Secret Service Communication Skills & Designing a Meaningful Life

On a freezing morning, it feels smart to let your car idle and warm up before driving off. But is it? Modern engines aren’t built the way they used to be. In fact, letting your car sit and idle too long may not be doing what you think it is. This episode begins with what actually happens under the hood — and how long you really should wait before you hit the gas and go. https://www.mensjournal.com/gear/stop-idling-like-its-1985-warm-up-your-car-right There are few communication situations more intense than when a Secret Service agent speaks with someone who has threatened the President of the United States. In those moments, connection, trust, and careful listening aren’t just helpful — they’re critical. Brad Beeler developed his communication skills in those exact circumstances and shares how anyone can apply those same techniques to everyday conversations. Brad served in many roles at the Secret Service including on the protection detail for President George H. W. Bush. He is author of Tell Me Everything: A Secret Service Agent's Proven Strategies for Earning Trust, Revealing the Truth, and Communicating with Anyone (https://amzn.to/3M5YlKy). Designing a meaningful life may not be about discovering your one true calling or waiting for passion to strike. What if finding meaning is something you build through experimentation — by testing ideas, adjusting course, and learning from experience? Bill Burnett explains how “design thinking” can be applied to life itself. He is executive director of the Stanford Life Design Lab, founder of the Designing Your Life Institute, and co-author of How to Live a Meaningful Life: Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day. (https://amzn.to/4ataW2i) And finally, when a company doesn’t honor its promise, most people either complain or give up. But there’s another tool that can quickly get a retailer’s attention: the chargeback. We wrap up with how chargebacks actually work — and why businesses take them very seriously. https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/Insights/2025/what-s-the-true-cost-of-a-chargeback-in-2025.html PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS QUINCE: Refresh your wardrobe with Quince! Go to ⁠⁠https://Quince.dom/sysk ⁠⁠for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! HIMS: For simple, online access to personalized and affordable care for Hair Loss, ED, Weight Loss, and more, visit ⁠⁠https://Hims.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠ for your free online visit! SHOPIFY: Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠ DELL: Dell Tech Days are here. Enjoy huge deals on PCs like the Dell 14 Plus with Intel® Core™ Ultra processors. Visit ⁠⁠https://Dell.com/deals⁠⁠ PLANET VISIONARIES: We love the Planet Visionaries podcast, so listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you're listening to this podcast! In partnership with The Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

  Hiring the wrong person is expensive, but it's also exhausting. Because now you haven't solved your problem, you've created a new one. You've spent time interviewing and training somebody, but it's the wrong person. And it's just not working. So when you're hiring, you don't just need a person, you need the right person. And that is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Sponsored Jobs helps you reach candidates with the skills and experience and other qualifications you're looking for, and boosts your job and search results, so the right people are more likely to see it.

• 0:42Mike Carruthers?

  In fact, Sponsored Jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. So give yourself a better shot at finding the right person. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast.

• 1:23Mike Carruthers?

  Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need the right hire fast? Then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Today on Something You Should Know, is it a good idea to warm up your car before you drive it? Then a veteran Secret Service agent reveals powerful communication techniques, from how you speak to trusting first impressions.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Bad people can hack that first impression. And we put horns and halos on people too quickly. A lot of the scams I would work in the Secret Service were because people made great first impressions.

• 2:14Mike Carruthers?

  Also, what you can do when a retailer won't do the right thing. And how to design a meaningful, purposeful life that takes you where you want to go.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  What I run into is a lot of people ended up somewhere. I ended up in high-tech, but I don't really like it. I ended up a lawyer, but I don't really like it. There's a wonderful professor, Ruth Chang, at Rutgers, who says, "Your people are drifters, or they're intentional."

• 2:39Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 2:43Mike Carruthers?

  Now, here's something that might be worth a minute of your time. How would you like $1,000 to spend on shopping? Especially with the holidays coming. Well, the people behind Shopify have a shopping site called shop.com. And to celebrate the new shop.com, they're giving away $1 million in Shop Cash. But not to one person. 1,000 people will each win $1,000 in Shop Cash. And shop.com is actually a really clever idea. It brings lots of different stores together in one place. So, instead of bouncing around from website to website, you can search across stores,

• 3:27Mike Carruthers?

  find what you're looking for, and track your orders, all in one place. Clothes, electronics, gifts, things for the house, all kinds of stuff. And whether you win or not, it's worth knowing. But with 1,000 chances to win $1,000, I'd certainly take a look. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today. Something you should know. With Mike Carruthers.

• 4:22Mike Carruthers?

  So here's a question for you. When you start your car in the morning, do you let it warm up for a while before you start driving? Should you? Well, that's the question we're going to start with today on this episode of Something You Should Know. Hi and welcome. I'm Mike Carruthers. So a lot of drivers believe that letting your car idle to warm up in the morning before you drive it is a good thing. In fact, it is a bad thing. And it can actually do harm to parts of your engine, causing them to wear out. Warming your engine up was smart back before 1980, when cars had carburetors. Because if the gasoline was too cold, the car could stall out. But now, with electronic fuel injection,

• 5:06Mike Carruthers?

  that's just not an issue anymore. So it's fine to drive your car shortly after you start it. It is still recommended by some to wait about 20 to 30 seconds for the engine oil to circulate. But after that, it's fine to drive. Just don't gun it for the first 5 to 15 minutes as you'll put unnecessary stress on the engine until it does warm up. And that is something you should know.

• 5:36Mike Carruthers?

  I'm sure you know people like this. I certainly do. People who, within minutes of talking to them, make you feel comfortable. You find yourself opening up, trusting them, telling them things that you didn't really plan to share. There's nothing flashy about it. It's just the way they talk, the way they listen, the way they respond. And as you listen to my next guest, you'll hear it. You can actually hear it in his voice. The calm, the pacing, the way he addresses me. It makes you trust him almost immediately. And it's not an accident. It's a skill he developed over years of working for the United

• 6:17Mike Carruthers?

  States Secret Service, where earning trust quickly really matters. My guest is Brad Beeler. Today, he's a communication expert and author of the book, Tell Me Everything: A Secret Service Agent's Proven Strategies for Earning Trust, Revealing the Truth, and Communicating with Anyone. Hi, Brad. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Hey, Mike. Thank you so much for having me on.

• 6:41Mike Carruthers?

  Sure, sure. So, we're going to be talking about effective communication and what all that means. But since you were with the Secret Service for so long, we have to start with a good Secret Service story, one that you're allowed to tell, or discretion will still allow you to tell that we would find interesting.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I appreciate you, Mike, framing it that way, because there's so many funny stories that I wish I could tell, but unfortunately, I can't. But I will say, how I really got into communication was during the election of 2000, I was on the advance for a George W. Bush event down in a site in Illinois. And it was one of those things where it seemed like it was pretty low-hanging fruit. It was going to be a pretty easy event until the night before, we got a call to the Republican National Headquarters that basically said, "I'm a sniper. I'm a good shot, obviously, and I'm going to take him out," meaning, "I'll protect he." So, it was one of those things where, as a brand-new agent, I didn't know what to do, kind of a snot-nosed kid. And thankfully, I had an amazing agent named Bill

• 7:44Speaker 01

  that kind of took me under his wing. And we tracked down where the phone call came from, small, little strip mall, really nothing around there. And what he did was magnificent as far as he whips out his pocket knife, cuts the, this is the old payphone, so I'm really dating myself, but cuts the receiver off the phone, puts it in a Ziploc bag because he thought, "Ah, we made it for fingerprints," which kind of blew me away. Then he kicked over the... The can, the trash can there and started digging through dirty diapers, all this stuff. I had no idea what he was looking for. And then just his experience really showed because he found a Styrofoam cup that had a little yellow piece of paper that actually had the phone number to the Republican headquarters.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  So we knew that forensically, obviously, we would be able to prove based upon the Styrofoam handwriting potentially, but the visit was the next day. So he took it the next step and we started going around looking at gas stations and various places to where, where could this Styrofoam cup have come from? We went to the nearest store, which was a shopping market and walked in, talked to the manager. And while we were talking to the manager in the break area, his observation skills were amazing. And what he was able to see across the room was a little yellow notepad that had a piece ripped from it where the piece that he found in the trash perfectly fit on it. He looked in the Yellow Pages, once again dating myself, and he found the RNC headquarters had been underlined.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  He asked the manager, hey, who was working here between the ages of 40 and 80 of a male that had, you know, a male? And there were three people. We looked at their employment apps and he had, and right away saw that this person on his employment app had put a layover on his two and a strike through on his seven. So we knew pretty much this was the guy that made the phone call. We went out to the guy's house about 10 o'clock that night. And I'll never forget, Bill, when we walked in and met this individual's wife, he just so laid back, so in control of his emotions, you know, I was all hyped up. And he said, you know, identified himself and the lady said, you know, yeah, my husband's here. And he said, well, you might want to put a cup of coffee on or, you know, a pot of coffee on, we're going to be here for a little bit. And we went to talk to the husband who was seated in the kitchen.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  And while we're walking, I see Bill kind of look at some of the pictures on the wall and he sees this individual, his pictures in the military in Vietnam. He sees the pictures with the woman we had just met about 40 years prior. So he'd been married for about 40 years. And he just put that in the back of his mind. And when he introduced himself, he said to this person, he said, you know, John, Bob, whatever his name is, he goes, hey, with the Secret Service, we do two things. We protect the president and people running for president. And we also stop people who make counterfeit money. And he said to the individual, he said, when's the last time you've made any counterfeit money? The guy said, never. He goes, well, now you know why I'm here. And then he followed that up with, the good thing is, I see that you're a veteran. I see that you're somebody that served this country and I see that you're a faithful man. So what that says to me is a lot.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  And it says to me, you probably got in a political conversation that got out of hand. You said something that you don't mean and that you're not the boogeyman. And I think that's a good starting point. And let's have a win-win situation here and make sure you're not that boogeyman. And seeing Bill do that from start to finish showed how he was an investigator. Show how he could communicate, show how he knew what our protective methodology would be. And it was really eye opening for me to see that excellence. And I wanted from that point on, I want to be a great communicator.

• 11:03Mike Carruthers?

  Wow, what a story. And what happened? I mean, what, you, did you arrest the guy?

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was arrested. I think there was some mitigating circumstances because of his age. He was an older individual and, and looking at the totality of the circumstances. I think he probably got probation. But yeah, it was, it was one of those things where as a new agent, it was scary because that's the stuff you learn about in school. And the fact that it happened right before the visit was, was the time sensitive nature. But that would made a drastic impact on, man, I want to get good at this.

• 11:36Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, that makes a, because the way that story just ended was not the way I thought it was going to go. Where you were going to, you know, burst in guns drawn and take the guy down. But it was, it was so not that. It was a, it was a connection with the guy that there's such a great lesson in that story.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, connection is everything. And then once again, this goes back to the, my other love for communication, which my best friend being deaf since I was 15. So for the last 45 odd years, I've had to really connect with him. And when I mean connect, I'm talking about looking people in the eyes and using all forms of communication. Just not just the words you use, but how you say the words, how you look somebody in the face and how you use that body language with somebody. And I think having been in the Secret Service and with Polygraph, having interrogated thousands of people, you realize. That it's not what you see in the movies as far as the bright light, the disrespect, the banging, you know, the, you know, on the table. It's truly connecting with somebody and allowing them to have the space to tell you the truth because it's not the fact that people are going to lie to you, they're going to lie to you.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  It's what is the lie? Why are they lying? And once you understand why somebody's lying, a lot of times what they'll do is they'll tell you the what.

• 12:49Mike Carruthers?

  So help me understand how you make those connections and, and I mean, that's the topic of your whole book about effective communication. What does that term mean to you? Maybe you just explained it, but, but what is effective communication to you?

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Well, I think, Mike, if you look back on the last 10 or so years of you doing this podcast and 10 or so years before that being on the radio, I think back about how you prepare for a good podcast episode, right? You request a book or your, or whatever about the subject that you meet, you probably look at some of their other podcast experiences. So you're doing your homework. Then what you're doing is you're meeting in the green room beforehand and you're talking a little bit about, you know, what makes them tick, just to kind of have a great first impression. So first impressions are unbelievable. You know, you have to go back to 300,000 years ago when we walked on the plains, you know, our forefathers, we would use our eyes and our ears to understand, are you a threat to me? So there's certain things we can do to hack that first impression.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  So at least we're not putting horns on ourself to that person that we're talking to. Then, you know, we move past that and we use all our senses. Once we get past that first impression, get past that amygdala to where now we can get deeper with people to where I can ask you about your family, your education, your employment, your leisure. And then, you know, your employment, a lot of people don't really, you know, what they do as far as to make a living is not their passion, but what people do in their free time, Mike, says everything about them. So for me, a connection is spending a lot of time on what somebody does 60, 70 hours a week in their free time and asking them, you know, what do you like to do in your free time? And by doing that, you have people educate you about what they like to do. It brings joy to their hearts. It lowers their cortisol levels.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  It increases the dopamine, which they're going to associate with you. And if we do a good job, Mike, what we don't do. Is we don't go me too. All right. When they talk about that activity, and I'm sure you've seen it is there are a lot of times, Mike, where over the last 20 years, you probably have as much information with the people that you're interviewing. You have shared experiences with them and they may be telling a story, but what does a bad podcaster do and a bad communicator? They say me too. So you talk about running a marathon. Oh, so did I. You just shut that conversation up right away. And I'm sure you've seen it, right? Is that what I want to do is I find out you do a marathon and I ask you, oh, man, how did you get into that? What kind of shoes do you like to wear? What kind of nutrition do you do? What's your training split?

• 15:14Speaker 01

  And by asking those educated questions, Mike, what I find is a lot of times people then say, oh, do you run too? Oh, yeah. Then you get the best of both worlds. We get the reciprocity of them starting to ask about you, but you get the dopamine hit of you asking about them. So the beauty of you doing a podcast is you let the other person talk 80% of the time, which is what we should do. And then if they go too far down a rabbit hole, you bring them back. You know what your audience wants to listen to. You ask some refining questions. And before you know it, you're 45 minutes in the conversation, both, both people feel better for having met.

• 15:47Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, that's a great explanation. I'm talking with Brad Beeler. He's author of the book, Tell Me Everything, A Secret Service Agent's Proven Strategies for Earning Trust, Revealing the Truth, and Communicating with Anyone.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 16:30Speaker 05

  Born from the intensity of a night in the eternal city. Introducing Born in Roma Fragrances by Valentino. Feminine perfume Donna Born in Roma features juicy black currant, central jasmine, soft cashmerin, and warm vanilla. Masculine leaning but unisex Womo has notes of fresh violet leaf, aromatic sage, green vetiver, and mineral salt. Shop holiday gifts at Macy's.com.

• 16:57Mike Carruthers?

  So Brad, I want to go back to what you were saying about first impressions because we didn't get too deep into that. Reading first impressions, translating them as to what they mean, has got to be a bit of an art and a science, and so help me be better at that.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if you think of a gut instinct, Mike, I mean, we hear that term a lot, and that's very effective for law enforcement, military, when, you know, if you are in a situation and you're walking up to a car and something doesn't feel right, that's when you want to trust your gut. That's a first impression of something, pattern recognition, something is not good here. Same thing, anybody in your listeners, if they're walking late at night down an alley or to their car and something doesn't add up, yes, trust that. The problem is people use that gut instinct in personal and professional relationships, not understanding that bad people can hack that first impression. And we put horns and halos on people too quickly, all right?

• 17:55Speaker 01

  And it's one thing when we move past that first impression, we've got to be very, very careful about taking into account what people are putting out to us. So I like to hack that impression, and what I mean by it is I want to have a great handshake. I want to have a dry handshake, it's going to be warm. If I'm seated at an event, I'm going to be sitting on my hands so that it's warm and it's dry. The worst thing we can do is have a wet, cold handshake. And I'm sure you've had people do that, that limp fish handshake. And it's terrible because it's the first thing we do, it's the last thing we do in most personal and professional relationships. And that's what scientifically is what people remember, the first and last thing of that interaction. So that's an easy hack. I like to have warm hands, I like to have a dry, actually spray antiperspirant on my

• 18:40Speaker 01

  hands before I do a lot of speaking engagements or a lot of my interviews, so I know I'm going to have that taken care of.

• 18:46Mike Carruthers?

  I would imagine, being in the Secret Service, that you have to read body language really well when you're protecting the president. You've got to look at how people are just moving their bodies. So, talk about that.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Babies and dogs, they don't understand, um, they don't understand language, but what they do understand is body language. And so do people during first impressions. So, I want to have that slightly deeper tone. I want my body language to be controlled. I want to maybe tick my neck off to, or my head off to one side to expose my carotid. I want to give it a quick eyebrow flash. These are friend signs, because people look at neutrality. If they see a neutral face, out of self-preservation, we code that as negative. So, what I want to do is, I want, again, once again, do those things that if I would walk up to a baby, from a body language standpoint, if I would walk up to a dog, from a body language standpoint, would it be scared if it was just looking at me? And if that's the case, I need to be very, very careful.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  But also understand that people are going to do that to us. A lot of the scams I would work in the Secret Service were because people made great first impressions.

• 19:54Mike Carruthers?

  But if you're dealing with, say, a scammer who's good at that, who can, can use body language to deceive you, how do you, as a Secret Service agent, or just in public, how do you spot that?

• 20:08Speaker 01

  So, I want multiple contacts, Mike, and that's one of the best ways to eliminate it. Whether they're a narcissist, whether they're a scammer, it is hard for, for that person to keep doing that over multiple interactions. So, consistency is so important in relationships. I can't tell you how many times I've met somebody, they made a horrible first impression, and then they're become a really good friend of mine, or vice versa. We've all seen that, where somebody made a great first impression, and then after multiple interactions, we're like, "That guy's kind of a jerk." All right? So, I want multiple interactions, and also understand the speed of that relationship. Why are they moving so fast? You know, it's the old thing, "Act now, we need to do this now." No, we don't. Most of the time, we can sleep on it, when it comes to personal and professional relationships.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  So, if somebody's trying to rush you into a decision, especially early on in a relationship, that's where the red flags need to go up.

• 20:58Mike Carruthers?

  You mentioned using all of your senses and maybe people do that instinctively, but but let's dig into that and talk about what that means and what that looks like and how to maybe do it better.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  So when I talk about senses, hearing is very, very important because a higher pitched voice carries further into the fields and forests to summon help. We didn't always have 911 on radio, so a high pitched voice, we've coded as being scary. So I want to make sure I don't have that high pitched voice when I'm talking to people. I want to be very controlled in my voice. I want to warm it up. I've got an app on my phone where before I have any speaking engagements, I'll make sure I warm up my phone. I mean, I don't know what you do, Mike. You have the greatest radio voice of all time. And maybe that's just God given. But I use a lozenge as well that has eucalyptus in it that kind of opens up my nasal passages. So some of that can be very, very helpful as far as hearing.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Obviously with sight, I'm avoiding bright colors. I want to look the part. I want to be dressed slightly above the person that I'm talking to because when they make that first impression, they're gauging me on, do I feel comfortable talking to this person? When it comes to smell, my teenage son, he likes to use Axe body spray, not just as a deodorant, but as a perfume, as a everything, right? And it follows him. Is that we want to be careful with that. I've talked to criminals before where I was in a room, if you could call it an interrogation room, where people had been smoking, there was stale urine smell. And this guy said to me, he goes, this smells like jail. And then he lawyered up quickly thereafter because he had an association to that. When we smell something from our past, it, you know, our memory when it comes to smell is so ingrained, we can probably

• 22:40Speaker 01

  remember the greatest dish that our grandma made. So there's a lot of marketing research on how we smell. So something as simple as that touch, touching someone on the outside of the frame, their shoulder, obviously with the handshake that we already discussed, all those things taste. I can't tell you how many times I've talked to somebody about very sensitive things over food. Food is a barometer on where their nervous level is. They're not going to eat if their heart rate's over a certain level. If I'm providing food to them, there's going to be reciprocity. And we're used to talking around the dinner table when it comes to with our family members. So little hacks like that, as far as when we have that difficult conversation, where we have it, go a long ways to be just as important as what we're actually saying during the conversation.

• 23:26Mike Carruthers?

  The whole listening thing, you know, we've, we've talked about that many times on the show, the importance of, of good listening and that generally people aren't that good at it because they want to tell their side of the story. But talk about it from, from your perspective of how important that is and how to do it and not, and silence the urge to keep talking.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks, Mike. That's, that's a great point. As far as a lot of the people that I've talked to, a lot of the criminals, you would think, why would they talk about this? This is probably against their self-interest. Many of these people, this is their identity, or it's something they feel horrible about. They've never had somebody ask them about it. All right. And one of the things that really taught me this is in graduate school, I worked at the jail in St. Louis and it was a research project. And I'm a small town kid. I knew nothing about the big city crime. And I would talk to people about robbery, rape, murder, prostitution. And what we would do is we'd collect urine from them as part of a research project. And we'd give them a Snickers bar and a Mountain Dew. But I wanted to talk to them. It was all anonymous. So I would ask them, hey, how do you make

• 24:32Speaker 01

  methamphetamines? How do you make crack cocaine? How do you serve as a pimp? Like, and it's amazing that even though these are criminal acts, when you engage in tactical curiosity, Mike, and you ask people, what is it about? They want to teach you. And when people feel like they're teaching you, they don't feel like they're being interrogated. They don't feel like they're being judged. And whatever it is, they yearn to get that information out there. Everybody wants to be the hero of their own adventure. And these were some of the most amazing conversations I ever had. And that kind of, something I kept with me over the next 25 years is that, you know, in show those signals of interest, you gotta nod that head when people are talking. You gotta have that subtle smile.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  And what you really got to avoid is that contempt, that furrowing of the brow when somebody mentions something that grits your teeth. I've had that early on in my career. Somebody would say they did that bad thing. And I would just show that little, that little subtle down push of the, of the.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  You know, of the brow and that shuts people up like nothing else. So those are little things, you know, summarizing what they said, you know, mirroring back the last three or four words of what they say many, many times they're going to clarify. And then also just following up with, I see, okay, tell me more. Something as simple as that is going to make them go deeper and you'll get the underside of the iceberg in whatever they're talking about.

• 25:53Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I love your insight and I love the fact that it's, it's from the field. It's from working in the field as a Secret Service agent where the stakes can be pretty high and the things that you've learned, I think are translatable to anybody. Brad Beeler has been my guest. He's a former Secret Service agent and author of the book, Tell Me Everything. A Secret Service Agent's Proven Strategies for Earning Trust, Revealing Truth, and Communicating with Anyone. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Brad, great, great job. Thank you.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Mike. I appreciate the opportunity.

• 26:31Speaker 04

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you, based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 26:59Speaker 05

  Born from the intensity of a night in the eternal city. Introducing Born in Roma Fragrances by Valentino. Feminine perfume Donna Born in Roma features juicy black currant, central jasmine, soft cashmerin, and warm vanilla. Masculine leaning but unisex Womo has notes of fresh violet leaf, aromatic sage, green vetiver, and mineral salt. Shop holiday gifts at macys.com.

• 27:31Mike Carruthers?

  When people talk about living a meaningful life, it sounds kind of abstract, like something you're supposed to figure out after years of soul searching. But what if the meaning in your life isn't something you discover at all, but something you design? That's the idea behind today's conversation. Instead of chasing purpose or waiting for clarity to strike, there's a practical approach to building a life that feels meaningful. And here to explain how to do it is Bill Burnett. He's the executive director of the Stanford Life Design Lab, an adjunct professor of mechanical engineering and design at Stanford, and the founder of the Designing Your Life Institute in Singapore.

• 28:15Mike Carruthers?

  He's also the co-author of the book How to Live a Meaningful Life: Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day. Hey, Bill, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Mike, thanks for inviting me.

• 28:28Mike Carruthers?

  Sure. So, designing a meaningful life sounds like such a great idea, but I think we probably have to define some terms here. What is a meaningful life? How do you know if you're living one?

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, everybody, I mean, this is a perennial question, right? 3,000-year-old, you know, wisdom tradition, the meaning of life. I'm a designer, been a designer my whole career. So, you know, the old thing when all you got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. We wanted to make something that was practical and doable, and the meaning of life is kind of a big philosophical question. So, we flip it to talking about the meaning in your life. What can you do to have meaning in your life every day? And meaning is, you know, the thing that gives you a sense of purpose, a sense of impact. You know, you're on the right path, you have something, we call it coherency, that your life makes sense to you, that the things you're doing at work, the things you believe in, your sort of big picture,

• 29:25Speaker 02

  and the sort of story you tell yourself all makes sense together.

• 29:29Mike Carruthers?

  And given what you just said, given that definition, do you think most of us have a meaningful life? Or we don't, or it just depends on who you are, or what?

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Well, I think everybody's looking for it. I don't think everybody's found it. You know, people are looking for meaning and impact, but impact comes and goes. You know, what have you done for me lately? And people are looking for meaning in what we call the transaction world, you know, getting stuff done. But if you look at all the research and you look at the histories of the question, you know, people answering this question. Meaning is really not found in the transactions and the day-to-day stuff. We have a notion that there's really two worlds. I mean, there's one world, but there's two ways of thinking of it, there's two worlds. This world of transactions where you're getting stuff done. Then right under that, I like to think of it like an aquifer, you know, of something right under the transaction world, is the world of flow.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  And that's the world where actually meaning is discovered in moments of flow, in moments of wonder and joy. There's a lot of new neuroscience on this, awe and wonder. But wonder and meaning and joy, it's all found in the flow world. And so we can get there. You've just got to look in the right place.

• 30:42Mike Carruthers?

  So can you give me an example of that, of transaction and flow, what you just described? Make it a real-life situation.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. So let's say, let's say you're, you know, you're sitting in the average, you know, staff meeting at the job. And mostly the staff meeting is a transactional meeting. Things are happening, right? We're making schedules, we're making budgets, we're doing reports, we're doing status. And so you can experience that meeting as a transactional meeting, there's nothing wrong with that. But it's probably kind of boring. Frankly, most of the staff meetings I've been in are pretty boring. But if you flip the switch, if you sort of drop into the flow world, and you start to notice, oh, well, you know, John is really nailing it when he describes his stuff. He seems to really be embodying the work he's doing. Or Jane over there seems really distant, and something else is going on with her. I should check in with her and see what's happening.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  And so when I'm when I'm kind of more in a flow transaction or more in my right brain, if you want to think of it that way, I'm looking, I'm looking at the world generatively. I'm seeing opportunities, I'm seeing, I'm available to things that are happening. And, you know, and you can also provoke flow by by doing activities. People talk about being, you know, athletes talk about being in the zone. Musicians talk about being in flow as they're playing, you know, people in the creative world are in flow quite often. But you can train yourself to do it. And we're sort of over index in the transactional brain. And it takes a little practice to get into the flow, you know, brain or mindset. But it's available and it's and it's kind of right there all the time. So you can, you can have a transactional meeting, or you can notice the ebbs and flows,

• 32:23Speaker 02

  literally, of the emotions and the, and the activities that are happening right below those transactions. And it makes things more interesting.

• 32:32Mike Carruthers?

  So I saw in the introduction of your book where you talked about, I guess you talked about your other book, but the words were get curious, talk to people, try stuff, tell your story.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:44Mike Carruthers?

  Talk about that.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  So it's this sort of circular, it's kind of a little flywheel. And once you get it started, it's a way of thinking about how to design into the future. You know, designers are always making prototypes, they're always building new stuff. When I was at Apple, I was at Apple for seven years and we were doing the first laptops. We, you know, we just built lots of prototypes to figure out what, what the heck a laptop was because it hadn't been invented yet. So get curious is the energy that drives you. Curiosity is an intrinsic motivation. Humans are just naturally curious people. So re-engage your curiosity, get curious, talk to people, which is get out in the world. You know, you're, you're going to find meaning and purpose in the world with other people. It's almost never found in isolation.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  So get curious, talk to people, try stuff, which is the prototyping thing. You can, turns out you can prototype, you know, I, as a designer, I prototype lots of things to sort of figure out my designs, but you can prototype anything in your life with a prototype conversation, talk to somebody who's already doing what you're doing or what you're thinking of doing. And it's kind of like traveling. Time and you can meet someone who's five years down the road from you or have a prototype experience. So try stuff is all about getting out in the world and taking action, a bias to action, one of the mindsets of a designer. And tell your story is, is the way you connect the loop because you want to, it's not, it's not about bragging. It's just about saying, hey, I'm on this journey and I'm really curious about this stuff. And I've been talking to people and I've been trying things. And here's where I'm at. And when you do that, what happens is

• 34:14Speaker 02

  a lot of other people go, oh, hey, that's really cool. You know what you should do? You should talk to this guy. You should try this. So get curious, talk to people, try stuff, tell your story. Leads to more curiosity, more people, more trying. And once you get that flywheel working for you, you start to design into your future and you start to generate moments where you'll find meaning.

• 34:41Mike Carruthers?

  I love that. I love that. Yeah, it's really great.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Super practical. I mean, you can do, anybody can do it. There's no, there's no trick to it. It's just to understand, you know, there's some nuance in what's a prototype and what's a conversation and, you know, and these conversations aren't transactional. You're not trying to extract information from people. You're just trying to get their story.

• 35:00Mike Carruthers?

  The other thing in the title of your new book, Design, we were just talking about this the other, I did an interview just the other day about this, about how life is hard to design, that in fact, life is, if you look back, is the result of a lot of coincidences and chance meetings and all that. That you can't sit down and design your life. So when I see that in the title, I think, well, wait, wait, wait a minute.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  I think if you're looking backwards, you'll notice that, yeah, the life is sort of a zigzag of different things. Nobody's career is a straight line typically. But if you're looking forward, I'll say this, it's pretty hard to plan your life. And particularly nowadays with the disruptions of AI and other things going on in careers and life, it's pretty hard to plan your way forward because, well, there's an old military expression, no plan for the battle survives first contact with the enemy. And I don't know about military stuff, so I would say no plan for your life is gonna survive first contact with reality. But I do think you can design your way forward, because design is essentially a flexible strategy, right? Designers generate lots of ideas, not just one idea or two ideas, lots of ideas.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  And then they prototype into the future. Because, you know, you don't exactly know where you're going, but you wanna know you're on the right path. So you do some work to understand your coherency. Am I looking for something? Is the thing I'm looking for coherent with who I am and what I believe? And then you come up with three things, three plans. And then you start exploring those plans. And as you move forward, you know, things will change and things will happen. But because you have this sort of flexible strategy, rather than a planning strategy, I think it's more generative. And what I often tell my students is, don't you hope that five years from now, 10 years from now, you're doing something amazing that hasn't even been invented yet?

• 36:52Speaker 02

  And that's what I think, that's why I think a design strategy for the future is more viable. It's not perfect, but it does set you up to be available to things as they occur, because you're exercising your curiosity and you're trying lots of things. It's more resilient, I guess, than a planning strategy.

• 37:11Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, so maybe the better term was planned. You can't plan your life, because you just never know, and things happen.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:20Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, we were just going through that exercise of looking back and seeing like how we all got here. And we all got here in ways that are just so bizarre, that, you know, but that's how life works.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Well, and hope, you know, but if you take a designer's mindset, right? Curiosity, wonder, availability. If you're thinking this way, then...

• 37:46Speaker 02

  You don't end up sort of drifting. What I've run into is a lot of people in their, you know, 30s and 40s, and they've ended up somewhere. I ended up in high tech, but I don't really like it. I ended up a lawyer, but I only did that because my mom wanted me to be a lawyer. I ended up somewhere. There's a wonderful professor Ruth Chang at Rutgers who says, you know, people are drifters, or they're intentional. And what we're arguing is having some intention. Where do I want to go? I don't exactly know what the destination is, but I have to know, I know what my, how I want to feel, and I know how I want to, you know, think about it. And then if I'm fully engaged in this journey, but, you know, detached from, I can't, I can't control the outcomes. So

• 38:29Speaker 02

  fully engaged and calmly detached, I can, I can journey into the future, and I won't end up someplace by accident. And you, you know, you've met these people, right? And they're, and they're like, ah, I don't really want to be a lawyer, but my dad was a lawyer, so I became a lawyer, and I ended up here, and I'm pretty successful, but I really don't like it. It's so interesting. The people I meet who are maybe in the most pain, in some ways, are the folks who are pretty successful. But they sort of drifted into something without really, you know, thinking about it, about how it was a good fit. And then it was something, there was some little system of reward and punishment, you know? But you never really made the decision to do it. You know what I mean? You just sort of drifted. So that's what we're, we don't want you to end up there. We want you to

• 39:13Speaker 02

  end up in a, in a design that fits for you, and that you have the possibility of being available to something that's even cooler than the thing you were looking for.

• 39:22Mike Carruthers?

  It does seem, listening to you talk, that part of the problem is where you are now, where you're joining this journey. Because if you're a lawyer and you hate it, but you're making a lot of money, and you're prestigious and all that, it's, it's pretty tough to jump off that, that treadmill and try something new.

• 39:46Mike Carruthers?

  Because it's so risky.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, absolutely. But, you know, the alternative is I stay in something. I was talking to one, a woman who was very successful, you know, very successful at school, went to the best law school, got into the biggest law firm in New York, first woman partner, general manager, blah, blah, blah. And I said, how's it going? She said, well, it steals a little piece of my soul every time I go into the office. And I went, well, that's not so good. I think even if you're in that situation. So one of our, one of our mindsets is, you know, design starts in reality, radical acceptance. Where am I right now? And how do I feel about it? And the good news is if you are in a situation where you have some assets, you have some, you have some money, you have some assets, but you're not happy.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  I'm not suggesting, you know, you throw all that away and suddenly become a dive instructor in Bali or something. I mean, that's crazy. But you can start to think about, how do I take what I've got, except where I'm at, and move towards something that, that does feel a little bit more meaningful.

• 40:51Mike Carruthers?

  So I get the principle of awe and wonder, radical acceptance, I get that. But, but then how do you do it? How, give me some examples of like, how you do it?

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Well, let's take a couple of simple exercises. And one that I really like is this idea of putting on your wonder glasses, we call it. And it's really simple. So curiosity is one of the mindsets of a designer. But you add curiosity plus mystery, like, oh, there's mystery in the world. I don't know why, I don't know how roses get so red. I don't know, you know, I don't really know why the sunset has a green flash at the end. So, um, wonder plus mystery, curiosity plus mystery equals wonder. And wonder is that sense of awe or, or and just sort of the joy at looking, you know, at a moment of, of a sunset or a beautiful flower or whatever. Walk around the world, you know, just not noticing things. Take five minutes, literally five minutes.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  Put on your wonder glasses. So seeing the world, looking for something wondrous, something awe inspiring, something wonderful. And it'll occur in a simple, like I walked from my house to the train about four blocks. I was walking there the other day and it's the middle of, you know, it's the middle of winter here. And all of a sudden there was this gorgeous purple flower. In somebody's, you know, front garden that I hadn't noticed. And I just took a moment to stop. I had plenty of time to get to the train. Really so savor the fact that this is a beautiful thing. Register that as a moment and walk on. So you can find, put your wonder glasses on for five minutes and see what's in the world

• 42:33Speaker 02

  that you just aren't noticing and curate your curiosity. It's a, it's a, it's a superpower. Humans are naturally curious. Or, you know, flow states, um, I think there's a TED talk on 21 neuroscience, neuroscience proven methods to get to flow. But flow is, is just that, you know, that moment where you, you stop, you flip the switch. And then you attend to, you, you pay attention to the things that are happening all around you. Both that are, you know, mysterious and wonderful, but that, that pull you into an engagement. Which is, which is, you know, almost total. People talk about your time stands still and,

• 43:17Speaker 02

  and flow, I'm in flow or, you know, and it can happen when you're jogging, it can happen when you're, you know, pick a game of basketball if you're an athlete. For me, um, I like to cook. And, and literally if I pay attention, just chopping onions. If I'm paying attention, there's a flow state. It doesn't have to be, you know, climbing a mountain or something magical. It can just be very simple. And then the other one is this idea of, I'm telling your story, you know, talk to people and tell your story. One of the reasons we wrote this book is that people are really lonely now. And they're kind of living in echo chambers and they're not, they're not, you know, young men are not connecting, you know, in the world and people in general are spending too much time on social media. So,

• 44:01Speaker 02

  so find one or two people and have a conversation.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Around this idea of, hey, what's meaningful for you?

• 44:11Mike Carruthers?

  And so that question, what is meaningful to you? When you said, you know, ask someone what's meaningful to them. If somebody asked me what's meaningful to me, I don't know how to answer that. What's meaningful to you?

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Let me ask you the question a little bit differently. When's the last time you remember having a transaction, you know, moment with somebody, a conversation, something, or an observation, you were watching kids play in a park? Whatever it was, what's the last moment that you can remember that was something just a little bit different, a little more emotional, a little more colorful, a little more something than your average daily transaction? Did you have, can you, can you think of a moment?

• 44:52Mike Carruthers?

  Oh, it was on a vacation. It was just, it was just the beauty of where we were. And there was, there was just a moment where it just seemed so magical. It was just profound and it's hard to put in words.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Exactly. And that's why, you know, I'd say curiosity plus mystery equals wonder. Don't try to demystify mystery. Like, let it be just wonderful. And I'll, I'll say that, that the, you know, the, the, the format of your experience is quite common. One, we were in a new place, so we were sort of seeing things new because some place new. That, that left us available to the idea that, hey, this is a really beautiful place. And we're, and you also, you were on a time out from, you know, something else, a little bit of, of a vacation time. So you were, you were available and you were fully engaged in the moment. And then that moment came and you were like, wow, this is so beautiful. That's all you, that's all you need.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  You need, you, and you don't have to be on a vacation to have that experience because it just needs. It needs five minutes of attention. One, put your under glasses on and look around. See, is there something here that deserves my attention? That I didn't notice? Two, take a breath, take the time. You were on a vacation, so you had time and you were paying attention to things because they were new, they weren't your daily environment. And then you were with someone, I assume, and being able to share that moment and say, wow, look at that sunset, look at that thing, it's so beautiful. So it had, you were available, it was special, you noticed the wonder of it, the mystery

• 46:37Speaker 02

  of it, and you had the ability to share it with somebody. And all four of those things are readily designable. You can design that moment.

• 46:47Mike Carruthers?

  So that's a meaningful moment, but how does that translate into a meaningful life? Because, you know, that moment where you see the sunset is great, it feels wonderful, but then tomorrow I go back to the bills and the thing and the problems and the thing. So how does that work?

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Well, here's the trick, in a sense, I guess. It's called the scandal of particularity. The scandal of particularity says, hey, you know, these infinite things, love, beauty, truth, joy, all these things like that, they are all infinite, and the human brain is sort of finite. And so it turns out our only experience of the infinite things like love, joy, and beauty, whatever, occur in a moment, in a finite moment. So stacking those moments and recognizing, oh, wait a minute, I can actually be in flow for all sorts of moments, is how you make it work.

• 47:43Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, I like that, because as you just described, we talk about things like happiness and joy and all these experiences, but we only experience those things in those moments. It's the moments that count. So if you stack them up, that, I guess, turns into a meaningful life. I've been talking with Bill Burnett. He is the executive director of the Stanford Life Design Lab, and he's co-author of a book called How to Live a Meaningful Life: Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. And Bill, it was a pleasure. Thanks for explaining this.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  Well, thank you very much for the opportunity, Mike. It was fun. Great questions.

• 48:31Mike Carruthers?

  If you ever have trouble with a retailer that won't refund a purchase, or correct a purchase problem, or won't stop charging your card when you canceled the subscription, or they're just unresponsive, you can always threaten to file a chargeback. Retailers tend to hate chargebacks. A chargeback is when you ask the credit card company to investigate and force a refund from the merchant back to your account. And the reason retailers don't like it is they've got to fill out a bunch of paperwork, they often have to pay a fee, even if they win, and if they have a lot of chargebacks, there can be fines, increases to their service fees, and a bunch of other problems they don't want.

• 49:15Mike Carruthers?

  Now, just because you make a chargeback request doesn't mean you're going to win, and big retailers are so used to chargebacks that the threat of another one from you isn't going to upset them very much. But chargebacks are one of the strongest consumer protections when merchants won't play fair, and that is something you should know. So on the device you're listening to right now, if you look at the screen, you will see -- you'll probably have to scroll or click or something, but you'll see a list of previous episodes of this podcast. There are hundreds and hundreds of them, and I'll bet if you look at that list, you will see a title of an episode that grabs your attention. Click on it and listen and enjoy another episode. I'm Mike Herrothers.

• 50:00Mike Carruthers?

  Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 50:06Speaker 04

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, built just for you, based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 50:33Speaker 06

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.