This week we’re diving into the two sides of the topic of influence. 

Surprisingly, there are two very different schools of thought on the best way to influence someone. But which style is more effective? What are the pros and cons of each of them? 

In order to get to the bottom of this debate, we brought in some incredible experts to make their cases on the topic. First, we’ll dig into the light side of the force of influence. You’ll hear from Robin Dreeke. 

Robin began his career in law enforcement in 1997 after serving in the United States Marine Corp. Robin has directed the behavior analysis program of a federal law enforcement agency and has received training and operational experience in social psychology and the science of relationship management. Robin is currently an agent of the FBI and the author of “It’s Not All About “Me”, The Code of Trust and the newly released Sizing People Up. 

Then, representing the dark side of influence you'll hear from Chase Hughes, Chase Hughes is the founder of Ellipsis Behavior Laboratories and the amazon bestselling author of The Ellipsis Manual. Chase previously served in the US Navy as part of the correctional and prisoner management departments. Chase speaks on a variety of topics including brainwashing and attraction and frequently develops new programs for the US Government and members of anti-human-trafficking teams around the world. 

Both of these experts have INCREDIBLE backgrounds and some amazing stories as well. In the end, how you use these incredible powers is up to you. 

Which side are you on?

Thank you so much for listening!

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[00:00:11] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet with more than 5 million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries.

Have you seen Star Wars? Are you drawn to the light side of the force or do you gravitate to the power of the dark side? In this week’s episode, we’re diving into the two sides of influence. Surprisingly, there are two very different schools of thought of the best ways to influence someone. But which style is more effective and what the pros and cons of each of them?

In order to get to the bottom of this debate, we brought in some incredible experts to make their case on each of these topics. First, we’ll dig into the light side of influence. You’ll hear from Robin Dreeke. Robin began his career in law enforcement in 1997 after serving in the United States Marine Corps. Robin has directed the behavior analysis program of a federal law enforcement agency and has received training and operational experience in social psychology and the science of relationship management. He’s currently an agent of the FBI and the author of It’s Not All About Me, The Code of Trust, and the newly released Sizing People Up. 

Then representing the dark side of influence, we’ll hear from Chase Hughes. Chase Hughes is the founder of Ellipsis Behavior Laboratories and the Amazon bestselling author of the Ellipsis Manual. Chase previously served in the US Navy as part of the correctional and prisoner management departments. Chase speaks on a variety of topics including brainwashing, attraction and frequently develops new programs for the US government and members of antihuman trafficking teams around the world. 

Both of these experts have incredible backgrounds and some amazing stories. In the end, how you use these incredible powers is up to you. Which side are you going to be one? Sign up for our email list and let me know. I’ll even tell you my own personal affiliation. Jedi or Sith?

As always, thanks for listening to this show. First up, let’s hear from Robin Dreeke. 

[00:02:25] MB: You have an incredible background and story and some of the work you’ve done with the FBI is fascinating. Would you share kind of your journey with the listeners? 

[00:02:34] RD: Yeah, sure Matt. It’s actually pretty funny and remarkable not in the things I’ve achieved, but because in what I’ve done with my life and career completely opposite of what my biological genetic coding is for. What I mean is this – And you read part of it, my bio and background. Yes, I’m a Naval Academy graduate, Marine Corps officer. I came in to law enforcement and the FBI in 1997.I served in New York City, Norfolk, FBI Headquarters, Quantico. I ran our behavioral team. All those things. They sound pretty neat on paper and they kind of scream at you hard charging type A, but in reality – Which I am. There’s no doubt. But in reality, when you work in the world of counterintelligence like I do, it’s completely backwards from the behavior you really need for success. 

What I mean by that and what I learned when I first got assigned to New York City working counterintelligence, I was very fortunate that I got on a squad of individuals that had probably 20, 25 years in the FBI all doing that job and working in counterintelligence is different than anything else in the FBI or really in the world. It is related mostly anywhere else to sales. I basically sell a concept that protecting America is a great idea and the way I’m going to compensate you for that is through a great relationship with me, mostly, not much else. Government funded me. What it is, it really comes down to this feeling of patriotism and having a great relationship that’s going to be the inspiration behind why people are going to want to cooperate with you. 

Also working in counterintelligence, it’s all leadership, because the people that I interact with day-in and day-out, they don’t commit crimes. I mean, it’s very rare that my main job in New York was to recruit spies. 99.99% of the time, they’re just getting regular information, open source information and sourcing it to an individual. So it has value. Mostly information, like I said, it’s open source. Who it comes from makes it valuable. The people I interact with are great Americans or citizens as well. 

The challenge is, “All right. If you’re a hard charging type A that’s used to trying to convince and coerce and manipulate people into giving you things, it doesn’t work. It just does not work,” because as soon as someone walks away from any engagement with you, think to themselves, “Wow! I really wonder what he really wanted.” You’ve totally failed, because there’s doubt. There’s subterfuge and people are very, very keen to pick up on these things, because what generally happens – And we’ve all experienced it, whether it’s been a shady cars salesman or any other kind of salesman that is actually there for profit and gain and to take advantage of you. People pick up on that because there’s incongruence between people’s words and things they say which they might be saying all the slick lines, everything really great, but their body language becomes very incongruent with what they’re saying and our ancient [inaudible 00:05:24] brain really picks up on these things and it gives us that creep feeling. 

Well, when you’re actually genuinely making about everyone else, and that’s what the code of trust is about, how to make it about everyone else but yourself, but you have a lot of clarity, the destination that you hope to move to, but you realize that you can only do that through being an available resource for the prosperity of others. That’s what the whole thing is about. 

I did this for years on the street on our behavioral team. Again, I’m not naturally born leaders. Not naturally born doing this, but I was surrounded by greats that were showing me and modeling the way. So you learn these things on the job training, osmosis, and observation. But what really started happening was I started writing because I was asked to write about it. When I got down to Quantico, when they started asking me to teach about it, you start making this art form as it is in a personal art form, a paint by number. 

You start giving labels and meanings to things so people can start recognizing the behaviors they’ve already been doing. I call the new car effect and I always get a puzzled look when I say that. But really what it comes down to, the days you buy your new car or any car, all of a sudden you start seeing that vehicle everywhere. I mean, I own a Tundra. The day I bought my Tundra, I swear, I think 300 people in my town bought the same darn truck because it has that label and meaning. That’s all I do, is I give labels and meanings to all the behaviors that we do when we’re having a great relationship. So you can repeat that behavior and understand also the ones that you might have failed at or more challenged at to understand exactly what you were and weren’t during those situations so you can stop doing those behaviors. 

That’s been the journey. Probably, the code of trust came about around 2013. I was running our behavioral team and someone asked me to do an article again on counterintelligence and I said, “Well, we can’t really talk about hooky-spooky spy stuff.” I said, “Who? Let me talk about what my team does,” and I had never really sat down and contemplated. 

When I sit down and strategize any kind of operation I’m doing, what am I actually doing? Then I reflected on every instance of my entire life, my career, in the Marine Corps, in the Naval Academy and with my friends, family, kids, I started realizing that, “Well, in every encounter, all I’m ever doing is strategizing trust,” and I came out with the five steps of trust and all of a sudden when I gave myself that green Tundra effect as I call it, or the new car effect, I started seeing the code of trust everywhere and it’s become my guiding light in my life. I live it every day and it creates amazing prosperity as a byproduct, but if you – The core thing of the code of trust is if you focus on yourself, it undermines the entire process. It really comes down to first and foremost good healthy relationships, open ask communication and being an available resource for the prosperity of others. When [inaudible 00:08:10] those things first, everything else falls into place. That’s kind of a brief overview of almost 49 years of my life. 

[00:08:19] MB: The funny thing about – And there’s so much to unpack there. There’re a number of things I want to ask you about. One of the most fascinating things to me about fields like counterintelligence is that there’s no room for error. Did these tactics have to work, in many cases, literally, life and death situations? I think it’s such a beautiful format for really – It’s almost a crucible for cultivating the absolute, most effective strategies for doing something. 

Then you talked about how your old sort of perception of what leadership meant isn’t necessarily what actually works and actually changes behavior. Can you tell me about how that transformation took place and how the old conception of kind of the hard charging, manipulating, pressuring, bullying framework of leadership doesn’t really work?

[00:09:04] RD: Yeah, absolutely. My form is leadership is what I witnessed. The things we witness between the ages of 9 and 19 really form our generational outlook on the world because our prefrontal lobe is not fully developed yet. The emotional impresses we have really form how we see the world. During those years, I wanted to go to the Naval Academy. I want to be a Navy pilot, aerospace engineer, an astronaut. My form of leadership is what I watched in the movies and TV. The first movie I saw in leadership that I thought was strong leadership was Patton, screaming at people, yelling, kicking them in the butt, poking them in the eye. I figured leadership was getting people to do what you want. 

That’s the behavior I was modeling. At a young age, many people get rewarded for that kind of behavior, because just think sports of teams you’ve been on or clubs or any other kind of position where an adult or a superior ask you to accomplish something with a group of people and you ask politely all the group of people to do what was asked and no one goes along with what it is you want them to do. So you now get chastised for being a weak leader. Now next thing you do is you yell and scream and these people do what you want them to do and now you’re reward for being a good leader. 

The negative behavior on convincing and cajoling gets rewarded. So you start at a young age thinking that’s the way in order to get things done. In reality, what you just did is you manipulated people through fear and reprisal to take action. The action they’re giving you is probably about 5%, maybe 5% to 10% effort just to get you to shut up and go away. That can work fine in situations where there is a position of reprisal that people can take again you. Again, you're not going to get the best out of anyone because loathing start seeping in against you and people are just going to stop performing. That makes the now leader look extremely bad and can’t be productive and that leader now things, “Well, what's happened? Why am I not been productive? Why am I no longer getting promoted?” They now think they've gotten soft. So the way to undo getting soft, they think they have to get harder. This is where the bullying in the workplace starts in that kind of leadership. 

In reality, what I found both in the Marine Corps and coming in the FBI, especially working, like I said, counterintelligence, where I get up every day hoping I don't make a mistake and then it caused myself a humbling moment because every relationship is potentially helping our national security. Protect our country. Protect my community. I don't have the luxury of making mistakes. I mean, I am extremely hypercritical of myself and all my conversations and dialogues. I care passionately about not making a mistake. 

What I found is especially when you work in the world as I described to you, there are no criminals. Very, very few were criminals and even if someone is manipulated good-naturedly by accident by someone trying to take advantage of them, they're very unwitting that they've even done anything wrong. In my entire life in career the last 20 years, I've never made an arrest in the area I’ve done. I've only done things that hopefully build relationship strong enough so we can garner the information we need to protect our country. 

When people don't have to talk to you and you can't rely on your title and position, you better know what to do. The other thing I really found out too is that people do not care about your title and position and whatsoever. I mean, being an FBI in New York City knock on a front door and see what people think about you if you start showing a badge and everything. Really comes down to not your title and position, but how you treat them. If you treat them and talk in terms of their priorities, you validate them, you validate their context, you don't argue their point of view on things and you genuinely – This is the real key, is you got to be genuine and sincere about your desire to understand them as a human being and their motivations and priorities in life.

[00:12:57] MB: Before we get too deep into that, because I really want to go deep down that track, tell me about – You mentioned the importance of kind of really honest self-awareness and self-assessment.

[00:13:10] RD: Yeah. As a Marine Corps, there was the 14 leadership principle I learned was know yourself and seek self-improvement. One of my more humbling aha moments in life was I remember I was stationed at Cherry Point. I was in the air wing but on the ground side, and so we’re really bottom heavy. We had a lot of junior officers, and I think we had about 14 or 15 of my rank as second lieutenant. I remember my first assessment, I was ranked last out of them all. I remember walking up to my major that rated me and said, “All right. I get it. I'm doing something wrong. What am I doing?” All he could say was, “You just need to be a better leader.” 

It was very subjective, and so I didn't understand what that meant, but it bothered me. I was like, “All right. I’m doing something wrong.” What I started discovering was – And everyone has this, that what I thought I was projecting to the world was not what the rest of the world is seeing. So taking an honest self-assessment is actually hearing the word people say about you and to you but really ideally about you where you can be a fly on the wall and hear people's honest impression of you. This is not a self-loathing or always me if you hear something you don't like. It's an assessment of what people see when they see you. 

It's funny, I often – Any time I bump in to someone I knew 25 years ago, I usually give them a big hug and thanked them for tolerating me 25 years ago in their lives. The one thing that I've heard when I apologize for being a self-centered jerk years ago, they said, “No. No. Robin. You're just intense.” When I hear something twice, I do assessment of it. I analyze what intense looked like to other people. Intense looked like just me being a good guy to me, because very rarely do people get up in the morning and say, “All right. Today I’m going to treat people really horribly and be a jerk,” but ultimately that happens sometimes not because we want to, but because there is this incongruence again between what we feel and what's get hijacked that comes out of our mouth because of our ego, vanity and insecurities. 

So I define that, I looked at intensity and actually saw what that meant, and it’s a typical type A response. It’s you have something you’re trying to achieve, a goal of some sort. A very tangible means goal, I call them, instead of ends goals. Ends goals are states of mind, and I’ll tell you more about that later maybe. But a means goal is I want a promotion. I'm trying to do well on this project. I want a better salary. I want to move. All those things are very, very specific and we become so focused on them that we totally disregarded not by intent, but by our genetic design that anyone else around is doing anything and we kind of wholly focused on what we’re trying to do. Again, we’re not regarding really people around us that are actually might be working on other things that you're not making yourself available to or pretty much ignoring and you combine that with a tempo that is out of sync with the others around you because, again, you have that higher tempo of activity. It really becomes off-putting to other people and it looks like a narcissistic megalomaniac jerk. Was that in the heart and soul of the individual to type A? No. They are totally clueless about this until you actually have those aha moments and listen to the people around you, take feedback and ask yourself, “Is that the behavior I want to be exhibiting or not?” If it's not, what can I add to myself to have that behavior stop being that way?

Again, especially when you're working in areas and fields weather you’re in sales and doing cold calls and people are already dealing with individuals and companies that give them products and services. So why should they want to go with you? Why should they even listen to you? If you come across that kind of intensity, people are just going to shut down, because you're not really regarding them. You're more focused on what you're trying to do rather than being a resource for other’s prosperity. That’s probably the first time where I had – I've had multiple, I think everyone does, multiple moments in your life where you create yourself a humbling moment. Every day I wake up and I hope I don't cause another one that day. I haven't had one in a while, and it's important to keep that ego and vanity in check, because when you don't, the mouth will run of the way and you’ll become self-centered and focused and there is no reason why anyone, any individual should want to listen to you if you're not talking in terms of what's important to them.

[00:17:15] MB: I think that segues into one of the other really, really important things that you mentioned and you write and talk a lot about, which is all of these strategies and influence that – Sorry, not influence, because we talked about this before the show, but all of these strategies have a root in not focusing on yourself and focusing really deeply on the other person. Can you tell me about the importance of that? 

[00:17:38] RD: It’s all right. The influence – Influence is important to understand how to influence and what influence is. But what I found is, and this is part of where all these things came from, folks and others. Influence still has a connotation in my mind when I use the word. Again, this is purely me. There is no right or wrong, just as meanings and definitions. It still has a connotation of influencing another individual to do something that's in my mind. 

When you understand how that works and what's going on there and you want to be more effective at influence, what happens is you start realizing that, “Well, I just need to move beyond influence, because I need to focus on other people in what their priorities are and be a resource for them,” because then what you do is you start moving into the realm of inspiration. When you’re in the realm of inspiration, it’s completely about the other person. 

Here's how this process works and why it's important. Individuals, you go back to ancient tribal men, where tribes are 30, 40 or 50. It was the first form of social welfare, healthcare and survival. If you are not part of the tribe, the likelihood of your genetic coding being passed on was extremely low. Our brain rewards us for being valued and part of a collective in a group and a tribe. If we use language that demonstrates value and demonstrates that we are vested in you and your prosperity, however that individual defines prosperity, they are naturally going to keep listening to you and keep regarding you and want to collaborate, because it's in their best nature, because it's in their best interest to do so. 

So anytime I have a project or something, again, this isn't – You can make it all about someone else and many people in life do, but they then get accused of being a carpet and being walked over. That's where the code of trust comes in and make sure that doesn't happen in the sense that the first step in the code of trust is understanding what your goals and priorities are. What it is you're trying to accomplish? The second part of that first question of what your goal is reversing it now and think in terms of, “So why should someone want to?” Here's the difference between that influencing and manipulating or anything like that. People then started thinking, “How can I make them want to do that or how can I influence them do that? 

What the code of trust is and what I'm talking about in order to make it about the other person is I don't think about that at all. I start reversing. I think in terms of how can I inspire them to want to? That’s the key, because if I'm thinking in terms of inspiring someone to take action, because I know what my goals. I give myself my own new car effect by naming and stating the things I'm hoping to achieve and now I completely let go of those, because I reverse it, just like you don't have to try to see the car once you bought it. You just see it. That's why you’ve given labels and meanings to things that are important to you. That's all you have to do. You don’t have to try to make an effort, because if you make an effort on your own behalf, you're now manipulating or influencing or anything else, because it's all about you and you’re only slightly regarding the other person. I let go of it. It’s got label and meaning. Now I reverse it. I think in terms of how can I inspire someone to maybe align with me. In order to inspire someone, I have to know what their priorities are, long-term, short-term, personal, professional. I have to talk in terms of those priorities. I have to demonstrate their value, and I demonstrate value by four really simple statements. I always include in conversations, emails. I'm going to seek thoughts and opinions, because when I demonstrate that I'm seeking your thoughts and opinions, I'm demonstrating value. Human beings do not ask other human beings what they think unless they have value. 

When you do that, people's brains are rewarded with dopamine, because you’re demonstrating their affiliation. When they're affiliated, that means it's good for their survival. Dopamine is released in the brain, oxytocin, serotonin, all the pleasure centers are firing because you're demonstrating value and demonstrating affiliation. 

Next I’m also going to talk in terms of their priorities. If I don't know what their priorities are, I’m going to ask them what are their priorities. Next, I’m going to validate them, and validation, it's a beautiful, very, very broad term that demonstrates that you're trying to understand without judgment the human being you’re engaging with. It doesn't mean you necessarily agree, because this isn’t about agreeing within just plain cadence. It’s about validation. It means understanding. Finally, I empower you with choice. Again, we do not give people choice unless we value them and there's affiliation.

Here's the fun part. If I know what your priorities are and I’m making myself available resource to your priorities and your prosperity, and I already know mine are because I've already labeled them before I’ve engaged. When I empower someone with choice, I'm empowering them with choice with naturally overlapping priorities, mine and there's, and then it's up to them whether they accept it or not. If they don't, that's fine too, because it's all about them, their timing, their perspective. 

Here's what I can guarantee, I can absolutely guarantee you if I know exactly what your priorities are. As again as I said again, long-term, short-term, personal, professional, and I'm making resources available for your success and prosperity in those areas. I guarantee you’re going to take that action. There hasn't been a time yet when it hasn't. Now what happens is, is most time triggers is that there’s a need to reciprocate by other individuals that you're a resource of their prosperity. You can’t keep a scorecard. 

One of the things I love to say is leaders don't keep score cards, because then there's an expectation or reciprocity and then you really did it for you and not them. I don't keep a scorecard. I give. I let go and I just wait. I just wait. It's really been pretty ridiculous when you honor on the core of the code, which is that healthy professional or happy relationship and you're an open honest communications, everything falls into place. It flows very, very easily. The more you create these healthy relationships with more and more people, they actually have – It's also a very calming effect on your own mind, because you can’t really engage people successfully if you're emotionally hijacked all the time, stress, anger, discontentment, resentment, frustration, all those things cloud our judgment. The code of trust clears the cloud and you can actually objectively see exactly path to where you're trying to go. More importantly, where others are trying to go.

[00:23:22] MB: One of the things you touched, and again, there are so many things I want to dig into from that, but one of the things you’ve touched on was this idea that in the counterintelligence world, in many cases, people either don't want to reach out to you or explicitly or trying to avoid contacting you and you have to almost reverse engineer them wanting to reach out to you. Can you talk about that strategy? More broadly about the strategy of getting someone's brain to reward them for engaging with you.

[00:23:52] RD: I'll start with your last question first, because it will be easier to answer the first. If I lose track of it, because as you can tell, I can talk forever about this and I get sidetracked in my own brain on it. So I apologize if I do. 

The goal for me at every engagement with everyone is to get their brain to reward them chemically for engaging with you. We've already covered how that works. If you demonstrate value and you demonstrate affiliation and you understand someone's priorities and you talk in terms of their priorities, and even more importantly, if you have resources for them to move forward on those priorities and their own prosperities, they define it, their brain is going reward them guaranteed. I guarantee you, shields will be down. There will be no resistance and they’ll be a great dialogue and conversation. Where it goes from there is really up to them and their tempo. 

It's a very simple concept that I just keep my mind is that what does every human being I'm engaging with, what do they need, want and dream of, and just make sure that I'm talking in terms of saying. Honesty is really the key of this too, because if you're making stuff up, do people pick up on that? Absolutely, and that's where you get that incongruence of the mind and the heart and the mouth of what's going on. 

When I do validations, I’ll only start our conversations specially if they’re going to be a little more challenging than others or if it’s a brand-new person I’m meeting. I always start out with a specific nonjudgmental validation of a strength attribute or action that I have witnessed in their life or in immediate time or anything. If I have nothing to validate in that opening statement, the biggest thing I’m going to do is I’m going to validate their time, because people's time is very valuable, and to have them share with me, I am beyond grateful for it. If I have nothing that I can validate at the start, I’m going to validate the time, because, again, I'm just very grateful for it. 

Now, translating that into working in counterintelligence, to me it’s really working anywhere that sometimes you can do with people that might not want to have a relationship with you. That’s completely okay. Matter of fact, one of the most challenging – Every now and then, you hit these situations where you got a cold call to try to get a piece of information or just a question answered on something and people do not want to engage with you. 

The first thing I do in those situations is I validate that, “Yeah, honestly, I understand how you don't want to deal with someone like me from the United States government. I completely understand. If you want me to leave you alone, if you just respond to this and tell me to leave you alone, I'll do it. But if not, if you can provide this and here's the reason why I'd like that, it might be of help to others. If that’s something that interests you, let me know. Again, just respond to me. If you don't want me to engage you, then I'll leave you alone. That way, at least get a response. What did I just do? I talked in terms of them, their priorities, because what’s their priority? Leave me alone. 

Again, I don't judge – I can’t judge whether that priority is aligned with yours or not. Who cares? It's all about them? Those are the ones that are resistant. But in all honesty, the times that happens are exceptionally rare, exceptionally rare. Again, if you're talking in terms and figuring out what someone's needs, wants, dreams and aspirations are, personal and professional, and you're talking in terms of those, you’re seeking to understand those, you're validating those and you bring to bear resources to further those for them, why wouldn't they talk to you? The only reason they wouldn't is either they lied about their priorities, their subterfuge or some other thing that they didn’t make you aware of. Again, it's not what you did or didn't do. It's all on them and it's not going to be a very good relationship anyway, because they don't want one. Why force it? You can save a lot of time and just break contact. 

Then even in those instances, you got to leave them feeling better for having met you and having to engage with you, those brain rewards. Why? Branding. Branding is everything. I have no problem if someone tells me they don't want to talk or don't want to share or don't want to cooperate, because it's not you. It’ll be someone else no. I will never get another one else if you break contact with me and I ruined your day. I mean, just think about this. Say you met me and we had a conversation 9, 10 o'clock in the morning and it went horrible. I tried to convince you of things. I could try to cajole you, try to manipulate you and you just walk away feeling horrendous. 

Whether you even talked about me or not for the rest day, it put you in a bad mood. Now everyone you touch in your entire sphere of influence that entire day or even a couple of days, maybe a week, maybe a month, who knows? They’re touching you and seeing stress, anxiety, all the negative emotions you cause and it leaks out where it came from. It came from the engagement with this Robin guy. Now, in contrary to that, if I leave you feeling better for having met me and I made you feel great for the conversation, your brain is rewarding you, I demonstrated your value, I’m talking in terms of your priorities. Even if you say no, you don't want to cooperate or have a relationship or if you're in sales, buy what you’re selling, and if you’re completely find with that and you let it go. Now, for the rest of the day, weeks, month, again, someone's leaving the engage in with you with very positive emotions in a great state of mind and people like to feel that way. They're going to start seeing that. In other words, you caused a calming effect here. It's going to cause a calming effect in their entire sphere of influence. Again, that goes to branding. 

I never think ever about just the one person I'm engaging with. I think about their entire sphere of influence from that point on. I always want good branding. Again, if someone doesn't want to engage, that's fine. It’s funny, because when you empower people choice, people walking away and not dealing with you. How many times I've actually had someone walk away and not want to deal with me. Zero so far since the code of trust. Why? Because I keep talking in terms of them. 

Think about this. On average, think to yourself, how many times a day do you hear words in every single statement that someone says they're completely you? Meaning, is someone asking your thoughts and opinions? Is someone talking in terms your priorities? Is someone empowering you with choice? Is someone validating your thoughts, ideas and context of how you see the world in every single statement you say? No. I mean, on average, even our closest friends and family may be do it 2% to 5% a day. 

When you actually do that 100% of the time when you’re engaging with someone, and so every statement come out of your mouth, their brain is rewarding them for you for being around you. Why wouldn't they want to be around you? 

[00:30:02] MB: One of the core principles of inspiring people is the idea you’ve just talked about, which is essentially this notion that if you focus really deeply on other people, making your statements about them, speaking in terms of their priorities, seeking out their thoughts and opinions in a very biological sense, their brain is releasing hormones and chemicals that are making them like you, want to engage with you and want to be part of what you're doing.

[00:30:27] RD: 100%. Again, it goes evolutionary psychology. The ancient tribal brain gets rooted. The best analogy I can give without going into – I think it was April, around 2012 that Harvard did this study where they actually wired up people's brains and saw that when people were talking about themselves and their priorities, dopamine was released. But the easiest demonstration you can do with this is – I always ask this question when I'm dealing with a crowd that I'm engaging with and training. I always ask, “How many of you have actually traveled overseas for pleasure?” A lot of hands go up. I said, “Great. What happens when you bump into another American?” Without fail, everyone starts smiling or laughing. Yeah, because what you initially do is you ask, “Well, where you’re from?” If they’re from anywhere even near your state, you start collaborating and thinking about things that you’ve been doing in the same areas. You start thinking about places you might've traveled in the same timeframe. Then you actually start talking about so and so. You keep trying to build linkages because your brain is saying, “Ah! Someone from my tribe,” and it brings comfort. So we keep trying to build that comfort. 

That’s why when you go to anyplace and you’re taking training or you're given a conference or even in a crowd, we generally coalesce into our mini-tribes. When I give training to law enforcement or something, all the different departments, they sit together. You don't have to tell people where to sit. People clump together according to their comfort and their tribe. It's a natural human reaction. So knowing that, you can actually use your language to demonstrate that affiliation. I mean, that’s what people do all time. I mean, everyone someone shares a story or an anecdote, which is most of life when engaging, all you’re doing is demonstrating value and demonstrating affiliation and people just are so anxious to tell their side of the story to tell the thing that they did on the weekend because they’re seeking that validation and acceptance as well. They’re not even listening to anyone else. They’re just waiting for people to shut up so they can tell their story. Again, because the brain is saying, “Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go.” 

[00:32:21] MB: Fascinating insights from Robin. Now that we've heard about the powers of the light side, let's dig into the dark side in our conversation with Chase Hughes. 

[00:32:34] MB: We’re really excited to have you on here today. For listeners who might not be familiar with you and your story, tells us a little bit about your background and the world that you come from. 

[00:32:44] CH: I’m in the military and grew up in the military pretty much. I went to military school when I was a kid, and around the age of 19, I had this kind of epiphany experience to where I finally got the realization that I didn't really get human behavior, and it was at a bar. I went home that night and I remember spending hours on Google just printing out every document I could find. It just went on there, I typed in how to tell when girls like you, and that was the catalyst that served for me learning all of these and just kind of getting so deep into this. 

[00:33:25] MB: You've obviously gone very, very deep in this. Tell me about – You named your book The Ellipses Manual. Why ellipses and what does that mean?

[00:33:34] CH: We chose to name the company Ellipses because I think it's a grammatical or punctuation symbol where you have the three dots, and the meaning of that is just removed or omitted language or language that isn't there. I also just thought it sounded cool. We use that as a company name just because it kind of has a little cool back story to it.

[00:33:58] MB: You mentioned that you kind of started going down this rabbit hole by Googling how to tell if women were interested in you. I find that really fascinating. Pick up and that kind of associated world is something that I've done a little bit of research and digging on and it's amazing all of the different kind of behavior patterns and things that you can really pick up on. Tell me a little bit about how that informs your journey into understanding a lot of the nonverbal elements of human behavior and how to kind of design and engineer human behavior.

[00:34:30] CH: Well, when I first got started doing body language reading, it was very revealing because I spent a lot of time on it and it got to a point where at first it's depressing almost at the beginning, because you just see that every human being is suffering in one way or another. I think that we’re all suffering so much that seeing the way that someone hides their suffering is usually the most powerful and revealing piece of information you can get. After that period, it kind of just humanizes everybody to the point where you can see those weaknesses or those fears or insecurities and it's not a point of looking down on someone because you can see all that. It's a point of just that guy is just like me. That guy who used to be threatening is just as scared as I am in this situation or just as flawed as I am. 

Seeing that was just a huge eye-opener for me that changed the way I see people forever. I wanted more of that and it's very addicting especially when you really dig into it and spend some time learning behavior. 

It got to the point where I started doing social profiling and behavior profiling, and then I got into conversations in how to analyze what people are saying, and then it got into like the hypnosis aspect of it, and then it got into behavior engineering, and then interrogation started coming into it that kind of intertwined with some stuff I was doing. It was just kind of a long snowball effect of information that all kind of revolved around the main theme of trying to discover how vulnerable all of us are. In the end, it's kind of scary to see we all walk around thinking that we've got some kind of firewall mechanism or some kind of antivirus system to where we know BS when we see it, but we don't. Just seeing through the development phase, like just seeing how weak we all are or how vulnerable we all are is a truly shocking revelation. 

[00:36:54] MB: Tell me a little bit more about that. When you say seeing how weak and vulnerable everyone is, what does that mean and how did you come to that conclusion? 

[00:37:03] CH: I wanted to see with persuasion. I wanted to see how far we could go. I thought like the end, like the greatest thing — This was maybe 10 years ago. I thought the greatest thing that we might be able to do this by creating a Manchurian candidate in real life. It turns out it's been done before in a much different way where they used drugs and all kinds of dangerous stuff, but I thought maybe that there is some therapeutic applications of that. Maybe we could work on depression or even schizophrenia with that kind of stuff. Going through that with the vulnerability aspect that you just asked about, I specifically mean how we can be talked into doing things that are not in our best interest very easily. 

[00:37:52] MB: Give me an example. How can somebody be either sort of manipulated or hacked into doing something that's not necessarily in their best interest? 

[00:38:02] CH: A good example would be if you look up people that are hypnotist bank robbers that go up to the bank and use some really just preschool level skills. Of course, the guy might be really suggestible behind the counter, but I think an example of that would be you talking someone into doing something against their will, like buying something or going home with someone or using the skills for a business negotiation or at a job interview. 

[00:38:35] MB: I want to dig in to specifically some of the tools and strategies around how to engineer that type of behavior. What are some of the tactics that you’ve seen from your research, from your work in the military engineering human behavior that can help people either recognize when someone is trying to do that to them or use some of these strategies to influence others? 

[00:39:01] CH: Sure. I can give you guys some basic ones. I want to touch on this real quick if you don't mind me going off a little bit here, Matt. When we see like one of those articles online about learn body language quickly, or like quick tips to do X, Y, and Z, I think a lot of us grossly underestimate how much work is usually involved in mastering something or being really good at something. 

If you take a piano for example, there're plenty of videos on YouTube where you can just walk through a song. You know what I’m saying? 

[00:39:37] MB: Yeah. 

[00:39:37] CH: To where you could just walk through a song and you might be able to maybe impress a few people for 30 seconds at a party, but to get really good at this you'll need an investment and time. One of the things that I always kind of compare this to is like the first level would be like the paramedic. He knows some basic skills just enough to kind of be dangerous, and then you have a nurse who studied for several years, then you have a doctor who studied this in depth. Way down at the bottom, underneath the paramedic, you have the guy who watches like Gray’s Anatomy and thinks he's a doctor.

I think that just estimating how much time it will take is usually if you think it’s less than a year to get really good at this stuff. I would say more power to you, but this stuff is incredibly complex and it’s far more complex than a piano. In fact, if you can imagine mastering a piano and then every time you sat down at it, the keys were in different places. That’s kind of where we’re at with just basically human behavior engineering. 

With body language and behavior profiling, that's what makes the difference between really being able to influence someone and just knowing a few tricks, because if you read any influence book nowadays they’re going to give you all these methods that are supposed to work for all people, but every single person that you talk to is different and is fundamentally different from the core of their being. If you can't see that and you can't profile that and kind of tailor what you're saying and doing to meet that person's needs or their fears or weaknesses, whatever you’re trying to do with that person, you’re going to get some really basic level of success. That's why we tried to integrate every single part of this, every aspect inside of the ellipsis manual to be able to get that engineered scenario to where you can create an outcome that you'd like. 

For your listeners specifically, I would say one of the main things you need to start doing every single day is disengage people's autopilot response, and the autopilot response is basically the roles that we play or the hats that we put on. If you’re at work, you have a workout on and you talk to people as if you’re at work. It’s going to be completely different than the way you talk to your wife. It's going to be completely different than how you talk to your kids. 

We change roles throughout the day, and once we get into a roll, our neurons that have kind of connected for that role start to fire in sequence there just to where everything is kind of automated and we’re not really paying much attention to what's going on. When someone is in autopilot, it’s usually a role. So like an employee and a customer, that's one that you’re probably going to encounter every single day. 

I would say breaking someone's autopilot is the most fantastic way to start capturing that focus and the attention that you’re going to need, and breaking autopilot can be done with anything that breaks them out of their mental state. If you're getting a coffee at Starbucks and you ask really quickly which direction Northeast is, just to make them start — They've never been asked that question before. They start going internal to their head and they kind of break out of that employee mode for just a few seconds, and then you start doing what we call FIC, which stands for focus, interest and curiosity, which you want to develop in sequence. A really good technique for developing focus is just talking about focus. 

Does that make sense? 

[00:43:28] MB: Tell me more about that. 

[00:43:30] CH: Okay. I didn’t know how far you wanted to go in here. 

[00:43:32] MB: Yeah. No, I want to dig in. I want to learn a lot. Tell me about FIC and tell me specifically about how we can kind of cultivate each of those pieces. Then I still want to drill down a little bit more as well and kind of how we can break someone out of a pattern. 

[00:43:46] CH: Okay. FIC is focus, interest and curiosity. The first part of that is focus, and the easiest way to establish or get someone to start focusing on you is to have authority. I know you wanted to talk about that, and this would be a great segue to that. 

[00:44:03] MB: Perfect. Let’s dig in to authority and then we’ll come back to FIC. 

[00:44:08] CH: Great. Let's talk about focus. The main way, the number one way that human beings start to focus on something or view it as important is when someone has authority. Authority is probably the most important thing that you can possibly master. There's a thing in our brains called a reticular activation system or the RAS, which is kind of like a precursor to the fight or flight response. This RAS is consistently looking for threats, things that are threatening to you or things that are socially valuable. If you're in a doctor’s office, all of your attention is going to go to the doctor. If you get pulled over by police, all of your attention is going to go to that person. If you're sitting in a restaurant and George Clooney walks in and starts talking to you, all of your attention, no matter what you were doing is going to go to George Clooney. That has to do with social authority or perceived authority.

My goal is to try to convince your listeners that authority is more important and more effective than influence. The main reason being that — Are you familiar with the Milgram Study? 

[00:45:24] MB: Oh, yeah. Definitely. 

[00:45:26] CH: Okay. Just for your listeners who haven't heard of this, this was done at Yale University. It was by a man named Dr. Stanley Milgram whose parents were refugees from the Nazis. He came to America and he did this study where a guy walks into a room and they say, “This is a learning experiment. There's a guy with a lab coat on and they're taking down notes on clipboard,” and he says, “You’re going to shock this guy in the other room,” and every time he gets this set of words wrong so to speak. 

The guy goes in the other room, gets hooked up to a shocking machine and this other guy who’s being experimented on is sitting there, he’s supposed to shock this guy on the side of this wall every time the guy gets words wrong. Td the guy just keeps repeatedly doing it and the guy continues to ramp up the voltage in accordance with the instructions of the guy wearing the lab coat. It turned out that almost 80% of the people who did this experiment shock the person on the other side of the wall to the point of death. To death. Social psychologist, before the experiment was conducted, estimated that .011% of people would shock someone to death, and it was almost 80%. 

A lot of people got some stuff out of that and they got a lot of scientific research out of that, but I took away something completely different. Of course, they got away like people who say, “I was just following orders,” like a lot of Nazis did after they're brought in front of a tribunal for war crimes. 

Think about the authority aspect of this. A guy just standing there in a gray lab coat tells you to shock another human being to death and you do it. Stand up and leave, you don’t protest. Of course, everyone — 100% of people would say, “No. I would never do that,” but then 80% of people do. 

A man with no medical name tag on, he has no identifying marks other than he’s just wearing a tie and a lab coat and he's uttering phrases, he’s not ordering anyone to do it. He just speak in phrases like it's important that the experiment continues or it's important that you continue. Just little phrases like that. 

Let's go back to influence and contrast these two things together. With influence, it might take you two hours to talk somebody into buying a new car per se. A guy in a lab coat in less than 45 minutes suggested that a stranger kill another person and they did it. 80% of people, which is better than most sales numbers. That's with no neurolinguistic programming. No hypnosis. No Robert Cialdini influence methods. None of that, and you just have that tiny bit of authority, just that perceived social authority. The guy was a nobody, he was just a volunteer who was an actor. Just that is enough to convince a stranger to commit murder, that tiny bit of social authority. 

[00:48:40] MB: That's fascinating. The Milgram experiment obviously is one of the kind of groundbreaking and fundamental experiments in psychology. For listeners who wanted to get it, we actually have a previous episode which I’ll link to in the show notes where we go super deep on the authority bias. I'm curious, tell me what are some — You write about and talk about the idea of hacking this sort of authority and how we can create it. What are some of the factors that we can use in order to hack authority? 

[00:49:06] CH: There are five basic qualities that dictate authority, and one of them is interchangeable. I’ll give them to you now. There are dominance, discipline, leadership, gratitude and fun, or just having a sense of adventure. The first one, dominance, does not mean being domineering. You can be dominant and still be completely supportive and nice to everyone around you. It's a common misconception that you have to be mean or serious all the time in order to be dominant. You can be a really fun person and just be a natural leader. 

The only thing that dominance can really be replaced with is ambition. If you think about like a starving artist who is opening a new art gallery or something like that. That's the only thing that we found that can be replaced. Those five qualities really dictate whether or not other people will respond to you, and especially the opposite sex. Whether or not you will have that automatic kind of obedient response, and it’s not necessarily an obedience response. What happens when we get exposed to authority, we go through what Dr. Milgram called an agentic shift. While this shift is taking place, our brain actually shifts responsibility for our own actions on to the person that's telling us to do something. That is profound, and I think a lot of people really look over that piece of information when they read the research. A person makes a shift to where they no longer feel responsible for their actions just in the presence of someone they think might be an authority figure. 

Developing that level of authority takes time and I it’s hard for me to get that point across to my students sometimes that somebody will come up and say, “Hey, man. I want to fly out there and do training with you for a few weeks.” Somehow they’ve got all the money to do that, but they're the type of person who's got a pile of dishes in the sink. They’ve got clothes piled up in their bedroom. I know for a fact this guy does not make his bed every day. He doesn't even trim his fingernails. He doesn’t even have his own wife together and he wants to come and learn how to take control of another human being. 

You have got some master yourself first, and with the students that I teach for private coaching, we have a few steps that you need to master environment first if you're trying to get this authority. It has to start with the environment. It has to start with cleaning your house, living in a clean place, hanging out with good friends, then mastering your time, keeping a planner and really sticking to it and starting to learn how to discipline yourself into habits, because discipline only needs to last long enough to get the habit done, and then you’re good. Then you can kind of cool off a little bit. You just only do one at a time. After you master the environment, then it becomes mastery of time, and after time you start to master your mechanics every day. What you're studying and mastering your attention span. You pick one thing to do every day. Today I’m going to study whether or not people are breathing from their chest or their stomach. Today I’m going to watch pupil dilation. Today I’m going to do X, Y and Z. 

Developing the authority is almost more important than learning any kind of influence method. I know a lot of people really are into influence and they’re into learning sales, but if you don't have that authority or you basically don't have your “shit together” you won't get the results you want. 

I would like to suggest if your listeners could just try this on for a month or two, that the results you want socially, the results you want from other people, especially when someone’s into studying influence, those things start to happen as a byproduct of you just making your life better and starting to master authority. 

We have one chapter in the Ellipsis Manual called authority, and it talks about this and it’s got a step-by-step system and it’s got a bunch of ways to kind of hack it. I'll give you a couple here if I'm not droning on too long here, Matt. 

[00:53:40] MB: No. That’s perfect. I'd love to hear some of those strategies. I think that’d be great. 

[00:53:44] CH: Okay. If you just want to start mastering authority today, start to express genuine interest in other people and make them feel interesting, not interested. Find out what they're excited about and remember the phrase leadership through support. Leadership through support. You have to make the other people understand that you are genuinely interested in them, and that level of interest will start to help you get more comfortable with having authority over other people. 

Because as soon as someone who’s new or just start studying this, they get that first taste of authority or somebody completely goes into the agentic state in front of them. It makes people immediately pull the plug and start to back out. It's a strange feeling, especially when it's your first time. Not necessarily having control over another human, but having that authority for the first time is strange, but it addicting, so it’s a good thing especially if you have good motives and you want to help others.

I would say especially with people who are the alpha male types who I would not describe as alpha males, but the people who we think are alpha males are usually not the alpha males. They’re the ones who want people to think they’re alpha males, because it’s usually the tiniest, the smallest dogs that barks the most. The Chihuahuas always worried about getting attacked, and the giant dogs don't really feel the need to bark. 

Dealing with those type of people, try what we call the Colombo method. I don’t know if you're familiar with that show, Matt. 

[00:55:30] MB: Yeah, the old detective show. 

[00:55:32] CH: Yeah, it is fantastic. I would say that is the point where you need to make some deliberate expression of insecurity. Then you can still have authority and you can still make deliberate errors, like maybe look insecure on purpose or make a deliberate social error, like your shirttail is hanging out or something like that. Those people need to feel dominant at the beginning of a conversation in order to relax. 

It works the same in an interrogation room. If I paid a police officer to yell at me like I was in trouble as I was walking in the room or I tripped on purpose or had a giant coffee stain on my shirt. It depends on who you're talking to. I would say start working on yourself immediately. That is going to be the game changer for you. We tend to seek things outside of us. All of these stuff we see on the Internet, we think the products or the things are going to make us better, but I strongly encourage your listeners to start from the inside out, especially when you're learning influence. That will help you basically to talk to strangers every day. I think using that level of social skill, you should be talking to a stranger every single day. You should make it a goal to discover a fact about a stranger in your area every single day. 

[00:57:00] MB: I love that strategy, and something that I'm a big fan of is kind of the idea or rejection therapy and the whole notion of constantly be sort of putting yourself out there failing, talking to people, pushing your comfort zone and even something as simple as talking to a stranger every day can be a great way to start to get outside that comfort zone and work on your ability to interact and connect and talk to people. 

[00:57:23] CH: Absolutely. I think the conference zone thing is really what's going to hold people back, and starting a conversation starts to get easy, then you need to take it to the next step, because you’re back in your comfort zone once it becomes easy. Then you need to start going further. 

[00:57:41] MB: Wow! Some incredible philosophies and tactics on both sides of the fence. I hope you enjoyed this week's unique episode and don't forget to go to successpodcast.com, sign up for our email list and shoot me an email. I'll let you in on a secret. Am I on the side of the light or am I drawn to the power of the dark? 

See you on the next episode of the Science of Success. 

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