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I just did a test with these things because they use such high quality paper on them and the laminate cover.
0
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One book will stop multiple 22 caliber rounds at point blank range, which was pretty cool.
0
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Like it literally, they all stopped around page 168 of one book.
0
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Now two books will stop nine millimeter.
0
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You literally can use them as improvised body armor, which is like skill number eight in book one.
0
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Welcome to the Yard of Charm, I m your host Jordan Harbinger.
0
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Today I m here with producer Jason DeFilippo and we re talking with Clint Emerson, author of 100 Deadly Skills and the 100 Deadly Skills Survival Edition.
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We re gonna talk about Navy SEALs and the NSA, Special Forces Training and Social Dynamics, Boy Scouts and how it started as a spy school for boys, I did not know that.
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and some cultural and physical awareness, how we make judgments and are judged by others based on factors we may not even be aware of.
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That and a whole lot more.
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Enjoy this episode with Clint Emerson.
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We re glad to have you here with us at AOC.
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And by the way, if you re new to the show, we d love to send you some top episodes and the AOC toolbox where we discuss concepts like reading body language, having charismatic nonverbal communication,
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negotiation techniques, networking, influence strategies, mentorship, the science of attraction, persuasion tactics, and everything else that we teach here at The Art of Charm.
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Check that out at theartofcharm.com slash toolbox.
0
SPEAKER_00
Also at theartofcharm.com slash podcast, that s where you can find the full show notes for this and all previous episodes of the show.
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Alright, here s Clint Emerson.
0
SPEAKER_00
Did I just hear that you have a rectal cache?
0
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or something like that.
0
SPEAKER_00
Let s start with the rectum.
0
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Yeah, that s book one.
0
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Book one is more personal, I would say.
0
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Intimate, if you will.
0
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Yeah.
0
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Yeah.
0
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The survival edition is more like a playbook for dealing with different kinds of crisis.
0
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You know, everything from, you know, virtual stuff to, you know, reality, natural disaster, manmade disaster.
0
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But the first book is the one that pushed the limits on, you know, disposing of a dead body, you know, hiding shit up your ass.
0
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I mean, all kinds of stuff.
0
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Yeah, I mean, it just reminds me of, is it Pulp Fiction, where he s like, your father had this watch in his ass for four years.
0
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
0
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Yeah.
0
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I mean, look, as men, our places to hide objects are severely limited.
0
SPEAKER_00
I guess, as a human, generally, we can t hide too many things on our body, but we do have many more limitations than you might think, and I can t believe we re starting the show with this.
0
SPEAKER_00
Give me an example of something that you would need to conceal in your backside in an emergency situation.
0
SPEAKER_01
Well, on the serious note, you know, if you know you re going in behind enemy lines, you know you re going to be operating at the highest risks, then you might need to hide things in your rectum because the first thing bad guys do if you get captured is strip you down butt naked.
0
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And so you still want a means of escape.
0
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And those means of escape can be either hidden in different kinds of
0
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you know, materials that look like scars.
0
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Or what I put in the book is you can take a cigar tube, which is aluminum and air and water tight.
0
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You can do the shorties.
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I don t recommend the long ones.
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Voice of experience.
0
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You can preload it with everything from razor blades, handcuff keys, rolled up money.
0
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You can even punch a hole in the cap.
0
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and put a nail in there to where it turns into an improvised ice pick or an improvised weapon of some sort.
0
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What s significant about it is it s been going on in the world of espionage for decades.
0
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And when certain operatives or operators travel the globe with a substantial risk of being captured,
0
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they will go ahead and be more preemptive and proactive with where they hide things so that it increases, you know, a level of success when they try to escape.
0
SPEAKER_01
So you can put anything you want in, but initially it s, you know, a micro compass.
0
SPEAKER_01
money, and then means of escape, which could be razor blades, handcuff keys, you name it, all put into these small cigar tubes, and you can use any kind of line or dental floss so that you can grab it like a tampon, pull it out, and use the tools that you have on you, in you.
0
SPEAKER_00
Right, yeah.
0
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You don t want to wait for nature to take its course when you re like, I really need an escape weapon and a handcuff key.
0
SPEAKER_00
Well, you got to wait till tomorrow morning.
0
SPEAKER_00
Sorry.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, exactly.
0
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Always escape as soon as you can.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
0
SPEAKER_00
Actually, that s a really good real piece of advice.
0
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We were talking with Gavin DeBecker about the gift of fear, and I was telling him how I saw him on Oprah in like 1994, or sitting at home with my mom, probably on some random afternoon, and he said something like, never go to the secondary location, which is the same thing that you kind of just said, escape as soon as you can.
0
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and I got kidnapped by a fake taxi in Mexico City six, seven years later and I remembered going, oh crap, we re going to the secondary location and that was probably a game changer for me.
0
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That s like the one piece of advice that has definitely worked for me and seems to have a really high leverage point because it s tempting to go,
0
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all right, I m in the back of a pickup with these ISIS guys.
0
SPEAKER_00
I should just wait until we get where we re going and then I m not in a moving car and then I can escape from there.
0
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And it s like, no, then you re in a compound in a village that s unfriendly in another province with an injury.
0
SPEAKER_00
You just gotta get out of the truck, right?
0
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Even if it means pulling something out of your B-hole and stabbing somebody in the neck with it.
0
SPEAKER_00
You know, so be it, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
0
SPEAKER_01
Hopefully it s covered in fecal matter and you re stabbing them with it.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, Gavin s book came out pre 9-11, you know, so since then and with the number of kidnappings and everything else that s been going on, you know, starting with AQ all the way to ISIS, it s, yeah, it s escape as soon as you can.
0
SPEAKER_01
You re not, you don t even want to wait for the first stop, much less the second.
0
SPEAKER_01
So, you know, you re waiting for the stop sign or the stop light or a very slow right-hand turn and you re getting out of that vehicle, you know, so that s kind of where we re at today for sure.
0
SPEAKER_00
Right, because I think now it s sort of been established it s better to literally run with them shooting at you in any direction in a zig-zaggy line than to wait until you get to Anbar province or something like that and then try to get out of the village in the mountains where you ended up after six hours of driving.
0
SPEAKER_01
Always gotta make sure you serpentine, serpentine.
0
SPEAKER_01
That s right, zigzag, zigzag, yep.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
0
SPEAKER_00
Dispel this myth for me or confirm this rumor.
0
SPEAKER_00
The first thing I thought when we were talking about hiding stuff where the sun don t shine was, oh, maybe you keep something in there, like if you end up getting captured by ISIS, you can just end it quick because you don t want to end up on CNN wearing a blindfold.
0
SPEAKER_00
I assume they don t give you something whereby you can take your own life, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
They just expect that you re gonna escape or die trying, is that the case?
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, in my profession, yeah, you re just going to fight to the death.
0
SPEAKER_01
For everything that I personally went through, I was never thinking about getting captured, you know, even though I had, you know, all of this kind of proactive gears and tools in place, but it is without a doubt the last thing, if not
0
SPEAKER_01
the one thing you just don t consider, because, yeah, it s going to end badly and it s probably going to be a nightmare that no one should go through.
0
SPEAKER_01
So, yeah, there s nothing given to us, you know, unless you want to keep the last round in your magazine of your pistol when you re all out of bullets.
0
SPEAKER_01
That s the only thing given to you.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, sure.
0
SPEAKER_00
They just expect that you re going to use that last one on one of the five guys that entered the room and then try to twist necks until you get shot, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
I assume that s kind of how it goes.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you might.
0
SPEAKER_01
Or you just stick it in your mouth and go ahead and get it over with.
0
SPEAKER_01
But no.
0
SPEAKER_01
Man.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, fighting to the end is, I would have to say for most guys, is the only option.
0
SPEAKER_00
What is your background and your training?
0
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people aren t familiar exactly with what you do and where you came from.
0
SPEAKER_00
Let s start from that beginning.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so I joined the Navy back in 94, wanted to be a SEAL.
0
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to be a SEAL since I was probably 10 years old when I met my first SEAL in the Frankfurt airport.
0
SPEAKER_01
I was traveling.
0
SPEAKER_01
I grew up in Saudi.
0
SPEAKER_01
They make you leave the country, you know, at least once a month.
0
SPEAKER_01
They pay the family to go on vacation and renew their visas.
0
SPEAKER_01
So we ended up always going through Germany on our way back to the States.
0
SPEAKER_01
And one of those trips, I ended up in the bar and there stands this guy with a tattoo on his arm.
0
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I asked what that was.
0
SPEAKER_01
He said, it was a trident.
0
SPEAKER_01
I was like, well, what s a trident?
0
SPEAKER_01
And he said, it s a symbol that represents, you know,
0
SPEAKER_01
a community and I kept poking and prodding, finally kind of gave it up and told me some cool stories and I was sold.
0
SPEAKER_01
So back then, you know, that was the 80s.
0
SPEAKER_01
There was no books.
0
SPEAKER_01
There was really very little out there about SEALs.
0
SPEAKER_01
So, but I was done at that point.
0
SPEAKER_01
Anyway, got done with college and immediately joined and then did 20 years.
0
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I did half my time at SEAL Team 3 on the West Coast with popular SEALs like Chris Kyle and Glenn Doherty and a couple of others.
0
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And then my last 10 years was at SEAL Team 6.
0
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and I retired January 2015.
0
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Why did you grow up in Saudi?
0
SPEAKER_00
I know somebody s thinking, wait, how are you gonna let that go?
0
SPEAKER_00
Why were you growing up in Saudi?
0
SPEAKER_00
A diplomat?
0
SPEAKER_00
Military?
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, my dad worked for Ramco, which is kind of like, it is the biggest oil company in the world nobody has ever heard of.
0
SPEAKER_01
That s Saudi oil.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s basically owned by the Saudis, but Americans pull it out of the ground.
0
SPEAKER_01
So my dad went over as an engineer.
0
SPEAKER_01
We grew up there, or I grew up there from the second
1
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grade pretty much to high school.
1
SPEAKER_03
Gotcha, okay.
1
SPEAKER_03
That must have been a weird childhood to say the least because you re growing up in this American bubble, this western bubble where, is it true you re in kind of a neighborhood where you have everything you need there but it s gated?
1
SPEAKER_03
You re not just hanging out in the middle of Riyadh or Jeddah or something like that because the cultures are isolating and they re purposely, like you said, weirdly keeping you guys isolated.
1
SPEAKER_03
They don t want to quote unquote pollute their
1
SPEAKER_03
Islamic Sharia environment with Western values, right?
1
SPEAKER_03
So everybody s kind of in one area.
1
SPEAKER_03
Everybody knows each other.
1
SPEAKER_03
You re basically growing up in a big high school, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
You re absolutely correct.
1
SPEAKER_01
These are compounds that, you know, kind of like an oasis in the middle of the desert with a barbed wire fence around it and anti-aircraft guns back then because it was the fear of Libya.
1
SPEAKER_01
And Libya, if they were going to strike Americans, it was going to be into Saudi because they didn t have anything that could go any further.
1
SPEAKER_01
The compounds were, you know, were an oasis.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was, you know, it s all desert until you hit that fence line and all of a sudden it s green grass and palm trees and, you know, Olympic swimming pools.
1
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, it s probably wasn t a bad deal for my parents as a kid.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, you re just rolling with it.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s all Westerners.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, my best friends were Brits and Canadians and we roamed around just
1
SPEAKER_01
causing trouble, pretending to be ninjas and, you know, getting away with pretty much anything.
1
SPEAKER_01
But you are surrounded by that culture.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it was another factor to becoming a SEAL.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, the SEAL piece was intriguing because, oh, you get to, you know, blow shit up and kill people and get paid for it.
1
SPEAKER_01
But the other half of that was I wanted to like growing up in that society made me want to go back.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, I really didn t grow up liking them too much.
1
SPEAKER_01
So as a youngster, I was like, I want to come back and kill these people someday.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, how they treat my dad, how they treat women, this and that, all the horrible stories and things that you witnessed growing up there that nobody ever hears about outside Saudi.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, it makes you want to come back and make things right to a certain degree.
1
SPEAKER_01
And now, of course, as an adult, I get it.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, there s thousands of cultures all over this planet.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, who am I to say which one s right or wrong?
1
SPEAKER_01
And they re just all different.
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, it seems like something that an American teenager, culture-wise, could never accept.
1
SPEAKER_01
No, I mean, like, I ll give you an example.
1
SPEAKER_01
One of my best friends was Canadian, and we were probably 10 or 11 years old, and he s trying to write his name with urine, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
He s peeing on the ground, trying to spell his name out.
1
SPEAKER_01
Classic.
1
SPEAKER_01
And one of the Saudi religious police witnessed this, and the very next week, he was pulled out front and caned in front of all of us, you know, and this is, you know,
1
SPEAKER_01
10, 11 year old kid, you know, your parents have no control over that.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, it was just, it s brutal.
1
SPEAKER_01
The people that do it are professionals and it s not like a typical cane.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s more like a piece of bamboo, you know, imagine like a fishing pole, you know, it s diameter
1
SPEAKER_01
Thicker at one end very narrow at the other has a whipping motion when you sling it So and what they do is it catches the back on the way up and can literally fillet a back open If not, right and they ll do that three times, you know in the first one I mean, you re already on the ground and they re telling you to stand up for the next two They got a different way of doing things.
1
SPEAKER_03
You know, that sounds absolutely terrible barbaric and
1
SPEAKER_03
Disgusting in so many ways, so now the context of your earlier comment seems to make a little bit more sense.
1
SPEAKER_01
If I saw my best friend- Yeah, exactly, you re like, okay, we ll come back and take care of business someday.
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, yeah, because at first I was like, ugh, that s harsh, but yeah.
1
SPEAKER_03
If I saw my best friend get filleted by these whack job religious police,
1
SPEAKER_03
of a religion that wasn t mine, for a kid doing something that every male in history has tried to do, I would probably carry that with me for a while as well.
1
SPEAKER_03
And in the moment, I would be thinking, can I get away with strangling one of these guys, or how many punches can I get in before I get caned?
1
SPEAKER_03
It s violating, and it s designed to be that way.
1
SPEAKER_03
It s designed to be humiliating on purpose, which doesn t feel good, especially to our sensibilities as Westerners who think that
1
SPEAKER_03
writing our name in the snow is normal, or I guess there s no snow in Saudi Arabia, but you get the idea.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it was an amazing, incredible experience, but there was parts of it that were good, there was parts of it that were bad, just like anything, and it s not until you become an adult, you start realizing, okay, it s just the way they do business, and I have to say, there are kids in this country that probably deserve the same damn thing, depending on what you do.
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, maybe not for trying to write your name in whiz, but definitely there may be a room for spare the rod, spoil the child.
1
SPEAKER_03
It s at some place for some people, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_03
Okay, that makes a little bit more sense now.
1
SPEAKER_03
And so you move on to SEAL Team Six.
1
SPEAKER_03
I see here also that you worked with the National Security Agency.
1
SPEAKER_03
I didn t realize the NSA had military operations.
1
SPEAKER_03
I mean, what can we talk about with that?
1
SPEAKER_03
What does that involve?
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, the NSA, the National Security Agency, is a DOD entity.
1
SPEAKER_01
It falls under the Department of Defense.
1
SPEAKER_01
Most people don t realize that.
1
SPEAKER_01
They think it s kind of like just another sister agency to the CIA.
1
SPEAKER_01
The CIA is its own freestanding agency that is governed by, you know, your intel czar, you know, National Security Council and advisors and the president.
1
SPEAKER_01
So, but yeah, the NSA is a military entity and it has
1
SPEAKER_01
billets for all armed forces at it.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so I was there for three years as a SEAL and kind of played a liaison to our community, increasing communication and relationships.
1
SPEAKER_01
It included deployments, it included training, you name it.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was just like being at any other command really, but just very different than what typical SEAL operations.
1
SPEAKER_03
It sounds a little ominous and scary, because lately what we hear about the NSA is, okay, they re spying on us, and so the fact that they would have SEAL Team Six quality military operations units inside it is kind of terrifying to a lot of us.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s a very, very powerful entity, without a doubt.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I was more than impressed every day that I worked there.
1
SPEAKER_01
And every time I thought I knew the latest, greatest secrets, there was always another one that would surprise the crap out of me as far as like capabilities that place has.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s awesome.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, as far as privacy and all that s concerned, it s like, you know,
1
SPEAKER_01
The way I look at it is, if you re not doing anything wrong, who cares?
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I don t care.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s my personal opinion.
1
SPEAKER_01
I know people out there want their privacy and they deserve it, but for me, I m like, I don t care who s looking at my crap, because I m not doing anything wrong, so.
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, there s definitely going to be people who email me and go, how did you let that go?
1
SPEAKER_03
So I m going to just say formally, we re not going to touch that topic on purpose.
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, go for it.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_02
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Now, you re working with the NSA, you re working with SEAL Team Six.
1
SPEAKER_03
How much of being a SEAL is sitting in a base in California, swimming in the surf, and how much of this is overseas, doing the stuff that everybody imagines you guys are doing?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it really depends.
1
SPEAKER_01
where we are in time.
1
SPEAKER_01
So, you know, pre 9-11, you know, you had just regular op tempo, regular deployments, you know, you re gone for six months, you come home, you do training for anywhere between a year to a year and a half, and then you deploy again for six months, and you just kind of keep this rotation going of training, deploying, training, deploying.
2
SPEAKER_01
Then after 9-11, things changed considerably where, you know, we became more of a plug-and-play force.
2
SPEAKER_01
So as things happened overseas, you respond to it, and also those responses would also be coupled with deployments.
2
SPEAKER_01
You could find yourself in a year gone, you know, three-fourths of the time and then the other quarter of the year you re training.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you re never really home is the bottom line, you know, because most of the training that we conduct isn t even in the places where we live.
2
SPEAKER_01
We usually go out of town for training.
2
SPEAKER_01
So regardless, you re pretty much gone all year round.
2
SPEAKER_00
We ve had a lot of dev grew.
2
SPEAKER_00
We ve had a lot of seals come through our skills training bootcamps in LA when we used to run them in New York as well.
2
SPEAKER_00
And of course they didn t tell us all the time where they were from.
2
SPEAKER_00
A lot of them were like, yeah, I sell farm equipment.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m like, you re in really good shape for a guy who sells tractors, you know?
2
SPEAKER_00
And then.
2
SPEAKER_00
Three months after the program or during the program, we d be talking about something and they re like, okay, look, here s the deal, but it s not public.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re not under some sort of official cover.
2
SPEAKER_00
They probably just didn t feel like talking about it all the time and telling war stories and being the center of attention at a workshop where they re supposed to learn.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I definitely understand that.
2
SPEAKER_00
It seems like there is some training that s just very, very basic that you guys undertake where you learn things that supposedly are gonna get you past a checkpoint or past some sort of basics of an interrogation.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I ll tell you, for guys that have millions of dollars in training from shooting to skydiving and weapons and deployment and all the survival stuff, the stuff that I ve been hearing and seeing
2
SPEAKER_00
from a lot of the guys that come out of your training programs, the social element, the social dynamics element, the counter-interrogation stuff, is just like, it s too basic.
2
SPEAKER_00
Is that because you guys aren t expected to use this, or why is the emphasis on that stuff so low?
2
SPEAKER_00
Is it just because shooting has got 1,000 times the ROI of these particular skill sets?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, there s a lot of skills that, you know, we would love to have, you d love to be able to just plug into the matrix and be capable of everything.
2
SPEAKER_01
But there s only so much time.
2
SPEAKER_01
And at the end of the day, it s mission focused.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the training is, you know, dovetails right into whatever the current mission is.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so yeah, shooting bullets straight and accurately is obviously the primary objective.
2
SPEAKER_01
And, and then there s a lot that comes with that, you know, so
2
SPEAKER_01
you know, how you get in and how you get out, you know, is that going to be aviation platforms?
2
SPEAKER_01
Is that going to be maritime platforms?
2
SPEAKER_01
So, okay, well, once you identify that, well, that s the next level of training.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it just goes, you know, it s a domino effect from there.
2
SPEAKER_01
But when it comes to like that sear situation, and that capture piece, and
2
SPEAKER_01
interrogation stuff yeah we tend to throw that to the wayside I mean if there s anything that we rather go focus on you know jujitsu or boxing or something else then sit there and you know do that stuff that s not considered fun for us you know we don t plan on getting captured and like we started out if it gets to that point we ll probably just die fighting vice getting captured so
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it seems like one of this particular type of skill set, the social dynamics, social engineering skill set, the training seems to be much more focused when it comes to guys like the Green Berets, to use the colloquial term here, because they re just deployed in country dealing with the local population for so long.
2
SPEAKER_00
I would imagine
2
SPEAKER_00
It seems like from what you guys are doing, if you re dealing with the local population, it s because you accidentally ran into somebody taking a walk at four o clock in the morning, or a sheep herder type situation, and not because you re hanging out in the village for six months training with people, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
It seems like a different type of mission.
2
SPEAKER_01
ourselves on staying away from the FID mission, which is exactly special forces, like primary job, and they ve been doing it for decades.
2
SPEAKER_01
They re really good at it.
2
SPEAKER_01
We leave that to them, you know, training guerrilla forces and surrogate forces and all that good stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
Our job has always been direct action and reconnaissance, and we don t care to know languages.
2
SPEAKER_01
We don t care to be able to talk to anyone.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think it s even in a meme or some kind of poster or something.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, we re never really there to talk to you.
2
SPEAKER_01
ever.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
If we re meeting you, it s a bad day.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s what keeps us getting.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, when you talk about, you know, mission focus, once you have a couple of successes dropping the hammer on people s foreheads, then they just keep on coming back for more.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think that was the key element to
2
SPEAKER_01
getting very high profile operations, you know, the last 10 years of my career was really that.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, any president who said go knew that he was sending in, you know, highly functioning sociopaths to just beat the shit out of whoever was in our way and then would get the mission done no matter what, so.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so wait a minute, highly functioning sociopaths.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let s talk about that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I m just being funny, but.
2
SPEAKER_01
Of course, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you think there s an element to the training that hits switches in the brain?
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, are there guys that you see during training that kind of turn the corner and you go, wow, okay, didn t see that coming from this guy or what happened?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because the training to get anybody to any
2
SPEAKER_00
super high level of performance, takes a lot of breaking people down and building them back up again, as we all know.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that could be the same thing for ice hockey as it is for what you re doing.
2
SPEAKER_00
The difference is, you re playing much higher stakes, because people die, or you die, in any given scenario, almost 100% of the time, I would imagine.
2
SPEAKER_00
Otherwise, they wouldn t focus on these particular sorts of things.
2
SPEAKER_00
How does that change the mindset that you get when you come out of training?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s interesting.
2
SPEAKER_01
When you go through buds, you know, my class had 180 guys.
2
SPEAKER_01
Six months later, there s 28 of us standing.
2
SPEAKER_01
And one thing that I thought was always interesting, and I can only speak from personal experience, is that you can have a guy that grew up in a trailer park in New Mexico, start day one, right next to a guy who just graduated from Harvard.
2
SPEAKER_01
And six months later, and if they are still there together,
2
SPEAKER_01
They literally are the same person.
2
SPEAKER_01
They talk the same.
2
SPEAKER_01
They look the same.
2
SPEAKER_01
They are, without a doubt, like have become personality wise, like the same kind of guy.
2
SPEAKER_01
It always blew me away.
2
SPEAKER_01
Anytime later, as you do more and more deployments with different groups of guys,
2
SPEAKER_01
how diversified on paper someone is.
2
SPEAKER_01
But when you put us all in a room, we really are like the same bunch of kind of perverted, rowdy guys, very barbaric in personality, but also at the same time, very professional and want to get the job done.
2
SPEAKER_01
Always want to be the first guy through the door.
2
SPEAKER_01
Couple that with the zero fail mentality.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there is no room for failure.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s every mission is zero fail.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a zero fail mission, zero fail mission.
2
SPEAKER_01
You put that all together, and I don t know that anyone could really explain it.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s just something you witness, and you kind of sit back at awe, and it s kind of cool, you know?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s something that we ve talked about with a lot of different authors and a lot of different experts that have come on the show before.
2
SPEAKER_00
Steven Kotler, for example, talking about flow, talking about the altered states that SEAL teams, especially in Special Forces,
2
SPEAKER_00
find themselves in where you re moving like a school of fish without looking at each other.
2
SPEAKER_00
People are thinking the exact same thoughts.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re doing really cool stuff with fMRI, looking at your brains while you re operating, and it s like the same pieces are lighting up at the exact same time, and they re not even sure exactly how it works.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there s even some sort of discussion and testing going around whether or not you guys can read micro facial expressions in the dark across the room at somebody you re not looking directly at
2
SPEAKER_00
the levels of training that you ve experienced.
2
SPEAKER_00
Is this something that sounds familiar to you or does that sound like hocus pocus?
2
SPEAKER_01
The breakdown that you just gave, I mean, we obviously don t train to that, but yes, I can agree thoroughly that once you ve been with a group of guys for an extended period of time and you gel, you know, through training and then operationally overseas, I mean, the gate in a guy s walk, I mean, I can see him 10 years later
2
SPEAKER_01
on busy New York City street, a hundred yards in front of me and know it s him.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, it s weird.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like just by because I walked behind him for years, I know exactly how that guy walks, you know, is the best example I can give.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s probably the most popular one with us, but
2
SPEAKER_01
you know, a way a guy holds his weapon compared to a way other guys.
2
SPEAKER_01
To you, it looks like we all hold our weapons the same.
2
SPEAKER_01
But to us, we see the smaller differences that are identifiers, especially when you talk about operating on NODs, you know, NVGs or darker environments, no white light kind of stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
So,
2
SPEAKER_01
if, you know, micro facial features and all that kind of stuff is how they re defining it, then yeah, I guess it s probably to a certain degree true, you know, but I think that happens even in a family.
2
SPEAKER_01
We know what, you can see your brother a hundred yards away in New York and know it s your brother as well.
2
SPEAKER_00
It seems like there s a lot in this book that seems a little bit almost random, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s, okay, how to make a bamboo this and that, how to make a hammock, building an arctic fire, defending your ship against pirates.
2
SPEAKER_00
These are cool skills, no doubt, in 100 Deadly Skills, the survival edition that I m looking at here.
2
SPEAKER_00
But when you re in training, are you learning this stuff all in SEAL training, or is this something that was
3
SPEAKER_02
just sparked by SEAL training that you researched on your own.
3
SPEAKER_02
So in the SEER training, survival, evasion, resistance, and escape is what that stands for.
3
SPEAKER_02
The program basically teaches for the civilians out there, which is most of us, the DOD program that trains civilians, military contractors to escape, evade, et cetera.
3
SPEAKER_02
This training, if this goes by the wayside, then it seems almost hard to believe that they re like, hey look, we need to teach you how to survive a human stampede or how to defend your ship against pirates.
3
SPEAKER_02
I get the gunshot wounds, I certainly get the hammock if you re gonna be spending some time in the wilderness on a deployment or something like that and you need a quick nap, but some of these skills,
3
SPEAKER_02
Do you learn this stuff at SEAL school, or do you learn this stuff in the military, or was this just an interest that got sparked by going through ridiculous amounts of training and probably suffering from a little bit of withdrawal?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, so the first half of the book is very much survival-oriented, but it s an updated version to the stuff that s on shelves today.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s a combination of what you learn over the years.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, I did 20 years,
3
SPEAKER_01
You learn some of this stuff in training.
3
SPEAKER_01
Some of it you learn on the job.
3
SPEAKER_01
Some of it is things you research, certainly on my own, as just-in-case kind of knowledge, you know, and it needs to be easy and simple to retain it all.
3
SPEAKER_01
But the biggest reason for having it in this book was that it s not so much about a camping trip gone bad as it is
3
SPEAKER_01
every idiot we see in the news that takes a right-hand turn because their phone told them to and they end up stuck in the snow and there s a blizzard coming that night and they always decide to leave their car for some reason, you know, and then die 300 meters to 3 miles away from it.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s more to give people their survival instincts back because we ve been sticking our noses in our phones and technology for so long we ve kind of lost our
3
SPEAKER_01
natural ability to just survive.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so I kind of just wanted to highlight that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And yeah, some of it is tricks of the trade from the military.
3
SPEAKER_01
Some of it is tricks of the trade I learned just growing up, you know, overseas.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I have to give scouting credit.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, I was the only thing to do in Saudi was Boy Scouts.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so, you know, I did that all the way up to Eagle and just wanted to still share some of that information.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I m with you, man.
3
SPEAKER_02
I m an Eagle Scout, super nerdy, but I ll tell you, some of the stuff I learned in Scouts has been the only stuff I remember learning as a kid, for real.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it lays the foundation.
3
SPEAKER_01
And yeah, when I came back to the States, it was weird because I was like, everybody that was kind of in Scouting did have that nerdy, geeky kind of personality and even look.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, okay, I don t fit in with these guys.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I was out of there.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that was that, you know, for my BSA life, you know, so.
3
SPEAKER_01
overseas we were just a bunch of troublemakers and it didn t have a stereotype attached to it.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s unfortunate that when I came back I totally saw it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I highly recommend it for any dad that has a little boy.
3
SPEAKER_01
Stick them in there regardless of the stereotype because they will get a ton of life skills that they deserve to know.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and if you re a dad out there and you re listening and your kid doesn t want to join scouts because it s not cool, that means that your job is to get involved with the troop and make it cool.
3
SPEAKER_02
Because I ll tell you, our troop was cool because our scoutmaster was a federal marshal, so we did shotgun, we speared frogs and roasted them, we went whitewater rafting, rappelling, rock climbing, we learned defensive driving and offensive driving as soon as we were old enough to on these cool closed courses, flipping cars and doing J-turns and stuff.
3
SPEAKER_02
This wasn t like,
3
SPEAKER_02
basket weaving stuff.
3
SPEAKER_02
We were doing the cool stuff.
3
SPEAKER_02
So if you were in our troop and you were going on those high adventure trips, it was like a who s who of our high school, not just dorks are us, you know, learning about merit badge rabbit raising stuff, you know?
3
SPEAKER_02
I was totally in the wrong troop.
3
SPEAKER_02
I just learned how to tie a bunch of knots.
3
SPEAKER_00
Man.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, we learned how to tie knots so we didn t fall off of the mountain that we were doing, we were rappelling down on our way to Class 5 Rapids.
3
SPEAKER_02
Like, we used the stuff.
3
SPEAKER_02
It wasn t just like making baskets.
3
SPEAKER_02
It was awesome.
3
SPEAKER_02
And so if your kid doesn t want to join, then make it cool.
3
SPEAKER_02
And if you can t, find another older person who can.
3
SPEAKER_02
We had a lot of cool influences there.
3
SPEAKER_02
It probably kept me out of jail, honestly, because I was doing it in high school.
3
SPEAKER_02
It took up a ton of time, especially the Eagle Project.
3
SPEAKER_02
And that was the time at which I was wiretapping, cloning cell phones, ended up being an FBI informant.
3
SPEAKER_02
If I d had any more time, I would have done something stupid.
3
SPEAKER_02
It was only a matter of time.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well there you go, and I think too.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know people have forgotten how it started I mean Boy Scouts was the first spy school.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was started by a cross-dressing spy himself You know did not know that did not know that so if people just looked at the history of scouting and its roots all the way back to England and
3
SPEAKER_01
and how it began.
3
SPEAKER_01
It is the first spy school, turning young boys into, uh, you know, future spies.
3
SPEAKER_01
Anyway, I found it beneficial and, you know, believe it or not, the skills I learned in scouting and you end up learning and relearning and advancing once you get in the military.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it definitely has its place if you plan on going down that route in life.
3
SPEAKER_00
I originally got your first book as soon as it came out.
3
SPEAKER_00
I love this book.
3
SPEAKER_00
I swear to God, everybody that listens to the show needs to go get both of these books and put them in your bathroom first.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I ll honestly get two copies because, yeah, these are the perfect bathroom readers because you can learn an amazing skill in a dump or two.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re fantastic.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yep, they are.
3
SPEAKER_01
I d say they re the number one.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I highly recommend that, but I also recommend keeping them in your car, because what you were saying before was about leaving the car and all that.
3
SPEAKER_00
I had a friend, his name was James Kim.
3
SPEAKER_00
He worked at Tech TV back in the day.
3
SPEAKER_00
And him and his family were on a drive in the mountains in a winter storm, and they went off the side of a hill and got trapped.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it was like some ranger left the gate open so the hunters could get out.
3
SPEAKER_00
not thinking anybody would be dumb enough to go in.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so they were trapped for days and they did all the right things, all the right things.
3
SPEAKER_00
James did everything right except until the end where he left the car and he was going for help because he had a map, he had a printed map, he thought they knew where they were.
3
SPEAKER_00
And at the same point when he died four days later after leaving the car was when the family was rescued.
3
SPEAKER_00
So his wife and his kids were rescued because of everything that he did to save them.
3
SPEAKER_00
But he made that one mistake of leaving the car.
3
SPEAKER_00
My first copy of 100 Deadly Skills is in my car.
3
SPEAKER_00
I always keep that in my car.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now I ve got the second one in my car, too, because they re great reference books.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, no, thank you for that.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s the goal is it s informative, but also entertaining.
3
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, the illustrations.
3
SPEAKER_01
go ahead and paint the right picture in everybody s mind so that they get it, you know, and the narrative doesn t repeat anything that the illustrations have and the illustrations don t repeat anything that the narrative have.
3
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, while you re sitting on the toilet, you learn a whole lot and you don t even realize it.
3
SPEAKER_01
But most of all, it s really about, you know, getting people to be more preemptive, you know, to have that plan to a certain degree, and then know what the proper response is to the myriad of threats and crises that are out there.
3
SPEAKER_02
It seems like the kind of thing you should actually keep in your car, because when I started reading it, I thought, you know, I m not going to sit down.
3
SPEAKER_02
I m big on as needed access to information.
3
SPEAKER_02
I read a lot of books, a lot of it s entertainment, a lot of it is for the show, but I m not a fan of trying to memorize a hundred survival skills from a book in the theory,
3
SPEAKER_02
that I may, God forbid, in 30 years need one or two of them over that time.
3
SPEAKER_02
It s something where you re gonna find yourself in the snow, stuck, because you went through the wrong gate with your wife and kid, God forbid, and you re gonna need to crack this open and go, crap, I don t know how to actually stay warm right now with what I ve got.
3
SPEAKER_02
Am I supposed to leave the car and go back the way I came, or am I supposed to stay in the car?
3
SPEAKER_02
How do I signal for help?
3
SPEAKER_02
You re not gonna remember that stuff if you read it a month ago, let alone three years ago.
3
SPEAKER_02
It s a good reference guide to have there, and I agree.
3
SPEAKER_02
Keep a copy in the restroom as well so you can get a feel for the stuff and know what s in there, but really, it s like the old going back to Boy Scouts, the handbook, right?
3
SPEAKER_02
You keep it in your bag.
3
SPEAKER_02
You re not trying to memorize everything.
3
SPEAKER_02
You might memorize some knots here and there, but they expect you to use it as a reference.
3
SPEAKER_02
Going back to some of the tactics that are in here,
3
SPEAKER_02
I m looking at some of the stuff that overlaps with what we teach in some way to the core of what we teach at the Art of Charm.
3
SPEAKER_02
Spotting suicide bombers, escaping social unrest and riots.
3
SPEAKER_02
What are we looking for when we re looking for inspired terrorists and suicide bombers?
3
SPEAKER_02
I mean, what kind of stuff are we looking at here?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, there s an unfortunate aspect to this because it s people that are going to notice someone who s being radicalized are going to be people that are closest to that person, you know, whether it s close colleagues at work, family members really are the only ones that are going to see those changes.
3
SPEAKER_01
Everyone else
3
SPEAKER_01
else is going to look like the guy at work that sits two cubicles away.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s the unfortunate side of this.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the reason being is because if you re really close to someone, you start to see these changes in them.
3
SPEAKER_01
And especially if it s a loved one, you re going to be the last person that s actually going to
3
SPEAKER_01
call the authorities, you know.
3
SPEAKER_01
So if you look at every time we ve had an inspired attack of some sort here in the United States or even abroad, their family members after the fact will always interview and say, oh yeah, I saw this, I saw that, or I thought something was going on, or yeah, I knew he was being radicalized for the past year or two.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is all unfortunate
4
SPEAKER_00
post-mortem information that you need to know ahead of time.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that s the first thing everyone should know that it s not something you re going to notice just right out of the gate.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s something that you re going to have to look for, especially if you re not close to them.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right at the beginning of that radicalization period, their digital signature starts to kind of go away.
4
SPEAKER_00
So
4
SPEAKER_00
For example, their Facebook page, you know, may have been in true name and then all of a sudden, you know, it s deleted or the account is closed.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s because they ve gone and stood something up in an alias.
4
SPEAKER_00
Same with Twitter and all the other primary forms of social media.
4
SPEAKER_00
They will slowly get rid of their true name stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
off of that cyber world and then they will go back in completely different.
4
SPEAKER_00
And if they re being coached right through like Inspired Magazine and other articles that are out there that these guys follow, you know, they re not doing it from their home computers or their work computers or their personal phones.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re literally setting up all this stuff from completely different IP and MAC addresses
4
SPEAKER_00
so that it makes it more difficult for them to be traced later if they start to get targeted by, you know, government intel services or law enforcement.
4
SPEAKER_00
So, they re getting smarter and smarter when they do this, but what we re going to see on, you know, on the friend side is, oh, what happened to, you know, John s account?
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean,
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, one day he was here, now he s not.
4
SPEAKER_00
And people do that all the time, doesn t mean they re terrorists.
4
SPEAKER_00
So the next level is, okay, what are they doing, like daily habits and pattern of life?
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, if they re suddenly going to the shooting range or shooting has become a hobby, like the San Bernardino couple, you know, he took on shooting, you know, all of a sudden, he also had an area that no one was allowed to go into, no family members, anything.
4
SPEAKER_00
So once again,
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, it s going to be behavior, behavior, behavior that s going to change and that s going to spark that initial like interest.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s the thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not necessarily about calling the cops and assuming everyone s a terrorist just because they did a couple of things.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s more about if you see it, then go and ask them, hey, what do you got going on?
4
SPEAKER_00
And don t take, you know, no for an answer.
4
SPEAKER_00
Don t worry about it.
4
SPEAKER_00
You ve got to actually kind of pursue it a little bit because they re not going to give it up.
4
SPEAKER_00
And if you feel like it s true, now, you know, perception has become reality.
4
SPEAKER_00
And of course, if you see something, say something, get law enforcement involved.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s kind of what it breaks down in the book is the behaviors.
4
SPEAKER_00
the social side, and then physical habits.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re taking on shooting, they re suddenly becoming secretive, they re less socialized, they re spending more time alone and becoming a loner.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s just some of what it talks about.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, this is really interesting stuff, because it s about establishing a baseline, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
You have to have that, otherwise you can t necessarily tell.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s all 20-20 hindsight.
4
SPEAKER_00
Exactly, and it s the unfortunate piece to it.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s all hindsight bias.
4
SPEAKER_02
What s an express kidnapping?
4
SPEAKER_00
Express kidnappings is what, you know, Ryan Lochte supposedly happened to him, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
You get into a taxi, the taxi driver isn t a taxi driver.
4
SPEAKER_00
He s a criminal.
4
SPEAKER_00
He holds a gun to your head and drives you around from ATM machine to ATM machine and then lets you go.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s very temporary.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s focused on, you know, the short term money, financial gain, but they have become more and more violent.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, not too many people are actually getting killed, though it does happen.
4
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But the violence is, you know, maybe, you know, you get hit in the head a couple of times just so they send the message that, you know, if you resist, then I will kill you.
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But they make sure they hit you ahead of time to kind of let you know they re serious.
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Then they ll take you around from ATM machine, ATM machine, make you max out all your cards and then usually let you go.
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And then that s that.
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That s your typical express kidnapping.
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How do you know you re in one of those?
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Because here s the problem, right?
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This type of thing happened to me, got into a fake taxi, kept driving further and further away from the city, and my brain, of course, after I figured out what was kind of happening, looking back, it ended in a physical altercation.
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I m still here, so we know how that shook out.
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it was kind of like, I don t think I m being taken to an ATM, but I always wonder if things would have shaken out differently if you were doing that.
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I just assumed, this is 2000, so we didn t hear about these.
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I just kind of assumed I was on my way to get chopped up into little pieces.
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It seems like we would have been driving towards town where there are more ATMs if that were the case.
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How do we know if this is what s happening, or do we treat all abductions exactly the same, which is always assume the worst case scenario?
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Yeah, I mean, generally, that s what I recommend.
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Yeah, you got to treat it as worst case, you know, and leverage kind of like that run, hide, fight philosophy for most of what s been going on these days.
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You know, if you can run, you should, if you can t, then you should hide.
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If you re going to hide, hide behind cover, cover stops bullets.
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If there s concealment, great.
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But concealment is, you know, defined as like curtains.
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You know, it s not going to stop a bullet, but it ll hide you.
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If you can t do any of that because maybe you re in a confined space, like a train in Europe or you re in a bathroom in Orlando, then you have to fight.
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And if you re going to fight, you fight as a team and you grabbed as many improvised weapons as you can.
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And you kind of go for the MMA style of
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If you control the hips or the head, then you control the body.
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And of course, you want to always get control of the weapon first.
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But in an express kidnapping situation, certainly the first stop, you run for it, you know, especially if it s an ATM machine.
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And like we talked about the beginning, if there s a slow roll anywhere in there, I d rather fall out of the car while it s rolling and, you know, bang my head, then keep on going with that guy.
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So distance obviously always increases survivability.
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And that s kind of the main goal, I think.
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Sure, yeah, it seems like that s a great concept, right?
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Distance, survive, survivability.
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Don t jump out of a moving car at 40 miles an hour.
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But it s good to have a framework for this, the run-hide-fight framework, because otherwise you do what I do when I was in that car, which is go, this isn t really happening.
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Is this happening?
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What do I do now?
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Do I get out?
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Nah, we re going kind of fast.
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Maybe I should wait till we stop.
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Then we stop, and I go, well, I don t know where I am, so maybe I should wait until we re in a better, more well-lit area.
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And I boxed myself in, I painted myself into a corner where I couldn t run, I obviously couldn t hide in the car, and I had to fight.
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And luckily this was before mobile phones, so when we finally did stop at the place where he was going to take me and he was going to get out of the car, I was able to stop him there.
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But had he called ahead or sent a text message, there could have been people outside waiting for us and that would have been the end of it, or of me.
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Yeah, and that s the unfortunate part of technology.
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It s great, but it s great for bad guys, too.
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I think you were thinking the right way.
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They did a study after the Mumbai attacks, you know, the FBI and the people that survived in the different hotels, they asked them, well, what were your thoughts?
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You know, and they really could only come up with two things.
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Either they re going to be rescued or they were going to die.
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Most people tend to steer away from that self-reliance, self-rescue thing.
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I think it s changing.
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And that s, once again, the goal of the books is to get people to be more self-reliant and start thinking about self-rescue and always try to fill the gap between 9-1-1 and when law enforcement actually shows up.
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So I think you were thinking down the right path, obviously.
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And then when you needed to fight, you did.
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And yeah, you re here behind a microphone now.
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So it was all good.
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But it definitely can always take a turn for the worse when you least expect it.
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And that s why you need to have a plan and act those plans out immediately.
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Yes, well, of course, yes, I got lucky in that it did work in the end.
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There wasn t the technology for him to plan better.
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But I do go through the scenario in my head often, as you might imagine.
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I ve talked about it on the show often as well.
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But had it been fresh in the mind, never go to the secondary location, then the second I thought of it, I would have stopped.
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trying to do that thing where you talk yourself out of it, like, this probably isn t happening.
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Oh, it s gonna be okay.
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Well, you know, he s probably just, you start making excuses because it s so uncomfortable.
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If I d known about run-hide-fight, or if I d known about this, look at even September 11th, we can armchair quarterback that thing all day, but had people realized almost the same thing, where they couldn t run, they couldn t hide, but they could fight, we might have had a different outcome in that scenario.
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But people kept thinking, we re gonna land in some Mexican airport, and you know, everybody will be fine.
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If you look at that particular scenario, that type of thing will never happen again because you re gonna have so many agitated passengers on board that anybody who tries to hijack an American airliner with a box cutter is gonna get ripped limb from limb in just seconds.
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Without a doubt, and that s why I put that skill in the latest book, you know, to jettison the hijacker, you know?
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So, how to do it properly.
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I saw that, it s basically the only instructions on how to throw someone out of an airplane that you ll ever need.
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A lot of the stuff that we re talking about comes back to awareness, and in the first book you ve got like the four tiers of awareness, when you re talking about blending into any environment, the personal awareness, cultural, situational, and third party awareness.
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Can you talk about that a little bit?
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Yeah, I think people overuse situational awareness, you know, they say it all the time, but they don t really break it down.
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So that s why I put that in there.
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And it was the number one weapon I had whenever I was operating alone from time to time.
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So, you know, personal awareness is all about projection and demeanor management.
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It s looking in the mirror before you walk out the door.
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That has to be coupled with cultural awareness, which is, you know, the social etiquette and protocols in the geographical area in which you re standing in.
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And so you combine the two, your cultural awareness and your
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personal awareness, you combine them together.
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And I always use the example of women traveling to India with their cow like rawhide purses.
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You know, it s the last thing you want to do because they look at the cow far differently than we do.
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We look at it as something to eat.
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They, in certain provinces, worship it.
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It s the same thing for a lot of different things we do versus what happens overseas.
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But point being is that you re making yourself a target and you don t even know it, whether it s out of ignorance or just being stupid or just being a proud American.
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These are the things you kind of have to study up on, you know, and with the power of Google, it doesn t take but a minute or two.
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But you have to take your personal awareness, which once again, projection, demeanor management,
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how you walk, how you talk, what you wear, all plays a part with cultural awareness, which is really the do s and don ts, you know, eye contact, handshakes, what do I do when I eat with these people?
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What do I wear?
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What do I don t wear?
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And these are all important for reducing basically threat reduction.
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And then what s coupled with that is third party awareness, which is knowing that anybody can look at you from afar, judge you and go ahead and
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make a decision on what they think you are, you know.
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And so the Proud American piece, you know, we like to wear our t-shirts with our big iconic, whether it s a university or an NFL football team or you name it, we like to throw it out there.
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But it s important to realize that you have organized crime, law enforcement, intelligence agencies, innocent bystanders that all make up your third-party awareness.
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And the minute you start realizing that, okay, there s all these different groups and people out there watching me, observing me, and making decisions about me, it ll start to help with your personal awareness, cultural awareness piece, which then leads to the big one, which isn t so big anymore once you define the other three, which is situational awareness.
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And a lot of times this is
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define as like that three-foot bubble, but it needs to be beyond that.
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It s everything from your seatbelts on, you got more than a half a tank of gas, I ve got minutes on my SIM card, to, you know, literally paying attention to what s going on in your environment based on what you re doing and where you re going.
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You know, I always tell people, you can t obviously, if you re trying to pay attention to everything, then you re paying attention to nothing.
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It s something you have to make and slowly make a habit into everything you do each day.
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And I always compare it to the seatbelt.
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There was a time when none of us wore seatbelts and you never received a ticket for it.
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And there was never an annoying chime in your car if you didn t have it on.
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But now, today, you put it on, you take it off dozens of times in a day and you don t even remember doing it.
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And that s what you have to get
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your levels of awareness to.
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It s not something you re just going to start doing overnight.
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It s something that you do little by little each day, and before you know it, you re doing it without realizing it.
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Hopefully, paying attention to all of those important cues and clues in your environment, now you re navigating the world a lot safer and more secure.
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So how do we start this process, right?
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Because you re right, if we start going, okay, I can t wear any sports gear.
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Okay, I gotta learn microexpressions.
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Okay, I gotta be aware of everybody around me.
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All right, I gotta be aware of my own body language.
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We teach a lot of this stuff at the Art of Charm.
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This is what boot camp is all about.
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And we have our own ways to sort of impart this knowledge, of course, in a crash course and with drills and exercises later on over time and even before people get here.
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But where do you start with it, right?
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I assume what you mean is we re trying to limit the amount of communication that we re doing unintentionally
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like my University of Michigan hoodie that says, I am American, right?
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It s very uniquely American, and I know we often lump Canadians in with the United States.
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This is one thing where it s just, we have that sports university, sports culture, no one else does.
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It is a massive indicator.
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Nobody thinks about that, right?
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We might wear that overseas thinking, oh, I m blending in, and you re not.
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You know, one of the things that for most people, maybe not for you guys, but most of the things that dress us in the morning is our ego.
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And it usually is.
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And even when we go shopping, it s our ego.
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Your ego is always yearning and it s hungry to define you as something different than the person sitting next to you on that subway.
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train or driving down the road with the car you drive, it s ego, ego, ego is probably 99% of the problem.
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And so once you start to realize that, you can start putting your ego in check, then all of a sudden you become a much grayer person.
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And that s why I always push the gray guy kind of mentality is you want to be gray.
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I mean, we sit in international terminals waiting for our planes all the time.
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And you re really only noticing a very small percentage of the people in there.
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You re noticing the people that are dressed a certain way or the chick with the nice ass.
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Or, you know, it could be a guy that, wow, he looks like he s in better shape than me.
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Or I wonder if I could kick that dude s ass.
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Who knows what s running through your mind, but you re seeing all this walk by, but you re missing 95% of the other people that are kind of gray.
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And that s what you want to be.
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And that s what you want to do, especially if you re traveling abroad.
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But it s all about being gray and it s all about putting your ego in check.
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And you want to be the person that no one notices walk by.
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It seems like that s a different lifestyle mindset, essentially, because it s really easy to become so paranoid, like no brands, always wear dark glasses and a hat, but not a hat with a logo on it.
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I mean, where do we draw the line?
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When you re walking around in Texas, do you have your North Face jacket on, or do you just never travel?
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I mean, how do you apply this in your own life, or are you selectively applying this?
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Because it s kind of like,
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our concept here at AOC of body language, you have to build this into your identity level personality.
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You can t go, all right, I m gonna have confident nonverbal communication when I go to this networking event.
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It has to be done as a set of habits, otherwise you re gonna look corny, right?
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You can t just decide to be incognito when you re traveling.
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You re gonna look like you re wearing a fake mustache and the big nose glasses disguise.
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It s gonna come across awkward unless this is something that you ve built into your personality.
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Yeah, I agree totally.
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I mean, like I said, like your seatbelt, you know, it took a while for us to get there, but it becomes a habit over time.
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So as far as wardrobe is concerned, I mean, yeah, I mean, neutral colors instead of the flashy ones.
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It s better to have, you know, maybe the embroidered polo symbol on your shirt than it is to have the fully silkscreen University of Texas printed on the front.
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So it s give and take.
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It s an exchange of
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what you have that works and that you already wear and getting rid of the other stuff that you might already have.
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I mean, that s just wardrobe specific.
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I mean, a lot of times your environment, you know, is going to dictate always.
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So for us, we d always hit thrift stores.
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You know, if I m going to be in Europe, you go to the thrift stores in Europe, you pick up a lot of stuff there and you have it.
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And is that realistic for, you know, the average person?
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Probably not.
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If you re looking to blend in as a hipster, then you re set.
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Exactly.
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But I don t back paranoia or, you know, putting foil on your head or any of that.
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I m not a fear monger either.
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But there is a balance, right?
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You re not going to put on dark shades and you re not trying.
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That stands out.
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Now you look like somebody suspicious and you re going to end up in handcuffs.
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So, you know, if you have all North Face stuff, it s as simple as taking a black sharpie and
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you know, turning the white embroidered north face thread and sharpening it out to a darker color so it s not standing out.
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You know, it s simple things that you can do to current stuff that can allow you to feel a lot less attractive, I guess is what you say, because most of the time we just all want to be attractive.
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And that s something you can easily put in check.
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We just choose not to.
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Is this something where you could like do some basic reconnaissance before you go to an area that you re not comfortable with and like just go to somebody s Facebook page and see what the general populace is kind of wearing and kind of emulate that just so you kind of have an idea what the baseline is before you get there instead of going to like a thrift store and getting older clothes, which are maybe out of style?
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Yeah, of course, of course you can.
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anything these days you know so that s the beauty of just doing some research and yeah you got to be more preemptive you know and proactive with everything and I think that s what allows change to be a little more successful is if you mentally go all right
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You know, I m gonna what if, what I m gonna do if someone comes in this restaurant right now.
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We always hear that, but actually walking through it and setting up invisible thresholds in our mind.
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If you do see someone suspicious and they cross that invisible threshold, that s gonna, you know, create a response that decision you ve already made.
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I mean, at the end of the day, the goal to all this, whether it s how you dress or what you do in crisis, the goal is to
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Already have your decisions made when it s in peace, right?
5
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You don t want to make decisions in crisis because they tend to be the wrong ones.
5
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What you want to do in crisis or anything that you go do is act them out.
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You want to act it out.
5
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You want to act those decisions out when you need to, which means you have to think about some things before you even walk out the door.
5
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You re going to piecemeal this stuff together over time.
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It certainly isn t going to happen overnight.
5
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Clint, thank you so much.
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This has been enlightening in a lot of ways.
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We went in a lot of different directions here, but there s a lot on awareness, there s a lot on survival, there s a lot, of course, on your backstory, and we appreciate your time and your availability.
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No, thank you for having me, guys.
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It s awesome.
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Love talking to you.
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Great big thank you to Clint.
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The book title is 100 Deadly Skills.
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There are a few different editions here.
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And remember, at the very least, it can stop bullets, no guarantees, right?
6
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Put a little asterisk by that one.
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Might be worth picking up a few copies.
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Of course, that ll be linked up in the show notes as well as the Twitter.
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And if you enjoyed this, don t forget to thank Clint on Twitter.
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That will also be up there along with my Twitter, which is at the art of charm.
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And if you can t find the show notes, tap your phone screen, tap your iPad, they should pop right up.
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If you re listening on a web browser, well, you re probably looking at the show notes right with the player there, so just never fear.
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We got you covered.
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Our boot camps, our live program details, those are at bootcamp.theartofcharm.com.
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We ve been running these for almost a decade, almost as long as we ve been running the show, and to see people become a part of the AOC family and the growth they experience over the next months and years is just nothing short of amazing.
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Remember, we do sell out a few months in advance, so if you re thinking about it a little bit,
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get in touch with us ASAP, get some info from us, plan ahead, and we also have the Art of Charm Challenge at theartofcharm.com slash challenge, or you can text the word charmed, that s C-H-A-R-M-E-D, to 33444.
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The challenge is about improving your networking skills and your connection skills, and inspiring those around you to develop personal and professional relationships with you.
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We ll also email you our fundamentals toolbox that I mentioned earlier on the show,
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and I do regular videos with drills and exercises to help you move forward.
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It ll make you a better networker, it ll make you a better connector, and it ll make you a better thinker.
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That s theartofcharm.com slash challenge or text charmed in the US to 33444.
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For full show notes for this and all previous episodes, head on over to theartofcharm.com slash podcast.
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This episode of AOC was produced by Jason DeFilippo.
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Jason Sanderson is our audio engineer and editor, and the show notes on the website are by Robert Fogerty.
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I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
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Go ahead, tell your friends, because the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else, either in person or shared on the web.
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Word of mouth is everything, so stay charming, and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
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Thanks for listening to the Art of Charm.
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Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more at theartofcharmpodcast.com.