The Art of Manliness - #513： Be Your Own Bodyguard

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. If you've

00:00:11.040 ever been in an event where there's a prominent person like a politician, celebrity or business

00:00:15.740 executive, you've likely noticed the dudes wearing sunglasses and sporting an earpiece

00:00:19.600 trying to look as unassuming as possible while vigilantly keep an eye out for their client

00:00:23.920 or what's also called a principal. These guys are part of a personal security detail and

00:00:28.200 their job is to protect VIPs from harassment and harm. Most of us will likely never be

00:00:32.740 able to afford our own bodyguard, but that doesn't mean we can't use the same mindset

00:00:36.620 and skills these professionals use to protect their high-powered clients, to protect ourselves

00:00:40.660 and our loved ones. Today on the show, I talk to a former executive bodyguard, his name's

00:00:44.720 Nick Hughes, about his book, How to Be Your Own Bodyguard. We begin our conversation discussing

00:00:48.960 Nick's stint in the French Foreign Legion and how that transitioned to his work in executive

00:00:53.020 protection. We then discuss how a bodyguard's primary focus is to prevent violence or altercations

00:00:58.180 from occurring in the first place and the tactics that can accomplish that goal. Nick

00:01:01.620 walks us through how criminals pick their victims and how to avoid being targeted. We

00:01:05.320 then discuss how to verbally diffuse a situation before it turns to blows and the legal ramifications

00:01:09.700 of self-defense. We enter conversations with tactics you can use to stay safe whether you're

00:01:13.720 a vacation abroad or driving the streets of your hometown. After the show's over, check

00:01:17.660 out our show notes at aom.is slash bodyguard. Nick joins me now via clearcast.io.

00:01:28.180 All right, Nick Hughes, welcome to the show.

00:01:34.320 Thanks, mate. Great to be here.

00:01:35.720 So you wrote a book, How to Be Your Own Bodyguard. Before we get to the content of the book and

00:01:40.100 how we can do a better job of defending ourselves and our families, let's talk about your background

00:01:44.880 because it's really interesting. You served in the French Foreign Legion, and this is a military

00:01:50.820 organization I think a lot of people have heard of. They probably, I mean, I've seen in like

00:01:54.760 just referenced in pop culture. I think there was a Pepe Le Pew cartoon where he joins the French

00:01:58.840 Foreign Legion. But like a lot of people don't know a lot about it. So what is the French Foreign

00:02:04.660 Legion?

00:02:05.640 Well, in a nutshell, it was set up in 1831 by King Louis Philippe in France. And the French,

00:02:13.020 like a lot of other countries, you know, the English, the Dutch, the Portuguese were all

00:02:16.660 running around the world, setting up their empires. And the French were all through Africa.

00:02:21.620 And war was wiping out the troops. And so was malaria, which they didn't know what the cause

00:02:28.340 was at that point, but it was decimating their garrisons. And the king went, you know, we need

00:02:33.480 more soldiers and like we can't get them. And he said, what if we use foreigners? And his advisor

00:02:38.640 said, you know, why the hell would a foreigner want to come and fight for France? And he said,

00:02:41.800 well, we'll set up a legion of them and we will give them a fresh start. So they can be wanted for

00:02:47.460 murder. They can be wanted for any sort of crime on the run for anyone, want a second chance at life.

00:02:52.280 We'll give them a fake name. And if they serve for five years with us, they get the right to French

00:02:57.920 citizenship. And that wasn't promising a lot in those days because most guys didn't make it through

00:03:02.800 the five years. And that's essentially how it started. And it's been around ever since.

00:03:08.100 And are those rules still in time? I mean, that's a myth around it that you can like have any type of

00:03:12.280 background and you can join. Is that still in place? Yeah, that changed. You know, warfare

00:03:17.140 changed. You now need guys who are a hell of a lot more smarter than, you know, fix a bayonet and run

00:03:21.520 at a machine gun nest. And they got the opportunity to pick and choose. They no longer take murderers.

00:03:29.200 If you're guilty of any sort of felony, basically anywhere in the world, the legion works hand in

00:03:34.300 glove with Interpol and the French gendarmes. And we'd have guys try and join. And they usually tell

00:03:40.220 them, look, you can turn yourself in and that's going to go better for you or we can turn you in.

00:03:45.020 But they'll still take, the French government still works on that basis that they used to do

00:03:49.620 here in England where, you know, you get convicted of something, you know, shoplifting, steal a purse,

00:03:54.400 steal a car. And the judge would offer you, look, you can go join the military or you can go to prison.

00:03:59.380 And of course, a lot of guys would opt for the military. And the French still do that.

00:04:03.900 But capital crimes, yeah, you can't get in. That is one of the myths.

00:04:07.300 But it's still a legion that's just for foreigners, correct?

00:04:11.440 Yeah, they say that. And legally, a French kid is not allowed to join. But the legion's made up of

00:04:17.880 about, when I was in there, about 40% of them are French. And the way they get around that is they

00:04:23.500 give that kid a ID card saying he's from Belgium or he's from Switzerland or he's Canadian. And that

00:04:31.260 way, if he's stopped on the train by a guard and he starts talking perfectly fluent French, that explains

00:04:36.420 why. So, I mean, what drew you to joining the French Foreign Legion? Like, how old were you when that

00:04:40.820 happened?

00:04:42.120 24. I was with a karate organization in Australia that their whole focus was on security and self-defense

00:04:49.300 and the practical side of martial arts as opposed to tournaments. And so, we had schools across the

00:04:54.740 country. We did all the crowd control work, had pretty much every single nightclub in every major

00:05:00.800 city in the country. Our guys were the bouncers. We did bodyguard work for every visiting rock and roll

00:05:06.040 band. And some of those guys are still working with those bands to this day. And I got into that

00:05:11.220 side of it and loved it. But I wanted to go to the next level, which was diplomatic protection.

00:05:15.500 And we didn't have any in Australia at that time. Even the prime minister of Australia had an old

00:05:20.640 retired cop walking around with a wheel gun was his whole security because we'd never had any

00:05:24.740 terrorism or anything. And everyone told me who was in the industry, you know, you're going to have

00:05:28.980 to go to America or Europe because that's where the market is. And I landed in England because

00:05:34.280 my grandparents are English. It was easier to get into there than the States. I went around the

00:05:39.340 couple of agencies that furnished these bodyguards for people and found out that they only hired people

00:05:44.200 who were ex-special forces, which makes sense when you think about it. And I arrived, you know,

00:05:48.960 black belt in hand, thinking I was ready to go. And they laughed and said, come back once you've been

00:05:53.920 through the military. At that point in time in England, they had, this was what, 84, so massive

00:05:59.720 unemployment all through Europe. And to get into the British army, it was about a one and a half

00:06:04.320 year waiting list to even apply. And then another one and a half before his training started.

00:06:09.580 But I bumped into this Irish guy on one of the bodyguard teams. And he said, mate, I was in the

00:06:13.420 legion. And he said, if they take you, they'll take you straight away. And popped across, rolled up in

00:06:20.100 the fort in Marseille and was in three days later.

00:06:23.200 Wow. And what did you do during your tenure there?

00:06:27.060 Well, I wanted to be a paratrooper and a medic. I figured those would be the two best things for

00:06:31.560 my future career. And I ended up in the parachute regiment, despite being way too big for French

00:06:37.960 parachutes. I was too heavy. I was over the safe weight limit by about 20 kilos. And I could only

00:06:43.380 just fit inside the harnesses at six foot eight. I'd be the last one out of the door of the plane. I was

00:06:48.780 still the first guy to hit the ground. So I started breaking my feet. And at that point,

00:06:53.300 they said, this isn't worth it. And I volunteered to go out to Africa. When I was in the parachute

00:06:58.520 regiment, I was in their equivalent of the Navy SEALs. We were recon divers. And when I went to

00:07:03.660 Africa, I got stuck in the same role. I was supposed to go to my medic training out there and ended up

00:07:09.460 getting shoved onto a signals course instead, because they were a man short. And finished the contract

00:07:14.880 five years later and rolled out. And I had a job ready to go. When I was on leave, I'd done a

00:07:20.920 bodyguard training course with a group in England run by some ex-SAS guys. And they told me, when you

00:07:27.820 get done, give us a call. And we were writing back and forth as the end of contract approached.

00:07:34.400 And I had a job waiting pretty much two days after I got out of the camp. I was working on a gig in

00:07:39.700 London. And so before the French Foreign Legion, you said you were doing bodyguard stuff for

00:07:44.060 rock bands and things like that. And you wanted to get into the diplomatic sphere.

00:07:48.000 Did that happen after you finished your contract with the French Foreign Legion?

00:07:52.180 Yes. Yeah. Those guys in England, it's a whole different ballgame. And you have,

00:07:56.300 there's two aspects of bodyguarding. You've got the guys that work executive protection,

00:08:01.440 diplomatic protection. So they're looking after politicians and businessmen. And then you have

00:08:05.800 these guys that look after celebrities. And they're almost two completely separate industries.

00:08:10.020 I was one of the rare few that could cross over. So I looked after a bunch of rock and roll bands,

00:08:15.740 both in London and over here in the States. And I could also go and work with the executives and

00:08:20.480 the corporate and the VIPs. I did a lot of work for the Saudi Royal family. And I'd look after a band

00:08:25.620 like Warrant a month later. Then I was in Russia looking after Peter Max, the artist. So I could sort of

00:08:30.520 flip back and forth. And I think that was largely because I'd done the rock and roll stuff in Australia.

00:08:35.040 So I knew what was required. And then I got trained up in the VIP executive protection

00:08:40.200 stuff by the SAS guy. So I could slot into that role too.

00:08:43.920 And are you still doing bodyguard work?

00:08:46.700 Mate, no, I'm too old. I was born at a very early age and I got out of that industry a long time ago.

00:08:52.900 I imagine it's a young man's game.

00:08:54.940 It is. And the other problem with it is, and you know, I didn't find, it's one of those things,

00:08:59.940 I'm sure a lot of us do this. You have this idea in mind of what it's going to be like to do a certain

00:09:05.020 job. And then when you get into the job, you find out what you imagined to be in reality are two

00:09:10.060 different things. And the problem I had with that is you don't know where the money's coming from.

00:09:15.200 You also have no life of your own. You know, when I was in the Legion, I knew every month I would get

00:09:20.340 X amount of money and I knew where I was going to be every week and where I, you know, when I'd be

00:09:25.060 back from a mission and when I'd go on a training course and how long I had in this particular

00:09:28.780 regiment. And with bodyguarding, you're sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. You get a

00:09:33.160 job, it ends, you've been paid. And now I have to figure out, is this money going to last me for a

00:09:38.460 day because I get another job tomorrow? Or is this going to last me for a year? And I'm going to have

00:09:42.560 to get some sort of side hustle. And then they don't tell you when the gig's going to finish.

00:09:46.720 And so the money's hit and miss. And what I meant by you have no life of your own,

00:09:51.540 you know, if I want to go and eat pizza and sit on the beach and the boss wants to go skiing and

00:09:55.360 eat Chinese, guess what we're doing? And, you know, I came to that conclusion five or six years

00:10:00.800 later of working on it. It just wasn't as much fun as I thought it was going to be.

00:10:04.620 So you transitioned to training people on self-defense?

00:10:08.900 Yeah, that was, I actually started tattooing people first. I had met a tattoo artist when I was

00:10:15.220 looking after Warren and he came out on the road and would tattoo all the band members.

00:10:19.980 And I do art. I've done it my whole life. I've actually sold watercolor paintings.

00:10:24.920 And he looked at my sketchbook and said, man, you ever want to learn how to tattoo, I'll teach you.

00:10:30.220 And I've sort of stuck that in the back of my head and yet, well, when am I going to do that?

00:10:34.100 And when I got out of bodyguarding, I thought, well, hell, I'll go back to the Legion because,

00:10:39.040 you know, I enjoyed it. You're being paid to live and work in the South of France and Africa,

00:10:42.740 and you're being paid, you know, to jump out of planes, shoot and scuba dive and all that stuff

00:10:47.000 that people pay a fortune to do in Civvy Street. And I thought, man, if I could learn to tattoo

00:10:52.160 and do that while I was in the Legion, I have my equipment under the bed and then after hours work

00:10:56.760 on guys, there would be my side hustle. So I called him up and he said, yeah, get your butt over here.

00:11:02.080 And I ended up in the States. Plan was to work with him for three months, learn the ropes and go back

00:11:07.800 in the Legion. And then I met my now ex-wife and that changed the whole thing.

00:11:12.100 Sure. So let's get to your book, How to Be Your Own Bodyguard, because this is basically your,

00:11:16.740 you've taken your insights, you've learned from firsthand experience from the French Foreign

00:11:20.580 Legion and doing bodyguard for VIPs and how just regular citizens, civilians can apply this to their

00:11:26.960 own lives. And I thought what was great about your book is that you spend a lot of time talking about

00:11:33.500 self-defense before the altercation occurs. Because I think a lot of people, when they talk

00:11:37.800 and think about, I got to learn how to defend myself, they think about the actual moment of

00:11:41.960 physical altercation, right? The punch, you know, when someone draws a weapon, but you highlight in

00:11:46.940 the book, you know, as a bodyguard, your job is to even just prevent that from happening in the first

00:11:51.920 place. Yeah, you're absolutely right. When I went through bodyguard training and we're doing so much

00:11:57.740 of the focus, you know, I'm assuming again, this is that image we have, right? I'm going to learn how to

00:12:01.620 shoot guns. I'm going to run cars through roadblocks, jump out of helicopters, do all this

00:12:05.120 crap. And you're in there and you're learning pretty much the entire job is about avoidance.

00:12:10.220 So I'm going to take a client down, you know, someone from an American company is going to

00:12:13.840 open up a factory in South America and they've got to go down there and do the ribbon cutting.

00:12:17.740 Well, the risk there is he's going to get kidnapped. And of course, it's announced in the

00:12:20.880 local newspapers that he's going to be visiting. So we have to have an advanced team goes down and you

00:12:25.940 do a threat analysis and you try and work out who the bad actors are down there.

00:12:29.480 Yeah. And it's all about preventing any sort of conflict whatsoever. And I'm comparing that to

00:12:37.160 all the self-defense and I'd trained, you know, living and worked in 26 different countries around

00:12:41.660 the world. And everywhere I went, I would find the local martial arts school and train. So I've

00:12:46.060 trained in, you know, judo, jujitsu, aikido, karate, 50 different styles, everywhere I'd lob up,

00:12:51.700 I'd train with them. And it's always the same thing. You know, you start with the attack and I was

00:12:57.000 sitting there on the bodyguard course, one of them, I've done three. I'm sitting on the course

00:13:00.940 one day going, why is no one teaching this to civilians? You know, why are they all learning?

00:13:06.540 Oh, the guy's got you in a headlock or he's strangling or he's coming at you with a knife

00:13:10.020 when so much of it starts way before that. And I started to sort of analyze it all.

00:13:15.960 And I thought, why not give this knowledge to the people that need it? You know, most,

00:13:19.160 the average person goes on vacation and they're going to be targeted and they can't afford a bodyguard

00:13:23.040 team. I mean, we're expensive. So I decided to put that information in for him. And it comes in,

00:13:29.060 if you've read the book, you've read the bit about SEVA, which was the acronym I came up for.

00:13:33.680 And all crime essentially starts with S stands for selection of the victim. And then they isolate

00:13:39.520 the victim. Then they use some sort of verbal patter to approach close enough to launch their attack.

00:13:45.180 So if you break it down that way, 75% of self-defense is learning how not to be selected.

00:13:53.100 Being careful when you're isolated or alone, how to deal with that verbal altercation.

00:13:58.200 And only 25% is the actual, what we call hard skills or fighting your way out of something. And I

00:14:03.000 figured if you do that, just like in bodyguarding, if you do the 75% correctly, the chances of you

00:14:08.520 needing the hard skills are almost non-existent. So that's what the book's about.

00:14:12.440 Well, let's walk through that SEVA acronym. So selection. So what can people do

00:14:16.700 to increase the chances that they're not selected as a victim of a crime?

00:14:21.840 Okay. The first thing I would recommend is you read a study by a couple called Grayson and Stein.

00:14:28.500 That was fascinating. They filmed a hundred people walking down the street. They took the film and

00:14:35.000 they went into people who prey on other humans. They went into the prison system. And so they

00:14:40.180 interviewed murderers and rapists and muggers. And they arranged time off their sentence if they took

00:14:47.780 part in the study. And they showed the film of these people walking and they had a little clipboard

00:14:52.220 and under each person is a number. And they're like, tell us who you would pick as victims.

00:14:57.140 And they were stunned when they got the sheets back from, you know, a couple of hundred of these guys

00:15:02.140 and they had all picked the same people. And, you know, initially you're thinking, okay,

00:15:06.800 I bet they're all tiny and they weren't, or I bet they're all women. And they weren't. Some of these

00:15:11.560 guys they chose were big guys. Some were women. It had nothing to do with color. It had nothing to

00:15:17.120 do with size. It had nothing to do with religion. It was purely based on how you carried yourself.

00:15:23.180 And that dovetails with something that's close to my heart, which is bullying. And I have a teen

00:15:27.600 class at my Krav Maga school because I was actually bullied when I went to school. And one of the things

00:15:33.060 I know with the, you know, anti-bully movement here that's largely ineffective is these parents get

00:15:38.720 angry that the school isn't doing enough. And they take the kid out of the school and put him

00:15:42.620 into another one. And what do we know happens, right? Two months later, that kid's being bullied

00:15:46.000 again. And you can put him in six different schools and he's just going to get bullied

00:15:49.980 every single time he goes somewhere new and shows up because of this study that he's carrying himself

00:15:56.060 the same way, which is a trigger to the bullies. And further to that, there's a more recent study now

00:16:01.480 out of England where someone said, well, does bullying stop when you leave school? And so they tracked all

00:16:07.020 these kids that had been bullied at school and found out that they were victims of bullying in

00:16:11.760 the workplace, cyber bullying. They were more likely to be mugged. They were more likely to have

00:16:16.140 their houses broken into and so on. So number one is the way you carry yourself. And, you know,

00:16:21.080 there's a bunch of stuff in the study that will, you know, if you read it online, goes into the

00:16:26.220 details of the things they found. But basically, these people don't walk at the same pace as other

00:16:31.480 people and they don't have the same gait that other people have. So that's one part of it.

00:16:36.160 Another part is fairly obvious, trying to be the gray man, which is a term that comes from,

00:16:41.380 you know, the spook industry, or you want to be the guy that sort of doesn't stand out,

00:16:45.900 doesn't draw attention to himself, flits into somewhere, he's at the party for a couple of

00:16:49.820 hours meeting everyone, getting information he leaves, and no one ever remembers what he looked

00:16:53.680 like or who he was. And then there are some more obvious ones like, you know, leave the valuable

00:16:58.700 jewelry at home. Don't go rolling into, you know, some third world, very, very poor country

00:17:04.120 with gold Rolexes on and great big cameras hanging around your neck because you're setting yourself

00:17:08.180 up. You're advertising basically, hey, you know, take me. Another thing is pay attention to your

00:17:13.500 surroundings. And that's probably one of the biggest. Criminals are looking for opportunity

00:17:18.460 and we call it task fixation. If you're sitting there staring at the ATM screen, staring at the gas

00:17:25.660 nozzle that you've got in the car while you're pumping gas, if you're looking down at your phone,

00:17:29.580 it makes it very easy for the bad guy to approach and take your stuff. So one of the biggest things

00:17:34.800 is just pay attention to your surroundings at all times. And I imagine this selection,

00:17:39.120 you can apply this selection idea to your house as well to prevent burglies and home invasions.

00:17:44.020 Like you want to, you want to present your house in a way that it's not like,

00:17:48.420 it's not robbable or it doesn't look desirable to rob or whatever.

00:17:52.180 Yeah. All crime fits that parameter. I mean, it doesn't matter if it's an attack on a person.

00:17:57.020 We teach it that way because, you know, the students that come to me are primarily interested

00:18:00.640 in self-defense of themselves. But yeah, every single crime, whether it's a carjacking or a

00:18:05.500 burglary, you know, it starts with choosing what sort of a car do I want to jack or what house am I

00:18:10.800 going to break into? And one of the ways they'll go for your house, for example, is, and this is one

00:18:15.100 of the ones we talk in isolation in SIBA. If you go to a big box store to buy your, you know, 60-inch TV,

00:18:23.200 pay particular attention when you're driving home that you're not being followed,

00:18:26.300 because this is how these guys go shopping. So they'll sit at the big store. They watch you come

00:18:30.760 out with the TV, put it in, they follow you home. And now they know you've got a brand new TV inside

00:18:36.060 the house. And that's obviously going to make you a target. And there's parts of the country where

00:18:41.480 that's massively prevalent, but they'll even hit you in the driveway when you get to the house.

00:18:45.320 They don't even wait to break in. They just walk right up on the driveway, pull guns and take the

00:18:49.180 stuff and drive away. Jeez. Well, I mean, related to that, one thing I've heard, tip I've heard,

00:18:53.900 is at Christmas time, be careful of putting boxes out on your driveway because you're basically

00:18:58.900 advertising, oh, I got this thing and this thing and this thing. And don't do that.

00:19:03.620 Yeah. Cut the boxes up, get a box cutter, cut them up into small pieces, stick it inside black

00:19:08.240 trash bags. Don't stick the big box. That's absolutely correct.

00:19:11.080 All right. Let's move on to isolation. So I guess that's just a matter of don't become isolated

00:19:16.140 because that's dangerous.

00:19:17.180 Well, I mean, it comes down to the old saying, right? There's safety in numbers.

00:19:19.980 So I tell my female students, if you're going to go shopping, right, call up one of your

00:19:23.740 girlfriends and go with her. It's a lot harder as a predator to control two people than it is to

00:19:28.840 control one. And controlling three becomes even more problematic. And that's taken straight out

00:19:34.580 of scuba diving, the old buddy rule. The other thing is practice a lot of what we call counter

00:19:39.920 surveillance and situational awareness when you're in that situation, because it's when most people

00:19:44.960 tune out. So a lot of crime happens on the periphery of tourist events. So if you've got

00:19:50.680 a fireworks display downtown, for example, criminals will go there because it's like the

00:19:54.840 watering hole on the African plains, right? Predatory animals go to the watering hole to

00:19:59.020 get dinner because all the animals are going to be at the watering hole. So criminals who are going to

00:20:04.000 target you will go to where there's a crowd event like that. And they love it when your attention

00:20:08.980 is distracted. So you're sitting there looking at the fireworks and all that stuff. So they'll

00:20:12.340 pick you out. Now you leave to walk. And this is where all the crimes happen. You cut through the

00:20:17.360 alley to the parking lot to go where you parked your car. And this is when most people switch off.

00:20:21.960 You know, the fireworks display is over, the nightclub shut down. And now they're walking

00:20:25.920 along, checking the messages on their phone again. And they're oblivious to the fact that the guy comes

00:20:31.200 up and gets them. And that's telling because I work with a lot of law enforcement officers and I've

00:20:35.980 trained some of the local SWAT teams on executive protection. And one of the things we're always

00:20:40.200 talking about is how many victims of crime will say, oh, the guy came out of nowhere.

00:20:45.400 And, you know, Merlin the magician isn't running around mugging people. It appeared as if he came

00:20:50.800 out of nowhere because you had your head up your ass and the guy was able to approach you because

00:20:55.320 of this task fixation problem. And had you been paying attention, had you had your head up and

00:21:00.080 been looking around, he wouldn't have been able to do it and he would have picked someone else.

00:21:04.160 So, but sometimes, yeah, sometimes criminals, they will just like maybe pickpocket,

00:21:08.200 steal from you without even talking to you. But that SIVA part, there is often a verbal

00:21:12.580 interview that occurs. What is the criminal trying to do with that verbal interview?

00:21:18.100 Well, let me go back to the pickpocket thing. It's actually funny. Pickpockets will use verbal.

00:21:22.940 A lot of times they won't, right? The actual pickpocket, what they call a dip,

00:21:26.400 will come up and bump you and take your stuff. But there have been many instances where,

00:21:31.180 and this is a classic, right? The guy will be on the subway and he'll yell out to the entire

00:21:36.040 carriage. Hey, everybody, check your stuff. I've just noticed I've had my wallet picked.

00:21:41.420 And of course, everyone on the train now pats their pocket to make sure their wallet's there.

00:21:46.680 Well, that guy's part of a team and they're all watching everybody on the train to see where they

00:21:51.860 pat. So if I watch you pat your back pocket and your wife lifts a handbag and looks inside and

00:21:57.800 someone else pats his jacket pocket, now we know where the wallets are. So we don't have to waste time.

00:22:02.640 We can just go right up against you. And when the train stops at the next carriage and everyone's

00:22:06.640 getting out and those guys are that good, they don't care that they forewarned you.

00:22:10.200 And I mentioned in the book, there's a sign in India across the alleyway between all the American

00:22:16.060 hotels. And it's written in about 50 different languages that said, watch out for pickpockets.

00:22:20.100 And it was the pickpockets who put the sign up. Because again, you do that same thing. You see the

00:22:23.940 sign and you go, oh my God, and you pat wherever your wallet happens to be. And all you've done is told

00:22:29.040 them where it is. So you just make their job easier. But back to the verbal, yeah, it's used

00:22:33.640 as a distraction technique. And I was talking to some of the local cops that were doing undercover

00:22:38.620 work about eight years ago. We had a spate of muggings downtown when people were leaving the

00:22:43.660 nightclubs. And so these cops would put some money hanging out of their pocket, pretend they were drunk,

00:22:48.820 stick a gold Rolex on and stumble down the road. And they had earpieces and microphones waiting to catch

00:22:54.280 these guys. But when they talked to the victims, they found out that a lot of these guys were still

00:22:58.940 using the classic, have you got the time? And of course, if you ask me that, I've either got to look

00:23:03.600 down at my watch, or if you're a member of the Snapchat generation, you pull your phone out and look

00:23:07.780 at the screen of the phone. And again, you're taking your attention away from them and looking at

00:23:12.820 something else, which gives them the opportunity to launch.

00:23:15.700 And besides that, as a distraction, sometimes you talk about in the book, sometimes they'll just yell or

00:23:20.500 just try to intimidate you, basically.

00:23:22.920 Cold fronting, yep. And that's no different. Again, there's so many comparisons to wild animals.

00:23:29.960 When a wild animal's about to attack, it does that big screaming roar and it causes that momentary

00:23:34.580 flinch in its prey and it enables the animal to get close enough. And you'll get this thing where the

00:23:39.880 guys will start screaming and yelling at you in your face. And again, it's an intimidation thing.

00:23:43.980 No one likes being yelled at. And they'll scream so violently and stick their chin in your face

00:23:49.100 that the average person who's not experienced with non-consensual violence freezes and then

00:23:54.460 gets done. And then there's a whole aspect of verbal, which comes under the heading of social

00:24:00.200 violence. And this is what Rory Miller calls the monkey dance. And that's where we've all done

00:24:06.360 this. If a guy goes to a new school, he goes into a military unit, he goes to prison, he goes to

00:24:11.040 anywhere where there's a group of guys, a new neighborhood, his parents move. He's going to

00:24:15.160 have to go through this. Who are the new kids? And he's going to be the interloper trying to join

00:24:20.340 that group. And someone's going to challenge him. There has to be a fight between two of the kids

00:24:24.960 to establish his position in the hierarchy. And the thing with social violence is there are rules

00:24:30.440 attached to it. Like, you know, no one's going to get seriously hurt. They'll break it up before that

00:24:34.040 happens. And he might come home with a black eye and the other kid's got a fat lip, but both sides

00:24:38.480 have sort of used to, even if you lose, it doesn't matter. You stepped up to the plate and showed that

00:24:42.760 you're willing to defend yourself. And that's okay. Now the group accepts you. So there's a lot

00:24:47.840 of that when you walk into a bar, like you're driving across the country and you stop to get

00:24:51.900 directions or grab a drink, and you're the interloper in that group. A lot of times you'll

00:24:56.220 run into these clowns that, you know, will bump you at the bar and like, what are you looking at?

00:24:59.880 You're looking at my girlfriend. I saw you take my money off the pool table. You knocked my beer

00:25:04.800 over. You owe me a beer. And so there's a lot of this starts with that, you know, verbal intimidation

00:25:09.640 again. And we cover how to deal with that because if I can say something in that situation to make it

00:25:16.580 worse, which is pretty easy, I can obviously say something that will make it better. And so we

00:25:21.940 steal from the playbook of the hostage negotiations guys in trying to use some de-escalation.

00:25:27.980 But there is a caveat in that there are people who teach only that. And the reality is there are some

00:25:34.220 guys, they're not talking. They're just going to walk up and belt you. You know, we've got clip

00:25:38.100 after clip of people, you know, usually mental patients off their meds, but you know, they'll

00:25:43.120 just be walking down the street and they'll just start randomly stabbing people, for example. Or

00:25:46.680 you can work on all the verbal dissuasion techniques you like. That's not going to do you any good in

00:25:50.540 that situation. Right. And we can talk about some of those verbal diffusion techniques here in a bit,

00:25:54.400 but like the last part of this sequence is attack. And that can happen in a variety of ways.

00:25:59.540 A shove, a punch, weapons, could be anything. Yeah, there's a whole gamut. I mean, it's literally like

00:26:05.700 we said, it can be social, it can be asocial, there can be weapons involved, weapons can be

00:26:09.660 broken down into categories of impact, edged, projectile, chemical. There can be a mob attack,

00:26:15.340 it can be a mob armed with weapons. I mean, that's worst case scenario. So yeah, there's a whole,

00:26:19.900 that's why, you know, there are people who, you know, verbal judo books and stuff that sort of

00:26:24.560 come from the premise of, oh, I can talk my way out of anything. And I run into people at parties

00:26:29.500 that tell me that, and you can't. And then there are people who, I carry a gun, everything's going to be,

00:26:35.140 you know, solved with that. And that's wrong to be truly, you know, effective at this. You have

00:26:40.320 to have the whole range. You have multiple tools. Okay. So we've thought we've went through how a

00:26:45.180 criminal thinks when he's going through deciding on which victim to select. Let's talk more about

00:26:50.740 your experience as a bodyguard. When you say you walk into a place or even before you go to a place,

00:26:56.000 like you said earlier, you do a whole bunch of reconnaissance. You get an idea of the type of

00:27:00.400 people that are going to be there, where the entrance and exits are at. Obviously someone who's just,

00:27:05.140 defending themselves, their family, they can't oftentimes have the time to do all of that. So

00:27:09.620 what's something that people could do similar to what a bodyguard would do? Let's say they're

00:27:13.540 walking into a restaurant or a bar and they want to get a lay of the land. So they have an idea,

00:27:20.280 have a plan on what to do to protect themselves or the people they're with.

00:27:24.620 Well, the first thing I always start with before I do anything physical is I'm trying to establish

00:27:30.800 what we call a baseline. So if I'm in a library, right, the baseline is everyone's very quiet.

00:27:38.240 If I go to a rock concert, the baseline is everyone's very loud and they're holding up,

00:27:42.940 you know, in my day it was cigarette lighters. Nowadays, I think they hold up the flashlight

00:27:46.220 on their phone. If I go to a restaurant, you know, depending on the restaurant, there's going to be

00:27:51.980 another baseline. If I'm on the beach, there's another baseline. And what we're looking for is any

00:27:56.380 anomaly in the baseline. So if we go back to the Aurora cinema shooting in Colorado,

00:28:03.760 where that guy dresses as the Joker props the back door open. So that if the theater baseline is we

00:28:09.600 all walk in, people are sitting there eating their popcorn, watching the ads, talking, texting last

00:28:14.080 minute before the movie starts. If I had been sitting in that movie theater and I see the back

00:28:19.860 door propped open and I see a guy dressed as the Joker coming in and out of the door, bringing in,

00:28:24.900 you know, equipment, that's not fitting in the baseline. So that would have prompted me to get

00:28:30.180 up and go outside and ask management, you know, is there some sort of a show going on with the movie?

00:28:35.200 Is this normal? So never ignore that baseline. If you see anything out of the ordinary, you know,

00:28:40.620 I was in my tattoo shop when I first got to the States. So this was about 95. And in the middle of

00:28:46.800 summer, two guys walk in wearing full length trench coats and sweating profusely, you know,

00:28:53.980 and it's 99 degrees outside. And so what's the baseline? What's everybody wearing? They're all

00:28:58.880 in shorts and wife beaters. And here come these two guys rocking in, in coats. And immediately that

00:29:05.660 sets off the alarm bells and we turned around. Fortunately, I was showing a friend a new pistol

00:29:10.300 I just bought. So we turned around, I looked at these guys and they're like, oh, oh, and they bolted.

00:29:14.580 Two days later, we found out another tattoo shop got robbed by two guys in long trench coats.

00:29:18.680 So first thing I'm doing is establishing that baseline. The next thing I want to do is where

00:29:24.560 are the exits? And I mentioned in the book, we used to play a game. All the bodyguards would sit

00:29:29.180 down after a gig was over in England and someone coming back from the bathroom would grab you,

00:29:34.080 cover your eyes from behind and go, where are the exits? And if you couldn't point to them all

00:29:37.840 with your eyes closed, you had to buy dinner. So being aware of where they are is a big deal.

00:29:43.340 And then the next thing I'm always doing is sitting down and any girl that's ever dated a cop

00:29:48.340 or an ex-military guys run into this, we sit with our back to the wall so we can see who's coming in

00:29:55.320 and out of the restaurant. And again, any advance warning you can get. And so back to that tattoo

00:30:00.960 shop thing, you know, if I see two guys walking in like that and their mannerisms aren't fitting the

00:30:06.200 baseline, that immediately starts to get my spidey sense tingling and you're starting to watch,

00:30:11.140 you know, something's going down. The more advanced warning you can get at that, the better your

00:30:15.000 chances are of survival. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:30:20.140 And now back to the show. Right. And it typically, yeah, I've been doing all those things since I've

00:30:25.500 been talking to self-defense guys. I do all those things. I walk into a place establishing baseline,

00:30:30.200 looking for anomalies. I try to look for where all the exits are at. And I always sit with my back

00:30:34.660 to the wall. And here's the thing, it doesn't like people think, oh, if you got to be super paranoid

00:30:38.520 about this, like you don't, it literally, it becomes a habit and you don't really think about

00:30:43.080 it. Yes. Yeah. It's not paranoia at all. Paranoia is an actual mental condition. And someone who's

00:30:49.260 paranoid will be at home hiding under their bed. All right. They're afraid of everything. They're

00:30:53.840 afraid they're going to get attacked everywhere. And, you know, they're walking around in this

00:30:57.280 constant state where they're freaking out because they think everything evil in the world is going to

00:31:01.020 befall them. Preparedness, which is what this is, is a wholly different thing. It's got nothing to do

00:31:06.780 with paranoia. It's got nothing to do with fear. It's being prepared. You know, I don't put my seat

00:31:10.900 belt on when I drive the car because I'm afraid I'm going to have an accident. I put it on because

00:31:16.120 I'm preparing myself in the event that one happened, right? I've done something to alleviate it. I'm not

00:31:23.380 afraid. Otherwise I wouldn't get in the car and drive in the first place. And here's another thing.

00:31:27.660 I've had critics say, well, who wants to live their life like that? And I'm like, like what?

00:31:32.580 How long does it take you to put a seat belt on? You know, a second, how long does it take you to

00:31:38.240 sit with your back to a wall facing the door versus sitting with your back to the door?

00:31:42.920 How long does it take to go into a bathroom and go into the cubicle or the cabinet rather than

00:31:47.540 standing out in the open? All of these things take about two seconds longer. So there's really

00:31:52.700 no inconvenience. And as you said, after a while, it becomes your operating norm and you just do these

00:31:57.800 things. And again, the nice thing about it is the bad guys recognize the behavior and they leave

00:32:03.600 you alone. They're looking for the victim again, who's not paying attention, who's not doing those

00:32:08.300 things. Now, I imagine in addition to doing all these things, a bodyguard is also developing plans,

00:32:14.600 like multiple plans at the same time based on what if scenarios. Yeah, I'm going to contradict

00:32:20.780 myself here. We call ourselves professional paranoics because we walk around all day, you know,

00:32:26.520 what if, what if, what if, what if, if you're doing the job correctly. So I'm driving in the

00:32:31.100 car with the client and I'm sitting there, you know, what if this truck in front of us stopped

00:32:34.760 and two guys got out with rifles and ran at the car. And then when I pull up at the club we're going

00:32:39.660 into, I'm like, what if we get out here and three guys run out of the crowd and try and stab him? And

00:32:44.500 then we go into the hotel room. What if there's someone waiting inside the room? So you're playing

00:32:48.640 these drills all the time in your head. And the nice thing about those, you know, the Russians claimed

00:32:55.120 they came up with this thing called imagery rehearsal, which every sports psychologist and

00:33:00.760 every, you know, tier one athlete around the world uses now what we call imagery rehearsal.

00:33:07.140 And they've done studies on this with basketball teams where one team does the physical act of

00:33:11.840 shooting. One team imagines shooting and one team does a mixture of the both. And the team that does

00:33:17.840 the mixture of both, right, outperforms everybody else. And so every single professional athlete,

00:33:22.880 Gary Player used to talk about this in golf and they sit there and they visualize the shot before

00:33:29.160 they take it. And it's massively beneficial. I was pointing out to someone the other day,

00:33:34.620 this is what forms are in Japanese martial arts, by the way, it's the same stuff. So it goes way back

00:33:39.020 before the Russians in the sixties and goes back to the 15th and 16th century. I am running through

00:33:44.860 like someone who dry fires a pistol or a boxer who shadow boxes. I'm running through in my imagination,

00:33:50.680 right? What will be happening. Now, what we know is the subconscious can't differentiate between

00:33:56.280 what's real and what's imagined. So as far as my subconscious mind is concerned, I'm actually

00:34:02.620 in a fight if I'm doing one of those forms in martial arts. So when I'm sitting in the car with a

00:34:07.740 client and I'm visualizing something that could go wrong, if it does, my subconscious has already

00:34:13.400 dealt with it and I'm moving rather than the average person who's never thought about it. And all of a

00:34:18.500 sudden they're attacked. Now, here's the problem with that is when something happens to you, you

00:34:23.660 got a little guy monitoring, you know, sitting in the front of your head, basically behind a,

00:34:28.060 like a security guard with a bunch of camera screens. And he sees this thing going on and

00:34:32.160 he jumps up and runs back to the filing cabinet and goes, shows me, show me everything we've got

00:34:36.180 on someone coming at me with a gun. Well, the average person's never thought about that and it's

00:34:40.580 never happened. So they got nothing. So they basically freeze. And that's what causes that reaction

00:34:46.000 where people freeze and or go into shock. With someone who's trained for that, they go back

00:34:51.300 and pull the file out like, oh yeah, this is, you know, I remember this, we did this in so-and-so

00:34:56.480 and now it does the relevant response. And so we're capitalizing on a principle in psychology,

00:35:02.920 which is called recency. If whatever you've been thinking about last is going to come to hand first,

00:35:09.660 all right? So it's kind of like having files on your desk again. If the last file I looked at's on top,

00:35:13.760 it's easier to find than the one that's buried under the pile. So I spend my day when I'm working

00:35:18.420 with a client driving around wondering what if this happens, what if this happens? So you're

00:35:21.840 mentally prepared. And this all ties in with, you had this, you discussed this in the book,

00:35:26.040 had a whole chapter dedicated to the OODA loop, the observe, orient, decide, act. That whole what

00:35:30.740 is scenario, it sounds like you're basically orienting yourself. You're giving yourself mental models

00:35:34.900 to work with. So whenever something does happen, you can make a decision and act quickly instead of

00:35:39.920 having to develop the plan on the fly while it's happening and then try to act.

00:35:44.200 Yes, exactly. It's preconditioned responses. And that's going to make you a hell of a lot faster

00:35:48.840 than someone who's trying to guess or make it up as they go along. And if you go into the military

00:35:52.740 and you're looking at any SF unit that's worth their salt, during their basic training,

00:35:57.620 they're doing what's called immediate contact drills or contact response drills, depending on

00:36:01.600 which military you're in. But you're walking along on patrol and all of a sudden, another squad

00:36:06.460 playing the enemy pops up and ambushes you. And you drill that again and again and again and again,

00:36:11.900 with the concept being now I'm on patrol in a village somewhere and we're ambushed.

00:36:15.760 You're not sitting there like, where do we go? What do we do? Everyone knows exactly what they

00:36:20.360 have to do when they respond. Because conscious thought, there's a really good book called Thinking

00:36:25.140 Fast and Thinking Slow. And it talks about the difference between the amygdala, which is this

00:36:30.080 part of our reptilian brain that we're wired for survival, versus our neocortex, which is using

00:36:37.500 conscious thought. And he measures in the book how much faster one is than the other. And so you just

00:36:44.560 got to drill those responses until they become automated. And we found that, you know, someone

00:36:48.780 talked in a book and said, it's 10,000 hours. And I believe the author of that book has since

00:36:53.620 admitted those numbers aren't necessarily true. As I've told people before, you know, you didn't

00:36:57.980 ride your bicycle for 10,000 hours to get where it was automatic. And you didn't get kicked in the

00:37:02.760 balls for 10,000 hours before someone goes to throw a kick at your nuts and you pull back.

00:37:07.680 All right. There's some of those responses get conditioned a lot quicker. The number we've come

00:37:11.720 up with is roughly three to 500 repetitions. And it will start to get automated.

00:37:16.220 Right. And I think it's an important point. I love how you point this out with the OODA

00:37:19.860 loop section is that it's the person who completes their OODA loop the fastest is the person that

00:37:25.700 wins. So say there's a bad guy, he's got an OODA loop going on in his brain, even though

00:37:30.720 he might not know it. He's an advantage because he knows already what his plan is. You have

00:37:35.760 no clue that he's doing that. So the way you can sort of speed up your OODA loop is have

00:37:41.020 those plans in place. Like think about, okay, if the guy comes in here, what's my plan?

00:37:45.140 What am I going to do? If this happens, this is what I would do. You can make that. You

00:37:48.500 can make the decision. You can act.

00:37:50.240 People often forget the criminal decides when you're going to get attacked. You don't.

00:37:56.880 No, that's entirely on him. So you're always playing catch up. You're at least a second

00:38:00.880 and a half behind in the whole process. So, you know, he's sitting there on a street corner

00:38:05.180 looking for a victim and you come walking past, staring down at your phone and he goes,

00:38:09.780 it's you. And only next minute taps you on the shoulder and punches you in the side of the

00:38:13.300 head. He decided all of that. And you're trying to come to terms with it and process it and react

00:38:18.620 to it. And if you haven't got a preconditioned response, then yeah, you've virtually got no

00:38:23.420 chance at that point, which is why ambushes are so effective. You know, and you've got to have that

00:38:28.140 conditioned response hardwired in. And that only comes from training. It's why, you know, one of

00:38:32.880 the bank, I get calls every week. Do you do a self-defense course? And I'm like, what are you

00:38:37.200 talking about? They're like, oh, we want to come in for a couple of hours and learn something.

00:38:40.100 And I'm like, well, it'd be like me going to a golf pro and getting two hours worth of lessons

00:38:44.560 and, you know, putting the clubs in the cupboard and five years from now, I'm going to play Tiger

00:38:48.140 Woods. It's not going to do me any good. I have to do those three to 500 hours of training and build

00:38:53.880 that as, you know, hardwired into the system. And again, this, this, what is scenario you said,

00:38:57.960 you know, you're professional paranoid, but again, it doesn't take, you don't have to be super

00:39:00.940 paranoid about this. It's just a matter of just, you're sitting down and you just quickly,

00:39:04.300 like, this is what I do. I was like, okay, if there's a guy that comes in, or even if there's like a fire,

00:39:08.300 yeah, this is, this is my plan. It's like a tentative plan. I have, I have something and

00:39:12.680 it literally takes one to two seconds. Yeah. And you know, again, I, I jokingly use the term

00:39:17.700 professional paranoid because we're not, you know, I'm not afraid. I wouldn't be doing the job.

00:39:22.320 Right. It's just where we're prepared constantly by thinking about that. And as you said, it becomes

00:39:27.380 a habit. It's not something, you know, I'm not walking around looking over my shoulder every 15

00:39:31.820 seconds for stuff. It's actually nicer because I can relax because I'm less concerned about being

00:39:37.240 attacked and someone who has no plan and is fearful for that. So we've walked through on

00:39:42.420 some things already that we can do to prevent things from happening, you know, carrying ourselves,

00:39:47.000 dressing away where we don't make ourselves an easy target, positioning ourselves so that we

00:39:51.420 can increase the speed of our OODA loop so we can take action faster. But let's say we've done all

00:39:57.500 that. We've taken precautions to avoid an altercation, but someone starts a verbal confrontation with us.

00:40:02.540 And this is the stereotypical, the guy at the bar thing that you were talking about earlier.

00:40:05.580 Walk us through some tactics that we can use to de-escalate that verbal confrontation so it

00:40:11.620 doesn't go further to a physical violence.

00:40:14.340 Well, we actually role play these, you know, the military over the last couple of years and so have,

00:40:19.560 you know, forward thinking police departments realize the massive benefit in what we call

00:40:24.400 scenario based training. So, you know, instead of reading about it or watching a film,

00:40:29.620 you actually set up, you know, the police will set up a car and they'll do a vehicle stop and the guy

00:40:34.620 will walk up and they'll have a cop inside and he role plays, you know, and he role plays someone

00:40:38.340 who's being compliant and he role plays someone who isn't. We set those up in my crab school all

00:40:43.640 the time. We'll go out in the parking lot and we'll do parking lot disputes, which, you know,

00:40:47.940 massively common. And, you know, there's people actually killed over this crap every single year.

00:40:54.420 You know, you're driving around for 15 minutes trying to find a space and you finally see this person

00:41:00.380 walking to their car and you stop and you wait and they get in the car and they've done studies,

00:41:04.740 by the way, when they know you're waiting, they're going to make you wait longer and they're balancing

00:41:07.980 their checkbook and checking text messages and then they start the car up and check their makeup

00:41:11.560 and they're going through this whole thing. And then as that car backs out and you're ready to go

00:41:15.380 in, someone coming the other way steals the spot and people get irate over that. Next minute,

00:41:20.580 you get out of the car. Now, you haven't done anything wrong. You didn't know the guy was waiting

00:41:24.000 for 15 minutes. You just pulled into a parking space and you get out of the car and here's this

00:41:30.180 person apoplectic screaming at you. You know, so we rehearse that one. We do the bar thing. You know,

00:41:35.640 what the hell are you looking at? You were looking at my girlfriend. What are you looking at? All,

00:41:39.520 you know, do you have a problem with me? All of these things. And yeah, you have to practice them.

00:41:44.140 You know, the car lot dispute one, we take it a step further than everyone else. A lot of people do

00:41:48.540 those and they just go straight into, I'll chop him on the neck and kick him between the legs crap.

00:41:52.340 I do things like, yeah, well, let's role play this a step further. Who's in the car with you?

00:41:59.960 You know, do you have your two-year-old kid in the backseat and you're not going to punch this guy

00:42:03.540 that's mouthing off? Is that the message you want to send him? What happens if he watches you get

00:42:08.160 your ass kicked? Do you have the girl in the front seat that you met last night and this is your first

00:42:13.120 date? You know, how are you going to handle this situation? Are you getting out and it's one guy or

00:42:18.020 has he got five mates behind him? All of this is going to be, in other words, self-defense is all

00:42:22.060 context-driven. And the elegant solution, and this comes down to Sun Tzu, you know, the best battle

00:42:28.640 is the one you don't have to fight, is you're telling, mate, I didn't know you were waiting.

00:42:32.840 I'll give you the space. And we role play this and you watch people's expressions that you just

00:42:38.380 take the air right out of them because they're preparing themselves mentally for this big, you

00:42:42.980 know, FU, no FU. And you just go, dude, I didn't know you were waiting. Of course, I'll give

00:42:46.980 you the space. And they just deflate in front of you. Again, we have this, I do a demo where

00:42:53.700 I'll get a person out of the crowd at a seminar and I'll go, respond to me how you would respond

00:42:58.760 to me. And I'll put my hands up like I'm shaped up to them and they immediately respond and pick

00:43:03.340 their hands up. And then I'll walk up to them and put my hand out as if I'm going to shake

00:43:07.100 hands and they put their hand out as if they're going to shake hands. And then I'll get them,

00:43:12.000 they come up and I get them to do the boxing stance and I throw my hand out as if to shake

00:43:16.640 hands and everybody shakes hands. All right. So we're trying to disarm the person. So our

00:43:23.500 natural reaction is someone goes, you know, what the hell are you looking at? And you, I

00:43:27.220 don't know. I don't have my animal book on me and we, and that's it, right? That's going

00:43:31.100 to escalate. Or I can turn around and go that shirt, brother. That is amazing. I've been looking

00:43:35.480 for one of those for ages. My brother has been asking me to get one and I can't find him.

00:43:39.840 Where did you get that from? And now I've taken him off on a tangent. You know, he's

00:43:44.240 expecting the aggressive response. It's all scripted. You know, these guys are like, you

00:43:48.580 were looking at my girlfriend, right? You got two chances. You got two answers. Yes, I

00:43:52.180 was or no, I wasn't. If you say, no, I wasn't, the guy's going to say, you're calling me a liar

00:43:57.020 and that's justification in his mind for punching you. Or you say, yes, I was. And that's justification

00:44:02.420 in his mind for punching you. So again, you have to role play those things to figure out what

00:44:07.900 am I going to say so that I don't get punched. And that's the key for that one.

00:44:12.800 Yeah. I love that scenario you gave. We're looking at my girlfriend and you'd say, you

00:44:16.960 don't want to disagree with them because again, you'll say, you're calling me a liar. You

00:44:20.480 say, well, yeah, she looks like a friend of mine from high school. Is her name Susan?

00:44:25.360 Yep. Her name's Sally, right? She went to so-and-so. Yeah. And we've actually had to do that a step

00:44:30.320 further because one guy threw us a curveball in a seminar. We said, yeah, that's Sally, right?

00:44:33.980 And he said, yes, it is. And we're like, oh, so we had to figure out, all right, what would

00:44:39.140 we do if that happened? And then of course, you know, throw up this weird non-existent

00:44:43.080 last name. Yeah. Sally Mikkelpletz. And he's like, no, I ain't Mikkelpletz. It's Smith.

00:44:46.760 And you're like, oh, I thought it was Sally Mikkelpletz. Man, has she got a twin? Because

00:44:50.200 she looks exactly like this girl. And let me, let me show you a picture. And you know, you

00:44:54.040 start scrolling through your phone. And again, you're just using this stuff essentially

00:44:58.860 to distract them and take them off their, you know, A, B, C, you've gone A, B, F. And

00:45:05.220 it completely, you know, you go back to the OODA loop, right? They're expecting this pre-ordained

00:45:11.360 this is how it's going to roll out. And you throw something and that's it. It's done.

00:45:16.920 Let's say you've done that. The verbal de-escalation did not work. And they throw a punch or they

00:45:24.380 shove you. What should be your next step? Because this is where things get tricky. Do you want

00:45:28.700 to prevent as much as you can? Because by preventing violence, you stay out of the legal sphere,

00:45:35.320 basically. As soon as there's a punch thrown by you or the other person, you're going to

00:45:39.340 be put into civil court possibly or criminal in criminal court. So how do we manage that

00:45:44.460 aspect of self-defense?

00:45:46.440 Yeah. It's one of the things we're probably most famous for in my school. We're one of the

00:45:50.020 very, very, very few that actually teach the legal ramifications of the techniques we teach

00:45:55.740 you. And there's a very famous case in self-defense that most self-defense guys are aware of. Certainly

00:46:01.740 the Filipino martial art community is aware of it. And there was a kid in New York who

00:46:07.460 had been taught Filipino martial arts. And, you know, that's all for those familiar with

00:46:10.900 it. It's how to use a blade and how to use a stick. And they're really, really, really

00:46:15.460 adept at, you know, flensing meat off people. And they know where all the major blood vessels

00:46:19.560 are in a human body. And they'll stick you 15 times in three seconds with these preordained

00:46:24.760 templates and so on. Unfortunately for this particular student, no one taught him, you

00:46:29.900 know, legally, when can I get away with that? And this kid's in a bar in New York right

00:46:36.080 after they'd introduced the no smoking law. And the bouncer came over and told his buddy

00:46:40.360 he had to put his cigarette out. So they get into an argument. The bouncer's dragging this

00:46:44.660 kid out and his mate who's trained in the Filipino martial arts shoves the knife in this guy's

00:46:49.500 femoral artery and the bouncer dies. And that kid went to jail. One of his friends who helped

00:46:55.720 him get cleaned up and changed his clothes went, got convicted as an accessory to the

00:46:59.900 fact. And I was always surprised that no one sued the instructor for failing this kid and

00:47:06.120 not teaching them it in conjunction with this, here's 50 ways to kill someone with a knife,

00:47:10.540 you know, know when you can do this. And working as a bodyguard, you know, when I'm looking after

00:47:16.500 the banned warrant, for example, we toured, I think, 46 of the 50 states. And I can't possibly

00:47:23.140 pick up the local laws concerning self-defense because they will, there's statewide, there are

00:47:29.340 federal laws, there are statewide laws, there are city laws, there are county laws, and there's various

00:47:34.920 ordinances depending on jurisdictions that you're in. I can't possibly as a bodyguard going from,

00:47:40.240 you know, six towns in six nights, learn all that. So, you apply a general rule of thumb,

00:47:46.200 which is, there's two ways to look at it, you know, the reasonable man defense,

00:47:50.260 which is what the prosecutor is going to ask the jury, right? What would a reasonable person do in

00:47:55.080 the situation you found yourself in? And the other one is, do the, use the least amount of physical

00:48:00.560 force you can to resolve the situation. And if you follow those two guidelines,

00:48:05.720 all right, you're doing just about everything you can humanly do to reduce your risk of ending up

00:48:11.220 in legal hot water. And we talk about that, we, you know, I tell my students, you've actually got

00:48:15.220 two fights you have to win. You've got to win the physical one, and you also have to win the legal one.

00:48:20.600 And there are horror stories in this country. You know, I see them every week, that someone will

00:48:25.920 pull his gun out, shoot someone doing a home invasion or whatever, and next minute he's being sued.

00:48:30.240 And it costs, there was one I just read the other day. It was a Marine and crutches went down to tell

00:48:34.440 some drunks in front of his house to move along. He was trying to sleep. And the woman said,

00:48:38.780 I'm going to go get a gun from the car. And she came back. She actually had a knife hidden down the

00:48:42.920 back of a leg, but she told him she was getting a gun and he shot her. He won the criminal trial,

00:48:49.680 cost him 50,000 in legal fees. And now he's being sued by her for a hundred thousand. She survived.

00:48:55.840 So civilly, she's suing him for a hundred thousand dollars for lost wages and medical bills.

00:49:01.740 So, you know, it's 150 grand. That's a lot of damn money if you get this stuff wrong.

00:49:06.560 So yeah, the legal stuff is absolutely huge.

00:49:09.700 Right. So yeah, someone shoves you, you're not going to go to lethal force. That'd be a reason.

00:49:14.200 Yeah. There's a thing we teach and, you know, most law, a lot of law enforcement's gotten away from

00:49:18.600 it. I actually think it's still good. It's called the use of force continuum. And it basically lists all

00:49:24.160 the levels of force that the bad guy can use. So it starts with psychological intimidation. You

00:49:29.240 know, the guy's staring at you, you know, guys wearing gang colors and so on. Then it goes to

00:49:34.460 verbal, you know, what are you looking at? Now it comes over to the grabbing of the shirt.

00:49:38.820 Then it'll come to the punch. Then it will come to weapons. All right. And so we as civilians on the

00:49:44.500 right side of the fence have corresponding levels of response. You get some guy trying to break in your

00:49:49.500 back door at night and you go downstairs and turn your light on and shine a flashlight, right?

00:49:53.380 That's your psychological intimidation. Now you say, what the hell are you doing? Go away. I'll

00:49:57.320 call the cops. That's your verbal response, right? He comes in and tries to push his way through. And

00:50:02.580 a lot of guys are just shooting, you know, BS. What if it's, he's the drunk neighbor trying to get

00:50:07.640 into the wrong house, which happens a lot. So, you know, now you grab him and escort him off the

00:50:13.120 property, which is your right, you know, cause he's trespassing. And then he tries to swing or he

00:50:17.420 picks up a golf club and comes back and tries to hit you. So we have these same levels of

00:50:21.240 force that we can respond with. And the law is basically saying, you know, if he's pushing

00:50:26.180 me and shoving me, I can't pull my gun out and shoot him. You know, there's too many degrees

00:50:31.180 in there of difference. So I've got to try and match tit for tat, or I can go one level above

00:50:36.700 what he's doing is what they pretty much give law enforcement the right to do. And so we just

00:50:42.460 follow those same guidelines.

00:50:44.240 Right. Well, I'm going to put on my, I went, I went to law school and put on my legal cap.

00:50:47.440 Uh, what we just said is not legal advice. Uh, it's no, no, no, no, no, no. I tell my

00:50:53.080 students that all the time. In fact, about once a year, I bring a lawyer into the school

00:50:57.460 and I pay him for a couple of hours of his time. And all my students have questions prepared ahead

00:51:03.020 of time and, uh, they get to ask him and that is legal advice. Right. In the, in the interim,

00:51:08.400 we just give them, you know, general guidelines and we advise everybody, you know, if you're going

00:51:12.440 to buy, if you make the decision to buy a gun, for God's sake, go and talk to an attorney and learn

00:51:17.960 the rules, right. In your particular situation of when and where you can use that. Because one of

00:51:23.040 the ones we did on the bodyguard course, which was the first time I got exposed to it, is they gave

00:51:27.540 us a wax pistol, right? This is, you know, before simunitions existed. So you had a revolver and you

00:51:32.720 had these bullets packed with wax and they said, all right, you're looking after a client. You hear a

00:51:37.100 noise in the middle of the night, you come downstairs, we're going to open up the door and here's the

00:51:40.340 scenario. And they open up the door and here's a guy holding the TV set. And, you know, everyone

00:51:44.980 pulls the gun out and goes, put the TV set down. And the guy goes to hell with that and walks out

00:51:48.740 of the room. And everybody on the course shot him in the back of the head. And then they came over

00:51:53.680 and said, congratulations, you're all going to jail. Everyone's like, what? No, but he's, he's in the

00:51:57.720 house taking my TV set. And I was like, yes, you can't, you can't kill him for that. And there were so

00:52:02.980 many people that I run into who, you know, think I'm going to buy a gun for defense. And if I find

00:52:08.640 someone in my house, by gully, I'm going to shoot him. And legally you're going to end up in hot

00:52:12.860 water. You know, you, you, you go downstairs and that guy's walking out with your TV set. You can't

00:52:17.820 do anything with that gun to him and you try and shoot him and you're going to find out how that

00:52:23.240 works. Right. Yeah. And it varies from state to state. Like some States, they have like the castle

00:52:27.640 doctrine. So it's like anyone's in your home and they shouldn't be there. You can shoot them

00:52:32.340 possibly. And then there's some States where they're like, you have a duty to retreat. So you

00:52:35.720 actually, even in your own home, you got to go someplace and hide before the altercation

00:52:41.460 occurs. Yeah. And it gets weird. There's ones where if he's kicking the door on the other

00:52:46.480 side of the door, I am allowed to shoot him. But now he opens the door and comes inside.

00:52:50.640 Now I have to start retreating. It gets really bizarre.

00:52:54.200 It also gets bizarre. And like, what constitute, what is a house? Is it like, does it start at

00:52:57.560 your driveway? Does it start at the door? So that's why it's important, especially with the

00:53:02.720 United States, with our federalism, however, every state's got different laws. You want

00:53:07.100 to check in on that.

00:53:08.460 Yes, absolutely. You've got to know your local laws. There were two people I read two years

00:53:12.660 ago, went to Washington, DC, I believe. And they were from Tennessee. One guy was from

00:53:18.040 Ohio, went to New York. And he's allowed to have guns at home and he traveled to New York

00:53:22.960 and he took his weapons with him. He didn't think there was anything wrong with that because

00:53:25.740 in his state, he's allowed to do it. And he left the gun on the bed in his hotel room in

00:53:30.300 New York and went downstairs to get dinner. The maid came in, saw it, called the cops and

00:53:34.660 he got charged, arrested, automatically 12 months in prison due to the Sullivan Act.

00:53:39.480 And then the other one was a woman from Tennessee that went to see the Washington Monument.

00:53:43.080 And she walked into the guard downstairs and said, it said no weapons. And she said, pulls

00:53:47.560 her gun out of her pocket and says, where do I leave this while I go inside? And she got

00:53:51.280 arrested. So yeah, it absolutely behooves you, anyone listening to this, to, you know,

00:53:55.540 wherever you're living and you want to check because just because your state says something

00:53:59.820 is, you know, you can have a, there's federal laws about the length of a knife. And then there

00:54:03.960 are state laws that say you can't have one. Then there are city ordinances that might overrule all

00:54:08.720 of that. And again, the guideline we give people is always go with the strictest. So in other words,

00:54:14.620 if the feds say you can have a shotgun and the state says you can't, right, then you've got to abide

00:54:20.820 by what the state says, because it doesn't matter if the feds say you can, if the state says you can't.

00:54:24.820 All right. So pick the hardest one and abide by that.

00:54:28.500 So we've talked about some just general principles of what things that you can do to apply while

00:54:32.860 you're out and about to protect yourself, to avoid altercations. I'd like to end this conversation

00:54:37.900 with a few very context specific, which you did this in the book, which I appreciate. So for example,

00:54:43.100 a lot of people travel, they're staying in a hotel. If you're staying in New York, leave your pistol

00:54:47.740 at home because that will get you in trouble. But what can people do to stay safe while they're

00:54:51.620 staying in a hotel? Man, I could write a book on this one because this is such a big part of

00:54:56.240 executive protection. You know, traveling with clients, we stay in hotels, right? So here's a

00:55:00.660 couple of good ones. One, I always pack a portable burglar alarm, which in my case is a door wedge

00:55:06.880 and a two foot by three foot piece of bubble wrap. And they roll up, you know, the wedge takes up no

00:55:14.180 space at all in your luggage and costs you about, I think you'd get a bag of those of three for about

00:55:18.320 $2 at Lowe's. Your bubble wrap costs you next to nothing. Get that from a UPS store. I roll it up

00:55:24.660 and keep that in my luggage. And then when I'm in my room at night, you know, the wedge gets kicked

00:55:28.700 under the door and the bubble wrap gets laid in front of the door. And both of those super, super

00:55:33.500 cheap. And it takes care of a lot of the hotels, you know, especially in third world countries,

00:55:38.280 the maids aren't paid a lot. They'll make copies of the keys and give them to their boyfriends. And then

00:55:42.620 your room can get rifled while you're not there. So that's a good one. Another one with my clients,

00:55:48.160 we're never allowed to book a room over the eighth floor because there's no fire truck in the world

00:55:53.020 can get a ladder up over the eighth floor. And, you know, people laugh about that and go, oh,

00:55:58.120 paranoid much. And I'm like, well, go check the fire in Vegas in which, you know, 98 people were

00:56:03.420 burnt to a crisp. Look at the twin towers on 9-11. You know, those fire trucks can't get that high.

00:56:09.020 My guidelines with my clients is always floor two or three, because if there is a hotel fire or you have

00:56:15.200 to get away, you can drop from those floors with little risk of physical injury and anything much

00:56:20.440 higher than that. And you've got problems. I tell my clients, you know, put the do not disturb sign

00:56:26.000 on the door and leave the TV on. And I will tip the maid on day one and tell her, listen, I'm good.

00:56:31.260 I'll come see you if I need anything. And that makes the room always look occupied.

00:56:36.740 Another one is don't use the hotel safe. People stick stuff in that and it gets taken all the time.

00:56:41.340 And most of those safes have a manufacturer's code in them so that if hotel security, because you know

00:56:47.440 how you go in there and you can program your own pin code in, you know, you set the lock and you

00:56:51.440 turn the thing and you've got so many seconds to put your pin code. People forget that all the time.

00:56:55.860 They call hotel security. They come up and put in four zeros and open the safe up. So most of them

00:57:00.200 have that back door into them. So things like that, you know, take a, now it's great. You can take a

00:57:05.160 picture of that little map on the back of the door that tells you how many exits to the fire escape

00:57:09.880 and which direction, because people forget if there is a hotel fire and you open the door,

00:57:14.540 the top two thirds of the corridor are going to be filled with smoke and all the exit signs are over

00:57:20.200 the door. So you're not going to see them. So you've got to be able to drop on the floor and crawl and

00:57:24.340 count the doors as you're going past and know which one the exit's in. And then there are things like,

00:57:29.220 you know, be aware of scams. We do a lot of work with lone female executives that travel because

00:57:34.500 obviously again, you know, they're targeted and there's a, you know, I tell them if you're at a

00:57:39.520 conference with your name badge on the second, you leave the conference floor, take your name badge

00:57:43.580 off because it makes it very easy for someone to spot the name and go, oh, there's Sally. You know,

00:57:47.600 they come up and knock on the door and go, Sally, it's us. And she hears her name and assumes that

00:57:51.600 someone she knows and opens the door to someone she doesn't know. Watch out for scams. I'm a little bit

00:57:57.600 hesitant to say this one because there could be some bad guys listening that go cool way to make money,

00:58:01.720 but, you know, I'd stand next to you checking into the hotel and I hear the guy say, you know,

00:58:08.220 yes, Mr. Smith, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's your keys. You're in room 417.

00:58:12.900 And now I go out in the parking lot or I go over to the courtesy phone. I give you five minutes to

00:58:18.180 get settled. Then I call your room and I say, it's Michael down on the front desk, your credit card.

00:58:24.000 It didn't get processed correctly. Let me save you the trip down. Just give me the numbers again.

00:58:28.100 And are you half asleep and jet lagged? You know, you just got undressed and you're like,

00:58:32.820 oh my God. All right. Yeah, cool. Let me just give you the number. I'm sitting down in the parking

00:58:36.540 lot, writing out your number. And then I go on a spending spree. So it's just being aware of

00:58:40.800 things like that. If they call you from the front desk and say, can you come downstairs?

00:58:44.640 You hang up and you call the front desk and say, did you guys ask for me to come down? Because

00:58:48.320 that's how someone got kidnapped out of South America. You know, they wandered down to the lobby

00:58:53.020 because they thought management had called them and the team was waiting in the lobby and snatched the guy.

00:58:56.720 So just stuff like that. You know, this is the hard thing. The criminals are so damn clever and

00:59:01.640 creative that every time they come up with one and we figure out a way to beat it, they're coming up

00:59:05.240 with another one. There's so many jumps ahead. I just wish they'd turn that creativity to business

00:59:09.340 and they'd be multi-billionaire damn entrepreneurs. Right. So another context specific situation you

00:59:15.760 talked about was when you're out in a car driving. Yes. What are some things that people can do,

00:59:22.060 easy things that people can do to ensure that they stay safe while they're out driving?

00:59:27.620 Okay. There are bunches. The new empty sign on your car should be the halfway point.

00:59:33.860 And I've actually had a female client took a picture and showed me. She put a little piece

00:59:37.300 of white tape on her gas gauge with an E drawn on where the halfway point is. You want to all the

00:59:43.160 security drivers I've ever worked with, we start the day they got a full tank of gas in the car.

00:59:47.520 Because the last thing you want to do is be out somewhere. Your spot that you're being followed

00:59:51.560 or a blue light bandit tries to pull you over and you're trying to get away and you're in a car

00:59:55.060 chase and you look down and your gas gauge is on empty. All right. That's horrific. I tell people

00:59:59.940 buy an SUV. I know that gets the ire of the earth biscuits, but if they argue with me from an

01:00:09.300 ecologically friendly viewpoint that SUVs are bad for the environment, I agree. But if my counter

01:00:14.880 argument is from a security viewpoint, there's no better vehicle. I am higher than every other

01:00:20.380 vehicle I can see around. I can push other vehicles out the way. I can go over sidewalks

01:00:25.140 and curbstones. You know, there's a reason all, if you look around the world, all the operators

01:00:29.460 in government, secret service, CIA, paramilitary, everyone, wherever they're working, they're driving

01:00:34.940 those things. They're not driving Priuses. All right. So from a security viewpoint, they're awesome.

01:00:39.480 Another good trick is to know your 24 hour safe havens. We mostly do the same five trips every

01:00:47.840 week in the car. So everyone has the same route. They go to work every morning. Then they go pick

01:00:51.980 the kids up and drop the kids off at school. They take them to soccer on Wednesday. They go get

01:00:56.020 groceries on Friday and then they drive to mom's house on Sunday or they go to church. But it's

01:01:00.660 typically the same five trips over and over. Your job is to know on that route where every single

01:01:08.020 building is or institution is that's open 24 hours that has security guards.

01:01:14.980 So those will be things like fire stations, police stations, hospitals. You know, I live near a nuclear

01:01:19.220 power plant. Anything along those lines, there are 24 hour supermarkets. So that if you're alone,

01:01:25.500 female at night being followed, you don't go home, which is your initial reaction. You know,

01:01:29.720 I'm safe at home if I can get home. And now the bad guy's following me. So you go and pick one of

01:01:33.160 those 24 hour safe havens and drive right through the front door if you have to. Things like that.

01:01:38.700 Don't do not do road rage. It ain't worth it. Someone's doing that. Ignore and drive away,

01:01:44.300 slow down, leave, get on another ramp, whatever. It isn't worth getting involved in this stuff.

01:01:49.320 You know, and again, every week we see, you know, there was one was about two weeks ago. I saw the

01:01:53.640 girl was shot coming on the on-ramp arguing with the guy and, you know, they're both moving,

01:01:58.500 inching forward, trying to fight for who's going to get in front and the guy shoots and kills her.

01:02:02.460 So he's in jail for life. She's dead over what? You know, public highway. It just doesn't make

01:02:06.700 sense. A good rule of thumb is pretend every other single car on the road is being driven by your

01:02:12.260 grandmother. Another one I tell them is when you pull up behind cars in front of you, make sure you

01:02:18.400 can see the bottom of their tires where they make contact with the road. And that doesn't matter what

01:02:23.280 vehicle you're in. I can go from a Porsche to an SUV. If I maintain that rule, it means if

01:02:28.380 something happens, so a guy comes up with a gun at the intersection and starts shooting into cars,

01:02:33.660 or there's an attempted carjacking or whatever, I can hook my wheel left or right and drive without

01:02:38.760 fear of hitting the car in front of me, which is just going to complicate things. And, you know,

01:02:43.300 it's just a ton of stuff like that. I think you had mentioned sanitizing the vehicle or keeping the

01:02:48.020 vehicle clean. One of the exercises I do on the live course is we take them out into the parking lot

01:02:53.900 and I just start going through people's cars, building up a profile on them. You know, you see

01:02:58.900 those little family stickers on the back. So I'm like, okay, you've got two kids. I've seen those

01:03:03.120 things with the kids' names written underneath the sticker. You know, all I have to do is follow

01:03:09.340 that mom home, see where they live, see where the school bus drops the kid off. Now I pull up next to

01:03:15.160 the kid and go, Susan, your mom told me to get you. Your dad's in the hospital. We've got to go right

01:03:20.360 now. Now, because I know her name, all right, she assumes, and let's say in the back of the car,

01:03:26.260 I've seen a saddle or something, you know, some horse riding gear or lacrosse equipment. I go,

01:03:30.360 you know, I'm from the lacrosse club. Your mom sent me down to get your dad's in the hospital and

01:03:34.240 she climbs into the car. And I've got all of that just looking at your vehicle. You know,

01:03:38.100 as a guy, someone put a picture on social media the other day of a guy had put the, you know,

01:03:42.360 the anti-gun grabbing sticker across the back of come and get it. And someone broke his back window and got

01:03:47.340 it. You know, this is the bad guys know if you have an NRA sticker on the back of your car,

01:03:52.040 chances are there's a gun inside your vehicle. You know, I know cops who've been targeted because

01:03:56.820 they've got a police sticker on the back and it's just simple stuff. I've got so many of the clients,

01:04:02.340 when they pull up, I walk out to the car and their mail's on the front seat with their home address on

01:04:06.200 it. And you can just learn so much just by walking around that vehicle and looking at that stuff.

01:04:11.460 So we tell people, sanitize all that crap, make it so if someone looks at your car,

01:04:14.980 there is nothing they can learn about you. Right. Keep it like a rental car,

01:04:18.360 basically. Pretty much. Yep. Yeah. We talked about a lot, but there's so much more we could

01:04:23.340 talk about. Where can people go to learn more about the book and the rest of your work?

01:04:27.140 They can find the book on Amazon under howtobeyourownbodyguard.com. And then we have a

01:04:31.620 website for the book, which is, you know, constantly being updated. And we're, you know,

01:04:36.120 when we announced the audio book, that will be on there. The app is being recalibrated. That's

01:04:41.280 going to be on there. We're going to have another live course coming up soon. That's going to be on

01:04:44.700 there. But that's all on h2bg.com, which is the how to be your own bodyguard. So H for hotel,

01:04:53.040 the number two, bbravoggolf.com. Fantastic. Well, Nick Hughes, thanks so much for your time.

01:04:58.000 It's been a pleasure. Likewise, mate. Enjoyed it.

01:05:01.000 My guest today was Nick Hughes. He's the author of the book, How to Be Your Own Bodyguard. It's

01:05:04.640 available on amazon.com. You can find out more information about his work at his website,

01:05:09.120 h2bg.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash bodyguard, where you can find links to

01:05:14.360 resources, where we delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM

01:05:25.820 podcast. Check out our website, artofmanlios.com, where you can find our podcast archives. There's

01:05:30.120 over 500 episodes there, as well as thousands of articles written over the air on topics like

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The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#513： Be Your Own Bodyguard

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