Mike Baker - Ex-CIA Operative, Chairman & CEO at Portman Square Group | Lessons From The CIA

What do you recommend for companies to sort of stay ahead of the perk? Depending on their areas of operation or jurisdictions they're working in, the size of the company, I'm back in change, but you have to understand if you're running a business, a small, medium, large doesn't matter. You got to have Michael Baker as a former CIA covert operations officer, president of diligence, LLC, global intelligence firm, and the host of black files being classified. The book is called company rules, everything I know about business and the CIA. But it's not like you get a manual when you sit down for the first day of training and they say, here's the company rules. These were things that I took with me. There's nine in fact, and there's nine because I couldn't think of the ten. So, but there's little things like, what's the one thing that you really fucked up when you were building a business? So what is it? Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. 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With sales hub, closing big deals is simple, try it for yourself at HubSpot.com slash sales. That thing that moment in time would have been when I had my last interview to get into the agency, into the CIA, and the fellow who was doing that last in person interview, and I'd been talking to them for a while. There's a lot of back and forth, and you never really know what you stand. Anyway, so we had this last interview, and he was a very highly regarded traditional Cold War era spy officer within the agency, very well regarded, and a really storied career. So I'm sitting there in my little chair, and he's sitting at his big desk, and he's looking at my file, and the file seemed awful large since I didn't actually work there at the time. And so he's leaving through it, and I'm thinking, oh God, now what, it's deadly quiet, which is a good interrogation technique, right? I mean, if you just leave the silence there, and people are inclined to talk, so don't feel like you got to fill up all the space. And so he wasn't, he would just stare in at my file, and then he looked at me down in his nose, and he had those little half glasses on, and he said, basically, he said, you have the lowest GPA of anybody. We've ever recruited into the operations director, and I had no idea what to say to that. I figured he was right. I knew how awful my GPA was, given out of university, and I looked at him, I said, well, I guess that makes me a winner, and he stared at me for a while. I think waiting for me to say something else, and I had nothing to say at that point, so I stared at him. Bali, he stood up, shook my hands and welcomed, and that set me off on a tremendous ride with the agency, which I'm always, always grateful for, for that experience. And it also taught me that, you know, that I had more ability, more skills than I think just the book learning or the GPA would imply. And that was, that was a real moment, right? Because that gave me sort of an immense boost of confidence that didn't allow me to go in and do what I did with the agency, which gives you a tremendous amount of responsibility at a relatively young age. So that was, I would say that's that point in time when I really knew that I was going to be on the right path. So I was speaking to, I was speaking to a Navy SEAL, Kaj Larson, and he was telling me that he wanted to be a SEAL because he watched too much top gun growing up. So I'm super curious, was it like too much Tom Clancy or what, what got you into this? No, no, I didn't, you know, I didn't really anticipate that's where I was going to end up. It wasn't like I had some lifelong dream ever since I was a kid. In fact, I still have a little, little one page on lined paper, you know, from elementary school days. I think I was in, I don't know, I might have been, it was before I got the first form. So it was probably, you know, 10 years old and it was talked about what you wanted to be when you grew up. And my answer was I wanted to be an astronaut. And my fallback position was if I couldn't be an astronaut, I wanted to be a police officer. And so I had no real, you know, passion or it wasn't like I thought, this is what I have to do with my life. And so it's interesting, but it turns out that it was a, it was a pretty solid fit. It worked out. You said it was 17 years, right? Yeah, almost, almost 20 by the time we wrapped up. That's it. So, so what is it, you know, I'm super curious. And you stop when you have to stop, but what's the process of training and what's the process of onboarding? And because like that's, that seems to be an incredible amount of responsibility to give a kid coming out of college university. So there has to be significant. What you're doing, there's an interesting thing about the agency is that there's, I mean, there's a number of what we used to call directorates. They're basically, you know, elements within the organization that focus on different things, science and technology, Intel analysis, which is where all the really smart people go to, right? You know, the material up that gets collected off the streets, the operation side where I was, and admin, which is critically important to what the agency does. And so, you know, it kind of depends. It's horses for courses, right? Everybody goes in, and they've got a different training path, and they come in from a different, you know, past experience. But the onboarding, you know, and I tell people this all the time, young people all the time who, you know, talk to me about what the experience is going to be like, or, you know, how they apply, what do they do? The onboarding can be a very lengthy and difficult process, right? Because of the nature of what the agency is. So you have to be extremely patient. You have to be committed, right? And you have to be definite about what it is that you want to do. If you just go to the agency and say, I'd like to apply, nowadays, you can apply online and say, I'd like to apply because I want to, I don't know, be a spy. I want to work with you. You have to, they're looking for something a little bit more defined than that. They're looking for people with commitment, with self-discipline motivated by things other than money, obviously, because it's a government job. If I told you what my starting salary was, you'd probably, you know, send me a bag of money. It was, so it's, but it is a, it's worth it in the end, right? For the right people, for when it's the right fit, it's a tremendous experience. That's all. And, you know, what is the right person for that kind of job? How do you know growing up that you could be the right person? And then you think about what's the right person for CIA versus FBI? What's the personality type? It is definitely a different personality type, right? It's not there's, there are, you know, there's not a lot of similarities between working for an Intel operation and working in law enforcement, right? But I think there probably are some traits that cut across, you know, both of those areas. And I would say, again, self-discipline would be one of those things, self-starter, motivated, patriotic, that always helps. But with the agency, look, they're looking for people who can work independently, but who can work as team members, right? You got to play well with others. And there's also a sense of, I don't want to call it curiosity, inquisitiveness, it's more of an awareness and concern and interest in what's happening in the world, right? If you sit down and start talking to a recruiter and you don't know what's happening around the world in some detail, then that's going to show a lack of awareness and, you know, understanding. And the work of the agency is overseas, so that's a part of it. Your ability to do languages, languages is a key part of the agency's operations, of course, because so much, I mean, everything we do is focused externally. So it's, you know, and then there's other bits and pieces they can fall into there. You got to keep your nose clean, right? It's still do lifestyle polygraphs. And if you show up and you've been doing recreational drugs during the course of your college career or, you know, shortly thereafter, yeah, that door's closed. And even though they know it's a new day, so if you, you know, smoked a, you know, bit of weed and, you know, beginning of college, okay? But the honest to God's truth is they got a very deep well of potential candidates. Yeah, so they don't, they don't even bother. They don't even bother. Yeah, I mean, even though they know the world has changed and is changing, again, they're looking for those people who demonstrate through their lifestyle that they're disciplined. Yeah, you know, it's, it's interesting because a lot of people listening to this would think like why wouldn't, why wouldn't they evolve? And there is so many candidates. I have first hand experience from this because, because my dad used to work for CISIS. So I'm Canadian. So I mean, it's, it's very different, obviously, but not that different in terms of their hiring and onboarding and what they're looking for and, and the strict policies they have. And it's, it's just because, I mean, it's just the type of work you do. I feel like you don't want any, you don't want to have, let anyone have anything on you when you're going into this kind of work. Like it's easier to do the job when you go in clean. And then that's, it's already going to be tough enough, right? So I know that they've had really tough hiring policies in CISIS, which is like a similar type organization in Canada. And the UK's operations are the same. And really any serious mindset intel service is going to feel the same way. Yeah, you don't want to, you know, I mean, why start with somebody who has already demonstrated, you know, the potential to be compromised, right? In a sense. Exactly. Yeah. So I tell young folks at all the time, just keep your nose clean, you know, figure it out. Figure it out. And literally, yeah. And, you know, and then, and then it's all those other things, you know, study, study languages, get, you know, get proficient and ideally something other than Spanish or French, even though those are great languages. But, you know, hard languages are always going to be desired. And so it's, but it is a, you know, it can be a journey, right? I know a lot of young folks who applied great credentials, you know, after the first year, they're still waiting to find out whether they've been accepted or are they going to get through the next round of interviews. And eventually, you know, you got to, you got to pay the bills. So you do lose, you know, very good candidates because sometimes the process is very arduous. And, and, and what kind of, what kind of personal life can you have during your career for security and, and clearance reasons or otherwise, just the travel, the type of lifestyle that you have, I guess it really depends on the deployment that you're, that you're given. Yeah, it really is depends on the path, the career path, you're following, right? There are people that work for the agency that, you know, are based all the time in headquarters or, you know, somewhere else in, in a main facility of the, of the organization. And then there are others who, you know, spend your life overseas. I spent all, basically, all my time, I never did a headquarters tourist, but all my time overseas. And, you know, for the right person, I grew up overseas. I lived overseas. I spent most of my life there. I, enjoyed it. I'm very comfortable. And that's, that's what I was looking for. So, you know, it just depends, right? But you, you know, you, you got to, you know, you, you've got to want something other than, what's the, you know, recognition, right? Again, it's not the money and it's not the path on the back. If you're somebody who has to be constantly pat on the back and told you doing a great job, then you probably need to look elsewhere for employment. Yeah. And, and, you know, then, you know, we're going to have to, we have to fast forward 20 years, but then, then the question becomes, when do you, when do you choose to exit at a career like this? And how do you? Because you've exited out of a career like this, but then you become, you know, you're putting out a book, you, you, you go on TV, you're going on Rogan, like you're not keeping a low profile. So, how do you come to that decision? That's obviously, first of all, you're not just exiting, which is already difficult enough. You're exiting and then building a personal brand around yourself. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's more of the, the fact that I built a company, you know, started and built a company. And so that's where a lot of the sort of the external activities, the media appearances and all that, because I was, I was looking for a way to get free marketing for my business that I was starting up. Damn smart. That's the way to do it, man. May for it. And so, and I talked about it in, in, in the book that I just came out with, unscript, the Netflix of books, script, it's an audio book. So it's an easy, easy read. But I talk about that moment when I decided I have to leave. And I left for, you know, very simple reasons. I was raising a daughter. Yeah. And I needed to be home. And I needed to be at least home more often. And as it turns out, kids don't really care what you do for a living as long as you're there, sitting on the floor playing Legos. And, or in my case, watching endless, uh, uh, Disney videos. So, but, uh, so I, I, I remember I had to go and, and make that decision. It was easier because I had a great, uh, I had a great boss at the time. Um, it was very senior within the operations group and, and was a terrifically, uh, understanding and, uh, generous individual. And then had some other good folks there. And they, they really went to bad for me and they said, look, because I wasn't, I was too young to retire. I wasn't retiring. I was leaving, whichever was stupid, because I was basically throwing away all that time built up for, uh, pension or retirement, whatever you want to call it. So that just got chucked out the window, because I, you know, was leading. You don't have your whatever. You're 70% of your five best years or whatever the hell the pension is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So that went out the window. So people thought I was being enormously stupid. They kept asking me what it was that I was going to do. I didn't really have an idea. Um, uh, it was very fortunate that I had a very good friend of mine who, uh, came out of the British teams, um, we'd known each other for a while. Uh, and, and he wanted to do the same thing. And he was with the, at by that time, he was with the British service, one of them. And, uh, he wanted to leave and we decided to kind of strike out. We got lucky, uh, both getting brought into a startup and the intelligence and investigations and security services industry, which is kind of the only thing I could think of, uh, that aligned with the skills that I had. And so we, we had a lot of luck, right? At the outset. And, you know, I, looking back on it and I talk about this, I think in the, in the book is that I never was engaged in an operation that worked that didn't have some element of luck, right? You'd like to think it's all because you're so fucking clever. But it primarily, there was always some little bit of luck that that that came in there and influenced the outcome. I was, you know, when you, when you pivot into private, you're building, you're building a company in the intelligence space. It's, you know, it's interesting because you had a, you had a behind the curtains view at a lot of the darkest spots of the world, but you can't bring that into the private industry. So you have to separate and delineate those two, those two lives basically. So when you do that, because in theory, that could even be a competitive advantage for private industry. So how do you build something? And, you know, former, former, you know, boss is not concerned about what you're building, about who you're consulting for, about the information that, that, you know, you're giving these companies, what's the off-boarding process like? Yeah, you know, when, when we got started, there wasn't a lot of this going on, right? You didn't have a lot of movement from the Intel community, whether it was in here, the UK or wherever, into the private sector. Not, you know, not that I'm, you know, as old as Gullford Brimley, but, you know, it was a, it was a well-backed and so we didn't really know, I think, at the time, what we were getting into, which is why we were so fortunate. There's this fellow that I mentioned who would, who hired us at the outset. He really kind of acted as a mentor and allowed us to set the table. And we knew we wanted to have our own gig. I mean, there was no question about that. We wanted to have our own business. And I think that came out of the fact, certainly for me, that the agency, the CIA does give you so much responsibility, that my theory is, once you've been there, particularly in the operation side, if you worked overseas in operations for a long period of time, you would make the world's worst employee anywhere else. You would be a terrible employee. And I knew I would be. So I knew that I had to have my own business at some point and, you know, my buddy Nick felt the same way. So we had a chance, you know, to understand what the investigations intel security services business was like in the private sector by working with Mike Comer in the UK. We were based out of London. And that was both lucky and, you know, enormously helpful. So from there, we were able to then start our own business and, you know, build that over the years. But the agency, I've always had a good relationship with because I respect them immensely. I respect the people I worked for. I keep my app shut when it comes to, you know, all the important things. And, you know, I never felt like, you know, some people leave an organization, it doesn't matter what the organization is. And they feel like they didn't get enough hugs, or they weren't respected. And so, you know, they were, or that if the organization just listened to them, things would have been different. I never felt that way. You know, I was out in the field. I was on the street. I just, I did, you know, the tasks. And I think in a simple minded way, that's why I was a good fit because I never sat around and stared at my belly button and wondered where I fit in the whole scheme of things. And, you know, all the questions that can come from working for an intel organization. Yeah, no, that makes sense. And as you build this up, you know, you mentioned something, being, being in the agency probably makes you the worst employee in the world, but it also made you a successful entrepreneur. So I'm curious about, and I think this is probably what allowed you to actually write this book. So what were some of the things that you learned while being in the agency that allowed you to be successful? Because there's always these traits that carry over. And I find it fascinating between sports and business. And I've never really thought about, you know, agency life in business, but there's a lot of parallels there too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it is, you know, I, I've been asked about, well, you want to write a book about your, you know, over the years, about your time with the agency. And I was like, no, hey, I don't think any people ever want to read it. And, and be, you know, I don't see any need for it. And other people are doing that. And that's fine. But then after a while, it became clear that one of the things that was interesting to me was that there were certain things I did learn from my time with the agency. I don't even know that I knew I was absorbing those ideas or principles at the time that allowed, you know, me to get out and build a company. And and keep it, you know, moving forward, hopefully, still to this day. And so I think the, and, and, and look, these, these things, I refer to the book is called company rules, right? Company rules. Everything I know about business I learned from the CIA. But there's no set of company rules. It's not like you get a, a manual when you sit down for the first day of training. And they say, here's the company rules. But these were things that I took away. You know, I know guys that I worked with, people that I worked with, they left. I'm sure they took away their own ideas. But these happened to be mine. And there's, there's a variety of them in there. There's nine in fact. And there's nine because, I couldn't think of a tenth. So, and I didn't want to just make shit up. So, but there's little things like define the mission, right? And that sounds, sounds simplistic. But when you join the agency, one of the first things that happens is you spend what seems like an ungodly amount of time sitting in like a windowless classroom for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks listening to people bang on about the structure of the organization and the structure of the intel community and structure of its place in the world and the world itself. And, and how all these pieces link together. And you don't realize it necessarily at the time. But what they're trying to do is they're trying to define the mission. They're trying to explain to you, you know, who you're working for because most people show up without really having a full understanding, obviously. And, and what your purpose is and what the agency's purpose is in life. And that's critically important. And so, I do the same thing in business. What I've found over the years is, A, you got to hire people smarter than yourself, right? You get people hear that all the time. It's kind of a tried saying, for me it's easy because I can find lots of people smarter than me. So, but you have to hire people smarter than yourself. And then what I found most effective is just define the mission. And the mission may be just for a particular project. Here's the project. The mission is not, okay, we have a company and the company wants to make money. And, you know, that sets a shitty mission statement. But the mission can be, what do we want to be? We want to be, we want to be the finest intelligence investigative and security services firm in the world. Okay, you know, now you're getting closer to a mission statement. But the mission statement can also be for just specific projects for clients. Here it is. And I'll explain that to a team leader who's got a staff of people who are going to work on a project, explain the mission, you make sure they understand it, then you get to hell out of the way, right? And then you count on the fact that you've hired the right people. And so, in our case at Portman Square Group, we try to hire smart, curious people who speak multiple languages, who are great at research and investigation, that are listening information, solid writing. And then you stay out of their way and you let them do the job. And that's one of those things that I took away from the agency. Other little things, you know, like knowing your operating environment that is fairly self-explanatory from an operational perspective, right? If you're operating in a hostile, challenging environment, you better know what the hell you're stepping into, right? And the agency has always been very good about that the best managers, the best officers, when they get new people coming into their area of operations, give them time, right? To understand the environment, to understand, get out really, just understand where you're working in, right? Get out there and get a feel for it before you get started doing whatever it is you're going to be doing. And in business, it's, you know, it's pretty much the same. Know your operating environment. I mean, that means everything from, you know, know your competition, know your potential clients, you know, know your shareholders, your investors, understand the jurisdictions you're operating in and what the limitations are there. So there's all these, these little things. And there's a series of these ideas. Again, I don't know that I was even aware I was absorbing them, but eventually, you know, a while back in a conversation, someone said, well, you should put all this down in a book. And so we didn't, you know, well, there are a lot of parallels. I think what's most fascinating when I look at your life in the agency versus your life as an entrepreneur, founder, business owner, when you, when you have to defer example, define your mission in the agency or know your operating environment in the agency. If you do not properly define your mission, people can die. If you do not properly know your operating environment, people can die in a business. There's a lot of times when people try to define a mission, but they don't properly do it. And no one dies. I mean, maybe the business size, but nobody actually dies. They just work half-ass or they work without guidance for months at a time, and they waste a lot of money and they, you know, they bullshit around and whatnot. So I guess when you, when you come from such a, like a high pressure environment where it's very black and white, there can be no margin of error because it's a very high risk environment in some of these cases. How do you take that and how do you take the, how do you have the same level of, I guess, that information landing with your team that you get. You understand what I'm saying? No, I do. It's a really, yeah, it's a really good question. It's a really smart question. It's, you know what, if you don't, if you don't, I suppose the answer is if you really don't care about your business or you really don't care about your clients and as was fine, fuck it, you know, I'm just going to, you know, here it is. Let's see how it goes and maybe we make some money and, you know, I'll live to see another day. But when it's your own business, and I know a lot of your folks are, you know, entrepreneurs and, and, you know, they're started or have started or process of building their own businesses, it's really a different situation, right? Every day, it's you. Every day it's your reputation. No matter how big the company gets, you are, at least I feel, so personally invested in the work product that goes out the door and how our clients feel about it. And we work for a lot of Fortune 50 companies and large law firms and financial institutions and others. And I worry all the time, excessively so, about, you know, whether we're doing the best job we can for them. And I know that sounds tripe, but honest guy, it's the truth. I stress more about whether the clients and some of the, and I've worked with some of these companies now for, you know, a decade and a half or longer and, you know, they're very good friends. And so maybe that puts more pressure on because now you're working for friends. Yeah, totally not some company. But so you try to, you try to impart that to the folks that are working with you, right? And that's tough. If you're talking about like, you know, younger folks, they've just come on board or whatever, they're, of course, they're not going to be as invested. They're not going to be as concerned. They're not going to stress about things. But we've been lucky. We've got people that have been with me now for over 15 years, right? Which is a little unusual in this industry. You get a lot of staff movement typically. But we've had people that have stuck with us for a long time and they do feel that same level of stress or pressure. And I think that's, that's important because it sets you apart, right? I've taken on the large large projects, multi jurisdictional issues where we just haven't been getting a result, right? Because you're just, you're doing everything you can. You're just not finding the answer. You're not getting that piece of intelligence. So you're not seeing the evidence that, you know, points to some sort of solution. And, you know, there have been times that I've said, screw it. We're just, we're not going to bill you anymore because we're not producing right now. We're just going to keep working. And, you know, so I've, not that I'm the world's worst business person, but there have been times when I've been operating almost as a nonprofit because I want the right result. So I've never had a problem. I've gotten, I've been very lucky. People sometimes get out of the agency and they spend the rest of their time talking about their time in the agency, right? Yeah. I loved it. But what I also love is I got a great new challenge when I got out and started in the private sector and started building a business. And I get a tremendous charge out of it still. So I've been very fortunate. Again, luck comes into this again. I got lucky. Yeah. As you all know, the success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network, which has incredible podcasts for entrepreneurs, business leaders, people just wanting to upscale themselves. One of my favorites that you need to go check out is my first million hosted by Sam Parr and Sean Perry. They have incredible guests, Alex Ramosi, Sophia Amaruso, Hassan Minhash, all sharing their secrets, how they made their first million and how to apply their learnings to capitalize on today's business trends and opportunity. Go listen to my first million wherever you get your podcast. No, I think that, you know, you're, I'm just uncovering things that make you successful as you speak more. And I think that one of the things that was actually a benefit, you not coming from a business background is this almost this insane obsession with the customer to a detriment in some cases. But ultimately, like that mindset has allowed you to differentiate yourself, whereas some people probably wouldn't have gone that far. Stop short, cut off a project, whatever delivered half-ass results. And then, you know, you don't build the 15-year-plus relationships. That's what I'm seeing. And that's something that I think that's, maybe that is, I hadn't actually thought about it in terms of that that approach or that that thought process being a result of where it came out of. I was probably sure to thought about that for the book. No, you can do, listen, you can do another one. Maybe I'll write and attend them. Exactly. No, no, you know, listen, it's always, the people that succeed the most are not the Stanford or the Harvard MBAs, they have their spot. But I believe that people that come from different circumstances have a mass, have an edge. Whether or not it's a chip on their shoulder or they came from nothing or they came from a totally different lifestyle, they look at things differently. I think that somebody that goes into something saying, this is the way it's always been done is the death of business. I always find that. Yeah, I think that's, I think there's not been a downside to it. I mean, I do think sometimes, you know, my lack of a business background or sort of business sense has kept me from building a much bigger enterprise. But at the end of the day, all our clients, including the largest corporations we work for, they say things like, look, we work, we're excited because you're small because you're a tailored business, right? We can always go to a large, you know, 2000 person company. But so I think, you know, that actually has worked in our favor to stay relatively small and sort of provide this, this tailored approach to every client we deal with. So it's been, that's, that's been interesting. But it's, it's, I think if you don't find new challenges when you get out of an environment like the agency or, well, the military, look, I know a lot of wonderful folks coming out of the military and it can be, that transition can be super tough, right? Particularly if you're, you know, some high-speed operations. But you have to be able to find that next challenge. That, that keeps you moving forward or that, or that provides that next opportunity to grow. And if you don't, then that's when, you know, that's when trouble can set in. You know, it's, it's interesting. You keep mentioning your lack of basically business acumen, but yet you've built a successful company. You work with Fortune 50, Fortune 100, and you've probably marketed yourself a hell of a lot better than a lot of the people with 2000 person plus companies like how many of their CEOs have been on Rogan and, and Patrick, but David's podcast and I'll throw myself in the mix even on not on that low yet. But I mean, you know, so I'm seeing you're doing some, so what, what do you think consciously or, or maybe now subconsciously is just thinking through what do you think differentiated you when it came to building the business, building a personal brand, marketing yourself, because all this, and then I mean you're on TV too. You've done some very strategic things that anybody else coming out of the agency, anybody else coming out of a military, FBI, even police force, they have a story to tell. Yeah, you know, it's a little bit sexy, but I mean, FBI is sexy. You're up high enough in the military. You do some cool shit. That's sexy too. You can build a brand around that. What made you different? Yeah, I mean, I think, and some people have, and they've done it very well. You know, what I kind of, I kind of blonde it into if we just took it to media appearances, if you just talk about doing talking head appearances for, for the news on, on national security issues or counterterrorism or whatever the topic may be. I kind of blended into it. It was, I had moved from London to the East Coast to set up an office. We had just taken our first investors and they, BGR, which is a fantastic lobbying firm in Washington DC. And so part of the agreement for the investment was open in office there with them, co-locate. And at the time, we were starting to, to build up a presence in Iraq. And this was early, early 2003. So very beginning of our first incursion there. But we had been dealing with some of the infrastructure companies. And so the point of this story is, one day, Ed Rogers, great guy, terrific individual part of BGR and the original founding partners, he came walking to my office, knocked on the door and said, hey, Fox News needs somebody to talk about Iraq, you know, head over there. It'll be fun. You got to be so I made it on the balls. It said, sure, you know, don't talk about anything stupid, but you can, you can do it. And the agency's always been good with me that way. But so I went over, did the appearance and found out after the first couple that, you know, honestly, as long as you don't say anything stupid, and you don't fall off your chair, right? You know, the news networks need to fill up a lot of time. And I just happen to have a lot of, you know, experience and background and certain areas and was willing to go on and talk about that. And so some of the outlets, including Fox, they were very good. They were very good to me. And they were, and then I discovered that I wasn't getting paid for any of it. But what they would do is they would put the company name on the bottom, like, you know, with, with the company. And once I realized that, then we were off to the races, because like I said earlier, there was no way we could have, as a startup, afforded that sort of marketing. It just wasn't going to happen. And so, you know, I, I was, I realized that, you know, that was an edge, right? We had an opportunity there. And then everything else just sort of kind of fell into place, I suppose. You know, I was going to say it's amazing how, you know, to, to have a good story, you just have to have a cool career, do something incredible, and then speak about it. But you'd be surprised at how many people just don't feel comfortable leaning into that. And then you did. I mean, I think the agency again, because of what I was doing in operations, and, you know, you do have a, sometimes an overblown sense of confidence. And, you know, so I think that that part of it never, and I genuinely like talking about issues of the day, I spent a great deal of time focused on that. I have a lot of friends in a lot of different places. And we end up, you know, banging on about, you know, the current crises. There's never, there's never a shortage of them. There's never a shortage. And so it helps if you find it all interesting, right? You can't, you can't think that part of it. It's like, but I, you know, again, I think, you know, luck kind of fell into it again. And then, you know, once I realized that it was certainly beneficial, you know, it wasn't like I was going to turn down opportunities. Yeah, no, no, obviously. Another one of the rules that you mentioned, which I thought was interesting. It just in terms of velocity and getting shit done. It's, it's number four. It's get off the X. Yeah. What does that, what does that mean exactly? Where does that come from in an agency context? And then how does that translate into business start up entrepreneurship? Well, in an operational sense, you know, not just the agency with military and other organizations. The, the X means it is essentially an ambush site. So, I mean, hey, you don't want to be on the ambush site to begin. The idea is you spend a lot of time training to recognize indicators of a potential ambush. And, you know, but if you do get on the X, if you're unfortunate and for whatever reason you land on that spot, then you have to be able to get off the X. You have to get out of there, right? And, and in operational terms, that's a tough thing because everything starts locking up, right? And you're, you know, you start, you know, getting blinders and, you know, your hearing goes and, you know, in any, any difficult situation, right? You have to start relying on big muscle memory. And so, that's again why training is so important. Why, you know, it's not enough just to do, you know, some training. You have to constantly review it. But anyway, the point is in business, what it means is I think, anyway, in my opinion, this is what, again, you know, there's no hard and fast, I suppose, to any of this, but from my perspective, it simply means knowing how to make decisions quickly within perfect information, right? Because once you land in the, in the shed from an operational perspective, right? You just got to take action, right? You don't have time to sit around and hope that you get all the data, you know, where, you know, where are all the hostile elements? What the hell is happening? You have to start making decisions, right? And it's the same in business, right? You, if you wait for all the data sets to come in, if you wait for all the analysis to be done on whatever it may be, something bad's going to happen, right? Or the competition's going to have you lunch, or you're going to lose the opportunity, or your reputation's going to be damaged, whatever it might be. So, it really comes down to how do you, you know, learn to, and also, a lot of this is about how do you impart that ability to your, your, your personnel, to all the folks that are working with you, to make these decisions, again, within perfect information? And so, when you're making these decisions within perfect information, as a CEO, is that just, is that just being a leader for a period of time, or is there, is there actual practice that you can do to make sure that when shit hits a fan, you don't screw it up? Yeah, there's, I mean, there's, there's, there's a lot, there's a lot to this. It's a fairly, I mean, part of it is not that complicated. Part of it is, you know, knowing your risk appetite, which is another, you know, element. I was actually curious about that one too, only because I thought that business inherently comes with risk. So, how do you not have a risk appetite if you're building something? Well, you'd be surprised. And even, I mean, going back to, you know, the Intel community, Intel organizations, which, you know, by definition are risk-taking operations, they go through periods of time, where they become risk-averse, right? It's because, you know, they had blowback from, you know, some operation, or they've gotten their ass kicked up on Capitol Hill too many times. And so, you know, suddenly you've got a cycle where, you know, management is avoiding risks. And I've seen a couple of those cycles sweep through the A to Z over the years. And that's a bad thing. But, and so, and you have to understand what, and when you're understanding what your risk appetite is, it also means you have to understand what your shareholders or your investors or your board of advisors risk appetite is. You have to understand what the client's risk appetite is, for sure, when you're talking about, you know, working for them and providing, you know, strategic intelligence or guidance or due diligence or whatever it may be. And, you know, that's a, that's a key part of it. And that informs a lot of other decisions that you make, including how do you, you know, again, make decisions within perfect information. Another, you know, when you're talking about risk appetite, I'm interested because you deal with businesses that are dealing with threats. So, in a business landscape, advice for executive CEOs, founders, what are the threats that you see really plaguing businesses right now? And I know there's, you know, there's specific examples that would not transcend every industry or every category. But you see, you see macro level. What are some things that people should think about? Well, I think any company of any size, and it doesn't really matter how big it is because small businesses can, can be damaged quicker and faster and, you know, more broadly than large corporations at times, some of these. But the insider threat is always something that, that we end up talking about. And the insider threat can mean a variety of things, right? It can mean, it can mean within a pharmaceutical company, you've got somebody who has been recruited, developed by a competitor to provide, you know, intellectual property or key information regarding research and development. It could mean they could have been compromised by, you know, Chinese intelligence service, right? I mean, that, that sounds, oh my god, that's spooky. But look, yeah, that, that's happened to Dow, it's happened to Dupont, it's happened to a wide variety of companies, right? We're a state sponsored intel services have targeted the private sector gone after individuals who they've identified through the typical recruitment process, a recruitment cycle, and just, just like an intel service would, and go after these individuals who can provide them inside information, economic espionage basically. So that, and so that's an example of an insider threat, you know, insider threat can also be, you know, a disgruntled employee who decides, you know, to do enormous damage, because perhaps they work an IT or wherever they may have access to very sensitive information, it could be an accounting issue, and finance. So the insider threat is something that companies need to be focused on. Cyber security is obviously a big buzz word and has been for a while, and that is a whole separate, you know, conversation in terms of the ability of companies to understand what those threats are to stay on top of those threats, to understand how to respond, when to, when to incorporate outside law enforcement assistance, the FBI is working very hard now to try to establish better dialogue with the private sector so that they can better inform the private sector where these threats are coming from. And, you know, and it's just, you know, the potential for damage to a company, and when we talk about, and you mentioned it early on, when you talk about, like, within operations or within the agency, failure to do the right thing can lead to, you know, death or serious, you know, goat rope, then, you know, I think with the private sector, you know, you talking about the crushing of a company, you're talking about the, you know, irreparable damage to a brand, you're talking about, you know, massive losses, layoffs. I mean, there's all sorts of damage that can be done through companies not paying attention. I mean, look at the, you know, SVB, Silicon Valley Bank, probably not the best example of like that, that sort of insider threat, that seemed more like it was a bunch of tools trying to make decisions that were completely inappropriate. Yeah, so there was, so, you know, you also have to worry about the insider tool threat, apparently. By the way, I know that, I know we booked this till till three, I was just going to ask a few more of them, we'll wrap up quick, if that's okay, if you don't have like a hard stop and four. No, so when you actually go into a company like this or any, any size, well, I'd ask like, what do you, what would you recommend somebody who's listening to this, you know, they have a, they have a workforce of a hundred or, or, or five thousand, how would you even start to approach that? How, how could they start to approach that, just look for red flags to know if they should even work for somebody like you? What's, what's the, you know, what's, I mean, the size of the business, most, most corporations of any size, obviously have internal, you know, security departments. They may view them differently. I mean, some companies that's interesting, even no matter how large they are, they view their security element as physical security, and that's pretty much it, right? And, and, and, you know, access controls and, and, you know, CCTV and, you know, badges and, you know, it's a very old school way of viewing security. Others are much more advanced, they're proactive about understanding the importance of, of a chief security officer of, you know, and how they work with the chief compliance officer, the smartest ones where they have operations overseas. They typically have international risk groups within their company that analyze the potential threats and, and try to understand, you know, down the road, not just the immediate threat, because you got to keep looking down the road, because everything changes. And so, I guess one of the, one of the biggest problems, sometimes that we see, when you're talking about how the company or the C-suite interacts with the security side of things, information security, personnel security, strategic understanding of threats that exist to the business, is that there's an indirect reporting line. If I was running a corporation of any size, I would want those individuals, the chief compliance, the chief security officer, the head of your cyber security, you know, element, your IT personnel. I would want them in my office on a constant regular basis, briefing me and me asking questions and having a conversation with them. So you want direct reporting lines there. And oftentimes that's not the case and it's sort of filtered and they don't. And it's a reflection of how they view the importance of security or information. And our perspective is always whoever's got the best intelligence, whether it's the intelligence about the existing threats to their company or the potential threats, whether it's intelligence about how their competition is creating unlevel playing fields, you have to understand the value of information. And that could be a difficult thing because, you know, again, they look at security and they look at the, perhaps the internal intel group as cost centers, right? And that's, you couldn't, nothing's further from the truth. Those, those elements within these companies are not only saving potentially vast sums of money, but they're creating opportunities for them, right? By their ability to understand and process and analyze and disseminate information to the C suite so they can make better strategic decisions. No, I would say that I would assume, unfortunately, that a lot of these organizations only start taking these groups seriously when something happens in retrospect, which that's very well put. That said, that's much more eloquent and concise than I just banged out about for 10 minutes. No, I have no doubt. I have no doubt. They only care when it went, again, shit hits the fan, which is, yeah, which is, and that's typically when with due diligence as an example, right? That's the way to protect your business is to do thorough due diligence. Now due diligence isn't sexy. It's not exciting, right? But it's also not a heavy lift. It's not costly. But yet we see time and time again, we see companies that are like, hey, we don't want to spend, you know, some small amount to do due diligence properly, thoroughly, on a, you know, 100, 200, 300, 400 million dollar investment, whatever it may be, right? Because, yeah, it's a cost center. Do we really want to spend the money, you know, Bob worked with Todd, you know, 20 years ago, he knows him, he's a good guy, now he's in this, you see that, you know, constantly, I mean, look at FTX, right? Sam Bankman, you know, looking, you know, made off, right? Some simple due diligence would have informed a lot of people and kept people from getting hurt. Well, did you see that? You see the JP Morgan's suing that company for 100 some million because whatever their entire customer base is fake, did you see this story? Yes. Yeah, I know, go figure. Well, I mean, but look, you have to be, if you're running a business, right? Small, medium, large, doesn't matter. You got to ask the questions all the time, right? Never take, I mean, KPMG is probably going to get their knickers into twist because they signed off on SVB and signature, I think. Yeah. You know, as audits, shortly before, I think within a couple of weeks of everything heading south. So, you know, that's, that's a major well-regarded operation, signing an audit, you know, off and then you've got this problem. So clearly, people weren't asking the right questions and, you know, taking the time to actually conduct the proper level of due diligence. So we're big fans with my company of due diligence. Again, not exciting, not sexy, it's not a big investigation that you can, you know, look at that. But you've got a beginning, a middle and an end, and it, you know, it saves you most often, the big heavy costs of an investigation when everything, you know, heads south. Yeah. So, you know, and just to wrap up this sort of the security and best practices discussion, what do you, what do you recommend for companies to sort of stay ahead of the curve? Looking forward, what are they, what are they looking at? What are they researching? What are they paying attention to that you've seen have a major impact that they really have to, you know, focus on? Yeah. Again, depending on their, you know, their, their areas of operation, what jurisdictions they're working in, the size of the company, I mean, that can, that can change. But it is, it's a great question because it kind of points back to sort of that idea of no-your-operating environment, right? So you have to understand, and this takes, this takes a while, right? And whether you use internal resources or you have to go outside to get it done, you know, you have to understand where you're operating, what those jurisdictions are doing, what their regulations look like, what the governments in those areas, if you're working overseas, what they're doing, what their stability looks like, what, you know, what's going to happen? I got great relations with a company, or with a country now, but, you know, elections are coming up, who should I know in two or three years? I got to build a network there. So there's a lot of little things, knowing what your competition is engaged in, particularly, again, if you're operating overseas because, you know, typically it's not a level playing field out there. And, and then you need to, you know, understand, even small businesses, you know, need to, need to pay attention to the bigger issues, right? Like the banking industry, right? You got, you got to focus, right? This is not just about SVB and signature going down. This is, this is a bigger issue, right? So you have to start being proactive about gathering information and, and understanding it and then using that information to make smarter decisions going forward two or three or four years down the road. Like you said, you have to look forward. You can't just sit and stare at what you're doing currently. What is, now let's bring it back just to close out with your experience building a business. What's the, the one thing that you really fucked up when you were building a business? It's, that's the lesson for entrepreneurs. Like what's that thing that I know you think of something the second I say that. So what is it? Probably many, but you know what? It's probably not having my wife run the business earlier on, right? Now I'm teamed up because we, we went and, um, we, we managed to essentially a buyout a couple of years ago from our last investors. And so I merged it with my, my wife's crisis communications and policy firm. And I've completely outpunted my coverage, right? I mean, she is first smarter than I am. So when you say, what's the one thing I should have done? I should have asked him to run the business years ago. There's a lesson there. There's definitely a lesson there. It's better than I am. Um, but other than that, you know what? Yeah, you live in my, and I, um, I don't know. I don't think there was anything else that that exists. I've been very fortunate with the people that we've hired and that I've had a chance to work with. I can't really, I can't really whine about anything. No, that's good. That's the blessing. Um, but you know what? That's the lesson in itself, like hiring, hiring the right people. It's not everyone, not everyone has a, has a wife that can take over, but you do have a CEO or something that can probably take over and do some stuff better than you too. So that's a good lesson. Um, okay. If people want to, if people want to get this book, what's, what's this book for? Who's this book for? Who's going to benefit from this? Where can they get it? Uh, and then also, uh, social for you. Where do you want people to go? Website, all that stuff. No, thank you very much for that. Uh, it's called company rules. It's on Scribd SCRIBD, which is again, the Netflix of books. So you go to the Scribd app. You can download company rules. It's an audio book. I narrate it myself. So it's almost as soothing as listening to Morgan Freeman, uh, who was busy. Uh, but I think it's for, I honestly got, when I, when I look at it, I, and during the course of writing it, the rules are great, I think, for anybody who's in business, right? It's not, and it doesn't matter whether you've got five people or you've got five thousand people, because yeah, I, what I find anyway, I'm subjective, is they seem applicable across the board. And then it's also what I've realized, a lot of these things are the same things I tell my kids, right? So it may be applicable. I may have written a parenting manual is what I'm saying. Uh, and it's not that different, by the way. Oh, it's not that different. Exactly. Anybody running a business knows it's, you know, sometimes it's not that different. But anyway, and then as far as social goes, I got the, the whole Twitter thing. It's at MB company man, at MB company man. So yeah, that's, that's, that's where we're at. Perfect. Okay, and the last question I ask everyone, uh, you sort of had, you've had two lives, you had agency life, then, then entrepreneur life, after everything, what does success mean to you? Uh, you know what? That, um, I raised healthy, productive, loyal, humor-filled, honest, hardworking kids and, um, that they are above average. I, I tell them all the time, my job and, and Emily's job, we're not here to raise average people. Um, so if we can achieve that, then everything else