status probably more than they should, and that bleeds into their behavior.

You brought up the fake it till you make it with that first book that you were sitting with your mentor reviewing. Does that mean you don't believe in the concept of fake it till you make it?

No, I absolutely do, because there's no such thing as faking it. If you act confident, then you're confident because other people will see confidence. So I think fake it just means that I'm doing something without mental permission from myself to do it.

Oh, wow. I like that. Because I agree with you. The more you start behaving a certain way, the more you start feeling it. And like you said, other people are responding to it as if it is. As if it is real. So that has been a successful tactic in moments when I've needed.

For sure.

Yeah. And I always ask people, where's the line? Where's the line from faking it to reality? Are you judging this by how other people respond? Then if that's the case, then faking it is for the rest of your life.

If you're going to keep growing and keep wanting to go to that next level and keep entering into that next Starbucks to negotiate, you have to be able to keep challenging yourself to do that.

And I think the whole concept, or the title fake it till you make it automatically carries some negative connotation.

Yes.

Where I think we should maybe replace that with just give yourself permission to do it. Because that's the threshold. That's the threshold between faking it and doing it for real. The moment you give yourself permission, no one else cares. They care so little whether or not, hey, does he really feel this way? No one gives a shit. So I think that's the threshold. When you talk to a human, even if you're faking confidence until you make it. There's no graduation ceremony where you get a certificate. Okay, you're not faking it anymore. Heather is officially confident. Hang it on the wall. If we're outside our comfort zone, I think it's a good thing.

When you were initially out of the military just in the past two years, and you decided to start taking on this work, were you questioning yourself all the time?

Two days after I retired, I did 20 years in the military. Two days after I retired, I retired on a plane on the way to London. And I'd never been to London before, and I was doing a seminar there, and I'd never taught civilians in my life. I've never done a keynote. I didn't do anything. And I had a hundred people sign up for this big thing. I rented out the entire Winston Churchill underground war bunker for this symbol.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. I had a major imposter syndrome for that. Like, well, I'm not qualified because I haven't taught civilians before. I'm not qualified because I'm used to teaching in uniform, and now I'm wearing a suit. I'm not wearing camouflage anymore. I'm not qualified because I don't bring my body armor overseas. There's so many things that I tried to convince myself I looked for evidence and proof that I wasn't qualified instead of just ignoring that that stuff doesn't matter.

And you are so educated in this arena. That's so interesting that someone who's so knowledgeable still defaults back to these same issues that everyone has.

100%. I think the difference between me and the average Joe is that I'm looking at myself like, what a dipshit. Like, as I'm experiencing the thoughts, I'm like, I know that it's happening, I know I'm experiencing it. And it's down there in that little mammalian part of the brain. And I know that it's a completely irrational part of my brain, but still it's, it's got a visceral. Like you said, it's a visceral effect. And it's, it's also the part of the brain that's making your heartbeat, it's making your intestines work right now and it's powerful. And if you start pissing it off and start getting out of your comfort zone, it's going to say, okay dude, I'm just going to make your body feel like crap for the next 15 minutes.

And would that really happen?

Yeah. That's why we feel so stressed out when we do something. We're faking confidence, for example, or we do something out of our comfort zone. That thing stresses us out so much we feel like crap. So we'll go back to safety. It's a little kid. I want you to try to imagine that part of your brain as a little nine year old kid who doesn't know any better and is trying to pull you back into safety. And you understand that, that you can speak back to that part of you like an authority figure and say, well, I, I appreciate you're trying to do the right thing here, but I'm going to make the decisions as a human instead of a mammal, an animal.

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That matter, the way that you described it to me resonates with me so much because I liken it to learning as a 46 year old woman. It's crazy. I'm just learning this recently that fear is a green light. That means go and step into fear instead of running away and hiding from it. And I always liken that to we Learned as children. If you feel fear, go home, go under your bed, hide, don't do anything that would put you in harm's way. But somehow along the way that just becomes, like you said, the habit, the norm. And you don't even notice that you're implementing it in your daily life. It's so unbelievably eye opening. So tell me about 6 minute X ray.

6 minute X ray is a new book that just came out and I spent 20 years developing this system because everybody says I trained the military with a six week course. And everybody says, oh, we need a shorter course, Chase, we need a shorter course, shorter course. And so I had to get a system down to eight hours for intelligence agencies to read a person on an extremely deep level. That is more than any psychiatrist or psychologist is trained to do. What are the essential things that make this person tick? What are their insecurities, their secret fears? What are they hiding behind? What does their mask look like? And we're all wearing. Everyone wears a mask. Everybody. And how do they run on the inside? And I wanted to be able to teach these intelligence people to be able to profile a human in a conversation in six minutes or less. And that's what my courses teach and that's what the book is all about.

That seems incredibly difficult and beyond aggressive. And you feel like you were able to accomplish it.

Yeah. And I teach this to law firms when they're doing jury selection and things like that as well. So I teach it to police departments, law firms, intelligence agencies and, and civilians now.

And I was going to say, and you should teach it to people dating as well. I mean, this could apply to, to anything, right?

Yeah. One of the courses that we have is a, a course designed for women. But anybody can take it. It's got a lot of this in here. And then it's a huge bonus throughout the entire course on how to unmask and reveal narcissists on a first date. And how would you be able to unmask and spot a narcissist or a manipulator within the first six minutes, within that six minute window.

Can you share one of those strategies with us?

Sure, I'll share a couple. So one thing you'll see with narcissists, especially on that first date, I'll do three. Their friends are all out of town. They live in another state, another city, another country. They don't really have a lot of local friends. Their friends are elsewhere second. You'll see. Just asking a small question. You'll hear their Past relationships, everything was someone else's fault. They were a perfect human being. And you'll hear a lot of that type of language. But most of all, if you want to spot, like someone who's a malignant narcissist who preys on the weakness of others, is if you say something that's really exciting, your face lights up. See how your eyebrows just went up when mine did? That's called reflective empathy. So your face lit up the same way mine did. And if I'm saying something sad, like if I'm talking about a relative of mine who was just diagnosed with some illness or whatever, you'll see their face change to a little bit of more sympathetic tone to match yours. And when you're dealing with someone who's a malignant narcissist, you won't see reflection, reflections of emotions in their face when you do those things.

That's kind of. I mean, that sounds like a killer, not a narcissist. I mean, that sounds a little bizarre to me. So what happens then? Are you teaching? Because if you're teaching women how to spot the narcissist, obviously, then the narcissist could be learning how to teach themselves not to exhibit these behaviors.

Right?

That's right. And that's why you got to look for a cluster of things and not just one or two, because you can't manage all of them.

How do you know that people are using all this information for good and not evil that you're putting out there?

I'm an arms dealer. I guess 99% of the people are going to use it for good stuff. And you got to remember, all psychopaths are narcissists, but not all narcissists are psychopaths.

Yeah, so I did not know that. So I could not remember that until you just shared that with us. But I definitely appreciate that knowledge. Wow, that is really eye opening. I would imagine, though, and tell me if I'm wrong, that if someone's doing like you were saying, you know, raising the eyebrows or whatever, that you would be. Anyone would be able to tell if someone was faking that.

It depends. Especially with, you know, if you work with people on the spectrum, the way that they cope as they're growing up is to mimic facial expressions. And if you send a narcissist to a psychotherapist for treatment, there's no treatment. What they're going to do is learn how to wear a better looking mask.

What do you mean by that? You said everybody is wearing a mask, pretending to be Something they're not.

No. Everyone has a mask that they present. And that's typically one of the biggest mistakes that I identified in my career is that, that I'll just use the word selling instead of getting someone to confess to a crime.

Sure.

So if I'm selling to a person, the best advice I could give somebody is due to the fact that every sales training, every influence, every persuasion training teaches you how to sell to the mask instead of the person behind it. So the person that's behind it is typically what makes the decisions. Because our, but our brains are extremely driven by the subconscious, by that mammalian emotional part of the brain. And then we'll go do something stupid or not and then reverse rationalize it after we've already done it. So we'll come up, you stop somebody walking out of a Best Buy with a big ass TV and you're like, hey, why don't you buy that tv? And they're going to say, oh, they're going to list off all these logical things and they're going to say, I've never been influenced by commercial before. None of those things. My neighbor's tv. No, that did not make me want to buy a bigger tv. You know, like all these little emotions happen and it's so powerful. Listen to this. They did a study where they opened someone's skull, put electrodes down into the brain and moved a person's arm with the electrodes so they made them reach forward, they made them reach up, so they moved their arms around. Even then, the person knowing full well that there's a neuroscientist back there doing this stuff, swear up and down, they absolutely affirm they chose to do those things. That's how powerful that conscious brain is that tries to take credit for a lot of stuff that goes on down in the basement.

That is really crazy to hear that. I mean, that's kind of scary, isn't it?

Yeah.

And so your whole concept is to understand who is beneath the mask then so that you can impact that person, not the mask that people think they're speaking to.

Correct.

How can you do that?

Well, the system that I teach is to identify who the person is within six minutes, what their social needs are, what are the things that drive them on a social level. Because if I'm in a conversation, if I'm talking to you right now, we are in a social situation here. So I'm not worried about your actual needs, on whether or not you're hungry or, you know, this pyramid of needs that, that goes to the Side, this is a social situation. So I'm worried about what do you need socially? Do you need to feel intelligent? Do you need to feel accepted or do you need approval? Do you need to feel significant? Do you need other people to feel pity for you or to acknowledge how bad you have it more than everybody else? So all of these little social drivers are really important and they help us to expose what the person is very privately afraid of in a lot of their decisions. Because our decisions are emotional and social and they take place on that level. That's way behind the mask and that's one of the things I teach. To start peeling that mask off.

This is just so unbelievable. I was a psych major all through college and I find it so incredibly interesting. But we didn't learn things like this. I mean, they need to somehow combine your teachings for students so that they're learning more day to day applicable things that they can implement in their life. Versus theories.

It's a ton of theories. I majored in psychology too.

Of course you did.

And it's like, oh, here's a study that says that humans typically tend to do X, Y and Z. And I've always got to the ends of those things and just praying that I would see another like, okay, and here's the end of the article. Here's 15 ways you can actually use this shit.

Right?

That never happens.

Well, Chase, obviously everyone is going to want to learn so much more after this interview. Where can we send everybody to find out more about you and your very real world teachings?

You can just google Chase Hughes anywhere or you can go to chasehughughes.com pretty simple. And you can check out our YouTube channel. I have with three other behavioral experts where we dissect true crime interviews. People that say they were impregnated by aliens tell you whether or not they're telling the truth or not. And with science based, research based things, we'll break it down and teach you how to do it in your daily life. Whether or not you're interviewing a babysitter, when stuff like that, it's really critical, you can learn to do that yourself. And that is called the behavior panel on YouTube.

Chase, thank you so so much. Love this conversation and so appreciate your time today. It means the world to all of us.

Thank you.

Likewise. Thanks for having me.

Heather, hold tight. We're going to be right back.

I asked you to try to find your passion. I hope you love meeting Chase as much as I did and were able to glean some insights into reading other People, because this guy is just a wealth of knowledge. I'm so grateful he was here. Okay, now let's take a look at this. I got this note on LinkedIn, I believe, or Instagram, not sure. Hey, Heather, any advice for a new year kickoff message for my team? I lead three manufacturing companies and I'm looking for a fresh kickoff and theme for 2021. What do you think? So I have a couple that I want to share with you that and I love the idea of theme meetings and having, you know, a themed year. But first of all, one that's been really powerful for me and I leveraged a lot in my virtual speeches, has been finding certainty in uncertain times. Right. As everybody's dealing with so much unknown of what, what is this year going to look like? What is the economy going to look like? You know, is there going to be more layoffs? What are, you know, people are feeling very uncertain and calling out the elephant in the room is key to success and trust and communication. So call it out. There's a lot of of uncertainty right now, and I believe we need to acknowledge that. Another possible theme would be 2021, a year in transition and looking at and embracing this year as the transitional year. Knowing that, you know, last year was the stay at home year. This year is for a lot of us, stay at home, for some people, not so much. Hopefully by the end of the year, there's more back to normal out in the world. So calling this year what it is, a year in trans transition, a year of the unknown would be another great theme for a meeting, great kickoff. And there's so many different legs that you can take out of these different themes. Right. In regards to innovation, in regards to self awareness, in regards to personal development, in regards to achieving goals, in regards to evolving and changing and getting better and uniting as a team. So that's my answer there. Okay, next one. I've just recently started listening to your podcast. I love it. Thank you. I thought I'd reach out to you because I'm looking to start a business online. I bounced around ideas for years trying to figure out what type of business to have. I travel a ton. However, the changes too often for me are that I don't own a boat and I'm not sure what that means. Okay. I have a certain degree and I'm certified as a diver and would like to become more involved in environmental recovery. If you have any advice, I'd be more than happy to hear from you. I know you get tons of messages. Okay. I'm not sure exactly what it is this person saying they want to do, but here's what I would share. The way that you build a business, a successful business, is one you need to identify. What problem are you solving for people? What is it that people come to you for? Now, that's if, let's say you don't have, maybe this person has a diving idea and it's a product that they want to develop. We'll then go ahead and create a prototype and see if there is, you know, you got to test the market. Is there an interest in need there? If you're saying you're going to be teaching or training, you need to see are people coming to you for that? Is there a problem that you solve around that that's different than what's in the marketplace right now. You have to test and start understanding if there's a need. Just because you like diving doesn't mean you can create a diving business unless you're solving a problem. And maybe it is just that, you know, people do want to go out on boats and learn how to dive. And now you just to figure out how can I, you know, come up with the money to invest in buying a boat and how do I set it up online? Don't worry about the how so much. I would focus on what it is you really want to do. Solving problems for people and starting to understand and test and ask. You gotta ask people. It all starts with asking, hey, would you want to, you know, would you be interested? And that's really what I did when I launched my online coaching business was I just put on social media, hey, you asked, I answered. You asked if I would do consulting and coaching. I'm doing it. Shoot me a DM if you're interested, right? Just put it out there. Start. Stop holding yourself back and worrying about how will I do this and how will I launch an online store. I didn't know how I would do it, but the more you take steps towards it, the faster you start figuring it out along the way. So don't get held down or held back in the how. Focus on the why and the what, what problem you're solving and why you're doing it. It's your passion. So permission granted. Start taking steps towards that. Figure out if there is a business model there and then don't focus on the how to start taking action to get it done and you'll figure it.

Out along the way.

Successful people, that's exactly the recipe for success. They don't know how they're going to do it, but they have faith in themselves that they will figure it out. And 99% of the time, they do. So thank you so much for being here. If you could please subscribe to the show rate and review. It means the world to me. Until next week. I'll be creating confidence, and I hope you will too.

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