#532 Master Communication Skills: Body Language, Tonality, and Handshake Secrets to Handle Any Conversation with Confidence — with Former Secret Service Agent Brad Beeler.

What if the key to mastering difficult conversations was hidden in the way you shake hands or ask a single question?

In a world where communication is more fragmented than ever, misinterpretation can derail deals, damage relationships, and escalate tensions. Former U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Brad Beeler has spent 25 years reading people under extreme pressure. In this episode, he reveals the body language cues, vocal techniques, and subtle shifts that can turn an awkward exchange into a moment of connection, whether you’re negotiating a business deal, leading a team, or navigating personal relationships.

• Learn the subtle handshake and body language adjustments that instantly create trust and credibility.
• Discover the vocal tone shifts that project confidence, reduce tension, and elicit more honest responses.
• Understand the patterns and red flags that can help you detect dishonesty—without relying on unreliable “one-size-fits-all” cues.

Press play now to learn how to decode people, lead with confidence, and transform even the toughest conversations into breakthroughs.

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KEY POINTS AND TIMESTAMPS:

02:45 - A Critical Communication Moment in China

06:22 - The Foundation of Body Language and Handshakes

11:55 - Mastering Vocal Tone and Tonality

16:53 - The Connection Between Sales and Interrogation

20:09 - Improving Communication in the Digital Age

23:27 - Detecting Dishonesty in High-Stakes Situations

29:04 - Personal Development Philosophy

30:56 - Advice for Your Younger Self

33:04 - Managing Inner State Under Pressure

36:47 - Closing Thoughts

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MEMORABLE QUOTE:

"Pace yourself, invest in becoming 1% better every day, and protect your reputation because your last name is everything."

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VALUABLE RESOURCES:

Connect with Brad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradbeeler1865/

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To explore coaching with Agi: https://personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com/mentor

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🎙️ Want to be a guest?

Message Agi on PodMatch: https://www.podmatch.com/member/personaldevelopmentmastery

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Personal development interviews exploring key principles of personal development, self improvement, self mastery, personal growth, self-discipline, and personal improvement — all supporting a life of purpose and fulfilment.

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Transcript

Agi Keramidas: 0:00

Negotiate like a pro body language, tonality and handshake secrets to handle any conversation with confidence. Welcome to personal development mastery, the podcast that helps intelligent, busy professionals develop self mastery and gain clarity so you can thrive in a fulfilling, purposeful life. Join us every Monday for an insightful conversation with a guest, and it's Thursday for a shorter episode where I reflect and share with you I am your host, Agi Keramidas, and this is episode 532 if you are looking to improve your communication skills and handle high stakes conversations with confidence, this conversation with a former secret agent explores how body language, vocal tone and even your handshake can transform your interactions by listening today, you are going to learn the subtle handshake and body language adjustments that instantly create trust and credibility. You will also discover the vocal tone shifts that project confidence and reduce tension, and you will understand the patterns and red flags that can help you detect dishonesty. If you are ready to communicate more effectively, then this episode is for you before we dive in, if you are in a life or career transition and resonate with the topics we discuss here, I offer one to one coaching and mentoring to help you find clarity and move forward with purpose. Are you curious to explore what that could look like for you? Visit personal development mastery podcast.com/mentor or just tap the link in the show notes. Now let's get started today. My guest is Brad Beeler. Brad you are a recently retired Special Agent with the United States Secret Service, where you served for 25 years and became one of the agency's most respected polygraph examiners. You Now bring your expertise to communication, negotiation and leadership, and you are passionate about helping others master communication and navigate difficult conversations using advanced credibility and elicitation techniques, Brad, it's an honour to have you on the show

Brad Beeler: 2:46

today. Welcome. Thank you very much. Appreciate you having me on it's

Agi Keramidas: 2:51

we will explore. I'm looking forward to this, how to manage difficult conversations, which is something I believe very important. Also, how to get people to open up improving communication. So in this kind of topic, since you it is your expertise before we go there, I would like you to tell us, can you walk us through a real moment where everything hinged on your ability to communicate effectively, and what happened, how you handled it?

Brad Beeler: 3:29

No, that's a really insightful question, and it definitely brings back a lot of memories a lot of the people that I've talked to over the years with polygraph, we help out the local police department when it comes to their very significant cases, homicide, child, sexual assault. So there's been hundreds of situations where I'm trying to get somebody to explain something that's maybe in their not in their best interest, about how they committed an act of violence or of inappropriate contact with the child, but the one thing that jumps into mind when he asked that question, was a situation that happened in China during a protective assignment. So the Secret Service, we do protection, but we also do investigations. But when the President and the former president were coming to during the US Olympics in Beijing, basically, I had set up a security perimeter and everything was dialled in. We thought we had all contingencies planned for and then about five minutes before arrival, we had 40 local police officers from Beijing show up and basically try to shut down the facility. It was just mayhem. There was pushing, there was shoving, between the US Olympic team, between the Chinese. I thought we were gonna have an international incident. And it just shows being able to speak the local language wherever you are. How important that is, and it's a superpower. If you can speak whatever language in whatever country you're in, not only do you get instant credibility, but it allows you to navigate those difficult situations. And as many Americans I speak wanting one language, and that's English, and I could not communicate with the locals. So. Luckily, I had a secret service agent that spoke Chinese Mandarin, and it was one of these things where he was able to somehow communicate, and we're in this back and forth. And right before arrival, we were able to allow, you know, kind of allow their detail leader to say, Hey, can you show us around to kind of allow him to save face, and you know, so just in the nick of time, we were able to keep an international incident from happening, and a lot of it was just miscommunication, not being able to speak someone's language. So I a lot of what I talk about is the universal language of body language. My best friend is deaf, and for 35 years, I do know sign language. But before I learned sign language, I learned if, if he can see my face, if I can be present in the conversation, and if I can use my body language. It doesn't matter what culture you're in, you can communicate stress, distress and certain things along those lines, or in this sense, I can at least communicate that I'm not a threat to the Chinese nationals as they were coming onto our scene. So I am a true believer that we need to focus on the words we say, the lyrics, how we say them, the soundtrack, and then our body language, which is the dance. And we got to put all that together and be present in our conversations.

Agi Keramidas: 6:22

I like the metaphor of the dance and the in the singing and the lyrics. It's quite interesting. Since you mentioned body language, I was planning to ask you later on, but since you mentioned it, the you mentioned the role that it plays in its importance, can you give us, right now, something that comes from your experience as perhaps something that many people do wrong in their conversations with other people, in their body language, something that we should be aware of? Perhaps,

Brad Beeler: 6:57

yeah, I think I think it's really good question how you frame it in that I think you need to start on a timeline almost of communication. So most communication starts, at least professionally, with a handshake, and it ends with a handshake. And what most people remember about a conversation is the first part of the conversation and the last part of the conversation. So we have to hack that first body language, which is as we approach the person, and we don't approach them with neutral we don't approach them with contempt, because first impressions, or the primacy effect, is built upon our ancient ancestors, looking and seeing, those are the first two main senses, because they we can do them from farther away as to whether or not you are a threat to me. So that's it. Are you a threat to me? And even though we've evolved, you know, over these hundreds of 1000s of years, that's something that still resides into us. Am I experiencing a threat? So I want soft eyes. I maybe want even a slight eyebrow flash, okay, just to show interest, I might expose my carotid artery a little bit, just by kicking my head off to the side. I'm going to have good distance between my ear and my shoulders, which is going to show that I'm not tense. I'm going to be showing my hands, all right. I don't have a weapon. I'm going to be showing my hands. And when we go into a handshake, there's the best handshake in the world is a dry handshake that's not cold and too often. And I know you've probably had bad handshakes that are cold and clammy. It's brought on by nerves, right? So if I'm see, if I'm seated at a dinner party, something like that, I'm not going to be holding on to a cold water bottle, because then when I shake your hand, it's going to be cold and it's going to be wet, so instantaneously, subconsciously to them, that is, that is a really bad sign. But if I take my coffee cup here and I'm holding on to that, and then I shake your hand, I've got the warmth down. Also, if I know I'm going to be going in for a job interview or a sensitive communication, I will put Anna Perrin on my hands. That way you will never get moisture from me when I shake your hands. I'm typically going to have my hand at about a one o'clock because people naturally like to pronate, and as a result, I'm exposing the lighter part of my hand, which shows, once again, I don't have a weapon. It's going to be easier for you to not misconnect When you shake my hand. And I think what a lot of people misunderstand about a handshake is it's not a shake, it's a hold. Too many times people sit there and they shake uncomfortably. Some of this is culturally, I know you're Greek, okay, handshake and touching is different, you know, in that part of the world than it is in others. But in, you know, in America, a nice one second hold while we have eye contact, while our heart is facing their heart, the worst thing we can do is face away, shake someone's hand and not have eye contact. The politicians that do that are viewed as uncharismatic. The politicians that I've seen that do do that are viewed as very charismatic, regardless of politics people. Say what they want about Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, whatever, on either side of the aisle here in America, but they will say that those people had charisma and they connected with me because they have great handshakes and they have great interpersonal skills. So I would say, I know I've kind of went on to the tangent, but I would say handshakes are something that people mess up every day in the world. And if you get that right, you're going to metaphorically put a halo on your head instead of horns. And then, because of cognitive bias, what's going to happen is people are going to look for the best in you instead of assume the worst. So in business, personal life, professional life, if you get a great handshake and you keep an open posture during the interaction with maybe a nice, slight flow, forward, lean, nice, minimal encouragers as we're going on, and definitely never showing contempt. I've lost confessions when subconsciously I furrowed my brow and I showed disgust when you show that that is a huge stopper in interpersonal communications. Hmm?

Agi Keramidas: 11:03

Thank you for this detailed and so expansive answer. It was so many different elements there of the body language. Appreciate it very much. I will ask you, since you started giving this and I'm very much fond of these practical things that one can pick and implement straight away. I would like also to hear your thoughts or advice perhaps on the other big, big part of communication, which is our tonality, how we use the tone of our voice. I think you said it was it the singing when you used the metaphor again, tell us what many people do wrong, and how can one start to improve things

Brad Beeler: 11:55

absolutely. So we sometimes think about the perfect words to say while we're talking, and how this relates to me personally is I remember, during my first polygraph examination where I was out of my internship, I was on my own, somebody failed my test. It was a double homicide, and it was one of these things where I really wanted to obtain why this person did this. I wanted them to admit but when I confronted them, it was my voice pitch was super high. You could tell I was unsure of myself. My statement sounded like questions, and that's what we got to be careful about, is that upward pitch, especially when we first meet, because we are coded to hear a higher pitch voice from an evolutionary standard as threats. It's kind of like with our kids, when you can tell if your kid is hurt by how they're crying, if that is a super high pitch cry and it's instantaneous, we code that as Oh, boy, what's going on? We got to go check out what happened in the other room. It's the same thing when I meet someone, and if they have a very high pitched voice, even if it's at a subconscious level, I can code that as distress, unsure. You know that they're unsure of their self, that they're not confident. So I don't want you to be fake about it, but if when we first meet, what I like to do is I slow down and I lower my vocal tonality just a little bit, because I don't want to come off as if I'm in stress when you listen to police radio calls, especially with a lot of rookies, what you'll hear is, you know, they're nervous, they're amped up, and they sound like the 12 year old version of themselves. They don't sound like somebody that's calm and composed. So if you're doing a negotiation, if you're selling a car, if you're talking to your kids, you need to think if we wrote those words out, if the teleprompter wrote them out, would there have been a question mark after the end of it, or would there have been an exclamation point after the end of it? You know, if in those the way we say, it can also lead to other inquiries. So if you were talking about a negotiation, and you were saying, I'm just under a lot of pressure at work right now, and I mirror back to you and I say, so you're under a lot of pressure. That's one way to say it, and that's a statement, and it's going to get a yes or yes or no answer if I say so, you're under a lot of pressure. You see, I kind of went up a little bit in my voice inflection. People want to answer a question, so what they may say is, yeah, you know, man, I'm just I didn't hit my number last month, and, you know, I've got some stuff going on at home. Whatever the case may be, I instantly elicited two or three different bits of information by how I ended that question. But that's usually not how I like to do it. Usually, if I'm not eliciting and I want to sound confident, I want to. It's like when I say the word no, if I'm questioning a bad guy, and I say, did you do X, Y and Z, and they said, No, it's almost like they're asking the question to see if I buy their their answer, versus DID YOU DO THAT bad thing? No. Well, that was with an exclamation point. So if you want conviction. Connection in your communications. Think, if somebody was just listening to this, would it sound as if I had an exclamation point behind what the word that I just spoke? You know, the analogy I like to give is the old band, Milli Vanilli. You know, they made it in the 80s, right? I went to one of their concerts, right? I went to one of their concerts. And for your listeners that don't know Milli Vanilli, the lyrics were written by, I think farian was his name. He was a producer, and he took a German model and a Dutch model, and basically they were great dancers, and he basically created this image where they weren't the singers. They didn't write the music, and at the Grammy Awards, the DVD kept sticking, and it all came out, but they sold, I don't know, 12, 15 million records, whatever the case may be, because of the complete image the dancing, okay? It wasn't the words, the singing was okay. It was the dancing. Once people realise that, Oh, that wasn't really them. The other band, the actual Milli Vanilli, put their music out, and nobody bought it because they didn't have that last aspect of putting it all together.

Agi Keramidas: 16:13

I do remember them. And then the real Milli Vanilli remember any of the real one songs, but I remember a couple of songs, of the the other one, thank you. This is very useful, Brad. Let me ask. I will bring us to something, let's say a bit more specific. Now I read something, and it intrigued me that you wrote, you said something about sales and interrogation being related. So I would like to hear more about this.

Brad Beeler: 16:53

Yeah. So if you think about it, and if we go to Cialdini principle, Arizona State PhD, put out a book called Influence, many, many years ago, sold millions and millions of copies, but he looked at the principles of influence, reciprocity, consistency. It goes on and on, seven to eight principles, scarcity. We do the same thing, and I don't want to use the word sometimes the word interrogation gets a bad name. I would say investigative interview, and I use the word interrogation, but sometimes in the public Nexus, it gets a little because people think of the dark side of interrogation,

Agi Keramidas: 17:26

which we don't. Thank you for thank you for clarifying that

Brad Beeler: 17:29

we we have conversations, and I never raise my voice. I'm in, you know, personable, empathetic, but a lot of people, you know, the Hollywood version of interrogation, you know, kicks in. So I'm selling a product. You're selling a product. People are selling something with their kids every single day. It's just, I'm selling jail, okay? I'm selling a timeshare for 15 years, maybe in an eight by eight cell that has all inclusive meals will provide you know this, that's a hard thing to sell. Okay, but are there certain things that I'm going to do? Yes, I'm going to prepare. I'm going to know the case backs. Do we think when you walk on a car lot that they're not preparing? I may provide them food, water and drink. The same thing's going to happen with that car dealer. That's going to say, Can I get you something to drink? I'm going to give them a polygraph examination. They're going to give you a test drive, okay? After the test drive, okay, they're going to bring you back to the finance office. I'm going to bring you maybe back to the interview room to talk to you about how you did poorly on the polygraph. So selling is is pretty universal. I think we we get we make it too complicated. It's about connecting with people. It's about preparing with people. It's providing about what is in your best interest. For me, I focus a lot, not on the what, but the why. And if you can give the people why, they can make their own decision on how it's in their best interest. So you tell stories we've gotten away from that. We don't improv anymore. We talk to people in delayed communications, text messages, emails, and as a result, we have the inability to do what we're doing right now, where I can gauge in how you just responded, oh, you gave me a minimal encourager. There. You shook your head, yes. So we've lost that ability. And you wonder, why, when people get in a sales environment this current generation, or they come in for a job interview, how there's that delay and there's that deer in the headlights look because they're not used to engaging in those spontaneous Communications.

Agi Keramidas: 19:34

Thank you. That is indeed. And since you brought it up, let's I would like to hear a bit more about this lack of the the other communication elements that the emails and texts that many people rely on, especially the younger generations, if you have something perhaps. Again, I will say the word practical for someone, perhaps, that they should do in a better way, in an improved way.

Brad Beeler: 20:09

Yeah. So to go back first, when you talked about your voice, there are tonnes of applications that you can get on your iPhone or your Android that, literally, in five minutes a day, can teach you to have better vocal range, so you make yourself more interesting, they actually will record how fast you're speaking, because we typically want to be about 130 words per minute, so that you get cognizant of that. So I'd say, as far as voice, that's something that you can definitely do. Another thing is record yourself. So what I teach a lot of my students, when I was teaching at the federal polygraph school here in the United States, is I would record them just like we're in a situation right now, but I would have them watch it without the video, and just have them listen to themselves. And then what I would do is I'd turn the volume down, I'd have them watch themselves, and I say, Are you congruent in your message? Because you're looking down, you're trying to sound confident. If I just listen to you, I would say that's a confident person. Or I would see and they've got this body language, but they're talking like this, you know. So that was very eye opening, because a lot of people can't, in real time, see what they're doing wrong, and just understand you don't have to pick the right word, because the words are not as important as how you look saying the word and how you sound saying the word. So if you can master those, you don't have to sit there and think most people have about 25,000 words in their brain. So think about the Think about the software. Is that too many people get into software problem? Okay, they're thinking about the perfect word versus worrying about the hardware. Okay, I can hack the hardware a lot easier than I can fix the software. So if and the hardware, in my opinion, body language and how we speak is more important. Who remembers the voice of Darth Vader? Okay? Everyone? James Earl Jones, right? You put anyone else in that part, and that's not Darth Vader. So how we sound is, I don't want to say it's a life hack, but if you're going to do something for 10 minutes a day, your voice can be improved drastically.

Agi Keramidas: 22:25

Excellent. Thank you for that's very useful and very practical. As a matter of fact, I was, you know, sometimes you have some ads that come up on your Instagram feed, and this, I have kept getting that. So now that you've also mentioned it, I think it's time for me to check it out. So thanks a lot.

Brad Beeler: 22:46

Yeah, try it out seven days. Usually they give you for free. You know, try it out.

Agi Keramidas: 22:51

I will most certainly, Brad, let me ask something a little bit different when we are in let's say, or when someone is in a high stakes situation. Let's say it is negotiating a deal, for example, or an important leadership meeting. How can we tell when someone is is not being honest is and what's the best way to respond, or, you know, respond to that?

Brad Beeler: 23:27

Yeah, it's a great question, and obviously it's dependent upon culture, circumstance, context in some respects. But let's say I'm in a business meeting and somebody is talking about quarterly earnings or a product, whatever the case may be, I would love and it's amazing what's out there about people. So in my preparation, I'm going to see if there's any online one what's out there? Because everybody doesn't put their diaries under their bed anymore. They put their diaries online, right? So I'm going to do my preparation. I'm going to find out, do I have any other instances of this person speaking in similar situations, so that I can establish that baseline. And anybody that says, hey, if you touch your nose or you do this or eye contact, that there's no one characteristic that denotes if somebody's being honest. But the way I like to view it as this is when someone is in an open you give them an open ended question. It's kind of like a dog off a leash, and they can take you wherever they want to take you, and they can omit whatever they don't want to say that's negative in their you know, in their life. So when they're off the leash and they're giving me a statement, I'm looking for words like so then next, after that, transitional type words that I will then take little notes, and I'll be like, okay, and then what I'll do is I'll ask specific questions around those time frames to try to determine now I'm giving you a yes or no question, and the easiest way to explain this is, if I ask you a yes or no question, I should get a yes. Or no response, and I should get it in a timely fashion. If I the first thing that I look for is delay, because it's the easiest to see is that if I ask you, did you shoot that man? It's pretty easy for you to say no. If I ask you, did you shoot that man? And there's a long delay, and you repeat the question, you're buying yourself time, is it 100% Absolutely not. But it's a huge red flag, because that was an easy question, and you should have been able to give me an easy response. If, if I give you a yes or no answer and you say, Well, usually, Well, normally, for the most part, anything with an ly exclusive qualifiers, big red flags for me, if I ask you a yes or no question and you confront me, how dare you ask me, or you spice it up with, I'm the most religious person in the world. Why would I ever do that? It's not 100% but I'm asking you a yes or no question, why do you feel like you need to help yourself out and get you know external validity in that question? Why do you have to shroud yourself in religion with that you know, a lot of times people will do a truth sandwich, where they'll have truthful information, because that's lowers the cortisol of line and the fear of lying. Then they throw the lie in there, and then they get another truthful statement, so that, because it's uncomfortable to lie. So that's what a lot of times people will do. You can also subtly, sometimes see this, where people are shaking their head yes and they say no, or they're shaking their head no and they say yes. You very rarely see it, but when you do the body language is what I'm going to trust, not the spoken word. Many, many times it's a disconnect, and then the shifting vocal inflection that we talked about earlier, as far as no kind of said as a question. So I see that a lot with my kids, did you clean your room? Yeah, yes, or did you do you? Did you get all your homework done? I got all my math homework done. Well, that was very specific, right? Did you get all your homework done? Oh, no, I still got some English, right? So those are little I hope there's some something there that somebody can unpack is that you look for clusters, you look for multiple things. You look for things you can hone in on and ask additional questions. But if you look at what's out there on Tiktok and Instagram on, yeah, I touched my nose. I did this, I crossed my arms. Those are situational factors that in the time could happen for a lot of

Agi Keramidas: 27:24

different reasons. This is great. I got the from that because it wasn't it. I think many things someone can pick, for me was the hesitation before answering what should be a simple yes or no answer. And that's something that, of course, if someone hesitates answering every question, I suppose, depends on the person also Yes, baseline, exactly. Brad, I want to Well, it's been a truly fascinating conversation, the topic of communication and connection, because, in the end, it has to do with connection. You mentioned influence all these things. You mentioned examples with the children, our children, all these things are, I believe, foundational in our Well, our experience of life. Also, the better we are at communicating, the more we can also do as I will start wrapping things up, the first thing I want to ask you is, where would you like to direct the listener who has enjoyed this conversation and wants to find out more about

Brad Beeler: 28:42

you, sure I'm on LinkedIn and Instagram. Brad Beeler, 1865 on both and because I'm writing a new book, I had to come up with a website that should be out here next week, or at least by the time the episode drops. It's Bradley beeler.com that'd probably be the best way to get a hold of me.

Agi Keramidas: 29:04

Thank you. And I have two quick questions, which I always ask my guests, what does personal development mean to you?

Brad Beeler: 29:16

Interesting for me, personal development is I love Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and I want to view life as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And what I mean by that is, there's a belt structure. It's you start out as a white belt, and you learn a lot, really, really quick, and then you start learning less things as you go on, you become a blue belt, a purple belt. And now, instead of learning 10 Things to practice, I learn one thing a week. And that's a lot about life, right? We learn a lot in our adolescent years, or a lot in our college years, and then we're like, we got it all figured out. And that's a lot of times when people quit jiu jitsu because they quit learning things. So what I say to a lot of people in my generation that think they know it all is you don't. Built and personal development for me is being 1% better every day, learning one thing every day that I can make actionable. But most importantly, I've realised you can only be you can only control what you do in personal development, for me is providing my skill set and the mistakes that I've made to the people that I'm teaching, those metaphorical white belts, so they can maybe change their trajectory and level up quicker than I did, so I can hopefully mentor them so they don't have to go through some of the challenges and lessons learned that I did and maybe lose out on a case like I did. So personal development for me is helping the next generation. You

Agi Keramidas: 30:44

Agi and a hypothetical question, if you could go back in time and meet your 18 year old self, what's one piece of advice you would give him?

Brad Beeler: 30:56

Man, you're throwing some heavy, heavy hitters at us. I would be, I don't. I don't think I would give myself much, because I've learned more from my mistakes. And I know, I don't know if that's a cop out answer, but I truly believe in the butterfly effect that one thing can affect something else. Is that mistakes I made or places I didn't go to school, you know, or I played soccer in college here, versus not is the only reason that I was in this situation and threw a snowball at my buddy, and the snowball missed him and hit my wife, my future wife that I've been married to for 27 years. So if I gave myself advice, it would completely change that trajectory. I would just say your last name is everything, and don't go for the quick success, right? I mean, you like running life is a marathon, right? It's not a 5k It's not a sprint, it's a marathon. And that, I would tell my 18 year old self, pace yourself, right? You don't run that first mile of the marathon at a 5k pace, right? So pace yourself. Get 1% better every day, and it's kind of like the stock market. If you invest in an index fund at the age of 18, you're going to be a multi millionaire by the time you're 50. So invest in yourself. Get 1% better. Your last name is everything. Don't ever do anything that would sacrifice that, but you know, so I hope I gave you a little bit of both there, but I'd be very careful about the advice that I gave myself, my 18 year old self,

Agi Keramidas: 32:29

of course. And actually now you gave me a handle here, which I'm going to pick. I don't know if you probably did it inadvertently. You said something about the heavy heaters. Or I do have one more question I would like to ask to end up you have spent decades reading people under pressure. What have this experience taught you about mastering your own inner state in, you know, this high stress environments or in a high stress situation,

Brad Beeler: 33:04

yeah, don't, don't react. And what I mean by that is, if you think from a protective standpoint. So Secret Service, we do protection. I never, and what we're taught is never let people see you sweat outwardly, because then it's going to cause fear among everybody because they're looking at you, right? It's kind of like a flight attendant. If a flight attendant is on a bumpy flight, what's that? What are they taught to do? Right? This is normal. What are they maybe thinking internally? Oh, dang, right. But if they show that every 300 people on that plane is gonna Oh, my God, we're going down, right? So I would say don't, don't expose that negative emotion or that contempt is but it's sometimes it's hard, because I've talked to hundreds of paedophiles, and obviously their behaviour is disgusting, but if I show that and I and I'm not curious and I'm judgmental, they're going to shut down on me. So I always am extremely curious about leisure activities. So if I was talking to you, I would focus on your marathons and how that journey came about and what you get out of it. And, you know, I would let you bathe in that be. And I wouldn't try to one up you. You wouldn't say 5k and say, Oh, I did a half marathon. And you'd say, I did a half marathon. I'd say, Oh yeah, I did a full marathon. And you said, Oh, I did London, yeah, I did Chicago. And then you say, I did a half Ironman, well, I did a full Ironman, yeah, it's we get into this tit for tat and modern communication where I bring it up. I'll let you talk about it. You know, I may ask about your shoes. What kind of nutrition you use on the course? And as a course of that, you're going to start man, Brad kind of knows a little bit about this, and you asked me the question then about, so do you run so too many times in conversation, and I'm sure you get this is you bring it up, and somebody instantly thinks that they're building rapport with you by saying they did the same thing. Nope, you're just being a jerk. You. Right? So sorry. I took that question and kind of turned a little bit I thought, I think that that's such an important lesson. And, you know, I think we use metaphors a lot when we're talking to people, and I always need to do the preparation. So for you, I would use metaphors about dentistry. I would use metaphors about, you know, running and taking care of yourself and personal development. And you know that life is a journey, that life is a marathon, that we have this many books of life I would talk about, maybe if you were a bad guy, I'd say, look, we've identified the problem here. Similar to dentistry, we take a bite, ring, X ray, we see where there's a problem, and what do we need to do? We need to go fix that problem. Because if we don't fix the problem, John, we're next thing. You know, we're doing a root canal. I mean, sounds like it sounds like a goofy metaphor, but for you, I could not be talking about the crime, but I could use dentistry as the metaphor to connect brother.

Agi Keramidas: 35:55

I want to thank you so much for this conversation. It was fascinating. I appreciate you. I want to wish you the very best when spreading this empowering message of you know how to improve our communication. I will leave it to you for your parting words. My

Brad Beeler: 36:16

parting words are a great interview, and you threw me three or four questions that I've never been asked before. So it's like anything else, right? Is that to be better at podcasting or communication, you can't do the same thing every day. When I do jujitsu, I like to go to different schools, because you're not in this echo chamber. You get somewhere else and you try something else. So you threw me in a different echo chamber here today, which is always good. You showed me some different things. I have to respond to them. It's going to make me 1% better today. So mission accomplished.

Agi Keramidas: 36:47

Thank you for listening to this conversation with Brad Beeler. I hope it has given you a fresh perspective on how to navigate difficult conversations and create meaningful connections. If this conversation inspired or helped you. If it gave you something meaningful, consider supporting the show. Just visit personal development mastery podcast.com/support or tap the link in the episode description. As a thank you, I will send you a personal, small gift and mention you in a future episode. Thank you for being part of the journey until next time stand out. Don't fit in.