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Today we have an exceptional guest joining us, Robin Dreeke. Robin is a 
retired FBI special agent and former chief of the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program, bringing more than two decades of experience strategizing trust in high-stakes environments. His expertise isn’t limited to recruiting spies and building alliances in the world of intelligence—Robin’s unique perspective translates directly to entrepreneurship, investing, and relationship-building in business.
Throughout his career, Robin has mastered the art of communication, rapport, and character assessment—skills he believes are not just “soft skills,” but decisive assets for success. He’s also a bestselling author, with four books including “It’s Not All About Me,” a guide to shifting focus from ourselves to others in order to build authentic trust.
In this episode, our host Dave Wolcott uncovers Robin’s powerful framework for building genuine relationships. Robin shares practical advice drawn from both his FBI and Marine Corps backgrounds, revealing how transparency, nonjudgmental validation, and empowering others are at the heart of lasting rapport and trust.
Listeners will gain actionable insights on how to assess people, communicate with intention, and create stronger alliances in both business and family life. If you want to sharpen your relationship capital, this episode offers a proven roadmap from one of the world’s leading experts.
In This Episode
- Robin’s journey from the Marine Corps to leading trust at the FBI
- A simple, actionable framework for building trust and rapport
- How transparency and authentic communication create safer, stronger relationships
- Techniques for assessing character, values, and congruence in business partnerships
I just live in the world of transparency. I found transparency is the greatest mitigator of misunderstandings, the greatest mitigator of someone thinking there is manipulation or subterfuge in some way. It is the greatest mitigator of people who might not be trustworthy. Just be transparent. If you are unwilling to be transparent, share why you are unwilling, because that is transparency.
Welcome to the Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy podcast, where we help entrepreneurs exponentially build wealth through passive income to live a life of freedom and prosperity. Are you tired of paying too much in taxes, gambling your future on the stock market, and want to learn about hidden strategies for making your money work for you? Now your host, Dave Wolcott, serial entrepreneur and author of the bestselling book The Holistic Wealth Strategy.
Hey everyone, welcome back to Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Today’s episode is about one of the most underestimated assets in wealth building: trust. My guest is Robin Dreeke, a retired FBI special agent and former chief of the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. For more than two decades, Robin’s job was strategizing trust, recruiting spies, building human sources, and navigating high-stakes relationships where safety, influence, and alignment were everything. Here is why this matters to you. In entrepreneurship, investing, and private deals, success often comes down to people—who you partner with, who you invest with, and who you choose to bring into your inner circle. Communication, rapport, and character assessment are not soft skills, they are decisive skills.
In this conversation, we break down Robin’s practical framework for building trust, reading behavior patterns, identifying congruence, and strengthening relationship capital, whether that is with your family, your team, or a sponsor you are considering investing with. If you want to sharpen your ability to assess people, communicate with intention, and build stronger alliances in business and life, this is a powerful one. Robin, welcome to the show.
Dave, it is an honor and a pleasure to be here, especially talking to another veteran Marine, because brothers forever. It has been a lot of fun so far, so thank you.
Yeah, likewise. Our blood is the same color, it still runs green. It is quite interesting, we had some parallels early on, really around the same time frame. We promised the audience not to bore you with sea stories about the adventures we had back in the Marine Corps. However, there are amazing commonalities, as we were talking about values and traits that the Marine Corps truly exemplifies. Now we both have sons in the Marines, following down that path, which we are definitely proud fathers to see. It is interesting, as we conduct ourselves as entrepreneurs in the business and investing world, we seek similar values and people we can align with, trying to seek trust and communicate properly. I think your discussion is going to be very timely, because we live in such a world of uncertainty these days.
Most of our audience is focused on building their businesses as well as investing in private assets, where communication, rapport building, and diligence on sponsors in the private world is critically important. It is probably one of the number one factors in determining if an investment is going to pan out properly. I really appreciate your time today and look forward to peeling back the onion on your framework—how to build rapport, communicate better, and understand how people are wired so we can determine whether they are going to be successful or people we want to partner with. Why don’t we start with a little bit about your journey and how you got to where you are today, Robin?
I will give the quick snippet at the end of what I retired as from the Bureau, and then take you on a quick arc to how it wound up there and make it relevant to the audience. My final role in the FBI was Chief of the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. I retired in 2018 after 22 years at the FBI and 9 years in the military, 5 as a Marine Corps officer. My main purpose was strategizing what I call the hooky spooky spy stuff, mostly recruiting spies. I did it as a case agent in the field my entire career, then led a team helping other agents do the same. Whether recruiting spies or confidence human sources, my job every single day for 22 years was strategizing trust. You could not get someone to buy my service of American patriotism unless I could solve a critical life challenge in their life with a resource I had.
The most important thing was whether they could trust me with their life and their family’s lives, because that was the level of risk they were taking by investing in me. Every single day was strategizing trust, never manipulation or deception, because if a human being suspects that, there is no trust. I had to exemplify behaviors every single meeting, every single moment, because you always had to re-recruit the human being and ride their waves of emotion and insecurities. I always had to have open, honest communication, transparency, and vulnerability. In other words, owning my behavior, knowing my strengths and weaknesses, and communicating that transparency.
When we are transparent, we give situational awareness to the other person that allows them to answer the number one question we ask every moment of every day: why should they want to? From their perspective. The base core of all human behavior is people want to feel safe. Ask yourself before you take any action or say any words, is what I am going to do or say going to inspire them to feel safe to take this action? If they do not, if they are reticent, ask yourself, what did I miss? What did I not do? This is what Jocko Willink and Leif Babin talk about in Extreme Ownership and Dichotomy of Leadership. The only thing we control is our part in them not feeling safe with us. That is what we strategized every day.
My arc to get there was wanting to be an astronaut, naval aviator, and jet pilot growing up. I barely got into the Naval Academy, barely got out, because I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. I had to take the SAT seven times. My eyesight went to 20/30, uncorrectable back then, so naval aviation went out the door. The Marine Corps found me, and we had a love affair of doing hard things with great people. This was the bedrock of understanding how to communicate and do the things I wound up doing. I was bad at leadership, and the Marine Corps is great at telling you what you are bad at. At my first duty station at Cherry Point, I came in dead last out of all the Second Lieutenants in peer rankings and was evaluated 14 out of 14. I said to my rating officer, “I own it. What am I doing wrong?” He said, “You need to be a better leader.”
I said, “That is subjective. Help me understand. How do I be a better leader?” He said, “You need to make it about everyone else but yourself.” Words that make sense, but without context I did not understand. I asked, “What do I do to do that?” He said, “You are a big boy, figure it out.” The gauntlet was laid down. What he was really saying was I had been a very good problem solver, but only for my own problems. Leadership, inspiring people to take action and trust you, is about letting go of focusing on your problems first and learning about the problems of others, being a resource for them, and having them trust you to solve their problems. That became the life arc that translates into everything—recruiting sources, recruiting spies, sales, management, investing. The simple question is: what can you do to inspire someone to trust you to solve a critical life challenge in their life?
The hard part is execution.
Hmm. Wow, that’s a great, really a great way of thinking about it. I don’t think many people really come at it from that perspective, and you have such a unique view on that from your entire career at the Bureau as well as the Marine Corps. So talk to us a little bit about your framework and how you do think through that from a book. I know you’ve written four books right now and you just re-released your first one. So talk to us about that book. Is there a particular framework that you use that we can kind of bottle up and start to put into practice?
100%. So yeah, my re-release of my book coming out is called It’s Not All About Me, kind of really apropos for this because it was really my first book, which was my self-life manual on how not to be the self-centered problem solver I was born to be and how to shift that focus to others. All those years ago, that Marine Corps major that said you just need to make it about everyone else but yourself, he laid down the gauntlet. What I didn’t know then that I started building was this framework, as you say, and it is actually so simple. I’m going to share what I call the bedrock of everything, the golden keys to communication that I did not have, that I was not naturally doing, but it’s so easy to implement. You can do it in your speech, you can do it in your interactions, live, texting, I don’t care what it is. Think about every single sentence you say, every single thing you put down on paper or in the text, and ask yourself, is this statement about me or is it about them? Here’s the test. Here are these four keys to ensure that it’s always about the other person, because when we make the conversation about the other person, it demonstrates that we see them, we hear them, we value them, and that’s all we’re looking for, and that we want to affiliate with them. When we’re doing those four things with another human being, genetically and biologically, it triggers good things in the brain.
The big four in the brain are firing: serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins, and dopamine. The brain is saying, this person is good for me, they’re good for my survival, and we need to move forward together because we’re very tribal. Here they are. Number one, in every interaction, think to yourself, I need to seek their thoughts and opinions instead of going on and on about what I think. Number two: speak in terms of their challenges, their priorities, their pain points, and their friction points in life instead of lamenting, complaining, and begroaning yours. In order to talk in terms of their priorities, what do you need to do? You need to figure them out. You need to listen, because in step three, you need to non-judgmentally validate with active curiosity who they are. What I mean by that is non-judgmental validation.
You gotta let go of your need for your own confirmation bias and judging of someone being right or wrong. They just are. Every human being—here’s another truism guaranteed—of all human beings are always acting in our own best interest in terms of our safety, security, and prosperity from our own very unique point of view. All you have to do to be a resource for someone, to inspire them to let you into their life, to solve that problem, to be that investor for whatever it is, is know what that looks like to them without judging what it is, because they put a lot of thought into who they are and that methodology for moving forward. The other part of that is with non-judgmental active curiosity. What I mean by active curiosity is just don’t be curious about the things that you want to know, be curious about the things that they want to share. Those are the most important things in the world to them. When you discover what the most important things in the world are to them, what are they? Those are priorities.
Now when you can think in terms of the resources you have in terms of those priorities, that’s where that conversation lies. Finally, the fourth step is empowering people with choices. People do not like to be controlled. They do not like to be pigeonholed. They do not like to be forced because that just rings of manipulation. It rings of control. When that happens, shields go up. They think, “Stand by for manipulation,” and they never want to talk to you again.
It’s a very simple thing that all you have to do is add this beautiful little word called “if.” “If that sounds good to you.” “If you’re comfortable doing that.” “If you’re not comfortable doing that, here’s two other options. Tell me which one you’re most comfortable with and what I can do to make you feel more comfortable with it.” The entire thing is about them. Meanwhile, everything you’re offering is something you’re comfortable with. You’re just offering them a path to get to yes. So those four things: seeking their thoughts and opinions, talking in terms of their challenges, priorities, and pain points, validation with non-judgmental active curiosity, and empowering them with choices. If you include one of those things in everything you say and do, the entire shift goes from you to them, and they will now hear everything coming out of your mouth. If you’re talking in terms of all those things in terms of yourself, people are being played at best. It’s going to glaze right over.
So just phrase—you can keep the same exact content. In other words, if you have a product or service that you want to sell someone or offer them to do, say, “Hey, you know, Dave, here’s what I think you would be really good at for you to do X, Y, and Z, or take this, whatever it is.” Here’s the shift. “Dave, what do you think about doing X, Y, and Z and what it’s going to mean to what you’re trying to do?” Just that tiny little shift. Instead of making a statement, you make it a question about what they think about it. That’s what we’re talking about. That means their brain will engage because we never plant seeds with people by telling them what we think. We plant seeds with people by asking them what they think. They will remember every single thing they’re asked, not what they’re told.
Yeah, it’s a really great framework, very comprehensive. Totally makes sense to me. What’s really coming to mind for me is just having good listening skills and really being patient as people talk through their own situation, their own dynamics before jumping into a solution. I know men are notorious for this with women, trying to solve problems where sometimes it’s all about being heard and really understanding that. I’m also trying to think about different contexts in which we, on this show as investors, entrepreneurs, and successful business people, can really apply this in different capacities. Clearly the work one makes sense, but I was also thinking about legacy. The statistics are sobering that almost 80% of wealth passed on to Generation 2 is lost, and it goes even higher by Generation 3. All of us who have kids see that as our kids get older, they want to do things independently. They don’t want to listen to you. Maybe to your point, they don’t necessarily have that sense of trust or safety with mom and dad that they actually want. This could be a fantastic way to enhance communication because as part of our legacy, we’re not trying to leave just financial capital. We’re trying to leave intellectual capital, emotional capital, and other forms of capital that are really going to sustain decades of prosperity. I really love this perspective on how we could communicate to our families where there’s always challenging dynamics in terms of baggage from younger years or different belief systems you haven’t been able to move through, but trying to apply some of those techniques so you can create greater cohesion.
Legacy isn’t just financial capital, it’s intellectual and emotional capital too.
It’s so true, Dave. I often say when people ask me, I didn’t do it at the beginning of this, like, “So tell me about your background and what you do.” My first answer is always, I’m a dad. Everything I learned professionally that I just shared, the greatest test of my skill set is with my kids because they’re your greatest critics in life and you’re their greatest test because they know everything about you. They know your background. If they’re willing to listen to you, then anyone will. My number one goal with every human interaction is what can I do to inspire them to want to listen to me, communicate with me, and want to communicate with me again tomorrow? All relationships start with that. In order to do that, you can’t judge.
Toughest thing in the world. As you’re talking about the foibles and missteps our children, friends, and colleagues make, the hardest thing is not to want to come in and fix it. What people really need is to feel empowered, because remember that last thing of the four steps is empower with choice. How you employ that when you’re having a dialogue with someone you see going off the rails is very simple, but it’s still their path. You have to let go and let them walk their path and get what I call a great life rep in. I let go years ago of the notion of right or wrong with choices. There are just choices and cause and effect. Some of the effects are going to be a greater learning moment.
Some are going to be a lesser learning moment, but all are going to be a great learning moment. Part of that positivity I have is remembering this: our brains do not remember average days. You can ask yourself what you had for breakfast a year ago, and you’re not going to have the faintest idea unless you have the same routine every day. But if I asked you, Dave, tell me about the most significant thing that happened to you last year, you’re going to remember every single detail because it deviated from the norm. Every time something deviates from the norm, I call it a great life rep.
So there’s no bad here. Keep a positive framework with our kids and everyone. Always what I would do with anyone—this works with investors, it works with your kids—is ask, what is it you’re trying to achieve? What’s your goal and objective, where are you trying to walk to? All I’m going to be is a resource. For my own kids, I am their chief operating officer. They’re the CEO. I’m the chief of staff that will help them get to the destination. The entire time in their lives and in all my friends’ lives, I ask them, what’s the path you’re trying to walk and what’s the destination you’re trying to get to? As they share that with me, I don’t critique it. I don’t judge it.
I say, all right, what do we need to do to get to that destination? Most importantly, you’re going to find you can get training on all the widgets in the world you want. You can take a class, you can take a Udemy course, you can do all those things to get the technical skills. Where I come in, the most important equation, because all problems are interpersonal problems, is they can be solved through relationships. My most important question I then ask is, the destination they’re trying to walk to—who do we need to talk to to make that happen? What relationship do we need today that we don’t have, that we need to foster and build and make into an ally in our life? Without allies, you’re going nowhere. My entire framework, my entire mentality, is obviously get the technical skills you need. As we were talking before, my son just graduated, he got his gold wings. My son is an F-35 fighter pilot in the Marine Corps.
That did not happen because he knew how to flip switches. It’s part of it. Relationships, relationships, relationships. Every single day, every single time, from the moment he graduated and actually moved through high school to the Naval Academy to the Marine Corps. Every time something went sideways, we analyzed what relationships went sideways, what we could do better with the dialogues we were using, how we could inspire people to feel safe. Matter of fact, our three mantras for every single interaction we have when we’re working with anyone are: be positive, because people don’t like naysayers. Being skeptical and critical so you can identify problems is one thing, but being positive that we can do this, moving towards yes, is critical.
Next, be safe—psychologically, emotionally, physically. Create a safe environment. Number three, be a great student. Always a great student. In other words, there’s always something to gain from someone. Be a fantastic listener. You have a skill set you’re going to be able to impart when it’s asked. Be a resource for people that need that skill set.
Most importantly, always remember: two ears, one mouth. Be a great listener, as you said. Be a humble student, because people do not like being looked down upon. They don’t like feeling like you think you’re superior. Any sign of arrogance, shields up, walls up. Being confident is great. Confidence balanced with humility is perfection.
We plant seeds with people by asking them what they think, not by telling them what we think.
Yeah. Another great alignment that’s really resonating here, Robin, is we also talk about improving your relationship capital as an investor. You literally could be one relationship away from the biggest opportunity of your life. So actually focusing on building those relationships, whether those be different partners or team members. We also call this building a dream team around you, of different people that are going to help you get to that next level, whether they’re mentors, coaches, or experts in a certain domain area. Let’s say a tax strategist or something. You can’t just use a team member and expect them to have the silver bullet for you and just do everything. You have to create that relationship so you really understand what their capabilities are. You can hone in on what you’re truly looking to accomplish so you can ask them better questions and they can deliver better for you. So you have even more clarity. That all is based on communication.
Right?
A true understanding of the why. Why are you trying to do something? What is making you tick? Then applying that expertise to it. I really love using this application for people to be able to improve their relationship capital. Another kind of extension off of that that’s interesting as well is proximity. The higher we can move our proximity towards relationships that are next level for us, that opens up new opportunities that weren’t there the day before.
100%. When you say relationship capital, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin talk about it as a reservoir. In order to have— and you mentioned being able to ask the right questions and engage people in that way. In order to do that, where you’re going to have a big ask, the reservoir has to be full, the bank has to be full. Because if you’re constantly taking from that reservoir or that capital, it’s empty. The motivation and positive attitude to want to engage with you will be gone. You just drain that husk, wring it out dry, and there’s nothing left. The way you build that is through a very simple, sometimes hard to do because it takes a little more bandwidth and energy, is you need to be very proactive in taking care of someone else. It’s a sign of trust I call vesting. When you can recognize someone is vesting in you, your future, your potential, and you can do that in someone else, that starts building up that reservoir.
For a great example, I have a very good friend of mine, retired CIA operations officer. From time to time, he knows what I do. I’m a speaker, author, and things like that. Once a month, once every two months, or sometimes weekly, really depends on who he’s interacting with. He’ll call me out of the blue or send me a text: “Hey, Robin, I know you’re working on this project. I bumped into someone today that I think might be good for you. Here’s his background. Here’s his LinkedIn page.”
“Let me know if you think this might be good, and I’ll make an introduction for you.” Out of the blue, no ask. He’s so aware again of talking in terms of challenges, priorities, and pain points of others. He knows my challenges, priorities, and pain points, and then he proactively will reach out without an ask to be a resource for me. He offers without the ask. He builds, he builds, he builds. You do that with someone once or twice, what do you think the response is when you come in with a minor ask or even a medium ask? Snap of fingers. It won’t even be a second thought.
Then you talk about that legacy, the brand you start building for yourself, that reputation. It starts because now it’s not just who you know, it’s what they say about you through these degrees of separation. So here I am in the FBI, trying to recruit confidential human sources, spies, which are intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover at diplomatic establishments around the world. It’s illegal by treaty for me to approach them. By their training, if I approach them, they automatically assume I’m US intelligence, they’ll never talk to me again. So how do you make it so you can recruit these people, sell them my product as American patriotism? Most of the time you’re creating what we call the lighthouse.
You become the beacon people want to come to. How do you create that lighthouse to become that beacon? It’s this positive brand and reputation. They know and they can then refer, say, “Man, you got to talk to my friend Robin. You might not want to buy what he’s selling, but you can have a great conversation. He might be able to introduce you to someone that can.” There’ll be no ask. It’s just a relationship of networking for potential. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. Robin Sharma, another great author I love, wrote the book Who Will Cry When You Die? I think that’s the title of the one I was thinking of, but there’s a few that are similar.
He asked this great rhetorical question for everyone to listen. Just ask yourself this question. It doesn’t matter what phase of life you’re in or what you want to use it for. Give yourself a little thought experiment. Who could walk around that corner of where you’re sitting right now, and when they walked around that corner, you would just light up inside? The big smile comes across your face. You want to drop everything, turn the podcast off, and just have an engagement with this person because they are the most beautiful person that you love interacting with. Once you have a picture of this person, ask yourself what specifically are they doing that inspires you to feel that way? Wouldn’t that be great if you became that person to everyone else? If you’re not, what aren’t you doing to make you that person? I guarantee you, think for a second. That person walks around and makes you feel that way, they are either seeking your thoughts and opinions, talking in terms of what’s important to you, validating and being curious without judging, and/or giving you choices.
Those four keys, they’re doing one of them. Most likely, the most predominant answer is they’re curious without judging about what’s going on in your life, and they offer themselves as a resource without an ask. You be that for someone else, your brand skyrockets. You become the lighthouse that everyone talks about and can’t wait to talk about and talk to.
Robin, in the world of private investing, we’re looking at whether it be real estate opportunities or different private syndications that are put together by a group of executives. Basically capital is solicited to try to invest in that particular project. One of the most critical factors in examining and doing due diligence on these opportunities is actually investing in the key stakeholders and trying to really understand that from a due diligence perspective. Any thoughts and perspective you can give us based on your frameworks and approach in terms of how can we assess the character, the values, the operational standards that some of these key stakeholders would really have?
Yeah, it’s a great question. Luckily, so far, everything we’ve talked about—the behaviors that we want to do to inspire people to trust us and want to align with us—what I want you to do is relisten, reshare the podcast, and reverse it. Look for those things in others. Look for others using those four keys of communication with everyone they’re engaging with. Are they seeking the thoughts and opinions of others? Are they talking in terms of their priorities? Are they validating them? Are they giving them choices? Those are beautiful keys of communication others should be doing not just with you, but the people around them. If you’re at a meeting, if you’re at a lunch meeting, I don’t care where you are. Watch how they’re engaging everyone, not just you, because that’s going to be a really key indicator. I’m always assessing people’s tempo and their arcs.
What I mean by tempo is, is it always congruent? In other words, the way you and I are talking, we have a specific energy, a specific tempo, our speech, our patterns, our body language. It’s matching when we’re talking about comfortable things. If we start talking about uncomfortable things, it should match as well. Even though it might be uncomfortable, we’re still open and honest and we’re being transparent with our communication because that’s what we always want to seek. We’re looking for open, honest communication and transparency with people. That is a huge indicator of trustworthiness and someone that has the type of behaviors that are healthy because we want to always engage with healthy people, with healthy organizations, and in a healthy culture. So the open, honest communication and transparency and vulnerability is key and critical. Are there times when they can’t share things with you? Absolutely.
What we’re looking for in transparency is I want to know the reasons why. If the rule, policy, law, or procedure applies, just be transparent. Because as soon as someone shifts that tempo, shields go up, a little reticent. All right, we have what I call a little hotspot right here. Then we’ll examine this hotspot. When you examine, say, “Listen, Dave, I don’t quite understand. I was hoping to get some more clarity in this area, this friction point. Maybe help me understand what that is.” The response, a healthy response, should be, “Oh, Robin, I’m so sorry. Here’s what we meant by this and here’s why we can’t share it.” Again, same tempo of speech, same congruence between words, actions, and deeds.
Now, if you’re still getting resistance, trying to move the conversation this way or that way, I’m going to pull back a little bit, give it more consideration, and do the most important thing in the world when we’re working with someone: talk to my loving critic. What I mean by that is someone who’s objective about what’s being said and what’s being done, who’s vested in me, listening objectively to the conversation and dialogue and the information flow, but not tied to the outcome that I’m tied to. They can help me be a little more discerning if possible. So I’m looking for congruence of words, actions, and deeds. I’m looking for transparency. I’m looking for vesting. Most importantly, I’m also looking for how they’re treating other people in their circle. Are they doing it the same way? Because how they treat others is how they’re going to treat you and how they treat everyone.
So those are some basic things I’m looking for, as well as those keys of communication.
Yeah, well said. For me, it’s pretty interesting. I feel like usually within the first five minutes of a conversation with someone, you can easily tell the values and where someone is coming from. Are they centered? What is their value base really coming from? What’s interesting is there are so many people, especially in this day and age, between social media or maybe people coming from another podcast or TV or whatever it is. You can easily see this inauthenticity around how they are on stage versus when you meet them in person. It’s crazy to me that they’re really not the same person because they’re incongruent. You want to be working with people that are completely authentic, transparent, and connected in any type of situation—in a stressful situation, in a media-driven situation—because that’s how they’re going to be.
More often than not, you find a lot of dissonance there.
It’s what I call the five-second highlight reel. Social media loves—everyone loves being in the cult of more and the disease of comparison, and they do that by putting out their five-second highlight reel, trying to portray that as their entire life and who they are. Meanwhile, when you meet in person, it’s like the old saying: never meet your heroes, you’re going to be greatly disappointed. The greatest test ever is when you meet your hero or meet the people you see on the news or in social media and they’re exactly the same. That’s good. I think I’m the same everywhere I go and everything I do. I’m extremely congruent, transparent, vulnerable, telling self-deprecating stories, not because of “look at me” moments. When I’m assessing all these sources and data points of information coming in, I do so without judgment. I’m doing so to understand others, how they prefer to communicate, so I can make healthy choices for myself.
I’m always assessing: is this person a me-former or an informer? When they’re posting things online, are they posting information for the benefit of others, or are they posting “look at me” moments to promote themselves? Not right or wrong, I’m just looking for a baseline to understand where the focus is. Is the focus in balance? Is it out of balance? Again, not for judging right or wrong, just where do I want to work and who do I want to cooperate with? When you meet in person, does it maintain the same? Here’s a great example: we watch news all the time. I do because I’m stuck on it with all the craziness in the world. It’s always interesting looking at the commentators when they come on, when they’re talking about a news event. I do a lot of true crime and talking about true crime. Are they talking about what their experience was working a type of case like this? Are they talking about what the facts are? It’s always fascinating how many “I” statements someone makes versus “you” statements or facts and detail statements. It’s another interesting way to observe people to get a baseline of what you can then reasonably expect when they’re going to be engaging you.
Yeah, really such a great lens on it. I like how you just talked about flipping it. What is the perspective someone is coming at you with? Is it all about them, or is it focused on you? That is really a great lead-in into how they’re going to be.
100%. How they perform—that’s one of the things I talk about when it comes to behavior prediction—is that life arc. What I mean by that is if I can see and observe two or three data points of how you’re engaging with the world, your decision-making process, the things that are important to you, you doing things the same way three, four, and five times the same way are pretty high. When I’m doing assessments of people in action, the first thing I’m doing is looking at the relationships they have. I’m looking at whether they are healthy relationships. I’m looking at transparency. I’m looking at the communication style. Because if someone’s wondering and asking themselves, “Well, I hope they’ll be better tomorrow. They’ll probably be different here.” No, they probably won’t.
If they have a pattern of doing things a certain way, communicating a certain way, the likelihood they’re going to deviate from the things they’ve done before is slim to none. Unless there’s a new stimulus that makes them do that. Generally, when someone decides to have a change of life or behavior pattern change, it’s like the Titanic—big ship, small rudder. They know they have to put that thing hard over, but it’s going to start shifting very slightly. Human behavior doesn’t go from zero to 100. James Clear talks about this in Atomic Habits. You want to add a new healthy habit or change of behavior, it’s zero to one mile an hour, five miles an hour tops. Stops, slow shifts.
So when you’re working with someone or want to work with someone, observe those patterns of behavior. You can assess a lot of it online with how they’re engaging others, because how they’re engaging others is most likely exactly how they’re going to engage you.
Perfect segue, Robin. I was going to ask you, what is your number one peak performance habit?
Transparency, probably. I live in the world of transparency. I have found transparency is the greatest mitigator of misunderstandings, the greatest mitigator if someone thinks there’s manipulation or subterfuge in some way. It’s the greatest mitigator of people who might not be trustworthy. Just be transparent. If you’re unwilling to be transparent, share why you’re unwilling to be transparent, because that’s transparency. When you’re willing to expose your why and your whats and hows and whos in your life, that empowers people with knowledge and choice, gives people situational awareness. These are the things that got us out of the caves when we were ancient homo sapiens. We wanted to control the environment for shelter, for food, and for the survival of our offspring.
When you empower people with knowledge about you and the world around you so they feel safe to make the choices they think are in their best interests, you can move in any direction. I’m always going in the world of transparency.
Awesome. Really appreciate that and all the insights today, Robin. If someone would like to check out your book or find out more about you, what is the best place for them to connect?
Simple and easy, robindreeke.com. . R-O-B-I-N-D-R-E-E-K-E.com. . All things me.
Perfect. We’ll make sure to link that in the show notes. Thanks again for your time. Really appreciate it. Semper fi to you and your son.
Right, Dave. Thanks a lot for having me on. Last note for everyone listening, make sure you like, share, and tell all your friends about it. Dave puts a lot of time and effort and resources into providing great content and great guests for you. Show love back by making sure you share it with others. Thank you.
Appreciate that.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Wealth Strategy Secrets. If you’d like to get a free copy of the book, go to holisticwealthstrategy.com. . That’s holisticwealthstrategy.com. . If you’d like to learn more about upcoming opportunities at Pantheon, please visit pantheoninvest.com. . That’s pantheoninvest.com.