Hi. Welcome to the personal side of business where every business has a story. I'm your host, Jet Bunditwong Bunditwong. Today my guest was A Real Life James Bond is now helping high level leaders understand the power of influence, communication, and presence. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Don Weber. Hey, Jet. Yeah. So tell us, how did we get here? And I want you to get into as much detail as you need to. Okay. Well, I got up this morning bright and early. Put the key in my car. Nah. Um, well, growing up, um, I was, as a young child, I was kinda like bullied and stuff like that. So it kind of created a certain personality type that, uh, governments for certain kinds of jobs, they like people with those sorts of, um, characteristics. So being bullied and learning, having to learn how to survive, and very quickly being able to adapt to situations, being able to read situations. And this is a, as a youngster youngster. Um, I carried that through high school and then the university, and later they came to me, offered me a opportunity. Um, though I didn't know what opportunity I was being offered, it's kind of always like a gradual thing I got into. And then I realized, holy s**t, where am I? What wa what was the first door that opened for you that got you into that opportunity? Uh, it was through a friend. It was a Canadian, French Canadian, supposedly I'll never know who. Sure. I knew him for, I knew him for years before. Yeah. Looking back In your life now, you're not sure what At Yeah. To be honest with you, um, I could tell you, we could go on a tangent on him because he's a really interesting character, but I knew him for a few years. I met him through this, uh, German girl who spoke five languages. He's very talented, so I've always wondered about her now. But anyway, so she introduced me to this French Canadian guy. We be, we became friends, but he used to go to Africa all the time doing these, like, weird things. Yeah. And I knew there was something weird about his life, and I asked him, he said, no, no, it's, you know, I just go down there to go do business. But he had suggested to me that I get involved in the diamond trade and I learned about how to buy rough diamonds because there's good money in that. And this was in the mid to or late nineties. Okay. So I went to Antwerp, learned the diamond trade. I didn't know I was getting set up. I had been prepared for something down the road. Yeah. Um, so I got into the diamond business in the late nineties. And how, how Long were you in that for? Oh, a good years. Okay. Rough, rough. Wow. So, till I pretty much stopped 2010, I'd say I was really out of it. I, I kind of tapered off when the economic crisis happened in 2008, I started tapering outta that. Um, so I, I got in that business, I got her moving. We started to move. And then, uh, one day he contacted me, he said, Hey, would you like to have lunch with me? And the French consulate down in southern Spain, un unbeknownst to me, I thought, yeah, sure. That sounds really cool. Free lunch. Right. So I went down to southern Spain. We met with his friend to have lunch. I thought we were just having lunch and I'm gonna meet somebody who's a, you know, a diplomat. Right. Cool. Well, it wasn't exactly that way. Um, a lot of times your people that work in embassies actually work for intelligence agencies. In this particular case, this gentleman worked for the, uh, DGSE, which is the equivalent to MI six, our equivalent in US Virginia CIA. Um, he didn't tell me that though, but I I figured that out pretty quickly. Um, he At the lunch, you figured at the lunch? No, I knew something was up, but I figured out what later on he was working for. He said, you know, I've got some friends at the US Embassy in Paris that would really like to talk to you. And this is right after nine had happened. Yeah. So George Bush was, was in the White House. And I said, yeah, sure. It sounds cool. Sounds, sounds exciting. Right. So I had a conversation with these people in Paris, and uh, then they sent me to Columbia Boa. And then there I met a couple of agents and that was a crazy thing because they sent me to an ice cream shop. You think they'd invite you into the embassy? No. They had me go to an ice cream shop, hang out in this ice cream shop with French Canadian. I'm gonna See a pattern that food is always involved. Right. It, it lets you ease, ease whatever news you're gonna get, I Guess. Yeah. But I didn't order any ice cream as, as I recall. I don't think so. I think my friend did though. But he was pretty big guy too. Um, and his black, uh, suburbans kept driving around the block, which I knew Yeah. That they were embassy cars. Right. And they did this for like minutes. I'm thinking, one of you guys gonna like stop and come and have our meeting. Right. Obviously they were doing counter surveillance and make sure they weren't getting set up or whatever. So we had our first encounter and, uh, it was all really nice and everything like that. And what happened is I was kind of given like small tasks, and technically I was helping the Department of Treasury was the way it started out. And I was helped them with some small tasks. But those small tasks gradually became bigger and bigger and bigger tasks. So, small tasks maybe went from, I never got involved in drug dealing and or the drug dealers that was never, there was two, actually two small, too small for our, for our interests, uh, counterfeit and stuff like that was like the beginning, uh, steps and all the way from that into arms dealers and like really heavy stuff in Africa and stuff like that. Um, during that period, I traveled most of the time I was on the road all the time. And, uh, so I get dicier and dicier. I was, I was genuinely addicted to the adrenaline. I really enjoyed the excitement. Um, but I used to think every, pretty much every day, will I be coming home tonight? You know, kind of thing. Yeah. And at that point, by the time you were in there, how old were you? I would've been my hold on. Uh, yeah, I would've about 30. Okay. to roughly. So, and the reason why I ask that is I feel like at that point, looking back in when your early thirties as a guy, you're kind of, you have enough knowledge to make sound decisions, but you also, you kind of have the balls to just want to do whatever you want to do at that point. Right. So it, when you're starting to realize that this is starting to get a little bit dicey, your life is always on the line. What, what's your next move? Do you keep going? Uh, I'm in, it's too late. I, I, I, I gotta keep going with this. The Next juicy assignment would come along. You can stop It. Addicted, man. It's, it's completely like adrenaline packed. And also you're kind of important in a way. Yeah. If you've got the information, I mean, you're important, like, important, important. Because could You even stop at that point? Or are you so involved in it because of the information, you know, that they, like, you have to keep going. I, I never thought really in the middle of something to stop because I'd be like wasting a lot of resources and people hanging. I suppose I could have, and nothing would've happened. Probably would've p****d a lot of people off. In fact, I did. I did, I did dump, uh, I once did dump, uh, something or working on, because the lack of professionalism of a, of a foreign intelligence agency, uh, they were just a bunch of slackers. They know what the hell they're doing and get people killed the way they operate. They, I, I dumped them, I slapped them hanging. But, uh, I never did that with any of the professional agencies. And there was no reason to. I mean, they always came through, you know, said what they said they were gonna do and, and things worked out with the exception of that one, um, one agency. And what was, what was the point that actually flipped the switch for you and you were like, okay, this might be time for me to get out Like too much? Yeah. Uh, probably the first time I almost dropped dead and then the second time. Can You talk about that? Uh, well, the first time, um, yeah, I can tell talk about it. There was, I was traveling with someone else, um, and we went, uh, Columbia and Ecuador were having problems. Um, because, uh, Uribe was president of Columbia at the time. He sent in, uh, para or he sent in military troops into Ecuador's territory to, uh, arrest or kill, uh, Fark, uh, rebels. I'm trying to remember the story. So anyway, we flew to keto, um, that same week or whatever. And, uh, they tried to poison us, is what happened. We both ended up in really bad shape. And the course of, but You were poison, you just stopped. Well, okay. It wasn't poisoned in the sense like it was, uh, ine or Yeah. Or strict nine or arsenic or something. There's something else they put in the food. It was kinda a long term thing. Um, but yeah, it almost took me out. I spent about a month and a half in the hospital 'cause they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. Mm-hmm. It was the problem. And my friend was also messed up for several months. Meanwhile, someone was coming to your bed, giving you cookies or something that were also poisoned. Like you were just, this is coming from different angles. No, I left, uh, that I was kind of ill. I came back to Europe. Um, I went to go visit the hospital. The doctor told, oh, you're fine, blah, blah, blah. I traveled off to Asia somewhere, and I just got progressively worse. And, um, actually I got patched up in, um, in Asia. They patched me up pretty well. They sent me back to Europe. And, uh, in Europe they put me in for about a month, uh, five weeks. And they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I mean, they come, I'm coming by every day, so, okay. It's not tuberculosis, it's not this, it's not cancer, it's not bad. It's not this, it's not that. And then fi finally what they figured out, it was, uh, a very, very nasty kind of parasite, uh, that was in my liver. And it's a fa a terminal, it's a terminal, uh, situation. So I was pretty lucky. And the medication was bad. So that was the first time. But I, I have enough stamina. That wasn't enough. Yeah. It was the second time, a few years later, I got attacked, uh, in Southern Europe. And, uh, I got in a fight with, um, three or four people. And I can usually handle myself pretty well. I'm not saying I'm here like, you know, Bruce Lee or something, but I could handle myself. And a couple guys attacked me and I dealt, dealt with him. But there was a third or fourth person, um, that showed up with a, a, a steel pipe. And he cracked my head. I remember when he hit me, I remember going blacking out. I remember falling down and not being able to do anything. I, oh. And then the next thing, um, uh, I woke up in attack, uh, going into a attack machine in the hospital. And the guy tells me, I said, where am I? He goes, you're in the hospital. What time is it? Six o'clock. What day? It's Tuesday. He said, s**t, I have a flight to Caracas, I gotta go. And he's going, no, no, you're not going anywhere. I said, what do you mean I'm not going anywhere? He goes, you've got a cracked skull and you might even die. Yeah. I'm like, die. Well, Do you, uh, curious in a situation like that, do you think you made it out because they thought you were dead and they just left you or they didn't want to kill you? I think they thought I was dead because I was in the street for about my, according to the, um, hospital, about six hours. Wow. In a big, I guess a big pool of blood. I don't know. I didn't see it. And I think, and I had my money with me. They didn't take my money, my passport, nothing. So it wasn't a robbery, obviously. Um, and specifically who it was, I'm not really at, um, liberty to say. Yeah. But, um, yeah. So I was, that, that took me several months of rehab to get back to, I was like dizzy all the time. Yeah. Even after they got my skull back together and couldn't quite figure out. Oh my God. Yeah. I messed up my exercise. It was a bad deal. So then I decided, you know what, this is really hard. One More time. Yeah. Three times. Three times is a charm, right? Yeah. My third time they'll get me. For sure. So, um, and also things had changed, which was no longer in the White House during his, during his administration. You always felt they had, the US government had your back, Obama is now his administration. And they, you did not have, were very different. So that can change dramatically. Administration to administration. Wait. And you can feel that, or you can sense it out in field. Right. And I, I I used to work with a lot of Interpol agents and Europol a lot of people. Yeah. And they were, they had the same feeling. I mean, we talked about opening, saying Yeah. It's not the same things. Like there's no, it's not your imagination. It's, that's exactly what's happening. What are, What are some maybe one or two key elements that you feel out in the field that you're like, this isn't field the same that Well, normally let's say you're going in to do something. Normally I would work alone. Mm-hmm. Typically because there's less loose ends. Mm-hmm. And I might maybe on occasion may be with two people, but usually one of the people's leaving. So it might be you're introducing me to somebody. Yeah. And now it's my job to take over and become friends or whatever I gotta do and you disappear. Okay. That would be, that's usually, it's usually not two of us working. Yeah. Right. Um, but you always have to feel, okay, I'm an x, y, Z country. It's not maybe necessarily a friendly country, but you always knew that there was somebody there that kind of had your back. So something happened. You had Yeah. A possibility of some place to run or, or do or get some help, support. And that feeling was gone because when the few times I asked for support, I wasn't getting the support that I would get in the past. And you really are calling in for stuff. But things do happen. I mean, what happens if you go in to go purchase, let's say a bunch of counterfeit bills in a foreign country, right. And you're hearing with a stack of money and you're saying, right, okay, now I've got this stuff. I'm in this foreign country. Now what? Right. What do I do with the bills? Right. I fly back to x, y, Z country with them because that's illegal. Huh? You follow me and the person's not picking up the phone. Yeah. Now you're stuck. You're just stuck with This and you Commit a crime. Yeah. You like, if I take it back, I'm committ a crime. If not, I I destroy evidence. What the hell do I do? Yeah. And This was, this was a period this before you had the digital connection. Right. So it, did it take you a little bit longer to get connections back and forth from how it like it, 'cause this was prior to like smartphones that we have Right now. Oh yeah. We smartphones, we, back then we were still using things like dead drops and far more, far more sophisticated than what people today. Oh, okay. I mean there's, yeah. There's much more sophisticated systems that you can still use today. Um, that I don't want to get into, but I've pic in my head that you're having to go to payphones Oh yeah. All the time. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But payphone, payphones are not always safe either. Yeah. And you need to use different ones in different parts of town. And you got a thing called tri triangulation we had back then. Yeah. So they could triangulate your phone call by three points. Yeah. It's not as exact as GPS, but it's, it's quite good. So we can know the person's within a given block. We use, use that all, all the time. You have payphones be, uh, pagers, uh, dead drops. So you might have somebody at a that works in the store and you just come by and you just leave a message and that message will goes down to somebody else. So it's basically a whole entire network system, network that you have to keep up with. And if you start to fall outta the loop at any given point, like you don't know who's who, the, is that the point where you might wanna be like, I, this is, this is not looking good for me. I I might need to figure this out back out of it, and then go start from the beginning somewhere. That, That, that's a great, that's a great question. Yeah. That's follow question. Uh, I don't think I really ever experienced that. Okay. Um, but less resources being simply like Yeah. Kind of in a way, not being, having people to fall back on. So, you know, there might be certain taxi driver you might call Yeah. In a certain country might, you know, So it's almost like it goes from, uh, a government agency trusting to people that you just trust directly. Right. People that you know for sure like are not gonna screw you over. Right. When you feel that administration change, you're like, this is, doesn't feel good from coming back home. But at least I know where I am in my surroundings. There's two levels. Some of those people came from government, and then you develop bonds. Mm-hmm. So for example, when people talk about cross border police collaboration, okay, great. You got Interpol. That's great. It's a computer system. But what it really comes down to is the agent in Mexico, let's say, has a personal relationship with the agent in Italy. Personal relationship things get done. Yeah. Much more than just because they have a treaty. Just because Italy and Mexico have a treaty, that doesn't mean Yeah. Yeah.

It's like, it is valid is a piece of toilet paper. Yeah. But it's that personal, those personal relationships because you trust each other so you know that the other guy's not gonna screw you over right Back. Because you do have people, agents and people out there that they'll steal other people's cases. They'll betray you. You won't know, you don't know where their loyalty really is. Maybe they're, they're crook. This happened, we had crooked, crooked people too. Yeah, yeah. Working opposing, you know, they're working for government, but they're also extorting, uh, you know, maybe your informants. Right. The real stuff. Huh. So yeah, there was, uh, a lot of crazy s**t. I mean, that's, that's a lot of, I feel like mental emotional stress that's always underlying that you're not even, I mean, you, you're probably so far in the thick of it that you're not even thinking about, but there's gotta be moments where you, maybe you get a day that nothing happens, you're able to come down and you go, oh my God. Like my heart's been beating beats per minute for like a week. Right. And I, my head, I'm tired, haven't slept. Like how do you, how do you deal with all that? Well that, when that happens, like, something's wrong. Oh yeah. Because You're so addicted to having the, you know, is that where you were all The time? Lemme I was Like always like, ramped up This. Right. You spent the, your childhood getting bullied, getting dropped, and then you put this emotional, physical, mental stress on you for like years. What do you do? Like Psychotic man? I'm not normal. I mean, yeah. What do you, what do you do with yourself this way? You might be, do see therapy for a while. Yeah. No, no. That's true though. When you start to, to get into like, you're living this every single day. I've always had this question, and I don't feel like movies, anything, books do it justice. How do you maintain stability for like eating, like getting fluids in you, keeping in shape for being able to handle all that? Like, do you think of that stuff or it's just so Automatic? Yeah, I mean, I'd get up and run every morning. Okay. Where Pretty much, pretty much wherever I was. Okay. I mean, I was like in Ukraine or something like that in the winter. Um, maybe not running because it just wasn't practical, but I'd get up and run every morning. Why? What for my health? Yeah. But there was another reason, 'cause I went to go run around the neighborhood or run around the area because I was doing counter surveillance. Nice. And they know that. Yeah. I mean, the other side, they know that. But it helps me get, ah, there's a van over there. Very interesting. In Case something. But also I, I'm assuming in case something happens in that, that you need to run, you know, the area. Well, you Know, I, very important, I always wanna know the area, all my exits. I mean, I walk into a new hotel, a new, let's say hotel. Uh, first thing I'm doing more than I'm just in my room and whether the hot water works. Okay, where's the exits? How the hell do I get outta here? Okay, here's the window. Yeah. All that kind of stuff would be the first thing I'd be looking at. Also, the street layout. Okay. If I have to get outta here in a hurry, whatever, because I wasn't worried, uh, about so much about other intelligence agencies or police and stuff so much. It was more organized crime. Yeah. And these people are professional. And by the way, there's a lot of organized crime people that work in intelligence there. There's a, there's a, a OPAC line. I'm not saying all intelligent agencies organized. No, I'm not saying that. I'll be clear. Not all intelligence people, but, but there are, there is, there is some. It helps both sides, essentially. Right, right. Yeah. And there is some connections. Yeah. So now when you are fast forward, when you're finally getting out of all this, when you finally get to sit down and relax in your home, do you feel that weight taken off of you at that point? Or any of that stress? Or are you still So like, it takes like years to get rid of? When I come back to the states where I didn't have to be watching over my shoulder, let's say for a couple weeks, I didn't like it because I felt like I'm letting my, um, uh, my radar down. Oh, okay. And, and having that intent always on. Always, always. Like there's something off. And I would always be able to, I was always scanning, looking for something off. Now sometimes they're red herrings or nothing. Yeah. Yeah. And so it looks like something's off, but it's actually not. But I always wanted to be in that state of alert because Yeah. It's called survival. Do you think a lot of the times you're doing that, it's not really, it's, it's just you going through that in your head by yourself, like Absolutely paranoia. That wasn't real there, but you know how many times that paranoia was real? How, how, what percentage you think that Probably 70. Oh man. I definitely more still, it's like worth, it's worth that 30% of, I'm gonna say b******t paranoia, because so many times it was, and at least on one occasion, I'd saved my life. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Yeah. It, it was a crazy time. It really was a crazy time. It was, uh, it's not for the normal person. People think it's really exciting, this and that and James Bond and blah, blah. You know, how many really cute girls I just turned down because of safety. Yeah. Little because I wanna take 'em back to my hotel, or I want them to know where I'm living at. Right. Yeah. But you, but you've also talked about that, that you've had to have relationships, whether it be romantic or friendships, really for the information and for you to get ahead. Right. Now, my question to you in that is, that's gotta have some sort of emotional playback on you over and over again for you to go through. Man, I, I'm, I'm using someone. I'm, I'm, it's not as genuine. Right. And you seem like a really genuine person. So how does that deal? Or maybe you aren't, I don't know, maybe, but, but having lunch with, with a stranger, so I have a known at all. Psychopath. No, Go ahead. But, but do you feel like that also takes a toll on you as a person and you're like, I don't know who I am at this point? Or were you able to concentrate and focus so much that you're able to compartmentalize where things go? I was very good at com compartmentalizing everything. Okay. So I was always thinking about, okay, if this happens, so point B to point C to point everything as much as humanly possible. Okay. You know, I, I mean, I used to spend so much time organizing for that plan B, plan C, plan D, we're talking, you know, luggage, maybe luggage test three parts around the city, around the country, maybe with passports and cash in each one. Um, all kind of, all kinds of stuff for maybe escape all kinds of, like, for phones. And because I have to, because back then we weren't using smartphones, but we had, uh, the, with the GG ones and G two, G two, like the flips and stuff like that. Yeah. Um, which then the cameras started coming into those which were really grainy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So the pictures that he may have shown that are grainy, it's probably because it came off of that. Or an old digital. Yeah. Um, because said, we, I didn't take a lot of pictures back then. I, that was one thing many times there were people taking pictures like, oh, I gotta go to the bathroom, or I don't feel good turn around. But you're saying you didn't want to be in him? I, yeah. At all, because I never knew it down the road to make it. Oh, that guy, I, you follow me? But I thought that guy, that, that guy's name was John. No, no, it's Peter. No, no, it's Mark. Who the hell is that guy? Right. You follow me, God. Yeah. Yeah. It's not, that's quite dangerous actually. Got it. I, it's, it's, it's interesting because I have nothing to question about my past, but hearing you talk about your past makes me question things. I'm like, what is real? What's not? Like what, what if I, have I been sitting next to someone that's gone through this and is a, you know, you may, You may have, like, This is, this is Crazy. I mean, again, they don't hire just anybody. Yeah. You have to have a, you have to have a certain psychological profile to do what I was doing. It's not for everybody. So I had the ability to believe my own lies. Mm-hmm. I mean, I really believed him. I, there was a part of me that knew it wasn't true, but it's live. But you have to convince everyone else around you too. Right. And I'd convinced myself, so I'd tell that line enough times that, believe me, I believed it. Now I went to that school and I'm like this, and I speak with a funny accent and all kind of stuff. Um, and do it consistently. Yeah. And me going have a few drinks and still do it. I mean, really, it needs to be really ingrained that where you take on that as your, as your person. So, and then when you come back to the states, do you try to practice that? Like when you're by yourself And it's not practice, it's you, it's so ingrained. What I don't wanna do is step out of it and then step back in. I'd rather just stay with it. And until I'm done with that. Okay. Per, with that, per, whoever that person might be, you start that person and maybe you adopt a new one for Yeah. Something else. Yeah. Ending. Now, shifting gears a little bit. You use this information or this, the skill that you've built up over years to be able to help leaders, executives about it. What are some of the components that you feel like you take from that to be able to translate to what they're doing in the business world? It a lot really, it comes really down to obser observing. Mm-hmm. People listening to people. Okay. Yeah. You hear it all the time. Active listening isn't that great? Emotional inte, it's, isn't that great? Empathy isn't that great? But it comes down to that. I, it comes down to looking, that person does, when I say something, does their skin color change? Yeah. What, what do their under eyelids do? Little things like this, gimme a clue how they're feeling. Does that what I just ask them to do? Does that make them angry? Mean they're hiding it. But if you're observing closely, you know what to look for, you'll see it. Um, and why does it make 'em angry? Question. Ask myself as a leader, if I wanna motivate somebody, how do I best motivate this person? Is this an ego guy or is this person they need acceptance? You have different kind of basic psychological profiles on people. You, some people, it's really important that they're accepted. They're just looking for everybody to accept them. You have other people, you know, they wanna be important. They wanna be recognized. I'll give you an example. The important recognized ego guy. Mm-hmm. Typically he'll have his desk with lots of books behind him. Mm-hmm. Right. And he's gonna have all these, uh, probably certificate, you know, his PhD of this and his award of this and his, uh, I don't know, achievement of this and this. And that's a good, in indication that you're dealing with somebody who's got a pretty strong ego. Right. So that's what's important to them. So you give them what they want. Yeah. Right. And if you're a leader of a company and you've got a, a strategy you're trying to roll out and people are giving you pushback because maybe you have a, a senior, uh, director of na, the national director of sales who's been there years and you're the new CEO and you've been there two days or two years or something. You've got this new program you wanna roll out, and he's giving you pushback, but it's important that he's on, on bed. He's with you on that. Uh, you have two cha choices either to convince him to help you roll it out or replace him. It's much better if you can get him on board. Right. And how do you do that? By trying to figure out what makes that mantic, what motivates that person. And the spy world was the same thing. All what, when I was going in to manipulate people, was figuring out what motivates this person? What's this person about? What do they want? They want money. They want chicks. They'd need money because their child is sick. Uh, what do they want? What do they need? And figuring, and by figuring out what that thing is, um, generally, and giving them what they want, they're gonna tend to like you. Yeah. If you give somebody what they need, all right? Yeah. Not what they want, what they need, they're generally gonna like you because you're like that food supply, you know? Yeah. And when you're going through this with someone and you're trading them giving foundational tools to be able to use in, in their business world, um, how much of it is now having to learn about that person and make them sh shift a little bit? Because like for instance, if you're coming in here and you're like, okay, well we need to find out what these people need. Right. But I'm an a*****e. Okay. Okay. What are we doing? What are we doing here? Like, so are you, is the first goal for me to understand that, or for you to change me and go, Hey, you need to start getting a little more em em empathy in your life and be able to deal with that. Would that be either coaching or working with you? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you're the a*****e. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Very good. So, uh, once there's enough trust, I might tell you, you know, maybe I, I would say in more diplomatic terms, or maybe there's better ways to deal with people and you'll be able, you get more from people with honey, then you do vinegar. Yeah. Right. So if you want people to be really engaged in doing things from the heart and, and their creativity, and they're sweating their blood, they gotta do it because it makes 'em feel good. If they're doing it just because they're getting a paycheck, they're gonna only go so far. Yeah. And if they're doing it outta coercion, outta fear, they're only gonna go so far. But if they're doing it because they get a kick out of it, they get a buzz out of it because they love it, they're gonna go a lot further. So it's trying to figure out having the right people in the right job, obviously that's what HR supposedly does. Right. And that's why they have the cycle, cycle metric test to do that to help to identify. And there's work kind of, kind of. Yeah. Um, but they're not a hundred percent. Um, so trying to figure out the person, so you've got a person, why does this person, uh, giving you pushback? What are they afraid of it? Usually it comes onto that. Either the person feels, I'm afraid of this, or I'm gonna get some pleasure from this. Yeah. People are basically almost that simple. Yeah. Yeah. And they say, okay, if it's fear, maybe it's fear because I'm gonna lose my prestige or my ego, or because I'm fearful because I'm not gonna be accepted. And those are two simple examples. Right. There's more, by the way, um, that might be a fear. The, the, on the other hand, the, the pleasure for them might be, oh, I might get a promotion and people think I'm really smart. A lot of times a good leader, uh, executive, like CEO or something like that will let somebody else get the credit. Hmm. And it's, it is a good way, even even though it was your idea, your thing, you let them take the credit. And I'm sure those type of people are easier for you to work with in the beginning. Right. 'cause they can s they can, they want to help the community around them and the business people to thrive, right. Or, or am I wrong On that? No, you're right. You know, if you, if you, you have to remember what is your objective. Uh, if I want my company to grow and I wanna get this outcome, I might have to do things that are uncomfortable for me as a leader. Yeah. Because it's not my na it's not my nature. I'm, let's say I'm a jerk and I'm a real egocentric guy and it's all about me, me, me, me, me. And I say, well, I have to let go. If I wanna get what I want. I have to let go of that a little bit to get what I want. Yeah. Same thing, thing about, if you're in an argument, you might think, well, do I, what's the thing here? Work? I'm in an argument with somebody. Do I wanna win this argument and prove they're wrong and they're stupid? Or is there an objective, an outcome I want from this argument? Right. I want them to take action and do implement this plan. So that might take a different course, a different, a different tact, a different, there's different strategies I might use to get that accomplished. And that's what I help people do. Yeah. You know, not everybody's coachable. Not every senior executive is coachable. Sometimes you get people they think they know it all and hey, maybe some of 'em do. Good luck to 'em. But I can tell you, most people can always learn from this kind of training. Yeah.

And Do you see that right away when you're starting to work with someone, maybe a third session, you're like, this is where impasse here, like it is not working out, and you're like, maybe it's just not gonna work. I'm gonna, it's better for you to find someone else that can really work with you. But you're saying for the most part that all of us have the ability to be able to get coach and, and move in a certain direction. Most People are, yeah. I'd say most people are coachable, but there are people, but they're just not willing to take any advice. Yeah. And then you see those people also get replaced. I've seen that happen in really big companies too, where they, where the board of directors sends 'em in to get help or coaching or whatever. They're, they're resistant to it. Yeah. And then a year later, the board of directors, they replace 'em with somebody else because they're not, How much do you think the environment and atmosphere of a business can lend to a leader being able to take these heels and, and thrive with it? Right. Repeat, Repeat the question. It's a good one. Like If, if I'm, if I'm the exec mm-hmm. In a company, there's of us, right. And I'm, and I'm willing to make this shift. I get you as a coach, I'm going there, I'm going, I'm so open minded, I'm gonna do this. Mm-hmm. But then I, this atmosphere around me has like, we hate this guy. We don't wanna help him out. You know, is it is now or is it too hard for you to, for that exec to go in there and be like, I can still change, I can still change this whole entire business. I think you could still change it in most cases. I mean, you might, okay. If you have people and they're, you're seeing the feelings they hate you, it's probably a few individuals that feed that. And then, then you need a little bit of what we call change management. You can help these people be happier. You can give them an opportunity to be happier elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, but you need to identify who are those people who are just like entrenched against you. Some of them, maybe you can win to your side by figuring out what they want and what their fears are or whatever. Um, and you might have to be a bit more subtle how you go about doing it. You might not call me and say, oh, we we're gonna have a therapy session here. We're gonna sing kumbaya. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Probably be a little bit more slick about that. And you wanna get people who are gonna be allies to you in order to, for you to roll out that program. So you might have to do some changes to do that if you've got like a lot of resistance in the team and obviously making some changes yourself. Yeah. Or trying to figure out what have you done that has created that environment. Yeah. In the first place. It could been just really not hiring the right kind of people and I'm, but I'm sure there's, yeah. It's gonna be two sides of the, I get that. And you know, one of the things that you talked about is, uh, leadership under pressure too. Mm-hmm. Right? So when you're looking to help someone that's feeling that pressure from it, what are some things that, what are things that you're looking for as a coach and say, okay, these things are, are falling upon you and I can see it's getting too much. This is how we have to start to change you or uplift you or fight whatever pressure's coming on you. Right. What are some, what are some elements that you're looking for? Like Yeah. It's getting too much for you. I guess you're talking about like stress management type stuff? Yeah. Well, one thing is maybe learning to step back and learning to prioritize. Mm-hmm. There was just on Forbes, uh, the other day, I was asking a question on this is, is a really good one. Um, learning to prioritize. So you can't do everything that's stupid. Right? So you have to figure out what is a one or two things that's gonna give us the most, that's gonna give us the biggest bang for our buck. What's one or two things going to give us the biggest result? 'cause I can't do everything, so I'm gonna focus on those one, two things right there. You've just reduced all the work, A lot of the workload. Yeah. Okay. When you're stressed out as well. If I came, you come into a meeting, right. And you get, have an argument. Oh, I dunno, the meeting goes poorly. You're frustrated, you're angry. Now you gotta go into another meeting. Well, if you walk into that other meeting immediately, guess what's gonna happen? Your anger and frustration from this meeting. Yeah. It's gonna walk, go right into that next meeting, and it's probably not gonna be as productive as it could be. So you're better off maybe taking a, and I've known very senior executives, like CFO of a huge petroleum company. I went with a walk with him one day and we went for a walk for about 10, minutes, took some fresh air in and we chit chatted. Then he, then he went back to, uh, he, he went to his next meeting and carried out what he had to do. But he was really hacked off at what had happened in his previous meeting. So having the, having the intelligence of doing it, it's the same thing. Like, you get an email, somebody, it p****s you off and you write them this email and then you think, oh, yeah, yeah. Think, well, I, you know what, I'll just put this in draft Yeah. And I'll come back to it. And then you read it and you go, oh my goodness, I'm glad I did that. That's, that's something that I've learned over the years is to, uh, not react response. Like, come back tomorrow or later on that day after things have subsided. And I think, you know, I, I don't know if I, if this is gonna be stereotyping, but I feel like when, um, as a, as a male, the first thing is just, just react to it. Right? Yeah. Be like, I, I need to, I always solve this, deal with this move on. Right. Right. And I think it's, it comes off a lot easier. I'm like, oh, this is intelligent. I can, I can respond and, and have a better response to this where, 'cause now you start to learn that the other side of it, someone's reading this and it just be like, okay. Becomes, oh, okay. Like that's, it's a totally different, it's a different thing now. Right, right, right. We're we're all, we, the first time, you know, years ago, a text or an email came through, we all, I think, felt like we read the same way. Right. And then now it's like there's so much interpretation. Like, maybe it's time for me to just sit back a little bit, let my emotions, you know, soften and then I'm gonna come back to it. Or you teaching them skills to deal with this as you're coaching them. Yeah, For sure. For sure. Depending on what they need. But in this case, have you ever read a message or an email and it came across a certain way and then you come back and read it a few hours later and you read again? Yeah. Yeah. Not so bad. It was just person being just erect. But you think that it's personal against you. You know, And I talk, use this analogy a lot where it's like wearing tinted glasses. If you're wearing tinted glasses and they're pink color Right. Where everything's gonna look pink. If you're wearing tinted glasses and they're yellow, everything's gonna look yellow. So if you're wearing tinted glass and you're like maybe a little bit angry, frustrated, stressed out, your, your perception might not be that real. Yeah. Slightly tinted. So that's why it's sometimes better to, and there's us usually nothing so urgent. You need to respond immediately. Yeah. If it's something where you could make a mistake, stop. Yeah. Deal with it a little bit later, reflect on it. And if it needs to be dealt with still harshly after hours, there's still time. Yeah. You know, it's not a, again, a question about winning, it's about getting the outcome that you're after and always keeping that in mind. And you think in perspective, I mean, and think about something, you have an argument with somebody in one year who's gonna really care probably. Yeah. And definitely in years nobody's gonna give a s**t. Yeah. So we need to put things in perspective that we got a lot of importance to something that maybe is really not that important. Yeah. It might seem really important right now at the moment, oh my God, I gotta deal with this. But I guarantee you, in days, months, years, whatever, it's gonna be less and less and less important. Yeah. And you know, this is something that's interesting about you that I feel like because you, you have dealt with such high pressure duress on you for such a long time, for you to be able to step back and, and see like an email's not that important. It makes sense. Right. Because it's really relative. Like you're just like, no, I, someone was shooting in my head, this is an email that you could deal with within like, literally hours. Right. I, and I feel like I can wait. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like I wonder if that that's what makes you a, a good or great coach too, right. To be able to, to get perspective and say, it's really not that important, but what's, what's gonna be bigger picture is that this person that works underneath you is not gonna be p****d off at you for the next three weeks. Mm-hmm. But you're able to have a communication with them. Right. And words can really be damaging. Uh, you can say something the wrong way or taken the wrong way and to get that corrected, um, can take you or maybe never. Mm-hmm. So that's why it's really important, like what you say to people you need to be, and especially nowadays because now psychological safety, I mean, I've heard people saying that verbal abuse is akin to physical abuse. I don't know. It's not that I'd rather have somebody call me a bunch of names and bunch in the nose. Right. But it's like, I felt it. I don't what it's like. Right. And, and you know, when you were going, just going back a little bit to when you were talking about human, um, cues and body language. Is that a skill that takes a long time for the average person to develop? And, and when you're reading someone, do you think the people you've worked with, you're like, this, this is on average takes like three months or whatever it is. It depends on the individual, first of all, how curious they're about people. Mm-hmm. Like yourself, you're curious about people. So should be a lot quicker for you. Yeah. How, what your ability is to observe people. So you're curious, you like observing people. You're gonna learn a lot quicker. You're not curious, you're not good at observing people because you're too interested on whatever's happening on your phone or whatever. Your mind's all over. You're not gonna be very good at body language 'cause you're gonna miss stuff. And it's the small things face, people are really good with poker face. Right. It's other things Yeah. That come across. It can be the feet finger movements again, a lot of times around the eyes can give the clues around the lips too. Can give you clues. Yeah. So it's other things and it's being very observant. Yeah. And seeing the different No, now you're feeling paranoid. Yeah. I am. I'm super paranoid. I don't like, I Don't like dogs. You know, years ago, I take this back to zoo. Years, years ago, I used to tell people I, oh, I, yeah, when do you do, oh, I teach body language. I thought people would think, oh, this is really cool. Teach me. Right. Yeah. And people used to creep out, man, they like kick off. Yeah. I don't feel comfortable with you. Like you, I feel like you know too much about me without knowing too much about me. Right. It's because of I know your history now that you're able to, to read things and see things. So it's, it's kind of creeping me out. But, um, but now you've taken a lot of this and it's not just coaching, right. You do speak engagements now too. Mm-hmm. And, um, what are some of the things that, uh, you really like to the topics that you like to bring up or talk about when you go to speak engagement Then talking about, well, one of them is difficult conversations, arguments and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. How to avoid 'em and how to deal with those kind of nasty confrontations because it's something that all human beings we all Yeah. Encounter and stuff. Like, I really enjoyed teaching people that. Um, and I've done a number of like executive MBA programs teaching everything. Um, executive presence is kind of cool. And because you can tie in body language into it and yeah. Voice tonality and all that kind of stuff. I like teaching public speaking sometimes with people depending who, who the group is and stuff like that can be fun because got a little bit of like, art in it, A little bit of drama, a little bit of, you know, adding, uh, elements to it. But my main thing is I like figuring out solving problems. So when I get a, uh, uh, uh, a client who's got a problem with a maybe his client or a client who's got a problem with his team, and I can help him sort those problems out, that's very satisfying. Yeah. Right. Well, and they'll listen to me. Yeah. Sometimes it takes 'em a bit. A lot of times people, it's this counterintuitive intuitive and they're like, well, I've never done things like that. Well, yeah. If you do what you do, if you, if you do the same thing and expect to get a different salt Yeah. You know, there's Einstein. Yeah. So, so when, when you're talking with these people and to forget them to change, um, I will bet you that once they first they see the first thing that happens positively. Right. They're like, all right, I'm on board. Yeah, for sure. Everything. For sure. Yeah. I mean like, oh wow, this guy actually knows what he's saying. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think that's been I to have your, um, life be where it is now. Did you think years ago that you were gonna be helping businesses, small businesses or Exist? Maybe, maybe years ago. But I never thought I would end up working for the government. Yeah. I never fat on that in a million years. Yeah. That was not on my plan. That was not on my radar. But, you know, uh, that would just surprise me. And there's a certain amount of like patriotic kind of like Yeah, yeah, yeah. For the greater good. And I'm sacrificing, nobody knows what I'm doing and I'm flying all over the place and whatever. Um, so, But you've had like, you've had long period of stages it feels like that have helped you get into that have produced this next phase of your life, right? You want, so you had this bullying kid, or that had to deal with all that for probably like teenage years. Mm-hmm. Take that into this year period that you are working the government. Mm-hmm. And now you're taking that to be able to help probably this back part of your life, be able to help execs and, and, and leaders be able to move forward and become better business people, leaders and then, uh, just better people in general. Right. So that's, it's amazing. I mean this is, um, it's impressive. I, I think, you know, when we started connecting a while back and so, you know, I don't know, can I tell you where you live? The should I, should I say that I live In California? Yeah. I live in Europe. I live California. Yeah. Yeah. So, and the reason why this is relevant is, you know, when, when, uh, I connected with Don a while back, um, we said there was a possibility that we weren't gonna connect. 'cause Don was only here for a little while in California and, um, that he was gonna go back to the, the uk. And I was like, you know what, I, I, I don't want this to be about, uh, impersonal because of the story that Don has. And I think if you guys get a chance to look up, go on his website, check out everything that's on there, um, and then learn about what he does because I think it's gonna help you become, like I said, a better person but also a better, um, business person as well. Um, and then where can they find you? You know, uh, you can find me@drwebercoaching.com. You can find me at the Forbes Business console. You can find me on LinkedIn at Don Weber. And I think that's pretty, pretty good place start. Yeah. Yeah. They're great. Um, well thank you Don. Uh, it's been a pleasure and you know, I'm gonna follow up with you down the road and be able to hear where you're at now and then see the progress you have. Thank you so much for being on the personal side of business. I appreciate Thanks for having me on, man. Appreciate it. Thank you.