#219: Robin Dreeke – How to earn someone’s trust (from a former FBI special agent)

Robin Dreeke [00:00:00]:
Thing I love to say is you don't plant seeds with people by telling them what you think. You plant seeds with people by asking them what they think. And if you ask a question in an area that is a challenging priority for them, that grabs their attention. Hello, my friend. Welcome back

Jay Clouse [00:00:26]:
to another episode of Creator Science. We have a really fun one here today. If you know me, you know I'm constantly banging the drum of building trust with your audience. People buy from you when they know, like, and trust you. But how do you develop trust? It's been surprising to me just how few people are out there talking about this subject in particular. But one of the very best is today's guest, Robin Driek. Robin Driek is a human behavior expert, best selling author, and professional speaker with a pretty incredible background. Check this out.

Jay Clouse [00:01:01]:
As a Marine Corps officer and retired FBI special agent, he served as chief of the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program, where he honed his skills in recruiting spies. He literally built relationships with citizens of other countries, earned their trust, and convinced them to become spies for United States Intelligence. I've recently read 2 of Robin's books that I highly recommend. The first is The Code of Trust, which teaches you to inspire trust. And the second is It's Not All About Me, the top ten techniques for building quick rapport with anyone. I thought these books were incredible. It's subject matter that I just don't find in other places. He also wrote Sizing People Up, A Veteran FBI Agent's User Manual for Behavior Prediction.

Jay Clouse [00:01:47]:
And most recently, Unbreakable Alliances, a spy recruiter's authoritative guide to cultivating powerful and lasting connections. Robin has a super unique background for helping us understand humans and how to build relationships with them. And that is exactly what we talk about in this episode. Love to hear what you think about this episode. Just tag me at jklaus on any social media platform to let me know that you're listening. And now, let's talk with Robin. Right. Robin, I'm so excited to chat with you.

Jay Clouse [00:02:20]:
You are one of few people I find that are actually head on talking about the subject of building trust, and it's such a core part of online business. I'm excited to have a conversation about it. One of the most common questions I get from people is they say you're really great at building trust with your audience. How do you do that? And honestly, I don't know. So I'm hoping by talking to you. I can actually get some clarity and understand what it is that I might be doing and what I could be doing better to build that trust. So as a starting point, I thought I would ask you. This is gonna sound really open ended.

Jay Clouse [00:02:57]:
But how do humans decide who we can trust?

Robin Dreeke [00:03:00]:
Boy, as soon as you said, you know, how you're building trust the audience, I already had something that popped in my head for that. So I'm gonna answer that question even though it wasn't a question, but I'm also gonna say how do people generally build trust in general. So I answer that one first. In general, to build trust is really, really simple. And remember, anytime you're ingesting information from someone of resource, a news outlet, is it simple couple of simple things to keep in mind. If it's really, really complicated to understand, the person sharing it probably doesn't understand it that well themselves because these principles of life are very, very simple. To build trust is really simple. How do you and this is how would you because you got to own your own behavior inspire someone to feel safe with you? That's it.

Robin Dreeke [00:03:50]:
Are you providing content whether tangible or intangible that is going to solve a challenge party pain point or friction point in their life? And are you doing so with open honest communication, transparency, and vulnerability? Those are the behaviors of trust and those are what people are looking for. People are looking for you to solve a problem or challenge in your life. And so taking that knowledge and then applying it to what you're doing, because if someone is saying your audience is saying that, Jay, you do a great job of having a great trust rapport with your audience. So here's what I say you're doing. You have done a fantastic job of, 1, articulating what your show does so when someone goes and they're perusing all the podcasts it could be on, your show description is probably very, very accurate and congruent with the guest you have on the information being provided. So you have congruency of information provided. So when people go to it, they know exactly what to expect because when you manage expectations and people know what to get, that makes them feel safe. There's no 's.

Robin Dreeke [00:04:50]:
And like you said before we started, there's no gotchas. And you're doing so with open eyes communication, transparency, vulnerability where you're saying, you know what? I don't have all the answers, but I'll do the best to get people with the answers. And if I fall short, just let me know. And most importantly, the information you're then providing now that is congruent is solving a challenge prior to your pain point and friction point in your audience's life. And so that's pretty much it. You made them feel safe with the information you're providing them that makes their life a little bit easier and a little bit better.

Jay Clouse [00:05:20]:
Let's talk about that word safety a little bit because there's obviously the, like, existential safety that we feel. But if I'm scrolling through Instagram, I'm not worrying that the videos that are popping into my feed are an existential threat. So what feels safe and unsafe in a world where I am consuming information?

Robin Dreeke [00:05:43]:
So there's a lot of things that go into that. So when you're scrolling through information on Instagram or anything else as human beings as Robert Greene's and I apologize. I'm I might quote books as we go along here.

Jay Clouse [00:05:53]:
You do.

Robin Dreeke [00:05:53]:
So Robert Greene's, laws of human nature, it's very congruent for us as a species. What we're doing is we're constantly consuming information that validates our own self opinion of what we think the world is. Think about this when you're going through TikTok, Instagram, you're watching news, whatever news program it is, whatever your political affiliation is, you're consuming information that's validating your own self opinion because to bring in information that contradicts it would be contradicting how you view yourself. We don't like doing that as human beings emotionally. That is so the emotional way we think is at the lower level. The cognitive, thoughtful, pragmatic level is at the higher level. And so what I mean by that, a great example is there are numerous authors, and I could rattle them off, but I won't, that I don't personally think I'd like. Like, I wouldn't wanna have dinner with them.

Robin Dreeke [00:06:42]:
I won't wanna sit down with a conversation with them because I don't like them for how they're living their life necessarily would be incongruent mine, but their content is absolutely phenomenal. I promote it all the time. Matter of fact, I promote so many different authors. You'd have no idea which ones I liked or didn't like because you know what? All their content is fantastic, absolutely fantastic. And so that is the pragmatic way to go about it. So that's where safety comes in. We feel safe when we're consuming information that allows us to feel situationally aware. So we feel empowered to make choices and decisions that are in our own best interest and can contribute to our own prosperity for ourselves and those around us because that's a big part of what our whole motivation as a species is to feel safe and to be prosperous for ourselves and those we care about because if we didn't do those things, our genetics would not be passed along and that's not good for our reproductive health as a species.

Robin Dreeke [00:07:37]:
So that's why we're genetically and biologically decoded to want to do these things.

Jay Clouse [00:07:42]:
I hadn't thought about the threat to our identity as a point of safety, but this makes a lot of sense from other conversations I've had and things that I've learned just out of my own curiosity. I have come to believe that we are so attached to the identity of who we believe we are and when something contradicts that or threatens to contradict that that does feel very unsafe and uncomfortable. So this is where confirmation bias comes in. You're saying if we're seeing something that aligns with our viewpoint or aligns with who we think we want to be, that feels safe and comfortable and approachable to us.

Robin Dreeke [00:08:22]:
Yeah. Confirmation bias plays a huge part. All of our biases play a huge part in this, and you hit the keyword in there that is the most beautiful way to approach every situation, every human being. Matter of fact, if you look back through history at some of the most renowned well known people that everyone's heard I mean I can't mention these names without someone's everyone I've ever met saying I've heard of that name. Leonardo da Vinci. Everyone's heard of the name Leonardo da Vinci. They, you know, might say okay you did the Mona Lisa engineer maybe first new designs of aircraft things like that. They don't know exactly why they know Leonardo da Vinci's name.

Robin Dreeke [00:08:58]:
Benjamin Franklin is another one. Einstein, Albert Einstein is another one. Just those 3 off the top of my head, each one of them they were non judgmentally curious about the world around them, and they validated those people around them by being actively curious about who they were and not just actively curious about the things that they wanted to know. At the deeper level, this active curiosity I love talking about is being curious not about necessarily what you wanna know, but what they wanna share. And so when you are curious about what someone else wants to share, it might be incongruent with your own self opinion with how you see the world through your optic. That is why these people are so beloved by everyone because they had the ability to suspend their ego, suspend their vanity, and be curious about how the other people saw the world through their context, through their lens. That is called deep, deep empathy.

Jay Clouse [00:09:51]:
I wanna talk about this word you've used 3 times now that I haven't heard another individual use since I was, like, doing geometry in grade school, which is congruency. And I'm a lover of English language. Congruent has a very specific meaning and definition that means some things and doesn't mean other things. Talk to me about what congruency means to you and why you use that word so specifically.

Robin Dreeke [00:10:11]:
Congruency to me is alignment. It's where things line up together. Congruency, When I first started using the word it came down to understanding I love understanding the emotions we feel because when we feel an emotion it's not because we have some super spider sense, it's because we are taking in data points as an organism that gives us feelings and emotions. And so, for example, when people have this gut feeling that someone makes them feel creepy, what exactly is someone seeing that allows them to feel creepy, that makes them feel unsafe? Because that's what creepy is. Creepy is when someone doesn't feel necessarily safe with you because what you're observing, whether you're witting of it or not, and when you give labels and meanings and behaviors, you become very much more wittings. Like, we see everything around us no matter what, but when you actually give labels, meanings, behaviors, it's the fog clears. In other words, you're no longer seeing the matrix. You're seeing the code behind the matrix because you understand exactly what it is you're seeing.

Robin Dreeke [00:11:06]:
And so congruency is when the verbal, the nonverbal, and the tempo, everything about that person is in sync. It makes sense. The things that are coming out of their mouth are very congruent with them as human being. In other words, an example of incongruence where we feel creepy is when someone is using beautiful language with you, thinking that they're making it all about you and this is what great manipulators do. They're making all about you, but something makes me feel creepy. Something's a little off, and you know what it was? They were pressing their tempo. They're leaning in a little too far non verbally on you. They're invading your space.

Robin Dreeke [00:11:43]:
They were pressing for answers that you weren't ready to give yet. So all those little nuances, all these little data points that are incongruent with what normal healthy relationships look like in your life, they're spiking from that norm, and that becomes incongruent. And so that's where I use congruency and congruency is what we seek as human beings is we're seeking congruency with the world around us. In other words, everything matches the regular tempo of life.

Jay Clouse [00:12:10]:
Yes. I love that because someone might think that incongruent and inconsistent are kind of the same. But if you think about like a shape, like a triangle, it's kind of more like symmetry. Is this side like this side? Do these things match up as you're saying? And a lot of times, that is the feeling we have when something just isn't quite right. Something isn't matching up. It's not that this person used to say this and now they're saying this necessarily. It's not about inconsistency necessarily. It's I am sensing something that just doesn't quite add up.

Jay Clouse [00:12:40]:
And we see it online a lot. People sharing like, hey, I got this really great result, but they don't show you any proof of how they got that result. Feels a little bit off. You know? How can I show more congruency in the claims that I'm making, the promises that I'm making so that people do see this through line of alignment between what I'm claiming and what has actually transpired?

Robin Dreeke [00:13:02]:
Could I give you an example of what you just said? I love it. It's a great point. So let's just take the triangle example that you just mentioned. So think about and I haven't thought about geometry in a long time. So equilateral triangle. All sides are equal, right? Isosceles triangle that's where one side's longer than the others or shorter?

Jay Clouse [00:13:19]:
Yes, yes or scaling is something like that.

Robin Dreeke [00:13:22]:
So so if you're used to seeing an equilateral triangle or a triangle that has all sides equal and so you have congruency between all the triangles you see And all of a sudden one with one side that's a little bit longer a little bit shorter, it stands out from that that pattern of what you normally see. But that triangle argued, Yeah, but I'm a triangle. Yeah, but you're deviating from my normal c so something's a little bit off. What is it that is off? And they might be trying to hide that one of their sides is a little off or they might not be if they're being transparent. So, yeah. I'm a triangle, but listen. My side's off here. I'm a little bit different.

Robin Dreeke [00:13:54]:
So again, that's that's transparency. That's fine. With human beings, what you're describing so say that you're wanting to learn about things like we're talking about today. You wanna learn about rapport. You wanna learn about trust. You wanna learn about interviewing skills. You wanna learn about how to build trust with people, and you've researched a lot of people like me, and there's a lot of beautiful books out there. What you're going to see is you're going to see that a pattern of normal behavior for all of us is pretty much the same.

Robin Dreeke [00:14:22]:
We're going to give you a lot of transparency about our backgrounds. We're going to give you transparency about how it is we came up with the information we have, where we get the information, quoting authors. You're gonna have a lot of maybe self deprecating humor about, Hey, here's what I'm good at. Here's what I'm not good at. So you can have a pattern of what normal looks like from someone that's going to be providing you information, but all of a sudden someone's going to be wanting to sell you this similar information, but there's there's questions. Well, what exactly is this person's background? How come he says he's this, but this person over here says he's this and he's transparent? How come this person's here is not being transparent? Something's a little off there. That sounds like what it was you're talking about. It's like how can you spot, you know, the con artist in a world where this market of what I do is completely flooded? Well, you look for the transparency.

Robin Dreeke [00:15:07]:
That's all.

Jay Clouse [00:15:08]:
Let's talk a little bit about transparency because that is some of the feedback I get from listeners of the show or people who read my work. They say I love how transparent you are. And then some people who see it tell me they're afraid of being transparent. They feel like that's showing too much sometimes in the context of like, how can I give away all my secrets? What would I sell then? But then more so, it's usually like a privacy concern. People are afraid that if I'm too transparent, I'm reducing my own privacy. So where is the line of how can I be transparent without feeling like I'm trading off personal privacy?

Robin Dreeke [00:15:44]:
So I'm gonna put privacy aside because there's always a fear of privacy being hacked, being taken advantage of, and all I can say to that is you just gotta have a lot of good security protocols put up on your systems. Change your passwords and things like that. Because I can tell you I'm very transparent. I'm very open and yet I'm safe. Because the big issue with people fearing being transparent is they're insecure. They're afraid to share who they are and what their vulnerabilities are because they fear someone's gonna take advantage of them. They fear they're gonna be laughed, that they fear they're gonna be judged. Now granted, it's okay.

Robin Dreeke [00:16:19]:
It's okay that you've had that fear. It is the predominant fear people have. It's why the greatest fear people have is public speaking. It's because you fear you're about to be judged by people and not be accepted. And how does that go back to ancient tribal brain? Well, if you are not part of meaningful groups and organizations and part of the tribe the likelihood of your survival is slim to none and so we fear being ostracized from groups and organizations. Every single day in our lives we're trying to affiliate with meaningful groups and organizations and we take a lot of pride in a great meaningful group and organization. Out of everything I've done in life I identify as 2 things: father and Marine Corps officer. You know, those are big things to me.

Robin Dreeke [00:16:55]:
Meanwhile, I've done all these other things, spy recruiter, FBI, behavior, blah blah blah. I don't care. Those are my big identifiers because those have great meaning to me, and so that's what we are constantly trying to do. And so when you have a fear of being vulnerable to people and saying what you're not good at, it's because you're you have some insecurities about it and it's okay. To me though, everything comes down to another favorite word of mine besides congruency is dichotomies. Life is a dichotomy. We can't have and really appreciate the most amazing awesome days we have unless we have really crappy days. We have to have a contrast and so in order to be safe to share we have to balance it with, you know, an understanding of oversharing.

Robin Dreeke [00:17:37]:
So with me, vulnerability and confidence in being vulnerable also has to be balanced with humility. So confidence and humility are 2 things that need to be balanced. Confident with that, hey, here's my skill set. Here's what I'm good at. At same time, I can be humble enough to say, here's what I'm not good at, and be willing to share it. And here's why it's really, really important to allow yourself to be vulnerable, to share information, and to share who you are that might not be in your own mind as helpful or might be a little too self deprecating. It might be you think you might lose a sale because of it. Here's another truth of all human beings.

Robin Dreeke [00:18:13]:
1, all human beings are predictable because I can predict that everyone's going to act in their own best interests in terms of their safety, security, and prosperity for themselves, and those who they care about. The other guaranteed of all human beings is we're all working on something. No one ever lived that was perfect, that's got it all right. I've read so many books over here. So many great biographies of great human beings have done amazing things and everyone does amazing things. But you know what? Everyone's also very flawed. And so if you try to come across and present yourself as unflawed, that does not give feelings of safety. That gives a feeling of someone who's afraid to share who they are.

Robin Dreeke [00:18:48]:
They're afraid to be genuine. They're afraid to be organic. That does not inspire someone to feel safe with you.

Jay Clouse [00:18:54]:
There's a fairness aspect to it. Right? How can I expect someone else to take any risk with me if I'm not willing to take some level of risk in terms of vulnerability, transparency? That's clicking for me a little bit. How can I expect that of others if I'm not willing to do it?

Robin Dreeke [00:19:12]:
Perfectly stated. Absolutely. The greatest courage we have is that is taking that first step. Are you willing to take that first step? Matter of fact, the next project I'm working on, you know, I'm interviewing a bunch of, former CIA guys, MI6 guys, James Bond types, and Tradecraft, and how to use their skill sets to overcome chaos at work and then apply it to real life. An amazing pattern has been emerging here and that is everyone is generally working from the game theory of tit for tat. And tit for tat, if you haven't heard of it, is the game theory that if you start with kindness and someone reciprocates with kindness, then you move forward and you're in a mutually beneficial balanced relationship. But if you start with kindness and they zing you, then if you double down on kindness, you're gonna be taken advantage of. Or if you always start with not being kind and being skeptical, that also doesn't work.

Robin Dreeke [00:20:03]:
So you start with kindness. If they zing you, you zing back, but as soon as they go back to kindness after you've zinged them, then you still progress forward. And so what the long answer to that is, if you have the courage to start with kindness, if you have the courage to start with openness and honesty, the results, they're scientific. And you should go on there and research. Anyone can do it. Research, you know, the most winningest game theory that's out there over just short term and long term, it's tit for tat. And because when you start with kindness and you just reciprocate the relationships that you're getting back, that's what works.

Jay Clouse [00:20:35]:
After a quick break, Robin shares how you cannot just make yourself look good, but how to build authentic relationships in real life and online using what he calls the 4 golden keys of communication. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. And now back to my conversation with Robin Drake. I've heard you talk before about relationships. He said, it's not about how you look. It's about the relationships that you build. And I think that's really prescient for creators because a lot of times since we are either put up on this pedestal by our audience or we try to put our self up on this pedestal, we feel like we need to paint this picture of we are the authority.

Jay Clouse [00:21:20]:
We are the expert. We have the answers. Look how awesome and smart we are. But I think sometimes that comes at the expense of how accessible we are to those people. So can you talk a little bit more about building relationships? How people can do that interpersonally, generally? And then I'm gonna take a step forward into how that maps to an online space.

Robin Dreeke [00:21:45]:
So relationships, again, it can build them with absolutely everyone regardless of whether you think you like someone, won't like someone. A relationship is different than liking. Liking helps relationships but in order to have a great healthy relationship, one, it should be balanced. Relationships part of that dichotomy is the balance between what you're doing for yourself what you're doing for others, but everyone's energy for giving of others is different as well. One of the gauges I use to balance a healthy relationship is the feeling of resentment, And if a feeling or a tinge of resentment starts filtering in, it's out of balance and so you need to bring it back in balance. One way you bring things back in balance is you have a great open and honest conversation about how you feel, what you've done to unbalance the relationship, and what we might be able to do together to bring it back in balance so it's a good healthy relationship. But in order to build relationships, it really starts with having the courage to make it about the other person. You can still have your goals, your objectives, and your agenda, but when you state those things and make it about the other person, that allows them to feel safe.

Robin Dreeke [00:22:44]:
It allows them to feel empowered. It gives them situational awareness, and so I have what I call the golden keys of communication. They're threaded in absolutely everything I do because these golden keys of communication, whether you're in person, remotely, texting, emails, I don't care, if you make sure at least one of these four things is infused in everything you say and everything you do and your words, actions, and deeds, the entire shift goes from you to them. Their brain rewards them with the big four, the oxytocin, the serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins are firing in the brain because your language and your actions are saying it's all about them and it makes me feel safe is number 1, seek their thoughts and opinions instead of giving them yours. In other words, if you have something it is that you're trying to sell, something you're trying to do, something you're trying to achieve, instead of saying, hey, here's what I think this would be really good for you in your life, shift and say, hey, what do you think about this and adding it to your life? Seeking a thought and opinion. 2, talk in terms of their challenges, priorities, pain points, and friction points as I've said a few times, instead of lamenting and complaining about yours. In other words, instead of saying, hey, here's what I got going on, reverse it. Hey, So what are some of the greatest challenges you're working on today? What was the spark all those years ago to help you arrive to who you are today? Number 3, nonjudgmental curiosity, active curiosity about them and their lives.

Robin Dreeke [00:24:06]:
In other words, when they're sharing information with you, instead of negating that information, say, wow. I haven't quite heard something put that way before. Help me understand. How did you come up with that? And then once they share their context, you get context. Context begets understanding, then it begets empathy, and then you can reverse it and seek a thought and opinion. So, wow, you have really shared a lot with me. I'm curious. Would this be a resource for you that might be good in terms of the things you're trying to achieve? Instead of blurting right out and say, hey, I I think you need to do this.

Robin Dreeke [00:24:34]:
You should do this. That is the worst word in the world you could use, by the way, with any human beings is you should. That word should so judgmental, so directive, makes people feel very untrustworthy in safe. And finally, the 4th in the behaviors is empowering people with choice. When people feel they have a choice, that makes them feel safe. And now granted, when you're empowering people with choices, the choices you're offering also good with you. So it's where it's a beautiful balance of the equation. So you don't offer people choices that you think are horrible choices for you.

Robin Dreeke [00:25:07]:
And that simple word to infuse in the things you're doing that gives people a choice, if. Now I've recruited a lot of competent human sources for the FBI's including spies and all the hooky spooky spy stuff. Every time I'd have a conversation with Alon, I'd always end up saying something to the line of if this is something you feel comfortable with. If it's not, please let me know what I might be able to do to make you feel comfortable. If not, I'll completely leave you alone and I won't contact you again. Let me know how you'd like to proceed. Do you see how that entire shift was all about them and empowered them with choices so to say, hey, I'd like you to cooperate with the United States government. Totally.

Robin Dreeke [00:25:43]:
Huge difference. Meanwhile, the objective is exactly the same.

Jay Clouse [00:25:46]:
Totally. This is so interesting because you're you're naming some things that through trial and error, I think I've come to understand in the world of content creation. Yes. I haven't been taught these things, but you're you're giving name and language to some things that I've definitely done noticed. Oh, that got a good outcome and continue to do because of it. And this stuff all becomes pretty easy to conceptualize when I'm standing face to face with somebody and having a conversation with them. But the awkward thing for creators is a lot of times the relationships we're building are not truly bidirectional. You know, we are creating content.

Jay Clouse [00:26:24]:
We're speaking to people directly but in a one to one many times format. And we may not actually know who's on the receiving end of this communication. So maybe you've thought through this. Maybe you haven't. But maybe we can workshop it live a little bit. How do you think this stuff changes when we are talking to a camera but ends up being seen by individuals?

Robin Dreeke [00:26:48]:
So circle back to what I said at the very beginning. It's the congruency. My first time I ever tried to recruit a spy, I was in New York City. I'm on the streets. I literally had, I think, 6 months in the FBI. My job was to walk up to a Russian military intelligence officer. The mission was to see if this person wanted a spy and be a resource for the United States government against his own country. When you put it like that, that's horrible, is it not? You know, I mean that is a high stress moment where like literally right now I got flashbulb vibes.

Robin Dreeke [00:27:17]:
I'm like stressing and you know like if I walked up to you said hey you want to spy for your country and work for the night site's government?

Jay Clouse [00:27:22]:
Yeah, very intense.

Robin Dreeke [00:27:24]:
This does not bring a sense of safety and confidence and it's going to be a one way conversation too because literally the chances of me getting a response is slim to none. So this is really a monologue as opposed to I believe we're the only organism on this planet that can do exactly this. We can reframe our context. Instead of walking up and thinking to myself, I'm about to approach a Russian spy who I don't know and ask him if he wants a spy for us against his country, I said to myself, In reality, what I'm doing is I'm going to walk up to a friend and offer him an opportunity to do something for him and his family, and it's up to him whether he accepts it or not. So that became very congruent. I felt very good about that. I was going to offer a human being a great opportunity, and I didn't care if he wanted it or not, you know, because I knew he had priorities, challenges, and pain points. I had resources, and in exchange for those resources, I need information.

Robin Dreeke [00:28:13]:
If he wants to do it, great. If not, that's fine. See how much more relaxed I am. It's all good. So same thing when you're speaking to an audience that's gonna be a one way monologue, just be very, very congruent with, I'm here to provide the best content I can, the best information I can to solve challenges, priorities, and pain points in someone's life. And when you're transparent about what it is you're trying to do, who you are as a person, and you're trying to do it, and if you fall short, here's a comment section. Leave me some notes. I'll do any adjustment if anyone has some follow-up.

Robin Dreeke [00:28:42]:
And so to me, it's interesting when you said it's not a conversation. You're right. It's not necessarily a 1 on 1 live conversation like we're having now, but everything's a conversation. It's a slower tempo conversation. You're still gonna get feedback.

Jay Clouse [00:28:58]:
Yeah.

Robin Dreeke [00:28:58]:
It's just not gonna be like this feedback. But what's interesting concept of real time? Real time just means now. Feedback is feedback. You're still gonna have the correspondence with those that want to correspond back and forth. So just listen to those words. And, again, you be organic, be congruent. I think the messaging as you're doing right now, you're successful with it because you're doing just that.

Jay Clouse [00:29:19]:
Yeah. And when I think about the 4 keys you just shared with us, you can do all of this in your content knowing that it's going to be consumed asynchronously. Right? Seek thoughts and opinions of others. We released a video recently where my producer and I were having a conversation. We came to a point where I was like, I don't actually know the answer to that. I would love for you guys in the comments to let us know, like, how you watch this show. Are you on your phone? Are you on your computer? Earlier, we were talking and I told you, I don't know why people trust me. I had the thought at the time.

Jay Clouse [00:29:48]:
I should have asked people in the comments. Tell me why it is that you're here. What do you like about what we're bringing here? Because that is seeking thoughts and opinions of others. That is creating this two way dialogue that you're talking about. Talk in terms of priorities, challenges, and pains. That's pretty much what we as creator educators do all the time. We are here to help you get the outcomes that you want, overcome the challenges that you're facing, allay the pains that you're feeling, give people choices. We make free things.

Jay Clouse [00:30:17]:
We make paid things. You give people different ways they can interact with us at different levels of investment. I'm trying to think about validation without curiosity.

Robin Dreeke [00:30:24]:
So you validate when you provide them the content they're looking for. That's validation that you listen to them. So it's a very subtle easy thing. It's also thing too when you were saying these things you were doing, you are actually already in a conversation. So it sounded like when you asked the question that you were thinking that you were the first person that started this conversation and it was one-sided with your audience. I don't think so. You've listened to what your audience wanted and you're creating content in response to them.

Jay Clouse [00:30:54]:
That's true.

Robin Dreeke [00:30:55]:
So you're actually the second step in a conversation that they started. And that's why people trust you because you're not assuming what it is they wanna know. You already know what they wanna know, and you're doing your best to satisfy that and then listening to responses. So they're the ones that have started the conversation, and you're doing so with all these other data points in there. And so the validation that we're talking about, that curiosity, is you were curious about what it is they needed to know, and you validated them by providing them answers to the things they wanted to know, and then continuing to validate them by continually listening. Instead of being so egocentric and have sense of superiority that I'm going to tell you what you need to know. No. I'm going to listen to what it is you want to know.

Robin Dreeke [00:31:35]:
Matter of fact, in my next book that's coming out, there's a point in there when I remember the first time I was teaching, I was an advanced instructor at the counterintelligence Training Center at the FBI Academy here in Quantico where I was teaching recruitment skills and all the double agent operations and false flag operations. I remember the first time I'm before a class, I'm up there, advanced instructor, and do all these things, and I'm watching the class kind of glazing over a little bit, kind of losing them, and so I called in a mentor teacher and friend that I worked with there. I said, Hey, Bill. Can you sit in the back of the class and just observe me for the second half and give me some feedback? Again, takes courage. Please judge me. And he got back there, and he got with me afterwards. He says, Robin, you know, your content was great. Your delivery is great.

Robin Dreeke [00:32:21]:
He said, but you've really gotta entertain this thought. Are you telling them what it is you wanna tell them, or you giving them what they wanna hear? In other words, you can have all the information in the world, but if they don't want that information, you're wasting your breath. So take that time to understand what it is they wanna hear and the way they wanna have it delivered, and that's what you can provide. So I was giving way too much. I was giving what I call death by Robin. They only wanted a small part of it in a small way in this way in this particular way. Instead of me inflicting myself on then, I reversed it and started seeing what do they need from me. And that's what you're doing.

Robin Dreeke [00:32:57]:
So you're the second part in the instead of initiating that conversation, you're the responders of the conversation.

Jay Clouse [00:33:02]:
Can you talk a little bit more about this idea of people receive what they want to hear? Because this gets to the crux of a lot of the conversations we have on YouTube around, like, packaging a video, the title and thumbnail of what people click on, subject lines and emails. I find that you are much more successful in getting people to engage with your content if you deliver this in a way that is specifically addressing, you know, their priorities. And sometimes you kinda have to address, like, the baser level priorities, it seems, to get people to pay attention more quickly. But I'd love to hear your take on this.

Robin Dreeke [00:33:39]:
The hardest question always is the balancing of solving a pain point. I always find asking a question that gets people engaged because the thing I love to say is you don't plant seeds with people by telling them what you think. You plant seeds with people by asking them what they think, and if you ask a question in an area that is a challenging priority for them, that grabs their attention. And then if you offer them a solution in terms of that thing during that quick little grabber for the first couple seconds and it's visually attractive, you know, so you're shifting up fast enough, that might get you the views. But, again, if the algorithm ain't grabbing it right because, again, again, on the technical side, which I don't know at all, it's not gonna work as good. But that's basically what you wanna do. You wanna make sure you're asking a question that grabs the attention of your audience in an area of a priority in their lives that will grab them. Matter of fact, there's a, another great book called the narrative gym.

Robin Dreeke [00:34:34]:
It's called an and but therefore statement, and what it is is you start out with a challenge and you double down on it. So creator science. So let's use your podcast title. Let me see if I can try to do this on a fly. If you're in a space that requires a lot of creativity and you find yourself really challenged but you don't really know where to go for for a great resource, what you should be doing is tuning in and listen to Jay Klaus. Therefore, you'd be able to really move forward with all the things you're trying to achieve in a business. So again, it's and, but, therefore. So it's using that kind of doubling down on the challenge, asking a question at the beginning, and then but there's a solution to things you're looking for, therefore, is the call to action.

Robin Dreeke [00:35:24]:
So throwing that into the narrative at the beginning can also be helpful. So all these little nuggets, who knows? Not bad on the fly, Not bad. I liked it. It was good. It was good.

Jay Clouse [00:35:34]:
When you share these 4 golden keys to help build relationships, help people communicate well, you kind of implicitly spoke about another topic that you bring up a lot, which is ego suspension. Can you just give us a little bit about the importance of ego suspension and how that plays into these approaches to building trust?

Robin Dreeke [00:35:53]:
Yeah. Ego suspension, the most challenging thing we have as an organism, as a human being, as a homo sapien, because without our egos, we would not be a species. We would not have survived. It's what allows us to act in our own best interest to feel safe, and feeling safe means we're going to not get harmed. We're not gonna get injured, not gonna get taken advantage of. But if the ego is too inflated too much and it becomes arrogance and we start shutting down other people to the sense that we have a sense of superiority, that does not allow people to feel safe. Therefore, ego suspension is really the key to being able to move forward to a great healthy strong relationships. Boy, and but therefore statement right there.

Robin Dreeke [00:36:34]:
In other words, balance the dichotomy. A lot of times our dichotomy with our own ego is out of balance. It's too much me me me me me. Matter of fact, another great book by Robert Greene is called the 48 Laws of Power. Power, and the word power, is all about self. It's about popularity. It's about control, and that is an ego out of balance. Leadership and leadership in a sense of being of service, though.

Robin Dreeke [00:36:58]:
There's not leadership by title and position. Leadership means that, matter of fact, as a creator, you're a leader. You're inspiring someone to take an action that is in their best interest according to what they think is their best interest, and so you're making it all about them. You're being of service. That's what servant leadership is, and so it's balancing that dichotomy between self and others. That is ego suspension and not to the extent of you're going to harm yourself. So that's in that dichotomy out of balance, but just keeping it in balance. And that goes back to the dichotomy of confidence with humility, power, and leadership.

Robin Dreeke [00:37:29]:
It's all a nice balance.

Jay Clouse [00:37:31]:
How do we work on this? It's not as easy as just snapping my fingers and saying, well, I'm gonna solve my ego issues. How do you think about or maybe when you were younger and this wasn't so dialed in, how did you work on ego suspension as part of your day to day? It's easy

Robin Dreeke [00:37:49]:
for us to recognize when it's out of balance. We can see it in the faces of the people around us all the time. That's where I learned my ego was out of balance. I had no idea about it. I thought I was just a naturally fun, eco, garius, outgoing guy, but I was making all about me. Every single statement was about me, me, me, me, me, me. Why? Because I when I the way I grew up in a very, very poor family with beautiful addictions going on in my household, no money, which makes you in order to feel safe, I was making myself feel safe, not my family, so I need to be very gritty, very resilient, very self reliant. Those are beautiful traits to have, but it also creates an imbalance.

Robin Dreeke [00:38:25]:
I was about me and self, And so later on where I go into the Naval Academy Marine Corps and FBI, all these beautiful traits which can be very healthy, very good, they were out of bounds because I what I didn't have in there was being of service to others, looking out for others, learning how to instead of trying to make myself look good, I was not letting other people look good. It was just out of whack and out of whack. The way it manifested itself was non verbally. You can see when you torque someone off, when you make them angry, when you make them upset, and so because at least I was born with empathy and I cared very much about what people thought, I was able to say, oops, I am doing something here. And this is part of ego suspension and bringing it into balances. You have to own your own behavior. You gotta get yourself out of the victim mindset. You gotta stop being a wound collector where you think the world is out to get you, the world is doing you wrong, theirs wrong, because all these behaviors that makes us feel like the world's out to get us, that they're persecuting me at work or something's going sideways, woe is me, what is happening there is you're not owning it.

Robin Dreeke [00:39:33]:
You're not asking yourself what did I do that didn't allow them to feel safe with me? Because I did something that has triggered a trauma response to them because we all have trauma responses. You know, another great book, Body Keeps a Score is what it's called, and it talks about the traumas we have, all human beings have growing up. And so our trauma response a lot of times will trigger our insecurities. Insecurities make us very self centered, and so people with a trauma response that's way out of whack will feel themselves a victim. They'll be what, you know, my good friend Joe Navarro calls in dangerous personalities a wound collector. Wound collectors, we see them all the time. These are the people they're always always lamenting. They're always moaning and complaining about everyone else around them, and they got it all right, and why is the world persecuting me? These are wound collectors.

Robin Dreeke [00:40:13]:
In order to get out of that, you got to own the behavior of what did you do that inspired them to not feel safe with you. That's what all starts there. And then we can actually take your accountability for your actions. You can make a choice. Do it again or not do it again because it's human beings are very predictable. Make them feel unsafe. They're gonna act like asses around you.

Jay Clouse [00:40:31]:
So what you're saying right here is if I take accountability for my actions, there's a chance that I look at that as now that's attacking the identity or the concept I have of myself as I am bad because thing happened. But taking accountability of your actions doesn't mean that you were malicious. It doesn't mean that their response was logical. You know? I think there's a point in my life when I realized if I have good intent, I don't make myself feel guilty for how something went. I just learned from the data. I wish I could give that to people.

Robin Dreeke [00:41:07]:
Everyone's on their own journey, on their own tempo, and on their own path, and you hit all the beautiful words in there. Absolutely. This is not about beating yourself up. This is not about I did something bad. Those are words that like bad, wrong. I don't you go by those words. We have data points. If you don't like the cause and effect of what happened, just change what you did to cause it.

Robin Dreeke [00:41:27]:
Now granted, if you then adjust your behavior because you owned the behavior you did that caused a trauma response from the other person, remember no one's doing anything to you. They're being who they are. You just happen to be in the way. You happen to be the straw that that broke that trauma response, and they directed that that ire at you. Now granted, if you shift your behavior to good healthy behavior and they're still toxic, that's when we walk away from crazy. And now if we can't walk away from crazy because their coworkers, bosses, manager, family members, then we just manage crazy by understanding it's not about me, meaning that they are being who they are. They're not out to get me. All I got to do is not be the person that's triggering the trauma response.

Robin Dreeke [00:42:08]:
You know, it's a bad way to think about it, but this is like if a bear is chasing you in the woods, you don't have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun the guy next to you. And so the same thing here is just don't be the person that's gonna trigger that trauma response. And now if you're not feeding that trauma response to them and not validating all those unhealthy behaviors, they're gonna get bored with that unhealthy behavior, and they're gonna stop doing it around you as well. So that I mean, this is a whole different side topic about how to manage, you know unhealthy relationships and unhealthy behavior in your life, but basically don't feed it. Don't it's easy to say don't take it personally, but it's true. They're not doing it to you, they're just responding to the stimulus and data points you're giving them. So assess what data points you're giving them and giving that response and don't do that.

Jay Clouse [00:42:52]:
After one last break, Robin and I talk about how competency and accountability go hand in hand in building trust with your audience. So stick around. We'll be right back. And now please enjoy the rest of my conversation with Robin Drink. I wanna circle back to trust a little bit here with the time we have left. A lot of people in this online space, when we are building our brand and building our business and trying to convince people to trust us, we think authority. We've gotta demonstrate authority. We've gotta demonstrate competency.

Jay Clouse [00:43:28]:
And when I look at people talking about trust, they often talk about competency as part of the model for it. And I would love to hear your response to where does competency or past results play into trust building in your mind?

Robin Dreeke [00:43:44]:
Yeah. Competency, definitely. Does your resume match what it is you're putting out? Does the product say what you say it's gonna say? In other words, competency to me is delivering on the actions you say you're going to do, and a product is going to do exactly what it says it's going to do, and will it do it over a period of time? That's competency. And then when, because it will happen, when things go sideways, do you own the behavior that goes sideways? Because remember when you own it, when you're vulnerable, when you're transparent, that builds trust because you can have competency, but competency without the core values of trust, which is open eyes communication, transparency, and vulnerability are going to evaporate because you become untrustworthy without those behaviors. So those 2 things that I think must be aligned is is the competency, which is the ability to deliver and the tempo of which you're going to deliver it and just consistency with that delivery and then with the behaviors behind it that are supporting that when it does go sideways because nothing is infallible. Things will go sideways. It's your reaction to when things go sideways which builds a trust. So the products and service and that ability to deliver that thing that the widget that's going to do what it says it does, that is one angle of it.

Robin Dreeke [00:44:55]:
But think about this. If someone sold you the most perfect product in the world, it's eventually gonna go break, or you're gonna hear someone that had their widget break. And when they went to customer service or they went back to the owner or they went back to someone and asked about it, and they were treated like dirt, they were not regarded, they're dismissed. What's that do to you? And and regardless of how you like that product, are you gonna think twice about it? It's the behavior of the company in response to someone having an issue with it is anything but those behaviors. Even if you love your product and service, you're gonna second guess that company. And so having the behaviors of trust as well as the competency behind it, I think they go hand in hand.

Jay Clouse [00:45:33]:
Okay. I guess to end this, I've heard you say before that during your time in counterintelligence, you said I was selling the most difficult product to sell in the world. Being American patriotism is what you said. Being an intelligence asset for a different country. So trust is obviously a huge part of somebody's willingness to transact. So how would you encourage people as they go back into their day to day life after this? How do we apply these concepts of trust when we ask for the sale?

Robin Dreeke [00:46:06]:
It goes back to and this is a nice way to circle back and around. So as I've related to recruiting a spy, as I call the toughest sales job in the world because I'm selling a service of American patriotism to someone who doesn't wanna buy it, who's working on behalf of another country, and I couldn't cold call. It was illegal for me to initiate a contact with them. Right? And so you first start out with you gotta make it all about them. If you have to identify those priorities, challenges, and pain points, and you have to talk in terms of their priorities, you have to validate the choices they're gonna make in life, and you have to empower them with choice about how to do it. When you can identify the challenges, probably pain points of your potential clients and you make it all about them doing that language, and then when you couple it with the behaviors of trust, with being open honest communication, transparency, vulnerability, That's what it it comes down to. The big thing that turns people off from any sale remember, you're never selling a product or a widget. You're selling yourself.

Robin Dreeke [00:46:59]:
In order for someone to wanna buy you, they have to feel safe with you. They have to trust you. And when you approach them and empower them with choice about whether to continue forward with you, that is the most unusual thing people do. Every single time I'd walk up to someone that I was selling my product and service to of American patriotism, I'd always end it with, and if you never wanna hear from me again, please let me know. I'll make a special note not to be a bother. I never had anyone say don't contact me ever again. To the entire conversation, I made it all about them. I talked in terms of their priorities.

Robin Dreeke [00:47:36]:
I was offering them resources. And even if they did not want to buy what it was I was selling, the conversation was ended in a great positive way. So at any point later on, they would. And also, that's where personal brand comes from. This is where references come from. This is where recommendations come from because even if they are not in a position today to want your service or product, they'll recommend you to someone who does. That is the best thing in the world because I always used to say, I'd rather have 7 people cooperating with me. Give me a 120% of their effort than a 100 people.

Robin Dreeke [00:48:07]:
Give me 5% of their effort unwillingly. And so I always empowered people with choice because if you wanna walk away and it's not good for you, I'm gonna help you not have me inflict myself on your life. But who else is making all about you to this extent? No one. That's why it had no one walk away. So just keep making it about them, and you give people choice. And people fear giving people a choice of walking away because they feel they're gonna walk away. And if they do, good. Because that's a relationship that they wouldn't think would be good.

Jay Clouse [00:48:41]:
I've seen that work in my favor so many times. It could be as simple as a pitch to come be a guest on a podcast. I always end it with no pressure, no expectation. Or if you're interested, but these times don't work, please let me know. It's this even just the out of you don't have to feel guilty by saying no. That is a choice you give somebody that makes them feel safer. And it's so powerful just to explicitly say you can say no. And just by saying that, I find that people more often at least respond if not say yes.

Robin Dreeke [00:49:13]:
It happens all the time when I'm negotiating with people doing a speaking engagement or someone's interviewing me for a training session I'm going to do. You know, when the preliminary training session, you know, conversation you have is like here's the services, here's what I can do, and it's a great conversation I always end it with, and it's probably not the best, but I always say, hey, listen. I know how these things work, and if you as a board decide not to go with me I completely understand and I'll want to let you know is thanks for a great conversation today I hope you found it as great as I did I hope you know I'll take it I'll have fond memories of it so if I never hear from you again no problem at all just let you know that hey no bridges burned this was a great conversation thanks very much

Jay Clouse [00:49:51]:
And to your point of congruency, this probably shows them this person doesn't have an unspoken agenda we're not aware of. Again, it just feels safe. It feels like

Robin Dreeke [00:50:01]:
Unspoken agendas. Yep.

Jay Clouse [00:50:02]:
This person doesn't have this behavior they're trying to compel me to. They are here with my interest in mind, which is a lot of what you've shared here today.

Robin Dreeke [00:50:12]:
Yeah. Jay, and you even said it before we started today, and I said it to you is like, you know, again, if anyone's watching Jay's show or listening to Jay's show, you go to my website, you see me on other shows, you see me on anything. I'm exactly the same. It's congruency. Like you said, it is what you see is what you get. Because that way, if someone wants you, there's no, like, surprise. Because the worst thing you can do is when someone hires you, brings you on board, or decides to go with your services, and all of a sudden, they have the surprise. Woah.

Robin Dreeke [00:50:39]:
That's not the person that we thought we were hiring. That destroys brand. It destroys trust because it means you're being deceptive in some way.

Jay Clouse [00:50:46]:
I feel like I would be remiss in a video context, and I ask you this. What are some of the nonverbal ways to make people feel safe that you have learned?

Robin Dreeke [00:50:58]:
Smile and make it genuine. I mean, head tilt smile. So years ago when I first been Joe Navarro, great nonverbal expert, wrote the book What Everybody's Saying, still an international bestseller. He was the founder one of the founders of my behavioral analysis program inside the FBI. I used to be this nonverbal massive guy. But when I started focusing more on recruiting and, and working with human beings, it was, became a part of the whole, but it really comes down to, and he says it so eloquently, the non verbals of comfort and the nonverbals of stress. And what you always wanna do is you want to have the comfort nonverbals and you want to elicit comfort nonverbals from others. In other words, when you're engaging with someone, you want open honesty and accommodating nonverbals.

Robin Dreeke [00:51:43]:
Comfort. You want eyebrow elevation, smiling, head tilt exposing karate, palms up, ventral displays. You want to lean in and be up and elevated, but if you're invading their space, you don't want to do that. So if they pull back, just pull back twice as far. You know, be very accommodating to tempo as well. People have a certain rate of speech. You don't want it to be too fast and over the top on them. You know, pull it back if there's slightly slower tempo of speech.

Robin Dreeke [00:52:07]:
You just wanna be very accommodating with your nonverbals as opposed to rushing tempos, eyebrow compression, lip compression, anything that's coming in and stress and coming at you like this. But the best way to not think about numbers because remember, if you're thinking about nonverbally what you're seeing and what you're doing, you're not doing the most important thing in the world. You're not listening to their words and making it about them. So in order to kind of bypass thinking about it too much, before you have any engagement with any human being, think about what you're going to do to be of great service. And look. I'm even just seeing it. I just start smiling. When I think in here is what am I going to do to be of great service to them, and I'm going to make this conversation all about them.

Robin Dreeke [00:52:51]:
Alright. Let's go. That's what you can do because when you have that emotion feeling, it's going to come out congruently very, very well. Now I'm gonna give one caveat to this. If for some chance, and it happens, I get this question asked, that you have what's called nassing resting angry face. Some might call it another face. Right? If you have natural resting angry face, like when you're focused on someone, you kind of scowl a little bit, the best way to mitigate it because if you can't control it, just be transparent. Say, listen.

Robin Dreeke [00:53:20]:
Before we get going, Jay, I gotta let you know. I am here. I'm very excited to be here because I'm putting a great program together. I'm gonna make it all about you because this is what I'm all about. But I've been told I have nasty and resting angry face. So before we get started, if you see me like this, just know I'm paying attention to you. So, again, I made you laugh. You made you smile because then I'm being self deprecating.

Robin Dreeke [00:53:40]:
I'm being humorous. I'm being transparent, which allowed you to feel safe. So it mitigates if you happen to be that type of person that does that because I'm basically saying I'm being transparent, I'm being open, and I'm doing my best to make it all about you.

Jay Clouse [00:53:59]:
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Those go a long way. It really helps us out and I read all of them. In fact, if you're listening on Spotify, you can actually leave a comment on this episode, which I would absolutely love to see and publish. Those reviews go a long way in helping us grow the show, so please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If you will learn more about Robin, visit his website at robindreke.com. That's robindreke.com. There's also a link to that in the show notes as well as Robin's books that I mentioned in the intro.

Jay Clouse [00:54:36]:
Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.