Secret Service Agent: Your Neutral Face Is Making People Distrust You (Here's How to Fix It)

Key Takeaway

In your next difficult conversation, replace “Why did you do that?” with “Help me understand what happened.” Keep your face warm rather than neutral or disapproving: relax your forehead, maintain comfortable eye contact, and let the other person speak without rushing to correct them. Brad Beeler’s core lesson is that truth emerges when people feel psychologically safe enough to disclose it—not when they feel cornered, judged, or forced to defend their identity.

Episode Overview

Former U.S. Secret Service agent and polygraph examiner Brad Beeler explains how to create the conditions for honest conversation. Drawing on investigative cases and personal mistakes, he shares practical methods for reading receptiveness, reducing defensiveness, avoiding confirmation bias, and separating empathy from agreement.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Secret Service Agent: Your Neutral Face Is Making People Distrust You (Here's How to Fix It) from The School of Greatness. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

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That's a quote from our guest today, Brad Bieler, and if you've ever struggled to get someone to actually open up with you, whether it be your kid, your partner, someone on your team, and you keep wondering why they shut down or why they hold back, then this episode is going to change how you see every conversation you have in your life moving forward. Maybe you've been taught that the way to get the truth out of someone is to push harder, ask smarter questions, catch people in something.

This former Secret Service agent proves the opposite, that people tell you the truth when they feel safe, not when they feel cornered. And that applies just as much to your marriage and your kids, your co-workers and your peers, as it does in a federal interrogation room. In this episode, you're going to learn how to read body language like a trained investigator, why a single facial expression can shut someone down instantly, how to build instant trust and rapport with anyone you meet, and why chasing being interesting will always lose to being genuinely interested.

Brad Beeler spent 25 years as a U.S. Secret Service agent, protecting presidents, interviewing thousands of people, and becoming one of the agency's top polygraph examiners and behavioral experts. My name is Lewis Howes, welcome to the School of Greatness, and let's go ahead and dive in. You've been around some of the most powerful and influential people in the world, and some of the most, I guess, disgusting people in the world are people who have done disgusting acts, right? Yeah. How many people have you interviewed over your years?

Probably a couple thousand. Couple thousand? Yeah. And these are people who have done crimes, or potentially done crimes, right? Not all of them. Yeah. Alleged to have committed crimes. Right. But a lot of the people I did talk to, we cleared. Yes. And they did commit those acts. Really? Mm-hmm. Man, that's tough. Yes. It's got to be tough when you have to clear them, like, okay, they did commit it too, right? Sometimes that's the greatest day you have, is that, you know, you come into a situation, I remember one, an individual was accused of domestic terrorism, and he was actually convicted of material support of domestic terrorism post 9-11.

And post 9-11, we had a fervor in the United States about certain activities, and this individual was accused of that, was convicted of that, and some information came up that maybe wasn't the case. This individual was offered a kind of global plea agreement by the Department of Justice, where if he passed this polygraph, he would be given this amount of years, versus if he didn't, he'd be given this amount of years. And so this was an individual I shared nothing in common with. This individual did not like America, but yet he, it turned out, did not do the thing that he was accused of.

Really? And honestly, it was probably the most proud interview that I ever did, because I was able to try to hold back my personal views of him personally, and focus on the job at hand, and get him in the right headspace to prove that he was innocent. Wow. So he didn't like America, but he didn't commit the crime that he was accused of. Correct. So did he still go to prison? He went to prison for some financial crimes, stuff that he did, yeah, that we were investigating, but he didn't do the major deed that he was accused of.

Interesting. So how do you remove your personal feelings of like, this guy's still a bad guy, right? He did something wrong over here, let's get him for this other thing, too. How do you remove that personal feeling, and really try to just get the right information to serve him, even though you know he's supposed to go to jail anyways? Yeah, and that's tough. That's tough, right? You're a scumbag here, but you weren't a scumbag here. Yeah, it's not something that they taught. I think it was just over a period of time, I would learn that if I had certain facial expressions, I almost view it like red light, yellow light, green light.

If I have a red light expression, or the way that I speak to somebody, it shuts them down. So they see that maybe there's some ulterior motives here, and that's in business, parenting, whatever the case may be. So I learned one time, I was talking to an individual that I believe was a serial offender against children, and he provided a disclosure, and I just gave that little, you know, just that little downward eyebrow flash, and it was contempt, and he immediately shut down after that admission.

Because he felt you weren't, you didn't like what he shared. Correct. Like, he's not in a safe place, right? These waters are not conducive, right? So any little bit of facial expression that you give someone, when you disapprove, it's going to shut people down from telling you more about what they did. Absolutely, because we always want to get the why, and then I want to get the what else. And there's so many times where, hey, what else? And it's almost said assumptively, if it's what else.

Like imagine, you know, Louis, and I don't know your faith, but imagine if you were a Catholic and you were going into confessional, and you walked in, and there were cameras, like these beautiful cameras you had here, and there wasn't that little shroud, right? And you knew who the other person was, and the priest knew who you were. And you said something. You made a disclosure. And that priest said, really? Or that priest said, why did you do that? Almost like what we do sometimes as parents, we punish the disclosure.

And that's what I learned, is in my spoken word, and how I look, and you are amazing at this, you know, in the community, in the podcast, in the public specter, because you were so good with your active listening skills and your affect, you always kind of truly put off. And I think it's genuine. It is. Or else you were the greatest actor ever. I'm not that good of an actor, yeah. But you do such a good job of inviting disclosure, is that you're never showing that furrowed brow.

And I almost have people either do a lot of Botox, or have imaginary like duct tape on your forehead. Because I've had applicants admit to shooting, raping, robbing. These are applicants for our organization. Wait, people are coming to the Secret Service? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Not bad guys that you caught. No, these are just applicants. People come in to work at the Secret Service. Yeah. It's not just our organization. Right, right, right. All the organization. Yeah. And that's why I always am careful about talking about Polygraph, because there's so much hatred about it.

And it's pseudoscience in this. It is a tool that needs to be used in the right place at the right time with guardrails and quality control. And when done in that environment, the things that are disclosed are amazing. And if we wouldn't have it, the amount of people that would get on this job that shouldn't have that job would be very, very problematic. I mean, you've had applicants admit to bestiality, all kinds of craziness, that the first time you hear it, you can't just sit there and be like, yeah, you just gotta be like, okay, you know, how old were you?

What else? Or it was a female cat, right? Okay, good. All right. How old was the cat? Okay, three. Okay, so it wasn't a kitten. Okay, good. I'm glad to hear that. No way. And you have to do that. No way. You have to do that. So they give you more. Yeah. You don't want to punish the disclosure. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So when you hear someone who's applying for, I guess, Secret Service or military or some role for the government, I guess, right? And they say they did something, how do you respond?

And is that an automatic, okay, they can't be hired? Or is there some gray area somewhere? Some of it's going to depend on age and intent and did they do it or were they part of a group that did it? So we're going to go into investigative mode at that point, try to understand what really happened here. But yeah, sometimes we've had to make those disclosures to law enforcement to came in looking for a job and it didn't necessarily work out. So that's why we have it is because think of it this way.

When you see about a serial killer, they always go interview the neighbors. What do the neighbors say about that serial killer? Oh, John was just such a quiet kid. Nobody ever says, yeah, I knew that John was going to be a serial killer, right? Is that background checks are great, but what do they really pick up? Because everybody's so afraid of making that disclosure because they're going to get in trouble. They're going to get litigation put against them. So they're always very nice about what they say.

So in that, that's why we use it and that's why it's very effective. So once again, I'm not a polygraph acolyte. I did it for 17 years. I know its limitations, but I also know its strengths. So when you hear someone disclose something that you in your gut and your soul are like, this is bad. This is wrong. This is horrible. Maybe whatever. It's disgusting. Yeah. How do you respond, right? When you hear it to ensure that they continue to reveal all the information you want to know?

Yeah. So no instant changes in body language. My facial affect doesn't be neutral. I want it to be positive. So neutral codes negative, both the first impressions and also existing impressions. Neutral. Neutral codes negative. And this goes back to caveman days. Okay. If we're going and we come across another tribe instantaneously, I'm going to look on your face and your hands and determine, are you going to hurt me? Are you going to be somebody that's going to potentially come into my tribe that I might reproduce with?

I mean, very primal level. If I have a neutral affect, our primitive self would code that as, this is not good, right? This is not good for me. I'm going to be aware on the side of caution. I'm going to put horns on you and run away, fight, whatever I need to do. So that's a, when you say first impression, like when I'm talking about within milliseconds of seeing you, is Louis going to hurt me? I would see your affect right now and I'd say, no, his hands aren't balled up.

He's not bladed his body. He's ventrally fronted showing me his- He doesn't have his head in his head, you know, it's like any little thing that's- Isn't it interesting we look at hands first a lot, don't we? When we're meeting someone new, and I heard that I think years ago, because you'd think that you'd look originally at their eyes or something, but it's like, maybe it's an eye and then the hand. And subconsciously I realized like, yeah, when I'm meeting, especially men, I'm trying to see like, are they in a relaxed hand position or are they clenched or is there something, are their hands in their pocket?

What do they have in their pocket? What's in there? It's like you're on guard then, right? Yeah. So bodies being bladed is another thing that we look at. If you look at any knockout video, what happens right before the people look away, they ball up their fist, they blade their body to their dominant side, if they're right-handed, they drop their right leg. The next thing you know, they try to spin your chin and make you go to sleep, is that from an officer safety standpoint, we'll look at those things, but those are primal.

And you may not pick up on it, you may not have got that training, but subconsciously it's still there. It's still in that source code where you're picking that up subconsciously, I don't feel good here. So when I meet people, first off, handshakes, a warm, dry handshake. I put clinical grade antiperspirant on my hands when I'm going to shake people's hands. Why? When you've shaken people's hands, whether it be in competition or elsewhere, and they're wet. It's the worst. They don't have confidence. What's wrong with this person?

Something seems off. Something's off, right? Or if they come on and they give you that Queen of England, or if they come in and do the Trump, you know, the power, the alpha. So what I like to do is I like to show them the whites of my hands, and like you are right now, you're at about a two o'clock. By doing that, since we always pronate, the other person, it's making it really easy for them to almost pancake. If we want to really connect right at the thumb, so we don't hit the bones, and also we don't want to come in too shallow, so it's like we're checking their pulse.

So we have that dry, that warm handshake, and it's not a shake, it's a hold. While we have eye contact. So what's that look like? Yeah, so it's this. Boom. We hold it. Yeah, we hold it. Now, I look down right before, so that I don't miss the mid-air refuel, because that's the worst when we do this, right? So you look down real quick, and then you look back up. Yeah, and identify early. So let's go back three or four years ago with COVID. We were doing this, and we were doing this, right?

So in some parts of the country, it's still a little bit, the vestiges are there. So what I'll come in is I'll show them the whites, boom, come in, and I look down to see it. Then I come back up and it's just a hold and then I go back and I don't bleed my body I still ventrally front, right? But then when we move to a seated area I like how you have this because this is almost like we're around a campfire. You got your little fire, right?

Yeah, you know face, but it's you know, it's a meal for more inviting Absolutely is that Italian researchers learn that there's a right ear advantage and if I can speak into your right ear You have about a five or ten percent better to process Sensitive information. So if I'm in this setup, this is perfect for me my right ear your right ear now once again 5% people are like this We talked Nick Saban in the green room earlier if Nick Saban had a 5% advantage in anything.

He did Alabama He take of course, right? So little things like that I don't want to be directly across from you and I don't want to have barriers if I have barriers I can't see where your feet are Yeah, the best body language is where your feet are because it's the longest cabling from your brain stem So interesting if I say something uncomfortable you may turn away. It's so interesting to say that because I think about Experiential design as well, you know we used to have a table which I like the table because your hands are on top and you can kind of see the Hands better.

I feel like and Or if it goes underneath then you're like, okay, what's happening under there? So I like having it up there and it also makes you feel less Vulnerable if you're face on to each other and we're like, yeah straight on then I used to have straight on but I was like Women that's a present feel comfortable. So it's just I'll have it a little bit off-centered Then we had this in the middle, but it's like your feet, you know So let's move it where it's not blocking but it's still like here for the cup.

So what would you change anything? I wouldn't change anything and I would say you were very good at being observant Watch where people's feet are watch where their orientation is if you bring up a subject that maybe they don't really feel comfortable They do this or let's say we get 90 minutes in and people like it's about time I've kind of talked about what I'm gonna talk about is is I want to be able to see that and we're across from a table, I can't see that plus a Table is gonna create an artificial anchor point that they can put their arms on I don't want to see that because anchor points for me are some of the best ways to determine Comfort discomfort body language is terrible for detection of deception, but it's great for reception of message So if I'm saying something all of a sudden you cross your arms, it could be cold It is it is cold in here But if you didn't do that for the first 45 minutes and it just happened now, hmm, you notice it It's a check engine light interest and the same thing is that I see that and I see you do it with your legs Okay, how can I unwind that?

Maybe I go to a lower anchor point at my ankles and two minutes later than I unwind it monkey see monkey Do you'd be surprised at how many times people will unwind that this is a confession posture Lewis right here Think about this right when you're leaning forward just like this If I if I can't tell you how many I mean in school they say like yeah This is just like this people this they look down at the ground So if I'm talking to you and I've got great rapport, I've got great respect, but I'm I'm seated like this You may mirror me but you're mirroring a position.

That's the furthest thing away from a disclosure So the way I always teach people is I'm like just when you're talking to people talk to him like this because this to this Is very close. So if you mirror me, I'm mirroring that in my benefit So you're when you're interviewing someone and trying to get information out of them. You're in the confessional posture Most of the time I've got my anchors right here the whole time essentially pretty much I may be back just a little bit further But let's say right there where you're if you're cut that's perfect really just like this Wow the whole time because you want them to Finally come up there and just be like and go into a shame mode and it's literally Yeah, and it's shame right because sometimes yeah, not always really right.

Sometimes it may be you just you got me You got you copy you got too much evidence on me. So it's not about asking the right questions It's creating the environment where the truth doesn't hurt and they can feel comfortable making that disclosure I create the right environment and that's from think of it this way great communication is a great podcast think about your great episodes over the years if You prepped and you read the book or you read saw some of their other podcasts You made an amazing first impression in your green room So you brought down their cortisol because they were stressed to be here because this is a beautiful building You got to know him a little bit.

You got some talking points. Okay, what could I bring up? What would be some things we shouldn't talk about? You come on screen and you advocate for them You let them talk 80% of the time the most soothing voice on the planet is their person's own Let that speak that and you advocate for me. And once again now That oxytocin that dopamine that serotonin is flowing in those neurochemicals are I'm bathing in it and I'm associating that with you Okay, I'm putting a halo on you right now because you're letting me talk and if I go down a rabbit hole That's not of interest to your listeners You kind of bring me back if I go down one that you think is interesting you kind of tease it out and then you Have a great podcast where I think podcasts are problematic is when it's 50-50 Because you got somebody here that's stressed out when they're talking.

They're actually more comfortable interesting. Really? Yeah, huh? It lets them get their sea legs underneath them. Hmm. So, you know 25 years Secret Service Getting people to admit the worst things I've ever done What would you say is the number one? Secret or communication tip to getting the truth out of anyone if you just said one trait I would say be interested More than you know trying to be interesting Dale Carnegie. Like I said, is that when you especially leisure activities? Let's kind of tease this out a little bit So if we're talking and you know, you're coming in here and you're accused of something.

What's your heart rate? Higher yeah, you're whether it be a job interview Uh-huh, would it be talking to your parents about did you wreck the car and I had last night or get a ticket or? Law enforcement your heart rates probably 120 130 Once your heart rate gets to a certain point everything starts to turn into fight-or-flight you get that tunnel vision and that's not good So I want to one make a great introduction. I want you to feel like you're in a good space Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

I want to work on that base I'm never gonna be your friend in a single interaction But what I'm going to do is I'm gonna make sure you're physiologically and psychologically safe So give me an example you're back in Secret Service and you're you know, you've got someone that did something really bad Yeah, and you're about to prep to oh hell. Yeah doing an interview with them, right? What does the prep look like and then what is the first five to ten minutes to really warm them up and feel?

Emotionally safe enough even though they know that they did something wrong and you know, they did something wrong Yeah so let's say we worked a lot of cases in the Secret Service a lot of people don't know is that We work a lot of cases for the National Center of Missing Exploited Children So a lot of child exploitation cases people think Secret Service protection. We started in 1865 doing investigations. So for me, I was an investigations person That's what I really enjoy doing outside the protection.

So that's how we got involved in doing this outside work So the case I'll give you a for instance an individual is accused of doing some bad I'm just to leave it as just some bad things to some kids him and his girlfriend and Sexually bad. Yes taking pictures doing inappropriate things. Okay, and It's one of these things where I'm trying to get a sight picture of what makes this person tick pain points Organic things that I might be able to bring up So we we don't put information in our diary anymore and put it under our bed where we put it put online You know, I mean if I'm trying to find out about Lewis I go on your every one of my posts every day I go on, you know Caroline, you know doing a great job distilling your your Instagram Yeah, is that I go on there and I can find out what makes them tick?

What do you get some of those quotes whatever and in this sense? That's what I did is that this person had a huge Facebook presence And so I could go find out what makes them tick and there were about 15 different things that I garnered But one thing in particular was the fact that he loved his pitbull and he kept having pictures of this pitbull I didn't know how I was gonna bring this up, but you have that in your mind I know that's just operating in the background, right?

So I always like to meet basic necessities bathroom food, I knew he liked Wendy's so guess what we're eating Hey, man, I'm starving. I was gonna get some Wendy's. What? Oh, man, I'd love a Frosty and that's great. I take $20 out of my pocket. Give it to the detective. What does that show? I'm taking care and once again, I don't know if he did this thing, but it looks like I'm playing fair. All right, so We break bread and break food is reciprocity Yeah, I give you something you got to give me something 100% right is that but also it's a it's a it's a barometer mean When you're nervous, you don't tend to eat So he's scarfing this stuff down So I feel like his heart rates in a good place where he can tell me the truth whether he did the thing or he Didn't do the thing so family education employment leisure feels what we call it Just because you're nervous doesn't mean that you did the thing.

They did the thing. Absolutely But they're just like oh, there's a an agent investigating me. It's a nerve-wracking a lot of people over the years Nervousness has been looked at as oh, that's deception. Amanda knocks. Yeah, people thought she's nervous She's acting strange and then the Italian police get that confirmation bias. So yes, you want to be real careful about that So one of the ways we like to do it is I want to find out what makes you tick so family education Employment leisure and where I find this really works very well as in leisure activities, really So in this case, what I did is hey, what do you like to you?

Let's just call him Bob Bob what do you like to do in your free time? I like to play this. I like the video game What kind of video games I like to do this this what else you like? I like to walk my dog Oh, tell me about your dog. Oh, he's a Staffordshire Terrier. Some people call it a pit bull, you know I said man they get bad reputations, right? Yeah, but it's all nature versus nurture if you take care of it You know, so he goes off in about 10 minutes He's talking about he's beaming by this dog about his dog And so his stress levels coming down his heart rates coming down now the backstory here is about 10 minutes later He makes a disclosure that something bad happened to him as a kid about the same ages in which these Kids that we were investigating had happened to them So you're basically providing him a built-in off-ramp by asking the question and I can say hey John Look, remember we talked about your people how when it's treated well, it's amazing But if you if you put OC spray on it, you know pepper spray on it And if you you know put a shock collar on it and you only feed it when it fights creates a monster, right?

That trajectory of that animals change I said, let's go back to your past Your trajectory was changed by something that somebody you loved did to you and it may be changed that asteroids Trajectory and it caused the crater that we're seeing here today Support for today's episode comes from square You probably know square as the thing you tap your card on at your favorite coffee shop restaurant salon or local store But for the person running that business square is a whole lot more than a way to get paid Square brings the tools you need to run and grow your business together in one system from payments and appointments to staff Inventory sales and customer relationships whether you're selling lattes cutting hair detailing cars running a restaurant or starting something new Square keeps your business tools working together so you can focus less on managing the moving parts and more on what's next Whether you're starting something new or looking for a better way to run the business you already have Square gives you the tools to take payments manage your day-to-day and keep growing and right now you can get up to $200 off Square hardware at square.com slash go slash greatness.

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That's better help.com slash greatness So by looking at that background, I'm able to give him an off-ramp to the bad thing. He did I'm not excusing it Right. He got 47 years in prison really so, you know, he still had to pay amends But in his mind that was his personal justification for that bad thing So I'm always really really big on asking and let's just run it out here real quick What do you like to do in your free time Lewis? Well, I like spending time with my kids right now because they're 10 months old like playing pickleball.

Yeah okay, so let's say we were on an airplane and I didn't know you were who you were right and I'm just sitting next to you and and and we're talking and there's too many me too people out there You've probably seen them. Okay, is that let people share their experience ask informed questions and it will circle back to you How many times has somebody said what do you like doing your freedom? I like to run me, too What marathons you do this but and now you're just in this measuring contest of who's more important.

So avoid the me too Yeah, I think the most interesting person in every room is always the most interested person Yeah, you know, it's how it kind of got started in my career because I was in my young 20s. I didn't understand business I was like just trying to figure out the business world and some mentors were like Why don't you go to some conferences and start meeting people? But I was like, I don't have anything to offer. I don't have any skills. I don't have any experience No success in the business world.

I was just got done playing football and so all I did was ask questions and I was like too nervous to talk about myself that didn't have anything to offer and Everyone at the end of the night. We're like you're such an interesting guy. I never said anything I was just asking questions and showed up for curiosity. I was like present. You're amazing what you do how you overcame that? Wow That's incredible and people like hey, how can I help you? Yeah at the end of the night.

They're like, well What can I do for you? I didn't even hear your story. You know, it's so fascinating how connected we can get to others when we show curiosity. Yeah, you're right, 100%. But how did, this is the thing, this is the something I struggle with. There are people in my past who have done wrong to me, or in my interpretation, they've done wrong to me. I felt betrayed, I felt abandoned, or whatever, abused, taken advantage of, whatever, right? Or it's like they did something wrong.

And for whatever reason, when I confront them, I don't have the ability to show compassion, or positive affect. Yeah, the emotion is clouding the logic. It is. And anytime your emotion gets involved into the situation, what's their automatic defense mechanism? Yeah, you know, so I think if you change it to help me understand, almost like dot, dot, dot after that. Help me understand why, you know? Is it, you're almost putting it out there as you're doing me a favor by explaining this to me, versus why.

Right, right. Why is very problematic. It's putting them on the defensive. And too many times, especially if that's associated with lying, you're trying to bring their identity into play. And when someone's identity's affected, ooh, that's bad. I like calling people out on their identity. I'm like, you're just a liar, you're a cheater, you know? It feels good. But here's the thing. Most of my childhood, I had like little white lies constantly to try to protect myself. So it's also the part of the younger version of me that I don't like.

So maybe it's part of me reflecting to myself of like, God, I was a jerk too, back in my day. And I've done things that I'm not proud of. And I lied, and I cheated, I did all these things. I stole, I did these things. But it's almost like, now I know how bad that was, how would you confront another person personally, rather than for the job, who did you wrong or your family wrong? I always like to prime it on the front end as much as possible.

I know you talked about how sometimes your dad would be, you know, he'd come at you with the red light, not the green light. Why did you do this? Don't lie to me. And that creates just walls, right? We need to go around the walls. No frontal attack when it comes to that. So priming as much as we can to make them feel comfortable, that we're not gonna judge them. So we may do something like. But if it's against you personally, or your kid, like, how do you take up the emotion?

I want you to step outside yourself. How do you do that? I want you to think as like those video games where you're the top level. View yourself as a character. And view yourself as like, you got the Xbox controller, and you're controlling yourself. You're connected, tethered to yourself, but you're not yourself. And I want you to be their buddy. But how do you do it if they really hit that button in your heart and your soul? Like, how do you like, okay, my heart rate's gonna load.

Like, how do you personally do that? What's your goal? Yeah, I know. But no, let's say it. The goal is to get the information. And if I told you, here's the best way to do it. You'd do that, right? Yes. So it's the same way. Here's your goal. What's the best way to do it? But how do you get the emotions out of it? It's tough. How have you, like, what's the strategy? Screwing up so many times, I let my ego, many times, affect the results.

Really? You know, we had a situation. I did a lot of work in Chicago, my partner Brian and I. And we had a case in which we thought we were 10 foot tall and bulletproof. And it was, unfortunately, the death of a baby. And we had a mother-father situation. And we thought, case facts look like the guy did it. You know, confirmation bias is the worst thing that can come in, right? Because you're assuming, you think it is. You see there might be some evidence. And that's what horns and halos are, right?

You see a negative trait or you get negative information and you see everything through that prism. So instead of talking to the mom and getting some background, maybe ruling her out as a suspect, we said, ah, why don't you go talk to dad? We're gonna get this. Dad was so close. He was showing really close signs of emotion. But we didn't have that one little bit of information that could push it. And we didn't get it. He lawyered up. We go talk to mom. She's too emotional to really talk to.

But she gives us a couple words. She says the guy's name. She says the baby. She says bat. And it was a situation where there was a little souvenir baseball bat found. And it had been disinfected, it looked like. If we'd have had that information from her, if we wouldn't let our egos come involved, and we'd have done that interview first, that would have been probably the straw that broke the camel's back to be able to elicit that last bit of information. From the guy. And we did bad by that child.

We didn't get justice for that child because of our egos. And because of our maybe emotions. This comes full circle where literally a few days after, we're given the same set of scenarios on a double homicide. And time is of the essence, but we can either talk to the 18-year-old kid who's never been arrested, or we can talk to the 25-year-old person that doesn't like law enforcement, but that's been arrested a lot. And we kind of tried to learn from those mistakes and said we're gonna talk to the 18-year-old this time.

And we did. And thankfully, because we were able to get the background information. This 25-year-old that was accused, he was minding his own business, so we get some context. He was on the south side of Chicago, and some Latin kings rolled up to him. They didn't know that he was a gold glove boxer, and he knocked all three of them out. Wow. And then he urinated on them. The problem with that is, if you're a gangster disciple and you urinate on three Latin kings, they're probably gonna come for retribution.

Oh yeah. And so he catches through the grapevine that they're coming for him. They're gonna roll three or four deep, is what they called it, over to his house and kill his family members in it. So understanding the backstory now is so important, right? Because now we got the why to his what, potentially. And my partner Brian did such an amazing job because after we got that information, he talks about where they cut the gun up, how they tried to cut the gun up, how they threw it in the canal, where we were able to send the dive team out.

But we still gotta go talk to the other potential subject. So we go in there and he is, every bad thing you could say to another human being, he says to us. And- Why? I think it's what he's always done to get his way. And I think he was trying to get a reaction. You know that visceral reaction you talked about when somebody does something wrong? I think he does that to push people's buttons. And you know what? Hey, I was trying to cooperate, but this guy was, and my partner just saw it as performative.

He saw that they weren't balled up. He saw it was fake emotion and he let it just play out. He let it habituate. And then he was his buddy. What he did with me by that is, you blame outside factors, you understand without agreement, you diminish impact, not culpability, you demonstrate tactical empathy and you focus on the why. He was his buddy. He said, John, look, here's the deal. I know you didn't wake up at eight o'clock in the morning with ill will in your heart.

Here's what I know happened. You were minding your own business. They stepped up to you and you protected yourself. You might've taken a little bit too far, but then you catch wind. They're gonna come kill your family members that aren't in the game. And you know what? You can't call the police or you didn't feel like you could call the police, so you stepped up and you did something that you shouldn't have done, okay? But there were five people in that car. You didn't kill all five.

You know, it's diminishing impact. And as we're talking, you just see him go from violent to down and he finally came in on it because Brian did such a good job being his buddy. And I'm not saying the stakes of some of your interactions maybe are the same, but it's what's the off ramp we can give that other person so they can save face, whether it be in a negotiation, whether it be in a criminal interrogation or whether it be that parent that did said that bad thing to your son by premise and hey, John, look, I've dealt with you a lot in the past.

I know you're a standup guy. Sometimes we get emotional. Sometimes we say things that we don't mean and those things, you know, and this all kind of makes me think about it, one of the first cases I ever had in the Secret Service. We get a call that comes in to the Republican headquarters in a small town in Illinois. And I'm literally 24, 25 years old, brand new, wet behind the ears. And this was a great gig because normally nothing happens when you're doing protective intelligence.

Murphy's Law, you know, is that literally the night before the visit, it was a W visit, so Bush 43. It's in 2000, the whole hanging chattel action. And nine o'clock at night, a phone call comes in to the headquarters saying, hey, if he comes here, I'm a sniper, I'm gonna shoot him, so on and so forth. Well, we find out, oh no, what am I gonna do? Luckily, I had this guy named Bill. And Bill was like, if you imagine Columbo as a Secret Service agent, that was him.

He was like, I don't know how old the dude was. He wasn't retired. But he was just so humble, and he said, man, let me show you the way. We go out to where, it was an old pay phone, so one of the old phones that you actually had to put coins in. And there were no, obviously, flock cameras then. There was no ring cameras. But he takes the phone, cuts it off, puts it in a Ziploc bag, kicks over the trash can, which I thought was wow, going through dirty diapers.

And one of the last things he goes through is a little Styrofoam cup that has a yellow piece of paper that has the Republican headquarters phone number on it. And I bagged that up, because this is pre-DNA, early stages of DNA, but now we've got potential handwriting and fingerprints. So we're canvassing the area, looking for where could this cup and page have come from. The only thing we see is a little supermarket about a block away. So we walk over there, and he's interviewing the manager, and we're looking around, and he sees the little yellow piece of paper next to the phone that was ripped off that was the same exact.

It was one of these scenarios you see in training. You're like, that didn't happen. No, but it did. It all happened perfectly. Perfectly, and we asked the manager, hey, guy sounded between 50 and 70. Who was working in that three people? We pull the employment apps, which are handwritten. He had a layover on his twos and a strike doing a seven. Once again, you couldn't come up with a scenario at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center that was more unrealistic, but now we know the guy, and now it's about 11 o'clock.

We go to the person's house, knock on the door, and it was surreal to see Bill just, when I talk about priming a situation and creating the environment for the truth. Could he have, as we're gonna do a search warrant, we're gonna do this? Absolutely, but he knocks on the door. We have a couple local law enforcement with us. The guy's wife comes to the door and very Midwestern. Hey, what can I do for you? You want some cookies? Come on in, yeah, yeah. He's like, hey, you could get us a cup of coffee.

So very, we walk in, we make a right, and I remember the hallway distinctly because the guy's almost at the kitchen table doing something very Rockwellian of doing fishing flies, like tying fishing flies at the kitchen table, and as we're walking, Bill sees a picture of his wedding from probably the 1960s, same woman, so he's been married for about 50 years, and he sees his Vietnam Marine photo. Intel, observant, Intel. I don't know how he's gonna use this, but he walks up to the guy and he goes, hey, John, hey, this is Brad, I'm Bill.

He's like, we're with the Secret Service. Secret Service does two things. We stop people from counterfeit money and stop people from hurting our protectees. He goes, have you been printing any counterfeit any recently? And he goes, no. He goes, well, now you know why we're here. Oh, man. I mean, so like, he hits him with that, but then he smooths it and says, look, here's the deal. The reason I'm handling it like this is because I just walked by your wonderful wife. I see you guys have been married for a long time.

It says a lot about you. I see that you serve this country. It says a lot about you, and I know the political times that we're in, and they're very charged. What I'd like to hope is that you got in a heated political discussion, you took it a step too far, and you did something that you're normally gonna do, but you weren't gonna take that next step. Is that what we're talking about? And the guy came completely in on it. He opened up to it right away.

Right there. And it was just mind-blowing to see a professional take all that in, prime it, and sometimes if you don't prime it on the front end, I don't want the lie to happen, Lewis. It's harder to deal with. 54% of people, when we've done the biggest study on lie detection, is that if I watch two videos of you, there's a 54% chance I get it right on which one was telling the truth and which was lying. We suck at this. That's not that good. It's a coin flip.

If I don't have to deal with the lie, even better. Right. Wow, so did he go to jail? Or because he didn't act, nothing happened. So he got a delayed sentence, probation. I think they took into his age. He had some health issues. Yeah, yeah. But yeah. But normally if someone does that, they're going to- You're getting arrested. Wow. Even if you don't act. 100%. But if you make that threat, if you make that, wow. Yeah, and it's, obviously the times we're in, because we're- Of course.

We're lawyers and how charged we are, there's less friction. Yeah. When we dealt with threats 20 years ago, if you said something stupid at a bar, somebody would say, hey Louis, that's stupid. Nowadays, the bars are virtual and people can just go to whatever bar they want and you've seen with a lot of the political violence, it's just, it's easier for people to find like-minded people Wow. Okay. You mentioned this thing, Halo and Horns. Can you share what that is? Yeah, it's, so I meet you and you have a positive attribute.

I give you an affinity bias, meaning I put a halo on you. I meet you and you're having a bad day, you give me a bad look, whatever. I hear you talking poorly to your staff. I associate that as a negative act. So I'm going to see everything through those prisms. And that can be very problematic, is that I remember a case not too long ago, about four years ago, when I was still with the Secret Service, where my partner and I are doing a search warrant on a child predator.

And we come into the kitchen and there's a chihuahua and there's a pit bull. Now there's a lot of stereotypes about those two animals, right? And I don't want to have to ever be in a situation where I have to shoot a dog. And thankfully it didn't come to that. But pit bulls can hurt you, right? So what's my focus? My focus is on the pit bull. I had put horns on the pit bull, a halo on the chihuahua. Chihuahuas will bite you though. Well, as I found out, Lewis.

You try to pet it, bah, bah, bah. So as I was focused, he came around behind me, jumped up and grabbed me by the testicles. The chihuahua? Chihuahua. It came up and jumped and bit you? It didn't just bite. It latched on and treated like a Nerf ball. Oh my God. So I have to holster up. My partner, Ryan, is laughing. The bad guy in the kitchen's laughing. I think the pit bull's probably laughing that his little toady's taking care of business. And thankfully the Duluth trading company, their fire hose pants kept me talking at the octave that I'm talking at right now.

So horns and halos can be very, very difficult. And not too long before that, I'd fall victim to it in a criminal case where there's a missing female and she is dating two bike members of a motorcycle outlaw gang. One member's a one percenter from the standpoint of he's 6'4", he's 250, numerous felonies. The ATF had thought he had done other nefarious things in his past. If you were spinning back up Sons of Anarchy and you needed a villain, he'd be the guy. The other guy was a hang around, didn't even have a bike.

Five, six, 130 pounds, dripping wet. Looked like an accountant. So they're both best friends. They're dating the same female, she's disappeared. They don't know they're dating. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. It's a long story. Okay, gotcha, all right. Yeah, so very Jerry Springer-ish, okay? No offense to Jerry Springer, but yeah, there was a lot going on there. But what's our assumption? When I talk to the detectives, I'm like, I made the mistake of saying, what do you think? Ah, we don't think this guy's capable of hurting a fly.

And if you looked at him, you didn't think that either. And this guy, he's a bad dude, chances are. and when you hear that, horns and halos get assigned. So I do a polygraph on the little five, six guy first, and I ask him about his participation in her disappearance. He fails. What's my assumption? My assumption is maybe he saw it. After the fact, he has knowledge. So for three or four hours, I'm talking to him. Let me help you. You're probably afraid of him. I'm Secret Service.

Let me help you. And he keeps saying, that's not it. That's not it. And the detective outside the room, she finally comes in, knocks on the door. She goes, hey, you mind if I say something? Because she had picked it up. She didn't have the confirmation bias. She goes, you keep saying that's not it. What is it? And he goes, I killed her, cut her up in six pieces, and threw in the river. No way. Holy cow. Confirmation bias can cloud everything. Oh my gosh. So use horns and halos for I'm walking down the street late at night.

Law enforcement, use it when you're walking up to a patrol car and you get that gut instinct. Trust it then unequivocally. When it comes to when you've got time to digest and you don't need to make a quick decision, try to get a couple more interactions before you throw those horns and halos on somebody. Because Ted Bundy did a great job with first impressions. Wow. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode. And The School of Greatness drops new conversations every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday around money, mindset, healing, manifestation, and relationships.

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Dell.com slash dell-pro. So do you not put horns or halos on anyone then? Or do you try to put halos on a bad person so that they will give you more information? Or how does that... Not really with them. I never want them to think that I look at them poorly. So I treat kind of horns and halos or a first impression as a hypothesis, not a conclusion. And I want more information to get the conclusion behind it. But when you're internally thinking about them or speaking to them and you're with a bad guy, are you putting a halo on them so that you are warm and kind to them?

Yeah, I see what you're saying. So that they will reveal more? Yeah. So let me give you a for instance. So what do you think should happen to these two people? I'm going to give you a short guy and I'll give you a tall guy. All right. And I think this will kind of explain it to your listeners. So the short guy, he was a veteran of World War I for his country. He served his country by all accounts valiantly. He was decorated for his activities in World War I.

Very introverted guy. He didn't really find his voice till the 1930s. He was very introverted, but he became a much better political speaker in the 1930s. He was the leader of his military juggernaut. And his actions, once again, very short guy. His actions led to the burning deaths, if we just want to focus on burning deaths of a million people. So that's the short guy. Then we got a tall guy, very tall guy. And this coming up on 9-11. So very, very tall guy, very religious guy, very, very rich guy.

Fought off two empires. Both empires that he fought off, he fought them off on the behalf of the other empire. He fought what some people would say by using terroristic type means, because he was fighting an enemy that had much more resources. And he caused the death of 24,000 people, but exponential amounts of gold and treasure, so to speak. So we have short guy and we have tall guy. And you can make one of them disappear from the annals of history. What would Lewis do? I mean, just from that information, the person who kills a million, you would think you'd want to remove them versus 25,000 from that.

Okay. But I don't know, is there more context? Well, you just killed Harry S. Truman instead of George Washington. So when we talk horns and halos, and that's not a gotcha question. Nobody's ever gotten that right when I say it to my students. But it just shows when you're given facts and you're not given any more context, we put the horns and the halos and it changes our assumptions. So if you look at it from this standpoint, Harry Truman, okay, with Curtis LeMay and his firebombing campaign in Japan, basically dropping bombs, napalm on civilian centers, and then the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

If you look at those actions and I try to be his buddy afterwards, you mentioned, how would I kind of use this? Here's what I would do. I'd say Harry. So let's say I'm interrogating Harry. We're at the Nuremberg trials. Harry, who would I blame? I blame the Empire of Japan. Say, Harry, look, December 6th, we're isolationists. We're staying out of the war. That's the sentiment of this country. But the Empire of Japan killed 3,000 of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen on one day. Then I would understand but not agree.

And I say, I get it. It's tough because you're writing letters home to soldiers, sailors, and airmen talking about how they gave their lives. And I diminish impact by saying, Harry, let's be honest. A million people died over the course of that three, four months. Millions of more would have died if we would have had to land in mainland Japan. Then I demonstrate empathy with stories and analogies. I say, Harry, it's kind of like an ER doc. And she's there at 2.30 in the morning. And a horrific car accident comes in with a little five-year-old kid that just looks like your kid.

And he's got a baseball uniform on and mangled leg. You got to make a decision. Am I going to take the leg or not? If you take the leg, he's never going to play baseball again. If you don't take the leg, he may die. You took the leg. And that's what you did here. And the buck stops here. And then I summarize. We're talking about you didn't start it, but you ended it. So, Harry, boom. And that's how you'd interrogate Harry Truman. If you're going to interrogate Osama bin Laden, you have to talk to him like he's George Washington because in his mind, he is.

Everyone's the hero of their own adventure. Yeah. Man. So, is that what you call the buddy framework then? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, the off-ramp. Can you walk me through the criminal equation that you use to understand when someone commits a crime? And does it also apply to everyday bad decisions too? A hundred percent, it does. Yeah. So, if you think about all crime, most crime can be kind of boiled down to an equation. You have need plus ability plus opportunity, their own internal justifications. And all of that is almost squared by stress.

Meaning stress is like the gasoline on that numerator. And then you got a denominator, which is social bonds and chances and consequences of getting caught. So, that's what keeps you from doing those bad things. So, if you want to think of, have you seen Breaking Bad? A couple of episodes, not the whole thing, but I need to. So, Walter White, you understand the gist of it, right? We got a chemistry teacher, gets in the meth game. All right. So, if you look at his need, his need was he needed money because he'd just been diagnosed with cancer.

What was his ability? He was a- He could make meth. What was his opportunity? He knew Jesse that had the distribution networks. What was his own justification? Hey, people are going to do it anyway. Why don't I provide him a better- Better service. Product. Better product. Better service. And what were his stressors? Well, just season one through five, the stressors are all over. His social bonds are a mess and his chances of getting caught, he's got a brother-in-law that's a DEA agent. Crazy. Yeah. So, literally, you can almost take any kind of crime or it could be embezzlement from work.

It could be whatever. And you can almost plug that in and then reverse engineer it to see what caused them to wake up that day to do that bad thing. And then try to be their buddy in that regard. Wow. Without calling a liar or a bad person. Gosh, that's so hard to do for me. Yes. It's so hard to do for me. Has there been an instance in your life personally where you've failed your own strategies because of emotion? Oh, yeah. I think it's really hard with your kids.

Tell me more. Well, so, I can just think without – I don't want to put the offending party on notice. But somebody – my son was an athlete and you get a coach that is doing something that's obviously wrong and inappropriate. Would I like to go be his buddy? Sure. Do I teach that? I did not practice what we preach in that situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is tough when it's your brother. You teach it personally then. Yeah. This is not – I mean, obviously, you have a sex offender, a children coming in.

It's not your kid, but you could take it very personally about how horrible that is and still get angry. But when it's your child, I bet it's like, how do you really regulate your emotions? Yeah, I'm interrogating the equation at work. My kid's not an equation. No. And so, yeah, it is tough. And I don't know the way around that. How did you handle that situation? I think initially poorly. Yeah, yeah. And then as I finally realized that my blood was boiling and realized logic comes after emotion and I'm putting up this coach's guard that I finally regulated myself a little bit.

And then you were able to – Yeah, then it was all good. Resolve it, yeah. In your mind, what are the most applicable tactics to everyday life that you've learned through interrogations then? Oh, man. Perception versus perspective. What does that mean? So, I learned this many, many years ago from the standpoint of, look, we all have a perspective of things, but we got to be careful about our perception. I mean, I've got a perspective on my own personal life. Those are my shoes that I'm in, is that I've got to be able to get in their shoes.

And people say, oh, empathy, this. No, I have to understand the other person's perspective. I have a perception about them. And I have to be very, very careful about that is because I don't know why they did that thing. And I've been very surprised about why people Really? did certain things. And that if I would have gone upon an assumption of my perception, I would have been 100% wrong. So, that's one of the things that universally that's kind of taught me is to try to understand things from their point of view.

And even if it's not right, how they got there could be problematic. But to get the mission done and to find out the truth, I have to look at it from their perspective. It's easier for me when we worked homicides, to understand a homicide most of the time, because it was gang related, it was drug related, it was disrespect, whatever. When we would deal with somebody that would hurt an infant, It's like, why? Yeah, and that's the hard part is to try to put that on that always caused some scars.

Okay, it's something that I had to deal with is that I was blessed, I kind of had three different stints in our polygraph program, Chicago, St. Louis, and then the greatest thing for me was going to teach and taking a step back from being in the trenches. Because when you are being people's buddy that don't deserve a buddy, I thought I was having heart attack, I thought I was having panic attacks, and it was cognitive dissonance. If I was getting on a plane, and we travel arms, so I don't want to have to be in a situation where oh my gosh, I'm having a panic attack.

I don't want to lose my gun. I didn't want to, you know, in law enforcement, we always view as, and we don't want to go talk to the therapist that shows you're weak. That's the old, the old me, you know, I didn't realize it's not the, you know, the old saying about, it's not the water outside the hall that sinks you, it's the water that gets inside the hall. And in talking to these people, I thought I was fine, but I wasn't self taking care of myself.

You're releasing that energy too. I was just, hey, we got another case, we got another case. And it's always another molester. And oh my God, I got to do this. Because if I don't do this, you get almost like a God complex. If I don't do this, this- More kids are going to suffer or die. And it's not right. It's that you have to take an inventory of where you're at. And finally, I was getting to the point where I had to go in, and I felt like I was having a heart attack.

They did a catheter on me. And they're like, oh yeah, they're like, your heart's fine. And it was, I was rotten mentally from the standpoint of, I started seeing neighbors as, what's their ulterior motive? Supervisor, what's his problem? When you deal with people that have horns all the time, you start to kind of- Everyone's got something. Everybody's got something. There's evil people out here, so how do I- And when you're constant, when the operational tempo is such, you don't have a chance to kind of decompress.

It'd be like this, when you think of your football career, every week, what's your preparation like? A lot of training, a lot of hitting, a lot of training, a lot of practice. Gain tape. Aggression, the other thing, focus. Focus. But would you say it's 95% prep and then really only 5% perform? Oh, I don't know. I mean, it's probably like 50-50 maybe. It's like you're prepping, and then you're practicing, and then you play at the end of the week, yeah. But 60 minutes of game time.

Yeah, that's it, yeah. So I guess 90% prep with training and then- So within that game time versus practice, you've got time to decompress, you've got times to heal, rehabilitate. The problem in law enforcement is we're so- Every day is game time. Eight hours a day, 10 hours a day. You don't have time to train. So you don't have time to go out and do control tactics and range and this. You do the bare minimum and- You learn on the job. And that's the problem. And it's also, you don't have time to heal, is that the average person in law enforcement from 911 operators to EMTs to state troopers to federal agents, they may experience 200 or 300 traumatic events where a 911 operator's on the phone when somebody dies.

A state trooper's pulling up to a horrific vehicle accident where seven people died. A detective has to go give a death notification. We have to talk to these horrific people. But yeah, you gotta go to work the next day. Oh my, yeah. There's no time off. So for me, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I would wear the same shirt to work. I had a great therapist that she would say, almost, you treat it like a, almost like a medical examiner has a laboratory coat. And you take it off.

I'd leave it in my car. I'd play a game of chess real quick on my phone before I walked in the house. Clear your mind, clear your energy. Disassociate it. Man, but you might've just seen the most horrific thing. And then 30 minutes later, like have to be with your wife and kids. Yeah. And especially when your kids are the ages of some of the victims. Oh gosh. It's like having to play that role to be the buddy and knowing, but you're doing it to try Get the bad guys, but still affects you emotionally hundred percent And that's why I think we're finally trying to do a better job now of Especially the people that have to look at these images and these horrific images to decompress talk to people and realize it's not It's not a weakness.

It's a strength to actually realize you need to talk to somebody and you know Yeah I'm glad to see that that seed change is kind of happening Is there a moment or a case that you still carry that changed how you see people permanently Wow? I would say in the many many cases that I've worked most of the people that I dealt with were not evil We're not evil What were they they were people that situational factors created an outcome? There was something I see I see chapter 30.

They're 30 years old If I went back in chapter 5 10 15 I would see all kinds of disruptions to that asteroid that changed that trajectory that led them to that moment to take action Not to make it right. Yeah, but most people I talked to I could do that. However, there were a few people That weren't like that. We had we would do a lot of cases in South Carolina They were very proactive trying to catch predators. They're very great and Kevin one of the commanders down there was great about doing these to catch predator operations where We kind of try to it's almost like a preemptive burn how you know out here with forest fires You want to sometimes burn, you know and catch the bad people that are out there So they don't maybe abduct a kid things like that So there'd be online detectives go out and perpetrate themselves as we're messaging people messaging kids and say hey, let's hang out Yeah, whatever.

Yeah, you've seen the Chris Hansen stuff and and that's what we were doing in this situation You know, there's a there's a funny part of it and there's a not so funny part of it Is that one of these offenders had said? Hey, I've been caught before you say you live near a lake I'm not buying it I need proof of life and this was a just when AI was just starting so without getting into sources and methods Kevin had a Profile photo that was actually him that they had doctored a little bit.

I won't get into me specifics But he ran back to his house he lived on the lake and he got on his dock and he put on his wife's bikini and Of course, they had to get rid of all the hair and you know the chest hair and get rid of that but they recreated the 12-year-old version of the previous photo that the person thought he was chatting with and That was the straw that broke his proverbial back and he jumped in his car came down and they they arrested him And so, you know you you see those moments.

You're like, oh, that's great. You know wonderful, but then the next case is a guy that Shows up and he is this is where we got to be careful about what we put online this female who was a babysitter she Had a pretty good social media presence and She was in his orbit. It's like a daycare or just a babysitter She kind of both but the problem is it wasn't really a regulated daycare So there weren't a lot of people around observing yeah, and he observed her as a mark not because he liked her but because she had access and He kind of scrubbed her social media and scraped it Because think about what you can find out from somebody's social media likes pain points Whatever the case may be and he created a mythical Prince Charming in him as of himself that she was like this guy's amazing He was a tender swindler hundred percent kind of that guy hundred percent with obviously different, you know motive.

Yeah, and he I Always say what else and he admitted to one infant. What else another infant 30 infants? Oh, but he had sexually abused that he had sexually assaulted. Oh and The way he described it was just I won't even yeah I won't even get into it because it's triggering is just like that for me was when I was like, you know, what? Clocks ticking I'm eligible to retire. I love teaching this stuff to me teaching. It was a great way to kind of You know give back and but yeah, it was time to how to get someone like that who's done, you know Horrible crime with kids to actually open up and reveal that they did this knowing that don't they know they're gonna go to jail by revealing this some do Some have been having that conversation in their head.

They know what they did is wrong Really? So this person knew it was wrong. They knew it was wrong because the sociopaths would they know it's wrong Yeah, they still know it's wrong. They just might not have a motion for the person that they're doing it here Yeah, it's like I always get that question on polygraph like would this person pass if they don't think it's wrong They still know they pulled the trigger. They still know they choked this person. They did the crime. So Yeah, they still know that they did it but once again, it's creating that space where I'm not judging them and I'm just creating a forum where just like on a podcast we can just air it out and And that's what he did and I didn't show that judgment After the fifth kid that he reveals you don't have how do you in internally not show disgust on your face externally?

Yeah, just keep my eyebrows up Yeah, it's like when you first meet people you do a quick eyebrow flash it keeps you from coding neutral but yeah It's almost like I had it kept there like guys guys crazy. Wow, but oh Yeah, it's just when people are talking a lot of times. They don't realize what's leaking out And so once again by not judging he had he had never told anybody this before So everybody wants to share cathartic, right? That's so interesting, right? Yeah You This podcast is sponsored by Lutron we're taking a quick break to remind you to discover the Lutron difference Lutron's premium lighting shades and controls empower designers with limitless possibilities schedule an immersive Lighting demo at one of Lutron's experience centers today to learn how Lutron can help you craft Elevated experiences with light on your next project learn more online at Lutron comm slash luxury When you're at work, you never know when you'll be interrupted But with the Dell Pro powered by Intel core ultra with vpro no matter what distracts you your laptop won't its battery Optimized for the way you work with built-in intelligence that quiets distractions when you need to focus your laptop will help keep you locked in Even when it's bring your dog to work day built for those who stay in the flow the Dell Pro built for you Dell comm slash Dell dash Pro What has been your Biggest personal challenge with all the information that you've learned in the Secret Service Is there anything that holds you back with the information, you know as a human being Wow Like do you I would say not letting your accomplishments or chasing accomplishments, right?

Is it coming in young? I thought man, I need to do this. I need these arrests I need to get on this protected detail. I need to do X Y & Z because those were resume things right and this kind of all came full circle for me where I had access because of the polygraph program and where I was the cities I Were in we had good relationships with the local police department. So I got to run a lot of polygraphs and I was blessed to have that opportunity that In one year 2015 my supervisor put in for me to win agent of the year And you know when you win that from the Secret Service, you think oh I've arrived and I made it right and then you go up there and it was wonderful They flew my family up there and there I am my son He's got his you know suit on and my wife's up there and you know, you're feeling proud of yourself And then you think this was built upon Talking about somebody doing their worst day and Yeah, this is a great honor but just down the street from our headquarters is it was raining it was a terrible weather day There were uniformed division officers technicians Agents that were standing out in the rain.

They were cold. They didn't have that opportunity They were you know, all they cared about is my push on time, right? And so it I felt almost afterwards like Donnie Brasco when he gets the gold watch afterwards. Mm-hmm is because to get all that I had had horrific mental like Dealing with that stuff. I had been away from my family, you know, you get the the hotel status You're like, oh I have lifetime titanium. That's not good That means you spent three and a half four years away from your family in this property interesting So I think to me that's when it became less about doing the thing And can you be a force multiplier and and be what my view of greatness is?

impacting others to do impacting others is that I Can't tell you how great it is when somebody else calls you or emails you and says hey, man And I don't I mean I remember them they said you taught me this and this is what this did for me It just you can't that's awesome. Yeah, how good are you at detecting a lie without the polygraph test? When you're in front of a person probably not very good really and when I say it's relative Yeah, but I get it wrong a lot.

Like we were doing two truths and a lie. That's not people like to do that It's not really a realistic scenario. But what I like to do is I like to give people an open-ended forum It's a dog without a leash. They tell me a story and then you look for certain statements So then next after that transitional moments a lot of times That's where people sandwich the lie or they sandwich the omission in his omission is the most common way people lie So within that then let's go to that time period and let's now force a yes or no question That's to me the closest thing I can get to a polygraph without a polygraph is what does that look like?

Omission is the closest thing to a lie. What does that mean? So a mission would be The obviously you just don't tell me right you just it's less cognitive load. You don't have to remember the lie You just don't tell me the lie. It's not as much psychological stress I know we were talking offline about how you have a hard time lying sometimes because you don't want to lie and you maybe feel Like you're so a polygraph is gonna measure Blood volume heart rate breathing pattern and quality and your galvanic skin response basically sweating activity and it's going to do that for a certain period of time after I provide you stimulus in the form of a yes-no question and You provide me a response as a yes-no question Without the polygraph that's it's still happening.

I'm just not seeing it on my monitor Yeah, but it may manifest itself in your word choice and your vocal inflection and how you choose to answer it So the best way I like to look at this Lewis is if I ask my daughter Did you clean your room? And she says yes There's two types of yes, there's yes, and there's yes, there's no so vocal inflection It's not perfect. Once again view these as check engine lights, but a high-pitched voice is kind of like are you believe me, right?

Delay, so if I'm if I'm baselining you and we're asking a bunch of questions and it's nope. Nope. Nope and then Nope. Yeah delay delay. Yeah, and you're thinking about it. I want to tell them yes or no. Yeah Yeah exclusive qualifiers usually typically normally So if I say I typically don't cheat Let's say you asked me about cheating in school and I say typically I don't cheat. Why did you say typically? That's a truthful statement. People don't want to lie. Yeah, most of the time.

I don't do that most time. I don't know normally usually Verbal nonverbal disconnect. Mm-hmm. So yes, or if I went like this, that's hard to do. No Yes, so if I'm speaking something that my body language is in you know Contrary to so someone shakes their head. No, but they say yes. What are they really saying? That's one of the few times where I'm really gonna look at the body language and be like, ooh I'm kind of airing on the body language like that You were so worried about what you're gonna verbally say to me and what leaked out but once again, not a hundred percent It's that check engine light where I'm like, I'm gonna follow that one up later There's also certain cultures where people kind of like shake their head.

No, and they say yes all the time, right? It's like there's and there's agreeable people So once again, I'm taking these things all into context and I'm not immediately calling them out going you just did that You're just taking information in taking it in What are some other things that we look at just not answering that? I want you to sit there and think when you ask somebody a question Did they answer the question? Yeah, if they gave you delay equivocation If they confronted you for asking it, why are you asking me that?

Yes, then you're like, oh, yeah, then it's once again It's the check engine light. So it's almost easier to just view it as did they answer my question? So like if you go back to the Jerry Sandusky situation where Bob Costas talked to him on real sports, then he said Are you a pedophile and Jerry said no, it's a legalistic term. He didn't view himself as a pedophile. He answered so quickly Then Costas did an amazing job and said are you sexually attracted to young children?

And he goes am I sexually attracted to young children? Sexually attracted to young children. I mean, I like spending time with them. I like hanging out with them, but no Well, he gave a lot of truthful statements. He likes hanging out with him He likes spending time with him, but he couldn't answer the actual question So that's what I think the biggest the easiest thing for your listeners to pick up on is when you ask yes No question. Did you actually get an answer or was it obfuscation?

Was it delay? Was it evasion? Have you ever had to take a lie detector test? Yeah Do you fail it do you pass it like how does it I must have passed I got the job I guess have you taken one since then? Oh, so we had to do one to get back into the polygraph program and I did okay on that one Really my understanding you did it you passed and I passed evidently if you were hypothetically trying to pass a test a lie detector test and There wasn't something you did wrong, hmm But maybe it wasn't like a hundred percent accurate you're like, I just don't want them to know that yeah but I'm not like lying about like Some wrong crime.

Yeah, like I just didn't want them to know this one things It looks bad with me makes me it's my character like a little off Yeah, is there a way you would get around that or do you just say, you know? I'm just you're just you would just try to be as honest as you can Just keep your heart rate down and just hope for the best. So the advice I always give people is look Think of this like a magnetometer and like a magnetometer like you're going through TSA Uh-huh.

I can't tell if that's a paperclip or I can't tell if that's a handgun It you may be making a mountain out of a molehill So before we take this test What do we need to talk about that? You need to kind of undo your pockets because once again I want to prime the situation so that they can be honest with me Yeah, I don't want them to fail and then I have to understand why they failed I want them to provide me the information and I will be just to your listeners out there Anybody applying to federal law enforcement?

They look at a whole person concept a lot of these things that that used to be especially with drug use and stuff that used To be you know, 10-15 years ago. Oh don't even apply Yeah now they look at the time the place the relevance and if the The best thing you can do is your distance away from you if you're 10 15 20 years away from it or something then Yeah But even now like with marijuana because it's legal on the stateside, right the time delineations like a year sometimes interesting so as long as the person Comes in and they're like look my application forms are correct All those forms are pulled off or all the questions are pulled off the forms So if when you mail that email that whatever if in your heart of hearts you knew that that was truthful you're going to pass It's when somebody goes on reddit Or they do this and they do that and they're like, oh, here's what I have to do to pass a polygraph I get this sometimes when I fly I'll be flying and I'll check in with the pilot and They'll be like, where are you going?

I'm going to Toledo. What are you doing? I'm gonna run some polygraphs and they're like polygraph that doesn't work and you're like, well TSA is not a hundred percent, but you're trusting that with 300 people on this plane, right? And I don't mean it as like why do you use it? Because it does work. Is it perfect? Absolutely not It's the best mousetrap we've got. Yeah, and then they're like, well, well, can't you beat it? I'm like, well and and you know, it's very civil conversation, but I'll say how big is your Book to fly this 737.

Oh, man, it's 1500 pages. I said, could I read that? Yeah, if I read it, could I fly your book and like now you need flight time and I go, what do you mean? Well, because you wouldn't know how much this would result in that and and I says the same thing with polygraph You can read on reddit or online do this do that to affect the outcome of the exam? But you don't see what I'm seeing and if I see normal physiology every day and you don't know how much input creates this Now, I know you're trying to do something untoward And it would be like if water came in to test you.

Yeah, and you gave them a watered-down sample. Yeah Well, what is this? Why are you giving them watered-down urine sample? You must be up to something So for honest people, you know follow the process be honest There's so many people that think they're gonna be a false positive Take bad advice and unfortunately it works against them It just causes more stress afterwards It causes stress and that agency may just be like look we're not gonna take a chance now Wow Wow You got a great book out Brad it's called tell me everything a secret service agents proven strategies for earning trust revealing the truth and communicating with anyone and in a world where I feel like relationships matter the most and sometimes revealing stuff about ourselves in relationships Specifically intimate relationships can make or break the relationship, you know, even when you know my wife when we first started dating You know in my mind I said, I'm gonna tell her everything she asked me anything like and I don't have the cleanest past of Like I got nothing.

I've done horrible, but it's not like things that I'm proud of when I was like 12, right? it's like okay used to steal I used to whatever like these things and I was like anything she asked me that I feel shame about I'm gonna share it and I go she may not like it It may not work out, but I don't want to hold on to Hiding something about myself to put someone I might be with for a long time right or forever and Thankfully, I chose the right woman because when I revealed these things she didn't give me content All right She didn't look at me like how you did that when you were 12 you did that when you're eight, you know You do all these things like she didn't look at me like I was a bad person which made me want to be like, let me share everything, you know, it's like here's all my flaws and and I think that goes a long way in relationships and Building trust in connection with someone.

So maybe she read your book before I met her, you know It's like but I think it goes a long way when you When you can connect with someone and not show them Disgust with something they've done in their past whether you want to hang out with that person or not But building rapport and connections, so I want people to get your book You're also on Bradley Beeler comms. That's your website, right? Yeah, and then you're on Instagram LinkedIn Brad Beeler 1860 Brad Beeler 1865 Yeah, but the book is tell me everything.

Who do you think would get the most out of this book? Well, of course, I'm gonna tell you everyone parents teachers coaches, right? That's what the publishing company will tell you to say I Originally wrote it for law enforcement and thought this is what I'm gonna go with right? I've made all these mistakes and luckily I had a great editor That's like and these are universal lessons About how to prepare for an interaction how to make a great first impression how to use all your senses in interaction How to further your communication how to detect deception and then when somebody does you're wrong?

How do you not punch him in the face? It's funny when I had it Evie Pamparas on a few different times. I can't remember what the question was I asked her but She started with something. I think I said like How do you know if someone is lying or something like this right or someone's lying or telling the truth and she goes well Everyone lies. Yeah, right and she goes everyone lies And I was like, oh, yeah, I guess everyone, you know, it's like I was playing into it, right?

I guess we did she goes it just how it depends what type of lie you're telling right? Is that what it is? Yeah, everyone lies. It depends how you're telling the lie. Why the lie by the lie? Yeah, I mean like so you lie as well. Everybody lies. I Mean you said it right We're a tribal-based culture that if men would typically and I'm not being sexist here. I'm just going evolution Yeah, we would lie about our exploits. I brought this home to the for us to eat I killed this mini Buffalo, whatever it was this big.

It was this big and and women a lot of times would lie to keep the cohesion of the group together and Obviously that's changed in a lot of different ways But we all lie and if we lived in a society where people didn't lie Who That would be I think pretty damning interesting I mean, it's weird to think that way But you know, there's been movies made about that or just everybody is completely honest and that's an interesting world that you live in I think Lies kind of like alcohol or somewhat of a social lubricant, huh?

Who lies more men or women in modern society? Man, I'm not getting trouble based on your evidence of Children let me go with that. I'm not gonna be it's it's kids because there's less Consequences for their actions. So I think juveniles tend to lie just a more. Yeah, what is it that? women who you're Interviewing and lie about more or how do they lie that difference than how men lie or what they lie about? I don't I don't I don't think there's much really. Yeah, I don't I think that's uh, I don't think that's gender specific I really don't I I haven't picked up any differences in how or what they lie about who's harder at tricking you at lying Who's better at lying?

Yes, who's better? I love women. Yeah, women are better at lying detecting lies and interrogating Yeah, if my wife's asked me something like I know not to lie I'm like, I know there's sometimes I'm like, I don't want to say this But I know if I don't say it she's gonna she's gonna understand something's off women's intuition is the thing So I'm just like I'd rather just not ask me certain things. I'm like great Why are you gonna make me feel bad about something, you know But it's just so much easier to live your life Being honest, especially in intimate relationships, but is there ever a moment you should lie to your partner?

Oh Man, yeah, I mean there would be I think there are times my wife just beat cancer and I think there were times that And and we've always we always had a pretty good prognosis But I think there were times where maybe my enthusiasm on the prior prognosis could have bordered on am I being deceptive But what's my motivation? Right? So yeah, there are there are times like that, right? Right, right. Yeah Wow So women are better at lying and they're better at detecting lies. Oh, yeah Why do you think that is is it is it their emotional awareness?

Is it spiritual? Is it they have something in their brain observant? We're men. We're very transactional how we talk to people most time a lot of times We'll be talking won't be looking away. I'll be thinking about you know, the old Stephen Covey and don't listen to You know listening to respond versus, you know, listening to understand is that I think women are a lot better at that as Actually using eye contact using body language so when there's an incongruence between the lyrics the soundtrack and The music video they're better at picking it up because words are just words How I say the words the second line of communication and then the third line of communication is my body language Like for instance my wife if she texts me with no emoji that says I'm fine I don't know what the frick that means is it I'm fine.

I'm fine. Mm-hmm I'm fine If I can talk to her at least I hear the voice if I see her I can put all that together I think women are a lot better at being observant and being able to pick up on those things. What's normal a Baselining you those types of things. What is the one question? You wish more people would ask you that would help them improve their life I would tell my son and and you know focus on your lane and Try to keep all the noise that's in the outside world The people are trying to live rent-free in your head try to keep that out and this goes from Marcus Aurelius to Viktor Frankl to You sing bolt, you know, he trained four years for nine point four seconds.

Whatever it is, right is that stay in your lane and You know focus on You know those outcomes and not the outcomes but focus on the process is a lead to the outcomes I know Nick Saban had a famous quote about that Is that just be vigorous in your day-to-day and your small victories so that you can achieve your don't try to eat that elephant Yeah, you know the entire way take those small little spoons That's beautiful a couple final questions Brad. This is called the three truths So imagine hypothetically you get to live as long as you want.

Mm-hmm, but it's your last day on earth In the future and you get to create and accomplish everything you want from this moment until then But for whatever reason you got to take all of your work with you. So this book this conversation any Written material videos that you have is gone hypothetically But on the last day of your life you get to leave behind three lessons to the world. Yeah, three truths What would those three truths be for you? So Ted lasso, I'm gonna give you a quote be curious not judgmental Yeah, I said it was Mark Twain.

It wasn't Mark Twain or Walt Whitman I think he said it was but be curious not judgmental if You are curious about other people and you use your mouth and ears in the proportion that the good Lord gave them to you You'll learn a lot more. You will come across as genuine From time. I was a little kid. I'm always asking why start asking why a little bit more I would go with kind of what I said before is once again stand in your lane as far as Don't be worried about what other people doing.

Don't be worried so much about what other people saying I think in today's society, we're always worried about the way we look the way we act those types of things I would say lastly perception versus perspective I know we talked about this before but too many times we look at things from our worldview how we see things The best thing about the Secret Service I got to travel to 40 countries and I got to talk to see politicians. I got to see pedophiles and everything in between and You realize really quickly that people are people I Remember I was in Tokyo not too long ago Before I left the Secret Service and I was there in a protective visit and it's not about being in the limo being on Air Force One that wasn't my protection story.

My protection story was usually near a dumpster or in a stairwell That wasn't in the recruiting brochure Three days in a stairwell with a Japanese Secret Service agent You were three days in a stairwell just guarding your spot I keep it him away from the protected area and Google Translate and I are having an amazing conversation with his Japanese Secret Service agent and Perspective wise if you think about it, he was from Nagasaki 70 80 90 years prior. What did we do Bob bombed him with an a-bomb and here I am.

She's bringing in pastries He we're having this amazing conversation that we're similar. We're going through the same parental issues as together and I give him a little $2 American flag pen and he pops open his cufflinks and gives me his grandfather's cufflinks pearl cufflinks so in a long way I think that's positive to society that in one two generations we can change from wanting to kill an entire and vice versa Yeah, too. We can break bread and get along so trying to understand other people's perception and get away from propaganda.

Mm-hmm. That's cool I want to acknowledge you Brad for you know, a lot of the work you did towards the end which is around you know capturing pedophiles and really Cleaning them, you know off the streets and getting them into behind bars because I feel like that's probably one of the worst crimes I mean obviously murder is horrible, but I think sexually abusing a child has got to be one of the the worst things that an adult can do and so For you using your skills and your knowledge your tools to go do that even though it's probably the thing that caused you to retire from doing it by seeing how Disgusting that is I want to acknowledge you for doing that work and saving a lot of kids lives.

Thank you. It means a lot Yeah, thank you. It's really powerful. I Found a question for you Brad is what is your definition of greatness? So I guess probably 25 years ago. I would view greatness as man winning the Super Bowl Right being that person that does that one great thing I think Having gone through 25 years of seeing presidents protect these and all that. I think it's about more Sustained doing things that have an impact upon society and I go back to being a 17 year old kid Union, Missouri, I've got a English teacher named miss Bertrand and miss Bertrand.

She taught English. She taught speech. She taught drama she was the drama coach all this stuff and she suffered from Unbelievably debilitating rheumatoid arthritis to where she could barely walk at our time you know moving pens and writing on the blackboard, but every day she got up and she Did what is the I think one of the greatest things people can do is give you attention? Okay, even back then before devices giving someone your attention is priceless and she would connect with thousands of students over 37 years and She would make them the best version of themselves.

She wasn't getting raises. She wasn't winning awards She wasn't winning Super Bowls She was in Union, Missouri Making these small-town kids better at the lyrics the soundtrack and the dance doing all part of it And I know she well I was one of those kids that she affected and hopefully made me a much better communicator that hopefully locked up some bad guys and Did some good things so she passed on and I know at her funeral hundreds of her former students came there Well from all over the country to pay their respects and she had no idea the impact that she had on people.

So doing Ordinary things at an unbelievably high level when nobody's keeping score. Nobody's giving you an award for it. Mm-hmm. That's greatness. It's great Thanks for being here. So yeah, but shit. Thanks, sir. Amazing my friend I hope you're enjoying this episode right now because we are on a mission to impact a hundred million lives every single week and Every follow here on this podcast helps us reach more people Make sure to hit the follow at the top of this show's page right now It's a single biggest thing that you can do to support the show and the impact of us reaching you every single time we Have new episodes.

I appreciate you and I can't wait to see you in the next episode. I Hope you enjoyed today's episode episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well.

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