Former FBI Spy Recruiter: The One Thing That Makes People Trust You Instantly

I've often said that, and in any sales process or any negotiation process, that people can't really lean in until they feel you pushing them away.

Yeah, sometimes. Yeah, no doubt.

So you're in this conversation and you've talked about safety and what it could be like on the other side, and they have the key to that life. They have the key to that economics or that security. Security or whatever it is that you're able to provide for them. But if they're just kind of wavering there and then you push them away by taking it away and saying, "Well, we can't. This is as far as we get to go." Right. And then at that point, immediately, generally, when I've done that, I know within a half a second because they will immediately fill the space and say, "Well, no, no, no, no." They'll lean right in and they'll come towards you. And then you just need to get outta their way and let 'em keep coming.

And you know why that is?

I don't.

I'm sure you do. It's 'cause they feel in control again.

Oh, okay.

Because so people start getting reticence is when they start feeling like there's manipulation at play. And manipulation, isn't it a control of time, action, space, words, thoughts?

Yes.

And so when they feel empowered with choice again, again, my 4 keys of communication, the last one is empowering people with choice. When they feel like they're back in command of their choices, Now they feel safe because again, when we have situational awareness, when we're empowered with choice, we feel safe. Now I feel safe that it's my decision to move forward. And so, and do you know, do you watch old movies ever?

Sure.

Did you ever see the original, a 1934 Miracle on 34th Street? Santa Claus?

Yes.

Macy's. Yeah. So think about this. So in that, in that old movie, Santa Claus is at Macy's and Macy's is trying to sell their toys and he'd have all the kids sitting on her laps and Macy's didn't have the toy. And so what did he tell the mom to do? Go to Gimbel's and get it. There. And the management was going bananas. Oh my God, Santa Claus is sending all these people to their competition to buy the toys that Macy's doesn't have. And meanwhile, one of the moms goes up to the manager at the end of her son sitting on Santa's lap and says, I don't know what scheme you're playing, but you know what? From now on, we're going to buy at Macy's because you actually looked after us. In other words, Santa Claus empowered them a choice to solve a problem in their life and gave them the choice about how they wanted to do it. Formed great trust.

Let's move over to your book because I read it yesterday and I'm in the middle of a bunch of negotiations. I think we always are, but it's unusually heavy for me right now, the scope and type of negotiations that I'm in. And I picked up your book to prepare for our conversation. It's called Unbreakable Alliances by Robin Dreeke. It's a highly recommend. And what I like the most about it, so, you know, I Okay, candidly, I'm like, man, I'm going to get some really good FBI stories in here. You know, I'm like, how many times has this guy been shot? No, you know, like, what's— you know, how fast was the car chase? Right. But no, this is a business book, right? This is— this is taking some very basic principles, like you mentioned, unlocking the power of communication, the 4 keys to building strong alliances. And it's, to me, I actually highlighted it. I copied it, I highlighted it, and I'm going to have it on my desk for the conversations that I have this week. Because sometimes we get, we overcomplicate things and we get too tactical. And if I've had any success in my life thus far, it's been very relationship-driven. And sometimes I've gotten taken advantage of and other times I've given too much. But there's other times where we've won and it was just based solely on the fact that the people knew what they could expect from me. And that if I hadn't screwed over, you know, people in the past and there's not people in my wake just, you know, laid over with my business dealings and my personal dealings, that they could expect that they could generally trust me, that if I said something, I would do the best of my power to deliver on it and that I would listen and try to always do what makes sense. And I've gotten into different business deals where there was issues of control. People have not— people appointed me as the person with the decision authority and the control. They put themselves at risk. But I mean, and these are relatively large deals, and— but they trusted that, you know, that I would, I would make the business decisions that were in the best interest of, of the business and I wouldn't self-deal. Um, the, you know, so I, I think As you look at these 4 keys, seeking thoughts and opinions of others instead of solely focusing on sharing my own.

Yeah.

The second one is speaking in terms of other people's priorities and challenges and pain points instead of your own. So basically being very Solomon-like and making sure that you really understand what's in it for the other person. Third key is practicing non-judgmental curiosity. So basically validating others. When people ask me questions and they're on point, then I understand that I'm heard and that they really understand what's here as opposed to just trying to negotiate against me in the situation, which is kind of repulsive. To your point, I get repelled very easily when people are overly transactional in the moment, and I think they're missing the long-term opportunity of a relationship. And that, and then empowering others with choices. Uh, how did you develop those, and would you just care to expand on— and then it goes on, and the following chapters are trust, communication, and inspiration. And that framework is, is, is so simple, but I find it to be so true.

I, I discovered it, and thanks for sharing it, because to me it's the anchors of everything in life. It's everything in life I was missing. I discovered it because of great, fantastic, humbling moments. You know, most of us go through childhood trauma, varying degrees. And I always say we were born pretty perfect. The world messes up for about 19 years. We spend the rest of our lives overcoming those trauma pain points in life. And what happens to typical people, especially in my case, was I was very, very adept at solving my problems. You know, I grew up with no money. I had to go to work at a young age. You know, you get bullied, you know, whatever it is. And so you overcome problems, challenges, and pain points, your own. And I was very good at relationships early on. So I have a, I have a desire to, I'm an extrovert, I'm from upstate New York, and so I love chit-chat and I loved people. I love engaging people. So I was very good at developing relationships and I was using those relationships to solve my problems. The, here's the rub though. I had lots of reps up until the time I hit the Marine Corps. I'm in the Naval Academy. I was, eh, kind of 50/50, but it's a hard test. Naval Marine Corps. It's all about leadership. And the first time I was evaluated as a Marine Corps young officer and I got ranked dead last out of all the other second lieutenants, and my Marine Corps major says to me, you just need to be a better leader. I said, what the hell are you talking about? I thought I was. And I go, what do I need to do? What? Owning my behavior. He goes, you need to make it about everyone else but yourself. I had no idea what the hell he's talking about. I had no context, but I started analyzing from that point on when I was 23, 24 years old, what the hell did he mean? And so over time, then definitely by the time I left the Marine Corps and coming in the FBI, you start seeing the impact your words have on others and you start observing it. When your job for 22 years in the FBI was your impact on human beings and developing healthy, strong relationships, whether it's confidential human sources, spies, or even the most important one is upper management because they had to approve my operations. You get very adept at shifting the focus instead of solving my problems, What can I do to understand and solve your problems? Because if I can be a problem solver for you, whether it's Recruiting Aspire, my executive management, my team members, my squad members, my kids, everyone wants you in their life. And so I had to learn the language to shift the focus from myself to others. And here's the beauty of the, of these 4 keys. You still are going to do the same thing. The objective doesn't change. So, I mean, I literally was on a I had a call with a client yesterday over the weekend. Instead of telling someone what you, hey, here's what I think you need to do. You know, I, I think you need to send me to this training event. I think you need to, um, do this type of profit share with me like this way, cuz that's what you think you should do. That's all about you. Instead, you can still do the same things. Like, hey, what do you think about sending me to this training event? And what do you think about people that are looking for profit shares in this way? What do you think is the best way forward? You're still getting them to think about exactly the same thing, but you now shifted the focus from what I want to asking their opinion about what I want. And they were going to remember in a very positive way, because when you're putting someone in a position where they're going to be a teacher, mentor, and guide, you're valuing them. Means you're valuing them, you're being present, you're accepting them for who they are non-judgmentally and their thoughts and opinions in a specific area. It's the greatest human flattery we can do. And I'm not talking about cheap flattery. It was like, hey, you got a great shirt on today. This is actually deeply making that human connection. That's just one example of using a seeking a thought and opinion instead of giving your opinion, but your objective is exactly the same. It's shifting that focus. And, when you do that, you got the big four in the brain, serotonin, oxytocin, dopamine, and endorphins are firing because you're saying to this person, "I see you, I value you, and you're safe with me." Nice.

What makes a great alliance?

The keys of communication for one thing. When I see those things coming back at me and it's balanced, oh my gosh, there's there's nothing better than a balanced equation where both people are being valued by others and both people are giving value to others. It's when ensuring that the asks don't outweigh the offers. It's making sure it's a good, healthy balance. And here's— and now there's some relationships where there's more energy giving on one side than there is on the other, and that's completely fine. 'Cause here's your simple one-ingredient recipe to see if it's a healthy relationship. Does it have any sense of the horrible emotion of resentment? If there's any resentment at all towards an action, a deed, a thought, or anything even implied, that becomes an unbalanced equation. Because if it, if there's resentment over someone or something or an action being taken, that means there's a feeling of inequality. There's a feeling of unbalance. And so I'm always ensuring that we maintain a great healthy relationship. And that no one at any point has any tinge of resentment or any of the unhealthy emotions, because that is the sign that we have an unhealthy balance.

We talked a little bit off air about reality shows, and alliances are key to Survivor. I just— the— my wife and I just finished watching extracted.

Yeah. And they had alliances on that too, didn't they?

Oh, they did. And alliances get made and alliances get broken, but alliances are important. The book Unbreakable Alliances was focused at who? Business people, you know, business owners, any— anybody who wants to further their own interests by paying attention to other people's interests.

Yeah. So I focused it and I wrote it for the aspiring leader inside organizations, someone roughly in their 30s and 40s. But that's how I disguise the holistic approach engaging any human being because it's exactly the same everywhere. There is not one thing in that book that I have not used in every single aspect of my life that I didn't learn a humbling moment, whether it was recruiting sources in the FBI, stumbling my way through the Marine Corps. And, the most important role I play every day in life is that's as a father. I'm a board member on different things. I coach, mentor, speak. It's everything in life because all these things, I mean, think about it, we're Homo sapiens. We've evolved for hundreds of thousands of years. We all seek, crave, and desire the very simple thing of wanting to feel safe and we're always going to act in what we think is our best interest in terms of our safety, security, and prosperity. That's the anchor. All you have to do as another human being, another Homo sapiens, is figure out what the other person think that means from their perspective. Be that person for them to solve all those things. You do so with open, honest communication, transparency, and that sense of vulnerability. You're going to have a relationship. It's just how we work. And so that's what the core of this book is, is how do we do that and make it a conscious thought so we're not reacting to the world around us, we're actually engaging the world around us.

Hmm. I was surprised to see the word inspiration in there as a chapter.

Yes.

How is that used in the model?

This is the most important part of the model to me. Um, the— I've, I've been part of so many trainings, so many groups, organizations that, uh, everyone always says, well, I'm not an— I'm anti-manipulation. 'Cause a lot of times people associate the spy recruiting world with manipulation, subterfuge, deception., and it's anything but that. I mean, you just hear from this conversation we're having, that is not my world. Because if you're going to inspire someone to take action, um, you're not going to use those things. And so every word, when you're working and doing the art form of human interaction, every word matters. And just think about this. If someone thinks you're manipulating them, do you have trust? No. Doesn't even matter whether it's true or not. It's the perception of manipulation. Then think about this too. That's why I dove deeper on these words, influence and persuasion. Manipulation's about me and what I want. Even when I say the word influence or persuade, those are softer words. They're meant with goodness and kindness, maybe at heart, but still, who's it about? I'm trying to influence you to what I want you to do. I'm trying to persuade you to what I want you to think. Who's still it about? Me.. So the word inspire, all I ever try to do, and I've used it throughout our conversation here, inspire is about what can I do to unlock it for within you? So in order to be inspirational, it has to come from and originate from you. So to, and here's what I mean by that. Even the word convince, you don't convince anyone to spy for their country. You don't persuade, influence, or manipulate anyone to spy for their country. All I can do is, what can I do to inspire you to want to? In other words, how do you inspire someone to take action? Well, I have to offer you a resource for priority, challenge, or pain point in your life for you to overcome it. And now I have to couple that with the behaviors of trust. So inspiration's all about unlocking it from within the other person. People talk about inspirational leadership. What's inspirational leadership? It's you being there for others. It's all about the others. So I use that word inspire because it's force you to be other-focused, not you-focused. Got it.

And we had a conversation about game theory, which starts with kindness and then a reciprocal action. So you're on Survivor and you perceive that you want an alliance with one or more people. So your guidance to these people would be to start with kindness, get to know who they are, help them in any way you can, maybe even be vulnerable and show, take an action that's visible to them that's for their benefit. And do you find that most people, even though there's obvious self-interest in that situation, will reciprocate and at least form some sort of alliance?

So Survivor, the reality show itself is complex. I've watched every season now forever. And actually, the one survivor that won using game theory was back, I think it was either '13 or '15, Yul Kwon, Cook Islands, became a friend of mine. And he actually, he used game theory or the game theory called tit-for-tat. And the computer models played this out and they've done it through hundreds of thousands of iterations. And it's the way actually human beings work most cooperatively. It's actually about how do you form a cooperation where both parties mutually benefit. And it's actually through game theory. And the theory is very simply, you start with kindness and then you just reciprocate the last action. And it, it means, it means you have to have the courage to take that leap of faith to start with kindness. Now, who has a challenge to do that? People that are, see the world as out to get them. They see the world that they're a victim, they're wound collectors. Also, if they get wronged once, then they hold onto that and all they're gonna do is reciprocate wrongness and they're gonna hold a grudge. And people that hold grudges cannot effectively use game theory cuz they're going to be out to get you. And what game theory simply says is, matter of fact, the most effective politicians and statesmen we see in the world use game theory. They start with kindness, but if you punch 'em in the face, they're gonna punch you back. Yeah. But as soon as you stop punching 'em in the face, well then we're all, we're all in big smiles and let's just move forward from here. The past is the past. We're in the present. So game theory is just starting with, starting with kindness, reciprocating the last, last emotion or action taken, and then eventually it always ends in kindness, kindness on both sides. In other words, offer, offer on both sides.

Okay. Who do you work with in professional life? Or would you consider yourself to be a negotiation trainer, a, a career trainer? What, How would you describe the people that you work with the most?

And for what? And for what? It's a great question. It's been in leadership, 100%. Leaders in different organizations. A lot of times it's, I do a lot of coaching, coaching of executives, coaching of individuals, especially finance division where there's a lot of people in high stakes games and they're building and forging a lot of healthy, strong relationships because people are literally giving their entire companies over another person to, and feeling safe with it. But when I—

Like mergers and acquisitions.

Yeah, a lot of mergers, acquisitions, and also taking care of clients. But I'll tell you why I actually did a deeper search on exactly what I do and where it relates mostly. It's mediation, believe it or not, as an intermediary mediator. Because what do I do most as we've talked about here? I have the ability to see the world through the other person's context and lens free of judging that context and lens. And when you can do so, you can see both sides. Like you said, like Jordan Peterson, you said, was doing. He's constantly putting himself in all these different positions as he's negotiating back and forth, even with himself, as he's arguing a point. And so what are those people? Those people are great mediators. Yeah.

Yeah. So what's your day job now? I mean, is it— I know you do speaking, right? I know that you do some consulting work. How active are you and what are you up to and what do you do the most of and what do you like about it?

Yeah, speaking is the number one thing that pays the bills. I enjoy it a lot, sharing these thoughts and opinions with groups. But I'll tell you the number one thing I do that takes up most of my time because of my FBI background and even though I was a spy recruiter and because I'm a behaviorist, I am a true crime commentator. Number one thing I do most of my time, I comment on all the big cases. I'm on different news networks and I'm on a couple weekly pod. I'm a contributor on a weekly podcast called Hidden Killers. So yeah, I'm a true crime guy because we just analyze crazy people with broken brains. It's just really, it's pretty sad, isn't it? But yeah, that's my number one thing I probably do most of the time now is true crime commentary.

Nice. Nice. So if you were speaking to somebody early in their career and with the lens of what you've got in your book, Unbreakable Alliances, how would you guide them in terms of building credibility for themselves so that they can create alliances and ownership and accountability? If you're gonna, if you're gonna program somebody and say, okay, if you, if you want to have a great career, you're going to need great alliances, and these are some skills that you need to acquire and that you need to practice and that you need to hone around building credibility for themselves and ownership and accountability, how would you counsel somebody?

Yeah, first thing is definitely lock in on the 4 keys of communication. Okay, focus on those 4 keys, reverse that optic from self to others, because that's going to build the number one thing you're going to need throughout your life, and that is a good positive brand. You want to be that house that people want to go to. And part of that second part of that is what I failed to have in my 20s. And what I think is the most critical thing that the most successful people have is that is focus on solving and being a problem solver and a resource for others. What are you going to do to make your boss's job just a little bit easier? What are you going to do to make your people's jobs around you a little bit easier, a little bit better? Get focused and practice on understanding what other people are going through. In what you can do to be a resource. And I say available resource too, because some people just might not want you, and that's fine and clear. And so just really focusing in on how to be that resource for others, seeing those pain points, seeing those challenges. And the most important thing that kind of anchors that all together, be a problem solver and not a victim. It is the most telling tell that anyone can have is if you see the world as half empty negative, as a, with a victim mindset, and you're a wound collector, as Joe Navarro talks about in Dangerous Personalities, that is a very difficult thing to overcome because problem solvers is what people need and want in life. Problem solvers don't complain. Problem solvers just lean in. And when you can then focus on, and, and it's not what I talk, what Simon Sinek talks about in his book, Start with Why, 'cause we have to understand that big overarching why as the mission statement of, of our purpose. But underneath that, we gotta focus on what, what questions, what specifically do I need to do to move forward? What specifically was the outcome I was looking for? What can I do differently next time? Focus on what questions, ask what questions, cuz it keeps people cognitively engaged, objectively engaged. So you lower the risk that they're gonna get insecure or feel like you're challenging 'em and flare up their insecurities and defensiveness. And so ask what questions, focus on being a problem solver, and use the keys of communication. That's my best guidance.