Secret Agent: Send Your Children To A Village! How To Detect A Lie Instantly! The Eye Contact Trick I Learnt From 12 Years As A Secret Service Agent! - Evy Poumpouras

She was the last line of defence and ready to die for the most important person on earth, here are the secret skills she’s learned defending 4 U. S. Presidents. Evy Poumpouras is a former U. S. Secret Service Special Agent and multi-media journalist. She is also the co-host of Bravo TV's series ‘Spy Games’ and author of the best-selling memoir, ‘Becoming Bulletproof’. In this episode, Evy and Steven discuss topics such as, Evy’s close encounter with death on 9/11, how to gain control over anyone, her biggest lessons from working for Obama and Bush, and the best way to tell if someone is lying to you. 00:00 Intro 02:05 My Mission To Unlock People's Potential 05:05 How You Became A Secret Service Officer 10:43 How To Get Someone To Do What You Want Them To 13:10 When You Listen To Someone They Like You More 14:34 You Need To Know About Them And Then You Can Start Asking The Right Questions 18:18 How To Get Others To Respect You 22:59 Is It Your Ego Or Have Your Boundaries Being Broken? 26:49 How To Build Confidence 29:34 The Different Versions Of Ourselves We Create 32:49 What I Learnt About Leadership From Working With 4 US Presidents 35:47 I Was In The Room When US Presidents Would Make Tough Decisions 38:36 My First Day Working For George Bush 41:07 Secret Service Training: Only 1% Make It Through 44:16 The 1% Of People That Became Part Of The Secret Service 46:06 How Can You Tell If Someone Is Lying To You? 48:16 Who's The Biggest Liar You've Met? 50:54 Signs They're Lying To You 52:59 What Your Body Language Reveals About You 01:00:19 Do Men Struggle With Strong Women? 01:01:00 What Advice Would You Give Your Daughter Become A Resilient Person 01:04:37 What Do You Work Out Your Mind And Body 01:07:19 What Was The Scariest Day Of Your Career? 01:12:28 How Was Your Mental Health During Your Career? 01:17:48 Discrimination In The Secret Service 01:19:39 How To Be Heard And Respected 01:25:51 Why You Need To Take Personal Responsibility 01:33:48 The Addiction To Being A Victim 01:35:02 Identifying Victims That Don't Want To Change 01:39:47 Undercover Missions 01:45:24 Discrimination In The Job 01:50:58 Labelling Yourself Can Affect The Way You See Yourself You can purchase Evy’s book, ‘Becoming Bulletproof’, here: https://amzn.to/3RhDtz9 Follow Evy: Instagram - https://bit.ly/4aN4q4D Twitter - https://bit.ly/4c4TErD Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/3kxINCANKsb My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now - https://smarturl.it/DOACbook Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Evy Poumpouras?

  Being an interrogator, a special agent with the Secret Service. I'm trained in the art of reading people's slotty language, verbal cues, I mean even written statements. So you can figure out who's full of BS and who isn't.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 0:11Evy Poumpouras?

  So one of the things I would see a lot of guilty people do is...

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Evy Pomporous, former US Secret Service special agent.

• 0:18Evy Poumpouras?

  Who protected presidents, worked undercover, and trained in the art of lie detection, human behavior, and cognitive influence. She's now on a mission to help us all benefit from the lessons she's learned along the way.

• 0:28Steven Bartlett?

  Evy, I want to go into all of the techniques, the life lessons, the wisdom. So what are the core components of how to get someone to do what you want?

• 0:34Evy Poumpouras?

  Everybody's motivated by something different. What you want to understand is that person's motivational mindset. What the biggest mistake people make is they...

• 0:42Steven Bartlett?

  What about when your boss or your colleague isn't listening to you? What should you do?

• 0:45Evy Poumpouras?

  So it's called paralinguistics. Everyone's so focused on what they say, they don't think about the tone, pitch of the voice. But there are simple things you can do to make sure people hear you. First...

• 0:55Steven Bartlett?

  You spent 12 years around people like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Did you learn anything about leadership?

• 1:00Evy Poumpouras?

  They're not driven by emotion. And the problem the majority of people have is they bring their feelings into it. You don't want to be an emotional decision maker. It never goes well. Pull back and be objective.

• 1:11Steven Bartlett?

  Evy, when you think back of your Secret Service experience, was there ever a day when you thought the president's life was at risk?

• 1:17Evy Poumpouras?

  You know, I don't think I ever talked about it, but...

• 1:19Steven Bartlett?

  And then what was the scariest moment of your career?

• 1:22Evy Poumpouras?

  There was another undercover case. All these things are escalating. Any second he's going to kill my partner. I pull my gun out.

• 1:32Evy Poumpouras?

  That stayed with me.

• 1:43Steven Bartlett?

  Evy, if someone's just clicked onto this podcast to listen because they thought the title was interesting or the thumbnail was interesting, with the understanding that we're going to talk about the work you're doing in this season of your life and who you're doing it for, can you tell me exactly why they should stay and listen to this conversation?

• 2:02Evy Poumpouras?

  I think for each person it's different, but why should you listen? At the core, we're always trying to become something better. I wrote my book, Becoming Bulletproof, and I think the essence of that was I'm trying to become more than. And how about this? The day you think you know everything is the day you become obsolete.

• 2:24Evy Poumpouras?

  I live by that because I am never at my peak. I'm always becoming more. So if you're looking to become more and you don't know what that is exactly, then listen.

• 2:35Steven Bartlett?

  All of this information we're going to talk about today, the techniques, the things you've learned, the life lessons, the wisdom, where does it come from? What is your, if I looked at your CV, what would I see?

• 2:46Evy Poumpouras?

  It probably honestly came from, probably comes from growing up in New York, daughter of immigrants. I think that there's one aspect there. But I true think, I truly think the majority is when I became a New York City police officer. And then I went to the US Secret Service. And I went in young. I was like 22, 23. And so while everyone's out at that age, partying, doing whatever, I went into this, this field. And I was around a lot, a lot of other elite performers and thinkers. And I learned so much. Training humbles you. The job humbles you. And then also working in the White House, being around other top performers, top thinkers.

• 3:29Evy Poumpouras?

  That really kind of, not kind of, I mean, that really, I grew up there. I grew up in the White House. I grew up in the US Secret Service. That's how I grew up. So I think that those things helped shape me and mold me, not just training, but also the people I was around. I learned a lot, made many mistakes, but I had really good, I don't want to say role models because I don't like that word. I don't look at anybody and say, I want to be that. No, I want to be me. But I can look at other people and learn and then get inspired from them and see what they do. So I had those examples that guided me. So I think that's the majority of where that comes from. And then the practicing of it, flexing that muscle.

• 4:14Evy Poumpouras?

  It's like a workout. You have to keep doing that and being honest with yourself. You're a Secret Service. Nobody wants to hear excuses. Nobody cares how you feel. I don't mean it in a mean way, but they're like, we have a job to do.

• 4:26Steven Bartlett?

  What is the Secret Service? I really want to zoom in on your career experience to understand.

• 4:32Steven Bartlett?

  How the wisdom you have was derived from different sort of seasons of your experience. So a lot of us have heard this term, Secret Service agent. But in but in reality, if I look at the span of your career, what did that involve specifically?

• 4:48Evy Poumpouras?

  Okay, so Secret Service, the United States Secret Service was actually the one of the oldest federal law enforcement train agencies in the US. So they do two things. The one thing that they do is they protect the president. Everybody sees it, right? Everyone's like, oh, that's Secret Service, that's all they do. No. In fact, even that unit of of people that you see around the president, it's very hard even to get in there. You don't you don't automatically go and even if you want to go, it doesn't mean you're gonna get it. So you do protection, president, former presidents, vice president, first ladies, even foreign heads of state. So when the Prime Minister of the UK comes to the US, he gets protection. Because we don't want him getting assassinated in the US. So all these foreign heads of state. So you're you're protecting tons of people.

• 5:34Evy Poumpouras?

  And it doesn't matter who it is, you're the job is, I die for you, period. So that's one aspect of it. So there's a very selfless aspect of that, which goes against all your intuition, right? Because even in law enforcement, as a cop or police officer, they teach you, hey, if you're getting shot at, you make yourself small, take cover, then engage. You as Secret Service is, that all goes out the window. It's no, you're getting shot at, you jump in front and then make yourself big, even bigger, to make sure the bullet hits you and not the person behind you. So you have to really rewire like something that's instinctual. That's protection. The other aspect of it is investigations. They work investigations.

• 6:17Evy Poumpouras?

  Fraud, a lot of fraud, a lot of complex crimes. And today, fraud is global. So you'll be investigating somebody in Russia. I remember there was one guy in Russia who was committing fraud here in the US. He was going into bank bank accounts of these. Very wealthy people. So the US Secret Service and Homeland and CBP Customs Border Patrol, everybody got together because like we have to get this guy. So they figure out, okay, he's in Russia. So the US goes to Russia, says, hey, Russia, can you help us get this guy? Can, you know, can you send him over? And so Russia, of course, is like, no, we're not going to do it. To be fair, we wouldn't do it for Russia either. So it goes both ways.

• 7:02Evy Poumpouras?

  So then everyone had to get creative. How do we get this guy? So they're like, all right, we're going to put a plan together to lure him into another country, a neutral country. So this plan goes into place. It's not my case. And it's probably Friday night. I hear my boss calling from across the way. He's like, hey, Pampuris. Yes, sir. He's like, what are you doing tomorrow? I looked at him, I'm like, why don't you tell me what I'm doing tomorrow? He said, can you go to the DR, Dominican Republic? I said, sure, what do you need? He's like, you need to do undercover. Okay, what am I doing? He's like, we've got this guy in Russia. We're luring, luring him over from Russia to the DR. We want to get him and bring him to the US. You're going to go with your boyfriend. I'm like, who's my boyfriend? He's a detective from the NYPD. I think he was, I can't remember what grade he was.

• 7:46Evy Poumpouras?

  You're going to be his girlfriend. You're going to give him legitimacy. You guys are going to convince this Russian to come to the US. I'm like, where are we going to do this? He's like, at a resort. I said, resort? I'm like, what do I have to do? He's like, just make him look legit. You mean hang out by the pool all day and just drink pina coladas? He said, yes, as long as they're virgin. I said, no problem. And so that's what we did. We spent, I don't know how many days at this resort, me and my boyfriend, who was like 20 years older than me, maybe 30, and dinners with the Russian, talking to him. And what we tried to motivate him by is greed. Come to America, we'll sneak you in and you'll make a ton of money. And because we knew what his motivator was, more money. So he's thinking about it, he's thinking about it. We're having a little bit of a hard time with him.

• 8:29Evy Poumpouras?

  Then finally, it's the day before we're supposed to leave on our private jet, which is Customs Border Patrol.

• 8:36Evy Poumpouras?

  And I'm talking to my boyfriend's detective. I'm like, you think he'll show? He's like, I don't know. So we're waiting that morning. It's like five minutes to nine. We're about to leave the resort. And we're like, he's not gonna show. Three minutes before nine, he rolls up. He's like, I'm in. So we board our plane. It's our private jet. It's customs border patrol. Everyone's undercover. We get on. There's like alcohol. I don't drink. There's food. He gets on the Russian. We fly from the Dominican Republic to Miami. We land in Miami, do a refuel. It's all agents they're watching, but they're all, you know, reading newspapers. Everyone's undercover. We get back on the jet. We fly to New York and then we land in Long Island in a very, in a remote area.

• 9:19Evy Poumpouras?

  There's a limo there, our limo, my boyfriend's limo with, I don't drink. Again, it's like Jack Daniels, Jack Daniels Blue Label, which is like the fancy, I guess, a liquor. We get in, we get into the limo and then we drive. So now we got him in the US. We got him. The goal was to bring him to Brooklyn, to the Brooklyn Bridge.

• 9:38Evy Poumpouras?

  And the takedown was, I take a photo of my boyfriend and the Russian by the Brooklyn Bridge, wearing their Russian hats, because he brought Russian hats. And that was my clear, take us down, it's safe. And so I put the photo up, the bridge is in the back. My boyfriend's like, welcome to America. We're gonna commit all this fraud. We're gonna steal all this money. The Russian's super happy. Click. Everybody comes in, we're all in cuffs. That's an example of a case.

• 10:04Steven Bartlett?

  If I back up there, you said that what he wanted was more money. When you're, when you're trying to understand how to get someone to do what you want to do, what are the sort of core components of that? I spoke to Andrew Bustamante, who's the former CIA agent. And he's, he said he spent a lot of time undercover doing very similar work, going to foreign countries, getting people to like him, to trust him, and then to give him something. And one of the things he said to me is you need to understand their ideology. He says of all the things that makes someone do something is understanding their ideology, which is kind of what you're describing there. I think there's ideology. And the other thing, he said this framework, RICE, reward ideology, coercion of ego. And what you described, I guess, is the reward that that Russian guy wanted.

• 10:47Steven Bartlett?

  When you're thinking about how to get someone to do what you want, what's the, what's the kind of framework? Where'd you, where'd you default to? And I'm, and here I'm thinking about business. I'm thinking about sales. I'm thinking about all forms of persuasion. Because that's essentially what you had to do. You had to get this total stranger, sounds like a stranger, onto a private jet to come with you to America.

• 11:04Evy Poumpouras?

  So, I'm gonna shut up. Because I need to understand what you want. The biggest mistake people make is they talk a lot. Steven, if I'm doing all the talking and you're doing all the listening, right? You're learning everything about me. You're learning about what I care about, my values, my belief systems. You're getting a good read on me. And I'm learning nothing about you. There's a myth that people think if I do most of the talking, I have control. It's garbage. You have the power. Because you've got me now. So, what I will tell you is, and I know of Andy. What you wanna understand is that person's motivational mindset. What are you motivated by? So that is your value and belief system. Everybody's motivated by something different.

• 11:48Evy Poumpouras?

  But I have to hear you and pay attention to you to understand what that is. Everybody's purpose is different. The example I gave you with the Russian, he's motivated by money.

• 11:59Steven Bartlett?

  How did you figure that out? Was there a certain question or was it just?

• 12:02Evy Poumpouras?

  One, his actions showed it, cuz he wants money. And then in talking to him, he had a, I believe he had a wife home, he had a kid home. He grew up a certain way. So you just listen, here, have a drink, talk to me, let me know. If you give people enough space, they will reveal themselves to you. But we're so busy talking, we're so busy making noise because we think everybody needs to hear me, I'm identity. Everybody needs to know me, me, me, me. And, you know what? Nobody cares.

• 12:30Steven Bartlett?

  Is there something in that as well where when you listen to someone, they like you more?

• 12:33Evy Poumpouras?

  Yeah, they like you more because everybody loves to talk about themselves. Because everybody wants to feel heard. Now, I'll tell you this, though. I'm gonna push back on the little bit of the like thing. Because even in business, people are like, I need people to like me, I need people to like me. That is a trek for disaster. Because now you're focused on not what your goal is, but I need to make somebody like me. Those are two different animals. If my goal is to do a deal with you, then I'm gonna focus on what do I need to get this deal done? If my goal is to get you to like me, which is much more complex and much more confusing, and also it's gonna mess me up in trying to figure that out. I say this.

• 13:15Evy Poumpouras?

  Don't focus on making people like you because you can do everything right and people may still just not like you. Instead, focus on, how about I'm gonna be competent in what I do? When I say I'm going to do something, I follow through. When I say I can do something, I actually can do it. When I say I'm gonna be there at nine, I'm there at eight fifty-five. In the U.S. Secret Service, we had a saying, if you're on time, you're late. So I show you that I'm competent. When you see that, are you gonna like me for that? Yes, you are.

• 13:43Steven Bartlett?

  I respect you.

• 13:45Evy Poumpouras?

  Now, there's warmth. Warmth is the other element here. Warmth is, I show you respect. So instead of me trying to get you to like me, how about I just show you respect?

• 13:55Steven Bartlett?

  What does that look like in reality, showing someone respect? Is that again, the timekeeping?

• 13:58Evy Poumpouras?

  I'm listening to you, I show up on time, I follow through with what I say I'm going to do. I'm also open and approachable, I'm also nonjudgmental, that's a big thing. Everybody is kinda like throwing their weight around, let me tell you what I think, let me tell you what I think. Nobody needs to know what you think. It doesn't matter. If you're really trying to build a connection with a person, then build it. And let them tell you what they think. Because now I see the world through your lens, not mine. I always say, when especially I do a lot of keynotes and training for businesses, you don't matter, they matter. What do they want? What do they need? What's important to them? Let them tell you. And then when they tell you, instead of trying to guess how to enter a conversation, because you're coming into the blind, but what do I do?

• 14:42Evy Poumpouras?

  I shut up, I listen, I let you reveal to me what matters to you, what your values are. And then I come in more intelligently into the conversation and I speak to you. You have to know your audience, but you don't know your audience if you're doing all the talking. Everybody's motivated by something different. If you take my motivational factor, growing up, I was never motivated by money. My Russian was, greed. That's fair, but I wasn't. Whenever I got a job, I never looked at the pay. NYPD, I had no idea what my salary was. Um, when I went to the U.S. Secret Service, I never once asked them, what's the pay? Because I wasn't motivated by that. I was motivated by the mission, by the purpose. But people will show you that. So the recruiter that talked to me probably realized, this woman never once asked me what

• 15:27Evy Poumpouras?

  her salary's gonna be. She's not motivated by that. Those are little things that people show you. People will show you what they care about if we just hold back, stay silent, ask good questions, and you know what? We're genuinely curious. I genuinely want to get to know you. I genuinely want to understand you. I don't genuinely want to tell you all about me. That's different. And the one factor that's really important is not having judgment, being nonjudgmental. When you show judgment to another person, they're gonna filter what they say, they're gonna shut down, they're gonna hold back, because nobody likes to be judged.

• 16:09Evy Poumpouras?

  I would interview in the polygraph room, people who committed really horrible crimes, crimes against children. A lot of people would say to me, how can you sit there and listen to it? And not, you know, tell them what you thought, or not like ream them out? I was like, because my goal was to get information, to see where there are their victims. How did they do it? I wanna know what they did, so that I can make sure that this doesn't happen again, and that I do maybe get information so I can get a conviction. And then I also wanna know if there are other victims out there. My goal is not to check somebody and put him in his place, or her, and tell them what I think of them. Those are two different things. Also in the room, my goal was not to get them to like me.

• 16:52Evy Poumpouras?

  My goal was to get them to feel heard, to feel respected, for me to be professional. And I think we bring the wrong terms, because it's confusing. If I want you to like me too, think of it this way, that I'm gonna think, I have to be nice to him. I have to be his friend. And when you become, you're in business, you can be warm, but when you start becoming people's friends, that's when the lines get blurred and we get confused. And in fact, there's research done by Susan Fisk and Chris Malone. And they say, be warm to people, be open and approachable. But if you're overly nice, overly kind, overly polite, that's when you get rolled. You wanna find that beautiful balance, where I'm a professional, I'm warm, I'm nonjudgmental, come talk to me, tell me, but at the same time, I maintain my authority, I maintain my boundaries.

• 17:38Steven Bartlett?

  What about when someone compromises your boundaries or disrespects you? How do you react to that? Because I think I have a lot of leaders around me in my various businesses. And I see sometimes that some leaders struggle with confrontation. They struggle with, you know, team member might disrespect them in some way or might not deliver work to the right standard. And they might struggle with like pulling that person in, knowing how to do that and how to address that situation. And the avoidance of that conflict obviously just causes a bigger future problem because you're setting a new, you're setting a new boundary, right? You've let someone jeopardize or cross a line. And if you don't, I'm assuming that if in the moment you don't address that, they're going to cross it again in the future.

• 18:22Steven Bartlett?

  This is really about like conflict resolution, interpersonal conflict resolution. And when you've been disrespected, how do you deal with that?

• 18:29Evy Poumpouras?

  So the first I'm going to do is I'm going to flip it back. What have you done to let people think that they can do that to you? That's the first thing I'm going to say. What standards have you created or what things have you set up to let people think, I don't have to deliver on time? I can be disrespectful. I can't show up late for work. That's the first thing I'm going to say.

• 18:47Steven Bartlett?

  So I would hazard a guess that I did, I in the past, set a standard for this.

• 18:52Evy Poumpouras?

  Right.

• 18:53Steven Bartlett?

  In some way that I showed up in the past.

• 18:54Evy Poumpouras?

  That's the first thing I'm going to do. Is there something I have done to create an environment where a person thinks that it is okay to do these things? That's first.

• 19:03Steven Bartlett?

  Why do you go to I?

• 19:05Evy Poumpouras?

  Because I'm the one who sets the tone. I just interviewed a chief of station, former chief of station, John Franchi. He's former CIA. And he managed a lot of people and a very strong, a lot of strong personalities. Because you've got officers and all these different people. And he said to me, you know what I learned? He said, it is easier to be more, have boundaries and be a little bit more sturdy and more authoritative in the beginning and then pull back than to be everybody's friend and then try to put those boundaries in place. The latter doesn't work. He's like, you do the first, you let people know what you expect of them, and then you can pull back a little bit. But you always have to toe that line. So that's what I'm going to say first. And he's right.

• 19:48Evy Poumpouras?

  What tone have I set in the environment that I'm working? That people think it's okay to do these things? That's one. Now, let's say sometimes I have an outlier. I have a person who does these things. As soon as it happens, you have to address it.

• 20:02Evy Poumpouras?

  What people do is they don't address things, they let it go. It's small, and then it happens again. It's small, then again, and then we become resentful. We become pissed. Why does this person keep doing it? Why don't they self-correct? Again, it goes back to me. Why haven't I addressed it? People are afraid of conflict. Conflict can be done in a great way. You have to think of conflict as, think of it as like, I'm competing. I'm, I can speak to you, not raise my voice, not make it ugly, and debate something with you. In the, in the White House, next to the Oval Office was the Cabinet Room. The Cabinet Room is where the President would sit with all his heads, you know, Secretary of Treasury, Secretary of Homeland Security, and they would discuss and debate policies, laws,

• 20:47Evy Poumpouras?

  and they would compete. One person would say, I don't like this idea. This is why. Another person would say, well, this idea doesn't work. This is why. You have to be comfortable in doing that. Most people are not. They don't understand that you can sit somebody down and say, hey, you know, this happened, can you tell me about that? I had someone who worked for me, and she had made a mistake on something. And so, it was a pretty big mistake. So, I, I called her up and I said, hey, you know what? This and this happened, you know, talk me through it. And I let her explain, and, you know, she said, you know, I'm sorry, this and that. Uh, there's a reason why. But the one thing I did is that, because I wanted to rectify it, because I didn't want it to happen again. I was like, is there anything I can do to help make your job better?

• 21:31Evy Poumpouras?

  So you can be more successful at what you do? Because I want to hear, is there something I'm doing or not doing that's impacting her decision-making? Or the way she sees things? So it's a twofold. But you also do, when it comes to respect, and this is a whole separate thing you brought up, with the respect part, just make sure people are truly disrespecting you, and that's not your ego that feels disrespected. Because sometimes people can't take somebody pushing back. And if my goal is to make a great product, or business deal, or transaction, then everything we do should be in furtherance of that. But what happens is, Stephen, people are so afraid of hurting other people's feelings

• 22:15Evy Poumpouras?

  or stepping on other people's toes. Nobody says something, and that's worse.

• 22:19Steven Bartlett?

  It's sometimes difficult to know the difference between whether this is a violation of my boundaries or this is my ego. Because, you know, I think of much of the reason why people won't confront something in the moment is because they start double guessing whether they're in the right, they're in the wrong, this is acceptable, this is unacceptable behavior. And that kind of mental debate of, is that actually acceptable that they treat me like this or that they did this? Or am I just being triggered because, you know, of some kind of emotional issue that I have? And that kind of conversation often results in them taking no action, which means they tolerate that behavior, whether they should or shouldn't. And then it becomes the norm.

• 22:57Evy Poumpouras?

  You know, it's interesting. So I'm a very, like, I'm quick to, to jump and like, I don't want to say go into attack mode, but I have it. I'm Greek, I grew up in New York and Queens, it's like, it's just on. So I always have to, my immediate response is like, what? Internally, inside voice. I pause and I'm like, hang on, is this person telling me something or doing something that I should hear? Right? Maybe they're telling, I made a mistake and they're trying to help me make something better? Or is this person crossing a boundary that I don't want them to cross? So then I will sit that person down or have a conversation, hey, can you tell me about this? What were you thinking when this happened? Walk me through it. But I will tell you, nonjudgmental, right?

• 23:41Evy Poumpouras?

  You don't want to show it, as I call it the poker face, just don't show it and let them talk and just see what they're thinking. Most people, as they're talking to you, Stephen, they will on their own realize as they talk through it, what they made wrong, what they did wrong. Also, you lead by example, so sometimes I'll make a mistake, I'll miss a deadline with someone I work with. And I'll say, listen, I'm sorry, I was traveling, I own it, tell me what I need to do to fix it. And what I have found, when I do that, the people I work with, when they make a mistake and I'm like, hey, what happened with this? You know, whatever, I'm sorry, I missed the deadline, I own it, I'll fix it. They reflect back what I show them. So I think it also shows in the behavior. And then there's sometimes, Stephen, sometimes you'll bring somebody in that just should not be there.

• 24:24Evy Poumpouras?

  And then you also have to make that hard decision because that one person, it will destroy the fabric of the group. One person can do that because everybody else around now watches that interaction. And they're thinking, well, Stephen doesn't care. I was like, he's letting this guy do this, so I can do this. Right? It's a, I compare it to like, uh, when I teach. So as I said, I'm an adjunct professor. I teach college, I teach undergrad criminal justice. First day of class, when they come in, I tell them no cell phones. I was like, and the reason I have you do no cell phones is not because I'm, I want you to respect me or this and that. I was like, I owe you an education. I owe you an education. I know some professors don't care, but I tell my students, day one, I give a shit.

• 25:09Evy Poumpouras?

  And because I give a shit, I don't want to see the phone in the class. However, I do something else. It's an influence strategy. I give them autonomy. I say, however, you can leave this classroom anytime you want to check Facebook, go on Instagram, I don't care. You have that autonomy, but in here, I want you to respect the sanctity of the classroom because you deserve education and I owe it to you. And I set that standard. And side note, there's a video clip that I showed day one and you're actually in it. I didn't even know who you were. There's a clip of you and some others. It's a montage of videos together, talking about social media and how it impacts you adversely and cell phones and cellphone addiction and all that. And I actually play that clip.

• 25:52Evy Poumpouras?

  And can I tell you, it resonates with everybody and I have no problems the rest of the semester. But I set that tone and I tell them, if I see the phone, you're going home. No hard feelings. I'm going to pause class and I'm going to send you home. And then if somebody violates it though, I do it.

• 26:09Steven Bartlett?

  Have you had to build up your, how would I describe it?

• 26:17Steven Bartlett?

  Mental fortitude, um, ability to be direct, to look someone in the eye, to stand up straight? Have you had to build that up over time? Because there'll be a lot of people who look at you and see strength and they see confidence and they see conviction and they'll wonder, maybe she was just born like that? Or maybe there's something she did along the way that grew that.

• 26:39Evy Poumpouras?

  A lot of mistakes and a lot of discipline. And it's also the people you surround yourself with will set that example, that tone for you. If everybody around me is a mess, or everybody around me, when there's a stressful situation, they fall apart and they're chaotic, I'm gonna be that. Even to this day, Stephen, I sit and I'm very aware of who I have conversations with, whose energy I absorb, whose problems I solve. I have somebody I care about very deeply. They're in a situation with someone, a relationship with someone who is volatile, chaotic. They've come to me so many times. I said, "You need to let go of this person." "Oh, I will, I will." They don't. But what happens is they keep coming to me.

• 27:22Evy Poumpouras?

  "I'm having this problem." And I put them on point. I'm like, "I told you what to do. Now you have to sort that out because now what's happening is your stuff is coming into me. And I can't have that because I have to keep this steady." So, sometimes, even with pain in my heart, I'll have to kind of move that person a little bit to the outer part of the circle. Does not mean I don't care or love them, but it means your chaos has to stay there because it's going to bleed into my life. You're unsteady, I'm unsteady. But everybody around me, it's like a, I don't want to say it's like a calculus problem, but it's kind of simple math. Man, look at who's around you. You are them. They are you. And if you don't like what's going on with you, pause and be like, "Who am I exposed to the most?" Sometimes the people we love,

• 28:08Evy Poumpouras?

  they can be very difficult personalities, but even with them, you could say, "I can manage this. I don't want to cut this person out." But what do I do? I just move them to the edge of the circle a little bit more. And you have to make sure your core circle is strong. And that's something you have to constantly reassess because sometimes in our lives, this person is good here, and then maybe two, three years later, they're not good anymore. But what we're tied to is that person who we knew back then. Well, they're not the same person now. If you have a shit show around you... It's you because you're allowing it to exist. So think about quietly, how can I create these changes? And quietly make these changes, quietly make these boundaries.

• 28:52Evy Poumpouras?

  Because these are boundaries internal for you.

• 28:55Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting. I remember watching a video of Steve Jobs talk about how he built his career. And he said, in that video, he said, I built my career by surrounding myself and finding these truly exceptional people, these A players. And the crazy thing is, when you find these A players, they like working with other A players and it propagates. But the opposite is also true, right? If, when you build a circle of drama, they'll invite more drama. But if you, I look at my own life and I look at my companies and it's almost this crazy sort of process of osmosis. When we have chaos and we have inexperience and we have drama, we end up hiring and inviting more of the same. Whereas when we made those steps to bring in experience, I'm thinking in my early, my early career,

• 29:36Steven Bartlett?

  experience and maturity and composure and a certain, yeah, a certain psychological maturity, then that's what we ended up bringing more of, more and more in because like-minded people attract like-minded people. And even in the context of our own lives, our circle will just, you know, the fifth person will become the sixth person, if that makes sense.

• 29:55Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, it's like they rotate out and it's okay. You know what's interesting too? I'm wondering too, because you do this podcast and you really try to, you're warm, you're open, you want people to speak to you. And I wonder if people that work with you outside of the podcast or people that work with you in your business, see this Steven on the podcast and they think he's so warm, he's so open, he's so, he's so flexible. And they confuse that Steven with the Steven who does business. And there can be different versions of you, Steven. So you could think of it, and I do this all the time. Who I am here doesn't mean I'm the same person here. So when I show up to work, I bring in maybe a little bit more energy, a little bit more directness. When I, when I hire people, I'll tell people, hey, listen, because I want to be efficient at what I do,

• 30:40Evy Poumpouras?

  sometimes I'll be very direct because I want to just get there. Don't get your feelings hurt. If at any point there's something you're not sure about, please tell me. But because I need to get to there, I maybe just be direct. So if you think it's going to be hard for you. I'm not the person. I was like, but I will always appreciate you and I'm always here. So I'll sprinkle in every now and then, hey, I appreciate you. Thank you for this. This is great. That way in the, so there's my warmth. So that in those months when I'm like, hey, this email you guys wrote, this is, we can't send this out. This needs to be redone. And so nobody's hearing like, oh, I'm stupid. She thinks I'm done. I did a horrible job. It's like, no, the email just sucks. Change it and fix it so we can move on and do better. But think about the versions you bring in.

• 31:22Evy Poumpouras?

  Cause I'll give you an example, who I am in the classroom is different than who I am on the podcast. Is different who I am when I do the news. There are different versions of me and we have to weigh out those. So if you're going into a business meeting or you're dealing with people who look to you as a supervisor.

• 31:41Evy Poumpouras?

  A little bit of a different Steven, so they feel. It's not what you say to people, Steven, it's how they feel around you. And if they feel like he's not taking any of this, they're gonna know it. It's the essence of who we are. It's our ethos is the Greek word, your, your way of being. We show, we show people in the context, whatever environment we're in. The version that we want them to see so that we can get the results that we want.

• 32:10Steven Bartlett?

  You spend much of your time around great leaders. If I think about, you know, you were working for about almost 12 years around people like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. Did you learn anything about leadership from those individuals, from observing them and seeing how they conducted themselves and how they communicated? You know, in the UK, we see someone like Barack Obama is a really incredible leader for many reasons. But I think one of the real standout reasons is his ability to communicate in a certain way, which galvanizes people. And we haven't really seen, I mean, one could actually argue that Trump has his own masterful communication skills.

• 32:51Steven Bartlett?

  It's very different, but it seems to work, you know? Did you learn anything from being around these presidents about leadership and communication?

• 32:59Evy Poumpouras?

  You learn, you learn something from all of them. To be president of the United States, whoever you are, I mean, that's a feat in of itself. So they're all, they all have something. So it's interesting. The, the one thing I learned is.

• 33:15Evy Poumpouras?

  Resilience. You'll be next to the president, and this was every president. A former, all of them I stood next to. And you're standing next to them and they're about to go onstage or in a big meeting or they're talking to someone and you've got the news on. And there's some political pundit on the news or channel talking about how stupid they are. He's a dummy, he's this, he's that, just shredding them.

• 33:38Evy Poumpouras?

  And he looks at it. Yeah. Gets his stuff together, gets his speech together, gets onstage and delivers. When the majority of the public would sit there. Oh my God, I'm disrespected, I'm this, how can they say that? Nothing. That was amazing to me. So not only did the US Secret Service make me resilient, but to see somebody just take such heat or hear such horrible things said about them on a consistent basis on such public platforms. And you have the ability to wake up, walk outside the White House, your head up, get in your limo, go onstage, go do this press conference. And you're like, it's just gonna happen. There's no there's no school for that. And so because I was around these

• 34:23Evy Poumpouras?

  these, these, these personalities. I'm like, yeah, well, if he can do it, I can do it.

• 34:29Steven Bartlett?

  Who was the most impressive?

• 34:31Evy Poumpouras?

  I have to tell you, they all were. There was no one that wasn't, like, they all had their their gift. You know, and even Trump, you brought up Trump before. I think what people like about him, he's just direct. He's very direct and he just lands it. He says what he says and he doesn't care. There's a there's something, and I'm Switzerland, because in the US Secret Service, we actually weren't even allowed to talk about if we voted for someone. We were very apolitical. Um, and I've always stayed that way. But from an objective standpoint, people just like the fact that he just says it. And he doesn't care.

• 35:06Evy Poumpouras?

  And sometimes I think people envy that.

• 35:08Steven Bartlett?

  Did you, did you see how they made their decisions? Did you ever observe them making tough decisions?

• 35:13Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, all the time. You'd be behind closed-door meetings, you would hear their ability.

• 35:17Steven Bartlett?

  Give me an example of this. I'm interested, you know, when the stakes are that high, because a lot of us on a day-to-day basis are making fairly inconsequential decisions, especially in the context of running the most powerful nation in the world. So I'm interested when the stakes are that high, when you've got to get Osama bin Laden in a compound in Pakistan, or, you know, there's a, there's a terrorist attack, how these individuals make decisions?

• 35:41Evy Poumpouras?

  They're not driven by emotion. They're very rational-based decisions. I weigh the pros, I weigh the cons, I look at the facts. So you very rarely, if ever, and I could probably say, I've never heard a US president yell, ever. I've never heard a US president lose his, himself. You know, when you hear them debate or talk about things, it's a debate. I can look at you, you can look at me, it'll be like, Stephen, I don't think that this is right. And you'd say, Evy, well, why isn't this right? If we do it this way, this way, this way, this is gonna happen. Yeah, but Stephen, if you do it like that, then what if this happens and these guys die? Well, I don't see it like that. Well, sir, I see it this way. It's like, we're gonna have to figure it out. But you're also with people who have the ability to sit and withstand their, their feelings are not so fragile,

• 36:24Evy Poumpouras?

  their ego not so soft, that you can actually have this debate. And that's important for you to have in your circle. Can you have these debates with people? I would call them competing. There's two great researchers in the UK, Dr. Lawrence and Emily Allison, and they architate people as animals. And one of the things they talk about is someone who's in control and setting the agenda is someone who's lying. I'm lying. And so sometimes we have to bring a little bit more line in with us. Or somebody who's competing is somebody who's capable of kind of debating with you, but It doesn't have to be ugly. I don't have to raise my voice or get in your face to break something down. I can sit there and be rational.

• 37:05Evy Poumpouras?

  The problem the majority of people have is they're so invested and emotional, they bring their feelings hurt, their feelings into it. Even something you just brought up, Trump, and you had like a little bit of a look like Trump, because everyone's so emotional when they hear that name. Pull back and be objective. It's like, let me look at this from a factual standpoint. I'm gonna lay this out, I'm gonna lay this out, I let, let, let this lay out. When you can, make decisions based on facts and rationality, the emotions go out the window. You don't want to be an emotional decision maker. It never goes well, because you're not thinking clearly. You're like just going with the wave. And it's those moments when you say something you shouldn't say, then afterward you regret it. Why did that person get me to say that? I went in with this intention.

• 37:48Evy Poumpouras?

  I got, got pulled in this direction, this person got me to say that. No, it's always on you, because you're the governor of you.

• 37:57Steven Bartlett?

  The first time you got exposed to a president, and you spent time around a, a president, were there any things that surprised you? Any things that before then you had a sort of mis, sort of ideas of what they were like and how they behaved, that you realized suddenly were like popular misconceptions that most people believe about presidents and so on?

• 38:15Evy Poumpouras?

  I don't know if this is a misconception, but my first time, they call it standing post. It was for President George W. Bush. He's in office, I'm standing post for him somewhere.

• 38:25Steven Bartlett?

  What does that mean?

• 38:26Evy Poumpouras?

  Oh, standing post is, when you're new, you don't get into like the close, close circle of the president. It's, Evy, here's the door, and the president's gonna walk through this door in like eight hours from now. We're gonna sweep it, check for bombs and everything, and your job is to stand, watch this door for eight hours, nobody comes through, right? That's it. That's called post standing. You secure the perimeter. It's mundane, right? But you do it, it's part of the job, especially when you start. So I have my, one of my first post standing things, I'm standing by the door, and the head agent, senior agent's coming around checking on us, hey, you okay, you okay? You need anything? It's briefing us. And the one agent comes and he's like, you're new, right? I'm like, yeah, well, I'm sorting you. I mean, I had started under Clinton, but Bush was my real, I don't know what, but my real hardcore assignment.

• 39:11Evy Poumpouras?

  And he's like, where's your phone? I said, it's here, sir. He's like, is that thing off or on silent? I said, yeah. He's like, don't let Bush hear your phone go off. And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, if he hears your phone go off, you're going home. He's like, he doesn't want to hear phones. We want like a respectable environment, a quiet environment. That thing goes off, you're gone. He sends people home. And I was like, what? Why would he get so upset with the phone? I didn't quite understand it. Now I understand it. Because if everybody's doing this and distracted, nobody's focused. There's things going on. It's the energy, the vibration. He was trying to be a leader and set boundaries for the environment he wanted. Everybody present, everybody focused, nobody's on their phones, no shenanigans. That really stuck with me.

• 39:55Evy Poumpouras?

  And you better make sure I took that thing out, put it all the way down. I was like, the President of the United States is not sending me home. And they're like, he does it. So though, that's something like I always remembered and it's a boundary. And it's just something he imposed throughout the environment. I remember thinking, wow, the President of the United States actually sits in, I don't want to say controls something so minute, but something so small can impact or create this ripple effect of the environment that he is trying to cultivate.

• 40:28Steven Bartlett?

  Why did you get that job? Uh, uh, because when I was reading through the numbers around how many people sort of apply to do the initial training? And then how many people ultimately get to be that, that close to these major issues? It seems like very few people get there. Could you quantify that for me? How many people dropped out during training? How many people passed? And how many people, how like rare is it to get to the position that you got to?

• 40:55Evy Poumpouras?

  So they spend like tens of thousands of dollars, maybe even a hundred, a hundred K by the time you get hired on you. So to understand how they select you, once you get selected, like you've gone through a rigorous process. So for example, I started in the NYPD. When I went in, it was fifteen hundred of us. And people would just quit left and right, and they wanted you to quit. When I went to the US Secret Service Academy, at that point, it was like fifty-four of us. But you were hand-selected. So, one, you apply. And I think they only take one percent of all applications that they get, which is like, it's easier to get into Harvard than it is to get into the service. So, out of all the applications, they only, you only select one percent to even look at.

• 41:38Evy Poumpouras?

  Then, they decide, okay, I'm gonna put this person through the process. Then they make you fill in all this paperwork, Stephen. I can't even tell you the amount of weeks it took me. Write essays, how you're gonna handle problems. Hey, they'll give you problem scenarios. Uh, and they'll say, you have this problem. How would you handle this? And they'll give you like, you've been here, what would you do here? And they have you write out essays. And break down what you would do. Then your paperwork. So they take your paperwork. They go through all that stuff. Then they do background checks on you. Criminal checks, background checks, they talk to all your neighbors. Um, when I was in the USC, when I was applying, I had studied overseas when I was in college. And one of the semesters I did abroad was in Italy.

• 42:21Evy Poumpouras?

  They sent an agent to Italy to speak to my college professor in Rome. To, to ask him what kind of student I was. So they do such an invasive look into you. You do a polygraph, you take a written test. Uh, it's called the TEA exam. I think they've changed it. But it was like, in the US, it's like, they call it the SATs. It was the SATs on steroids. That thing was so hard. I thought for sure I failed it. I was like, there's no way I passed this thing. I squeaked through that. And there's all these things. So by the time you get offered, they give you, it's a conditional offer of employment. Evy, you've passed everything. So we're gonna let you try to go to training. And then if you pass that, then you go on probation for, like, I think it's three years.

• 43:06Evy Poumpouras?

  And then you're good. Then you're truly in. But they, by the time you get to this process where you're actually going to training, because they've dumped so much money in you. Like, they want, you're at that point where you're typically gonna get through it. Because they don't want you to quit, because they've dropped a lot of money on you. So, at that point, they've really invested in you because they believe that you can meet the standards and be part of a culture that they want. So, i- it is hard, but they do kick people out. It happens all the time.

• 43:37Steven Bartlett?

  What is it about you, then? If you reflect in hindsight now and go, the reason I got through all of that is because I am...

• 43:45Evy Poumpouras?

  I didn't know any better.

• 43:48Evy Poumpouras?

  I didn't know any better not to apply. I didn't know any better to know that it's ninety eight percent men. I didn't know any better to think that I couldn't do it. My na- my naivety as a young woman or girl, that's what helped me get to that job. I didn't think about it. I was like, psh, why not?

• 44:05Steven Bartlett?

  What were they looking for?

• 44:07Evy Poumpouras?

  They look for a lot of different things. I will tell you unequivocally, they look for trustworthiness. If you lie on your stuff and they catch you, which later on I became one of their polygraph examiners, and my job became, I became the person to see if you were trustworthy, if you had lied to us. I was like the last layer of defense.

• 44:26Evy Poumpouras?

  That was a big thing. Integrity is a big thing, because their mindset was if you can lie about your application form or something that happened to you when you're nineteen, twenty, or something dumb you did, then you're gonna lie to us about anything. Because it's like if you can't own up to your stuff, you're gonna make mistakes here and we can't trust you. So integrity is a massive thing. The other thing that really like, they call it BQAs, but better qualified applicants, that's what you get when they don't want you, like, hey, we have better qualified applicants that, competitive wise.

• 44:55Evy Poumpouras?

  Drugs was a big thing. People using, like, so drugs played a big role when people had a lot of usage, that would be, or when I got on, it was like barely nothing. That would be a quick thing to get you disqualified. Because obviously, we work crime, criminal cases, so if I'm working a counterfeit case, criminals don't really stay in one lane. They do counterfeit money, and they do drugs, and they do other things. So they have to know that you can work these cases, and they don't have to worry about you.

• 45:26Steven Bartlett?

  You said you were working in, as an interrogator. I read that you traveled the world for roughly about eight years for the Secret Service doing polygraph tests and conducting interrogations as a polygraph examiner. You're trying to figure out if people are lying. You've got a machine in front of you, right, that's telling you, giving you a bunch of readings and data on what's going on physiologically inside their body, but then also, you know, in interrogations, but as a polygraph examiner, you're looking at them and you must have a bit of a sort of hunch based on like pattern recognition when you're looking at their body and how they're behaving. Do you think you can predict, or do you think you can now tell if someone's lying to you? Or if they're being dishonest?

• 46:04Evy Poumpouras?

  It happens a lot. When you speak to people, you can, I guess, you can look at it this way. You can figure out who's full of BS and who isn't.

• 46:14Evy Poumpouras?

  One, you feel it.

• 46:16Evy Poumpouras?

  I think your intuition is a huge thing. And we dismiss it. Two people show you, you create baselines on people. So if I sit and I speak to someone and the whole time they're speaking, like when you talk, Steven, most of your, your hands are usually here. You go on the iPad, you do this. That's your baseline, right? You do a lock eye contact. I've got Steven, right? Now, let's say I, I ask you later a question and maybe it's a question you don't like, right? I ask you like, tell me about your employees at work, or tell me about the most difficult employee you had and how did you deal with it? And it's something maybe that affects you. You don't want to talk about it. You don't want to be honest with me. You might be like, ah, you know, every, and you look down. I'm like, well, you know, I'll see a shift. This whole time I'm talking to Steven, he's locked in with me. He's got a certain posture.

• 46:59Evy Poumpouras?

  I ask him this question. He just showed me something different. Why? That's it. Why? And then now I know to be curious, that when you're done asking or answering my question, I come in with good follow-up questions. Cause you're showing me something is happening here. What most people don't do, Steven, is they see something, it registers and they let it go. They don't follow up to, with another question and then another question and then another question. You don't want to be nosy, but you want to be curious.

• 47:36Steven Bartlett?

  Who's the greatest liar you ever met?

• 47:40Steven Bartlett?

  Can you recall an instance of meeting someone who was just a really great liar?

• 47:44Evy Poumpouras?

  I had this one guy. He was doing, it wasn't a big scam, but he was doing ATM fraud. So you know how you go to the ATMs and you, you, you go, you put in your card, you take out money. So he was going on to the ATMs and he would, he would put us on a skimming device. This is a very, I don't want, but a very primitive way to steal money. So he would put on his own skimmer on the ATM. So when you swipe your card, you're swiping it on his skimmer. So it captures all the info. So this guy was just kind of like very low level, basic criminal. He's going around to the, all the ATMs in Brooklyn and he's doing this skimming device. So on the ATMs, they take photos of you. So I've got a photo of this guy. I've got him. And he's got his hat on. I think it was like a New York Knicks hat at the time. He's got his hat on. I've got his full frontal.

• 48:27Evy Poumpouras?

  We found the guy. We matched the prints to the prints on the ATM. Boom. I've got my guy. I got my photo. This is easy day. I put him in the interview room, I sit him down. Hey, you know, I want to talk to you about this. First I do like a rapport building. What's your name, where are you from? Talk to me, he's super nice. Super nice guy, yes ma'am, okay ma'am. You know, and he was from another country, I remember. So we're talking, he's looking to me, yes, and he's very, very, um, wants to help me. Yes, I want to help you and I'm so, you know, yes, of course, like very cooperative, overly cooperative. So that's my red flag, I'm like, this guy's trying too hard. And, uh, sir, I want to ask you about this ATM scam. Oh, no, I don't know anything, I don't know anything. I'm like, no, how about here?

• 49:10Evy Poumpouras?

  And I just start revealing a couple of things and I've got my photo in my background. I'm like, I'm gonna bust out this photo, this guy's gonna be like, yup, that's me, sorry. So as I'm doing this, I'm hitting a wall. No, no, no, I'm sorry ma'am, I wish I could help you, no, no, no. So I got the photo of the guy. Do you know he showed up to my interview wearing the same hat?

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:28Evy Poumpouras?

  And I'm thinking, I'm locked, I'm tight. Pull out the photo and I'm like, oh yeah? Then what's this? Put it down on the table, he looks at it. Oh yeah, that's me. It looks like me, but. Yeah, wow, I could see, no, it's not me.

• 49:46Evy Poumpouras?

  It was him. I got, he mean nothing, nothing. He was, I will never forget him, just a great liar. Most people waver this and that, not this guy. He was locked tight. He stuck to that story, never gave a confession. Thankfully, we had enough to charge him. I mean, it was ATM fraud, but. Not, looked at me, I'm sorry. And you know, one of, one of the things people would do, doesn't, doesn't mean that people are always lying when they do this, but one of the things I would see a lot of guilty people do, and he did this a lot. I swear to God, I swear to God, God is my witness, God knows that's not me. And so we would call it divine intervention. Whenever you'd hear somebody do that, you knew it's like, okay, there's a problem. Cause it's kind of like you're saying, why do you need God to come in to, to vouch for you?

• 50:32Evy Poumpouras?

  Or sometimes we actually have people come in with bibles. Or rosary beads, whenever you saw that in the waiting room, that person coming in, I was like, I, they'd be like, don't even poly them, they did it.

• 50:43Evy Poumpouras?

  Because they're trying so hard to connect to that. I'm a religious person, I would never do these things. And those were a little red flags. Of course, I would do my interview, but in my back of my head, I'm like, he probably did it.

• 50:55Steven Bartlett?

  What about other things like, you're very good at keeping eye contact?

• 50:58Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes.

• 50:59Steven Bartlett?

  Is there such a thing as too much eye contact?

• 51:02Evy Poumpouras?

  It depends on the person, but I think you also need to be you. So I make eye contact. Here's the other thing, when I make eye contact with you, I show you, one, I'm confident in myself. I also show you, I deserve to make eye contact with you, that I am relevant, and I don't need to look away or hide, because I deserve to be here, and I deserve to be having a conversation with you. Right? And that I matter. That's one thing. And I also convey authority and confidence. You don't have to say anything to people, you show them. I look at you, I'm comfortable to look at you. But I can also show you warmth, right? I can connect with you and engage with you and be present and listen to you.

• 51:44Evy Poumpouras?

  The other thing eye contact does, it also sends a message to you that you matter to me, that I'm here and that I am present with you and that I'm listening to you, that I see you, and that I want to try to understand you. So eye contact is wonderful because it does two things. It makes you feel relevant, and it makes me relevant also. That I'm relevant enough to sit here and look at you when I speak. And it's another way to convey my authority without having to tell you, hey, you know what? I'm in charge. I didn't have to tell you. I show you.

• 52:20Steven Bartlett?

  What about body language? You know, because I'm thinking about people that I know that are particularly low in self-esteem, and they struggle with eye contact. But then also, sometimes, it's almost like they make themselves smaller in their body language and stuff like that. And I was just thinking like, I guess what I'm thinking here is can I trick myself? Can I trick myself and other people into thinking I'm confident if I'm not? Is, you know, because there's all this stuff about like the Superman posture where you can kind of make yourself bigger and look in people's eyes. But when I reflect on my early years, when I was least confident, for some reason, I couldn't get anyone I was pursuing.

• 52:59Steven Bartlett?

  So I remember there was these five girls that I, over the, over the course of about, since I was from 14 to I'd say 23, that I was really into. All five of them weren't interested in me, that we would like, we'd get a little bit far down the line. So there was like a little bit of sort of initial interest, but then I would always lose them. And I never knew why, I never knew why, but in, but then it changed at about 24. And it doesn't correlate to like money or success necessarily. It correlates to my opinion of myself. And it was almost like magic. When I look back and I thought, fucking hell, like I got rejected over and over and over again. And when I got to the point that I actually believed that I was good enough, even though I read all the books, I read up all the pick up artistry books.

• 53:42Steven Bartlett?

  I read the game, I read all of these books, I had the tips, tactics and tricks to fake it. But I, but it wasn't until I genuinely believed that I was high value, that I had real success with the opposite sex. And so it left me with this feeling that you can read all the tips, the tricks, the eye contact, the body language. But maybe none of it works because there's a thousand other non-verbal micro expressions that are communicating, you're low value, you don't believe in yourself, you're not worthy. That overpower that, that we can't really control. And the reason it changed at 24, 25, 26, 27 is because I genuinely felt like I was good enough for them.

• 54:21Steven Bartlett?

  Like, so, you know, this is why I reflect on this idea of like, I know people will click podcasts like this because they want the tips, the tricks. They want to get from A to Z in three seconds. No. They wanna get, they wanna get from low confident, low self-esteem, all that, to at the altar with a king. Then they wanna do it, they wanna know how to do it in the space of this conversation, so that they can end this conversation and walk down the aisle tomorrow with their prince charming. That's what people want. They want to solve complex things with short, simple solutions.

• 54:59Evy Poumpouras?

  Doesn't exist.

• 55:00Steven Bartlett?

  I know this because, I know that if I title this, like if you title a podcast, six pack abs in seven minutes, people are gonna go blah blah blah. But if you titled it six pack abs in three years of work and diet restriction, fucking no one's gonna click. You know, and it's the same thing for, for here and I've, and I'm often wondering like, how, how does someone change the core of themselves? Whether it's as a, as a leader, a manager, in a relationship, that very core of you. Cause in my life, it was actually just this like long grueling process of building myself. It was at the, like retiring from caring so much about actually getting any of these people and just building up this real internal fortress.

• 55:42Steven Bartlett?

  And then everything else took care, the body language, the eye contact, the way I walk into a room, it all took care of itself. And you know, but it doesn't sell books that, like there's, no one's gonna buy that book.

• 55:52Evy Poumpouras?

  You know what though? It is all the little things we do that help us get there. There's no magic thing. That's why you're like, it took me time. And what it was, is all the little things along the lines that, that, that came. It's, there's no magic thing. People could sometimes come to me and they're like, I mean, what's the secret? And I tell them, there's no secret. The change that you want in your life, it's all the little things that you do. It's like, think of it like compound interest, right? I had to do this, and then I had this layer, and then this layer, and then this layer, and then this layer. It's like the sheets of paper. You put one sheet, it's light, two sheets are light, three sheets. But you put a thousand sheets, now you've got weight. That's how we are. We're layers and we have to add to those layers. There's no quick thing. You know when you know you're gonna get there? When you're sovereign.

• 56:37Evy Poumpouras?

  When you feel like, I don't need anybody. It's wonderful to have human beings around me. And I think connection is, is, it's, it's wonderful. But if your goal is, I need someone to complete me, you're done. And I think also, it's so wild, cause I'm thinking about my youth as you're talking about yours. When I became sovereign, like where I'm like, I'm good enough. I'm good as I am.

• 57:01Steven Bartlett?

  You become a magnet.

• 57:02Evy Poumpouras?

  I became a magnet. People like, well, I wanted that. I wanna be around that. I wanna be around her. Everywhere. People like, how do you? It's like, because I believe in me. But it took time to believe in me.

• 57:13Steven Bartlett?

  And when you became sovereign.

• 57:15Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, everyone's just like.

• 57:17Steven Bartlett?

  But how did your behavior change? Those micro behaviors.

• 57:20Evy Poumpouras?

  I stopped chasing things and chasing people.

• 57:22Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 57:22Evy Poumpouras?

  I stopped looking for approval. I stopped trying to people please. Right, and I just, I trusted myself. I also stopped taking inventory from everybody, asking everybody their opinion. And I also though, but I also had, I dealt with a lot of rejection. A lot of like rejection, a lot of people not agreeing with me. I gossip growing up. There was a lot, I took a lot of heavy hits. And those things made me resilient. Those things taught me to like not, you know, to stay my course. Like, you know, and I've shared this before, but when I became an agent, I put in front of Y P D. The community of friends and people I had around me, they thought I was ridiculous. They thought I was silly. I remember after, when I started dating, after I became an agent, there was one guy, a friend of mine's, a good friend of mine's brother.

• 58:07Evy Poumpouras?

  She was trying to hook me up with him. This is before my husband. My husband knows everything. And, uh, so I'm like, alright, you know, he was a nice Greek guy. I'm Greek, I'm staying, I'm keeping it in the community, cuz you're supposed to.

• 58:20Evy Poumpouras?

  So I'm talking to him and I'm like, yeah, and I'm thinking like, I went through so much to become a special agent with the U S Secret Service. And you know what he said to me? He's like, so like, when you get married, are you gonna quit that job and, you know, ditch this? I mean, like, how long are you gonna do this? Like, he spoke about it like it was nothing, like it was trivial. And I heard that and I was just like, wait, what? It's like, dude, you couldn't get into the Secret Service if like, like with your, like, there's no, with all your might. And when he was like, said that to me, and his job, he owned a diner and he owned, he owned a diner, food. His success was wealth and money. And some cultures, including mine and the community I was in, they, they measured success with money. Like, what I was doing was not successful.

• 59:05Evy Poumpouras?

  But I had the ability to be sovereign enough to like, not listen. I was just like, no, that's not my belief system, my moral compass. And, um, I stopped caring. Then I dated another guy who knew I was in the Secret Service. I really liked this guy, it was this Italian kid. And I'm thinking, he's gonna be so proud of me. I got in and we went on this date and he had just broken up with someone. Steven, like. He was so uncomfortable around me.

• 59:31Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 59:33Evy Poumpouras?

  Because I was an agent. That was like a freak show. It was weird. I think today's a little different, maybe at that time, and...

• 59:39Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think men struggle with strong women?

• 59:41Evy Poumpouras?

  I think certain men do. I think, I think men who are not confident in themselves, if you're steady, you don't care what somebody else is. You're cheering for them. I ended up dating an agent and marrying him. So because my husband's so steady and sovereign in himself, I could do whatever. And he'd be like, "You go."

• 1:00:04Steven Bartlett?

  You had your first child at forty-five years old?

• 1:00:07Evy Poumpouras?

  I had my daughter at forty, excuse me, forty-six. My daughter's eighteen months old.

• 1:00:12Steven Bartlett?

  Your daughter gets to eighteen?

• 1:00:14Evy Poumpouras?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:14Steven Bartlett?

  And she's, she's, she just can't get out of bed. She's lazy. She's blaming the world. She's saying, "Listen, this is, this person's fault and this person's fault and I, you know, I just can't be bothered." Where'd you start?

• 1:00:28Evy Poumpouras?

  Well, look, if I've done a good job, or my husband and I have done a good job, and again, it's not a hundred percent us, we should have, hopefully by that point, put in certain structures in place to prevent that. I'll give you a small example. I've never put an iPhone in front of her. I have no working television in my house. Because I control what she absorbs. Not the internet. And I'm gonna hold on to that as long as possible. Because I've seen with these, the cell phones, I'm a grown-ass adult, and I'll look at stuff, and it impacts me, and I'm like, "I can't look at this." Or I'll unfollow things, or I'll go off social. I don't wanna see it. I cover news. I cover crime. Child, I cover really heinous things. And there are times where I do the news. I do the news. Stephen, I don't watch it.

• 1:01:10Evy Poumpouras?

  So there are little things that I can do. So up until this point, eighteen months, it's a lot more work for me and my family. There's no social device. There's no cellphone. I control that. I kinda look at it. I wanna know what, what's feeding her mind. The way I choose to make her food, I choose what goes in the mind. I control it. And a lot of parents will come to me, and I'll tell them, "If you're not comfortable dropping your kid in the middle of Times Square to talk to whoever..." Then you get that thing out of their hands because now somebody else is putting ideas in your kid's head. I have no control over that. Zero. And that's powerful. That's one, and especially we see it affect little girls. And again, I'm a grown woman and social media impacts me in the moment I'm like, eh, I put that thing away. That's one.

• 1:01:55Evy Poumpouras?

  No TV in my house because TV is like when I was a kid, you had cartoons Saturday morning, that was it, and you had to wait for those cartoons. I mean, I was like, tomorrow cartoons. So this instant gratification process that kids have, that's, that's why you hear like, help me get to here fast. She's never gonna learn how to work hard. She's gonna be lazy. She's gonna lay in bed. She's gonna get depressed quicker. She's gonna have anxiety. So I'm doing everything I can to impact those things. They're little seeds. It's little things so that by the time she's 18, I hope in my heart, I have done my best. But I also understand, I'm 50%, she's 50%.

• 1:02:36Evy Poumpouras?

  So as much as I try to help navigate her, she's gonna be her own person. And I'm gonna have to listen, understand what her value systems are, what she cares about, but her exposure to them is real, I regulate that. Even the school she's gonna go to. I sit there, I'm already thinking about where I'm gonna put her to school. And I don't, I'm like, do I want her in a public school? I don't know. I don't want her being like, Mom, I want a Gucci belt and, you know, labels and all this stuff. I was like, I don't want her to think like that. I want her to have a different mindset. I'm like, so I'm creating in my head, how do I do that? Another thing I do, super small, I take her to Greece with me every summer. Do you know where we go in Greece? In the village. Village.

• 1:03:18Evy Poumpouras?

  I'm talking like bathroom in the back, hardcore, like rug in it. My parents grew up in villages. I grew up in that, I lived in that in the summer, June, July, August, September, I was in the village. In fact, the, the bathroom was connected to the chicken coop.

• 1:03:31Steven Bartlett?

  Would you let her fly business class?

• 1:03:33Evy Poumpouras?

  No. The only time I fly business class is when somebody else is paying.

• 1:03:39Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 1:03:40Evy Poumpouras?

  Because I'm saving my money.

• 1:03:43Evy Poumpouras?

  Because business class is expensive. Because I work really hard and I'm okay to sit in the back. So business class, there has to be a really good reason why I'm gonna dish out that money for business class for myself, let alone my daughter. Economy.

• 1:03:58Steven Bartlett?

  Economy?

• 1:04:00Evy Poumpouras?

  My poor kid, right? She can grow up and I'm like, you can keep all your stuff to yourself.

• 1:04:05Steven Bartlett?

  You, um, one of the things we, we were chatting about before we started recording was that your favorite days are when you work out, you go to the gym. Why, why is that so important to you? Why is exercise so central to, to everything that you do in your mind?

• 1:04:18Evy Poumpouras?

  There's, I think that there's a school of like, the mind and the body are two separate things. And a lot of people will be like, I'm working on my mind, I listen to podcasts, which is great, but then they don't work out their body. And, and these things live together. I learned this in the Secret Service, like these things were, they're married. So if you're depressed and you're not getting off the sofa,

• 1:04:40Evy Poumpouras?

  there's a problem. Your body needs help. I work with, uh, I trained out with Don Saladino. Even me, with all my experience, like sometimes we need somebody to push us. And accountability is a big thing. So I always tell people, if you're struggling, have somebody be accountable for you. Don, who I work with and I train with, he makes me take a photo of every meal I eat and text it to him. He's like, I wanna see what you're putting in your mouth. And every time I'm about to have something that I shouldn't, I think to myself, I gotta send this to Don. So he's gonna police it. So having somebody help you is also a good thing. But your body is your temple. You get one of these. We take better care of our cars than we do this. And then we wonder, why am I depressed?

• 1:05:24Evy Poumpouras?

  Because you have to move this, you have to take care of it. Everything in the US Secret Service was about performance. This is your, this is your home. It houses your mind, it houses your soul. And we treat it like garbage. And we give it garbage. When I run and I work out at night, all the stress, I'm like any other human being. I accumulate stress, people's angst, stuff coming at me. And I need a way to release it. So at night, I go run and I let it out. There's been times in my life, I can think of two distinct times. I remember once, and I don't remember what it was, but I had such a stressful, hard day. Steven, I went to the track to run. I remember it was freezing, it was winter, it was snowing.

• 1:06:04Evy Poumpouras?

  And I was just like, I was just like on the verge of just like, just pure emotion and rage. I started running. I was like talking to myself, I was running, I'm bawling, my eyes are bawling, bawling. I look like a crazy person to the outside world. But I ran it all out. And when I was done, I was back to me. The, the, the physical element of our body is such an important thing. And we treat them as two separate entities. And, and, and they, you have to take care of what houses your soul and your mind.

• 1:06:39Steven Bartlett?

  You strike me as someone that is pretty fearless. I, I, I say pretty because we all, I think we all have fear in us. I think fear is a useful, natural emotion. But you, you're someone that clearly has built up a, a more productive relationship with fear than most people. When you think back of your sort of Secret Service experience, was there a day where you were more scared than another day? I E. What was the most scared you were during your time in the Secret Service?

• 1:07:07Evy Poumpouras?

  Do you know, I had this one scenario, and I don't think I ever talked about it. I'm in downtown Manhattan, I'm with my colleague, and we're driving to a Secret Service meeting. We're gonna go arrest somebody the next day, and we were going to the briefing with this other department. We were gonna do our, our pre-arrest briefing about how we're gonna go in tactically. So we're driving to this meeting, and as we're going to this meeting, we're in downtown Manhattan.

• 1:07:32Evy Poumpouras?

  Somebody runs out of a, it was a jewelry store. This man runs out of a jewelry store, and these other people are out there running with him, and they're yelling. And they see us, and I guess they realize that we were in a police car, even though it was undercover, they just stand out. They're like, help, help, get him, get him. And the way they were acting, you'd think he would have shot, somebody shot somebody. And we can see, as you see them screaming and yelling, help, help, you see this other person running away. So my partner flips on the lights. We start driving and we're chasing this person. Now, I can't see this person. I see their back. They have a hoodie on. They're running. From the posture of it, of it, it looked like a male. And it looked like a guy running. So he's running, lights on. We get on the thing. Stop running, stop running. He's not listening to anything.

• 1:08:17Evy Poumpouras?

  He goes, he turns the block. We're still chasing him. Then he turns into a, a parking garage. In New York City, there, there's these parking garages and they go all the way underground. So he turns in. So we can't go in with the car. We're going in blind. We pull up. We get ourselves out. And as we're going in, we're clearing people out. But you could also see people running out. I guess they could tell something was wrong. People are leaving. And now we're thinking, does this guy have a gun? Like, what's going on? Cause people are responding very agitatedly to the scenario. We go in, we pull everybody out. Everybody get out, get out. So we go to the bottom level of the parking garage where we believe he's at. Lights are, it's dark. And we go in, police, come out, police, come out. He's not listening. We're looking for him underneath all these cars. And then I see him.

• 1:09:02Evy Poumpouras?

  He's underneath the car. And I, I go to my partner, I signal to my partner, cause he's like on the other side. I'm like, hey, I'm like, he's right down, he's right there. And we can't see him. My partner's like, I'm gonna go around. So my partner goes around and he, he didn't listen to me, my partner. So I blame him a little bit. He went too prematurely before we kind of figured out what, what. He goes to go grab him from behind. So now my partner's out in the open. This guy's out there. I see him. I don't know if he has a weapon. We have enough to, he ran from us, right? So all these things are escalating. Let me see your hands, let me see your hands. Nothing. Let me see your hands, put your hands out. I can see you. I see you under the car. Let me see your hands. Cause now I'm worried he's gonna shoot my partner. Cause my partner's out in the open trying to get to him. Let me see your hands. So then I pull my gun out.

• 1:09:46Evy Poumpouras?

  And I pointed at him. Let me see your hands, let me see your hands. And I'm thinking, please show your hands. Because now I'm in this cross between if this, this guy have a gun? And if he has a gun, any second, he's gonna kill my partner. And I had a choice where I was like, do I?

• 1:10:03Evy Poumpouras?

  Do you shoot? Because I think he's gonna shoot my partner because he's not showing me his hands and he's fidgeting? Do I not shoot? Give him the benefit of the doubt? And then he does shoot my partner and now I'm responsible for the death of my partner? Or if he doesn't have a gun? Am I responsible because now I just shot him and he didn't have a gun? And you're doing this, this thing in your head? And there's no way to win and this happening in seconds. I couldn't see his hands. I chose not to shoot. I'm praying that he doesn't shoot my partner. He has no gun. He's not showing his hands. And then I'm like, I'm gonna shoot you. Please show your hands, show your hands. And then my partner goes from behind. And then the guy's like, fine, fine. He's like, put your gun away. He's screaming. He puts his hands out. My partner pulls him up from the back and we get him. Then we come around. I'm pissed.

• 1:10:48Evy Poumpouras?

  I'm so pissed. We sit him down. We cuff him. I pull his hoodie out. Sixteen year old kid. I searched his pockets. You know what he did? He sold one, he stole one of those big gold crosses. That is all he did. Because I pulled out his ID. I checked his ID. I was like, do you know I almost shot you for this? Do you know we chased you down for this? You almost died for the stupid cross?

• 1:11:15Evy Poumpouras?

  So we call the cops. They come. That stayed with me because I almost killed an innocent person for what? For nothing. That was probably very powerful. I was afraid. I've been scenarios where the, the death was on my receiving end. And I was okay with that. But I wasn't okay with this because I thought there was a split second where I was deciding, do I shoot him? Because he's not following my instructions. I cannot see his hand. My partner's out there. He could kill my partner. I don't know if he has a gun. I had all these escalating reasons to think that. And I chose not to shoot.

• 1:11:49Steven Bartlett?

  What is your mental health like, uh, generally and throughout your career? Because people talk about mental health. They talk about anxiety, you know, depression, low moods and stuff. Have you ever experienced what people describe as mental health disorders?

• 1:12:02Evy Poumpouras?

  I, I don't. This is terrible. I don't think so. I think, I'm trying to think. I mean, like any human being, I go through moments, but I don't let myself live there. I guess I always feel like I'm the governor.

• 1:12:18Evy Poumpouras?

  I will say this, it is okay to be depressed, it is okay to have anxiety, it is okay to feel bad. I think maybe that's the issue because we're in a space where, oh, you're depressed? You, there's something wrong with you. You have anxiety? Whoa. I had anxiety every day when I went to training. I always had anxiety. When I put my vest on and I was protecting the president, I would carry my MP5, which is like this, a weapon that basically like could go into automatic, you could cause serious damage. Like, I had anxiety. I'm like, man, is today the day? Those are okay things to have. So I feel like maybe we should change the narrative and normalize feeling bad. Instead of making people feel like you're sad, take this pill. You have anxiety? Something's wrong with that. Why is that bad?

• 1:13:03Evy Poumpouras?

  Why do I have to be like every ridiculous commercial? Like, because in the US, we, we advertise prescription medication, where I'm smiling all the time and happy. My barometer for life is not to be happy. The, the moments that I've done the most amazing things in my life, I've not been happy. I've been fulfilled. I've been like, man, I just did that. When I woke up, when I would wake up at 3:00 AM to go to the White House to stand post for 10 hours outside the Oval Office in the freezing cold in the winter, I wasn't happy. It was freezing, I was cold. But you know what? I was like, man, how did I get here?

• 1:13:34Steven Bartlett?

  Was there ever a day when you thought the president's life was at risk and you were around him? Was there ever a moment where you thought?

• 1:13:40Evy Poumpouras?

  Every day.

• 1:13:42Steven Bartlett?

  But, but was there a particular day where you thought, no?

• 1:13:43Evy Poumpouras?

  Oh, we're screwed?

• 1:13:44Steven Bartlett?

  Or that he was gonna be attacked? Was there ever a moment where you genuinely thought there was a genuine threat on his life? Just wondering.

• 1:13:54Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes and no. Yes in that, like when you would do outdoor events, like certain events where he was very vulnerable, like he's speaking to a crowd of 10,000 people. There are so many things that could go wrong, right? So those events, like there was definitely that threat level was heightened. But we had just put together, man, the agency was just such a competent agency and there were so many layers of security put in. Things that you don't, you don't see, but it's the snipers, it's the counter assault team. It's the air restrictions, no planes flying above ground because we put those into place.

• 1:14:34Evy Poumpouras?

  It's even radi- radiation detection, nuclear, there's so many things we do that you, the average person has no idea about. The, the protocols we put in place, so I can't say the president per se, because I feel like he got all the bells and whistles. But maybe there were times where it was hard to protect certain people. And that, that's where I felt it was harder. When I protected Barbara Bush, Bush's daughter, when I had her, that was hard. Because I did not have the resources that you would have for a president. And she wanted to be a young girl and go out and date and go to clubs and go to Coachella and do these things. I had to take her to Coachella and I'm thinking,

• 1:15:19Evy Poumpouras?

  I gotta keep her alive. And there's, you know, it's Coachella and how many people are at Coachella, it's like ten thousand, hundreds, I don't even know at this point. So those scenarios were usually the most uneasy for me. Because I had limited resources. And it was a very different environment and they wanna live their life.

• 1:15:39Steven Bartlett?

  Is there anything that you can't talk about?

• 1:15:41Evy Poumpouras?

  Sure, if you ask me something I can't answer, I'll tell you.

• 1:15:44Steven Bartlett?

  But is, I'm, I'm interested to know what you're unable to talk about.

• 1:15:47Evy Poumpouras?

  You can't talk about the cars.

• 1:15:50Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, what, the way that the cars work in the security systems?

• 1:15:52Evy Poumpouras?

  Yeah, the way technical, mechanical things with the cars. Because you have to think of it this way, anything I share here, you're gonna have people that follow you that listen, but you're also gonna have bad actors who listen to these interviews to gather information because they wanna carry out an attack. I always think like that. So there are certain things you can't share. I can't share certain things about Air Force One. I can't share certain things about like how We positioned ourselves, like even though you'll see agents around the president, there's a schematic that we follow that the average person won't understand how we move, our vehicles, how they're positioned and why, uh, how we, how we would fight an attacker. Like there's scenarios we play and movements that exist. It's like a dance.

• 1:16:36Steven Bartlett?

  Do you have to sign a form when you leave or before you start to say that I'll never speak about certain things?

• 1:16:41Evy Poumpouras?

  Do you know, initially know there was no such thing because there was such a level of trust?

• 1:16:47Steven Bartlett?

  You didn't need it.

• 1:16:48Evy Poumpouras?

  You didn't need it. And then one agent, and I love him, he came out and he started talking about things he shouldn't have talked about. Um, and as soon as he did that, the NDAs came, which is a little sad because up until that point, it was really just, everything we did was based on the honor system.

• 1:17:08Steven Bartlett?

  Did you ever have any form of imposter syndrome? You know, we talked earlier that when you joined the secret service, there was what 98% men or something crazy?

• 1:17:16Evy Poumpouras?

  It was.

• 1:17:17Steven Bartlett?

  And so as a woman in that environment, I know that you underwent a lot of prejudice, a lot of discrimination, a lot of comments. Did that ever leave you feeling like you were somewhere you weren't supposed to be? Or what, you know, as they describe it as imposter syndrome?

• 1:17:33Evy Poumpouras?

  So I hate that word. And I don't let it live in my head. And it's like, who invented that word? I think there's like these two researchers and I want to say, I could be completely wrong. So everybody be kind to me if I'm making a mistake, but I had looked into it and I can't remember. And I think it was two researchers who invented it specifically for women. So I don't have imposter syndrome. I earned to where I got. I killed myself to get there. So I always felt like, oh wow, how did I get here? But I'm like, I got here. So I never let that live in my head and take up real estate. So one is my naivety, my naivety and my ignorance allowed me to get to where I was. Because I didn't have this narrative, I shouldn't be there. By whose standard?

• 1:18:19Evy Poumpouras?

  That's one. The other thing is, I'm not gonna dismiss and say that I did not endure difficult things. Of course I did. I was a woman. Yes, these things happened. I remember once I was at a briefing. I was a brand new. We were at this one briefing. It's me and all these guys. And then uh, there was a boss giving a briefing to everybody. He locked eye contact with everybody except me. He wouldn't look at me the whole briefing. After every brief, and then I ended having, ended up having it for a boss for a lot of things. It's like I wasn't there. He'd look at everybody else. I knew intuitively, it's like, he feels weird looking at me. Cause I'm a woman. Like, okay. I was like, I still deserve to be here.

• 1:18:59Steven Bartlett?

  In those environments, if someone's not, if you feel like your manager, or your, or your boss, or your, or the CEO, or even like a colleague, isn't showing you respect. And I, I know, I've read your story, so I know that this happened multiple times in your life where there'd be someone around you that wasn't showing you the respect you deserve. And I have a lot of people that come up to me and they say, I'm struggling because my boss is not showing me respect, or my colleague, this colleague isn't listening to me, or all these kinds of things. Where, where does your mind default to when I say that? Like, where do you go to in your mind? What is your, like, action A?

• 1:19:36Evy Poumpouras?

  So, with the last one, you just said, my, my colleagues don't listen to me. I would come back and I would say, give me an example of where they don't listen to you, right? So I would say to you, when you do speak, do you look at people when you speak? Do you project your voice? So it's called paralinguistics. Everyone's so focused on what they say, like, reading my notes or reading my agenda. They don't think about the tone pitch of the voice. How are you delivering this? Are you projecting your voice?

• 1:20:01Steven Bartlett?

  Give me an example.

• 1:20:02Evy Poumpouras?

  Do you talk like this when you speak? I have a question. I just wanna share something. People are gonna like, glaze over. I have a question. Or, or, even just the tone, how you under, hi, I'm Evy. Hi, I'm Evy. Feels different. Those are simple things you can do to make sure people hear you. The other thing is,

• 1:20:26Evy Poumpouras?

  I say this a lot when I speak to companies because communication is a big thing. Don't just talk to talk. There's this thing out there, and especially with women, where it's like, make sure they hear you. Make sure your voice is heard at the table. I'm fine with that. Do you have something beneficial to say or value to say? Because if you don't, don't say anything. Half the meetings I go to, I don't speak. Because I maybe I have nothing to say.

• 1:20:51Steven Bartlett?

  It's so interesting. I am from being in many boardrooms for many, many years, probably 15 years being in marketing boardrooms. Not 15 years, about 10 years being in marketing boardrooms with CEOs, with my team, with lots of different people, lots of different teams. I've had thousands and thousands of meetings. I eventually observed something in myself, which is a bit of a prejudice that I have, which is the minute someone speaks,

• 1:21:15Steven Bartlett?

  based on their contribution score, which is like a credit score, based on all of the contributions you made in the past. In those first couple of seconds, if their previous contributions were all valuable, everyone in the room would stop and look and lean in. But if they're if they developed a low contribution score because they'd continually talked for the sake of talking, i.e. they're just like, I'll give you an example. In my New York office back in the day, there was this one, one guy who we'd be in a brainstorm trying to solve a problem. And he would start speaking and you'd see by the way he started speaking that he hadn't actually thought through what he was going to say. And he'd go, what about if we put a, I don't know, like a pop up?

• 1:22:01Steven Bartlett?

  And like, maybe we'll do some TikToks. And so honestly, what I then observed from that individual is every time they opened their mouth, people would instantly basically like dismiss the idea because they had such a low contribution score. And like, we all have a contribution score. You have one, I have one. Based on the last 10 years of when we've opened our mouth, how valuable it was to the people around us. Like, that individual, whenever he spoke, I would see the person sat next to him, who I won't name, almost like low-key roll their eyes in the first five seconds and shut it down before he'd even got it out. And then there was this other guy called, in my UK office, called Paul, never spoke, like, never really said anything. Super mature, super experienced guy.

• 1:22:45Steven Bartlett?

  The minute he said anything, because every time he opened his mouth, it was important and valuable and considered. Everyone went, he could interrupt anyone, the instant silence, everyone stares over at this guy. Because when he contributed, we all knew that he had something valuable to add. And I, so I would say to my team, and I said this to this team that I were here with us in New York, like, just make sure you protect your contribution score.

• 1:23:06Evy Poumpouras?

  That, I think, that's such a brilliant way to say it, yes. You're probably, yes, it's like, it's your score because people keep tabs on you.

• 1:23:14Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:14Evy Poumpouras?

  They know Stephen's gonna say something. He doesn't always speak, but if he's gonna say something, every time he drops something, he drops something of value. Where people think like, I have to talk because everyone tells me I have to talk, make my voice heard. No, shut up.

• 1:23:28Steven Bartlett?

  And if you're silent, then you're not of value. That's what people think. They think, you didn't add anything.

• 1:23:32Evy Poumpouras?

  Right.

• 1:23:32Steven Bartlett?

  Well, you didn't take anything away either.

• 1:23:34Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes. I will tell you this too, Stephen, when I go to meetings, or sometimes I go to meetings, and if I'm the dumbest person in the room, I'm the happiest person. That's the one time where I'm happy because I'm thinking, wow, look at all these smart people around me and I get to be part of this. I get to listen. I love to sit back and listen. There's times, I just had a meeting with like my scripted agent, Sylvie, with my manager about some TV project. And I knew enough to know, to say, they're like, hey, Evy, this and this. And I said, you know what? This is space I don't know. I'm gonna follow your lead, fill me in, I'm taking a seat back, you guys do the talking.

• 1:24:10Steven Bartlett?

  You're someone who has a default to taking responsibility. You know, like, the opposite, I guess, of taking responsibility is becoming a victim, which we talked a little bit about before we started recording. But people don't like taking responsibility. It almost is like holding a mirror up to yourself. It's much easier to go through life blaming the world, blaming the government, blaming circumstance, luck. Parents, the guy that did it to me, my ex-boyfriend, my ex-husband. It's a much easier way, it's a much more comfortable way to exist within your mind. For most, for most people, for a lot of people. I am, I sat with a guy called Mogodat many years ago and he, the first time he came on my podcast. And he told me that when he writes a book, he gets 500 people at random, members of the public, to go into a Google Doc and kind of read through it.

• 1:24:53Steven Bartlett?

  And he goes, for some reason, when people got to the section about personal responsibility, about 10% of people just click off.

• 1:24:59Steven Bartlett?

  Because they don't want to read that.

• 1:25:01Evy Poumpouras?

  Because nothing's my fault.

• 1:25:02Steven Bartlett?

  They don't want someone to tell them that they can change their life. And I've always found that really bizarre, like, people, people don't want to know that they, some people don't want to know that wherever they are now and where they want to be, will largely be based, in most circumstances, not all, be based on what they do now and tomorrow and the day after. There's something about victimhood, which both alleviates blame from ourselves and makes us feel justified in our misery.

• 1:25:42Evy Poumpouras?

  Do you know, but some people want to live there. It becomes their identity. So I am this. I am how I am today because of this thing that happened to me a long time ago. I remember working with this woman, there was a window during Covid when people were writing to me. And I was like, ah, it's quiet, let me do consultations. And I did consultation mentors and I had this one woman come to me. And I would get people like what you're talking about every now and then. Usually when most people came to me, though, they knew what they were getting. But I would have people come to me that just wanted me to validate that somebody else did this to you or you're okay to feel this way. This one woman came to me, she was a therapist. And she came to me and she told me about some hardships she had when she was young.

• 1:26:24Evy Poumpouras?

  I think what she had was, she grew up with no money, it was very traumatic. She had to take care of her brother and she, there was a term for it, I forgot it was a clinical term. And because of that trauma, today she has all these issues. And so she's like, I have a hard time talking in front of people, I have anxiety. And she was telling me this stuff. I said, why don't we leave what happened to you here, here? Let's leave it there. I said, and let's look at what we're doing because you're telling me, Evy, I want to perform in life. But it's like you've just bought yourself this brand new Porsche and you're like, this thing won't go past fifty or sixty. Why? Because I'm like, because you have this big ass U-Haul attached to it and it can't. So why don't we leave this back there and we'll move forward? Would you believe Steven, she lost her mind? She's like, how dare you?

• 1:27:08Evy Poumpouras?

  How dare you dismiss what I've been through? How dare you read the room? I will never forget her. And the thing was, it was so part of who she was today. It was her. It defined her so much. She didn't want to leave it behind. She just wanted to talk about it more. And so sometimes.

• 1:27:27Steven Bartlett?

  Why doesn't she want to leave it behind, do you think?

• 1:27:29Evy Poumpouras?

  Because it's her identity. It's who she is. It's like people who have been through something. An experience. I will give you another example. September eleventh. So I was in the World Trade Center on September eleventh. I survived. I was almost killed. I lost colleagues and friends. But I was also around other people who experienced what I experienced. And different different people behave differently. And there were some people that would reach out to me. Remember this one guy, he was a medic. And he saw what I saw. He experienced what I experienced. And he just couldn't recover. And he would call me up. He's like, Evy, I'm struggling. I'm struggling. And I tell him, I'm like, I think his name was Jerry. I'm like, Jerry, I'm like, leave it. It's done. We're here. It's like where we go.

• 1:28:14Evy Poumpouras?

  And he couldn't. And all he did was talk about it. And the other thing he did is he went to therapy. A lot of it. And I was like, dude, I was like, I don't think you should be going to therapy about this. Stop talking about it.

• 1:28:27Evy Poumpouras?

  I was like, you're reliving it every time. Like therapy is supposed to like, it's a Hippocratic oath, do no harm. Like, therapy is supposed to help you move forward. But if I was like, if I went to therapy every week and I talked about nine eleven, I'd be a mess. I was like, leave it. Let it be where it is in the past. And like, what do you do with what we experienced and how do we move forward and how do we help other people? And I like, that was a scenario where I was like, if you keep reliving this trauma, like you become it and it was him. It was him. He left being a medic. He lost his marriage. He got a divorce. Like his whole life just fell apart. But do you know, he wanted to stay there. He didn't wanna leave it. It was what,

• 1:29:12Evy Poumpouras?

  it was, it defined who he was. I met another dude. I shouldn't say nude, but I met another man who I knew. He was an ironworker, nice guy. He does a lot of stuff around nine eleven. But I remember once I interviewed him for a news thing. He didn't know anything about me. This was strictly news as a journalist. After I left the Secret Service and it was a nine eleven piece we were doing. I didn't say anything because of course it's not about me. It's about him. I remember putting his mics on and doing stuff and getting ready to do my video thing with him. He had like nine eleven tattoos all over his arms. And like he had a nine eleven room. He's like, let me show you my room. And again, I said nothing. I remember thinking, I'm like, I was like, I can't, I would never tattoo the towers on my arms. I was like, I, I can't.

• 1:29:56Evy Poumpouras?

  I'm like, what mental mindset are you going to be in? And he had a room with all his nine eleven stuff. I was like, I don't, I have a valor ward. It's not, it's under my bed. I, my dad had took it. He hung it. Then when he passed away, I took it and I put it, I put it away again. It's under my bed. I think that these things, like, there are certain types of people, Stephen, that they want to be tied to this. It's their story. And when they meet you, they're gonna tell you about it. Oh, do you know what I would have been through? I'm recovering from this. I'm surviving for this. You come across those folks because that's their identity. It's become who they are and they don't know how to let it go. And it's okay, but that's for them. It's not for me.

• 1:30:36Steven Bartlett?

  What is the, what is the harm then of not letting go of our trauma? And embodying it and allowing it to become our identity? Like, what does it stop us from doing?

• 1:30:48Evy Poumpouras?

  Because I'm not a nine eleven survivor. I'm Evy. That's something I experienced one day in my life. And you're gonna tell me that one day defines who I am for the rest of my life? Fuck no.

• 1:31:01Steven Bartlett?

  If it does, what's the harm? Who's ever gonna become?

• 1:31:05Evy Poumpouras?

  I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be a mess. I'm gonna be afraid to go in a high-rise building. I'm gonna be afraid to get onto a plane. Three weeks after nine eleven, I got on a plane. I was like, oh, no, no, no, this is not. Kill fear, fear while it's still small. This is not gonna become a monster. I got my ass on a plane. I was like, I, I can't, I can't control everything in my life, but I can navigate the outcome of my life to some degree, not all. I'm not gonna be at the mercy of the world.

• 1:31:34Evy Poumpouras?

  I, I can take ownership to some degree, Stephen, but I have to choose to want it. Not everybody wants it. But it's also, I have to, you and I, or whoever, has to have enough intelligence to see that when someone is like that, just leave them. They don't want you to fix their problems. They want to be there. Let them be there. However, if it's someone you're looking to hire, or date, or hang out with, now you decide, is this someone I wanna be around because it is not good for me? Those are two different things.

• 1:32:07Steven Bartlett?

  I wanna come back to this nine eleven thing, but it reminded me of a conversation I had with someone recently where they were telling me about all the problems in their life and problems they were having with a particular job that they have. And I remember asking them, I was like, did you, you chose that job, right? And you can leave. And they were so offended by the idea that they had a choice. Like, and they, they, eventually they admitted to me that they could leave and they would be fine because they have enough money. And that they interviewed for that job and went for, and they also could leave. But they, they weren't interested in choice. Like, I remember saying to them, like, I've never, this is a good friend of mine, I remember saying to them, like, why don't you want power in this situation? Like, why don't you want to be empowered? You're, you're like, I could observe in them that they wanted to be disempowered.

• 1:32:52Steven Bartlett?

  They wanted to be powerless. They wanted to be a victim of circumstance. They didn't wanna have a conversation about choices and the decisions they could make. They were not interested. And I've, Jesus Christ, like, what a way to live. What a way to live, to not want to, you know, because objectively, bad things happen to people. You know, traumas, they go through things which were nothing of their doing, they weren't to blame. But it doesn't mean, right, that we can't do something about it. There's a very two different things, like.

• 1:33:21Evy Poumpouras?

  But you have to want it. Some people don't. So I think what you'll do is you'll be able to. People come to you and they'll say, Stephen, I need help or this and that. But you'll be able to see who genuinely really wants to move forward. Who just wants to just tell you about it.

• 1:33:36Steven Bartlett?

  How do you, how would you be able to identify the difference?

• 1:33:38Evy Poumpouras?

  So people who are, they call, it's called being identity. And I use this word before, but more in a clinical, not in a clinical, but more in the, the way that I've learned it through, through training and my, the research. I also have a masters in forensic, masters in forensic psychology. When someone is identity, um, they use repeated, you'll hear them say, I, I, I, I a lot. You can even see this in an email. Um, people who are identity tend to be highly depressed. Have a lot of anxiety, anxiety. They're very self-focused. They're very emotional based. So you can spot these individuals. Now, look, we all visit identity land from time to time. Like I may go through something difficult and have a moment in this identity space. But then I'm like, okay, I have to recover.

• 1:34:22Evy Poumpouras?

  But some people stay in this space. It's like their predominant disposition. So repeated use of I this, I that, I feel, I want, I went through. That's one red flag. The other thing is they're very emotional. Uh, you'll see they're linked, there's links to depression. They're typically depressed. But they stay in the space. The other thing is people like this who complain a lot. Do you know that when you relive a trauma or you complain or you have drama? Like you get those, you get those cortisol hits. You'll get also adrenaline hits, adrenaline hits. You, you get F3. It's your fight, flight, freeze response. We, we peak and some people get addicted to that peak. I'm addicted to the trauma. I'm addicted to feeling that.

• 1:35:06Evy Poumpouras?

  It's like the, last week I was racing a car. I was at Porsche and I was racing cars for fun. And, uh, when you're in the car, you're in the present, right? I'm like, shh, look, trying not to hit the cones, doing whatever. I'm there. I'm in the moment. But like my adrenaline's going up. I'm peaking. I've got my F3s on fire. And I'm, but I'm focused. It feels, I feel alive.

• 1:35:26Evy Poumpouras?

  So for some people, when they get into this state, when they relive this stuff and they have these spikes, or you see them very high conflict driven or high drama driven, they get these spikes. And it's when they feel in the moment, they feel alive, and you become addicted to it. It also becomes a habit.

• 1:35:43Steven Bartlett?

  I was thinking then about the, this idea of identity. And what, what identity also sometimes seems to give people is it gives them a community and it makes, gives them a sense of belonging and it gives them purpose, which we're all searching for. Like if I'm a insert trauma, then I instantly have a community of people that, you know, will make me feel like I belong. And then that is something I don't want to give up. If I give up my trauma, I end up giving up my sense of purpose, my, my community, who I belong to, the way the world understands me. And, and that's, oh, I guess another reason why it can be so sticky. Like our traumas can be so sticky. Because we, we, we build our whole, like our social circle around them. We go to events about it. We, we're in group, little social media groups about it.

• 1:36:28Evy Poumpouras?

  But I think today, trauma has become like a badge of honor now. In fact, you hear people talking and it's like a competition about who has more trauma.

• 1:36:38Evy Poumpouras?

  That's, i- i- is it not that? Who has, I have more trauma than you. No, I've had it harder than you. Like it's a competition of who's had it the hardest. And it's, it's become like this, this thing now to, that we put on a pedestal.

• 1:36:54Evy Poumpouras?

  I think it's just the new way to draw attention to ourselves and to make ourselves relevant.

• 1:36:58Steven Bartlett?

  It's like ego and status.

• 1:36:59Evy Poumpouras?

  It is ego, it is status. And it's, it's interesting, the sense of belonging in group, out group, that's a whole other psychological thing. If I'm in a group and I feel like I belong somewhere, it's like how, I'm taking it back to crime gangs or why people join terrorist organizations. They join it because they want to be part of something. Not because they're bad people. I want to feel like I'm part of a group. And so this makes me feel relevant.

• 1:37:24Evy Poumpouras?

  Which is fine, but to a degree, you also have to have your sovereignty as a person. We want to be part of something because we don't want to be out there and alone out there. But you don't have to be alone out there, but we hitch ourselves to these narratives. And now my identity is I'm a survivor of this. I am someone who's experienced this. It's like, no, those are things that happened to me, but they are not who I am. I'm an evolving thing. I called my book Becoming Bulletproof because I am always becoming. I'm becoming more, I'm evolving. We don't stop. I don't want to stop. I'm never going to get to a point where I know everything. Every day I learn something.

• 1:38:05Steven Bartlett?

  What was the most interesting day of your career? When I say interesting, the day that you think about and go, Jesus, that was like awesome. Or that was from a movie.

• 1:38:14Evy Poumpouras?

  So I have, I can give you a story, which I don't think I've shared. So because I didn't look like an agent, I would get pulled in for a lot of undercover stuff, which I loved, it was fun. Scary, but because I never got pegged for an agent, like I always felt super safe. So I did this one thing where it was another undercover case, where they came to me and we were working with NYPD. It wasn't my case, but they wanted me. There was this organized crime ring, I think they were Albanian. And they were selling passports, original passports and birth certificates to terrorists. This is, and so they're selling it to them to help them come into the US.

• 1:38:59Evy Poumpouras?

  And to other, other people who are bad actors. So we, the, the agencies get wind of this and they want to get this, these, these guys, this guy specifically with this organized crime ring. They're trying to figure out how to get in because they were so good at what they did. Like you couldn't get them. So they wanted me to go in undercover and pretend to be someone who needed paperwork. So they're trying to figure out how do we do it? So the, the idea we came up with was I would be someone who had been sex trafficked from an Eastern Bloc country because I, I can pass for it.

• 1:39:33Evy Poumpouras?

  So I started talking on the phone. I was introduced him through another undercover. And talking to him on the phone and I had to develop an eastern black accent. I need my papers. They brought me here from, you know, my country. Because when they sex traffic people in, the first thing they do when they lure you in is they'll take your paperwork from you. And they, and you can't even get a cellphone here in the US without paperwork. So they take your stuff and then they put you either to do sex traffic, you know, sex work or work in strip clubs or both. Until you pay off your debt for them bringing you to America. So I pretended to be one of those. So I, you know, under that premise, I have no paperwork. So I can't get an apartment. I can't get anything.

• 1:40:16Evy Poumpouras?

  I'm at the mercy of these traffickers. Which until I pay my, my dues, which you never do, by the way. They keep you locked in. And then they make them afraid and they tell them if you say anything, they're going to deport you back, which actually is not true. However, so I take on this role. I start talking to this guy. I need papers. I please, they take my papers. How much for new papers?

• 1:40:41Steven Bartlett?

  How do you learn this accent? Did you just go on line?

• 1:40:43Evy Poumpouras?

  I studied acting and then plus my parents are immigrants. I grew up in New York and Queens, so I just picked them up. But I practiced it. And I had to be good because if you're not good, you get a bullet to the head when you meet this guy. So you have to live in reality. Because my life is also on the line. And so I have these phone calls with him. He agrees, okay, I'll meet with you. So my first meeting is passport photos. I had to go get passport photos. I go meet him and I remember when I met him at his, I think he did construction was the outside thing he did. We meet him. I'm in, I'm in like dress clothes. I'm dressing like as a very young woman. But I also had to put on sneakers because I'm like, hey, if this guy tries to do something, I need to be able to run. So I meet him.

• 1:41:27Evy Poumpouras?

  I bring my, my passport photos. I go to this location that's a front. Hi, I'm here to see, I don't remember the guy's name. They're like, oh, no, he's not here. You'll have to wait for him. So they play with me for a little while. You know, everyone's watching me from the outside, but I have no wire on. And we debated whether I should have a wire or not or a gun. And I chose to take nothing. So I'm, I'm. I've got nothing with me, which makes me more vulnerable. But my concern was if they put me through a metal detector or they checked me, that would be worse. Because now I'm in their home and like they'll just off me right off the bat. So I'm sitting there and I'm waiting. He finally comes and he tries to lure me into his car. And I had been briefed, whatever you do, you don't get into a car with this guy. So I don't get in the car and I'm like, no, no, no, no, I don't get into car.

• 1:42:12Evy Poumpouras?

  He's like, no, we need to talk private. Now I have eyes on me and I want to make sure the agents and everybody can see me. So there's this back and forth where I'm like, please, I afraid, I don't want to go into the car. His passport photos, I give him, I think it was five Gs. I give him an envelope of five grand. Here's the five grand. He's like, okay, come back in like two weeks. And he's like, maybe you'll get in my car. So I come back like two weeks later, same story. I meet him, I get my passports. He gave me a Polish passport. I won't forget, it was a real authentic Polish passport and a certificate, birth certificate and all that. And I'm like, the deal was though, I needed more transactions with this guy. Because the more you get, the longer you can put them away. But he was so good, we couldn't get anything that we knew he had done.

• 1:42:56Evy Poumpouras?

  So I'm like, hey, I have more friends. Can I send you more girls? I'll bring you more girls. So he's, oh, yeah. So then I start bringing him more girls.

• 1:43:06Steven Bartlett?

  Who are these girls?

• 1:43:07Evy Poumpouras?

  Other undercovers, other undercover female agents and cops. We had NYPD play. And so we go in and we're doing this buying and selling transactions, transactions, till we got enough to get the US attorney to say, yes, we got him. And then they went in and they, um, they took him down. That was pretty interesting.

• 1:43:28Steven Bartlett?

  Were you scared at any point?

• 1:43:29Evy Poumpouras?

  I was not, because I always felt safe in that nobody, Stephen, ever thought I was a cop. Nobody ever thought I was an agent. I didn't look like one, I didn't speak like one. So I, I felt very safe.

• 1:43:42Steven Bartlett?

  On that point, because you don't look like an agent, I understand how that's useful for the, for the going undercover. But it, it's, it's got to lead people to underestimate you in your professional career.

• 1:43:54Evy Poumpouras?

  Mm hmm, yes.

• 1:43:55Steven Bartlett?

  And a lot of people that I've spoken to, I was speaking at a. A women's leadership conference about a week ago in London. And lots of the questions from the audience were about that subject, about being underestimated and how to deal with that. It was a D E I conference, so Diversity Equity Inclusion Conference. Lots of people that are black, lots of people that are women, lots of people that are from different sort of minority groups. And the question came up about like being underestimated because of your skin color, because of your gender, because of something else. How do you deal with that? And it's something that I thought a lot about when I started in business at eighteen years old as a university dropout. I'm going into rooms and I'm dealing with men that are all in suits and they're triple my age. I'm eighteen. I know they're looking at me with

• 1:44:38Steven Bartlett?

  my Afro and my fake tie, like my little cheap tie, thinking, who the fuck is this guy? Like, but have you have you seen your that underestimation of you as a disadvantage or an advantage?

• 1:44:50Evy Poumpouras?

  It's how you choose to view it. I remember once I was in Africa. Where was I? Botswana.

• 1:44:57Steven Bartlett?

  Where I was born.

• 1:44:58Evy Poumpouras?

  You were born in Botswana?

• 1:44:59Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, Caparai. Yeah.

• 1:45:01Evy Poumpouras?

  I spent a whole month. I've been to Africa a lot. I love Botswana. I remember I had to close the windows because at the hotel because they said the monkeys come in. And I was like monkeys? I thought it was cool though. I was like, no, I'll leave them open. They're like, no, no, you don't want the monkeys coming in your room. So I spent a lot of time at Botswana. And I was there with, I did a trip where I went from Botswana to Tanzania. And I was with Barbara, excuse me, Laura Bush, the daughter, President Bush's daughter. She was doing some, some work there, nonprofit work. And when I was her, it's called an assistant detail leader. So I was kind of like her main person and then I had a team under me. So I have my team and I'm, I'm, I'm holding a briefing. I'm in charge.

• 1:45:47Evy Poumpouras?

  And we're in the hotel room. We're here, there to meet before our, our, our trip starts. So they sent me agents from different parts of the world. They come in and the first agent that walked in, I was by myself in the room. First agent walked in, he's like, hey, oh, hey, hi, how are you? I'm like, oh, good. How are you? He said, are you with the staff? Are you an intern? Because if the staff's office is down the hall, if you want to go to the staff's office, I'll show you where it is.

• 1:46:11Evy Poumpouras?

  You know, so I don't, I don't show it. So I keep my face and I said, no, I'm actually Agent Poumpouras. I'm, I'm the one who's holding the brief in. Hi, good to meet you. Meaning I'm, I'm your supervisor for this trip. And he's like, oh, okay. Hi, nice to meet you. Now, I could sit there and be pissed about this, or I can just leave it.

• 1:46:32Evy Poumpouras?

  Sometimes like Stephen, like who cares? Like who cares? I can't care so much. There are some things you need to care about and some things you don't. And as you were talking about, you know, who we are, when I went to um, Poly School.

• 1:46:48Steven Bartlett?

  What's Poly School?

• 1:46:48Evy Poumpouras?

  I'm sorry. Polygraph School. It's where I went to the Department of Defense to be trained to be an interrogator. It was a really selective school. And it was like the who's who of agencies were there. And um, we were all in the classroom and I remember I was walking with a colleague of mine. We'll call him Kay. Kay and I are walking and we're walking back to our hotel. It's just he and I. And he was quiet. I'm like, Kay, what's wrong? And he's like, he's like, you know what? He's like, I don't know. He's like, it's just like the group of people. And he was an agent. He was a Secret Service agent. I was like, he's like, did you notice? Like, did you take toll of the room? I'm like, what about the room? He said, you know, I'm the only black guy in the room. And I was just like, huh. And I paused.

• 1:47:32Evy Poumpouras?

  And we had been there like maybe a couple of weeks already. And I'm like, I stopped. I said, I had to do the mental like assessment. I was like, yeah, Kay, you're right. You are. And he looked at me, he's like, you're the only female agent in the room too. And I was like, am I? And I stopped. And did a mental assessment. I was like, yeah, you're right.

• 1:47:54Evy Poumpouras?

  And it made me sad in that moment because I'm thinking like, look at what Kay's thinking about. And I hadn't even thought about it. And what, what ended up happening is like, I, I would invite him out. I'm like, Kay, come out, we're going with the guys. He's like, but they don't invite me. I'm like, dude, you don't need a special invite. They don't invite me either. We just go. And because he built this narrative in his head, because he thought, he thought, because he was different or I was different, we weren't wanted, like.

• 1:48:20Steven Bartlett?

  Makes you show up different, doesn't it?

• 1:48:21Evy Poumpouras?

  You show up different and I, and he was such a great guy, such a competent guy. And I would, and I would actually sit there, I'm like, Kay, I'm like, nobody's thinking like that. And there was a group of guys that were with us that came, that were Secret Service guys. And I was like, I am telling you, these guys are not thinking about, you're black, I'm a woman. Like, I don't think they give a shit. And he's like, I don't know, he's like, I don't want to just show up. I'm like, I do, I ask them every day, what are we having for dinner? I don't want to eat alone. And I would have to go knock on his door. And I remember it came to a point, he's like, I want them to invite me. And I had to go to the guys, I'm like, can you guys do me a solid? Can you invite Kay? Because he thinks I'm inviting him and I guess it's not enough to have the woman invite you. I was like, can you invite him? Because he feels like you guys don't want him. And they looked at me like, what?

• 1:49:06Evy Poumpouras?

  I was like, just go knock on his door, tell him we're having dinner tonight. But he had set himself up mentally in such a space. And he lived there. And I was like, man, I can't live here.

• 1:49:16Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting because it begs the question, sometimes what's doing more harm? The discrimination or the belief that you're being discriminated against? Sometimes it's, you know, you're, I'm black, you're a woman. Um, I, I often wondered this in my early career, you know, I had a really adverse reaction one day when I saw this grant that they did. I was eighteen, nineteen years old, had no money. And I saw that they were doing this grant for young black entrepreneurs. And there was something about it which like just irked me. I don't know why, I've never really understood why, but I wanted to be considered on my merits, not my skin color. So when I saw that they were giving out these grants to young black kids, you would think I'd go, amazing, give me the money. But in my head, I was like, I hate that.

• 1:49:58Steven Bartlett?

  I hate that because it's a reminder that it's like, it's like them thinking, and I know that this is a super complex thing, right? For me, it was like, they think I'm not good enough, so they have to give me a foot up. I know it's deeper and it's more systemic, but I've always tried to stay away from that, especially when I learned about labeling theory, which you see play out in kids in school when they get like an F on an exam. The implicit sort of message to themselves is that like I am an F. And when you overlay that with this thing I was reading about called stereotype threat, where they like remind a woman before a math exam, they ask her to put her like gender on the math exam and then she performs worse. Or they remind a black person about their race by asking them to tick a box with their race. And then those people perform worse on the exam because we're reminded of our identity.

• 1:50:41Steven Bartlett?

  And we, all of the identity stuff that you talked about, we then perform worse. I've always tried to make sure that I don't ever believe that my race is a reason not to show up and give everything I am in every situation. And I can see how for some people, anything that someone might discriminate you for can also cause harm if you start to believe it. You start to embody it, you start to look for it.

• 1:51:06Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes.

• 1:51:07Steven Bartlett?

  And you let it become real in your mind. This is not to say that objectively discrimination and prejudice isn't real. I've always been well aware that it's real. But as you said earlier, I'm also of the mind that it's not my problem in that moment to try and change someone.

• 1:51:21Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, and I get what you're saying. Labeling theory, we use it in criminal justice too. When you label somebody a criminal or an offender, and you put that label on them, they are more likely to reoffend again. Because you're just reminding me that I'm just a bad person. So if that's what I am, that's what I'm going to think like. And I will tell you, every time somebody asks me like, what was it like being a female special agent? I always get like a teeny tiny pang. And I want to be like, how many dudes do you sit in this chair? And ask them, how was it like being an agent? Why do I get that? I was an agent, I earned it. I earned it like everybody. And I also had to perform like everybody. And it, yes, it implies like, and you hear it sometimes.

• 1:52:06Evy Poumpouras?

  Or sometimes like maybe you'll read like, I'll see an interview of mine and you'll see token hire, female, you know, however they word it, like, oh, you could tell she was a female hire. And you just want to be like, I'm not going to give the finger because we're being PG here, even though we've cursed a few times. But I just want to flip the bird. It's like, dude, like you don't know what I went through to be that. Don't give me a hand handout. I want an opportunity, fine. But I'm gonna own it. And even in training, they had, you know, and I have talked about this before in training. Like, I found out they had male standards and female standards for performance. Oh, yeah, military too. There's different schools on this. So I, according to this, I don't have to run as fast as a guy, according to to these standards.

• 1:52:49Evy Poumpouras?

  According to these standards, I don't have to do as many pull-ups or push-ups. I didn't know this when I got hired. I find out later because some agent in training made sure that I knew, hey, just so you know, uh, you got special treatment to get here. And I'm thinking, what are you talking about? They're like, well, the standards that we have to meet and that you have to meet are not the same. Clearly, I'm not happy about this. I find out. I get the male standards and I'm like, I felt horrible. I remember when they told me this. I went to my room that night and I felt horrible about it. And I'm thinking, if, there's a part of me that's like, fuck these guys. How dare you talk to me like that? I have just as much a right to be here as you. And then there's another part of me that's like, they're right. So I was like, well, I was like, I'm gonna have to perform like they do.

• 1:53:34Evy Poumpouras?

  And so I just started, Stephen, like, working out like a maniac. And I was like, I don't want to hear anything from anybody. And I worked out and I worked out and I worked out morning and night. So I was like, I'm gonna be at their level. I'm gonna score what they score. But I will also tell you, because there were a couple of girls in my class, like, maybe another one or two, I can't remember.

• 1:53:55Evy Poumpouras?

  They didn't care. They were fine with the female standards.

• 1:54:00Evy Poumpouras?

  So I've seen both. I've seen both. I'm not judging them. I chose my own path. But I've also seen it where I've seen, and I can, I'm just speaking from the female standard, standard, where a woman was okay, who is an agent, not being able to do a pull-up. And I'm thinking like,

• 1:54:19Evy Poumpouras?

  that's no good either.

• 1:54:23Steven Bartlett?

  It's complex, isn't it? Because it's when we have these conversations, it always sounds like we're saying that prejudice and discrimination aren't very real things. But what we're saying is we're like not gonna make them our problem.

• 1:54:34Evy Poumpouras?

  It's not my identity.

• 1:54:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's your problem. If that's part of you, that's, you know, and I'm not gonna commit my very limited energy to fixing everybody I meet. It's like, Jesus Christ, I've got enough stuff to be thinking about than fixing everybody and correcting everybody, which some people fall into the trap of that. They go around their lives trying to fix the world. And you can't get much done.

• 1:54:52Evy Poumpouras?

  How tiring, how tiring is that? How exhausting is that? And how mentally draining? And how even just emotionally, like, what does that do to your soul that you're trying to fix? Who are you fighting? I guess that's, who are you fighting? I'm not gonna, maybe if you're sovereign in here and you know, you show, I feel like you show people, I'm not, I know those things exist. I know it. My parents were immigrants. My dad, like, he would always peg for Middle Eastern. And he had, and even though he was Greek and he had a really heavy accent, I saw how people treated him, even as a man. But like seeing him like Middle Eastern, dark tone, heavy accent. Like, my brother and I, we'd go through like security at the airport. He's like, we always knew he was gonna get pulled. He's like, who's going? You or me?

• 1:55:35Evy Poumpouras?

  And it hurt my heart to see how he was treated. But you can't sit and fight everybody. Like, I'm not, the space you take up in the world is just, and your time here, man, it's just so finite. Fight who you need to fight if you have to fight. But like, you have a choice. And I'm just too busy. And like you, I have things to do. And I can't sit and waste my time on every buffoon that comes my way, that's thinking and seeing me through a certain lens, lens. Not my problem. Sometimes it is my problem. And if it's my performance. So like with the scenario I gave you before, I get that. I get what they were saying. Fair enough. I'm not qualifying at the standards you are.

• 1:56:19Evy Poumpouras?

  I'm gonna do it, but I don't wanna hear shit from anybody once I do it. But even then, Stephen, I still heard shit. And that's when you know. You're the problem, I'm not the problem. At some point, you have to be able to like, write it off.

• 1:56:31Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting because the, you talked, you did a little gesture then, which was kind of, it looked like you were making a little bubble around yourself. And that bubble is, in the way that I perceived it was like, I'm gonna just protect this space here. Because, yeah, thinking about the border agent that like pulls you into the back room for four hours, which happens to me quite a lot for a variety of different reasons. There was actually an article about it like a couple of weeks, a couple of months back, that I'd been pulled into this like back room at Heathrow Airport over and over and over and over again. In the moments when I fight that situation, I do so much harm to my own energy. I'm like letting resentment in.

• 1:57:04Steven Bartlett?

  And it's so tempting, because it objectively probably is prejudice or some kind of like injustice. But I have to be conscious, as you always talk about, like of that energy exchange. It's almost impossible to like, do a one-way transfer of energy. It's always like a two-way transfer.

• 1:57:22Evy Poumpouras?

  I think you can. Like, I feel like it's your mental armor, like that bubble. Like, you can bubble wrap yourself. You can look at somebody and be like, alright, I know what I got. I don't have time because I'm busy. What do you need to ask me? Are we done? Okay. Because I do agree with you, sometimes if you fight it, their perception's gonna be, and I'm telling you because I'm former law enforcement, they're thinking, oh, why is he escalating? Oh, why is he this? Why is he have a problem? But from your standpoint, sure, are they picking you for a specific reason? Chances are, if it keeps happening to you over and over again, oh yeah, there's something there. And there is something systemic there. We're not, I'm not dismissing that those things don't exist. But it's also like, how much energy are you gonna put in? And I guess, is the energy you're putting in worth the outcome? That's all.

• 1:58:07Steven Bartlett?

  Becoming Bulletproof. Life Lessons From A Secret Service Agent. The quote on the front from Roger Alton at the Daily Mail is part memoir, part hugely entertaining self-help manual for these tough times. Protect yourself, read people, influence situations, and live fiercely. Become bulletproof. The paperback edition of this book is now available everywhere. And I think anybody that's listened to this conversation should have enough evidence as to why they need to read this book, because it's a really, really accessible, important book that's full of incredible, actionable advice that we can translate to the boardroom, to our relationships, to our lives more broadly, to enable us to become who we want to become. We have a closing tradition on this podcast,

• 1:58:51Steven Bartlett?

  where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're gonna be leaving it for. And the question that has been left for you inside the diary of a CEO is,

• 1:59:01Steven Bartlett?

  what about your body health have you struggled with the most? And what did you do to fix it or improve it?

• 1:59:07Evy Poumpouras?

  After I gave birth, because it was such a, my body went through so much trauma.

• 1:59:13Evy Poumpouras?

  I had to leave it alone and let it heal. Oh, you know what else I did when I was pregnant? Because I worked out my whole life. The entire time I was pregnant, I didn't work out. So I guess listen to your body. And give it what it needs, it'll tell you.

• 1:59:29Steven Bartlett?

  Evy, thank you so much.

• 1:59:31Evy Poumpouras?

  Thank you, Stephen.

• 1:59:32Steven Bartlett?

  You're a huge inspiration for so many people for so many reasons that I think I'd be here all day if I went through the entire list. You're an inspiration because of your vulnerability, because of the way that you articulate wisdom in such accessible, relatable ways to people. And really, you know, you said you don't really like the word, but unfortunately you are a role model to many people for many, many reasons. Because your life and your career are evidence to all of us that we can climb to the top of the mountain regardless of all of the hurdles and obstacles that are in our way. And much of that comes down to the way that we perceive those obstacles and hurdles. And, and also from speaking to you, I realized that many of those obstacles and hurdles that are in our way

• 2:00:14Steven Bartlett?

  as we journey up that mountain have been placed there ourselves, by ourselves. And I think that is an incredibly liberating thing. Your book is a must read for all people, for both men and women that are trying to climb their own personal or professional mountain and become more, as you said at the start of this conversation. So thank you so much for your wisdom. Thank you for all the work you're doing and thank you on behalf of all the people you've helped.

• 2:00:34Evy Poumpouras?

  Thank you, Stephen.