The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Former Spy: If You’re Easily Offended, You’re Easily Manipulated! Psychological Trick That Makes People Respect You! This 1 Trick Catches A Lie In Seconds!
Mon, 24 Feb 2025
She was trained to read minds, spot lies, and face danger - here’s what former Secret Service Agent Evy Poumpouras learned from protecting the world’s most powerful leaders Evy Poumpouras is a former Special Agent with the U.S. Secret Service. She is the author of the bestselling book, ‘Becoming Bulletproof: Protect Yourself, Read People, Influence Situations, Live Fearlessly’ and co-host of Bravo’s TV competition series ‘Spy Games’. In this conversation, Evy and Steven discuss topics such as, the dangers of getting easily offended, why you should stop asking people’s opinions, the top body language mistake that makes you look weak, and Evy’s ‘I’m not special’ hack for success. 00:00 Intro 02:13 What Is Evy Doing for People? 03:42 What Do People Come to Evy For? 04:05 People Sabotage Themselves 05:38 Lie Detecting 07:01 How Do We Start to Become Mentally Strong? 09:31 The People You Associate With Can Impact You 12:35 Observe Your Opponent, Don't Listen to Them 16:22 How Does Steven Pick People? 22:11 Living Fearlessly 24:29 Making Decisions Will Increase Your Confidence 28:42 How to Stop Others From Controlling Your Life 34:56 Making Decisions 37:01 How to Make Progress in Your Life or Career 40:12 Reliving Your Pains Makes You Feel High 43:25 Sexism in the Secret Service 52:05 How to Make Rational Decisions 57:08 What to Do When People Are Not Treating You Well 01:02:00 Being Bullied in a Work Environment 01:08:14 What I Learned About Bullies as a Secret Agent 01:12:59 How to Stop Being Prey for a Predator 01:20:44 Can Someone's Life Be Determined by the Way They Speak? 01:22:34 Ads 01:23:33 The Importance of Gesticulating With Your Hands 01:28:08 Can You Fake Your Body Language? 01:36:28 What's Step 1 to Becoming That Person When I'm Not? 01:42:15 Do You Have to Go Through Difficult Times to Learn? 01:47:11 The Hack of Knowing You're Not Special or the Only One 02:00:59 Ads 02:03:02 People Don't Want to Be Victims Anymore 02:07:52 Should We Make People Like Us? 02:09:43 The Importance of Being Authentic 02:11:50 Why Rejection Is the Way to Resilience 02:14:19 The Four Communication Styles 02:25:31 Emotion in the Police Workforce 02:27:40 Switching Styles During Interviews Follow Evy: Instagram - https://bit.ly/4gU6Pxo Twitter - https://bit.ly/4hJDgzW Website - https://bit.ly/4hHHQia YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@evypoumpourasofficial Evy’s BBC Maestro Course - https://bit.ly/43dx1zZ You can purchase Evy’s book, ‘Becoming Bulletproof: Protect Yourself, Read People, Influence Situations, Live Fearlessly’, here: https://amzn.to/4gMEv09 Evy’s BBC Maestro Course - https://bit.ly/43dx1zZ Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACEpisodes My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACBook You can purchase the The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards: Second Edition, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb Follow me: https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Sponsors: Linkedin Jobs - https://www.linkedin.com/doac PerfectTed - https://www.perfectted.com with code DIARY40 for 40% off Vanta - https://vanta.com/steven Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: How Does Getting Easily Offended Make You Easily Manipulated?
If I'm easily offended, I'm easily manipulated. So if you are that person where you are reactive, reactive, reactive, rule number one, shut the up. Because if you're looking to be respected, you need to manage yourself. But there are times that people are going to cross you and disrespect you.
How do you deal with it?
So there was a guy post that's talked to the intelligence communities and it really, really helps when you're dealing with people. And so one of the ways you deal with that kind of behavior is... The former secret service agent turned human behavior expert. From protecting presidents to interrogating the world's most dangerous men.
She now teaches people how to develop mental strength and persuasive communication skills. How did they train you as a Secret Service agent to have that strong mental foundation that you have?
There's a lot of things. So first, one of the biggest things that holds people back is the idea that I'm special. You're not that special. For example, I was one of the first responders at 9-11. I watched thousands of people die. And one of the things that got me through it was understanding I wasn't alone in it. And when you learn that, you can get through anything.
When you tell yourself, nobody knows what I'm going through. Nobody can help you because it's just you going through it. Now, the next thing, what's most important is this tool that we don't pay attention to, our body. And there's this study where they started recording people walking. Then they laid it to convicted felons and they said to them, who would you pick as prey?
They all picked the same people. They were f***ed. So there are simple things you can do with your hands, your voice, how you sit, and I will tell you everything. But also, the other thing that's actually interesting, which you didn't ask, but I will volunteer this information, are the strategies to tell if somebody's being truthful or not. And it's, that's Lie Detection 101.
I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven't yet hit the follow button or the subscribe button, wherever you're listening to this. I would like to make a deal with you.
If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button, I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better. I can't tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button. The show gets bigger, which means we can expand the production, bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to do in this thing we love.
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Chapter 2: What Can We Learn from a Former Secret Service Agent?
you're with someone, it's like, okay, I'm with Evie, but you know, Evie is this and Evie is that. And so you start to blend my identity with my behavior. And then over the time too, you normalize the things I do if I'm a bad actor. Well, Evie didn't mean it. She's always hotheaded. You know, she's this, but she did all these nice things for me here. And then what we do is we miss stuff.
That's why it's easier for you to look at somebody else's relationship and be like, hey, problem here, problem here, problem here, because you are not tainted. By the emotional aspect of being tied to that person, you're able to look at them objectively. This is why, by and large, it's easy to give other people advice. I can see the red flags and the issues in this person.
When you're in it, you can't. It's hard. So I would also venture to say people may not like this. If you're with someone and there are people around you that you know legitimately care and love you, and they're telling you, hey, not the best thing for you, I would say please listen. Because they are seeing something that you might not be seeing.
Do you think people just tend to know? Like in their gut, they tend to know, but they justify the person's behavior and they almost kind of gaslight themselves to some degree. They say, well, maybe not, maybe that's fine. Maybe they are a friend. Maybe they're just doing that for my best interest.
Whereas really that bad actor is acting in their interests and kind of gaslighting you and then you're gaslighting yourself.
I think it's, one thing is you don't go from zero to 100 overnight. When you're in a relationship or you're with around people who are like that, in the beginning, you don't see it, right? Everyone's got their best behavior. But over time, you'll start to see little changes. like sneak peeks, little previews. And it's those previews you want to pay attention to.
We like to give people the benefit of the doubt. We listen to the excuses that they give us. And you know, there's this ancient Greek saying that says, don't listen to your opponent. Look at them. It will tell you everything. And when I say look at them, look at what people do. I need you to drum out what they're telling you. I need you to drum out their I am sorries because they probably are.
They've hurt you, and they are probably genuinely sorry. That's not the point. The point is, when do you want to learn your lesson? In the beginning or at the end? And at the end, sometimes it's very, very, very hard. You know, I have a community, and I started after I did the book, and when people started writing in, I said, you know what, let me do this community.
I'll call it Beyond Be Bulletproof, and whoever signs up, and... You know, two years in, I have 800 members and we, a lot of people come in with different scenarios and they'll come in with, and it's almost always the scenario they come in with. If there's something like this, it's somebody that they're tied to. That's just sinking them, sinking them.
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Chapter 3: How Does Your Environment Affect Your Mental Strength?
And you don't build those things unless you deal with rejection. Unless you deal with people... pushing back. Maybe be a psychopath and embrace the things that everybody else is too terrified to embrace. Everyone's so scared of being rejected. So why don't you be the deviant? Don't be like everybody else and be like, I'm ready for it. I'm good with it.
Because the more you deal with it, the better you are at dealing with it. And you're going to get it anyway.
On that point of better understanding yourself, the other thing I found was this thing you talk about, which is the animal wheel, which is a framework that helps people understand themselves by finding out what their communication style is. I'll put this animal wheel on the screen for people that are watching on video.
But for people that can't see because they're listening on Spotify or Apple or somewhere else, can you explain to me what this animal wheel is?
So that was created by researchers, Dr. Lawrence and Emily Allison. They're actually in the UK. And they created a way to break behavior down, behavior of people. They actually watched thousands of hours of interview tapes, law enforcement, intelligence. and they were coding people's behavior. So basically they were like, what behavior is this person? So there's two important things.
One is we don't label people, we label behavior. You label behavior because people change. People are fluid. For the most part, people are fluid. So I need to look at who do I have across from me in this moment? So how they identified behavior of people, they gave them four animal archetypes. Lion, monkey, mouse, T-Rex. Lion is someone who's in charge, setting the agenda. I'm in control.
That's lion. When you have your meetings with your team and you're the one talking and your team sitting listening, you're lion in that moment. He's in charge, setting the agenda. Mouse is a person who is patient, looking to learn. They're trying to get information. They're eager. They're humble, seeking guidance.
It can be the people on your team who are sitting quietly because they're trying to learn. Probably in some sense right now, you and I switch back and forth from lion, and then our viewers, they're all mouse. They're all here, humble, seeking guidance. What can I learn? That's that, but it's fluid.
Now, a person who is monkey, monkey is an animal where you're social, you're warm, you're talking to people. Hi, how are you? Good. How are you? That's what that is, right? And then they're probably going to be that back to you, right? Bad monkey, which you probably get a lot is, hey, Steve, I got a great idea. Can I just share it with you? Hey, let me just put you something real quick.
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