Discovering Ground Truth w/ Pete Turner

🌟 Forging Trust with Counterintelligence Expert Pete A. Turner🌟 

🤔 In this engrossing conversation, Pete A. Turner, a counterintelligence expert, recounts his fascinating career journey and his key insights into building and nurturing relationships. Turner, who has served in the military in various capacities and is now a popular podcast host, discusses the essential role trust played in his professional life, particularly in engaging with warlords and even commanding officers. By employing deep empathy and focusing on the here and now, Turner shares how he navigates various encounters to cultivate valuable connections. He emphasizes the importance of curiosity, humility, and understanding others' perspectives in fostering trust. He also offers keen advice to those looking to connect more deeply with others, highlighting the need to listen, understand, and push past one's ego.

🌟 What we chat about:

👉 - Conversation Strategies from a Battlefield Intel Officer

👉 - Impact of Counterintelligence on the Battlefield

👉 - The "Life Arc" of a Master Battlefield Intel Collector

👉 - Planting and Harvesting Trust

🌟 Reach out and Connect with Pete:
pete@breakitdowshow.com
youtube.com/peteaturner

Pre-Order my Latest Book: "Unbreakable Alliances: A Spy Recruiters Authoritative Guide to Cultivating Powerful & Lasting Connections" HERE

Unlocking the Power of Trust: Keynote Speaker Robin Dreeke Shares Secrets to Creating Allies - Robin is the former Chief of the FBI's Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. With over 30 years of experience in recruiting spies and building trust, Robin is the world-renowned speaker you need. Don't miss out on the opportunity to learn from a true expert. Contact us now to book your event! Click HERE to book a time to chat.

🤔 Take Robin's FREE YouTube Keys to Communication Online Course HERE.

😃 Check out Robin's Speaking, and Training Services HERE.

Transcript

Pete: 0:06

I would say if you want to have a great conversation, stop asking interrogative based questions. Don't ask who, where, why, what, when, how. Get their opinion on it and explore it. Let me explore this with you. And then look at feelings and emotions and understand where they're at. Like when someone's passionate about some social issue or whatever, it's important to them. And you're not trying to convince them. You're just trying to understand them. I think that's a powerful elixir for people to be able to do that.

Robin: 0:31

Welcome to the Forged Vitroz podcast. I'm your host, Robin Dreeke, professional speaker, former US marine spy recruiter, best selling author, and your trust and communication expert.Coming up next on the Forged by Trust podcast. How do you inspire someone to feel safe in a combat zone?

Pete: 0:47

Delicately. Very deliberately. And when you, here's the thing, here's a couple of rules that I've learned. You don't have trust until they show you that they trust you. Yes. So you'll think you have trust with them way before they do. Where do I put my effort and how do I, how do I leave a path of friends behind me that I'm desperate to talk to? And, and they are desperate to hear from me. People never get enough of being told how wonderful they are. They never get enough of having a great conversation and finding ways to enrich each other's lives.

Robin: 1:19

The Forged by Trust podcast is a show where we explore the essential skill of forging trust for building an innovative culture and exceptional leadership. Join us as we delve into the behavior skills and communication techniques required for success and learn from the best in the industry. Our guests include spies, spy recruiters, master interrogators, best selling authors, thought leaders, and innovators who will share their insights on building teams, partnerships, and exceptional leadership by forging trust. Today's episode, discovering ground truth, is with my very good friend, Pete Turner. In this engrossing conversation, Pete, a counterintelligence expert, recounts his fascinating career journey and his key insights into building and nurturing relationships. S Turner, who has served in the military in various capacities and is now a popular podcast host, discusses the essential role trust played in his professional life, particularly in engaging with warlords and even commanding officers. By employing deep empathy and focusing on the here and now, Turner shares how he navigates various encounters to cultivate valuable connections. He emphasizes the importance of curiosity, humility and understanding other people's perspectives in fostering trust. He also offers keen advice to those looking to connect more deeply with others, highlighting the need to listen, understand, and push past one's ego. During the episode today, we talk about conversation strategies from a battlefield intelligence officer, the impact of counterintelligence on the battlefield, the life arc of a master battlefield intelligence collector and planting and harvesting trust. Pete, my friend, welcome to Forged by Trust, finally. I've been on your show numerous times. It's good to have you with me.

Pete: 3:02

Man, I'm so excited. Anytime I get to be on somebody else's air, it is great, right? That's just fantastic. But because of our mutually, mutual discovery of trust as a thing, In particular, talking to you is always just, it invigorates me. And then having you, a counterintelligence guy, I didn't know that another counterintelligence guy has actually interviewed me directly. So it's a first time for that. All of that stuff. And look, this wasn't possible just a couple of years ago. I just interviewed. Or had a conversation with a battalion commander who I came to his unit as an unknown variable. And he's like, I get what you do go crazy, you know? And so the ability to talk about that later on, no, nobody does that. So here's all the army always trying to get smarter in the Marine. Nobody's trying to get smarter all the time, but the conversation between these, these vertical elements, it just never happens. And so here we have these conversations, so I, I love this stuff.

Robin: 3:59

Pete, I can't overemphasize that more as well. It is truly remarkable, remarkable being able to, one, converse about these types of topics at these high levels, not just high levels, but really traumatic levels. And that's what we're going to get into with you and what you've done, which is much more traumatic than the things I did. Recruiting spies is not the James Bond stuff. Doing, recruiting spies in combat zones is a little more harrowing, so we'll get into that in a bit. But also, Thank goodness for technology. You know, everyone says it's the bane of existence and it's been a real detriment to society a lot of times, but like you just said, we couldn't be having these types of conversations with, with thought leaders and experts like you from all over the world, from all walks of life, if we didn't have the capability to do this. So I I'm eternally grateful as well, especially you, you have been in podcasting a great amount of time. I can't even imagine the challenges you had. You know, starting out before zoom existed and all the other types of platforms. Cause I don't even know, cause I wasn't even doing it then. But kudos to folks like you that were the pioneers for the greats. And because you are the great name with that, Pete, Hey, as you know, I love a good backstory because who you are today as the great host of the break it down show, a master interviewer recruiter in combat zones as spies from every single walk of life. That all started with a spark somewhere in life. What inspired you to want to dive deep and discover ground truth in human beings?

Pete: 5:34

Man, you know, I didn't even know that that's what I was doing until pretty late in my professional career. You know, so what I realized in what we do, whether it's FBI internally or Pete and the army externally, or not even in the army, but with the army, a lot of times, right, what I was trying to figure out is I've got crazy access to, to the battlefield. How can I bring something back that the commander is desperate to know? Like the unknown unknown notes. Like my job is to find that my job is to go out on the same patrol. When everyone's writing a patrol report and I bring back a truth. That is so valuable. The commander's like, get Pete on every single patrol, get him to every district, have him talk to every person. I need to know. I would go to the same meeting a lot of times as my commander and I would come back and he'd be like, how did you get all of this information? And so I realized that at some, I've tried putting it together. Like they can't see things like I can, because. You know, like in the olden times, right? Like if George Washington had a spy, he would just go off on a hilltop somewhere, a cafe, and he would say, Hey, there's actually only a thousand guys over the side of that hill. And that, that'd be, so I'm doing the same thing. Like, what can I tell my commander to reduce the amount of time that they're losing, increase the amount of time that they're winning, remove barriers and identify barriers, right? And so all of these things are what I'm trying to do. And most of that stuff, Robin, is not based in threat. I mean, not in modern conflicts. There's certainly time to focus on threat, but most of the time, everybody's focused on threat. And so all this gold is just laying in the field. And all you've got to do is look at the ground and realize, Oh my God, I just took a gold on the ground and pick it up and go, Hey boss, I found some gold. Do you want more? And they're like, yes. And so I didn't realize that until maybe 15 years ago. And it's cemented when I had a guy named General Wolf, he was the division commander in Iraq, and he's like, I know everything about the battlefield, except for what's happening on the ground. I need guys like you to give me the ground truth. I know more than any captain, any major, any current. I know more than all of those guys, cause I've got more experience, but what I can't do because of my rank, because of my position vertically from you, I can't see what's actually happening

Robin: 7:43

on the ground. Man, you said so many key things in there, I gotta go down. The one that struck me most recently was, I need guys like you. What did he see in a guy like you? Where, I mean, cause your passion for this is screaming from you. It's, it's not just transparent, it's translucent. I mean, it is who you are. I mean, you just lit up when you started talking about this. Where did that come from? What did he see?

Pete: 8:10

It's It is that passion, right? Like I do care, I'm desperate. So it used to be when I was focused on threat, I would, it was hard to sleep and hard to work and you're just desperate to work, work, work, and trying to, like, I have to try to find the thing that you're not supposed to find that everybody's trying to keep a secret from you. And I realized one day that if you say, where are the bombs, you're never going to find the bombs. Like, you can't ask that question, right? Like, where are the spies in this neighborhood? No, one's going to respond to that. So you have to find a different way. And once you see that, it's like, it's like Like Bill Walsh, when he's like, Oh my God, I've broken football. You know, you're like, I'm going to tell everybody I'm going to get in here. Check out how we can run our organization. Check out how we're going to run our plays. I broke combat in a lot of ways. Modern combat. I get it. Yeah. You can go win militarily, but I don't see you guys fighting anything. I do see you losing every day. Would you like to know why? Would you like to understand what the battlefield looks like? And every commander is like, Pete, what you're doing is changing the entire dynamic of my. Company, platoon, squad, brigade, battalion, division, all of it, like they're like changing your entire focus. How could I not be excited about that?

Robin: 9:19

So that mastery level that you're demonstrating pretty early on comes from a lifetime of reps, repetitions. Where did you first start at getting reps and engaging human beings and forging trust?

Pete: 9:33

We've talked about this off mic, so I know this will not be a surprise to you, but I had I guess the delicate way to say it is I had an unsafe household, right? And it's not the worst, you know, my dad 20 times was a great dad. He's like, you know, like a 70, 30 mix, right?

Robin: 9:49

And I'm sorry there, that you, you really, that's a really key phrase there. I guess a powerful phrase because safety equals trust. And you said you had an unsafe household. Right. How do you find unsafe household?

Pete: 10:01

You know, if my dad was home, I wasn't sure what was going to happen. Right. Right. And if I wasn't home. I knew that he wouldn't be the problem. And, and so that led me down to some poor personal choices and some, some poor rationalizations of my behavior. But if I wasn't in the house, I can eliminate that threat. And so I just spent a lot of time outside in other people's houses and you look at, and I'm a personable person. You know, I'm an extrovert and all of those things, but you realize in retrospect, but I just started to realize that my life. It was a lot more enjoyable being outside of the house and interacting with other people than it was being inside. I have, Robin, I have so many moms from my childhood. I just saw one of them. She's like, there's my second son, Pete. She was so excited to see me. I have so many moms from my hometown. Why did all

Robin: 10:56

these moms love you?

Pete: 10:58

I don't know. You know, I think I've always been, I've always been a pretty genuine dude. You know, I didn't try to put on airs. I didn't try to And, you know, look, I've always been funny, but, but I'm just, you know, I'm not a bad person either. Right. So I have all these different elements that I think make me enjoyable to be around, you know, and I, I don't know, that's the best I can do with that. I'm not really sure what it is, but it is a thing. And maybe I have a, I don't have like a mega star it factor, but I think I have a bit of it factor.

Robin: 11:33

I couldn't agree with you more on having the it factor. I mean, who doesn't love you that interacts with you because you have that it factor. So at this young age, you're experiencing challenging situations, which a lot of times make people really attuned to other people's behavior. Do you think that was a part of your first formative years of really being able to read and understand since you weren't feeling safe?

Pete: 11:58

I Think it's different for me. I wasn't reading things. And if I was, I was probably not reading it accurately. And I I've got an example about this, but I think it's more that I was able to relax more in these other environments and just be myself and, and have a good time because I was, I was a kid. Right. And I wasn't like some kind of like. You know, mastermind looking around, like what's going on here and seeing behind things like I wasn't doing that. I was just a dopey kid. Like, Hey, let's go throw the baseball as fast as we can in each other with no gloves. Like that was that kid. And I'm like, my friends are like, yes, let's do that. And so we'd be burning the ball at each other, you know? So I played a lot of sports and so a lot of my time was just spent running and knocking things over and being knocked over. And, you know, sometimes getting punched in the mouth, sometimes punching somebody, you know, just like that kind of stuff, which makes me sound like a ruffian. And I was, but also, you know, I could go sit in a chess club. I was always able to bounce between groups because I saw something that I liked and I would just go, I would go chase it out. I would just go pursue the thing that was interesting to me and, and oftentimes lock in on it for a long time. It's like, I'm not any good at chess, but I've played. Several thousand chess matches in my life. You know, I, I, I get comfortable in someone else's space really easily. And the other thing about reading people is my, my friend and I were making Christmas cards. This is back in the eighties. So we were taking pictures. And then we were going to write on the back of the picture and hand it to our friends. Right. And so we were staging all these ridiculous pictures and doing all we're putting on these waves.

Robin: 13:21

Okay. Having being a child of the eighties as well. The last thing on my mind was how to do something for someone else. I was too self centered, but here you are. Making Christmas cards for friends. Where'd that come from? That, that is, that's pretty altruistic of you back then at that age. I

Pete: 13:41

wasn't doing that altruism. I was doing it out of like, Hey, this is going to be something fun that we can do. And then the people that get these things. And some people save them. No, like I have that Christmas card. How many people have a Christmas card from 40 years ago? You know, like it's, it's one of those things. So it's just sort of like how I'm wired. Right. I've also

Robin: 13:57

hand painted. Your natural state of being was to be of service and to take care of others.

Pete: 14:03

Yeah. And I would think with like a creative foundation, right. So I often will paint Christmas ornaments. And by say often I've done this probably a dozen times, a dozen years in my life where I'll hand paint ornaments and just give them to people, here's an ornament. I made this for you. And who doesn't love having something handmade? I'm not a great painter. I can paint a house, but you'd be like, Oh, that's a terrible painting of a house. But if it's on a Christmas ornament. It's magic, right? And so I don't do it because it's magic. I do it because I'm expressing my creativity and love towards people that I care about. And oftentimes it's a lot of the time it's people outside of my family. And I love the people in my family and I do it for them too. But for me, family can be bigger than just who I'm related to by genetics and blood.

Robin: 14:46

Absolutely. So you have these great skills that are Developing by necessity at a young age, feeling comfortable at home, creative outlets and engaging others and being of service. Did you have any notion of what it is you wanted to be when you were matriculating in life and providing for yourself?

Pete: 15:05

I would ask my mom this question fairly regularly, like, what should I do? You know? So look, I'm, I'm pretty smart, but I'm not brilliant. I have a great memory, but you know, only in a way that's, you know, sort of useful to certain things. Right. So it wasn't like I was going to be able to crack the code with my brilliance. But again, have a conversation with me on any topic. It's in there. I can have a conversation, an intelligent conversation, an in depth conversation on a lot of topics because I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of people. I've read a lot of books, right? So well read, well traveled, all these things go together that make me this person that I don't know, you know, it's, it's hard, it's hard to put my finger on it, but I've become this thing where quite often I am the most interesting person in the room. And I'm saying this not out of ego, but to illustrate because I've been willing to step out of my comfort zone. and go out and do things. I've interacted people and things and lessons. that are not commonly available. And so my brilliance is in the gathering of these things and then being able to remember. That's sort of how I put everything together. And then I have a pretty good heart. I'm a pretty good person. I've made a lot of bad choices. But overall, These things make me a more charming person, I guess. And you know, I just, I try to be better all the time. And looking back behind me, I've done a pretty good job of becoming a better person throughout my life. Welcome

Robin: 16:26

to Beautiful Path. So here we are, we're in high school. We're getting ready to engage the world after high school. What was the first step you were planning on taking? Not necessarily that's what happened, but what was the plan? Yeah, so yeah, I

Pete: 16:39

remember now you would ask me like what I wanted to become. So I didn't know, right? I had all these talents and I love sports. I was an athlete, but I was not a jock. So I wasn't sure what to do. And I knew that college was like the next step for me. I didn't want to go become a this or that profession. I wanted to go out and go to college and I didn't know what I wanted to study. And so I basically, I kept things broad. I looked where the A, where the A is at. Oh, P. E. I took P. E. Every semester and quarter except for one in my entire and I was in school for five years, right? That's a lot of semesters and quarters when I took PE and the one year when the one semester I didn't do it. I'm like, why did I not take PE? I took PE all through high school. I loved sports. And so I tried, I thought, oh, I'll go into TV and become like a sports reporter. Like, it would be great to be like the 1130 or the 1030 news guy, you know, so it would be great. What was

Robin: 17:29

the spark to go into TV and media? That's interesting because, you know, for guys that are in sports, you know, they're thinking, I mean, I, I was into sports too. I was thinking, you know, I could be the shortest football player in the NFL. I mean, that kind of was on my mind, but what made you want to think of media?

Pete: 17:45

You know, it's funny that you say that because I'm a good athlete, but I'm not a great athlete, right? And so I was good enough and unafraid enough that I would end up on, on basketball courts where I didn't have the game to be the best player. But I for sure had the game to play with the best player and I would do the dirty work. I would go and get rebounds. I would pass the ball. I would play hard defense. And so I was valuable on the field, whatever field it was. I could, I could contribute in a way. I was never going to be the best player, but I was good at a lot of things. Not great really at any of them, but I also knew that like, this is not the repertoire. Of a professional athlete, you know, maybe I could have played a college sport if I would have locked onto one thing, but I'm really, I'm very wide in my interests, like I played them by the season, but also I can play volleyball. I can play all these different things. So I was never going to be a professional athlete, but I love sports. I thought, well, I definitely can talk. Let me get into sports announcing or sports reporting. And so that was just kind of the natural path. I found that path by where the A's were. Like, I liked video production back when this is the dawn of, like, anybody can make a movie. My, my friends Father used to take the kids out and they would make like little Indiana Jones movies, right? And I wasn't in that friend group at that time, but I was like, Oh my gosh, I'd love to go do that. You know, being in front of the camera, behind the camera. And so I, I kind of just nosed out like those kinds of classes and I'm like, there's a lot of work, but I love it. And so I, I went that way as much as, and look, and you know, the era for us. There's only so much of that available. It's not like now where you can go to the filmmaking academy at eight years old. None of that was around when I was a kid. But when it was available, I took those classes. I got good grades. And so I just kept going in that direction.

Robin: 19:32

Well, following a pretty logical path, you know, actually examining where your grades were. I should have done that.

Pete: 19:39

I'm not saying I got all good grades, but I did follow VAs. But

Robin: 19:42

following the path. All right. So we want to be a sports announcer and we're getting out of high school. What do we do? College.

Pete: 19:48

I went to college. So you'll notice a thing here. I went to seven different colleges before I graduated with a BA. I tried this. I tried that. I lived with this friend. I lived with that friend, you know, and so I moved around, but I, you know, wasn't afraid to do that because okay, I've done this. Let me try something else or this isn't going in the direction I wanted to go. How do I change this? And I was never afraid to do that. It was scary, but I was never afraid. And I know you get that difference. We're like, oh boy, we'll try this and see how it goes. And so I'm just a very experimental and kind of guy, and I can tolerate a lot of ambiguity. And I seem to land on my feet, even if it's really wobbly and ugly on my feet. I didn't stick the landing, but ta da, here I am, you know? So

Robin: 20:29

What do you think gave you that kind of courage? That's, that's unusual at that age or at any age, really.

Pete: 20:35

Why not? Why not do it? Right? What am I worried about? I don't have any money, so not having any money is not a concern. You know, it's like if you have money, you're afraid you're gonna lose it all. That's one thing. I didn't have any money. I had whatever I made. I worked all through college, right? My grades suffered for it, but I had a great time. And sometimes I had too much fun. In terms of work life balance throughout my life, I tend to default to the life side, right? Right. So that... Has given, that's because I'm comfortable in that space where you're like, I don't know what's going to happen over here, but I can take it and it's going to be terrible. I'm going to complain about it while it's in the middle of it, but all in all, it's going to work out because that's just kind of how life goes. If you have a comfort with uncertainty.

Robin: 21:16

Yeah, no kidding. And that definitely served you well as you're then progressing into the army. Is that what came next? I mean, how did that transpire?

Pete: 21:24

When I got out of school, out of my BA, the economy was bad. And so...

Robin: 21:29

Around what year was that,

Pete: 21:30

roughly? I graduated in 92. Right. The, the economy had taken a downturn and jobs, they're like, this is like the worst time since World War II to be a college graduate and get a job. You know, that was like, yeah. And. The other thing that happened was, in the sports announcing arena, they were like, Hey, that's enough with the old white guys. Let's start to bring in women. Holy cow, Robin Roberts, you know, and, and people who weren't just white. And so that took the amount of jobs that I could potentially get. And it narrowed it down even further. And I was like, I cannot find a job. I went to the smallest markets, you know, like Tulsa would be a big market for where I was looking. I'm looking in like Heiko, Texas, wherever they got a TV station, can I do anything? And back then, when you tried to get a job, you sent your tape off and you waited to hear something back and then usually you got back, no. And so you get told no for a 15, 000 a year job enough times. And you're like, I just can't, I don't know anybody to get in. The one time I knew somebody that didn't help.

Robin: 22:32

So you were actually, you were actually pursuing that dream really aggressively.

Pete: 22:36

Yeah, for the time. Yes. I was spending money. I was sending tapes out, was working at a Christian TV station, trying to improve my tape, trying to get my, and I was, I was doing very menial work there, but it was TV work, right? Right. So I was trying to find a way to get in the door so I can maybe get in front of the camera. I knew you didn't just walk into a big market job. I didn't have any kind of connections like that, but it turns out I couldn't get in anyway. They're like, Hey, why don't you get an internship? You can work for free for six months. I'm like, who can afford to work for free? Not me. I have bills, you know, and I wasn't old, but I was old enough to like. You know, need some money. I couldn't get

Robin: 23:11

no money, right? What do you think they weren't seeing in you back then?

Pete: 23:15

I was an unknown. No one, no one knew me. You know, I'm just, I'm just the next dopey college kid coming around. I'm like, how do I get started in the business? You know? And, and if you, again, if you know somebody who can connect you to somebody, be like, this is a good kid. He needs a mentor. All right, kid, come with me. I didn't have that. Right. So I had to invent that. And although I can break into groups, I can't break into every group. And although I can find people that like me, I can find moms for sure. But I don't necessarily find business mentors, and maybe that's a flaw in my game. Maybe I haven't tried it. Who knows? But that throughout my life has not been a thing that I've been very good at finding. Right.

Robin: 23:48

All right. So 92, the economy's rough. We're sending out tons of tape and no one's picking us up. What's the next step? Well

Pete: 23:57

you know, you get into 93 and I'm like, this is not working. You know, and I was talking to another guy in the same boat. He's like, I got this degree. He had even better degree, even better pedigree than I did. And he's like, I think I'm going to consider joining the army. And I was like, and we're working at Costco first thing in the morning, stocking shelves before Costco opens. And I got to thinking about it. And I'm like, my problem is I have no education. So maybe I'll go be a TV guy in the army or the Navy or whatever. And so one day I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm, I'm off all morning. Let me go down to the recruiting. Depot, walk down the line and the offer. Did you

Robin: 24:29

actually have your college education yet or no? I did. I had it. I was already a graduate. So you got, you graduated. All right. Good. Yeah. And,

Pete: 24:36

The army guy who recruited me was great. He was getting out of the recruiting, into the game. His tour there was up. He's like, Oh, I don't care if you sign up or not. I'm glad to help you. I'm glad to answer your questions. You let me know. Cause he put in everybody he was going to be counted for, right? And I said, don't bug me. I'll make my decision. So I went from never considering it to being in the army in 30 days. Wow. But again, that's the pattern of my life. You're doing what? You know, and I'm like, Hey, well, it's five years. I mean, what's the big deal? Like, I'm going to go do this for five years. My buddy, Dave, went off to his mission. He did something and I'm like, I got to do something. And

Robin: 25:09

were you enlisting or going officer

Pete: 25:11

route? Yeah. Enlisted was, was the option that I could do at that time. Right. You know, there's different windows of time and everything. And, and depending on the service and all that stuff. So when I got in, they're like, you'll be easily able to transition over to officer whenever you're ready. But go try this out. And so I did. And they were right. It was great. And what did you think

Robin: 25:28

you were going to be doing?

Pete: 25:29

Counterintelligence, whatever that means.

Robin: 25:34

So how did they select you to do that?

Pete: 25:38

I tested fantastically. I did very well. Again, not the smartest guy in the world, you know, I have brains. And so I tested really well and my recruiters were like, You are the highest testing person I've had. And granted, I tested in an area where there's a lot of lower socioeconomic people, right? So, and I have a college degree, so I, I'm, I'm kind of cheating and I don't, I didn't try to cheat. It's just, that's where you take the test. Right, right. And so I did well. And he's like, you're the highest scoring guy I've had. You can have any job in this big book. Even the jobs that people don't get to have, you can have. And I'm like, well, what job do you think I should have? And he did a great job as a recruiter. He basically said the higher the number, the job. The the bread of the job. And I don't know what a 97 Bravo is. It says counterintelligence. I don't really know what that is. Right. I've been in the army a long time. So that's gotta be a good job. It's like, let's read the description and watch the video. And he watched it with me. And he's like, I have no idea what these guys do. This has got to be an awesome job. You should do this. And I'm like, okay, let's do it. You know, cause Intel made sense. You know, I was reading Tom Clancy books. I knew it sounded like spy type stuff, but you know, when you read, when you read our job description, you know, it's like, Oh, wait, what do you do? I mean, even people who work in our organizations are like, yeah, but what do you guys do? Right. So. Yeah, off I went to counterintelligence.

Robin: 26:52

I once went to a promotion of one of my mentors in life. He was a company officer at the Naval Academy at the time. And he's now, he retired as Lieutenant General. And I remember I went to his promotion to brigadier and I was already in the FBI. I was teaching at the counterintelligence training center, worked CI for a number of years. Cause I'd gotten out of the Marine Corps and I go to his promotion. There's a bunch of colonels there and a bunch of generals. And I, a lot of these colonels I knew as captains at the Naval Academy. And one of them comes up to me and says, so what are you doing? So I work counterintelligence, the FBI, and I worked the Russia threat and I recruit spies. He goes, what is that? Just so yeah, so I get it. No one knows what it is.

Pete: 27:31

And we don't know inside. We don't know. Like my happens at you and I, we make our soup in a similar way. But the next agent down the line. Totally different way to make his suit, you know, and wonderful suit. Just, it's so hard to put your hands around it. And I think this is an important thing when in the military, when a commander receives or has a counterintelligence team, they are not trained on what the heck we do. And really, I don't know if you should take your time to do that. It really should be on us as the agent to say, Here is what I do. Here is my form of, of soup, or I like to say, here's my judo, right? This is what I do well. If you leave me in this kind of environment, I'm going to be flipping people all over the place for you. If you put me in another spot, you know, I'll perform. It

Robin: 28:14

sounds like that's what you're good at because you are good at identifying and discovering the pain points of your commanders and letting them know how you're going to solve their problem through the world of intelligence.

Pete: 28:27

There's a thing in the military where they write what are called IRs. And there's all kinds of letters, IIRs, PIRs. Everybody wants to make their information requests the most important. That's all that first letter is. So information requests or intelligence requests, if you want to go that route. And so there was a thought up in a staff room, often pre deployment. Well, they have no earthly clue what questions to ask. So when I get to a unit. I look on the wall and I see what they're, how they're communicating, right? This is my, my master's degree coming into play. How does this unit communicate? Ah, okay. They're a little bit more of this, a little bit less of that. Their decision making is this, this, and that. But I also know as a default, they're not communicating with the populace. They're not looking for anything that's not threat. And so I already know that I can start to bring those things in and I'm looking for that communication to change. The other thing I do is I look at them all and I see what is the commander's mission. And eventually I didn't have to look at that anymore because I already knew what it was because it was always the same. It was the same four elements every single time. So I didn't need someone to tell me what was important. I knew already because I'd been there. I'd seen it. I'd done it. And I knew that, again, this is the ground truth thing. You're trying to do four things. And if I can contribute to any one of those lines. of, of effort than that I'm giving you something you don't have already and I'm helping you do the thing you're saying. This is my mission statement. So who cares about these other things that you think you want to know? Let me get right to the elemental truth, the ground truth. of what is impacting your ability to accomplish your stated mission. Right.

Robin: 29:52

So here you are, you're newly recruited, you go through boot camp and you're off to your we call them the Marine Corps MOS school, Military Occupation and Specialty School. What was that like? And what was your first kind of aha discovery moment when you get to, all right, I'm being trained in this job?

Pete: 30:09

Yeah. I didn't know anything about the military when I got it. I should say this, right? Because I went from never considering it to being in it 30 days. So I was very, very, very green, mature, but green. And I didn't know half of the things that they were saying. There were so many, later on you learn, even if you don't know an acronym, you kind of get the gist of what it is, right? I didn't know any of that stuff. So I was, I was really behind for a long time in terms of like understanding what was being thrown at me until we got to the people part. And then my friends would look at me and they're going, You're really good at this. And I'm like, I'm just asking questions. I don't think, you know, they explained like kind of their theory and how to do it. And I think this will resonate with you. Like someone will say you know, a bunch of us saw a guy on a patrol. Okay. A guy, tell me that. Where were they? How far were they? What were they wearing? You know, you ask all these questions and you populate that picture in your head, and then you test it, and then you ask questions again, and then you scope back, and you're like, what else do I need to know about this situation? Oh, you know what? There was a red van there. At the time, I didn't think anything of it, but maybe it's important. Maybe it's part of the equation for you, you know? And so you just, you learn how to ask those. I did, at least, I learned how to ask those questions. So I was Not thinking about what's the next question to ask. I was trying to put it in my head visually, right? And that was kind of my first learning point. And once I got that down, I didn't have to remember to do that. I didn't have, I could ask the questions in the right sequence without knowing what the sequence is going to be. And then when I got really good, what's the emotion in these environments? And if I could find the emotions, look out, and there's no collector around me in the entire brigade, in the entire division, that's going to be able to bring that. That's the command. And so much of modern combat is affect over effect. And if you can find the affect and how to move the populace, either towards you or away from the enemy, that's what they do to us. I mean, they kick our asses. That's what they do to us.

Robin: 32:10

Yeah. You were, you literally were seeing it in the way your creative mind was working. I'm listening to you describe this and it was like someone put the scene in front of you and you're putting it together visually in your head. And that's how you knew what questions asked because you're trying to make a film in your head. That's what it sounded like. That's crazy. That's amazing.

Pete: 32:29

Yeah, I was. I mean, it really is a very good comparison, you know, and I'm looking at a farmer. I'm not looking at that farmer as a threat. I'm looking at him as a farmer. This guy's playing the farmer. Okay. What's he worried about? What scares him? Are we scary to him? What's dangerous once we leave? All these things. And when you think about that, those terms, how do you get that person to believe in their government that we're setting up and telling them it's good? Well, you better ask those kinds of questions because you say, Hey, where's the Taliban? They're not going to tell you that. Not in stay alive, not, not have the Taliban come knocking their door 10 minutes later. You know, I don't know who's listening. I don't, I know they're there watching. We can hear the radio chatter. We can hear them talking about us being there. So they're in the area. Now everybody else, the patrol can worry about where that guy is. I'm worried about the guy. I'm worried about this guy right here, right in front of me. And when that guy, and this actually happened, when that farmer goes, I don't know where the Taliban is, puts his hand in front of his mouth. And I'm like, Hey boss, you know, the cat that's with me, do you see that? You see him put his hand in front of his mouth? He absolutely knows who that guy is. Do you want me to look for him? Or do you want me to leave that alone? He says, leave it alone. Leave it alone. Because he trusted my judgment. And I was kind of hinting at him like, this is here. If you're worried about it, great. We can do something about it. Or we can focus on this guy. He's like, no, let's focus on this

Robin: 33:39

guy. And so we did. That's deep empathy and being extremely present with those you're engaging and seeing life through their optic without an agenda. Where did that come from? I mean, that's deep. Did that come from growing up? I mean, that's an incredible skill to have early on in a career.

Pete: 33:58

This is late in my career. And there's a guy named Robin who says, you need those reps. That comes from reps that comes from getting beat on the nose over and over. Yeah, it does. So that is, that is a seasoned black belt judo guy. It is, you know, showing, cause I can tell that to that captain. He didn't got to believe me. So how do I compel him? Right. To like, Hey, this is important right here. This guy's afraid. How do we protect this guy, but also understand who he is and where he's at, how far he's from the government, how close to the Taliban, you know, and like, if we can kind of put our hands on that, not easy to do, but we can then go back and re engage that guy in a safe way. We're not exposing him to threat and that will make him trust me and that will make him say, Hey Pete, I know a guy you need to talk to. And as you know, getting introduced outside of the network that nobody else knows. That is platinum. That's way better than gold.

Robin: 34:49

It's a, it's a challenging time in life when we're putting those reps in and we're having humbling moments, and we're following procedures and doctrine that we've been trained in. And then all of a sudden, Or not all of a sudden, a few times that light bulb starts going off when you're at that Jedi Master level that you just described. Do you remember when that started happening to you when you actually started saying, Oh, I got this?

Pete: 35:19

In Bosnia, we asked a lot of people a lot of questions and we were left to our own devices. The command, we were just far enough away, far enough away from the command that they really couldn't. do anything to prevent us from doing our job, and my boss was enough of a maverick, both of them, that they Saw that we are being productive and had the courage to let two E4s, which as you know, very low rank, smart guys, but low rank, they let us do it. And on our team of four people, and there were other people that were added in, my buddy Greg and I, we were the ones who were folksy. So he took a day, I took a day, he took a day, I took a day, I'm watching him. Do it his way. And if I can add some of his pepper into my soup, oh my gosh, it's so great. And so I started to realize that in Bosnia, like this is how this works. This is how this game works. And I don't know how Greg saw it, but I know one of the things I saw is how do we meet the right people? Because we're only meeting the people that we are comfortable going to. How do we go to places that are more dangerous or unknown to us? How do we interact with people? How do we get introduced outside of our immediate circle? And that will let us build a network pretty quickly that was powerful and, and successful at allowing us to, in our case, reduce the perception of threat for the American side in the area, because our area was not terribly dangerous anymore. It had been, brutally so, but as far as we could look around, Let's not worry too much about this area. We'll keep our hands on the, on fingers on the pulse and our hands on people's backs and talking and rubbing and everything. But let's let you boss above us, like direct resources towards other areas. We feel like we've got this area wired tight.

Robin: 36:58

So without a doubt. The most challenging thing in life, when you're going to inspire someone to share information with you. They're not going to share it unless they trust you. And trust is feeling safe. How do you inspire someone to feel safe in a combat zone? With you. That's the Jedi Master. Delicately.

Pete: 37:18

Delicately. Very deliberately. And when you, here's the thing, here's a couple of rules that I've learned. You don't have trust until they show you that they trust you. Yes. So you'll think you have trust with them way before they do. That's a key thing. And again, this is like black belt level stuff. My interpreter that I worked with, right, there's the military has a very bad policy on interpreters. We don't train anybody how to do it. And it's mostly focused on a lack of trust, which you and I are like, that is bad way to do it. So I would talk to my interpreter. Here's the mission. Here's what we're going to do. Here's, we're always going to look for like these seven things. And here's the kind of questions I want to get to. And some of these at the end of the string of questions are very hard questions. Where are the bombs? Well, you can't ask that. What's the question you asked to be allowed to ask? Where are the moms? Oh, that's this. Okay. What's the question before that? And so I would backwards plan all of my question trees and not because I was going to ask those questions in that sequence ever, but I'd gone through the exercise, understanding how that conversation flows so that whatever, whatever situation I found myself in, I would take that magazine of questions, put that into my mouth, a gun, and I would shoot them out. Farmer. Who's pissed off at the government. What are the questions I'm going to ask? And I would do that. So I would teach my interpreter that that's what I was doing. And then I would say, how would you ask these questions in your native or your familiar language? Cause some of these guys aren't from that. So they're, you know, Americans are like, I speak seven languages. And if I could have the trust in my interpreter first to be a better version of us together, right. To allow them to be them as well as us. That is powerful. And when my interpreter looks at me and says, shut up, you know what I do? I shut the fuck up. Because he or she usually he, for me, cause that's where we are working. When they latch onto something, that's my bird dog. I want my bird dog hunt for me and bring me that duck, you know, and so I would do it. Sometimes here's what it was. Hey, this guy's getting a bunch of phone calls about something going on in town. So my conversation now became tertiary, unimportant, because he had hot news coming into this, this shake, this leader. And he, he's hearing half of the conversation, but understanding 80 To think about that, that is not how the army works. So when I build trust, I'm looking at my interpreter to help me establish that trust, to ask questions in the right way, better than what I can do. He understands what I'm trying to get. And then with my partner, whoever I'm talking to, over time, I'm slowly extending low risk trust, medium risk trust, high risk trust, to the point where they will say to me, Pete, can we just meet at my house away from all these army people? Man, how do I, how do I ever stay safe in this environment? Who, how, how would I do that? And I'm like, Oh, come on. I'll protect you. You'll be fine with me. And that would be for me, the thing where now I've got to make a decision and then I've got to take my little trust account and I got to go back to the, the army and say, do I tell these guys that I have this opportunity? Yes. I don't, I want to tell them, but if they're going to say no and not take the benefit of this meeting, so I would have to figure that part out too. So that's how I built trust, right? Slowly, slowly add things in. And I didn't have expectations because maybe on this day they had some trust that could afford me or schedule that alone. We're in a dangerous place, right? And so crazy things happen. So just a pattern of behaviors, getting to know each other, and the thing I call fence building. You've got a daughter? I've got a daughter. You like chess? Hey, I like chess. You're watching football? I'm going to watch football with you. So all of these kind of things created this familiarity, and from the familiarity I could reap trust. Right,

Robin: 40:48

so I'm hearing in there familiarity demonstrating some commonality. Do you have a couple nuggets that you made sure you did that would start solidifying and forging that trust and that you're making sure you did every time?

Pete: 41:02

Yeah I would never worry about what I have. And it's really hard to do, especially in a combat environment. It is not about my success. I don't have to be the smartest person in the room. I have to shut up and listen. And one of the practices is like, you sit down for chai, I don't bring up business until they do. If we're just going to have a session where we meet and talk, that's fine. It doesn't matter what my commander wants. It matters that I build trust with this person so I can figure out how do I accomplish my commander's goal on my partner's path. Because if I don't have to reinvent their culture and I can still get to where the commander wants us to be, great. That's what I want to do. But that requires patience, mistakes, being deliberate, being delicate timelines that would make no sense at all. You know, you can't just keep coming back to this person. It's like you're dating a girl, but you still can only go out every other Friday. You know, like you want to go out on Tuesday night, but you can't because It's not that environment. The

Robin: 42:01

curiosity play a role in this?

Pete: 42:03

Well, for sure. Nonstop. A curiosity at the level of if they love fishing, I want to understand why they love fishing. You know, I don't like fishing at all, but I want to understand why you like it. Tell me more.

Robin: 42:15

You hit the key right there too. It's not that you want to love fishing to mirror match. You want to know why they do, because that's the deeper level. That's that Jedi level. So here we are, you become this, this master recruiter of, of all, what was the transition then from the military to back to civilian life? When did that happen and what inspired that?

Pete: 42:36

So I was in. in the military in some form or fashion, three times. So the regular army, the reserves, I was doing contract work, which is more with the army. And then I was in department of army. And the transition was not gentle. It, it, it was hard, but here I am standing. I mean, I'm definitely transitioned. I don't need to go to combat anymore. I'm not worried about what corporate America thinks about my resume. You know, I always need to work, of course, I'm not going to bend over backwards to, to go towards something that they don't act like they want me. So I just, I just continue to invent it, Rob. And I continue to try to figure out what's valuable. Where do I put my effort and how do I, how do I leave a path of friends behind me that I'm desperate to talk to? And, and they are desperate to hear from me.

Robin: 43:22

So you said valuable, what's valuable to you today?

Pete: 43:26

I mean, obviously it'd be nice to have a little more money, but that's not valuable. That's just a means of production. So what's valuable for me today are nightcaps with my friends, wherever I'm at. Hey, you want to come over and have a nightcap? One last, one last little drink, one last session of meeting getting together. Look, I'm 52, right? I'll be 53 in January. People in my life, in my circle, and I have a big circle, people are dying at a rate of once every six months. And actually, Like once every four months on average. So I don't want to go to a bunch of funerals saying, man, you know, we aren't two neighbors down from us lady died. She was in her early sixties and she got sick and things stacked up and all of a sudden she was gone. The party they threw for her. I'm like, she would have loved to have been here two weeks ago, you know? And so that to me is invaluable. You can't have enough exchanges with people. You have to live in the here and now, but you also have to keep running the future. But you have to find ways. For people like me, to get together with other people, and part of my job, Robin, is to tell my friends, the people I care about, we need to get together, and yes, it's going to be getting off the couch and not watching Yellowstone, but that's what's important right now, is each other and sharing this love, and it's so easy to sit in your screen or whatever, and I'm not judging that, I do those things too, but how do I rally people together and make them say, you know, we didn't really do anything, but I had a great time, I don't care how good Yellowstone is, That beats it. That's what's

Robin: 44:53

valuable. So, so building relationships was critical and key to your success early in life. Yeah. With the moms that you hung out with who loved you. Yeah. In the military as you're recruiting warlords. And your commanders that, that were inspired to allow you to do these things and on your podcast now with the relationships you're forging, what makes a great relationship for Pete?

Pete: 45:19

sOmething that's just, it is a source of joy. You know, I like to collect, it's easy to collect misery. It's easy to collect frustration. So I look for things that increase joy. What's joy? Joey is like, I cannot wait to see Robin and I drive to your hotel. Look, nobody wants to go drive across LA to go see some guy they've never met face to face, right? I do. I'm desperate to do it. And

Robin: 45:44

for those listening Pete had a last minute request for me to come on his show one time, but I was traveling out to LA for one of my engagements. And he said, well, you're gonna be in LA. Where are you going to be? And he literally traveled from. Unforsaken parts to come to my hotel with his equipment, with his gear to set up to meet in person for the first time, just to have a great conversation. So yeah, that's what he's talking

Pete: 46:06

about. But that's what spies do, Robin, right? Like that's what we do. We go out and like, if I, if you're, if I go to a real famous celebrity's house, who's going to be on my show. They all of a sudden become the host when I get there. I'm going to host the show, whatever, fill in the blank actor, fill in the blank director, whoever it's going to be. And they're like, Hey, can I get you some cookies? Or how about a bubbly water? I heard you like those things. And I'm like, yeah, great. And you look at that, that's joy. It's being able to have these magic moments where, you know, the right questions to ask, you create a rich fellowship filled environment. And then you're just like, Hey, as soon as we can do this again, I want to do it because I love hanging. I love hanging out with you, right? This next time we can won't be, it'll be too far. I want to do it tomorrow. Right? And so that to me is the ultimate value and creating that for people is really where I think my skill is now is how do I connect people that should know each other? How do I bring people together so they can have a great time? Even if we're just having dinner, like let's get you out of the house. Hey, you're my friend from South Dakota. You're my friend from Jamaica. I need you guys to talk and have a great time. You should know each other because you're both wonderful people. People never get enough of being told how wonderful they are. They never get enough of having a great conversation and finding ways to enrich each other's lives. Even if there's no money exchanged at all, you're trying to find great conversations that people are like, I absolutely have to see Pete every time he comes to town.

Robin: 47:28

So what are a few things someone can do starting now to have a great conversation and forge those great relationships that they can take away from you?

Pete: 47:37

I would say if you want to have a great conversation, stop asking interrogative based questions. Don't ask who, where, why, what, when, how. Get their opinion on it and explore it. Let me explore this with you. And then look at feelings and emotions and understand where they're at. Like when someone's passionate about some social issue or whatever, it's important to them. And you're not trying to convince them. You're just trying to understand them. I think that's a powerful elixir for people to be able to do that. And one of the things I thought I would say is in my line for what I did, I broke the mold some of it, right? And so I don't initially want to recruit a warlord. I might, but a lot of times I wasn't legally allowed to do that. And so you're not supposed to create placement and access, but here I am doing it. And so I would be the source and I would enter this environment where I was normal. And that's like a different level to be able to, that's not what the books say you're supposed to do at all. And that's what I want to do now for other people is be able to bring in what I have in terms of these conversations and share that with people. How does, how does anybody else do that? Build trust, listen, seek to understand, smash your ego back. These are all things that you, you've written in your book. They're the same principles that we do. And if you can remove your ego and just be in that room with that person and really hear them and then expand what they say. Like if a person is talking to you and they go, ah. And then they give you their answer. You were in the gold mine. Keep digging right there in that spot. And you were going to have something magic happen because now they're not just giving you the mouth answer. They're giving you some deep brain answers like you're doing with me. You're making me talk in a way that I wouldn't have talked an hour ago because I'm into what you're doing and I can't shut up because of it.

Robin: 49:16

And unfortunately, I'd love to keep going, but I always want to make sure that I ask you the most important question of all time, and that is, what's something you wanted to share that I was a horrible host and forgot to ask you that you want to make sure you shared with the audience before you leave? Yeah, I do this

Pete: 49:29

question too. What question should I have asked you? I'm honestly, I wouldn't take back a single question you asked me. I think you did a great job. We talked about my podcast and you know, everybody gets an idea of who I am and what I do. And look, I'm available, right? If you guys want me to help you do something or figure something out or you just want to have dinner with me, whatever it is, you know, just reach out peterpickettchurchill. com I'm, I'm prepared to do whatever it is that someone thinks, Hey, I think Pete could do this for us, you know, and, and I'd love to be helpful. So that's the only thing, let me know

Robin: 50:03

how I can help. I love it. Pete, where can people go to find out more about you, both your podcast and just you in general across social media, where should they

Pete: 50:12

go? Well, on YouTube, you just go to Pete A. Turner and you'll find a show there. There's all kinds of great stuff there. 1500 episodes, all that stuff. But you can get me on all socials that are at Pete at PA Turner. That's where you go. I'm probably on Facebook the most, you know, and if you friend me in a five miles, I have room on my friend list, which who knows where that is today. I'm going to say yes. And you're definitely feel free to talk to me and ask me questions. And you know, that's it. That's just talk to me there or email me Pete at break it down. Show. com. I'm I'm a. Very affable, welcoming person. So don't be intimidated by my breastiness and my beard. I'm glad to talk to you.

Robin: 50:49

And for those listening, all this will be in the show notes as well as my pump again for checkout Pete show the break it down show it's phenomenal. A great question from a great professional who loves to forge relationships and forge great connections with other human beings. Check out the show and just, Pete, it's just a true pleasure chatting with you each and every time. Thank you for your friendship and thank you for coming on and sharing. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Forged by Trust. Remember, if you want to forge trust. It's not how you make people feel about you that matters. It's how you make them feel about themselves. If you're interested in more information about how I can help you forge your own trust building, communication, and interpersonal strategies as a speaker, your coach, or as a trusted adviser for you or your organization, please visit my website at robendrike dot com. See you next time on Forged by

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