Learn to Live Fearlessly & Master Relationships w/ Evy Poumpouras EP 1270

Todays guest is Evy Poumpouras. Evy is a multimedia journalist who regularly appears on the Today Show, NBC, MSNBC, and GMA covering topics on national security, law enforcement, and crime. Evy’s actions as a first responder during the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City bestowed her the United States Secret Service Valor Award. As a member of the most prestigious protection force in the world for over 12 years, Evy served on the Secret Service’s Presidential Protective Division for President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. When not safeguarding the world’s most high value assets, Evy worked complex criminal investigations, operated undercover, and was an interrogator for the agency’s elite polygraph unit specially trained in the art of lie detection, human behavior, and cognitive influence. Check out Evy's book, Becoming Bulletproof: Protect Yourself, Read People, Influence Situations, Live Fearlessly. In this episode, you will learn:The difference between a disagreement and being competitive. How to feel more comfortable addressing a conflict. How to master your relationships. Why you should trust people conditionally. For more, go to lewishowes.com/1270Check out Evy's prior episode here - https://link.chtbl.com/1092-podDaymond John on How to Close any Deal and Achieve Any Outcome: https://link.chtbl.com/928-podSara Blakely on Writing Your Billion Dollar Story: https://link.chtbl.com/893-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Evy Poumpouras?

  When you're communicating with people, again, connection, connection, connection. Why does it matter? And not that you want to be nice to people. It's not about being nice. It is about negotiating. It's about communicating. It's about connecting. When you do all these things, you will be.

• 0:15Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:37Lewis Howes?

  So curious, for people that I feel like they've lost their self-esteem and confidence, what are some things that people could do to really own their confidence again and build it back up?

• 0:47Evy Poumpouras?

  Everything you're saying actually is true, and I've seen it because I've had so many people reach out to ask about questions. And there is a pattern. We're in a very fear-based place where people are very fear-based, very unsure of themselves, very unsure of their decisions. Even when we're seeing this mass exodus of people leaving work, you're seeing people almost reevaluating themselves, trying to understand their lives. People are not as assertive or certain about a lot of things.

• 1:14Lewis Howes?

  They're not definitive, they're not clear.

• 1:16Evy Poumpouras?

  They're not. It's very fear-based, very fear-based. I'm not sure, I'm afraid. Even, I even see it in the classroom. I'm an adjunct lecturer and professor, and I teach criminal justice and criminology. So even in my classroom, I will see my students be afraid to raise their hand when I ask a question.

• 1:36Lewis Howes?

  Why? Because they don't want to look silly or something?

• 1:38Evy Poumpouras?

  They don't want to be wrong. And we're also in this space where people are afraid to say the wrong thing and be wrong. So it's fear in so many ways. So it's not just the physical fear of the body, right? The illnesses, the COVID, all that stuff. But it's also this fear of what is the world going to think of me? How am I going to be labeled? And I will sit in class, I will ask a question, nobody raises their hand because they don't, they don't want to be wrong. And then even when I can get them to speak, you can see them speak in very hushed tones, very soft, I can barely hear them. And I tell them, own your answer. Don't worry about being right. Be wrong. It's a classroom environment.

• 2:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 2:21Evy Poumpouras?

  And so I think it comes from a very fear-based, we're just very afraid in general.

• 2:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I've been doing a lot of research for a new book I've been writing about really three main things that hold us back in our life, the three main fears that cause us to doubt ourselves. The fear of failure, the fear of success, and the fear of judgment, other people's opinions. And for most of my life, the fear of other people's opinions was the biggest thing that held me back. I was the one who wouldn't raise my hand. I wouldn't speak aloud because I was so afraid of being made fun of, or picked on, or whatever it might be. How can someone overcome that fear of, you know, a classmate laughing about them, or saying, "Oh, that was a dumb question," or just something maybe bigger, they're putting something out on social media and getting attacks, or whatever it might be. How do people overcome that insecurity?

• 3:10Evy Poumpouras?

  Well, I do think we've taken a step back, actually, in in-person communication, a huge step. Everything now is, people are more comfortable in texting, and communicating through social, and then when it comes to in-person, something's completely shifted. You can see people having a harder time communicating in person, and everyone's kind of deviating towards typing, texting, or email. It's become the comfort

• 3:36Lewis Howes?

  What's the easiest way to communicate without?

• 3:38Evy Poumpouras?

  Text.

• 3:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:39Evy Poumpouras?

  Text is the easiest. Email, so here's the thing, in-person is the best way to communicate, by the way. Whenever I can speak to somebody in person, or sit down and see them, like this, this is where you get

• 3:50Lewis Howes?

  It's the best.

• 3:51Evy Poumpouras?

  The best, is where you get magic, right? Then there's you, okay. Then there's the phone. Phone is another great way. But when you go to email, you still have to write, you can, but long-form sentences, you have to write properly. Texting is just a couple of words. And that is where everyone's kind of shifted to gone. It's also the, when I text, or when I post on social, I'm not as, it's keyboard courage.

• 4:19Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, you wouldn't say it to someone's face.

• 4:22Evy Poumpouras?

  You never say it to somebody's face.

• 4:23Lewis Howes?

  I feel like you should only say things online with what you would say to that person to their face. Otherwise, what are we doing?

• 4:29Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes. If you can't look at somebody and say it, then you shouldn't write it. But it's the anonymity, that I can write this stuff, and then I can take out whatever's going on in my life, out on somebody else, and I can feel brave in that way. But it's such a false way to be brave.

• 4:49Lewis Howes?

  What does that do to the person communicating in that way? Having that false bravery by saying something strong or powerful or aggressive online? But the unwillingness to do that in person, what does that do to that person?

• 5:03Evy Poumpouras?

  You have to check in with yourself and realize it's, am I being a coward?

• 5:07Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 5:08Evy Poumpouras?

  If I can't say something to somebody's face, but I can do it over text, there's something that's missing.

• 5:15Evy Poumpouras?

  I think bravery is something that we don't speak about and courage is something we don't speak about. We don't do it in a very overt way, in a very physical way, in a very engaged way. It's talked about as this like thing. Oh, be brave, be motivated. Well, where is that? You have to manifest that with your body. You have to do it. And it's doing it in the day to day decisions that you make.

• 5:40Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 5:40Evy Poumpouras?

  So going back to my class, it's interesting. We talk about criminal justice, right? Criminology and sometimes we'll talk about even being, uh, for example, I showed them a video of somebody who fell on these New York City train tracks in New York City. And there were all these people in the platform. One person gets down to go help the person. And so I asked them, would you do that?

• 6:01Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 6:02Evy Poumpouras?

  The majority of the class, no, no, hell no, no, whoa, I'm not gonna do that. And I hear that and I think something is lost there amongst us. When the answer, at least I feel through my belief system again, is that the overwhelming answer should be like, I would wanna help save another human being's life. I would wanna help save somebody else. But we've come to this place where it's very much self-preservation. Don't say anything wrong. Don't do the wrong thing.

• 6:31Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 6:32Evy Poumpouras?

  Right? And attack in a way that's safe and comfortable or not even attack, but you can disagree. And here's the other amazing thing. I think we don't understand how to disagree. So you can disagree or you can be competitive. It's something actually that you're taught in interviewing and in, uh, interrogations.

• 6:51Lewis Howes?

  Is this, are you trying to be competitive in interrogation or just?

• 6:54Evy Poumpouras?

  So when I say competitive, I mean that I can disagree with you in a healthy way.

• 7:00Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 7:00Evy Poumpouras?

  So you call it competitive dialogue.

• 7:02Lewis Howes?

  How's that look if I say, you know, the sky is green today?

• 7:07Evy Poumpouras?

  Okay. Well, tell me why you think the sky is green.

• 7:11Lewis Howes?

  It's just, it just looks green. You know, I just see the color, you know. I don't know, maybe it's a reflection of something, but it's green, it's not blue.

• 7:19Evy Poumpouras?

  Okay, so now, what I would do in that moment is ask you why you think of it that way? Why you see it that way? What is your belief system?

• 7:27Lewis Howes?

  You're not disagreeing with me and saying, oh, you know, you're an idiot, it's blue.

• 7:30Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes.

• 7:31Lewis Howes?

  You're not doing that. You're not getting like defensive or aggressive.

• 7:34Evy Poumpouras?

  Because that is your value system. So I may, for example, I have a very strong belief system, fitness and working out. It's been part of me. But that's my belief system. It is not somebody else's. If I try to impose it to somebody. So for example, when you hear, hear somebody say, I have to lose weight, I have to lose weight. Their belief system is not really based upon working out and fitness. So I can turn around and be very direct. And that's, being direct with someone is the way you lose people. So what you wanna do is, you wanna always let people talk, even if you don't like what they have to say, even if you don't agree with them. Let them go, let them explain themselves.

• 8:10Lewis Howes?

  What happens when you let someone explain themselves, even when you know they're a hundred percent wrong?

• 8:15Evy Poumpouras?

  You shut up. You shut your mouth. That's like, that's like, I always say that, that's my, the, it, it, the gift to any great communicator is this.

• 8:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:25Evy Poumpouras?

  Let them go, don't correct them, don't tell them that they're wrong. Just let them be in their world. Now, here's the important thing. One, they're gonna say everything they wanna say. You're gonna understand what their mindset is. And two things happen. One, you can speak now because once somebody's done sharing everything. Now they can hear you. Well, what you do is, you're speaking, I cut you off, I insert myself, you get frustrated. Hey, you're not listening to me, I'm talking, she's dismissing me. And so when I speak, you come, you come back at me, I come back at you, and now we have conflict. And so, for example, when I used to do interviews, I would sit in rooms with people who.

• 9:04Lewis Howes?

  When you mean to interview, you mean an interrogation.

• 9:06Evy Poumpouras?

  I use, you know, it's interesting.

• 9:08Lewis Howes?

  You call them interviews though.

• 9:08Evy Poumpouras?

  Interviews and interrogations are the same thing. So what you see in TV, in Law and Order, that you did it, you this, you that, that's garbage, it doesn't work. Doesn't that work? You're the best confessions I've ever gotten. They've been almost like psychology sessions or conversations. Where people progressively over a bit of time, give you what we call admissions.

• 9:31Lewis Howes?

  Little more, a little more.

• 9:32Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, so it'll be like, yes, I was there at the house. Oh, yes, I was there at the time. Yes, I saw her, or I saw him. Yes, I left upset. Yes, this, yes, that, and then incrementally, they get to, you get to the confession, yes, I did it. Whatever that is, right? Whereas we go straight, most people go straight for the kill, tell me. And it's because of this lack of patience, this thing that we know everything. And you know, maybe you are right in that moment, but it's not what you think. It's what the other person thinks, understanding how they think, getting into their head and speaking to them. So now if we bring this back to what you asked me about, being competitive means I can compete with you in ideas.

• 10:16Evy Poumpouras?

  Without being, it being ugly, without being confrontational or conflict. But what we've done is we've made conflict the confrontation. This very negative thing, we don't want it. When it happens, people lose their minds. I have so many people reach out, especially when I do consulting, how do I? The question's always, how do I avoid confrontation? How do I avoid conflict? Why do you spend so much time avoiding it? Why do you spend so much time avoiding speaking what you, what you wanna say, speaking your truth or sharing your ideas? And why can you not present them in a way? Where there is disagreement, there is competitiveness, I compete, you compete.

• 11:00Evy Poumpouras?

  No, the sky's green. Well, I see it this way. Oh, I see it blue. But why do you see it this way? And you have that dialogue.

• 11:06Lewis Howes?

  But it's not an aggressive competitiveness. It's a, it's an, it's an open dialogue.

• 11:10Evy Poumpouras?

  It's not me being a jerk to show you how smart I am.

• 11:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:13Evy Poumpouras?

  And it's not me shutting you down. And it's not me having an attachment to the end result. Me being right, and me showing you how right I am. Confident people don't care how right they are.

• 11:25Evy Poumpouras?

  They don't. When you're confident, it's like, I know what I know, I'm good with it. This person sees things a different way. And also, it also comes into where the dialogue, where sometimes we think, well, I'm saying this. And this is what I mean. You also have to think, what is this person hearing? So just because I think, well, I said this, it's like, that's great. But what are they hearing? How do they hear you?

• 11:49Lewis Howes?

  What's the skill then for people to uh? What happens when people avoid conflict as much as possible as opposed to leaning into it and being comfortable with the discomfort of conflict?

• 12:01Evy Poumpouras?

  That is very dangerous and it is very bad.

• 12:03Lewis Howes?

  To avoid it?

• 12:04Evy Poumpouras?

  To avoid it because I'm not telling you to go look for it. Avoid it to certain degrees when it it's when it's noise, when it's chatter. Like people talk to me about politics all the time because I was former Secret Service. I I don't participate. Uh to me it's noise, it's chatter. I don't share. And I never speak about the people that I had access to or protected.

• 12:24Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 12:24Evy Poumpouras?

  So but that it doesn't matter to me.

• 12:26Lewis Howes?

  But a conflict between relationships of friends or family or coworkers or?

• 12:30Evy Poumpouras?

  So it depends. If it's important to you, you should address it. What you do is it causes long-term regret.

• 12:37Lewis Howes?

  If you don't address it?

• 12:38Evy Poumpouras?

  If you don't address it, it it causes you to be to uh build up resentment. Anger, bitterness and hate. That's where that comes from.

• 12:46Lewis Howes?

  And then the other person doesn't even know what they did maybe.

• 12:49Evy Poumpouras?

  It maybe they know, but if you don't check them, because from time to time in life you have to, I say check. Uh this is my queens coming out, but when I say check, address it.

• 12:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, check in with them.

• 13:00Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, you said this. This is how I see this. And when you when you debate something with people, use language that's factual. You said this, you said this, you said this. You know, rather than trying to trying to speak to people, you did this, you said this, you said this, because you're giving somebody factual, something factual factual and tangible to look at. Rather than I feel this way, I feel that way. That's what what happens is we get lost a little bit.

• 13:30Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, so say. So instead of saying I feel this, you say I heard you say this or you said this?

• 13:37Evy Poumpouras?

  When you said this to me.

• 13:38Lewis Howes?

  When you said this to me.

• 13:39Evy Poumpouras?

  Okay, this is how I took it.

• 13:41Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 13:41Evy Poumpouras?

  This is why it's upsetting to me. Okay, I is this how you see me? Is this true? Uh uh we also have to check in with ourselves sometimes. You know, we provoke people or we we can be difficult people to deal with. But at the end of the right, we we always like and there's this, I don't know if you've noticed this, there's this overall. This theme out there, everybody's a narcissist and everybody's toxic. Everybody else, right? Everybody. And we don't realize, one, toxic people, toxic people hang out with toxic people. So check in with yourself, so if you're around a lot of toxic people, check in with yourself.

• 14:16Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 14:17Evy Poumpouras?

  And then you can't label everybody a narcissist, you can't label everybody something just to make it okay for you.

• 14:24Lewis Howes?

  And to put a blame on someone else, you didn't do that and yeah.

• 14:27Evy Poumpouras?

  Right, because we also have to look at what we're doing. What are we doing? Who are we engaging with? How much of this stuff do we bring into our lives? It's not, we're not always innocent. Sometimes we are. Especially, you know, in certain situations with serious trauma or abuse, especially with children, there there are some situations where that is completely innocent. But then if you see a pattern in your life, if you see this, you have to find a way where you are not afraid to speak.

• 14:56Lewis Howes?

  Why is it so scary for people to speak about a disagreement or a conflict?

• 15:03Evy Poumpouras?

  One, because the theme is to avoid it. Avoid this stuff, avoid confrontation. Conflict and confrontation have a very negative tone, uh stigma. And I say, I always tell people, embrace confrontation. When I worked in the White House, you have the cabinet room. President sits in one seat and you have all the the the heads of the different departments. The whole goal of the cabinet room was to debate things. So instead of if somebody says to you or your boss says to you, you know, I I didn't like the way this was done, do it this way next time. And you hear, he doesn't like me, there's an issue there. Because you're making everything too much about yourself.

• 15:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, taking it too personal.

• 15:45Evy Poumpouras?

  You're taking it, yes, your, your identity is becoming tied into everything. Whereas can you just hear what he said or she said, they're telling you they didn't like the way this was done to be effective. Right, and execute quickly to get things done. They're just telling you, I don't like it, I want it done this way. And so we've lost that ability too, to not make everything about us. We're also in this very me, me, me, me, me, me, me space. Everything's me, me, me, me. And we don't think about the other person across from us. What are they dealing with? It's my boss, there's a deadline, they're just trying to communicate with me in an efficient way. Um, and I think one of the blessings I had from being in the Secret Service.

• 16:30Evy Poumpouras?

  There was no, it was just very direct, hey, this wasn't supposed to be done this way, get it done this way.

• 16:35Lewis Howes?

  Do people take it personally?

• 16:36Evy Poumpouras?

  Zero.

• 16:37Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 16:37Evy Poumpouras?

  And we were so much more efficient.

• 16:39Lewis Howes?

  Did they train you on how to not take things personally? Or was that just a culture and you had to learn quickly, otherwise you would suffer?

• 16:45Evy Poumpouras?

  I think when you go through training itself. They put you in very stressful situations, you begin to understand that this isn't about me, that you're about a collective unit or team. You are there for the other person, you're there, there's human life on the line. So you really understand the bigger concept and idea. And then you understand too, what is the goal or the mission? The goal is to protect the president, the goal is to solve this case. You understand that there's a goal. You, you are less likely, very less likely to take things that, oh, you don't like me? It's like you have nothing to do with this.

• 17:18Lewis Howes?

  It's so interesting because I used, I would say that I used to have a fragile, um, what would you call it? Personality maybe, or confidence level, you know, in my teens and twenties, right? When someone would give me critique or say I wasn't doing something right. I would take it so much offense and take it personally. I would resist critique at all costs because I had a fragile identity, right? About self-belief.

• 17:45Lewis Howes?

  And then when I hit thirty, I'm thirty nine now, I started going to a lot more emotional intelligence training workshops where they taught me the power of feedback and not to take it personally. And it was so challenging to receive feedback in these workshops. But the more I practiced it, I was like, okay, actually, I want feedback. And how can I improve to be more effective in these areas of my life? And some things maybe are gonna land for me and support me and other things, eh, maybe it doesn't resonate with me, but not take any of it personally, just use it of how can I be more of service to my mission? And I think I was so afraid of what people thought about me and how I looked, as opposed to, am I just giving my best towards my mission in life right now?

• 18:26Lewis Howes?

  And when you have the mission at a high level of, you know, presidency and protecting people, you're not thinking about yourself or what people think about you. You're just thinking about getting the job done at the highest level, right?

• 18:36Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, but you're also thinking about too, executing it to the best of your ability. I wanna perform my best.

• 18:42Lewis Howes?

  So give me more critique or feedback, right?

• 18:45Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, I think, you know, now I have people who work for me as well, and I always tell them, don't yes me, if you see something different, tell me. And then I'll do the, I'll make the best assessment that I can. I don't want you to yes me because I may see something different. I have a different background, a different mindset, let me know. And, but we don't wanna hear that. We wanna be told how great we are, we wanna be, we don't wanna hear that we're, we're making mistakes, or that we're wrong, we take it way too deeply. And what that does, it doesn't allow us to grow. It makes it harder for people to work with us.

• 19:23Evy Poumpouras?

  And in fact, a lot of companies reach out in that one of their, one of the issues that they have is communicating to their employees. Where they wanna tell them, we want you to do this task this way. And when they speak to their employees, the employee hears something else. They get very upset, they get sensitive about it, they they're like, we don't know how to dialogue with them to make them care about the the task, it becomes, e- everything becomes about them personally.

• 19:48Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, what they're not doing right or something, or how they're.

• 19:52Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, how am I perceived? What do people think of me? And at the core, and it's interesting that you said that, it does come from our insecurity.

• 19:59Lewis Howes?

  So how do we overcome these insecurities so we're not offended by everyone that gives us feedback?

• 20:04Evy Poumpouras?

  Well, you have to ask yourself, am I an insecure person and be honest about it? And most people don't don't think, don't want to think of themselves that way.

• 20:11Lewis Howes?

  I had a lot of false confidence growing up, like I thought, or I was confident in one area but not in other areas, so I could be confident in the sports arena, but then in life, I would be more fearful of people's opinions. And it took a, it took a while to learn how to unlearn that and just be okay with with that.

• 20:31Evy Poumpouras?

  Where do you think that came from?

• 20:33Lewis Howes?

  I mean, I mean, probably a lot of stuff. I was the youngest of four. Uh, I didn't have a lot of friends growing up because I was, I was in the bottom of my class and I had like special needs classes and tutors all through college even. So I just felt like the thing I was spending the most time in school, I was the worst at compared to my peers. And so I think just getting picked on and made fun of in that arena made me insecure about myself, thinking I'm not good enough, not smart enough, not whatever, talented enough. And then when I was more of a teenager, I got into sports and became, put all my energy and effort into that. It started to excel, which gave me confidence. I got results in an area of life, so I went all in.

• 21:15Lewis Howes?

  But when I got injured playing football, um, when I was twenty three, I lost my identity in that. So it was like my, my confidence was tied to identity of sports. And then if I no longer have that identity, who am I? And where's my confidence come from? So I had to learn later in my twenties, how to build confidence within with my character, which is what something you talked about. It's like learning to trust people not based on um, really their results or who they are, or how famous they are, or what they've done, or how much money they have, but on how they show up and their way of being consistently. And I had to learn the hard way, you know, by making lots of mistakes and

• 21:56Lewis Howes?

  and then shifting that through pain. Okay, now I need to show up in a different way consistently. So I think that's how I learned. But I, part of me is grateful for the early training and the inner insecurities. But other part of me wishes I never had that also. But it allows me to connect with other people and see people and have a lot of empathy as well, so.

• 22:20Evy Poumpouras?

  I think when we are younger, yes, it's a bit more difficult during the teenage years and early adulthood. I mean, just factually, the human brain doesn't develop fully till you're twenty five years old anyway. So there's all these other issues happening biologically, which is harder to communicate sometimes with younger people. In fact, actually, even when we look at crime, the majority of crime committed is by younger people, eighteen to twenty five.

• 22:44Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:45Evy Poumpouras?

  So it goes to show you that there's correlation there with other things. We also see higher rates of impulsivity within that age group. So the younger population typically is the more, you know, I'm sorry to all my younger people out there. But I was there too, and if you think back, where it's where we are the most unstable. We are the most impulsive, which means we don't really think through things. We don't think of the consequences. We are much more identity based, me, me, me.

• 23:16Lewis Howes?

  What we wear, who we're hanging out with, what we're doing.

• 23:18Evy Poumpouras?

  I'm the sun, everything revolves around me.

• 23:20Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 23:21Evy Poumpouras?

  Right? And it is, and so that's where we also see, you know, this, this impulsive behavior, impulsivity tends to be one of the characteristics when we see criminal behavior, deviant behavior.

• 23:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 23:34Evy Poumpouras?

  So when you hit that twenty five mark, and there's a lot of theories trying to figure it, trying to figure out why that is, but we see even when it comes to just crime and deviant behavior, we see a kind of a, it, it, it peaks, peaks, peaks. We hit twenty five and it just starts to fall off the cliff.

• 23:50Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 23:51Evy Poumpouras?

  Some people think it's because of the biology, the development of the brain. You're fully developed now. Other people think.

• 23:57Lewis Howes?

  You have more responsibilities in your life, you gotta.

• 23:59Evy Poumpouras?

  You, you have a job, you're responsible, you have, you.

• 24:02Lewis Howes?

  A spouse, maybe.

• 24:03Evy Poumpouras?

  A partner that you answer to. You have these responsibilities. Sometimes if you look at it just based off of gender, male gender, which tends to skew more towards committing crime. They also think hormones, biology plays a role, testosterone plays a role in that as well.

• 24:20Lewis Howes?

  Are more men committing crimes than women?

• 24:21Evy Poumpouras?

  When we look at the data, yes. When we look at.

• 24:24Lewis Howes?

  Who are getting caught at least, you know.

• 24:25Evy Poumpouras?

  Who's getting caught. So I'll tell you this, so yes.

• 24:28Lewis Howes?

  Women are just better at not getting caught.

• 24:30Evy Poumpouras?

  Actually, women, so let me ask the first part. Yes, when we look at violent crime overwhelmingly, it's mostly men.

• 24:37Lewis Howes?

  However. Violent crime, yes.

• 24:39Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, violent crime. Actually, crime overall, to be fair. But were we seeing as we have this equality taking place, what's interesting, we're also seeing women commit more crime.

• 24:49Lewis Howes?

  Come on.

• 24:49Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, where we, so where we see actually more crime being committed by women is not really in the violent area. Violent crime, they're property crimes.

• 24:58Lewis Howes?

  What are they doing?

• 24:59Evy Poumpouras?

  Property crimes, fraud, money, scams.

• 25:02Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 25:02Evy Poumpouras?

  And I'm trying to think back when I worked investigations, I would arrest um quite a few women. And the crimes that I would arrest them for typically was fraud, stealing money from the government, checks, cashing. Fraud, schemes, trying to crime fraud, yes. That's where women tend to commit. When we look at the data, the most crime, violent crime typically still at the moment skews more male. Although women are definitely closing the gap. And then when we look at the male population who's represented in a prison more, we do have men. However, to be fair, is it also the mindset that when a woman goes before a judge or the court? And a man goes before the judge in the court, are they gonna look at those two individuals?

• 25:46Lewis Howes?

  The bias.

• 25:46Evy Poumpouras?

  The bias differently.

• 25:48Lewis Howes?

  They do, I'm assuming, right? And you wanna feel like, okay, we have to protect the woman maybe from what could happen in prison. I don't know what.

• 25:56Evy Poumpouras?

  I think it's because we don't perceive.

• 25:58Lewis Howes?

  Could they really do this?

• 26:01Lewis Howes?

  Did she really stab this person? I shoot them in the face, yeah.

• 26:05Evy Poumpouras?

  She seems so nice.

• 26:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, she seems so put together here. She's so kind, yes.

• 26:09Evy Poumpouras?

  Well, we don't perceive, uh typically, I do think it's shifting, but we typically, historically, women. Even if you just look at something simple as who gets away with getting a speeding ticket, men versus women.

• 26:20Lewis Howes?

  Women.

• 26:21Evy Poumpouras?

  Right, probably women, yes.

• 26:23Lewis Howes?

  Now, it does, who's harder on women in court, male judges or female judges?

• 26:30Evy Poumpouras?

  So I would think female judges would be harder on women in court. It's something called double marginality. Where when you are and they they also noted this in in races as well. When it comes to race. When you are in that capacity.

• 26:43Lewis Howes?

  Can't let your race or your gender get away with something.

• 26:46Evy Poumpouras?

  You will try to overcompensate to show I'm on this side. I'm a judge, I'm not gonna be biased towards somebody. Because of gender or race, cuz they're my same gender or race. Because it would not be perceived as well, so I might even be harder on them. Just so that I'm not perceived as being soft on them, which is not fair.

• 27:05Lewis Howes?

  That's tough. I'm curious, you know, I've heard that um. I don't know the statistic, but I've heard that women. In relationships cheat just as much as men. But women don't get caught as much. Why is that? And I don't know the statistics, but that's what I've just heard. Why do you think if that's the case? That women don't get caught as much, but still cheat as much?

• 27:30Evy Poumpouras?

  You know, that's interesting. I'd not heard that. I the one thing I had known is that. What we're seeing more is women are more likely to. Uh, file for divorce. Um, today than a man would. That that I've heard. As far as lying and cheating, my experience, I've seen it. I've seen everybody lie and cheat. Uh, regardless of gender. People do it. So I've. In my years and years of interviewing hundreds and hundreds of people. To me, I've seen people lie equally and cheat equally.

• 28:02Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 28:02Evy Poumpouras?

  I will say that, yes. I've not, I think. Some, I think certain people may not get caught. Perhaps cuz you're not looking at them as much, they're being overlooked.

• 28:14Lewis Howes?

  You're not as intuitive maybe, or?

• 28:16Evy Poumpouras?

  Well, look, if maybe they're not thinking they're as.

• 28:21Evy Poumpouras?

  I don't wanna say that they're better liars because it has to do with the person. But if you don't see them as. As a as a as much of a threat. You're not gonna suspect them as much. You know, here's a good example, I did undercover work. One of the reasons I felt comfortable doing undercover work and I would get picked to do undercover work is because I didn't look like law enforcement.

• 28:44Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 28:44Evy Poumpouras?

  I didn't look threatening or menacing or anything like that. So I was more successful.

• 28:50Lewis Howes?

  People trusted you more in.

• 28:52Evy Poumpouras?

  I wasn't looked as a threat.

• 28:53Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 28:54Evy Poumpouras?

  Oh, her, high five.

• 28:54Lewis Howes?

  She couldn't be a, she couldn't be a police or secret service or.

• 28:58Evy Poumpouras?

  Or even when I would do interviews or interrogations, or even today, if it's, you know, uh, on TV, on camera or for the news. When I'm interviewing people, guards tend to be lower versus when you've got somebody else, maybe that's a man, that's bigger in size, you're gonna be a bit more, oh, I need to. It's just how we perceive people, but it all goes back to the way we size people up.

• 29:19Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:20Evy Poumpouras?

  And we all do it. We have our perceived ideas of what we think of people. You meet someone, within the first five seconds, you've sized them up. You make the impression of them, what you think of them. And once you make that impression, especially if it's negative, it's very hard to undo.

• 29:36Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 29:36Evy Poumpouras?

  Very hard to undo.

• 29:37Lewis Howes?

  Well, after the first few moments, first few minutes.

• 29:40Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes. And that's good for us to know too, because when you're meeting someone, those few moments, when people don't have, when they don't know you, they have nothing to judge you by, they judge you on what they see and how they put you to get together.

• 29:52Lewis Howes?

  Your energy, what you say.

• 29:53Evy Poumpouras?

  Your energy, your behavior. You say energy, I say behavior.

• 29:57Lewis Howes?

  Behavior, yeah. We're in LA here, we say more energy, right?

• 30:00Evy Poumpouras?

  But it's, it's, it's behavior.

• 30:02Lewis Howes?

  It is behavior.

• 30:03Evy Poumpouras?

  Everyone uses energy because they don't know how to define it. Assess people on behavior. When and I'm bringing this up because this comes up a lot. Evy, I feel this person, I don't know, it's like, no, you do know, it's their behavior.

• 30:17Lewis Howes?

  What are they doing?

• 30:17Evy Poumpouras?

  What are they showing you?

• 30:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 30:19Evy Poumpouras?

  Because you'll get this, I love you, I love you if we bring it that. It can be uh, relationships or friendship. I love you, I would die without you, the most important person to me. People tell you that. But then when you look at the behavior, what does the behavior show you? When you are to meet them, are they there? Do they cancel on you? Do they show up on time? Are they present? Do they blow you off? So, we get confused with I hear this, but they show me this. And so, some people are very loud in the way they speak or very persuasive, and this.

• 30:56Evy Poumpouras?

  Is what people hear and follow and then they're like, oh, but the energy hits off. Is it the energy or is it what they're actually showing you?

• 31:04Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:04Evy Poumpouras?

  In their behavior, in their tone, even their paralinguistics, how they sound when they speak.

• 31:12Evy Poumpouras?

  Cause you can even find deception sometimes in in speech.

• 31:16Lewis Howes?

  And a tone.

• 31:17Evy Poumpouras?

  Yeah, you'll see. You'll see a change in cadence. So if I'm telling you a story, I'm gonna lie to you, which I wouldn't lie to you, Louis. But if I were gonna lie to you, right? You're asking me, Evy, what did you do last night? And initially, we're having this great conversation and then you start asking me, what did you do last night? And I don't want to tell you what I did. Maybe I went out with your girlfriend and we partied it up.

• 31:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:37Evy Poumpouras?

  I want to cover for her. My cadence could shift. So I could be speaking normally and then, yeah, we, you know, yesterday was great. I had a wonderful day. Evy, what'd you do last night? Oh, well, then I went to the store.

• 31:50Lewis Howes?

  You have to think about a story now, yeah.

• 31:52Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, well, lying, lying is work. It's not easy to lie.

• 31:57Lewis Howes?

  It's hard.

• 31:57Evy Poumpouras?

  It's hard. Lying is work.

• 31:59Lewis Howes?

  You have to remember what you said of the lie, right?

• 32:02Evy Poumpouras?

  You have to remember, and most people, Louis, don't like to lie, most.

• 32:07Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 32:08Evy Poumpouras?

  We don't like to lie. We know it's wrong. Nobody wants to be a liar. And so actually, the dominant way people lie is through omission. They leave parts out.

• 32:18Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, the white lies or they leave something out, right?

• 32:21Evy Poumpouras?

  No, white lie is, Evy, how do you like my outfit? I li- I think you look, I like, think you look amazing. I think you should, you look amazing. I love it. You look good. Actually, you do look good. Let's say it was like bright future or something like that, right? And I'm like, no, no, you look great, Louis, right?

• 32:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 32:37Evy Poumpouras?

  That would be a white lie. Lying by omission is.

• 32:40Lewis Howes?

  Leaving something out.

• 32:40Evy Poumpouras?

  I leave a big crux of it out. So I'll tell you about my day yesterday. But I will leave out that part where I met up with your girlfriend and we went out and we hung out and we partied it up. I'll leave that part out. Or I'll leave out the part that she partied up.

• 32:53Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:54Evy Poumpouras?

  So that's why it's hard for people to spot lies sometimes. Because we'll, the people will give us a story. But they leave this crux out. And this is the thing, you have to ask yourself, what's missing?

• 33:06Lewis Howes?

  How do you know when something's missing?

• 33:09Evy Poumpouras?

  Ask questions.

• 33:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:12Evy Poumpouras?

  Ask questions. When you see gaps in time, sometimes even in speech you'll hear all of a sudden, and then, and the next thing I knew, those are, those are typically um soundbites of deception. Not always, but sometimes when you hear that, it's somebody skipping time in a story. So if somebody's telling you a story and you get these great details they're sharing, then you get to a part of the story and there's a gap. And they're like, oh yeah, we went out, it was fun. And then they kind of.

• 33:41Lewis Howes?

  And then we came back and here's what, yeah.

• 33:42Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes. You have to say to yourself, what's missing? It's almost like when people hire um individuals to work for them and they look at their, their resume, and then they look at their application form. Where did you work before? What did you do here? And then there's that gap of time, like for employment, sometimes you'll see a gap of time. Oh, there's a couple of years here missing.

• 34:00Lewis Howes?

  What'd you do? Oh, you know, I was just.

• 34:02Evy Poumpouras?

  Oh, I was traveling across Europe.

• 34:04Lewis Howes?

  But I got fired from three jobs.

• 34:08Lewis Howes?

  I just left that out. You don't have to call those people. Yeah.

• 34:10Evy Poumpouras?

  I did the HR when I was in the service, because I did the polygraphs and I would look at their paperwork and I would see gaps of time um for jobs. Or even when people got evicted, because they would get asked, have you ever been thrown out or evicted? Because you want to see somebody's history. And so we'd ask them, where'd you live? And they would have to put years of, you know, I don't, I can't remember how many years back, but ten, fifteen years back where they've always, they've lived. And you'd see gaps of time. Well, where'd you live here? Oh, just with some friends. Well, why didn't you write it down? We asked you to write it down.

• 34:41Lewis Howes?

  This was for someone trying to be in the Secret Service, right?

• 34:43Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, I mean, our hiring, that hiring process was way more intensive.

• 34:47Lewis Howes?

  So you put them through the lie detector test?

• 34:49Evy Poumpouras?

  I can help you out here for your employees.

• 34:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly. So you put them through a lie detector test and interrogate them on their whole history?

• 34:58Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, so it's called um, when you do a polygraph, and this part I can share. Because I always want to be mindful, I don't want to say anything that's sensitive or classified. When you take, when you take certain federal jobs, so with US Secret Service, because people can write what they want to write, how do you verify what is or isn't truthful? And that's where it becomes tricky, and because of the nature of the job and the risk that comes with the job and the power that is given to someone. You, they do their best to validate that what is in the application is truthful. So there's two things. One, they'll look at. National security stuff, have you violated national security, are you somebody who's trying to infiltrate? That kind of thing.

• 35:42Evy Poumpouras?

  And then there's another part of it where it's, they call it lifestyle. Which is where people struggle the most. And people get disqualified the most. That is your history, so.

• 35:52Lewis Howes?

  So if they were, what they've committed a crime, that's the first part. There's no chance they're gonna make the job, right?

• 35:58Evy Poumpouras?

  Depends on what the crime is.

• 35:59Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 36:00Evy Poumpouras?

  Well, it depends on what you did.

• 36:01Lewis Howes?

  When I was fourteen, I did this and you know.

• 36:04Evy Poumpouras?

  Or even eighteen or nineteen, it depends on what you did. Because you have to look at people in general are flawed.

• 36:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:10Evy Poumpouras?

  So especially when you're looking at the window of time, which you brought up, you know, I was young, I was this.

• 36:14Lewis Howes?

  Oh man, lots of mistakes, yeah.

• 36:15Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes. And so, I think with those, at least I can speak, what they look for more is truthful and honesty. And the thing is, if you're gonna lie about this, then what are you willing to lie about later?

• 36:26Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 36:27Evy Poumpouras?

  Now, there are of course some things, like if you've got a couple of felonies, you're probably not gonna get, you know. Hired, because that's um. It's kind of goes against the principle of what that job function is.

• 36:38Lewis Howes?

  Was there ever any, anyone who had like? A pretty big crime that, but they were, hey, it's been fifteen years, I've been, my behavior has been so. In alignment since then, I've done this and this and this, and they're truthful about all their flaws. And there's like, yep, this was me and his point, and here's this. And you're like, they're so truthful and honest, I now trust them more. And we want them.

• 37:01Evy Poumpouras?

  I think by the time they come to you, because the thing was. You know, you, I would ask them, have you ever committed a crime, and then I would list the crimes. And so one of the, the signs where I, there was deception, I would, a red flag, let's say a red flag. Oh no, you guys ran my rap sheet, I don't have anything. It's like, I don't.

• 37:17Lewis Howes?

  Um, but have you done anything that wasn't hot?

• 37:20Evy Poumpouras?

  What you got caught for, I'm asking you what you did, and we all know what we do or don't do.

• 37:24Lewis Howes?

  Ooh.

• 37:25Evy Poumpouras?

  Typically, the people that were truthful had, would tend to have a very good shot. Where I would see um, things that were more memorable. Or when people would lie or cover it up. So I mean, you would get applicants that had. In the course of speaking to them, they would confess to.

• 37:44Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 37:44Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, I mean, I had abusive animals, which was a big thing. Like, I remember I had somebody who used to set animals on fire.

• 37:52Lewis Howes?

  Oh man.

• 37:53Evy Poumpouras?

  Um, you would have.

• 37:55Lewis Howes?

  Really, when they were really young though, or something?

• 37:57Evy Poumpouras?

  No, through the course of their, and that's actually a huge red flag. Because they was as they were young and then they got older and then they progressed from smaller to bigger animals. And so that's um, that's actually a bit of a uh, I don't wanna say prerequisite, but it's something that you'll see in younger people, which kind of leads to uh, there's a lack of empathy there. So that's where you kind of go into sociopathic or psychopathic uh, behavior, personality disorders. And when we see those disorders, you don't see them a lot.

• 38:31Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:31Evy Poumpouras?

  Um, everybody thinks it's prevalent. It's not. It's out there, not as much. But those are individuals who commit acts or harmful acts against someone, but they don't feel bad.

• 38:41Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 38:42Evy Poumpouras?

  They they lack empathy.

• 38:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 38:44Evy Poumpouras?

  It's one of the few. There's not a lot of disorders out there that do that, but there are some such as those. That's where you have serial killers or you have serial rapists where they do this, but they don't feel guilty. Where the majority of the population, when the when they cause you harm, they feel bad.

• 39:02Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 39:02Evy Poumpouras?

  That's why what's actually interesting, when I would do interviews, or as you like to call them interrogations. It was easier for me with the majority of the population to get a person who committed a violent crime to confess than it was somebody who stole money to confess.

• 39:22Lewis Howes?

  Because it wasn't harmful or what what? Why is that?

• 39:25Evy Poumpouras?

  Less guilt.

• 39:26Lewis Howes?

  Less guilt.

• 39:27Evy Poumpouras?

  So if I do something to harm you.

• 39:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:29Evy Poumpouras?

  It means I'm doing something to harm.

• 39:31Lewis Howes?

  Physically hurt you.

• 39:32Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes. Even if I stole money off of you, I have to take it off of you. I'm doing something to you. But now if I'm in my pajamas and my bunny slippers at my computer at home sipping my

• 39:45Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 39:45Evy Poumpouras?

  School of Greatness coffee and I'm on the computer and I'm stealing from Chase Bank or I'm stealing from some, or even if I'm stealing from a person, I don't know this person. Then I don't feel as bad. That is why we're seeing a huge also influx in crime here. Because now you're branching off to a larger portion of the population. So the reason why you see so much fraud and so much scams, like it's your cellphone, right? Every other minute it's like, hi, you wanna buy this life insurance? Or hey, this is about to expire. The reason you're seeing that skyrocket is people don't feel as bad about those crimes. So we have a larger portion of the population committing those crimes.

• 40:29Evy Poumpouras?

  Whereas violent crimes, the majority of people feel bad. I'm causing harm to you, I'm physically doing something to you.

• 40:36Lewis Howes?

  It's more personal. You see the person, you're with the person.

• 40:40Evy Poumpouras?

  Guilt.

• 40:40Lewis Howes?

  It's not like you don't know the person, yeah.

• 40:42Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, so this is why we're seeing this huge, huge blow up here. It's like, well, I'm not really, it's just some name on a screen that I see. But you also just, you know, wiped out this person's life savings. But you don't see it in that way.

• 40:56Lewis Howes?

  So sad, yeah, you can't, you're not emotionally connected to it as much.

• 41:00Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes.

• 41:00Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, you talked about how it's really hard after a first impression to change your mind about someone, right? Once you see them or you meet with them for a second, or you talk to them for thirty seconds, you kinda have made up probably a lot of your bias about that person, right? Based on the way they look, the way they sound, what they say, you know, facial expression, I'm assuming, body language, all these things, right? If that is so important, the first impression, to building influential relationships, what would you say is the thing that we should be thinking about every time we meet someone new? Whether it be a stranger or an important meeting?

• 41:44Evy Poumpouras?

  You have to bring all of you. So the majority of what we communicate with people, if we look at the science, and this is truly science-based, is almost seventy percent of what you communicate with people is this, your body.

• 41:59Evy Poumpouras?

  And people don't pay attention to it. So when they're sitting in a meeting, something as simple as having very poor posture. So slouching the whole time. Sit up. Show them you're there, taking space. So if I take space, so if I was doing this interview with you and I just was kind of sitting like this.

• 42:16Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 42:16Evy Poumpouras?

  I'm conveying to everybody out there, I'm not sure of myself. I'm, I, I don't feel comfortable, I'm insecure. You're gonna, you're gonna make an assessment of me. But when you take up space, when you open yourself up, it shows I matter. I'm, I'm here. And this is, people throw that out. People throw the body out.

• 42:36Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 42:36Evy Poumpouras?

  The other thing is, paralinguistics is powerful. So paralinguistics, linguistics are what you sound like when you speak. My tone.

• 42:46Lewis Howes?

  Tone.

• 42:46Evy Poumpouras?

  My pitch, my voice, even, and especially with women, this is one place where women sometimes it's, we bring in these really high tones and these very, my girly voice, I can bring that in.

• 42:57Lewis Howes?

  Everything's a question also.

• 42:58Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes. Did I go out last night? You know, did, did I, you know, I had dinner, I went with my friends. I'm Evie Poumpouras. That's, that sends a message about who we are and who we aren't. That where, they actually, some of the research says only seven percent of, uh, as, only seven percent accounts to what you actually say. So people will sit and memorize a speech. They will memorize a speech. I have to get this perfect. But that's only seven percent of what people actually hear. So it's, the two most important things is your body, the tool, are you bringing it, is it engaging? Are you connecting with people?

• 43:42Evy Poumpouras?

  Do you even eye contact, like, when you talk to someone, are you really looking at them? Or do you break eye contact a lot? Most of the time, we break eye contact when we talk to people, especially when we wanna remember something. When you're really trying to bring it in a scenario, in an interview, you're hiring someone, or they're hiring you. Bring it, be there. Eye contact also conveys huge amount of trust and a huge amount of confidence.

• 44:10Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:10Evy Poumpouras?

  So one of the things I hear is, oh, I'm uncomfortable with eye contact. It's gonna affect you.

• 44:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 44:16Evy Poumpouras?

  Because now, when I read you, that's not a confident person. Do I wanna hire this confident person?

• 44:21Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm. So if they're looking in the eyes while they're communicating with you, or while you're communicating with them, it shows they're more competent.

• 44:29Evy Poumpouras?

  It conveys strength and trust, confidence myself. Also, eye contact, again, overwhelm overwhelmingly, when we look at the data and research, it conveys trust. That's why everyone's like, look me in the eyes and tell me the truth. Look me in the eyes. I could look at you all day long, Lewis, and lie. I'm just as good a liar as you are.

• 44:47Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. It's really hard to look someone straight in the eyes and lie to them, right? You kinda have to look away for a second, right?

• 44:54Evy Poumpouras?

  Some people may. It depends how good they are.

• 44:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Do they train you how to be a great liar? Like, do you have to learn to be a great liar in Secret Service in order to understand when someone's doing it, to see the slightest tells?

• 45:07Evy Poumpouras?

  No. They don't, I was never taught to be a great liar. I was taught how to read behavior, and even still, I continue to go to training, you know, to assess human, it's all behavior. What are people showing you? What are the indicators? But the most important thing is, when it comes to reading people, and I know you and I talked about this in depth last time, it's not about one thing somebody does, and I see it a lot, where, oh, a liar is anyone who always does this, or anyone who always does that. It is seeing the person's behavior and then pulling out red flags. So for example, if we go and actually, the, one of the best ways to detect deception is through verbal. Words actually give people away a bit more.

• 45:51Lewis Howes?

  How many cues would you say that you're looking for? If there's like verbal, body language, the story, their behavior. Are there a set of cues that you're like, okay, I look for these five things?

• 46:03Evy Poumpouras?

  No.

• 46:03Lewis Howes?

  And if four of them are off, then it's like-

• 46:05Evy Poumpouras?

  Because you may not do those things.

• 46:07Lewis Howes?

  Uh-huh. Or I might just be like a nervous person in general.

• 46:09Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes.

• 46:10Lewis Howes?

  You know, like, why is this person nervous? Well, I'm always nervous, or something, right?

• 46:13Evy Poumpouras?

  So, oh, okay. When I first came in, you spent ten minutes, fifteen minutes chatting with me. Why do you do that?

• 46:20Lewis Howes?

  Well, cuz I like you, you know, I wanna, I wanna see how you're doing, I wanna connect with you, but I

• 46:25Evy Poumpouras?

  But you do that with all your guests?

• 46:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, I did a little more with you.

• 46:29Evy Poumpouras?

  But what, but why? But what's the reasoning why?

• 46:31Lewis Howes?

  It's, well, I wanna just jump right into an interview, I wanna build a connection, I wanna see what you're up to, what's what's really exciting in your life right now, is there something off in your life, you know, that we can talk about and go into and really just build a connection?

• 46:44Evy Poumpouras?

  So, when you connect with them, do you not also get their energy?

• 46:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, their behavior.

• 46:49Evy Poumpouras?

  Their behavior, their energy, their movement, how they sit?

• 46:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 46:53Evy Poumpouras?

  And all that, do you ever get somebody that's maybe, you read them, your impression is this person's a bit more shy, I don't wanna have a boring interview?

• 47:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, they're off or they need this.

• 47:01Evy Poumpouras?

  I need to bring it, I need to make him more comfortable, yes. So you're

• 47:06Lewis Howes?

  I always, I always say the pre-show is the show. You know, the show needs to be powerful, but if you don't bring it in the pre-show and build the connection there, it's like you're really interviewing someone in the pre-show. So that the show can inspire and impact the world.

• 47:22Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes.

• 47:23Lewis Howes?

  And if I don't create that in the pre-show, or if we're not creating that, it's gonna be harder to create it when we get started.

• 47:29Evy Poumpouras?

  And what you're trying to do is figure out that person's baseline when you first read them, what's their baseline, oh, right now I've got somebody very timid, they're not gonna bring it, this podcast's gonna suck, I can't have that, I wanna have people feeling inspired. So you assess people's baseline, everyone's different, so when you assess a baseline, is this is who this person is in this moment? Now, when you start asking them questions, and you're always very courteous to me, every time I come on, Evy, is there anything you don't want me to ask you? And every time I say, go ahead.

• 47:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 47:57Evy Poumpouras?

  Lay it on me, I have no problem, I mean, but then, if you ask me questions, then if I don't like it, you'll see a deviation. So, Evy, the, you know, the entire time we were speaking, she's been sitting this way, using her hands, she's expressive, using illustrators, then if you ask me a question that I don't like,

• 48:16Lewis Howes?

  You lean back, you, yeah.

• 48:18Evy Poumpouras?

  Well, I could just put my hands away, nothing more than put my hands away.

• 48:22Lewis Howes?

  And I can notice, oh, there's a shift here.

• 48:24Evy Poumpouras?

  Wait, wait a minute, right, you're gonna say, this whole time I've been speaking with her hands, she's very illustrative. And now, she put her hands away, so the, what you're looking at is, what did I just do, I asked a question, or I said something or did something? And as a result of that, it caused a shift in behavior. That's a bit of a red flag. Now, what you do next is, why? In your head, why did she do that?

• 48:48Lewis Howes?

  You bank it in your mind, you think about it.

• 48:50Evy Poumpouras?

  If you're a good interviewer, and it depends how deep you wanna go, you'll ask me questions about it.

• 48:55Lewis Howes?

  About why you shifted.

• 48:56Evy Poumpouras?

  You won't say to me, Evy, why did you sift? Shift, you'll continue to ask me questions about that.

• 49:02Lewis Howes?

  That topic that made you feel there was a shift.

• 49:04Evy Poumpouras?

  There was a shift, oh, there's something here, oh, I wanna know. Oh, what is she hiding? Oh, what is, what is the story there that I wanna know about? So, that can do that. For other people, I could just be sitting here the whole time, you ask me a question. I could do something as simple as put my hand over my mouth right before I answer you. Again, everybody doesn't do it, but you could say, why did she just put her hand over her mouth? Uh, it, but the thing is, what did I do, what did I say? That caused her to do that. The, the goal is for you to be, to be not afraid to ask questions. The majority of the population, very fear-based, we don't like confrontation, we don't wanna push through or ask. We let things go. Instead of being curious.

• 49:50Evy Poumpouras?

  You're curious about people, you're fascinated by people. I am too. I listen to people, I love to hear their story. And when you talk to them, they will tell you what they wanna tell you, and they'll leave some stuff out. But, and you can, can't you tell sometimes with the parts that they leave out? Of themselves?

• 50:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 50:08Evy Poumpouras?

  That they just don't wanna share?

• 50:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 50:11Evy Poumpouras?

  There's like something missing there. The energy shifts, the behavior shifts, it's behavior. I think people say energy because they just don't know how to define it.

• 50:19Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 50:20Evy Poumpouras?

  So, study a person's baseline, and you can do it within seconds too. So, when you're connecting with people, what you also probably don't realize that what you're doing is intuitively, Louis, you're reading people. You're getting the picture.

• 50:32Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 50:33Evy Poumpouras?

  You're getting a sense of who they are.

• 50:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 50:35Evy Poumpouras?

  Right? You even said to me actually today, you said, Evy, you seem more relaxed on this one. Last time you came in, I thought you were gonna pile drive me.

• 50:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 50:43Evy Poumpouras?

  Right?

• 50:44Lewis Howes?

  Um, yeah, it's interesting, and I, and I always know that. And I guess it depends on if you're meeting someone for the first time versus we've met each other before, so the energy can, or the behavior can be shifted, I guess. But I always try to, and I think I did this with you, when someone walks through the door, I try to open my arms. I think right away, I was just like, hey, you know, I open my arms. I try to open my arms and, and really just kind of be, you know, a joyful person. Whether it's someone I know or someone I'm just meeting, because I want to be able to appeal, people to feel like this is a safe space and this is a joyful place and I'm a safe human being, you know, I'm not gonna hurt anyone here.

• 51:24Evy Poumpouras?

  So let me ask you a question.

• 51:25Lewis Howes?

  And I also know I'm much bigger than a lot of people.

• 51:27Evy Poumpouras?

  Did anybody teach you that? Is that something you normally do on your own?

• 51:30Lewis Howes?

  I've just done it for years. I can't think if someone taught me, I don't remember, but I've just always kind of been this, because I think when I started doing it, probably in my teens or early twenties, I was like, oh, people are much more receptive to this, you know, there's probably a reward for that behavior based on what I was doing. So like, oh, let me just always be this way, you know?

• 51:51Evy Poumpouras?

  So actually, there's a term for that. It's called an open posture, welcoming posture. So it's, it's a wild, because you do it intuitively.

• 51:58Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 51:59Evy Poumpouras?

  So this is when you want people to not feel intimidated, you want people to connect with you, what you want to do is exactly what you did. So, and supervisors, anybody out there, listen up, if this is you want to connect with people, or people are intimidated by you, open posture. So I'm open, my hands are out, my hands are open, too. Nothing's in my hands, so it's, and you said, I'm safe. I'm not hiding anything. I don't have anything, my hands aren't in my pockets, I don't have anything in my hands, I'm open, I'm safe. And so it's, I'm welcoming you.

• 52:31Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 52:32Evy Poumpouras?

  So that's actually something, that's one of the first things they teach you in the foundation when it came to negotiation and interviewing school. Have an open posture when you speak to people. This is the open posture, exactly what you do with everybody you meet.

• 52:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:45Evy Poumpouras?

  And it's smart that you do that because it's disarming, they feel relaxed, they feel welcome, they feel open, they connect with you, and you're gonna have a better interview.

• 52:52Lewis Howes?

  Right. Intuitively, I mean, or just like unconsciously, the person's gonna feel safe, whether they're even aware that I'm doing that or not, right? I even try to be conscious.

• 53:04Lewis Howes?

  I move my hands a lot on my table and you know I cover my chin or I'm thinking but I always try to go back to having my hands open here even just in a relaxed position I don't know if you've noticed that or I'll bring it to the side here so you can see them or I'll kind of have them here and like a open class position as much as possible because I want people to feel hey I'm here you know I'm open but then I'll grab my pan or I'll do something but it's always tries to go back to a relaxed position

• 53:30Evy Poumpouras?

  So the hands again is the same thing you keep your hands and I don't want to say it's not always a sign of deception but one of the things they did

• 53:38Lewis Howes?

  If you put it underneath

• 53:39Evy Poumpouras?

  Teach you is just when you're talking to people and you see the hands disappear so you see somebody's hands they sit on their hands or their hands are under the table never great signs it doesn't mean again it's just a red flag so if I have my hands up here you ask me a question that I don't like and my hands go down here you should take note why did Evy do that what did I just do that caused her to do that but the fact that you keep your hands out and this is important when you're communicating with people again connection connection connection why does it matter and not that you want to be nice to people it's not about being nice it is about negotiating it's about communicating it's about connecting when you do all these things you will be more successful

• 54:22Evy Poumpouras?

  people will want to work with you they will want to date you they will want to be around you they will want to they will want to be in your vicinity this makes your life so much better because everyone sits and they memorize strategies and tactics and techniques you are dealing with people at the end of the day you master people you will master everything and it's so important but we we throw it away we throw it away and something as small as what you're doing welcoming people open hands the hands out being open connecting I'm showing you my hands I'm here Evy I'm looking at you slam dunks all the way or touchdowns excuse me you play football

• 54:59Lewis Howes?

  Both yeah yeah

• 55:00Evy Poumpouras?

  Touchdowns all the way

• 55:01Lewis Howes?

  Exactly

• 55:02Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes

• 55:02Lewis Howes?

  Now how does someone when they're hearing you say this and say they want to master their relationships in dating or in business or their career how do they what are some of the key strategies to mastering them in business and relationships without people feeling like they're manipulating or creating a toxic environment with those individuals

• 55:25Evy Poumpouras?

  So here's the thing right so you're saying manipulation trick am I tricking people right I hear this a lot. I'm gonna give you an example or analogy. If I were, if you work out every day, right? Let's say you work out every day. You're getting top, you're muscular, you're strong, you're all that, right? Could you use that? To help people, to help save people, keep people safe?

• 55:48Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 55:48Evy Poumpouras?

  Could you also use that to harm people?

• 55:50Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm. Right.

• 55:52Evy Poumpouras?

  So, this is the same thing. So, all the stuff that we talk about, could somebody use it to harm someone? Yes. It's like, it's like anything. You could take something that's meant to be positive and twist it. But I'll tell you this. When you come from a genuine place, people feel it.

• 56:10Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:11Evy Poumpouras?

  They feel it. When you are doing it with the goal to manipulate people, people feel that too.

• 56:19Lewis Howes?

  What do you, what do you think of the subtle cues? That people could tell if someone's trying to be more manipulative? Or more from a place of power, control, competition? Rather than a genuineness? Where it's like subtle, it's not as clear?

• 56:33Evy Poumpouras?

  I think one is if somebody is very over the top.

• 56:39Evy Poumpouras?

  Um, when I have somebody say, "Evie, you can trust me," or this. Like, we were talking entertainment business before you or not. When I hear, when I hear certain things, when people try very hard to oversell.

• 56:49Lewis Howes?

  This is a guarantee, this is gonna happen no matter what. This is easy, you know, all these things.

• 56:53Evy Poumpouras?

  Yeah, those are always red flags. I'm always thinking, why is this person trying so hard to sell me? I feel that I'm being sold. Versus, "Look, I'm gonna work with you, I'll do everything I can." You can connect with people and there's, there's a genuine part that comes through. But again, but it's also, does the behavior match what they say? So if somebody's saying, "I'm gonna do this, you're so important to me. You're my most important client, you're my this, you're my that." But then they don't call back, they don't answer their cellphone. Or when you do call, "Hey, I've got two minutes, I'm super busy." They don't deliver. When they don't do those things, that tells you what? So that it's not in harmony.

• 57:33Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:33Evy Poumpouras?

  I'll bring another example.

• 57:34Lewis Howes?

  They're not in alignment of what they're saying and how their behaviors are acting.

• 57:38Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, one of the things with you, and this is completely genuine. When one of the things that I appreciate about you where I saw that who you are and what you say is in harmony. With what you do is, and I brought this up to you earlier when we were doing our hello. When I did my first interview with you at the top of the description box. The first line was about subscribe to my show and all that. And the second line was, hey, guys. Evy's book, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, look, he put that up top. You, your behavior, what you said and what you showed me. As a, what you were verbally telling me matched up with what you showed me.

• 58:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 58:16Evy Poumpouras?

  That's what you want to look at. Because you'd be like, Evy, you're great, you're this or that. And then if it's like not there, if it's like all the way at the bottom or. It's all about Louis, Louis, Louis, Louis, and my guess doesn't matter.

• 58:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 58:27Evy Poumpouras?

  Then it doesn't matter.

• 58:28Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 58:28Evy Poumpouras?

  You can tell me I matter all day long, but people miss that. Don't just listen to, I don't want to say the garbage people say, just don't look at what they do.

• 58:41Lewis Howes?

  It's like trusting to an extent. Okay, you're selling me, you're gonna do something, I trust you, and let's see if the behaviors continue to match the words.

• 58:49Evy Poumpouras?

  I'll even better you this. You don't want to give unconditional trust. There's certain levels of trust. You give conditional trust.

• 58:56Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference?

• 58:57Evy Poumpouras?

  Conditional trust is I give you a little bit here, a little bit here, a little bit here. And I test you. Not I test you, but I watch and I wait. But what we do is, oh, my God, I love Louis, he's great, which you are, right? I'm gonna give him all my trust. I'm gonna tell him everything. And then I get confused as to why do I feel betrayed later? Why do I this? Because you just gave it away like it's nothing. It's like you just took all the money out of your wallet and you just did this.

• 59:25Evy Poumpouras?

  When you go to the store, what do you do? You ask, how much is that? Let me give you exactly what it costs. So you should be that way with your trust. You shouldn't be like just giving it out to people. It's conditional.

• 59:36Lewis Howes?

  Let me ask a question about uh being. Vulnerable with people, being honest, open and vulnerable with people. Whether when your first few interactions with them or you've known them for a while. Should we be thinking about ourselves and saying, I, I trust myself enough where I can be vulnerable and open with people, no matter how they receive it? Or should we hold back who we are, or some things about us, to protect ourselves, or to feel if they're trustworthy enough to have that information?

• 1:00:10Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, to the latter.

• 1:00:11Lewis Howes?

  Really? Interesting.

• 1:00:12Evy Poumpouras?

  I hear this vulnerable, vulnerable. I mean, nobody, one, like, nobody wants to see it all day long.

• 1:00:19Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:00:20Evy Poumpouras?

  Everybody's got their own problems and all their stuff they're dealing with. I will tell you this, though. When people feel too comfortable with you, they will challenge you more.

• 1:00:30Lewis Howes?

  In what ways?

• 1:00:31Evy Poumpouras?

  They will test you more, they will push back more. The more comfortable people feel with you. Think of it, the people that know you the best in life, they push you back, they push back the most, they'll call you out the most. And sometimes not, not, not in a healthy way, in an unpleasant way. But if you're, there's something powerful with keeping some things about you to you. You don't have to be an open book. I know this goes against a lot, you know, a lot of be vulnerable, be vulnerable. I'm not telling you to be a jerk, and I'm not telling you to conceal everything about you. But what I'm telling you is, you need to have a filter. Nobody needs to know, people don't need to know everything about you.

• 1:01:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Evy Poumpouras?

  Keep that stuff to yourself.

• 1:01:09Lewis Howes?

  When you were doing your interviews or interrogations, would you ever, or did you ever become too vulnerable? As a, I guess, strategy, to try to get the other person to open up and share their vulnerabilities, and kind of reveal that they did the thing they did?

• 1:01:28Evy Poumpouras?

  I think what I just did is I empathized the most.

• 1:01:30Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:01:31Evy Poumpouras?

  Because in truth, can I?

• 1:01:33Lewis Howes?

  I can see how you feel about this, I had an experience, you know, I had a feeling.

• 1:01:36Evy Poumpouras?

  Well, if it's a criminal investigation, hold on not, oh, you killed her, well, I could see why.

• 1:01:41Lewis Howes?

  Why I felt this in my life, or whatever it may be.

• 1:01:44Evy Poumpouras?

  No, no, because that would be disingenuous. So I'll give you an example.

• 1:01:50Evy Poumpouras?

  There's a difference between pretending, I understand and understanding empathy is. I've. I've been there with you. So when you, when I came in, I said, Louis, you know, I'm really sorry about your dad, right?

• 1:02:02Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:02:03Evy Poumpouras?

  So I've also lost my dad.

• 1:02:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Evy Poumpouras?

  So if I, if I said to you, Louis, I'm sorry about your dad, I understand how that feels. Can I say that to you? Do I understand? If, because my, I lost my dad.

• 1:02:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:02:15Evy Poumpouras?

  You would say she lost her father too, so she understands. Now, if I never lost my father.

• 1:02:20Lewis Howes?

  You couldn't say that.

• 1:02:21Evy Poumpouras?

  And I said that to you, you kind of be like, you don't really know.

• 1:02:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:25Evy Poumpouras?

  You still have your dad.

• 1:02:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26Evy Poumpouras?

  So when you empathize with someone in a scenario where let's say you had just lost your dad and I didn't. I would try to empathize. That must be very difficult. I'm sorry to hear that. Now.

• 1:02:37Lewis Howes?

  But not relating it to yourself.

• 1:02:39Evy Poumpouras?

  Not relating to myself. So the only way you can relate it to yourself and it be genuine is. If you experienced the exact same thing the other person did. So in this scenario, yes, you lost your dad. I lost my dad.

• 1:02:52Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:02:53Evy Poumpouras?

  So then you would feel genuine. So it would be the same thing when you speak to people.

• 1:02:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:02:58Evy Poumpouras?

  So it's, it's how you, how you say it. So if you, if you're not experienced the exact same thing. The best thing to do is say, I'm sorry to hear that. That must be so difficult. I can't imagine. I'm here for you if you need anything. You would do something along those lines instead of saying, I know how you feel. And trying to then, and this is what you don't want to do. Cause when you first told me, actually, I didn't say to you, I lost my dad. Because I would take away from what I was sharing with you. I made it now about me. Oh, you lost your dad. Let me tell you about my dad. My dad died too. He died of cancer and all this stuff. And I would go into that story. It takes away. So it's your story, your narrative, and I'm gonna let you just talk to me about it. And then if later mine comes up, fine.

• 1:03:41Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:03:42Evy Poumpouras?

  So you don't wanna make it about you. This is that me, me, me, me syndrome. When people are speaking to you, allow them to own their story. Don't feel that you have to be, oh, yeah, I do the same thing. Oh, yeah, this. They don't, one, they don't typically care. Unless you've been through the exact same thing and you feel that by bringing that up, that person needs that, fine.

• 1:04:04Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:04:05Evy Poumpouras?

  But don't do it.

• 1:04:06Lewis Howes?

  Even need to, yeah.

• 1:04:07Evy Poumpouras?

  If you don't need to, don't bring it in. Don't, don't bring in the noise. Let that person's story be their story. Cause what you're doing is you're bringing in your own stuff and.

• 1:04:15Lewis Howes?

  Give them that moment, yeah.

• 1:04:16Evy Poumpouras?

  Let them have that moment.

• 1:04:18Lewis Howes?

  I want to go back to something you you mentioned briefly that thought be interesting for people. When you're asking someone, when you want to get information out of someone, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, interrogating a criminal, whatever it might be, is it more employee, yes, is it more effective to ask direct question, did you do this? Or you did this, or is it better to ask an open ended question and see what happens next?

• 1:04:47Evy Poumpouras?

  So, direct questions are not good, and this is why. Most people do this, they go in for the kill, so to speak, and they get garbage. You get nothing.

• 1:04:54Lewis Howes?

  What do people say?

• 1:04:56Evy Poumpouras?

  They shut you down. Nobody, and especially if it's a sensitive topic, they're not going to want to tell you. It's like, did you do it? Yeah, hey, I did. Let me tell you, sit down. You want to let people adjust. It's almost like you put their feet in the water, in the pool. You, you, your feet, when you go into the ocean, you acclimate to the water. Some people dive in.

• 1:05:16Lewis Howes?

  Sometimes I jump in because it's too cold to just go in.

• 1:05:19Evy Poumpouras?

  But for the most part, the idea is you acclimate, and then by the time you get in, you're, you're the same temperature. When you speak to people, then that's the way to do it. And you don't have to get the information in that moment. You want to work on people over time. So you want to get admissions, which is pieces of information. If we make it about a crime per se, right? Rather than going, well, did you do this? Did you do this to this person? Did you rape this person, kill this person?

• 1:05:47Lewis Howes?

  Steal this thing.

• 1:05:48Evy Poumpouras?

  Steal this thing. And I would never say steal. Sounds ugly.

• 1:05:51Lewis Howes?

  You take this.

• 1:05:52Evy Poumpouras?

  Did you take this? Rape sounds ugly too. I would never say rape or, or, or kill. Kill, I would say, did you, did you hurt this person? Did you, you know, lose yourself? I would use different terms.

• 1:06:02Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:06:03Evy Poumpouras?

  Nicer, even if somebody lies. Hey, man, you're lying to me. Ooh. Lewis is like, no, Lewis, you're not, there's something you're missing. There's something you didn't tell me. I feel there's a part of the story I'm missing here. I want you to be comfortable enough to tell me.

• 1:06:17Lewis Howes?

  So you would say that?

• 1:06:18Evy Poumpouras?

  Yeah, sounds different. So, that's one. Think about the words coming out of your mouth.

• 1:06:25Evy Poumpouras?

  What do I sound like? And then more importantly, what do they hear when I speak? Not to what, not what do I think I'm saying? Cause everyone's like, oh, I just said this. What did I say? Doesn't matter what you think you said. What matters is what they hear.

• 1:06:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:06:39Evy Poumpouras?

  When you speak. Based off of their viewpoint, their biases, their DNA, their genetic makeup. Their, their drama, their trauma, all their stuff. Cause they bring that in. When they communicate.

• 1:06:51Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:51Evy Poumpouras?

  So you have to keep that in mind.

• 1:06:54Lewis Howes?

  Are you also thinking about? Are you trying to learn about the background of the person before you have a connection or a conversation with them? And get as much information on them before? Where they're from, who they are, you know?

• 1:07:06Evy Poumpouras?

  Depends what you want.

• 1:07:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:07Evy Poumpouras?

  What is your goal? Like, what are you looking to get? And obviously sometimes time's a factor if you're hiring somebody. I think. When you do, here's some tips. When you're doing your job interviews, or you're, you're bringing people on, or you're working with people. You wanna sit them down. You don't wanna sit like the way we are here. With a table between you and the person. You want an open space. So you've got like. Two sofas, put them on the sofas. Sit down. That's openness. This is a, a barrier.

• 1:07:33Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:07:33Evy Poumpouras?

  It's just, it causes a break between us. There's also formality with the table. And I feel like I'm being interviewed.

• 1:07:39Lewis Howes?

  More professional than as opposed to relaxed.

• 1:07:41Evy Poumpouras?

  And the thing is this, if you wanna know. Who you're hiring, let's say, or who you're dealing with. Or who you're bringing into your space. You want openness and you want them to speak to you in an open way.

• 1:07:52Lewis Howes?

  Freely.

• 1:07:52Evy Poumpouras?

  So you can get all the information. Tell me about yourself. How did you grow up? You know, where are you from? No kidding. What's about this? What, what about that? Now you get them and then you flow into the other questions. But if people feel like they're being interviewed, that they're gonna bring them.

• 1:08:07Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:07Evy Poumpouras?

  Bring that. So you wanna get people to feel comfortable and you wanna have that openness. Also, when you have a table. It cuts off the lower body.

• 1:08:14Lewis Howes?

  You can't see their. Triggers, yeah.

• 1:08:17Evy Poumpouras?

  There's tells.

• 1:08:18Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:08:18Evy Poumpouras?

  There's tells.

• 1:08:19Lewis Howes?

  They're crossing their legs, they're fidgety, they're.

• 1:08:21Evy Poumpouras?

  Fidgety, maybe you ask me a question about. Abby, did you ever get fired from a job? And then I cross my legs as soon as you ask me that question. You're not gonna say anything. You're gonna take a mental note. Oh. Abby just crossed her legs right when I asked her that question.

• 1:08:34Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:35Evy Poumpouras?

  Why? I need to, I need to, sorry, my.

• 1:08:40Evy Poumpouras?

  I need to, I need to pay attention to that.

• 1:08:43Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:08:44Evy Poumpouras?

  Right? So that you wanna just take notice. The whole goal is to be curious.

• 1:08:49Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:50Evy Poumpouras?

  And so if we can give it a term, maybe you need to Lewis house yourself.

• 1:08:54Lewis Howes?

  There you go, yeah.

• 1:08:55Evy Poumpouras?

  When people come in, you are super curious about them. You care about everybody who comes in, who's coming in. I wanna know everything I can about them that they're willing to share. I want them to feel comfortable to open up. I get a great interview. My viewers love it. Boom. This is like this with everything else. If you can bring that level of passion and curiosity with people, everyone's gonna be open books.

• 1:09:16Lewis Howes?

  Yes, that's it.

• 1:09:17Evy Poumpouras?

  Everyone's gonna be an open book for you.

• 1:09:19Lewis Howes?

  Now, I'm curious about this with, I think you said you're married for 12 years, right?

• 1:09:23Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, I think so.

• 1:09:24Lewis Howes?

  Married or in a relationship.

• 1:09:25Evy Poumpouras?

  He's gonna be upset right now, I'm trying to do the math in my head.

• 1:09:28Lewis Howes?

  Um, and he's in the secret service as well, correct? Or he's in the?

• 1:09:32Evy Poumpouras?

  He's, he was, he's a, he was a former special agent. I can't, can't give too much away, but he does work with, um.

• 1:09:38Lewis Howes?

  Works with the government?

• 1:09:39Evy Poumpouras?

  The federal government.

• 1:09:40Lewis Howes?

  There you go, okay.

• 1:09:41Evy Poumpouras?

  In a special agent capacity, yes.

• 1:09:43Lewis Howes?

  So you're both in a similar field, right?

• 1:09:45Evy Poumpouras?

  Exact same field, yes.

• 1:09:46Lewis Howes?

  Exact same field.

• 1:09:46Evy Poumpouras?

  Training, all of that.

• 1:09:48Lewis Howes?

  How does that work in intimacy and relationships when you both have these skills? Is it incredible? Or are you guys constantly, you know, assessing and be like, huh? I'm noticing this strategy he's using, or noticing this. Are you able to flow into it?

• 1:10:02Evy Poumpouras?

  So as people, sometimes we get, like, I'm gonna get emotional or he'll get emotional. And when I see certain things happen, I will be, I will, I will identify what's happening, okay? He needs to vent, he needs to say this. Let me let him, he's not gonna hear anything I say.

• 1:10:21Lewis Howes?

  Until he gets it out.

• 1:10:22Evy Poumpouras?

  He gets it out. So you just have to have, and I think this goes across the board for all relationships. If you can just, here's my word, shut up.

• 1:10:31Lewis Howes?

  And let someone communicate.

• 1:10:32Evy Poumpouras?

  Just let them go. Even if you don't like what they're saying, just let them say it. Let him get them, get it off their chest. Then speak. That's super powerful, it's gonna help you, and then they're also able to listen to you. So sometimes I will pull in a strategy, or sometimes we'll argue and he'll do a technique on me and I'll realize it after the fact. I'm like, oh, I know what he did. But then I'll realize, I understand why he did it. The whole goal of this stuff, it is not to manipulate or trick people. The goal of this stuff is to help progress a conversation. You don't wanna get stuck. When you feel stuck with people, this is why. You want progress and you, we all want progress in our lives. At work, in our conversations, in our relationship. So when you are stuck, you have to ask yourself, what am I doing that is causing me to be stuck?

• 1:11:17Evy Poumpouras?

  I want progress. So even in a conversation or dialogue, everything you do is to help keep the dialogue going furtherance. In furtherance, how am I progressing, progressing the dialogue?

• 1:11:30Evy Poumpouras?

  Think of it this way, and there's something called um the behavior wheel, and it's actually these amazing researchers, the Allison's were the ones who created this and they teach it to a lot of the top negotiators. They actually teach you.

• 1:11:42Lewis Howes?

  The Allison wheel?

• 1:11:43Evy Poumpouras?

  Uh, the Allison's, Allison's are their husband and wife who do research. And there's uh, something called the behavior wheel that they teach.

• 1:11:49Lewis Howes?

  Behavior wheel, okay.

• 1:11:50Evy Poumpouras?

  And this is where they teach you again to identify behavior. And when you see a behi- behavior, how do you respond to that behavior?

• 1:11:57Lewis Howes?

  How's the wheel look like?

• 1:11:58Evy Poumpouras?

  So, it's a circle.

• 1:11:59Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh. What's on the wheel?

• 1:12:01Evy Poumpouras?

  It's got all the different behaviors, but I'll give you an example of one. Let's do this, what we're talking about, you're having a conversation with someone and they are, let's put them at the top of the wheel, they're high power, they're controlling the conversation, they're setting the agenda. Now, when they are there, the other person has to go low power. To allow them.

• 1:12:19Lewis Howes?

  Because you can't both be in that position at the same time.

• 1:12:21Evy Poumpouras?

  Look at this interview. What do you and I do? Do we, we flip, when you're high power, when you're controlling the agenda, I go down here. When I'm speaking and I'm high power, I go back up here, you go down here. You understand for me to have progress in this conversation, we have to, if he's high power, I go low power. And that creates, creates progress. Now, if we're both high power, we're competing, we're arguing, nobody hears anything. And so relationships are like that, even even marriages, because you brought up marriages. So if somebody is in this high power, you go down here. And then when you can, you switch and you go up here.

• 1:13:02Evy Poumpouras?

  But if both people are up here, it's not going to work. And if both people are down here, it doesn't work. This is a kind of a, where do you want to go eat? I don't know.

• 1:13:13Evy Poumpouras?

  Where do you want to go eat? You guys are going to starve. Because somebody, somebody has to go high power. That's the behavior wheel. Now that would be an example of the good behavior wheel. And to the Allison's, I'm sorry, I'm doing my best. I don't want to butcher your work because they do some great, great stuff. If you go, now some people will visit the bad wheel. The same thing, bad wheel. Bad wheel is when you have somebody who's very dominant, who's very domineering. They're trying to be high power, but it's not in a good way.

• 1:13:39Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, it's aggressive.

• 1:13:40Evy Poumpouras?

  It's very aggressive. It shuts people down. Now here you have to be careful. And we see this in relationships, not just partner relationships, friendships, supervisors. When you have somebody like that, and you recognize they're high power, but in an unhealthy, not in a good way. And you go low power.

• 1:13:58Lewis Howes?

  You're just going to take advantage of, right?

• 1:14:00Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, you become now weak.

• 1:14:02Lewis Howes?

  A doormat.

• 1:14:03Evy Poumpouras?

  Submissive, you become the doormat. And so what happens is, over a period of time, you've helped groom that person to stay here, and you go here. And that's why sometimes we'll see in relationships, there's that one person who's the aggressor who's up here, and the other person who's super, um, this avoidant, submissive, and that's not good.

• 1:14:23Lewis Howes?

  How does that person get out of that position without upsetting and making the other person more aggressive?

• 1:14:30Evy Poumpouras?

  So what you would do is, you don't want to, you want to go back to the initial example I gave you, which is the good wheel.

• 1:14:37Lewis Howes?

  You're both, yeah.

• 1:14:38Evy Poumpouras?

  So, one thing is, when I have bad behavior, I don't want to mirror that bad behavior because it escalates. So what you always want to do is, present the behavior you want the other person to have. You don't mirror them.

• 1:14:53Lewis Howes?

  Just because they're being in that.

• 1:14:55Evy Poumpouras?

  Don't go there.

• 1:14:55Lewis Howes?

  Behavioral state, you don't match them.

• 1:14:57Evy Poumpouras?

  You don't match it, because it's going to, the whole thing's going to take a nosedive. So you want to say, I see, now this is where it gets important. I see this behavior, I know what I'm seeing, it's not personal. I'm not going to get emotional and upset, and how dare you know that? Even though I can think it and feel it, but if I identify the behavior, it's not as. It's not as piercing.

• 1:15:17Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:15:17Evy Poumpouras?

  I know what I'm seeing. I understand this behavior. I know what's happening here. Now, I'm not gonna be weak submissive. What, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go back to this good wheel. I'm gonna go low. I'm gonna go down here. But I'm gonna listen and I'm gonna say, okay, well, tell me why you feel that way. So I can still maintain eye contact with you. I can still sit here. I can still show you that I'm assertive. So this is where I'm listening. But I'm not becoming submissive or voided or small or carrying away or letting you take over.

• 1:15:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:49Evy Poumpouras?

  I'm taking this low power part of the wheel. But I'm here.

• 1:15:53Lewis Howes?

  So how does someone command respect then if they're in the lower part of the wheel? You can still do that?

• 1:16:00Evy Poumpouras?

  Well, it depends. So here's the thing. I feel like we're doing a whole psychology course.

• 1:16:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:06Evy Poumpouras?

  One thing is if you have a relationship and for a long period of time, you've had that dynamic, that power dynamic that we just talked. One person's the dominant, the this, the that, and the other person's down here. Once that's been set.

• 1:16:18Lewis Howes?

  It's so hard, right?

• 1:16:19Evy Poumpouras?

  That is very hard, almost impossible to get rid of. I've actually consulted with people who have come to me and said, I have a boss who's this way. And one of the first things I ask is, how long you've been there? How long this? And when they're here like three, four, five years.

• 1:16:35Lewis Howes?

  My boss isn't changing.

• 1:16:36Evy Poumpouras?

  I'm like, you, you're gonna have to find another job.

• 1:16:38Lewis Howes?

  The only way that boss would change is if, if.

• 1:16:40Evy Poumpouras?

  They got in trouble.

• 1:16:41Lewis Howes?

  They got in trouble, everyone leaves. Or he starts losing a lot of money or something where it's a big breakdown, right? You'd have to have a big breakdown and do a lot of work on yourself. To say, oh, I'm the problem, not everyone else around me.

• 1:16:56Evy Poumpouras?

  Right. But how many people actually get to that solution that they're the problem?

• 1:16:59Lewis Howes?

  Very few.

• 1:16:59Evy Poumpouras?

  Most people be like, look, look at the people out there. Look at Gen Z or Gen this or Gen that.

• 1:17:03Lewis Howes?

  Lazy or this or that, whatever.

• 1:17:05Evy Poumpouras?

  They're gonna, they're gonna deflect. So to answer your question, if you've groomed someone and you've been groomed to be here and you shift, unless that person is on board and they realize what they're doing. It'll work only then. If they don't, it's gonna be like, what, who are you now? What are you doing now? What do you think you are?

• 1:17:26Lewis Howes?

  It's probably even harder in an intimate relationship then. You've been with someone for five, 10 years and you've had this dynamic. It's gotta be so challenging to break that mold, right?

• 1:17:35Evy Poumpouras?

  It is. It is hard. If you break it, is that person gonna? The key is, if you can break it without them knowing you're breaking it. So when you

• 1:17:44Lewis Howes?

  Little subtleties.

• 1:17:45Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes. So you have to un-groom them. You almost have to groom them the opposite way.

• 1:17:49Lewis Howes?

  So much work, it seems like.

• 1:17:50Evy Poumpouras?

  Well, depends if you wanna stay or if you wanna go.

• 1:17:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:17:55Evy Poumpouras?

  Truthful in a scenario like that, it is very hard because you're trying to be, change long-term behavior. That's been set. That's my role. That's your role. It's set. And now you're trying to change the roles and that person's

• 1:18:08Lewis Howes?

  So hard.

• 1:18:09Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes. You're, I don't wanna say, I don't want everybody to go get divorced or break up. But be aware, what you would have to do is slowly groom that person to do the opposite. Unless you can convince them, hey, you're a part of this problem.

• 1:18:25Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm. It might be tough, yeah. And that's where like acceptance comes in. At some point, you have to accept who you're with. And realize this is who you're with. You either accept it, you try to change it, or you leave, right? It's like, what choices do you have?

• 1:18:39Evy Poumpouras?

  And that's, some people do. Some people will accept it. They'll get in that role. They're comfortable in that role. They know that role. They don't wanna get out of that role.

• 1:18:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:47Evy Poumpouras?

  And they stay there. And it's also, it's not so bad. I worked with someone, actually, this isn't. This is, I've heard this a couple of times. Sometimes, and I'm not a relationship expert, but I've had people speak to me about this dynamic. And they will, they will tell me, well, you know what? He doesn't hit me. It's not that bad.

• 1:19:06Lewis Howes?

  Just screams once a week, but

• 1:19:08Evy Poumpouras?

  And so I'll hear that, and I'll say to the person, Your your baseline or your threshold of whether it's healthy or not is well, he doesn't hit me.

• 1:19:20Lewis Howes?

  Why do people justify those things and why they'll stay in a toxic work environment or intimate relationship? When they make these justifications, well, at least it's not this and this and this.

• 1:19:32Evy Poumpouras?

  I'm invested. I've invested. How many years you been with your girlfriend?

• 1:19:37Lewis Howes?

  Uh, about a about a year.

• 1:19:39Evy Poumpouras?

  Okay, a year. Okay, you've been with her a year. So if there's issues happening in your in your mind and heart, you're like, I put a year into this. I've invested in this. I don't I don't I don't want this to go away. And that's what happens. I think that's one. We invest so much time and energy. I have to start over. I have to this. We do that. And then maybe if we're especially if we're in that submissive role. We've already our confidence in our

• 1:20:08Lewis Howes?

  Is lower.

• 1:20:09Evy Poumpouras?

  Has is lower. We feel weaker. We've had somebody push us there and it's harder now to get out of it. And we we it's amazing what a human being can normalize in their life. Especially when I would work cases of abuse or especially children, when abuse, you you would be amazed as to how a human being can adapt to the most egregious of environments. And that becomes their their norm, where somebody on the outside would be like, I can't believe this. We have this amazing ability to adapt to to a to a fault.

• 1:20:43Lewis Howes?

  It's kind of like the analogy of the frog in in hot water. Have you heard this where it's like a frog? Will stay in hot water and the more and more it gets hotter, they'll just keep staying there because they're used to it. As opposed to just jumping out of a pot, right? It's like and then they'll just die in boiling water eventually, like eventually you'll die.

• 1:21:00Evy Poumpouras?

  But that's how everything is. It's it's incremental. People will do a little bit to you. They test it.

• 1:21:06Lewis Howes?

  Oh, still here, so I can get away with more and push and push.

• 1:21:10Evy Poumpouras?

  Oh, Louis did it. Okay. Oh, and it's it's a groom. That's why it's called a grooming process. You are groomed. And then that's where you have those moments where you stop and you think, how did I get here? How this isn't me, it's not your fault.

• 1:21:26Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 1:21:26Evy Poumpouras?

  But this is why looking at behavior is so important. Don't listen to the garbage people give you and look at what they show you.

• 1:21:33Lewis Howes?

  Have you seen Tinder Swindler?

• 1:21:35Evy Poumpouras?

  No, it's on next on my list.

• 1:21:37Lewis Howes?

  It's like the grooming process, it's. And when you watch it from an outsider, you think, how could this happen? But like you said, the more you're groomed and you tied into someone romantically and psychologically and emotionally. You stay even when the behavior gets worse and worse, right? It's this.

• 1:21:53Evy Poumpouras?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:54Lewis Howes?

  You'll understand, you'll see when you see it, but it's crazy.

• 1:21:57Evy Poumpouras?

  You know what will also help people and? Look at who's around you. I don't know if you do this, I would, I would, and I'm making an assumption that you do, please tell me. I would assume or presume that you are very thoughtful about who you keep around.

• 1:22:10Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent, hundred percent in work environment, in personal life, hundred percent.

• 1:22:15Evy Poumpouras?

  Okay.

• 1:22:16Lewis Howes?

  And I'm even more, it's interesting because before the pandemic. Something I realized is I would connect with almost everyone and I would, and I would give time to a lot of people. I'd give meetings or I'd wanna like, oh, let's meet this person, meet this person. And now it's like, oh, I really have like. A handful of core friends that I wanna see consistently, right? And then other friends I'll see when I have time, but it's like those core friends. Core team members, it's like really getting clear on. That environment of the people that I wanna have in my life and it's been a powerful eye opening experience.

• 1:22:52Evy Poumpouras?

  Why do you do that?

• 1:22:54Lewis Howes?

  Well, the clearer I am on my, on my mission and my time. I'm like, I don't wanna spread my time all over the place. It's keeping me from my mission and the things that bring me the most joy. And it's also not deepening those relationships that I have that are really meaningful. So it's, I wanna spend more time with quality people that enrich my life. Where we are in collaboration with each other in terms of just. Our experiences and our conversations and deepening those relationships. So that's, that's where I'm at right now.

• 1:23:26Evy Poumpouras?

  So when you do that, you have these people that you select to have around you that makes you more solid, more centered. Right? It helps you in business, relationships and everything. And so when you have somebody who's maybe not so good come in. This is why having a good core of people around you, these people will notice that.

• 1:23:46Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, really?

• 1:23:47Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, they will help you. So when you have one, they become your norm, solid grounded people become your norm. If you're surrounded by that, then that's what you know, that's what you're used to. So if you have somebody, and I don't like this word, I just can't think of another one. Toxic come along, right? Because we label, everyone labels everybody toxic. Oh, they're toxic.

• 1:24:05Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:24:05Evy Poumpouras?

  So if somebody toxic for you comes along, you will notice that quicker.

• 1:24:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:12Evy Poumpouras?

  Because those people that are around you, they'll notice it, but they're all, they've also given you that stability. Now, if you, you are surrounded by off people, people who take advantage of you, there's a lot of noise, talking to everybody, getting everybody's chatter. You're not gonna pick that up. So one of the ways to offset this thing that we're talking about is to also really select who's around you.

• 1:24:37Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:24:38Evy Poumpouras?

  Because they make you steady or not steady, I don't care how strong, I have a strong identity as a person, you have a strong identity. But if you and I surround ourselves with buffoons.

• 1:24:49Lewis Howes?

  Start acting like a buffoon, yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:51Evy Poumpouras?

  We're gonna be off, right? We're not gonna be as confident or centered or strong when things are off. We're gonna, we're gonna have that weakness. People bring, can either bring out strength or weakness.

• 1:25:01Lewis Howes?

  That's why I think it's so crucial, um, you know, I've done, I, I feel like I've learned so many lessons over the years of in multiple relationships that I've been in, right? I feel like you've gotta, you've gotta learn the hard way sometimes when you, when you, when you keep making these mistakes in the past. And all these previous relationships that I've been in have given me awareness of like my flaws, my insecurities, why I chose certain people, all these different things. And I never put blame on anyone else. It's always about me, right? And why I chose. And I remember interviewing, uh, Erwin McMan- McManus, who's a pastor here at a church called Mosaic. And I was asking, he's been married for, I think, four decades, right?

• 1:25:45Lewis Howes?

  And he's had this beautiful relationship. I go, what's the secret to having a healthy, long relationship with someone? The same person, right? And he said, I hate to say this, but 80% of it, the happiness and the joy is who you choose. Is the person you choose. That's 80% of the success, right? Because if you choose the wrong fit, you're going to be stressed out and dealing with conflict constantly. And having a great partner, especially someone like Martha, who's so intuitive. She also kind of keeps me, I don't want to say protected, but can just be like, hmm, that was interesting conversation with that person. Like, make sure you watch out for their energy or whatever.

• 1:26:25Lewis Howes?

  Just the subtleties of having someone strong in your corner, a friend or a partner who can read people as well. I think it's really important. Who has got a solid identity like yourself?

• 1:26:35Evy Poumpouras?

  I think you're right, because you know, and I know I'm not, and I'm not a relationship person. I can only speak for my own.

• 1:26:43Evy Poumpouras?

  I, I picked a solid partner.

• 1:26:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:46Evy Poumpouras?

  And I, he looks out for me. He'll see things. I remember even when I began doing the news and I wasn't paying attention as much as I should have to my body posture. Because it's TV and during commercial break, he'd be like, sit up, you're slouching.

• 1:27:00Lewis Howes?

  You also said something that, um, earlier you said, oh yeah, he, he watched our conversation and he thinks you're like a good guy or something like that, or your behavior.

• 1:27:09Evy Poumpouras?

  A good person, yes.

• 1:27:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, good person. So are you guys doing this for each other where he'll watch your interviews that you're on and be like, huh, there's something off about that, that interviewer, be careful there or?

• 1:27:19Evy Poumpouras?

  This is, think of it this one, this is the person you have as your companion. So what Pastor said was right, because first, this is the person you have the most exposure to. They know you the most intimately and you want a solid person. If you can be on equal playing field, that's powerful.

• 1:27:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:27:37Evy Poumpouras?

  When one is like this or it's like this, it's, it's hard.

• 1:27:41Lewis Howes?

  So when you're trying to fix someone or you're trying to coach someone in a relationship, what usually happens? I know you're not the relationship coach here, but.

• 1:27:50Evy Poumpouras?

  When it if identify the behavior. I always go back to behavior because when I tell you. You did this to me and you this, it means you something is wrong with you. And you don't understand and then you feel attacked. But when you can identify. The behavior and say you did this specific thing or said the specific thing now you're giving somebody something visual. To see.

• 1:28:14Lewis Howes?

  It's not them as even being it's the thing that happened.

• 1:28:17Evy Poumpouras?

  It's the thing you did here because you did this thing or said this thing it caused this, this is why it's upsetting to me. Now, now that person in that moment will either. Understand. Be able to communicate and be illuminated by it and have a discussion. Or they'll shut down, they'll be aggressive, they'll do these other things. And then based on their behavior, you now can make intelligent choices and say. Is this a person I can progress with? Or is this a person I should step away from?

• 1:28:47Evy Poumpouras?

  Because we're we're everybody is flawed, like I'm flawed. So it's.

• 1:28:52Lewis Howes?

  What would your husband say is your biggest flaw? Or the thing that you've. Needed feedback on the most or support in overcoming. Or improving on or whatever it might be.

• 1:29:03Evy Poumpouras?

  To be truthful, I think being in.

• 1:29:05Lewis Howes?

  And when someone says to be truthful, does that mean they're about to lie?

• 1:29:07Evy Poumpouras?

  No, no, I'm being truthful. But you're right, it's a qualifier, honestly.

• 1:29:12Lewis Howes?

  Honestly, well, I'm telling you the truth.

• 1:29:14Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes, so you could have been cued by that and just been like, let me see how she answers.

• 1:29:18Lewis Howes?

  Let me notice, yeah.

• 1:29:19Evy Poumpouras?

  Um, and this is why you have to be careful when it comes to deception, right? But I will tell you, I think one of the things I've had to work on. Is because I came from a law enforcement background, I started off NYPD and then US Secret Service and you're around. You're around people of the worst of. You're around people when they are at their worst, especially when you're dealing with. Uh, criminal behavior, you are around. Some of the worst behaviors and the people when they're at their worst, no one's ever happy to see the police, by the way. Fire department, they love, oh, the firemen are here, police department, uh. So. Having said that, you're interacting with people who despise you, hate you and who are consistently lying to you. So one of the traits that actually they see in law enforcement is cynicism.

• 1:30:04Evy Poumpouras?

  And you become, they become quite cynical.

• 1:30:06Lewis Howes?

  Of everything, cause you've seen the worst.

• 1:30:08Evy Poumpouras?

  Right, but you're dealing with it on a daily basis, all day long. Now, that is a trait that I had to be careful of and that I noticed. So, where people in general, most people, the average population, the majority of the population, are more likely to be trusting and to believe in people. So, I say this to people too, so when they feel bad, oh, this person tricked me, what's wrong with me, I got duped. There's nothing you did wrong. People by gen- in general, in nature, naturally, want to believe and are more trusting. The exception is law enforcement, because you are typically around people who are not honest, genuine, deceitful, hateful. You deal with that type of behavior. I don't wanna say people, behavior.

• 1:30:53Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:30:54Evy Poumpouras?

  You become more cynical. So, I had to work on that, where I am more inclined to see the flaw or to see the problem than to be as trusting. I'm the opposite. I'm very, you know, uh, I'm do- doing the assessment. What does this person want? What's the problem? What do they want from you?

• 1:31:14Lewis Howes?

  What do they really want, yeah.

• 1:31:15Evy Poumpouras?

  Where's the deception? Everyone's got a- that's why I had to work on.

• 1:31:20Lewis Howes?

  I didn't even realize until you told me, but you're pregnant and you're, you're due to have a baby.

• 1:31:24Evy Poumpouras?

  Did you see it or did you think it was just a lot of donuts?

• 1:31:27Lewis Howes?

  I didn't even see. I wasn't even like, you know, maybe I should have been more aware and checked your whole body and assessed everything, but I was just looking. I look in the eyes usually when I'm connecting with someone, I'm not.

• 1:31:36Evy Poumpouras?

  You're being polite. She could be pregnant, she could have had a lot.

• 1:31:39Lewis Howes?

  I didn't know it till you like pointed it out. But I'm curious, you're four or five months pregnant?

• 1:31:45Evy Poumpouras?

  I'm five.

• 1:31:46Lewis Howes?

  Has anything shifted in you in terms of your intuition or your ability to sense behaviors differently while being pregnant? Um, or do you feel like it's the same as before?

• 1:31:59Evy Poumpouras?

  You know, I, and this is, this is probably gonna come into your, your language. I feel people's energy more.

• 1:32:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes. Not their behaviors?

• 1:32:09Evy Poumpouras?

  I still analyze behavior.

• 1:32:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you feel energy, like.

• 1:32:12Evy Poumpouras?

  I just feel people more and I'm much more aware. So, I don't know. And I don't know if this is, this is kinda going to different space and I tried to think about it. I don't know if it's because there's another soul inside of me, if you think of it, to some extent. And that makes you more sensitive, but I am more maybe sensitive, not in a negative way, towards what's around me. And more, um, I feel a bit more. So I'm using energy. A bit more, that I'm aware.

• 1:32:41Lewis Howes?

  What do you feel more?

• 1:32:43Evy Poumpouras?

  I feel, I think, I want to have noticed and I'm curious to see like what other pregnant women have noticed, but what I noticed is, I guess, think of it like a radio frequency. If my frequency was good before, it's like really crystal clear now. As far as somebody's energy coming through.

• 1:33:02Evy Poumpouras?

  I maybe I just get their behavior a bit more and I was always pretty on point. But I can really. Feel people on a stronger level, more acutely and more maybe intuitively. I don't know why. I have no knowledge in this space. This is more an internal thing that I've.

• 1:33:22Lewis Howes?

  So the Secret Service should be hiring pregnant women more to have that like superpower, right? Wow, you should come back and consult for a couple of months.

• 1:33:30Evy Poumpouras?

  Maybe, maybe. So I, it brings that, um, awareness. I also think you become. I don't know. I mean, I work very much, so I, even though I'm connected and in tune. I've also not, it was very important for me for it not to shift everything else in. My life. I've always been very, um, task oriented. I like the work I do. Um, and this is just like a whole other journey and God, God help me, right?

• 1:33:59Lewis Howes?

  I'm very excited for you.

• 1:34:00Evy Poumpouras?

  Yeah, that kid's doing pushups. People, people around their kids might be like, get down, give me fifty. I told you not to eat that cookie.

• 1:34:07Lewis Howes?

  Get to work.

• 1:34:07Evy Poumpouras?

  Get to work.

• 1:34:09Lewis Howes?

  What would you say were the three greatest lessons you learned from working with the Secret Service and these different presidents that you worked with? That you have taken with you and you'll apply for the rest of your life?

• 1:34:20Evy Poumpouras?

  I've learned to, one thing is resilience. When you're around people who are in such a world stage and they receive such hate, some venom. And you can see them just persist and get shredded and then get up and give a press conference. When other people, you know, completely become obliterated because somebody said something to them. That, that I learned. That, that, yes, part, part of it was training. Because they teach you like, hey, I don't want to be like toughen up, but toughen up. No one wants to hear you.

• 1:34:57Evy Poumpouras?

  But it gives you that resiliency and that awareness. but then also seeing people heads of state like you can't fall apart you're running a country that's one thing the second thing I was taught was

• 1:35:13Evy Poumpouras?

  to be of service to other people and it seems to me that I don't see a lot of it out there everyone and I don't know if it's just here in the US I could be wrong but we're very

• 1:35:30Evy Poumpouras?

  very me me me what's in it for me uh I want this I I I and it kind of brings me back to that train track scenario

• 1:35:41Evy Poumpouras?

  where we don't do for other people we don't serve and when I mean serve just serve for the greater good it was always interesting when people would say to me you would really take a bullet for that person because the idea is when you're a president and whoever it was and not just president but anybody else you were tasked to protect and they would think like there was something really

• 1:36:07Evy Poumpouras?

  wrong with that and I would always feel like I can't think of a better way or better reason to give my life or to die than saving the life of another human being it taught me to serve and to give of myself I think so that's just powerful and I think sometimes when we grow up and especially when we're younger we just think about ourselves and when I say to give of ourselves I don't mean to just give to our small inner circle I mean to humanity

• 1:36:39Evy Poumpouras?

  that I think was the biggest thing

• 1:36:41Lewis Howes?

  that's number two

• 1:36:42Evy Poumpouras?

  that's number two and the third one was shut up

• 1:36:47Evy Poumpouras?

  I learned in training to shut up not everything's about you listen observe

• 1:36:56Evy Poumpouras?

  You know, and just you learn so much when you shut your mouth.

• 1:37:00Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. I think one of my greatest insecurities became one of my greatest superpowers later in life because I felt afraid to speak to my friends when I was in elementary school, middle school. Later in high school, I'm more confident, but I was unsure of how to communicate, right? And how to tell stories and be interesting around people. I was more unsure of myself. I was more quiet. Because just speaking in school, I wasn't able to read and aloud, all these different things, right? And what it did for me is I just started observing people. I started watching people at school. Not a weird creepy way, but I would just be in the hallways and just watch how people interacted with each other.

• 1:37:45Lewis Howes?

  And their whole energy or the behavior, I would watch everything.

• 1:37:52Lewis Howes?

  And when I got into early in my career, my mid to late twenties, I remember thinking, I have no clue about this business stuff. I'm this young guy. There's all these professionals that I'm meeting. Me acting like I know something is going to be really disingenuine. So let me just ask questions and shut up. And for, you know, a decade, I've been doing this show where I've just asked questions. You know, I speak very little, maybe 10% of the time, 15% maybe, when I'm interviewing someone. And I gained so much wisdom by shutting up and by asking. So I think if people learn to not try to be impressive to other people all the time.

• 1:38:33Lewis Howes?

  Of course, if they're being interviewed, it's different. But if you're always trying to be the center of attention and have everything to say, I think you become more interesting when you listen and allow others to communicate. You become the most interesting person in the room when you're not speaking.

• 1:38:49Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes.

• 1:38:49Lewis Howes?

  I think. If you can ask the right questions and give people to share about themselves in certain ways, it's like, wow, no one's really been that thoughtful to ask, you know, so.

• 1:38:59Evy Poumpouras?

  You know, it's, I've learned this, and this is a side thing. I learned that heroism is quiet. Strength is quiet. Confidence is quiet.

• 1:39:09Evy Poumpouras?

  And that the most lethal person in the room is the person who says the least. And who observes.

• 1:39:17Lewis Howes?

  Yes. Especially it's like allowing everyone else to speak first before you give your opinion or before you give an idea, right? You get to hear what everyone else is saying and they're like, okay, I really like that. Let me pull from that and this and this. And now let me present my case.

• 1:39:30Evy Poumpouras?

  Can I ask you a question, Lewis? I'm curious, because you've been doing this for so long and people probably see you in such a way for inspiration and guidance.

• 1:39:40Evy Poumpouras?

  I would presume, again, this is an assumption, correct me if I'm wrong, that people come to you a lot for advice. What do you do in those scenarios? Because I would think you get hit up a lot.

• 1:39:52Lewis Howes?

  A lot.

• 1:39:53Evy Poumpouras?

  How do you, what do you do? How do you, how do you manage that?

• 1:39:56Lewis Howes?

  I, I try to say, like if someone's emailing or messaging on social media and they ask for advice, my whole thing is, listen, I share all my wisdom here on the podcast and there's much, people much smarter than me, check out this episode. So I try not to, I try to save my time and their time by saying, if you listen to this show or watch it, you know, it's over 1,200 episodes. I've said pretty much everything, you know, to your specific case. So I might just send them a link to something and listen to this or just like you, you've got your book. You've probably given a lot of your strategies already in the book, right? If someone says, tell me this strategy, you're like, just read the book and then ask me a question, a follow-up question, right? So it's like, I've got the book, I've got the podcast, things like that.

• 1:40:40Lewis Howes?

  People want to pay for it, if they want to have it for free, they have access. So it's more of just directing people to the answers or to people who have the answers. That's what I try to do.

• 1:40:49Evy Poumpouras?

  How about the real people, like people that you interact with or acquaintances or friends of friends? I'm just curious to see how you manage all that.

• 1:40:57Lewis Howes?

  My, my strategy has always been, my, my greatest coaches in sports never gave me the answer, right? They never gave me the advice. They would give me drills, they would give me feedback, they would show me a game film or videos to see like, what was really, what worked well, what didn't work well, they would have me observe. They would have me watch other talented people playing basketball or football. I'd watch other people who are professionals and see how they did it. And then watch myself back and how am I doing it? Am I close to that or not? And the greatest coaches would challenge me with questions, you know, it would almost be like Wolf. If you were in this position and coaching someone else, what would you tell them?

• 1:41:40Lewis Howes?

  You know, so I think I try to do that as much as possible without giving people the answer. Because if we're always giving people the answer to their problems, they're not going to be thinking about how do they can overcome it on their on their own.

• 1:41:52Evy Poumpouras?

  Do you find that you have to kind of, because you've been doing this for so long and it's become so popular from a protective mode for yourself? Do you find yourself having to shield yourself or protect yourself from getting hit up so much? I'm even thinking just on a personal note, like, hey, Louis.

• 1:42:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, just out in the world, yeah.

• 1:42:13Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes.

• 1:42:14Lewis Howes?

  I try to just listen and and give a quick solution or I say, you know, I got a great episode for you. Send me a send me a DM and I'll send you the link.

• 1:42:22Evy Poumpouras?

  Yes.

• 1:42:22Lewis Howes?

  To keep it shorter as opposed to let me coach you for an hour, you know.

• 1:42:28Lewis Howes?

  But it all depends, yeah, where I'm at in the situation, but yeah. Okay, I've got a, I want to remind people about this book. The last time we had you on, people loved this and they've been getting the book. But if you haven't got this book yet, Becoming Bulletproof, Protect Yourself, Read People, Influence Situations and Live Fearlessly. By Evy Pomporous, make sure you guys get a few copies of this. This will be a powerful tool in your toolkit to just improve the quality of your life, your confidence and your skills with people. You said in the beginning, I believe the same thing, the quality of our life is directly related to the relationships we have, right? Our success, our joy, our love is in how we interact with people in our life.

• 1:43:11Lewis Howes?

  And so if you want to protect yourself and also create more abundance in these relationships, this is the way to do it. Business, life, career, all these different things. So make sure you guys get a couple of copies of this book. Follow you, where are you at most right now? Is it Instagram, is it Twitter, where are you at the most?

• 1:43:27Evy Poumpouras?

  Probably Instagram, Instagram, Facebook.

• 1:43:30Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:43:31Evy Poumpouras?

  Twitter.

• 1:43:32Lewis Howes?

  Okay, do you spend the most time on Instagram yourself?

• 1:43:34Evy Poumpouras?

  I try to check all of them.

• 1:43:35Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:43:35Evy Poumpouras?

  Actually, I do try to connect with people, absolutely. I feel like if somebody's going through their. The process of reaching out, or at least I read everything. I do my best.

• 1:43:45Lewis Howes?

  Yes, of course. That's good. So check you out on Instagram, @evypomporous, and evypomporous.com's got all your information. You do a lot of speaking, consulting. You've got this book. I think you said you're working on another book as well, right? Maybe.

• 1:43:59Evy Poumpouras?

  Not yet.

• 1:43:59Lewis Howes?

  But in the future, I'm sure you'll have many more.

• 1:44:01Evy Poumpouras?

  You're working on another book, which I'm waiting to-

• 1:44:03Lewis Howes?

  Yes, yes. How else can we be of service to you today?

• 1:44:08Evy Poumpouras?

  I think, I think you're, you're great. I appreciate you, Louis. Like, it was just a pleasure coming back and, no, you've been solid.

• 1:44:17Lewis Howes?

  Okay, awesome. One final question for you before I ask. I want to acknowledge you, Evy, for the consistency you have in your life. You consistently show up to serve. And I think coming from that service mindset of working for 12-plus years in Secret Service and with government, and then transitioning and saying, "How can I take this to more people in the world?" is really inspiring. So I acknowledge you for constantly being of service and teaching people powerful strategies to help them improve their life. It's really meaningful work, and so I really acknowledge you for that. And I'm glad you're doing it while you're pregnant. I know you're gonna be a great mother. You've got a great kid on your hands coming up now. He's gonna be a lot of pressure, though, with both of you in the Secret Service.

• 1:45:00Evy Poumpouras?

  This kid's gonna be terrified.

• 1:45:01Lewis Howes?

  Terrified of the most powerful human being ever. My final question for you, Evy, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:45:09Evy Poumpouras?

  Man, Louis, why do you ask these questions? You always like, I, I always pause because I don't want to just say whatever.

• 1:45:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's good. Think about it.

• 1:45:17Evy Poumpouras?

  If tomorrow were to be my last day and I'm okay to go, then I've lived a great life. If tomorrow were to be my last day and I'm not okay to go, then that means I've not lived a great life and I need to lock it up and change something. That's what I think of greatness. Did I live a great life? And it's not, "Well, I live it later on. I'll do it later." It's right now. Tomorrow's your last day. Am I okay to go? I'm okay to go. That's, that means I've lived the best life I can live, a great life that I can live. How about you, before you high five me?

• 1:45:54Lewis Howes?

  Greatness is discovering and developing your unique skills and talents.

• 1:46:01Lewis Howes?

  Using them to pursue your dreams and in that pursuit, making the maximum impact on the people around you.

• 1:46:09Lewis Howes?

  I feel like we all have a uniqueness and we've got to develop those skills and figure out what those are and sharpen them and based on life experiences. I feel like we have to listen to the dreams inside of us and pursue those dreams and be on the journey, whether we accomplish them or not is irrelevant, but are we on the journey of the thing that we feel like we're chosen to do for that scene of life? Are we listening to the inner voice or whatever conversations inside us are feeling that's saying, go do this, go try this thing? And in that pursuit, like you said, are we making it all about me and look at me? Or are we using that tool and pursuing that dream to inspire, impact, influence in a positive way? That's what I think greatness is for me.

• 1:46:55Evy Poumpouras?

  Yeah, well, I thank you because you're also on the surface of everybody. Everything you do and everything you film and everyone you talk to, it's, it's what, how can I help people?

• 1:47:08Lewis Howes?

  That's the mission. To serve 100 million lives weekly, to help them improve the quality of life. That's what we're about.

• 1:47:14Evy Poumpouras?

  Solid mission.

• 1:47:15Lewis Howes?

  Yes. I appreciate it. Thanks, Evy. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links and also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.