DIARY OF A CEO · EXTRACTED

CIA Spy: "Leave The USA Before 2030!" ft. Andrew Bustamante

Mirror, motivate, and move through someone's secret life. The spy recruitment playbook applied to business, sales, and everyday influence.

▶14.3M views on YouTubePreview, 1 of 15 tactics free

With Andrew Bustamante

"Bad liars talk a lot. Good liars talk a little. Because the more you talk, the more you run the risk of undermining your own lie." — Andrew Bustamante
Andrew Bustamante, on the episode

Andrew Bustamante spent seven years as a covert CIA intelligence officer after nearly a decade as a US Air Force nuclear missile officer. The pop framing of the CIA spy is James Bond, a lone operative running on instinct and nerve. The actual operating system is colder and more transferable: a set of repeatable psychological processes for reading motivation, building trust in stages, and moving people from their public face to the secrets they share with almost no one. Bustamante left the CIA in 2014, spent six months unemployed in his in-laws' converted garage, and then used that same operating system to grow his company EverydaySpy by 300 percent every year for three consecutive years. This protocol pulls the core tradecraft from his conversation with Steven Bartlett: how to detect lies, how to identify and speak to anyone's real motivations, how to move through someone's three lives, and how to use time, fear, and questioning as precision tools.

Tactic 01

Mirror Body Language Before Attempting Influence

Before Bustamante attempts to move an interaction forward, he mirrors. When two people sit across from each other with the same hand position, the same foot position, the same overall posture, the other person registers a subconscious signal that they are looking at themselves. And the person you trust most in the world is yourself. The mechanism is not theatrical. Bustamante points out mid-conversation that he and the host are already mirrored, hands connected under the table, feet crossed the same way, without either of them planning it. The point is that mirroring creates a foundation of trust before a single persuasive word is spoken. Once that foundation exists, you can begin pushing the envelope, testing the untruth, deepening the ask, without triggering the alarm that would otherwise fire immediately.

The play

Before your next high-stakes conversation, a sales call, a difficult negotiation, a job interview, spend the first two to three minutes doing nothing but matching the other person's posture, hand position, and foot placement without making it obvious. Once they are visibly relaxed and open toward you, begin advancing your actual agenda. The subconscious trust built in those opening minutes makes everything that follows land differently.

Tactic 02

Talk Less, Ask More: The Good Liar's Discipline

Tactic 03

Use the RICE Framework to Find Anyone's Real Motivation

Tactic 04

Surface Ideology Through Observation and Targeted Messaging

Tactic 05

Use the SADRAT Process to Build and Qualify Any Relationship

Tactic 06

Move People from Public Life to Private Life to Secret Life

Tactic 07

Use the Two-In-One Combination to Keep People Talking

Tactic 08

Open a Window, Not a Door, to Invite Vulnerability

Tactic 09

Distrust Perception; Seek Perspective

Tactic 10

Build Perspective Through Deliberate Repetition in Low-Stakes Situations

Tactic 11

Use Time as a Strategic Tool, Not an Obstacle

Tactic 12

Qualify Price Sensitivity by Laddering Price Points

Tactic 13

Run a Surveillance Detection Route to Confirm a Threat

Tactic 14

Apply Stress Inoculation to Build Tolerance for Fear

Tactic 15

Take Imperfect Action Immediately Rather Than Waiting

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