The PSYCHOLOGICAL TRICKS To Instantly Be More Confident & WIN ANY ARGUMENT | Evy Poumpouras
Evy Poumpouras on what makes a life great: developing your unique talents, following your inner drive, and impacting others. She explains how body language often contradicts what we say, and why living as if today were your last shapes how you show up.
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When you're communicating with people, again, connection, connection, connection. Why does it matter? And not that you want to be nice to people, it's not about being nice. It is about negotiating, it's about communicating, it's about connecting. When you do all these things, you will be... I think you gotta have a dream.
The School of Greatness.
Really? Yeah.
Please welcome Lewis Howes. So I'm curious, for people that I feel like they've lost their self-esteem and confidence, what are some things that people could do to really own their confidence again and build it back up.
Everything you're saying actually is true, and I've seen it because I've had so many people reach out to ask about questions, and there's a pattern. We're in a very fear-based place where people are very fear-based very unsure of themselves, very unsure of their decisions. Even when we're seeing this mass exodus of people leaving work, you're seeing people almost reevaluating themselves, trying to understand their lives. People are not as Assertive or certain about a lot of things.
They're not definitive. They're not clear.
They're not. It's very fear-based, very fear-based. I'm not sure. I'm afraid. Even I even see them in the classroom. I'm an adjunct lecturer and professor, and I teach criminal justice and criminology. So even in my classroom, I will see my students be afraid to raise their hand. When I ask them questions.
Why? Because they don't want to look silly or something or.
They don't want to be wrong.
Mm-.
And we're also in this space where people are afraid to say the wrong thing and be wrong. So it's fear in so many ways. So it's not just the physical fear of the body, right? The illnesses, the COVID all that stuff, but it's also this fear of what is the world going to think of me? How am I going to be labeled? And I will sit in class, I will ask a question, nobody raises their hand because they don't, they don't want to be wrong. And then even when I can get them to speak, you can see them speak in very hushed tones, very soft. I can barely hear them. And I tell them, Own your answer. Don't worry about being right. Be wrong. It's a classroom environment. And so I think it comes from a very fear-based, we're just very afraid in general.
It's interesting, I've been doing a lot of research for a new book I've been writing about really three main things that hold us back in our life, the three main fears that cause us to doubt ourselves. The fear of failure, the fear of success, and the fear of judgment, other people's opinions. And for most of my life, the fear of other people's opinions was the biggest thing that held me back. I was the one who wouldn't raise my hand. I wouldn't speak aloud because I was so afraid of being made fun of or picked on or whatever it might be. How can someone overcome that fear of, you know, a classmate laughing about them or saying, oh, that was a dumb question or just, something may be bigger than putting something out on social media and getting a tax or whatever it might be. How do people overcome that insecurity?
Well, I do think we've taken a step back actually in in-person communication. A huge step. Everything now is people are more comfortable in texting and communicating through social and then when it comes to in-person, something's completely shifted. You can see people having a harder time Communicating in person and everyone's kind of deviating towards Typing texting or email. It's become the comfort.
What's the most the easiest way to.
Communicate without yeah, exactly text is the easiest email. So here's the thing in person is the best way to communicate by the way Whenever I can speak to somebody in person or sit down and see them Like this. This is where you get the best the best is where you get magic right then there's you Okay, then there's the phone. Phone is another great way. But when you go to email, you still have to write. But long-form sentences, you have to write properly. Texting is just a couple of words. And that is where everyone's kind of shifted to gone. It's also the, when I text or when I post on social, I'm not as, it's keyboard courage.
You wouldn't say it to someone's face.
You would never say it to somebody's face.
I feel like you should only say things online with what you would say to that person's face. Otherwise, what are we doing?
Yes. If you can't look at somebody and say it, then you shouldn't write it. But it's the anonymity that I can write this stuff and then I can take out whatever's going on in my life out on somebody else and I can feel brave in that way. But it's such a false Way to Be Brave.
What does that do to the person communicating in that way, having that false bravery by saying something strong or powerful or aggressive online, but the unwillingness to do that in person? What does that do to that person?
You have to check in with yourself and realize, Am I being a coward? If I can't say something to somebody's face, but I can do it over text, there's something that's missing. I think bravery is something that we don't speak about and courage is something we don't speak about. We don't do it in a very overt way, in a very physical way, in a very engaged way. It's talked about as this thing. Oh, be brave, be motivated. Where is that? You have to manifest that with your body. You have to do it. And it's doing it in the day-to-day decisions that you make. So going back to my class, it's interesting. We talk about criminal justice, criminology, and sometimes we'll talk about even being, for example, I showed them a video of somebody who fell on these New York City train tracks in New York City, and there were all these people on the platform. One person gets down to go help the person. And so I asked them, would you do that? The majority of the class, no. No, hell no. No, whoa, I'm not gonna do that. And I hear that and I think something is lost there amongst us. When the answer, at least I feel through my belief system again, is that the overwhelming answer should be like, I would want to help save another human being's life. I would want to help save somebody else. But we've come to this place where it's very much self-preservation. Don't say anything wrong. Don't do the wrong thing. Right? and attack in a way that's safe and comfortable, or not even attack, but you can disagree. And here's the other amazing thing. I think we don't understand how to disagree. So you can disagree or you can be competitive. It's something actually that you're taught in interviewing and in interrogations.
Are you trying to be competitive in.
Interrogation or just- so when I say competitive, I mean that I can disagree with you in a healthy way. So you call it competitive dialogue.
How's that look? If I say, you know, the sky is green today.
Okay, well tell me why you think the sky is green.
It's just, it just looks green. You know, I just see the color, you know, I don't know, maybe it's a reflection of something, but it's green, it's not blue.
Okay, so now what I would do in that moment is ask you why you think of it that way, why you see it that way, What is.
Your belief about that? You're not disagreeing with me and saying, oh, no, you're an idiot, it's blue. Yes.
You're not doing that. You're not getting like defensive or aggressive. Because that is your value system. So I may, for example, I have a very strong belief system, fitness and working out. It's been part of me. But that's my belief system. It is not somebody else's. If I try to impose it to somebody, so for example, when you hear somebody say, I have to lose weight, I have to lose weight, their belief system is not really based upon working out in fitness. So, I can turn around and be very direct. And that's being direct with someone is the way you lose people. So, what you want to do is, you want to always let people talk, even if you don't like what they have to say, even if you don't agree with them. Let them go, let them explain themselves.
What happens when you let someone explain themselves, even when you know they're 100% wrong?
You shut up. You shut your mouth. That's like, I always say that, that's my, the gift to any great communicator is this. Let them go. Don't correct them. Don't tell them that they're wrong. Just let them be in their world. Now here's the important thing. One, they're going to say everything they want to say. You're going to understand what their mindset is. And two things happen. One, you can speak now because once somebody is done sharing everything, now they can hear you. Well, what you do is you're speaking, I cut you off, I insert myself, you get frustrated, hey, you're not listening to me, I'm talking. She's dismissing me. And so when I speak, you come back at me, I come back at you, and now we have conflict. And so, for example, when I used to do interviews, I would sit in rooms with people who-- when you mean an interview, you mean interrogations.
Interrogations.
I use, you know, it's interesting. They call them interviews, though. Interviews and interrogations are the same thing. So what you see in TV, in law and order, that you did it, you this, you that, that's garbage. It doesn't work. Doesn't that work? The best confessions I've ever gotten, they've been almost like psychology sessions or conversations where people progressively over a bit of time give you what we call admissions.
A little more, a little more.
Yes. So it'll be like, Yes, I was there at the house. Oh, yes, I was there at the time. Yes, I saw her or I saw him. Yes, I left upset. Yes, this. Yes, that. And then, Incrementally, they get to, you get to the confession, yes, I did it, whatever that is, right? Whereas we go straight, most people go straight for the kill, tell me. And it's because of this lack of patience, this thing that we know everything. And maybe you are right in that moment, but it's not what you think, it's what the other person thinks, understanding how they think, getting into their head and speaking to them. So now if we bring this back to what you asked me about, being competitive means, I can compete with human ideas without it being ugly, without being confrontational or conflict. But what we've done is we've made conflict a confrontation, this very negative thing. We don't want it. When it happens, people lose their minds. I have so many people reach out, especially when I do consulting. The question is always, how do I avoid confrontation? How do I avoid conflict? Why do you spend so much time avoiding it? Why do you spend so much time avoiding speaking what you want to say, speaking your truth or sharing your ideas? And why can you not present them in a way where there is disagreement, there is competitiveness, I compete, you compete, no, the sky's green, well, I see it this way, oh, I see it blue, but why do you see it this way? And you have that dialogue.
But it's not an aggressive competitiveness. It's an open dialogue.
It's not me being a jerk to show you how smart I am. Yeah. And it's not me shutting you down. And it's not me having an attachment to the end result, me being right and me showing you how right I am. Confident people don't care how right they are. They don't. When you're confident, it's like, I know what I know, I'm good with it. This person sees things a different way. And also it also comes into where the dialogue where sometimes we think, well, I'm saying this, and this is what I mean, you also have to think, what is this person hearing? So just because I think, well, I said this, it's like, that's great, but what are they hearing? How do they hear you?
What's the skill then for people to-- what happens when people avoid conflict as much as possible, as opposed to leaning into it and being comfortable with the discomfort of conflict?
That is very dangerous. and it is very bad. To avoid it. To avoid it because I'm not telling you to go look for it. Avoid it to certain degrees when it's noise, when it's chatter. Like people talk to me about politics all the time because I was former Secret Service. I don't participate. To me, it's noise, it's chatter. I don't share. And I never speak about the people that I had access to are protected. Sure. But that, it doesn't matter to me.
But a conflict between relationships of friends or family or co-workers or so it.
Depends if it's important to you, you should address it. What you do is it causes long-term regret.
If you don't address it.
If you don't address it, it causes you to build up resentment, anger, bitterness and hate. That's where that comes from.
And then the other person doesn't even know what they did maybe.
Maybe they know, but if you don't check them, 'cause from time to time in life you have to, I say check, this is my queen's coming out, but when I say check, Address it.
Yeah, check in with them.
Yes, you said this, this is how I see this, and when you debate something with people, use language that's factual. You said this, you said this, you said this, you know, rather than trying to speak to people, you did this, you said this, you said this, 'cause you're giving somebody factual, something factual and tangible, to look at rather than I feel this way, I feel that way. That's what happens is we get lost a little bit.
So instead of saying, I feel this, you say, I heard you say this or you said this.
When you said this to me.
When you said this to me.
Okay, this is how I took it.
Okay.
This is why it's upsetting to me. Okay, is this how you see me? Is this true? We also have to check in with ourselves sometimes you know, we provoke people or we can be difficult people to deal with. But at the end of it, right, we always like, and there's this, I don't know if you've noticed this, there's this overall, this theme out there. Everybody's a narcissist and everybody's toxic.
Yeah.
Everybody else. Yes. Right? Yes. Everybody. And we don't realize, one, toxic people hang out with toxic people. So check in with yourself. So if you're around a lot of toxic people, check in with yourself. Right. Right. And then you can't label everybody a narcissist. You can't label everybody something just to make it okay for you.
And to put a blame on someone else. You didn't do that.
Right, because we also have to look at what we're doing. What are we doing? Who are we engaging with? How much of this stuff do we bring into our lives? We're not always innocent. Sometimes we are. Especially in certain situations with serious trauma or abuse, especially with children. There are some situations where That is completely innocent. But then if you see a pattern in your life, if you see this, you have to find a way where you are not afraid to speak.
Why is it so scary for people to speak about a disagreement or a conflict?
One, because the theme is to avoid it. Avoid the stuff, avoid confrontation. Conflict and confrontation have a very negative Tone, stigma. And I say, I always tell people, embrace confrontation. When I worked in the White House, you have the cabinet room. The president sits in one seat and you have all the heads of the different departments. The whole goal of the cabinet room was to debate things. So instead of, if somebody says to you or your boss says to you, you know, I didn't like the way this was done, do it this way next time. And you hear, He doesn't like me, there's an issue there. Because you're making everything too much about yourself.
Yeah, I'm taking it too personal.
You're taking it, yes, your identity is becoming tied into everything. Whereas can you just hear what he said or she said? They're telling you they didn't like the way this was done to be effective, right, and execute quickly to get things done. They're just telling you, I don't like it, I want it done this way. And so we've lost that ability too to not make everything about us. We're also in this very me, me, me, me, me, me space. Everything's me, me, me, me. And we don't think about the other person across from us. What are they dealing with? It's my boss. There's a deadline. They're just trying to communicate with me in an efficient way. And I think one of the blessings I had from being in the Secret Service There was no, it was just very direct, hey, this wasn't supposed to be done this way, get it done this way.
Did people take it personally?
Zero.
Really?
And we were so much more efficient.
Did they train you on how to not take things personally or was that just a culture and you had to learn quickly otherwise you would suffer?
I think when you go through training itself, they put you in very stressful situations. You begin to understand that this isn't about me, that you're about a collective unit or team. You are there for the other person, you're there, There's human life on the line, so you really understand the bigger concept and idea. And then you understand too, what is the goal or the mission? The goal is to protect the president. The goal is to solve this case. You understand that there's a goal. You are less likely, very less likely to take things that, oh, you don't like me. It's like you have nothing to do with this.
It's so interesting because I would say that I used to have a fragile, what would you call it, personality maybe, confidence level in my teens and 20s, right? When someone would give me critique or say I wasn't doing something right, I would take so much offense and take it personally. I would resist critique at all costs because I had a fragile identity about self-belief. And then when I hit 30, I'm 39 now, I started going to a lot more emotional intelligence training workshops. where they taught me the power of feedback and not to take it personally. And it was so challenging to receive feedback in these workshops. But the more I practice it, I was like, okay, actually I want feedback. How can I improve to be more effective in these areas of my life? And some things maybe are gonna land for me and support me and other things, maybe it doesn't resonate with me, but not take any of it personally. Just use it of how can I be more of service to my mission? and I think I was so afraid of what people thought about me and how I looked, as opposed to am I just giving my best towards my mission in life right now? And when you have the mission at a high level of, you know, presidency and protecting people, you're not thinking about yourself or what people think about you. You're just thinking about getting the job done at the highest level, right?
Yes. But you're also thinking about, too, executing it to the best of your ability. I want to perform my best.
So give me more critique or feedback, right?
Yes. Yeah. I know now I have people who work for me as well, and I always tell them, Don't yes me. If you see something different, tell me. And then I'll make the best assessment that I can. I don't want you to yes me because I may see something different. I have a different background, a different mindset. Let me know. But we don't want to hear that. We want to be told how great we are. We don't want to hear that we're, We're making mistakes where that we're wrong. We take it way too deeply and what that does, it doesn't allow us to grow. It makes it harder for people to work with us. And in fact, a lot of companies reach out in that one of their, one of the issues that they have is communicating to their employees where they want to tell them, we want you to do this task this way. And when they speak to their employees, the employee hears something else. They get very upset, they get sensitive about it. They're like, we don't know how to dialogue with them to make them care about the task. Everything becomes about them personally.
What they're not doing right or something.
Or how they're- Yes, how am I perceived? What do people think of me? And at the core, and it's interesting that you said that, it does come from our insecurity.
So how do we overcome these insecurities so we're not offended by everyone that gives us feedback?
Well, you have to ask yourself, am I an insecure person and be honest about it? And most people don't. don't want to think of themselves that way.
I had a lot of false confidence growing up. Or I was confident in one area, but not in other areas. So I could be confident in the sports arena, but then in life, I would be more fearful of people's opinions. And it took a while to learn how to unlearn that and just be okay with that.
Where do you think that came from?
I mean, probably a lot of stuff. I mean, I was the youngest of four. I didn't have a lot of friends growing up because I was in the bottom of my class and I had special needs classes and tutors all through college even. So I just felt like the thing I was spending the most time in, school, I was the worst at compared to my peers. And so I think just getting picked on and made fun of in that arena made me insecure about myself thinking I'm not good enough, not smart enough, not whatever, talented enough. And then when I was more of a teenager, I got into sports and became put all my energy and effort into that and started to excel, which gave me confidence. I got results in an area of life. So I went all in. But when I got injured playing football, when I was 23, I lost my identity in that. So it's like my confidence was tied to identity of sports. And if I no longer have that identity, who am I? And where does my confidence come from? I had to learn later in my 20s how to build confidence within with my character, which is what something you talked about. It's like learning to trust people not based on really their results or who they are or how famous they are or what they've done or how much money they have, but on how they show up and their way of being consistently. I had to learn the hard way by making lots of mistakes. and then shifting that through pain. Okay, now I need to show up in a different way consistently. So I think that's how I learned. But part of me is grateful for the early training and the inner insecurities, but other part of me wishes I never had that also. But it allows me to connect with other people and see people and have a lot of empathy as well.
I think when we are younger, yes, it's a bit more difficult during the teenage years and early adulthood I mean, just factually, the human brain doesn't develop fully till you're 25 years old anyway. So there's all these other issues happening biologically, which is harder to communicate sometimes with younger people. In fact, actually, even when we look at crime, the majority of crime committed is by younger people. 18 to 25. Really?
Wow.
So it goes to show you that there's correlation there with other things. We also see higher rates of impulsivity. within that age group. So the younger population typically is the more, you know, I'm sorry to all my younger people out there, but I was there too. And if you think back, it's where we are the most unstable, we are the most impulsive, which means we don't really think through things, we don't think of the consequences. We are much more identity based. Me, me, me.
What we wear, who we're hanging out with, what we're doing.
I'm the sun, everything revolves around me.
Right, right.
And it is, and so that's where we also see this impulsive behavior. Impulsivity tends to be one of the characteristics when we see criminal behavior, deviant behavior. So when you hit that 25 mark, and there's a lot of theories trying to figure out why that is, but we see even when it comes to just crime and deviant behavior, we see a kind of a, it peaks, peaks, peaks, we hit 25 and then it just starts to fall off the cliff.
Why is that?
Some people think it's because of the biology, the development of the brain. You're fully developed now.
Other people think-- you- have more responsibilities in your life.
You gotta-- you- have a job, you're responsible, you have a spouse, maybe a partner. A partner, yeah. That you answer to. You have these responsibilities. Sometimes if you look at it just based off of gender, male gender, which tends to skew more towards committing crime, they also think hormones, biology plays a role in that. As well.
Are more men committing crimes than women?
When we look at the data, yes.
When we look at- Or getting caught.
At least, you know. Who's getting caught?
So I'll tell you this.
So yes, women just better at not getting caught? Actually women, so let me add the first part, yes, when we look at violent crime overwhelmingly it's mostly men. However- Violent crime, yes. Yes, violent crime. Actually crime overall to be fair. But were we seeing as we have this equality taking place, what's interesting, we're also seeing women commit more crime. Come on. Yes, so where we see actually more crime being committed by women is not really in the violent area, violent crime, they're property crimes.
What are they?
Property crimes, fraud, money, scams.
Really?
And I'm trying to think back when I worked investigations, I would arrest quite a few women and the crimes that I would arrest them for typically was fraud, stealing money from the government, checks, cashing, fraud, schemes, electronic crime fraud, yes. That's where women tend to commit when we look at the data of the most crime. Violent crime typically still at the moment skews more male, although women are definitely closing the gap. And then when we look at the male population who's represented in a prison more, we do have men. However, to be fair, is it also the mindset that when a woman goes before a judge or the court and a man goes before the judge in the court, are they going to look at those two individuals?
The bias.
The bias differently.
They do, I'm assuming, right? And you want to feel like, okay, we have to protect the woman maybe from what could happen in prison. I don't know what.
I think it's because we don't perceive.
Women as-- Could they really do this? Did you really stab this person or shoot them in the face?
She seems so nice.
Yeah, she seems so put together. She's so kind, yes.
Well, we don't perceive typically. I do think it's shifting, but we typically, historically, Women, even if you just look at something simple as who gets away with getting a speeding ticket, men versus women.
Women.
Right, probably women, yes.
Now, who's harder on women in court, male judges or female judges?
So I would think female judges would be harder on women in court. It's something called double marginality, where when you are, and they also noted this in races as well, when it comes to race, when you are in that capacity.
You can't let your race or your gender get away with something.
You will try to overcompensate to show, I'm on this side, I'm a judge, I'm not gonna be biased towards somebody because of gender or race, 'cause they're my same gender or race, because it would not be perceived as well. So I might even be harder on them, just so that I'm not perceived as being soft on them, which is not fair.
That's tough. I'm curious. You know, I've heard that, I don't know the statistic, but I've heard that women in relationships cheat just as much as men. But women don't get caught as much. Why is that? And I don't know the statistics, but that's what I've just heard. Why do you think if that's the case that women don't get caught as much, but still cheat as much?
You know, that's interesting. I'd not heard that. The one thing I had known is that what we're seeing more is women are more likely to file for divorce today than a man would. That I've heard. As far as lying and cheating, my experience, I've seen it, I've seen everybody lie and cheat, regardless of gender. People do it. So I've, in my years and years of interviewing hundreds and hundreds of people, To me, I've seen people lie equally and cheat equally. I will say that, yes. I've not, I think certain people may not get caught. Perhaps because you're not looking at them as much, they're being overlooked.
You're not as intuitive maybe, or?
Well, look, if maybe you're not thinking they're as, I don't want to say that they're better liars because it has to do with the person. But if you don't see them as much of a threat, you're not going to suspect them as much. You know, here's a good example. I did undercover work. One of the reasons I felt comfortable doing undercover work and I would get picked to do undercover work is because I didn't look like law enforcement. I didn't look threatening or menacing or anything like that, so I was more successful.
People trusted you more in, in, I.
Wasn'T looked as a threat.
Oh, her high five. She couldn't be a, she couldn't be.
A police or she could be a service or, or even when I would do interviews or interrogations or even today, if it's, you know, on TV, on camera or for the news, when I'm interviewing people, guards tend to be lower versus when you've got somebody else, maybe that's a man that's bigger in size, you're going to be a bit more, oh, I need to, It's just how we perceive people, but it all goes back to the way we size people up. And we all do it. We have our perceived ideas of what we think of people. You meet someone within the first five seconds, you size them up. You make your impression of them, what you think of them. And once you make that impression, especially if it's negative, it's very hard to undo. Very hard to undo.
After the first few moments, first few minutes. Yes.
Yes. And that's good for us to know too, because when you're meeting someone, Those few moments when people don't have when they don't know you they have nothing to judge you by they judge you on what they see and how they put you together your energy what you say your energy Behavior you say energy.
I say behavior yeah, we're in LA here. We say more energy, right?
But it's behavior.
It is behavior.
Everyone uses energy because they don't know how to define it Assess people on behavior when And I'm bringing this up because this comes up a lot. Evie, I feel this person, I don't know. It's like, no, you do know. It's their behavior.
What are their behaviors? What are they doing?
What are they showing you? Because you'll get this, I love you, I love you if we bring it that. It can be relationships or friendships. I love you, I would die without you. The most important person to me. People tell you that. But then when you look at the behavior, what does the behavior show you when you are to meet them? Are they there? Do they cancel on you? Do they show up on time? Are they present? Do they blow you off? So, we get confused with, I hear this, but they show me this. And so, some people are very loud in the way they speak or very persuasive, and this is what people hear and follow, and then they're like, oh, but the energy hits off. Is it the energy or is it what they're actually showing you in their behavior? in their tone, even their paralinguistics, how they sound when they speak. Because you can even find deception sometimes in speech.
In a tone.
Yeah, you'll see a change in cadence. So if I'm telling you a story, I'm gonna lie to you, which I wouldn't lie to you, Louis. But if I were gonna lie to you, right, you're asking me, Evie, what did you do last night? And initially we're having this great conversation, and then you start asking me, What did you do last night? And I don't want to tell you what I did. Maybe I went out with your girlfriend.
And we partied it up.
Yeah, yeah. I want to cover for her. My cadence could shift. So I could be speaking normally and then, yeah, yesterday was great. I had a wonderful day. Abby, what'd you do last night?
Oh, well then I went to the store.
You have to think about a story now, yeah. Yes, well lying is work. It's not easy to lie. It's hard. It's hard. Lying is work.
You have to remember what you said of the lie, right?
You have to remember, and most people, Louis, don't like to lie. Most. No. We don't like to lie. We know it's wrong. Nobody wants to be a liar. And so, actually, the dominant way people lie is through omission. They leave parts out.
The white lies or they leave something out.
No, white lie is-- Evie, how do you like my outfit? I think you look amazing. I think you should, you look amazing.
I love it.
You look good.
You look good.
Actually, you look really good. Let's say it was like bright fuchsia or something like that, right? And I'm like, no, no, Brittany, you look great, Louis, right? Right. That would be a white lie. Lying by omission is... Leaving something out. I leave a big crux of it out. So I'll tell you about my day yesterday, but I will leave out that part where I met up with your girlfriend and we went out and we hung out and we partied it up. I'll leave that part out. or I'll leave out the part that she partied up. So that's why it's hard for people to spot lies sometimes, because people will give us a story, but they leave this crux out. And this is the thing you have to ask yourself, what's missing?
How do you know when something's missing?
Ask questions.
Yeah.
Ask questions. When you see gaps in time, sometimes even in speech you'll hear all of a sudden, and then in the next thing I knew, Those are typically sound bites of deception. Not always, but sometimes when you hear that, it's somebody skipping time in a story. So somebody's telling you a story and you get these great details, they're sharing. Then you get to a part of the story and there's a gap. And they're like, oh yeah, we went out, it was fine. And then they kind of... And then.
We came back and here's what...
Yes. You have to say to yourself, what's missing? It's almost like when people hire individuals to work for them and they look at their resume and then they look at their application form, where did you work before? What did you do here? And then there's that gap of time, like for employment sometimes you'll see a gap of time. Oh, there's a couple of years here missing.
What did you have? Oh, you know, I was just doing this.
Traveling across Europe.
But I got fired from three jobs. I just left that out. You don't have to call those people.
I did the HR when I was in the service because I did the polygraphs and I would look at their paperwork And I would see gaps of time for jobs or even when people got evicted, 'cause they would get asked, have you ever been thrown out or evicted? 'Cause you wanted to see somebody's history. And so we'd ask them, where'd you live? And they'd have to put years of, I can't remember how many years back, but 10, 15 years back where they've lived.
And you'd see gaps of time.
Well, where'd you live? Just with some friends. Well, why didn't you write it down? We asked you to write it down.
This was for someone trying to be.
In the Secret Service, right? Yes, I mean, that hiring process was way more intensive. So you put them through the lie detector test. I can help you out here for your employees.
Yeah, exactly. So you put them through a lie detector test and interrogate them on their whole history.
Yes, so it's called When youn Do a Polygraph, and this part I can share, 'cause I always wanna be mindful, I don't wanna say anything that's sensitive or classified. When you take certain federal jobs, so with US Secret Service, because people can write what they want to write, how do you verify what is or isn't truthful? That's where it becomes tricky and because of the nature of the job and the risk that comes with the job and the power that is given to someone, they do their best to validate that what is in the application is truthful. So there's two things. One, they'll look at National security stuff, have you violated national security? Are you somebody who's trying to infiltrate? That kind of thing. And then there's another part of it where it's, they call it lifestyle, which is where people struggle the most and people get disqualified the most. That is your history.
So, so if they were, if they've committed a crime, I guess the first part, there's no chance they're gonna make the job, right?
Depends on what the crime is. Really? Well, it depends on what you did.
When I was 14, I did this and that.
Or even 18 or 19. It depends on what you did because you have to look at people in general are flawed. So, especially when you're looking at the window of time which you brought up, you know, I was young, I was this.
Oh man, lots of mistakes. Yes.
And so, I think with those, at least I can speak, what they look for more is truthful and honesty. And the thing is, if you're gonna lie about this, then what are you willing to lie about later? Now, there are of course some things like if you've got a couple of felonies, you're probably not gonna get hired because that's, it kind of goes against the principle of what that job function is.
Was there ever anyone who had a pretty big crime that but they were, hey, it's been 15 years, I've been, my behavior has been so in alignment since then, I've done this and this and this and they're truthful about all their flaws and there's like, Yup, this was me and his point and here's this. And you're like, they're so truthful and honest, I now trust them more. And we want them.
I think by the time they come to you, because the thing was, you know, I would ask them, have you ever committed a crime? And then I would list the crimes. And so one of the signs where there was deception, I would, a red flag, let's say a red flag. Oh, no, you guys ran my rap sheet. I don't have anything.
What's like, I don't, have you done anything?
I didn't ask you what you got caught for. I'm asking you what you did. And we all know what we do or don't do. Typically, the people that were truthful would tend to have a very good shot, where I would see things that were more memorable or when people would lie or cover it up. So, I mean, you would get applicants that had, in the course of speaking to them, they would confess to... Really? Yes, I mean, I had abuse of animals, which was a big thing. I remember I had somebody who used to set animals on fire. Oh, man.
You would have-- oh, when they were really young, though, or something.
No, through the course of their-- and that's actually a huge red flag because as they were young and then they got older, and then they progressed from smaller to bigger animals. And so that's actually a bit of a-- I don't want to say prerequisite, but it's something that you'll see in younger people, which kind of leads to-- there's a lack of empathy there. So that's where you kind of go into sociopathic or psychopathic. behavior, personality disorders, and when we see those disorders, you don't see them a lot. Everybody thinks it's prevalent. It's not. It's out there, not as much. But those are individuals who commit acts or harmful acts against someone, but they don't feel bad. They lack empathy. It's one of the few, there's not a lot of disorders out there that do that, but there are some, such as those. That's where you have serial killers, or you have serial rapists where they do this but they don't feel guilty, where the majority of the population, when they cause you harm, they feel bad. That's why what's actually interesting when I would do interviews or as you like to call them interrogations, it was easier for me with the majority of the population to get a person who committed a violent crime to confess than it was somebody who stole money to confess.
Because it wasn't harmful or what?
What?
Why is that?
Less guilt.
Less guilt.
So if I do something to harm you, right, it means I'm doing something to harm.
To physically hurt you.
Yes. Even if I stole money off of you, I have to take it off of you. I'm doing something to you. But now, if I'm in my pajamas and my bunny slippers at my computer at home, Sipping my School of Greatness coffee and I'm on the computer and I'm stealing from Chase Bank or I'm stealing from some, or even if I'm stealing from a person, I don't know this person, then I don't feel as bad. That is why we're seeing a huge also influx in crime here. Because now you're branching off to a larger portion of the population. So the reason why you see so much fraud And so much scams, like it's your cell phone, right? Every other minute it's like, hi, you want to buy this life insurance? Or, hey, this is about to expire. The reason you're seeing that skyrocket is people don't feel as bad about those crimes. So we have a larger portion of the population committing those crimes. Whereas violent crimes, the majority of people feel bad. I'm causing harm to you. I'm physically doing something to you.
It's more personal.
It's personal.
You see the person, you're with the person.
Guilt.
It's not like you don't know the person.
Yes. So, this is why we're seeing this huge, huge blow up here. It's like, well, I'm not really, it's just some name on a screen that I see, but you also just wiped out this person's life savings. But you don't see it in that way.
So sad, yeah. You're not emotionally connected to it as much.
Yes.
I'm curious, you talked about how it's really hard after a first impression to change your mind about someone. Once you see them or you meet with them for a second or you talk to them for 30 seconds, you kind of have made up probably a lot of your bias about that person. Based on the way they look, the way they sound, what they say, facial expression, I'm assuming, body language, all these things. If that is so important, the first impression, to building influential relationships. What would you say is the thing that we should be thinking about every time we meet someone new, whether it be a stranger or an important meeting?
You have to bring all of you. So the majority of what we communicate with people, if we look at the science, and this is truly science-based, is almost 70% of what you communicate with people is this. your body and people don't pay attention to it. So when they're sitting in a meeting, something as simple as having very poor posture, so slouching the whole time. Sit up, show them you're there, taking space. So if I take space, so if I was doing this interview with you and I just was kind of sitting like this, I'm conveying to everybody out there, I'm not sure of myself. I don't feel comfortable, I'm insecure. You're gonna make an assessment of me. But when you take up space, when you open yourself up, it shows I matter. I'm here. And this is, people throw that out. People throw the body out. The other thing is, paralinguistics is powerful. So paralinguistics are what you sound like when you speak. My tone. My pitch. My voice. Even, and especially with women, this is one place where women sometimes It's we bring in these really high tones and these very my girly voice. I can bring that in.
Everything's a question also.
Did I go out last night? Did I, you know, I had dinner. I went with my friends. I'm very pompous. That sends a message about who we are and who we aren't. That where they actually some of the research says only 7% of Only 7% accounts to what you actually say. So people will sit and memorize a speech. They will memorize a speech. I have to get this perfect. But that's only 7% of what people actually hear. So it's the two most important things, is your body, the tool, are you bringing it? Is it engaging? Are you connecting with people? Do you even eye contact? When you talk to someone, are you really looking at them? Or do you break eye contact a lot? Most of the time we break eye contact when we talk to people, especially when we want to remember something. But when you're really trying to bring it in a scenario, in an interview, you're hiring someone or they're hiring you, bring it. Be there. Eye contact also conveys a huge amount of trust and a huge amount of confidence. So one of the things I hear is, oh, I'm uncomfortable with eye contact. It's going to affect you.
Right.
Because now when I read you, that's not a confident person. Do I want to hire this confident person?
So if they look you in the eyes while they're communicating with you or while you're communicating with them, it shows they're more confident.
It conveys strength and trust, confidence in myself. Also, eye contact, again, overwhelm, Overwhelmingly when we look at the data and research, it conveys trust. That's why everyone's like, Look me in the eyes and tell me the truth. Look me in the eyes.
I could look at you all day long, Louis and liar. I'm just as good a liar as you are. Exactly. It's really hard to look someone straight.
In the eyes and lie to them, right? You kind of have to look away for a second, right?
Some people may. It depends how good they are. Wow. Do they train you how to be a great liar? Like, do you have to learn to be a great liar in secret service in order to understand when someone's doing.
It to say, see the slightest tells? No. I was never taught to be a great liar. I was taught how to read behavior. And even still, I continue to go to training to assess human. It's all behavior. What are the people showing you? What are the indicators? But the most important thing is when it comes to reading people, and I know you and I talked about this in depth last time, it's not about one thing somebody does. And I see it a lot. where, oh, a liar is anyone who always does this or anyone who always does that. It is seeing the person's behavior and then pulling out red flags. So for example, if we go and actually one of the best ways to detect deception is through verbal. Words actually give people away a bit more.
How many cues would you say that you're looking for if there's like verbal body language, the story, their behavior, Are there a set of cues that you're like, okay, I look for these five things.
And if four of them are off, then it's like, Because you may not do those things.
Or I might just be like a nervous person in general.
Yes.
And you're like, why is this person nervous?
Well, I'm always nervous or something, right? So, okay, when I first came in, you spent 10 minutes, 15 minutes chatting with me.
Why do you do that? Well, because I like you. You know, I want to see how you're doing. I want to connect with you.
But you do that with all your guests.
Yeah, I mean, I did a little.
More with you, you know?
Okay, but what?
No, it's not that.
What's the reasoning why? Well, I don't want to just jump right into an interview. I want to build connection. I want to see what you're up to. What's really exciting in your life right now? Is there something off in your life that we can talk about and go.
Into and really just build a connection? So when you connect with them, do you not also get their energy?
Yeah, their behavior.
Their behavior, their energy, their movement, how they sit, and all that. Do you ever get somebody that's maybe you read them, your impression is this person is a bit more shy.
I don't want to have a boring interview.
Yeah, they're all off for the need this. I need to bring it.
I need to make them more comfortable. Absolutely. Yes. So, you're --I always say the pre-show is the show. You know, the show needs to be powerful, but if you don't bring it in the pre-show and build the connection there, it's like you're really interviewing someone in the pre-show. Yes. So that the show can inspire and impact the world.
Yes.
And if I don't create that in the pre-show or if we're not creating that, it's going to be harder to.
Create it when we get started. And what you're trying to do is figure out that person's baseline when you first read them. What's their baseline? Oh, right now I've got somebody very timid. They're not going to bring it. This podcast is going to suck. I can't have that. I want to have people feeling inspired. So you assess people's baseline. Everyone's different. So when you assess a baseline is this is who this person is in this moment. Now when you start asking them questions and you're always very courteous to me every time I come on, Evie, is there anything you don't want me to ask you?
Yes.
And every time I say go ahead, lay it on me, I have no problem. I mean, but then if you ask me questions then if I don't like it, you'll see a deviation. So Evie, you know, the entire time we were speaking, she's been sitting this way, using her hands, she's expressive, using illustrators, Then if you ask me a question that I don't like, if you lean back, you lean back, you, yeah. Well, I could just put my hands away.
Nothing more than put my hands away. And I can notice, oh, there's a shift here.
Wait a minute, right? You're gonna say, this whole time I've been speaking with her hands. She's very illustrative. And now she put her hands away. So what you're looking at is, what did I just do? I asked a question or I said something or did something. And as a result of that, it caused a shift in behavior. That's a bit of a red flag. Now, what you do next is why, in your head, why did she do that? You bank it in your mind.
You think about it.
If you're a good interviewer, and it depends how deep you want to go, you'll ask me questions about it.
About why you shifted.
You won't say to me, Evy, why did you shift? Shift, you'll continue to ask me questions about that.
That topic that made you feel there was a shift.
There was a shift. Oh, there's something here. Oh, I want to know. Oh, what is she hiding? Oh, what is the story there that I want to know about? so that can do that. For other people, I could just be sitting here the whole time. You ask me a question. I could do something as simple as put my hand over my mouth right before I answer you. Again, everybody doesn't do it, but you could say, why did she just put her hand over her mouth? But the thing is, what did I do? What did I say that caused her to do that? The goal is for you to be, to be not afraid. to ask questions. The majority of the population, very fear-based, we don't like confrontation, we don't want to push through or ask, and we let things go instead of being curious. You're curious about people, you're fascinated by people. I am too. I listen to people, I love to hear their story. And when you talk to them, they will tell you what they want to tell you, and they'll leave some stuff out. But, and you can't you tell sometimes the parts that they leave out? of themselves that they just don't want to share. There's something missing there. The energy shifts, the behavior shifts. It's behavior. I think people say energy because they just don't know how to define it. So study a person's baseline and you can do it within seconds too. So when you're connecting with people, what you also probably don't realize is that what you're doing is intuitively, Louis, you're reading people. You're getting the picture. You're getting a sense of who they are. Right? You even said to me actually today, you said, Evie, you seem more relaxed on this one. Last time you came in, I thought you were gonna pile drive me.
Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Right?
Yeah, it's interesting. And I always know that, and I guess it depends on if you're meeting someone for the first time versus we've met each other before, so the energy or the behavior can be shifted, I guess. But I always try to, and I think I did this with you, when someone walks through the door, I try to open my arms. I think right away I was just like, hey, you know, I open my arms. I try to open my arms and really just kind of be a joyful person, whether it's someone I know or someone I'm just meeting, because I want people to feel like this is a safe space and this is a joyful place and I'm a safe human being. I'm not gonna hurt anyone here.
So let me ask you a question.
And I also know I'm much bigger than a lot of people.
Did anybody teach you that or is that something you normally do on your own?
Just done it for years. I can't think if someone taught me, I don't remember, but I've just always kind of been this, because I think when I started doing it, probably in my teens or early 20s, I was like, oh, people are much more receptive to this. You know, there's probably a reward for that behavior based on what I was doing. So they go, oh, let me just always be this way, you know?
So actually, there's a term for that. It's called an open posture, welcoming posture. So it's, it's a wild because you do it intuitively.
Right.
So, this is when you want people to not feel intimidated, you want people to connect with you, what you want to do is exactly what you did. So, and supervisors, anybody out there listen up, if this is you want to connect with people or people are intimidated by you, open posture. So, I'm open, my hands are out, my hands are open too. Nothing's in my hands. So, it's, and you said, I'm safe. I'm not hiding anything. I don't have anything, my hands aren't in my pockets. I don't have anything in my hands. I'm open, I'm safe. And so I'm welcoming you.
Yes.
So that's actually something, that's one of the first things they teach you in the foundation when it came to negotiation and interviewing school. Have an open posture when you speak to people. This is the open posture, exactly what you do with everybody you meet. And it's smart that you do that because it's disarming, they feel relaxed, they feel welcome, they feel open, they connect with you, and you're gonna have a better interview.
Right. intuitively, or just unconsciously, the person's going to feel safe, whether they're even aware that I'm doing that or not. I even try to be conscious. I move my hands a lot on the table and I cover my chin or I'm thinking, but I always try to go back to having my hands open here, even just in a relaxed position. I don't know if you've noticed that, or I'll bring it to the side here so you can see them, or I'll have them here in an open clasp. Position as much as possible because I want people to feel, Hey, I'm here, you know, I'm open. But then I'll grab my pan or I'll do something, but it's always tries to go back to a relaxed position.
So, the hands again is the same thing. You keep your hands and I don't want to say it's not always a sign of deception. But one of the things they did- you- put it underneath. Teach you is just when you're talking to people and you see the hands disappear. So, you see somebody's hands, they sit on their hands. or their hands are under the table, never great signs. It doesn't mean again, it's just a red flag. So if I have my hands up here, you ask me a question that I don't like and my hands go down here, you should take note. Why did Evie do that? What did I just do that caused her to do that? But the fact that you keep your hands out, and this is important, when you're communicating with people, again, connection, connection, connection. Why does it matter? And not that you want to be nice to people, it's not about being nice. It is about negotiating, it's about communicating, it's about connecting. When you do all these things, you will be more successful. People will want to work with you, they will want to date you, they will want to be around you, they will want to be in your vicinity. This makes your life so much better because everyone sits and they memorize strategies and tactics and techniques. You are dealing with people at the end of the day. You master people, you will master everything. And it's so important, but we throw it away. We throw it away, and something as small as what you're doing, welcoming people, open hands, the hands out, being open, connecting, I'm showing you my hands, I'm here, Evie, I'm looking at you. Slam dunks all the way. Slam dunks. Touchdowns. Excuse me, you play football.
Touchdowns all the way.
Exactly.
Yes. Now, how does someone, when they're hearing you say this, and say they want to master the relationships in dating or in business or their career, how do they... What are some of the key strategies to mastering them in business and relationships without people feeling like they're manipulating or creating a toxic environment with those individuals?
So here's the thing, right? So you're saying manipulation, trick, am I tricking people, right? I hear this a lot. I'm gonna give you an example or analogy. If you work out every day, right? Let's say you work out every day, you're getting tough, you're muscular, you're strong, you're all that, right? Could you use that to help people, to help save people, keep people safe?
Absolutely.
Because you also use that to harm people.
Right.
So this is the same thing. So all the stuff that we talk about, could somebody use it to harm someone? Yes. It's like anything. You could take something that's meant to be positive and twist it. But I'll tell you this. When you come from a genuine place, people feel it. They feel it. When you are doing it with the goal to manipulate people, people feel that too.
What do you think are the subtle cues that people could tell if someone's trying to be more manipulative or more from a place of power control competition rather than a genuineness. It's where it's like subtle. It's not as clear.
I think one is if somebody is very over the top, when I have somebody say, Evie, you can trust me or this, like we were talking entertainment business before you or not. When I hear certain things, when people try very hard to oversell.
This is a guarantee this is gonna happen no matter what. This is easy, you know, all these things.
Yeah, those are always red flags. I'm always thinking, why is this person trying so hard to sell me? I feel that I'm being sold. Versus, look, I'm going to work with you. I'll do everything I can. You can connect with people and there's a genuine part that comes through. But again, but it's also, does the behavior match what they say? So if somebody's saying, I'm going to do this. You're so important to me. You're my most important client. You're my this. You're my that. But then they don't call back, they don't answer their cell phone, or when you do call, Hey, I've got two minutes, I'm super busy. They don't deliver. When they don't do those things, that tells you what? So that it's not in harmony. I'll bring you another example.
They're not in alignment of what they're saying and how their behaviors are acting.
Yes. One of the things with you, and this is completely genuine, when one of the things that I appreciate about you, where I saw that who you are and what you say is in harmony with what you do is, and I brought this up to you earlier when we were doing our hello, when I did my first interview with you at the top of the description box, the first line was about subscribe to my show and all that. And the second line was, Hey guys, Evie's book, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, look, he put that up top. You, your behavior, what you said and what you showed me, As what you were verbally telling me matched up with what you're showing me. That's what you want to look at. Because you'd be like, Emmy, you're great, you're this, you're that. And then if it's not there, if it's all the way at the bottom, or it's all about Lewis, Lewis, Lewis, Lewis, and my guess doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter. You can tell me I matter all day long, but people miss that. Don't just listen to, I don't want to say the garbage people say, Just don't look at what they do.
It's like trusting to an extent. Okay, you're selling me you're gonna do something. I trust you and let's see if the behaviors continue to match the words.
I'll even better you this. You don't want to give unconditional trust. There's certain levels of trust. You give conditional trust.
What's the difference?
Conditional trust is I give you a little bit here, a little bit here, a little bit here. And I test you. Not I test you, but I watch. And I wait. But what we do is, oh my God, I love Louis. He's great, which you are, right? I'm going to give him all my trust. I'm going to tell him everything. And then I get confused as to why do I feel betrayed later? Why do I this? Because you just gave it away like it's nothing. It's like you just took all the.
Money out of your wallet and you just did this.
When you go to the store, what do you do? You ask, how much is that? Let me give you exactly what it costs. So you should be that way with your trust.
Mm-.
You shouldn't be like just giving it out to people. It's conditional.
Let me ask you a question about.
Being.
Vulnerable with people, being honest, open, and vulnerable with people, whether in your first few interactions with them or you've known them for a while. Should we be thinking about ourselves and saying, I trust myself enough where I can be vulnerable and open with people, no matter how they receive it, or should we hold back who we are or some things about us to protect ourselves or to feel if they're trustworthy enough to have that information?
Yes, to the latter.
Really? Interesting.
I hear this vulnerable, vulnerable. I mean, nobody, one, like nobody wants to see it all day long. Right. Yeah. Everybody's got their own problems and their own stuff they're dealing with. I will tell you this though, When people feel too comfortable with you, they will challenge you more.
In what ways?
They will test you more. They will push back more. The more comfortable people feel with you. Think of it. The people that know you the best in life, they push you back. They push back the most. They'll call you out the most. And sometimes not in a healthy way, in an unpleasant way. But if you're, there's something powerful with keeping some things about you to you. You don't have to be an open book. And I know this goes against a lot of, be vulnerable, be vulnerable. I'm not telling you to be a jerk and I'm not telling you to conceal everything about you. But what I'm telling you is you need to have a filter. Nobody needs to know, people don't need to know everything about you. Keep that stuff to yourself.
When you were doing your interviews or interrogations, would you ever or did you ever become too vulnerable as a, I guess, strategy to try to get the other person to open up and share their vulnerabilities and kind of reveal that they did the thing they did. I think what I just did is.
I empathized the most. Okay. Because in truth, can I...
I can see how you feel about this. I had an experience, you know, I had a friend... Well, if it's a.
Criminal investigation, hopefully not. Oh, you killed her?
Oh, well, I could see why... Why I felt this in my life or.
Whatever it may be. No, because that would be disingenuous. So I'll give you an example. There's a difference between pretending, I understand and understanding. Empathy is I've been there with you. So when I came in, I said, Louis, I'm really sorry about your dad. Right?
Yes.
So I've also lost my dad. So if I said to you, Louis, I'm sorry about your dad, I understand how that feels. Can I say that to you? Do I understand? Because I lost my dad. Right. You would say she lost her father too, so she understands. Now if I never lost my father...
You can't say that.
And I said that to you, you kind of be like, you don't really know. Yeah. You still have your dad. Yeah. So when you empathize with someone in a scenario where let's say you had just lost your dad and I didn't, I would try to empathize. That must be very difficult. I'm sorry to hear that. Now...
But not relating it to yourself.
Not relating to myself. So the only way you can relate it to yourself and it be genuine is if you experienced the exact same thing the other person did. So in this scenario, yes, you lost your dad, I lost my dad. So then you would feel genuine. So it would be the same thing when you speak to people. So it's how you say it. So if you're not experienced the exact same thing, the best thing to do is say, I'm sorry to hear that. That must be so difficult. I can't imagine. I'm here for you if you need anything. You would do something along those lines. instead of saying, I know how you feel and trying to then, and this is what you don't want to do. Because when you first told me, actually, I didn't say to you, I lost my dad. Because I would take away from what I was sharing with you. I made it now about me. Oh, you lost your dad. Let me tell you about my dad. And my dad died, too. He died of cancer and all this stuff. And I'm going to that story. It takes away. So it's your story, your narrative, and I'm gonna let you just. Talk to me about it. And then if later mine comes up, fine.
Sure, sure.
So you don't want to make it about you. This is that me, me, me, me syndrome. When people are speaking to you, allow them to own their story. Don't feel that you have to be, oh yeah, I do the same thing. Oh yeah, this. One, they don't typically care. Unless you've been through the exact same thing and you feel that by bringing that up, that person needs that, Fine. Right. But don't do it.
You don't even need to, yeah.
If you don't need to, don't bring it in. Don't bring in the noise. Let that person's story be their story, 'cause what you're doing is you're bringing in your own stuff.
Give them that moment, yeah.
Let them have that moment.
I wanna go back to something you mentioned briefly that I thought would be interesting for people. When you wanna get information out of someone, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. interrogating a criminal, whatever it might be. Is it more effective to ask direct question, did you do this or you did this? Or is it better to ask an open-ended question and see what happens next?
So direct questions are not good and this is why most people do this, you're going for the kill so to speak and they get garbage. You get nothing.
What do people say?
Babe, they shut you down. And especially if it's a sensitive topic, they're not gonna wanna tell you. It's like, did you do it? Yeah, hey, I did. Let me tell you, sit down. You wanna let people adjust. It's almost like you put their feet in the water, in the pool. Your feet, when you go into the ocean, you acclimate to the water. Some people dive in, you know.
Sometimes I jump in, 'cause it's too.
Cold to just go in. But for the most part, the idea is you acclimate, and then by the time you get in, you're the same temperature. When you speak to people, then that's the way to do it. And you don't have to get the information in that moment. You want to work on people over time. So you want to get admissions, which is pieces of information, if we make it about a crime per se, right? Rather than going, Did you do this? Did you do this to this person? Did you rape this person, kill this person, steal this thing? Steal this thing. And I would never say steal. Sounds ugly.
Did you take this?
Did you take this? Rape sounds ugly too. I would never say rape or kill. I would say, Did you hurt this person? Did you lose yourself? I would use different terms. Sounds nicer. Even if somebody lies, Hey man, you're lying to me. Ooh, Louis is like, I know. Louis, there's something you're missing. There's something you didn't tell me. I feel there's a part of the story missing here. I want you to be comfortable enough to tell me.
So you would say that?
Yeah. Sounds different. So that's one, think about the words coming out of your mouth. What do I sound like? And then more importantly, what do they hear when I speak? Not what do I think I'm saying, because everyone's like, oh, I just said this. What did I say? It doesn't matter what you think you said. What matters is what they hear when you speak, based off of their viewpoint, their biases, their DNA, their genetic makeup, their drama, their trauma, all their stuff, because they bring that in when they communicate. So you have to keep that in mind.
Are you also thinking about, are you trying to learn about the background of the person before you have a connection or a conversation with them and get as much information on them before, where they're from, who they are, you know?
Depends what you want. What is your goal? What are you looking to get? And obviously, sometimes time's a factor. If you're hiring somebody, I think when you, here's some tips. When you're doing your job interviews or you're bringing people on or you're working with people, you want to sit them down. You don't want to sit like the way we are here with a table between you and the person. You want an open space so you've got like two sofas, put them on the sofas, sit down. That's openness. This is a barrier. It causes a break between us. There's also formality with the table. I feel like I'm being a bit.
More professional than as opposed to relaxed.
And the thing is this, if you want to know who you're hiring, let's say, or who you're dealing with, or who you're bringing into your space, you want openness and you want them to speak to you in an open way.
-Freely.
-So you can get all the information. Tell me about yourself. How did you grow up? Where are you from? No kidding. What's about this? What about that? Now you get them and then you flow into the other questions. But if people feel like they're being interviewed, that they're going to bring that, bring that. So you want to get people to feel comfortable and you want to have that openness. Also, when you have a table, it cuts off the lower body.
You can't see either.
There's towels. There's towels.
I can't cross their legs.
They're fidgety. They're fidgety. Maybe you asked me a question about Abby, did you ever get fired from a job? And then I crossed my legs as soon as you asked me that question. You're not going to say anything. You're going to take a mental note. Oh, Abby just crossed her legs right when I asked her that question. Why? I need to I need to, sorry, I need to pay attention to that.
Yes.
Right? So that you want to just take notice. The whole goal is to be curious. And so if we can give it a term, maybe you need to Lewis house yourself.
There you go.
Yeah. When people come in, you are super curious about them. You care about everybody who comes in, who's coming in. I want to know everything I can about them that they're willing to share. I want them to feel comfortable to open up. I get a great interview. My viewers love it. Boom. This is like this with everything else. If you can bring that level of passion and curiosity with people, everyone's gonna be open books. Yes, that's it.
Everyone's gonna be an open book for you. Now, I'm curious about this with, I think you said you're married for 12 years, right? Yes. I think so.
You're married or in a relationship for 12 years? I'm trying to do the math right now.
I'm trying to do the math right now. 12 years. And he's in the Secret Service as well, correct?
Or he's in the-- He was, he was a former special agent. I can't give too much away, but he does work with-- Works with the government. The federal government. There you go, okay.
In a special agent capacity, yes.
So you're both in a similar field, right? Exact same field, yes.
Yes, same field. Training, all of that. How does that work in intimacy and relationships when you both have these skills? Is it incredible or are you guys constantly assessing and be like, huh, I'm noticing this strategy he's using, you're noticing this, are you able to flow into it?
So as people sometimes we get, like, I'm gonna get emotional or he'll get emotional. And when I see certain things happen, I will identify what's happening. Okay, he needs to vent, he needs to say this. Let me let him, he's not gonna hear anything I say.
Until he gets it out.
He gets it out. So you just have to have, and I think this goes across the board for all relationships, If you can just, here's my word, shut up. And let someone communicate.
Just let them go.
Even if you don't like what they're saying, just let them say it. Let them get it off their chest, then speak. That's super powerful. It's going to help you. And then they're also able to listen to you. So sometimes I will pull in a strategy or sometimes we'll argue and he'll do a technique on me and I'll realize it after the fact.
Ooh, they did that.
Ooh, I know what he did. But then I'll realize, I understand why he did it. The whole goal of this stuff, it is not to manipulate or trick people. The goal of this stuff is to help progress a conversation. You don't want to get stuck. When you feel stuck with people, this is why. You want progress and we all want progress in our lives. At work, in our conversations, in our relationship. So when you are stuck, you have to ask yourself, what am I doing that is causing me to be stuck? I want progress. So even in a conversation or dialogue, Everything you do is to help keep the dialogue going furtherance. In furtherance, how am I progressing the dialogue? Think of it this way. And there's something called the Behavior Wheel. And it's actually these amazing researchers, the Allisons were the ones who created this and they teach it to a lot of the top negotiators.
They actually teach-- the Allison Wheel?
The Allisons. The Allisons are their husband and wife who do research. and there's something called the behavior wheel. Behavior wheel, okay. And this is where they teach you again to identify behavior. And when you see a behavior, how.
Do you respond to that behavior?
How does the wheel look like?
So, it's a circle.
What's on the wheel? It's got all the different behaviors. But I'll give you an example of one. Let's do this, what we're talking about. You're having a conversation with someone and they are, let's put them at the top of the wheel, they're high power, they're controlling the conversation, they're setting the agenda. Now, when they are there, the other person has to go low power to allow them.
Because you can't both be in that position at the same time.
Look at this interview. What do you and I do? Do we flip? When you're high power, when you're controlling the agenda, I go down here. When I'm speaking and I'm high power, I go back up here, you go down here. You understand for me to have progress in this conversation, we have to, every high power, I go low power. And that creates progress. Now, if we're both high power, we're competing, we're arguing, nobody hears anything. And so relationships are like that, even marriages, because you brought up marriages. So if somebody is in this high power, you go down here. And then when you can, you switch and you go up here. But if both people are up here, it's not going to work. And if both people are down here, it doesn't work. This is kind of a, where do you want to go eat? I don't know. Where do you want to go eat? I'll go anywhere. Where do you want to go eat? You guys are going to starve. Because somebody has to go high power. That's the behavior wheel. Now that would be an example of the good behavior wheel. And to the Allisons, I'm sorry I'm doing my best. I don't want to butcher your work because they do some great, great stuff. If you go, now some people will visit the bad wheel. The same thing bad wheel. Bad wheel is when you have somebody who's very dominant, who's very domineering. They're trying to be high power, but it's not in a good way. It's aggressive, it's-- Very aggressive, it shuts people down. Now here you have to be careful, and we see this in relationships, not just partner relationships, friendships, supervisors. When you have somebody like that, and you recognize they're high power, but in an unhealthy, not in a good way, and you go low power, you're just.
Going to get taken advantage of, right?
Yes, you become now weak.
A doormat.
Submissive, you become the doormat. And so what happens is over a period of time, you've helped groom that person to stay here and you go here. And that's why sometimes we'll see in relationships, there's that one person who's the aggressor who's up here and the other person who's super avoidant, submissive, and that's not good.
How does that person get out of that position without upsetting and making the other person more aggressive?
So what you would do is you don't wanna you wanna go back to the initial example I gave you which is the good one.
Oh, yeah, you're both, yeah.
So one thing is when I have bad behavior, I don't wanna mirror that bad behavior because it escalates. So what you always wanna do is present the behavior you want the other person to have. You don't mirror them. Just 'cause they're being in that- Don't go there.
Behavioral state, you don't match them. You don't match it 'cause it's gonna.
The whole thing's gonna take a nosedive. So you wanna say, See, now this is where it gets important. I see this behavior, I know what I'm seeing, it's not personal. I'm not going to get emotional and upset and how dare you and all that, even though I can think it and feel it, but if I identify the behavior, it's not as piercing. I know what I'm seeing. I understand this behavior. I know what's happening here. Now, I'm not going to be weak, submissive. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go back to this good wheel. I'm going to go low. I'm going to go down here. But I'm going to listen and I'm going to say, okay, well tell me why you feel that way. So I can still maintain eye contact with you. I can still sit here. I can still show you that I'm assertive. So this is where I'm listening, but I'm not becoming submissive or avoidant or small or carrying away or letting you take over. I'm taking this low power part of the wheel, but I'm here.
So how does someone command respect then if they're, in the lower part of the wheel. You can still do that?
Well, it depends. So here's the thing. I really we're doing a whole psychology course. Yeah. One thing is, if you have a relationship and for a long period of time, you've had that dynamic, that power dynamic that we just talked, one person's the dominant, the this or that, and the other person's down here. Once that's been set, so hard, right? That is very hard, almost impossible to get rid of. I've actually, Consulted with people who have come to me and said, I have a boss who's this way. And one of the first things I ask is, how long you've been there? How long this? And when I hear like three, four, five years-- My boss isn't changing.
I'm like, you're gonna have to find another job. The only way the boss would change is if-- They got in trouble. They got in trouble, everyone leaves, or he starts losing a lot of money, or something where it's a big breakdown, right? You'd have to have a big breakdown. and do a lot of work on yourself to say, oh, I'm the problem, not everyone else around me.
Right. But how many people actually get to that solution that they're the problem?
Very few.
Most people will be like, Look, look at the people out there. Look at Gen Z or Gen this or Gen that.
That's what's gonna happen. Look at this or that, whatever.
They're gonna deflect. So, to answer your question, if you've groomed someone and you've been groomed to be here and you shift, unless that person is on board and they realize what they're doing, It'll work only then. If they don't, it's gonna be like, who are you now? What are you doing now? What do you think you are?
It's probably even harder in an intimate relationship then. You've been with someone for five, 10 years and you've had this dynamic. It's gotta be so challenging to break that mold, right?
It is. It is hard. If you break it, is that person gonna... The key is, if you can break it without them knowing you're breaking it. So when you...
If you can break it...
Yes. So you have to ungroom them. You almost have to groom them the opposite way.
So much work it seems like.
Well, depends if you want to stay or if you want to go.
Right.
Truthful in a certain scenario like that, it is very hard because you're trying to change long-term behavior that's been set. That's my role, that's your role, it's set. And now you're trying to change the roles in that person's life. It's so hard.
Yes.
I don't want to say, I don't want everybody to go get divorced or break up. But be aware, what you would have to do is slowly groom that person to do the opposite, unless you can convince them, Hey, you're part of this problem.
It might be tough, yeah. And that's where acceptance comes in. At some point, you just have to accept who you're with and realize this is who you're with. You accept it, you try to change it, or you leave, right? It's like, what choices do you have?
And that's, some people do. Some people will accept it. They'll get in that role, they're comfortable in that role, they know that role, they don't want to get out of that role, and they stay there. And it's also, it's not so bad. I worked with someone, actually this isn't, I've heard this a couple of times, and I'm not a relationship expert, but I've had people speak to me about this dynamic, and they will tell me, well, you know what? He doesn't hit me. It's not that bad.
It just screams once a week, but...
And so I'll hear that and I'll say to the person, your baseline or your threshold of whether it's healthy or not is, well, he doesn't hit me.
Why do people justify those things and why they'll stay in a toxic work environment or intimate relationship when they make these justifications? Well, at least it's not this and this and this.
I'm invested. I've invested. How many years you've been with your girlfriend?
About a year.
Okay, a year. Okay, you've been with her a year. So if there's issues happening in your mind and heart, you're like, I put a year into this. I've invested in this. I don't want this to go away. And that's what happens. I think that's one, we invest so much time and energy, I have to start over. I have to this. We do that. And then maybe if we're, especially if we're in that submissive role, we've already, our confidence in our-- Is lower. Is lower. We feel weaker. We've had somebody push us there. And it's harder now to get out of it. And we, it's amazing what a human being can normalize in their life, especially in a world where cases of abuse were especially children. When abuse, you would be amazed as to how a human being can adapt to the most egregious of environments and that becomes their norm. Where somebody on the outside would be like, I can't believe this. We have this amazing ability to adapt to a frog.
It's kind of like the analogy of the frog in hot water. Have you heard this? Where it's like a frog will stay in hot water and the more and more it It gets harder, they'll just keep staying there because they're used to it, as opposed to just jumping out of a pot, right? It's like, and then they'll just die.
In boiling water eventually. Like eventually you'll die. But that's how everything is. It's incremental. People will do a little bit to.
You, they test it.
Oh, loose the soil. -I'm still here, so I can get away with more and push, push, push. -Oh, Louis did it, okay. Oh, and it's a group, that's why it's called a grooming process. You are groomed and then that's why you have those moments where you stop and you think, how did I get here? This isn't me. It's not your fault.
Easy.
But this is why looking at behavior is so important. Don't listen to the garbage people give you. Look at what they show you.
Have you seen Tinder Swindler?
No, it's next on my list.
It's like the grooming process. And when you watch it from an outsider, you think, how could this happen? But like you said, the more you're groomed and you tied into someone Romantically and psychologically and emotionally, you stay even when the behavior gets worse and worse, right? It's this-- yeah. You'll see when you see it, but it's crazy.
You know what will also help people and look at who's around you. I don't know if you do this. I would-- and I'm making an assumption that you do. Please tell me. I would assume or presume that you are very thoughtful about who you keep around you.
100%. 100% in work environment, in personal life, 100%. And I'm even more, it's interesting because before the pandemic, something I realized is I would connect with almost everyone and I would give time to a lot of people. I'd give meetings or I'd want to like, oh, let's meet this person and meet this person. And now it's like, oh, I really have like a handful of core friends that I want to see consistently, right? and then other friends that I'll see when I have time, but it's like those core friends, core team members, it's like really getting clear on that environment of the people that I want to have in my life. And it's been a powerful eye opening experience.
Why do you do that?
Well, the clearer I am on my mission and my time, I don't want to spread my time all over the place. It's keeping me from my mission and the things that bring me the most joy. and it's also not deepening those relationships that I have that are really meaningful. So it's, I want to spend more time with quality people that enrich my life, where we are in collaboration with each other in terms of just our experiences and our conversations and deepening those relationships. So that's, that's where I'm at right now.
So when you do that, you have these people that you select to have around you that makes you more solid, more centered, Right? It helps you in business, relationships and everything. And so when you have somebody who's maybe not so good come in, this is why having a good core of people around you, these people will notice that.
Really?
Yes, they will help you. So when you have one, they become your norm. Solid, grounded people become your norm. If you're surrounded by that, then that's what you know, that's what you're used to. So if you have somebody, and I don't like this word, I just can't think of another one, toxic come along, right? Because we label everyone labels everybody toxic. Oh, they're toxic. Yes. So if somebody toxic for you comes along, you will notice that quicker. Yeah. Because those people that are around you, they'll notice it, but they're all, they've also given you that stability. Now, if you, you are surrounded by off people, people who take advantage of you, there's a lot of noise talking to everybody, getting everybody's chatter. you're not gonna pick that up. So one of the ways to offset this thing that we're talking about is to also really select who's around you. Because they make you steady or not steady. I don't care how strong, I have a strong identity as a person. You have a strong identity. But if you and I surround ourselves.
With buffoons, start acting like a buffoon. Yeah, yeah.
We're gonna be off, right? We're not gonna be as confident or centered or strong when things are off, we're gonna have that weakness. People can either bring out strength or weakness.
That's why I think it's so crucial. I feel like I've learned so many lessons over the years in multiple relationships that I've been in, right? I feel like you've gotta learn the hard way sometimes when you keep making these mistakes in the past. and all these previous relationships that I've been in have given me awareness of like my flaws, my insecurities, why I chose certain people, all these different things. And I never put blame on anyone else. It's always about me, right? And why I chose. And I remember interviewing Erwin McManus, who's a pastor here at a church called Mosaic, and I was asking him, he's been married for, I think, four decades, right? And he said, this beautiful relationship, I go, what's the secret to having a healthy, long relationship with someone, the same person, right? And he said, I hate to say this, but 80% of it, the happiness and the joy, is who you choose. It's the person you choose. That's 80% of the success, right? Because if you choose the wrong fit, you're going to be stressed out and dealing with conflict constantly. And having a great partner, especially someone like Martha, who's so intuitive, She also kind of keeps me, I don't want to say protected, but can just be like, that was interesting conversation with that person. Make sure you watch out for their energy or whatever. Just the subtleties of having someone strong in your corner, a friend or a partner who can read people as well. I think it's really important who has got a solid identity like yourself.
I think you're right. And I know I'm not a relationship person. I can only speak for my own I picked a solid partner. And he looks out for me. He'll see things. I remember even when I began doing the news, and I wasn't paying attention as much as I should have to my body posture, because it's TV and to a commercial break, he'd be like, Sit up, you're slouching.
He also said something that earlier you said, oh yeah, he watched our conversation and he thinks you're like a good guy or something like that, or your behavior.
Good person, yeah.
Yeah, good person. So are you guys doing this for each other where he'll watch your interviews that you're on and be like, I don't know, something off about that interviewer, be careful there.
This is, think of it this one, this is the person you have as your companion. So what the pastor said was right because first, this is the person you have the most exposure to. They know you the most intimately and you want a solid person. If you can be on equal playing field, that's Right. When one is like this or it's like this, it's hard.
So when you're trying to fix someone or you're trying to coach someone in a relationship, what usually happens? I know you're not the relationship coach.
Here, but... Identify the behavior. I always go back to behavior because when I tell you, you did this to me and you this, it means something is wrong with you and you don't understand and then you feel attacked. Well, when you can identify the behavior and say you did this specific thing or said the specific thing, now are you giving somebody something visual to see?
It's not them as a human being, it's the thing that happened.
Right, it's the thing you did here because you did this thing or said this thing, it caused this. This is why it's upsetting to me. Now, that person in that moment will either understand, be able to communicate and be illuminated by it and have a discussion or they'll shut down, they'll be aggressive, they'll do these other things. And then based on their behavior, you now can make intelligent choices and say, is this a person I can progress with or is this a person I should step away from? Because everybody is flawed, like I'm flawed.
Yes.
So it's... What would your husband say.
Is your biggest flaw? Or the thing that you've needed feedback on the most or support in overcoming? or improving on or whatever it might be.
To be truthful, I think being in...
And when someone says to be truthful, does that mean they're about to lie?
No, no, I'm being truthful. But you're right, it's a qualifier. Honestly, honestly, if I'm telling you the truth. Yes, so you could have been cued.
By that and just been like, let.
Me see how she answers. Let me notice, yeah. And this is why you have to be careful when it comes to deception, right? But I will tell you, I think one of the things I've had to work on is because I came from a law enforcement background. I started off NYPD and then U.S. Secret Service. And you're around, you're around people, the worst of, you're around people when they are at their worst, especially when you're dealing with criminal behavior. You are around some of the worst behaviors and the people when they're at their worst. No one's ever happy to see the police, by the way. Fire department, they love all the firefighters. Police department, So, having said that, you're interacting with people who despise you, hate you, and who are consistently lying to you. So one of the traits that actually they see in law enforcement is cynicism. And they become quite cynical.
Of everything, because you're seeing the worst.
Right, but you're dealing with it on a daily basis all day long. Now that is a trait that I had to be careful of and that I noticed. where people in general, most people, the average population, the majority of the population are more likely to be trusting and to believe in people. So I say this to people too, so when they feel bad, oh this person tricked me, what's wrong with me, I got duped, there's nothing you did wrong. People in general, in nature, naturally want to believe and are more trusting. The exception is law enforcement because you are typically around people who are not honest, genuine, deceitful, hateful, you deal with that type of behavior. I don't want to say people behavior.
Sure.
You become more cynical. So I had to work on that where I am more inclined to see the flaw or to see the problem than to be as trusting. I'm the opposite. I'm very, you know, I'm doing the assessment. What is the problem? What's the problem? What do they want from me? What do they really want?
Yeah.
What do they Where's the deception? Everyone's got an, that's where I had to work on.
I didn't even realize until you told me, but you're pregnant and you're due to have a baby.
Did you see it or did you think it was just a lot of donuts?
I didn't even see it. I wasn't even like, you know, maybe I should have been more aware and checked your whole body and assessed everything.
But I was just looking, I look.
In the eyes usually when I'm connected with someone. You're being polite. She could be pregnant. She could have had a, I didn't notice until you're like, pointed it out. But I'm curious, you're four or five months pregnant.
I'm five.
Has anything shifted in you in terms of your intuition or your ability to sense behaviors differently while being pregnant? Or do you feel like it's the same as before?
You know, I, and this is probably going to come into your language. I feel people's energy more.
Yes. And I was-- Not their behaviors?
I still analyze behavior.
I can turn it around.
Yeah, you feel energy like the-- I just feel people more and I'm much more aware. So I don't know and I don't know if this is kind of going to different space and I tried to think about it. I don't know if it's because there's another soul inside of me if you think of it to some extent. And that makes you more sensitive, but I am more maybe sensitive, not in a negative way, towards what's around me. and more, I feel a bit more. So I'm using energy a bit more. That I'm aware of.
What do you feel more?
I think one I have noticed, and I'm curious to see what other pregnant women have noticed, but what I noticed is, I guess, think of it like a radio frequency. If my frequency was good before, it's really crystal clear now as far as somebody's energy coming through.
Through.
Maybe I just get their behavior a bit more and I was always pretty on point, but I can really feel people on a stronger level more acutely and more maybe intuitively. I don't know why, I have no knowledge in this space. This is more an internal thing that.
I've-- so the Secret Service should be hiring pregnant women more to have that superpower, right?
Maybe.
Wow, you should come back and consult for a couple months.
Maybe, maybe. So it brings that awareness. I also think you become, I don't know, I mean, I work very much. So even though I'm connected and in tune, I've also not, it was very important for me for it not to shift everything else in my life. I've always been very task-oriented. I like the work I do. And this is just like a whole other journey. God helped me, right? I don't know.
I'm very excited for you.
Yeah, that kid's doing push-ups. People ground their kids' mic because they're like, Get down, give me 50.
Yeah, exactly. I told you not to eat that cookie.
Right.
Get to work. Get to work. What would you say were the three greatest lessons you learned from working with the Secret Service and these different presidents that you worked with that you have taken with you and you'll apply for.
The rest of your life? I've learned to... One thing is resilience. When you're around people who are in such a world stage and they receive such hate, such venom, and you can see them just persist and get shredded and then get up and give a press conference, when other people, you know, completely become obliterated because somebody said something to them, that I learned. Yes, part of it was training because they teach you like, hey, I don't want to be tough enough, but tough enough no one wants to hear you. Right. But it gives you that resiliency and that awareness. But then also seeing people, heads of state, like you can't fall apart. You're running a country. That's one thing. The second thing I was taught was to be of service to other people. and it seems to me that I don't see a lot of it out there. Everyone, and I don't know if it's just here in the US, I could be wrong, but we're very, very me, me, me. What's in it for me? I want this, I, I, I. And it kind of brings me back to that train track scenario where we don't do for other people? We don't serve. And when I mean serve, just serve for the greater good. It was always interesting when people would say to me, you would really take a bullet for that person. Because the idea is when you're a service agent, a president and whoever it was, and not just president but anybody else you were tasked to protect. And they would think like there's something really wrong with that. and I would always feel like I can't think of a better way or better reason to give my life or to die than saving the life of another human being. It taught me to serve and to give of myself. I think that's just powerful. And I think sometimes when we grow up, and especially when we're younger, we just think about ourselves. And when I say to give of ourselves, I don't mean to just give to Our small inner circle, I mean to humanity. That, I think, was the biggest thing.
That's number two.
That's number two. And the third one was shut up. I learned in training to shut up. Not everything's about you. Listen, observe, and just something you learn so much when you shut your mouth.
I think one of my greatest insecurities became one of my greatest superpowers later in life because I felt afraid to speak to my friends when I was in elementary school, middle school, later in high school, I'm more confident, but I was unsure of how to communicate, right? And how to tell stories and be interesting around people. I was more unsure of myself, I was more quiet. because just speaking in school, I wasn't able to read and allowed all these different things, right? And what it did for me is I just started observing people. I started watching people at school, not a weird, creepy way, but I would just be in the hallways and just watch how people interacted with each other and their whole energy or the behavior. I would watch everything. And when I got into early in my career, my mid to late 20s, I remember thinking, I have no clue about this business stuff. I'm this young guy. There's all these professionals that I'm meeting. Me acting like I know something is going to be really disingenuous. So let me just ask questions and shut up. And for a decade, I've been doing this show where I've just asked questions. I speak very little, maybe 10% of the time, 15% maybe when I'm interviewing someone. and I gain so much wisdom by shutting up and by asking. So I think if people learn to not try to be impressive to other people all the time, of course if they're being interviewed it's different, but if you're always trying to be the center of attention and have everything to say, I think you become more interesting when you listen and allow others to communicate. You become the most interesting person in the room. when you're not speaking.
Yes.
I think if you can ask the right questions and get people to share about themselves in certain ways, it's like, well, no one's really been that thoughtful to ask, you know, so.
You know, it's, I've learned this, and this is a side thing. I've learned that heroism is quiet, strength is quiet, confidence is quiet, and that the most lethal person in the room is the person who says the least and who observes. Yes.
Especially it's like allowing everyone else to speak first before you give your opinion or before you give an idea, right? You get to hear what everyone else is saying and be like, okay, I really like that. Let me pull from that and this and this. And now let me present my case.
Can I ask you a question, Louis? I'm curious because you've been doing this for so long and people probably see in such a way for inspiration and guidance. I would presume again, this is an assumption, correct me if I'm wrong, that people come to you a lot for advice. What do you do in those scenarios? Because I would think you get hit up a lot.
A lot.
How do you, what do you do? How do you manage that?
I try to say, like if someone's emailing or messaging on social media and they ask for advice, my whole thing is, listen, I share all my wisdom here on the podcast and there's much people much smarter than me, check out this episode. So I try not to, I try to save my time and their time by saying, if you listen to this show or watch it, you know, it's over 1200 episodes. I've said pretty much everything, you know, to your specific case. So I might just send them a link to something and listen to this or just like you, you've got your book, you've probably given a lot of your strategies already in the book, right? If someone says, tell me this strategy, you're like, Just read the book and then ask me a question, a follow-up question, right? So it's like I've got the book, I've got the podcast, things like that. People want to pay for it if they want to have it for free, they have access. So it's more of just directing people to the answers or to people who have the answers. That's what I try to do.
How about though, real people, like people that you interact with or acquaintances or friends of friends? I'm just curious to see how you manage all that.
My strategy has always been my greatest coaches in sports never gave me the answer, right? They never gave me the advice. They would give me drills, they would give me feedback, they would show me game film or videos to see like what was really, what worked well, what didn't work well. They would have me observe, they would have me watch other talented people playing basketball or football. I'd watch other people who are professionals and see how they did it. And then watch myself back and how am I doing it? Am I close to that or not? And the greatest coaches would challenge me with questions. You know, they'd almost be like, well, if you were in this position and coaching someone else, what would you tell them? You know, so I think I try to do that as much as possible without giving people the answer. Because if we're always giving people the answer to their problems, they're never going to be thinking about how do they can overcome it on their own.
Do you find that you have to kind of, because you've been doing this for so long and it's become so popular from a protective mode for yourself, do you find yourself having to shield yourself or protect yourself from getting hit up so much? I'm even thinking just on a personal note, like, Hey, Louis. Hey, Louis.
Yeah, you know, just out in the world, yeah.
Yes.
I try to just listen and give a quick solution or I say, you know, I got a great episode for you. Send me a message, send me a and I'll send you the link. Yes. To keep it shorter as opposed to let me coach you for an hour, you know? But it all depends. Yeah. Where I'm at in the situation. But yeah. Okay. I've got a, I want to remind people about this book. The last time we had you on, people loved this and they've been getting the book. But if you haven't got this book yet, becoming Bulletproof, protect yourself, read people, influence situations, and live fearlessly. by Evi Pompouris. Make sure you guys get a few copies of this. This will be a powerful tool in your toolkit to just improve the quality of your life, your confidence and your skills with people. You said in the beginning, I believe the same thing. The quality of our life is directly related to the relationships we have. Our success, our joy, our love is in how we interact with people in our life. And so if you want to protect yourself and also create more abundance in these relationships. This is the way to do it. Business, life, career, all these different things. So make sure you guys get a couple copies of this book. Follow you. Where are you at most right now? Is it Instagram? Is it Twitter?
Where are you at the most? Probably Instagram.
Instagram. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.
Okay. Do you spend the most time on Instagram yourself? I try to check all of them. Okay. Actually, I do try to connect with people. Absolutely. I feel like if If somebody's going through the process of reaching out, or at least I read everything. I do my best. Yes, of course.
That's good. So check you out on Instagram, @everypomprous, and everypomprous.com has got all your information. You do a lot of speaking, consulting. You've got this book. I think you said you're working on another book as well, right? Maybe.
Not yet.
But in the future, I'm sure you'll have many more.
You're working on another book?
I'm working on another book. Yes, yes. How else can we be of service to you today?
I think you are great. I appreciate you, Louis. It was just a pleasure coming back and now you've been solid.
Okay, awesome. One final question for you before I ask, I wanna acknowledge you, Evie, for the consistency you have in your life. You consistently show up to serve. And I think coming from that service mindset of working for 12 plus years in secret service with government and then transitioning and saying, how can I take this to more people in the world? It's really inspiring. So I acknowledge you for constantly being of service and teaching people powerful strategies to help them improve their life. It's really meaningful work. And so I really acknowledge you for that. And I'm glad you're doing it while you're pregnant. I know you're gonna be a great mother. You got a great kid on your hands coming up now. He's gonna be a lot of pressure.
Though, with both of you and the secret. This kid's gonna be terrified.
Terrified or the most powerful human being ever. My final question for you, Evan, what's your definition of greatness?
Man, Louis, why do you ask these questions? You always like, I always pause, 'cause I don't wanna just say whatever.
Yeah, it's good, think about it.
If tomorrow were to be my last day and I'm okay to go, then I've lived a great life. If tomorrow were to be my last day and I'm not okay to go, And that means I've not lived a great life and I need to lock it up and change something. That's what I think of greatness, that I live a great life. And it's not, will I live it later on? I'll do it later. It's right now. Tomorrow's your last day. Am I okay to go? I'm okay to go. That means I've lived the best life I can live, a great life that I can live. How about you before you high-five me?
Greatness is discovering and developing your unique skills and talents, using them to pursue your dreams, and in that pursuit making the maximum impact on the people around you. I feel like we all have a uniqueness and we go to develop those skills and figure out what those are and sharpen them and based on life experiences, I feel like we have to listen to the dreams inside of us and pursue those dreams and be on the journey. Whether we accomplish them or not is irrelevant, but are we on the journey of the thing that we feel like we're chosen to do for that scene of life? Are we listening to the inner voice or whatever conversation inside us or feeling that's saying, go do this, go try this thing? And in that pursuit, like you said, are we making it all about me and look at me, or are we using that tool and pursuing that dream to inspire, impact, influence in a positive way. That's what I think greatness is for me.
Yeah, well, I thank you because you're also on service of everybody. Everything you do and everything you film and everyone you talk to, it's what, how can I help people?
That's the mission. It's to serve 100 million lives weekly. to help them improve the quality of their life. That's what we're about.
Solid mission.
Yes. I appreciate it. Thanks, Abby.
When people say their body doesn't match what they say, so they'll say no. Yes. And so you'll see the body will do this, like the body's in conflict with what they're seeing. It doesn't happen to everybody. It's everybody. Everyone is so unique and so different. And I think what popular culture likes to do.
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