BONUS: #youvebeenrused W/ Robert Kerbeck

0:00 So you know we do a tarot reading for every episode of the podcast. Oh my god, this is already the best podcast ever. I get a tarot card reading included. Yes, wow. Yes. Okay, I'm- We do charge $39.99 per reading. It's a steal. It's a steal. [Music] Hi Cassie. Well, hey there, Caitlyn.

0:40 Hi creepy people. Hi! We never get an answer. Yeah, they never respond. I actually did think you were talking to me and so I almost did respond. Yes. So I- There is a creepy person here? I guess I am the creepy person. Isn't it always fun to be the creepy person in the room? Yeah, every once in a while. You know, it's kind of cool, you know? Yeah. He says, oh boy, I don't know if I'd known you were going to introduce me that way. Not sure I would have signed on the dotted line for this. Well, let's introduce him to all of the other creepy people. We have on our show today, whenever you're listening, whatever day that happens to be, Robert and I'm hoping I'm not going to- I don't know why, but I look at the last name and I feel like, you've listened to the book.

1:30 I know. It makes no sense. I'm not saying it makes any sense. Kerbek. Robert Kerbek. That's right. That's right. My friends just call me creepy. So, you know. Perfect. You'll fit right in around here. I was just going to say. So, we're super excited to talk to you about Roo's. I think I told you before we get started. I'm on my second listen through on the book and audible. So, we reached out to you a while back because I connected with you on pod match. We're doing this wild thing where we're being very transparent about it. It feels a little bit like when online dating first came around.

2:12 And you always had to have a cover story. Nobody wanted to say that they met on an online dating website or app. It does sound like dating pod match. Yeah. Okay, Cassie. I'm going to grab a beverage here and did you want to- Yeah, after you're done opening your can of soda. Only soda? That's it. I mean- Oh, no, we're double fisting. I've got a- this is a lacroise sparkling water and then we've got the tumblers with the wine. Oh, thank goodness. I mean, that was the whole excitement of the pod match match. I said, you know, any people that are drinking on air, sign me up for that program.

2:55 Right. It's always going to be fun. Exactly. But here's the thing though, is I feel like for us and we first started doing this. We were initially releasing video, but it was a little nerve-wracking. Because you're kind of speaking into the void and we are not used to receiving critical reviews. Something that you might be a little bit more in duck-duck at this point. You're very familiar. Yes, yes. As an actor and as a writer, I've received many critical reviews. Sons of bitches. Ah, exactly, exactly. Okay. Well, I won't give you a critical review of the book. That's not my style. So- But so Caitlyn kind of does this thing where she's kind of my momager.

3:39 And she's just like sets up all these interviews and things and she's like, read this book, do this, do this. I'm like, okay. Yes, I will. So I jumped into your book and I had no idea what it was about. I don't even know if I read the entire title. So I'm sitting there listening to this book and I thought it was a fiction. I was like, wait a minute. Like, this sounds really real. So I had to go back and I was like, oh, okay. Not a fiction. Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's it's, I've written a true book about line. Because obviously, you know, obviously you know, now I'm writing a book about my career as a corporate spy, which is not someone you meet every day.

4:23 And- This is the first. Yeah. And so, the book, everything in the book, all the spying, all the shenanigans, it's all true. That's crazy. So you rused me in the beginning. That's right. Hashtag, you've been rused you've been rused Oh, I like that. Yeah, we're going to use that. Yeah, go have it. Have at it. I'm getting a tarot card reading. You guys should get some hashtags. Perfect. There you go. See, I knew we were going to really have a good time here today. I think it's really funny because throughout the book, there were so many different things where I was like, God damn it. This is just so relatable.

5:04 And my dad actually works in a car dealership, has for years. Not the owner of a car dealership, but I thought there were so many funny parallels to you know, different situations and conversations that I've had with my dad over the year. So I just thought like it's such a funny little detail from your background that I was like, oh man, I just know that I'm going to really identify with him. Oh, that's so funny. What did your dad do with the dealership? So he's done quite a few things over the years actually. He's been in sales.

5:45 He's been in finance. I think he's in finance right now. Okay, and what's from what kind of cars? What is the what is the product line? Gosh, right now. I mean, that's the other thing that you never you kind of bounce around. Unless your family owns a dealership, right? Right, right. Yeah, which you know, my family, as you guys know, the Kerbeck family, you know, started selling cars. Basically the second cars were invented in America. And even today, my cousins are still some of the biggest car dealers in America. And you know, so if you're looking for a deal on a Lamborghini, tell them I sent you. Perfect.

6:25 Well, there you go. Yeah, he's not working at a Lamborghini dealership as far as I know. I want to say Ford Mercury Lincoln. There you go. That could be wrong. That was where I worked. That was the dealership I worked. That was Lincoln Mercury, you know, as a young guy. When I graduated college. And you know, I went to work there. And you know, I was selling cars and it was funny because the kind of the trickery of sales, I mean, look, all sales is convincing people to buy something. Usually, obviously, for more than what you paid for. That's the whole point of sales because that's how you make money. But it just kind of didn't feel right to me, you know, trying to get people to buy a car for as much money as possible.

7:10 You know, because the more money I made, the more profit there was for the dealership, the more my commission was, which of course is common in most sales. And so it just didn't feel right to me and I kind of wanted to be an actor. And you know, I moved to New York to try acting. And of course, actors need survival jobs. And who stumbles into a career as a corporate spy, which is, of course, what I did, which ended up, obviously, being far more ethically challenged, let's say, than cars. Ironic, definitely. Yes, quite ironic. I know. My father did not find it so funny when I said to him, I'm leaving the dealership because, yeah, I don't really like the sales thing, tricking people.

7:51 And then later he found out I was a corporate spy and he was like, oh my god. You know, he was none too pleased. He could have done so great at the dealership. Oh, I know. And now my hometown is Philadelphia. And so if I had stayed, the Quebec name is extremely well known in Philadelphia. Like Philadelphia Magazine did an article a couple years back of the 30 famous Philadelphia families and our family, the Quebec family was one of the 30 families, which blew me. And by the way, that's not me. I'm the black sheep of the family. So clearly they were not writing it about me. But but if I had stayed, that level of celebrity literally when I go back and periodically, I go back.

8:33 And if I go to a restaurant and they say, you know, what's your name? And I say, Kerbeck and they go, Kerbeck, are you one of the curbs? Yeah. You know, my gosh. So I and now of course, my again, you guys aren't big sports fans. I don't think but the Philadelphia Eagles played Amaro in the NFC championship game. And so if I were back selling cars, I'd have free, well, maybe not free tickets to the Eagles, but I would have I would have seasoned tickets to the Eagles and I'd be at that game. So oh well, you win some you lose some. Oh, I'm stuck in Malibu, California. It's not too bad. Oh darn. Yeah, it could be worse. I know. I know. Yeah, you know, a lot of it's certainly good. A lot of people are probably right now going, man, I feel bad for this guy, you know, poor guy, corporate spy living in Malibu, California.

9:20 Poor little black sheep. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it does seem like it worked out other than, you know, the season tickets. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? You cannot have it all. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, what's funny to me is listening to the book and, you know, thinking about things from a perspective of really most of my adult career, something like LinkedIn has always been in existence. But thinking back to, and you referenced it multiple times in your book as well, but, you know, the archetype of sort of that wolf wolf wall street, and you think to what a crazy, competitive greed is good era that you became a corporate spy.

10:15 And how valuable that information was. And I'm like, how did this never occur to me? I feel like that was something that I was a little bit surprised that it didn't actually get featured as kind of this little side trail in more of the movies that are kind of in that vein. Yeah. I think that's exactly right. You know, and when I, you know, first kind of circled back to writing, I was in English major in college, and then many, many years went by, and I was acting, and spying, and getting, you know, almost in trouble, and, you know, and then having a midlife crisis, and then almost encircled back to writing after many, many years.

10:58 And when I started writing, I started going to a couple of writing conferences, because I said, look, you know, I need to figure out how to write. I know I have a great story, because how many people are a corporate spy? I know there's a story to be told, but I had to figure out how to tell it. So I go to these writing conferences, and I was reading early excerpts from reviews, and people were freaking out about it, because they said the exact same thing you just said, which was, oh my god, you know, I know the Russians fly on the Chinese and the Chinese fly on us, but I had no idea major corporations are spending so much money hiring spies to spy on each other, you know. And that was like a light bulb moment for me. I went, wow, you know, people were just, I mean, people were going bonkers about it.

11:40 And I knew it was cool, but I didn't know it was that cool. And then I realized, wow, there's really a story here that not only can I write, but that I could actually, you know, sell. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, there is something about it, the fact that it's your lived experience, that makes it seem like, oh, I mean, you know, I know it's cool, but like you say, like I didn't, oh, it was that cool. So I thought that was really interesting. I was really curious, because I know that you talk about a number of different types of information that you would be asked to collect. And it's a different era. So to me, I'm thinking, oh, wait a second, this is like a landline that people are picking up, right? Which first of all, what's a landline?

12:30 But I did, I did, you know, I mean, even today you can get people to pick up their cell phone, believe it or not. And I have tricks to get people to pick up their cell phone. And then when people pick up their cell phone, you use call spoofing to have your phone number appear as a number that they recognize or a number they sort of recognize. And then using those things, now I'm, you know, now theoretically I'm getting people to tell me whatever it is I want to know via the cell phone, which, you know, we did because obviously cell phones have been around for a while. So it wasn't just, it wasn't just landline, but definitely landline is where, where are my spine careers started.

13:14 Yeah, I thought it was so interesting too. And it sounds like it was sort of something that you guys were very aware of. And it probably just makes sense based on the era, but having worked for a number of doctors and after hours, a doctor doesn't answer their own calls. And in that industry to hear that all you had to do was call after hours and you might get this actual person on the line, this is somebody who's very high up at, you know, bare stirs or, I mean, that kind of is mind blowing. Right. Yeah, no, I mean, and again, I think a lot of these things we learned by accident because, you know, we were, you know, actors that needed a survival job. You know, we were getting, believe it or not, it sounds crazy. Eight dollars an hour to be corporate spies, which is hilarious.

14:08 Hellarius, since we were putting ourselves in jeopardy, legal jeopardy. Yeah. And of course, that's where we started. And obviously you guys have read the books. You know, eventually I was making millions of dollars a year doing this, but we started. It was just eight dollars an hour. And so we were learning these things because, you know, we needed this job, you know, nowadays, with COVID, so many people, you know, remote work became just so prevalent. But back in the day, you know, we're talking early 90s now, back in the day, you know, you couldn't work from home. There were no jobs from home. And so as an actor, you know, to be able to have a job, you could do from home and do for two or three hours, then go to an audition, then come back and work another two or three hours and then go to another audition. You know, it was just a miracle. And so we needed the job.

14:55 And we were desperate not to lose the job. And so we were working very hard to come up with the ploys and reasons why executives and assistants and receptionists that are educated people that are trained not to give out corporate secrets. We had to find and come up with, and we literally invented all of these ploys, you know, in the book, you know, there's the compliance. Some of them are so good. They're really, they're so clever. Yeah. Well, and you know, one of them we stumbled into was that what we learned is, is assistance. And I'm talking about Wall Street now, but I think this is true in most industries. You know, assistants generally have a pretty defined schedule for, you know, lack of a better thing. Nine to five, right? And so what we learned is when you called it five, thirty, the executive that you could never get through to now is picking up the phone. And better yet, if you called it seven, thirty, the executive is picking up the phone. And now they're exhausted after a long day. And now you get the executive on the phone. And you tell them, you're another executive in some different office, you know, maybe you're calling from the office in Frankfurt, Germany. Now we put on an accent. This is Gail Hot calling from the office in Frankfurt, Germany. He has a European union regulators here. And he has an emergency.

16:09 And if he needs some help from the states. And the executive's like, oh my gosh. Oh my god. I'm giving you the info. Absolutely. Of course you are. You know, it's like, and that was the thing about this job was that the crazy our ploys were. The, you know, the most ludicrous story. In a strange way, it became more believable. Like who's, who's calling you pretending to have a German accent, pretending to be in your firm's office in Germany, telling you they need this information, which you kind of can't figure out why they would really need it in Germany. But it's the guy in Germany on the phone. Like nobody's making this up. I guess it's real. Okay, here you go. Yeah. Well, and I thought it was so interesting to hear kind of from a psychological perspective. And how many times you reflected, you know, people might pause or they might sort of question and maybe, you know, provide very minimal. I would argue pushback.

17:08 But once they give you one piece of information, it's like your foot's in the door. And that just kind of blows you away. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing that I think blew me away the most and still does is that so you know, you'd get that one piece of information. And of course, we would always start with the softball question. Like a question we knew the answer to, a question we did not need this information. We already knew the information. But we were establishing this precedent of I ask you question, you answer it. And once they did it once, why would they do it twice? Why wouldn't they do it three times? But what shocked me the most was that once we did get our foot in the door, people would not only tell us anything and everything that they they knew. But once they told us every single thing they knew and theoretically I didn't need them anymore. They'd give it to me all their information. They'd say, Hey, is there anything else you need? And then you go, well, just wild. Well, you know what? As a matter of fact, I'd like to know this and they go, well, that's my not my department. I don't know that. That's not my area. That's not even my division.

18:11 But you know what? I know so and so over there. You don't hold on one second. Let me call over there and ask and see if I can get that for you. And so all of a sudden now you would have this person who has now become your spy. They're an employee who's now spying for you. And that happened very frequently. And that was incredible because now that person is calling someone they actually do know who's going to go, well, I don't know why you need this, but I know you. I trust you. You know. And so now you're really able to get some crazy secrets that I might not have been able to get directly, but now I'm getting them indirectly. And that was really shocking to me.

18:56 Wow. Do you think it's because people just like to be helpful? Yes. Yeah, I mean, look, and also, and also you're trained in a corporate setting to, you know, not rock the boat, not make waves, be a good teammate, be a team player, right? All of those things, which, which a spy like me is leveraging to get the intel that I want. And of course, my clients want, and of course, my clients, you know, again, later in my career, we're paying huge amounts of money for information about their biggest rivals. That is just it blows me away to be able to like recruit within their own organization. Yeah. And just have, you know, I mean, now you have foot soldiers, essentially. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And there was one, you know, the woman in the book who I opened with, and then I end with her. I mean, she was my spy. And of course, she did not know my, she was my spy. She believed I was an executive at this firm for 15 years. But it's mind blowing. I know. I know.

20:05 Mind blowing. And at one point, the thing that was the most, you know, in some sense, heartbreaking. But also like, you know, at one point, she says to me, you're my favorite person in the firm. Oh, I'll think about that. She's never. Not exactly a glowing recommendation for the rest of the firm, right? Yeah. Well, no, yeah, exactly. You know, and exactly. And of course, that was, you know, one of the things in the book is, you know, here I am doing this, you know, this exercise, which is certainly not ethical. And of course, is also, you know, potentially illegal. And in the book, you know, I reckon with the moral issues behind it. And of course, I really felt extremely conflicted.

20:53 And of course, in this situation of this woman terrible, because I really liked her too. And, and it was amazing to me that she could say that to me that I was her favorite person in the firm. Until, of course, you know, in the book, when I have my midlife crisis and the 2008 crash comes, and corporate spying stops on a dime because corporations are no longer spending money on spying, because they're just trying to survive because major companies are going under, you know, remember General Motors had to be bailed out. Right. You know, Lehman Brothers went under bare sternum. One of a few. Yeah. Right. Right. And so all the sudden corporations aren't spending money on spying. I had a mortgage. I had a family. I needed to, you know, get a job. So I had to take a job in corporate America. And of course, then when I go into corporate America and for the, the, the people out there that I hope do buy ruse or listen to it on audible, if you're seeing me do my corporate spying and you're kind of getting a little bummed out at me, don't worry reader.

21:54 I get my come-upence when I go to work in, when I go to work in corporate America, I become the victim, I become the doop. I'm the one that is sort of the sucker that believes everything that everyone is telling me. And here people are stabbing me in the back left and right. And I have no idea that they're doing it. I know. And you know what? You're going to hate it the whole time too. I was so, so angry. I'm like, all of these, how dare they? And then pause to think, well, wait a second. I guess, I guess maybe he did have a little bit of this coming. Well, I, we like him a lot better. Well, I appreciate the support I do. You know, I mean, I think that's what I was hoping with ruse. I wrote it during COVID. And obviously that was a terrible time. And so I wanted to write something that's fun. And, and a little crazy. And obviously quite different.

22:50 People say it's a page turner. People say it reads like a, they say it reads like a spy novel, even though everything in it is true. And that means a lot to me because I wanted to write something that people could have. They could enjoy and have some laughs. Yeah, definitely. There's a few solid chuckles in there. I think it was earlier this week. I was listening to the story, the part of the the book where you're specifically talking about, oh, I've got your money. And I'm thinking, wait a second, he didn't hand this woman his ATM card. Like what? And I'm like, this is an adorable continuation of that joke. I just that piece of it. And I'm like, I'm dancing around it because I'm like, I don't want to give away too many. All of like the factoids and everything. But I had to tell you I was like, stop. Like that's just, it's a really cool part of, and seeing how like both of you guys, your sense of humor and, um, damn it, just so likable. It can't. He's like, stop it.

23:56 That's enough, Caitlin. Gosh. But I am really curious because obviously we, you know, we've learned so much about, you know, the premise of rusing, which I mean, it blows my mind. It's just a mind numbing experience to hear about like all of the details over your time doing that. Your professional background as an actor, you know, in car sales. You've worn a lot of hats. And obviously a lot about your family. Is there anything that stands out as far as like a singular piece of information that was worth like just a shocking amount of money or a particular piece of information that seemed kind of odd or noteworthy? I feel like there's got to be a nugget of gold in there.

24:51 Well, yeah, I mean, you know, one time. So, you know, remember, we're in the pre-linked in ERA. So, um, and people didn't know who worked at firms, you know, they didn't know what the organizational structure was. And they certainly, and this is true even today, even with LinkedIn, you don't know who the rock stars are. You don't know who the top people are at a firm. You don't know who the top money makers, the top revenue producers, the top exit, you know, and so, um, so there was, at one point, there was a team at at Morgan Stanley, a major, you know, investment bank in New York.

25:31 And they made Morgan Stanley a billion dollars in, I think it was 2006. And it was eight person team, tiny team, making an insane amount of money. And so, we were tasked to find the people on this eight person team. Now, you may say to yourself, well, how hard could that be? Well, I can tell you, it was impossible. A lot of times, these firms would not even list their best executives in the corporate directory. Apple legendary Apple CEO Steve Jobs would not list his designers in the Apple directory for that very same reason. Imagine if you could poach one of the early designers of the iPad, you know, back in the day and get that guy, or, you know, man or woman, come to your team and bring not not only maybe one or two other people on the team, but the secrets of what they were working on, you know. No kidding. Yeah, it's like stealing a printing press. That's right. You know, prints money. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And so, so we, you know, or I identified the eight members of this team and then my client stole two of those people. Now, you say, okay, well, how much was that worth? Well, some portion of a billion dollars. Wow. Well. Yeah. So, so the information, you know, I mean, look, we see it, you know, and again, I forgive me. I go back to sports, but we see it in sports.

26:56 Like if you signed the star quarter back away from one team, Tom Brady was on the New England Patriots. He was winning Super Bowls. Right. He leaves the New England Patriots. Now they are not winning Super Bowls. Now they're not in the playoffs. And then the team he goes to, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, they win the Super Bowl, right? And it's the same thing in corporate America. If you can identify who the best players are and then you can steal them from your rival, you not only dent, you know, and sometimes severely damage your rival, but now your firm benefits immensely. And, you know, again, if you're listeners out there, corporate America is just as competitive as sports. It is just as competitive.

27:40 People want to win at all costs. Executives are paid based on their company stock price, based on their revenue. They get bonus checks. So it is super cutthroat. And so these corporations, they know their rivals are hiring spies. So they're going to hire spies. And so there's this whole spy versus spy thing that's constantly going on. It's pretty wild. You think that if both of them are hiring spies, they kind of would know what to look for and maybe like train their assistance and stuff to not get roost, right? I mean, they tried. They tried and not to get wild as part. Yeah, they don't try hard enough. Not not hard enough. I mean, look, when you think about today, you know, the big issue is cybercrime, right? And ransomware attacks. And so corporations spend so much money protecting their technology, their firewall, their encryption, their server, their network. And they spend a minuscule fraction of that money and time educating and training their employees. And that is a huge problem because the weakest link in cybersecurity is always the human being. Absolutely. Yeah, my brother works in IT for a healthcare organization. So I get to hear about a lot of those examples of like what it looks like a weak link in that system. And those are not low stakes. No, no, no, no, no,

29:10 no, no, no, no, no, yeah, no, and I actually had a healthcare company reach out to me. They were victims of a ransomware attack. And I won't go into the whole story, but they could not book an appointment. They could not help a patient deal with the patient. Do anything for 10 days. Now this was a healthcare provider. They had six locations. They couldn't all six shut down. Now think about not only the economic damage, but the reputational damage, right? Absolutely. And it all started from a junior person being roosed. Somebody call, you know, because a lot of times these ransomware firms, what they do is it's not just one person. It's usually small teams of people. And it's a little bit like mission possible, which each team member has a skill. So there's the social engineer who's going in and is finding out how the system is set up, finding out what the weak links might be, then they're feeding that information to the hacker. Because, you know, no matter how good the hacker is, they've got to understand some stuff to, you know, and so now the hacker gets all of this information that makes the hacking super, or if not super easy, much easier, easier. And then there's another person on the team who's the financial instruments expert because they've got to figure out how do we get this ransom and not get caught getting it? How do we make it untraceable? You know, so they're like these little teams, these mission impossible teams. So, you know, they're difficult to go up against.

30:45 And if you're not training your people about that exact scenario, you know, you're really, you're really, you know, you're really playing with fire because you're going to get burned. And when you get burned, it's, it can be catastrophic for, especially for a small or midsize company. No doubt. Well, and in a healthcare setting, you just hope, my God, I hope it's not like, while I'm on the operating table. On the ecology clinic. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Well, in that actually, you know, thinking about it in that manner where it's sort of a team that's working together that way, that sort of makes it even scarier. Yeah. Yeah. See, you know, here we are on this, you know, I'm so glad you guys had me on because this is an atypical maybe what you would think of as a crime story or, you know, homicides, you would think of homicides, you know. But there is especially now, you know, these stakes have gotten so much higher, right? You know, in my mind, you know, I don't, I'm not proud of what I did, but you know, we justified it as, as look, we weren't stealing the credit card numbers of people. Right. We weren't stealing individuals money. You know, it was like, we're stealing corporate secrets and all the corporations are in on it.

32:01 And it's part of the capitalist system. And then I'm not saying it's right, but that's how we rationalized it. But today, right? You know, the stakes are so much higher where people are stealing, you know, from corporations, the all of our personal information, right? And our social security numbers and our credit card and our data, you know, and all of that stuff. So it really is kind of a darker world now. I don't know that I could write a funny book about ransomware attacks. Yeah. I'm not sure it's out there. It's just, you know, what do you, oh, yeah, it's hard to turn a joke around on that. That's for sure. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I ended up kind of feeling like this feels a little bit like kind of a Robin Hood story. Yeah. You know, yeah. Thank you. That's a nice thing to say.

32:50 I like that. Yeah. I was just thinking about how we just had our credit card numbers stolen. Oh, no. Even worse, they were debit cards. Yeah. Yeah. I think that is worse. Yeah. Frank Appagnell is the man who wrote Catch Me If You Can. And he was just incredible and he read ruse, you know, the publisher sent him a copy. And you know, they, the publishers, when they, they take your book, they send it out to people that have books that are written books similar to yours. And they ask these people if they will consider reading it. And if they can, we'll consider reading it. If they read it and they liked it, will they give you a testimonial? What they call a blurb?

33:31 And, you know, I'm like, okay, send it to Catch Me If You Can guy, but he's not going to respond. And she or not, he did respond. He said, yeah, I'll read it. And then he read it and he, and he came back. He's like, I love this book. I'm going to, I want to write a blurb for you, which they put on the cover of the book. And Frank Appagnell talks about your exact situation. He says, that's a reason not to use debit cards is because you use the debit card. You don't have the protection, the way you do with the credit card. So with the credit card, if they get your credit card and they ring it up and they have $72,000 on it, you're not responsible for any of it. But with the debit card, if they get money out of your account, it's very difficult to get that money back. And so Frank Appagnell, for that reason, he advises people not to have debit cards. Not to use debit cards.

34:20 Well, and I worked as a teller. And that's advice that even at that low level position within a financial institution, that's something that we would share with people like, yeah, certain purchases, it's going to be a lot safer to use a credit card. I mean, we got lucky. And thankfully, this wasn't someone that had the physical card and they didn't have the pin. And they were making some very obviously suspicious transactions. And so none of that came out of our end. But yeah, it was one debit card after the other. So I mean, we were really lucky that they were watching it. And certainly happy that they got us all squared away. But you're thinking, man, a week before Christmas. And like, the smallest small business. Oh, no. Well, I'm glad I'm glad it worked out because you would have had to put me on the case to track them down. Exactly. Now we know what to call exactly. Exactly.

35:24 Yeah. Hey, listen, if Frank Abbick-Nill is going to write you a blurb, I mean, that's pretty compelling stuff, right? Yeah, it was really beautiful. And then he recommended me to his speaking agency. And I mean, he's just been a real stand-up guy. And you know, I feel like I hear that when people talk about him in interviews and you go, huh. Like, there's so many things that, I guess, not that you expect him to just be this awful guy, but you're like, wow, it really seems like he's gone out of his way to help out a lot of people. And you go, okay, all right, that makes me feel good. And you know, seems like he's kind of got things going on the right track in his life.

36:10 And oh, yeah, I mean, I think he's worked for the FBI for many years helping them, helping them catch people. You know, they're doing the kind of scams that he was doing before. Just like now, I, you know, go up and speak and talk to corporations. And you know, they don't really listen that much, but I do. I do try to talk to them and say, you, you guys got to train your people. And especially young people entering the market have grown up in an era of digital transparency, where privacy has sort of gone by the wayside. And so, right. And so people, you know, and of course, you know, we live in an era with social media where people post, you know, they post pictures of what they have for breakfast, they post pictures of, you know, so there's a little bit of the oversharing thing. And of course, in a corporation, you know, those things can get, you know, firms into trouble where a young person who doesn't know better has not been trained. Now, maybe is speaking to someone that they have not properly verified. And now they're, they're giving information up that they shouldn't give.

37:19 And I think, you know, corporations, and it's not the, it's not the responsibility of the young person because they're supposed to be trained. If you're not training people, what's appropriate to share, what's not appropriate to share, how you verify people are, you know, how do you verify that an email is legitimate of tech? Cause, you know, fishing comes in all, you know, manners, right? It's gotten really very bad too. The frequency and sometimes they're, they're pretty clever. Very clever. There are times where I go, wow, this is really impressive. And I have a little trick that I use and I encourage people, which is the 30 second rule that when you get the odd text, when you get the odd email or phone call, you, and you, you, you, something's going on in your head.

38:05 You're like, should I click it? 30 seconds. Right. 30 seconds. They just think about it. Cause once you think about it, and you look at it again, and you reread it again, and you see the syntax isn't right or you check the email and it comes from, you know, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that has nothing to do with the company that it's, you know, all of a sudden you go, oh, but, but for a moment there, it was, yeah. Yeah, pretty convincing. Oh, wait, this says Uzbekistan.com. Like, what? Yeah. Yeah, that's good advice. The 30 second rule could have saved me some trouble. I probably would receive less spicy text messages on my corporate cell phone if I had done that. My very first day, I got an email from the CEO and he said, I need you to send me your cell phone number because I have an urgent task for you. And I thought, okay, well, it's a CEO, of course you, you know, so my first day, wow, I haven't even met the CEO yet. He's not there in the office. And I thought, okay, this email address, there's really nothing suspicious about it other than the fact that it's not his corporate one. And I thought, well, this could very easily be, you know, his personal one. Of course.

39:32 Nothing like that stood out really too much. And I'm like, all they want is my cell phone number. Right. Well, I mean, why would that ever be a problem? Right, Robert? Right. Come on. Yeah, I think I invented that ploy, by the way. Sorry. Yeah, thank my bad. Yeah, I mean, look, again, that's taking advantage of the new person, of the, of the young person, of the junior person. And I did the same thing, which was, you know, we would utilize LinkedIn once it was invented. But even before then, we would really try to target in our initial calls for corporate information. We would, we would never go in directly where we wanted the information. That was the last call you would make because if you got shut down, because these people, you know, it happened that people would go, wait a second. Now, I don't buy this. I'm not giving you any information.

40:29 I'm reporting you to corporate security. So we would do all of this kind of around the periphery. And we would utilize and take advantage of young people who were not trained to give us information so that we could learn as much as we could so that when we called the real executive or the real assistance of the executive in the area that we wanted the secret, we knew so much about what was going on with the firm. We had done so much homework that, of course, it sounded completely believable that we said, you know, we were off site at the off site, you know, with the ski resort where they were having the off site. Yeah, you know, where all the executives were, you know, oh, well, how could this person know the hotel where all the executives were staying the time and the meetings, which we got from junior people? So then it made a complete sense that they would go, well, well, all the executives are over there and they need this document for the presentation about our new product or whatever it is, the secret new product. Right. And so again, you were, you were, you know, that was the same kind of thing that we were doing to get corporate secrets.

41:38 Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's a good one. Oh, they all need this presentation. So of course, of course, you don't want them to not get the presentation. No, it goes back to that, you know, you got to be a team player and you got to keep all of the executives happy. Man, I would have been roost so hard. You were. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I mean, I came from a background where, you know, doctors don't take really hardly any calls and, you know, normally they like to keep themselves busy throughout the day, seeing patients. And so I was very used to a gatekeeping role when I worked in a clinic. And so you think, well, I'm not going to be fooled. Right. Yeah. Well, oh boy. Don't take this the wrong way, but you were my ideal target is the person that says, I'm never going to be ruse. No way. All on because as soon as you have that level of confidence, you're setting yourself up for the fall as opposed to going, look, man, I'm going to stay on my toes because on any given day, somebody can slip something by me.

42:48 Any, but you know, if I'm not, you know, I got a const and be thinking about it, looking at it, you know, because sometimes people that had that level of confidence, we were able to utilize that against them. Yes. Yes. It's definitely put me back on my toes. I will say that. Good. Good. At least that one was benign. Yeah. I think you're safe now. Yeah. I'd like to think so. Let's see. Now on my second listening of the book, I really glommed on to again, a term. And I'm hoping that it's going to be one that you remember sort of the origin story of. And so we'll see, did you come up with the term ethical elasticity? Oh, that's a great question. You know, that might have been, I can't remember. You know, so when you have a book, you know, you get an editor and the editor works with you on the book. And I had a couple of great editors. And I mean, I'm sure I had elasticity in there. And I had ethical thing in there. And I actually think the editor at some point might have combined those two like one word, one word, one of Benin's the prior sentence in the other word.

44:04 And then as he was editing, he was like, cross this, cross this, put this up, you know, all of a sudden, it was ethical elasticity. So I can't take the credit for that. I think the editor came up with that. That is so interesting. And it is really interesting to me to hear from different authors that we've talked to. What the editing process looks like. And over time, you know, obviously they're taking something that you've created. And I mean, a really intensive process writing a book of course. But you have all of these fantastic ideas, but they're able to really like, you know, spit shine it for you. Yes. Some of those things. I mean, who won an undertaking though. Yeah. And having a great editor, I mean, you know, again, for your listeners out there that are maybe contemplating writing a book, writing their memoir, which I highly recommend. You know, self-publishing is viable.

44:57 The one thing I would say is if you are going to write a book and if you and you know, you do decide to self-publish it, you know, you got to get that great editor. Not your mom, not your partner, not your brother, not your best friend, a professional editor that is really going to spit shine it, which is a great term. Because you're going to put that out into the world. And once you put it out there, it's out there, you know, and you want it to be good. You know, you don't want to have, you know, 16 exclamation points on every page. And like I said, that ethical elasticity term that I think was the editor seeing, hey, and of course, you've got the, you know, alliteration there.

45:44 You know, it's just, you know, and editors are great at that, you know, and my editor, you know, he cut, I forget how many words he cut out of the final version, but close to about 10,000 words. So yeah, so I'm going to say the book was, I think the book is around 90,000 words and as funny as writers, I always talk in terms of words, not pages, because pages, you know, can be adjusted by fonts, you know, the size of the font on the page and, you know, a lot of different things. So I think the book was close to 100,000 words and he cut, I think, about 8,000,000 words out. So about 10% of the book, which is not uncommon. I think Stephen King, he wrote a great book called On Writing, which is a book I highly recommend if anybody is out there is thinking about writing it.

46:32 We got to read that. Did you read it? I think we had to read it for a class. Yeah, yeah, it's a great book. Yeah, and it's a pretty easy book to read too, you know. I mean, I actually think it's his best book, but hey, Stephen, don't get mad at me. But you know what? I'm inclined to agree. Anything else in his wheelhouse is really too scary for her. Yeah. Yeah. But he did, he wrote a wonderful book about very practical, like literally how to write a book. It's so, and it's short and it's easy to read. And he, I think he talked about writing an extra 20% because you can expect 20% of your book to be cut down by your own editor.

47:15 So in my case, it was 10%, but I can't remember it was 10 or 20%. But you know, the idea that when you turn in your book, you need to be prepared that it's going to cut down some. And so, you know, if you're turning in a book that's 60,000 words, that might be too short. Yeah. You know, if you're looking for an add-a-boy, and like, oh, perfect as is, probably an editor is not what you're looking for. No, no, that's not going to happen. And it shouldn't happen. It really shouldn't happen. I mean, editors, they can drive you crazy because a lot of times they're so picky. But at the end of the day, it's critical to have a really great editor. Well, I love that. I love that kind of having that second set of eyes. And I think, you know, most people, even if you're not familiar with, you know, the premise of self-publishing or, you know, with writing a book, you understand that there is an editing process, but seeing how something like that comes out and how they're able to really bring out the absolute best in your creative work, I think that's very cool. Are you working on any other books right now? Are you working?

48:28 You have any other literary project? That was my question. Oh, well, that's a great question. Well, I have two literary projects. One is very altruistic, which is I started a literary salon here in Malibu called the Soho House Literary Salon at Soho House Malibu. And the idea that I had was I wanted to, you know, promote other writers. And I have a lot of friends at a writers. And so the idea is once a month, I pick a book that I really feel passionate about and we have an event, the writer comes and we sit in the front of this beautiful room over looking at the Pacific Ocean and have a couple of cocktails and people come. And we talk about the book and there's a bookseller there so people can buy the book, they get the book signed. And this, you know, and again, I don't know when this will air, but I'm about to do one with ESPN sports media Legend Steven A Smith. And he's, you know, probably the most famous sports announcer in the world right now. And he has a new memoir out called Straight Shooter, which is the story of his life. And I'm going to interview him and talk about his book and his history and whatnot, which is really exciting. So that's very exciting. I mean, Steven, Steven A does not need my help in selling any books, but some of my other authors did. And so I really felt good about helping get the word out about their books.

49:58 And then I have a new book. This is actually fiction, but it's in the realm of ruse, you know, because ruse is obviously about about cons and scams. This book is about a world renowned antique Islamic carpet expert, who's also a bit of a con man. And it's called sex, rugs, and rock and roll. Love it. We're going to have to read that one. Yeah. So that's great. Yeah. So it's basically about this guy who's made his living identifying rare carpets and tapestries and rugs that are worth believe it or not in some situations, millions of dollars. Yes. And he finds these items in garage sales, at a state sales with people that don't know that they've got a carpet that is 500 years old.

50:55 They know what they got. Well, I know it's valuable. I know my great grandfather came over from so and so with it. And it's been in the fall. I know it's probably worth. Well, of course, it's worth some money. It's worth 15,000, 15,000 dollars. Oh my god. And then he sells it for 650,000 dollars. Oh boy. Yeah. So it's like a dark antique roadshow. Yeah. Dork. I'm going to use that in the in the in the description. Dork antique roadshow. Yeah. So it's good. Oh, yeah. Dark dark and dark. Maybe I don't know. There's something there. You workshop it with the editor. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So anyway, so that book is almost done. And it's funny because it's fiction, but it's very similar in the rules that it's about a con. It's fast moving. It's funny.

51:45 So I hope people will enjoy it. Oh, that's very exciting. Do you have kind of an anticipated release timeframe? No, no, not yet. Not yet. No, I mean, books. It's crazy. How long they take the right? Then how long they take to edit. And then even once the book is finished from the time it's finished, the editor has finished the book until the book comes out is at least a year. Oh my goodness. I know. Yeah, that is a long time. Now self publishing is different. Of course, I'm talking about traditional publishing because the publishing house, you know, they have to, you know, get it set up in all of the marketing thing. And they've sent it around to all the reviewers. And they sent it around to all the newspapers. And they said, you know, and they need a lot of time to do that so that there's, you know, a way to sell a lot of books, you know, self publishing, you know, you could, you know, you can do it very quickly. And that is one of the advantages of self publishing is you can get a book out there quickly. Now, it can also be a detriment. If you write your book and you're like, okay, it's ready to go. And then all of a sudden, because I think that's what happens to a lot of people. They're so excited that they publish it and they skip the lot of steps.

52:58 To make it as good as it could be, you know. And that makes sense. That makes sense. That's good advice because I think as our show has kind of grown, we've found that we have a lot of other types of creatives that have linked up with our show. Right. Yeah. So good advice. Yeah, it's right. It's true for anything. Musicians, you know, now you can make an album and record your own album at home, you know, and then you can put it out on, you know, YouTube or whatever. And that's great. And that's fantastic. But take the time to do the same things that the professionals do. Because you're basically trying to say, I am a professional. You know, hey, check out my album. Hey, check out my book. So, you know, a professional is going to have a producer in the studio that's going, "Neeh, I don't like this tune. This tune is not good enough." Or, you know, we need to re-record the vocals on this. So, whatever, you know. And so, you know, it's like, you know, I think I encourage people to write their stories, especially in memoir. People have amazing stories. You know, so many times, I teach a writing class in Melbourne. People come in. This woman came in and she had been arrested 69 times. Wow. My goodness.

54:12 Protesting. So, really, really cool, really cool woman with an amazing story. She'd been arrested 69 times. I'm like, there's your title, you know, 69 arrests or, you know, something like that, you know. And, you know, you can't make up her story because it was true. You know, it was an incredible story. And so, I was encouraging her to write it. But, you know, she had a whole bunch of stuff. And she basically was like, "Okay, can I publish this?" And I'm like, "No, you cannot publish this yet." You need to hone it down. You need to edit it. You need to find, you need to spit shine it. Which a lot of people don't want to hear. Yeah, I can understand that. You know, you pour a lot of love into it and it feels like you've spent so much time and energy and it's a lot to then feel like there's still more to do. I know. Yeah. I can imagine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know it's true for me too, all the time because you always think it's done and then somebody looks at it and goes, "Oh, wow."

55:10 You know what? You know, I'll submit it like an essay, you know, like a 10-page essay that I think is ready to be published. You know what? The editor will respond. The first paragraph is unbelievable. You're like, "The first paragraph, it's 12 pages." There you go. First paragraph. And then what I want you to do is instead of going in the direction you went for an 11 and a half pages, I want you to go this other direction. You're like, "Oh, great." But at least they like the first paragraph. Yeah. Awesome. No, I would not advise writing for as a career. I would definitely advise it as an avocation rather than a career that you're expecting to, you know, support yourself because it's not, it's likely not going to happen. And I'm a pretty optimistic person, but it is a very tough business to, you know, to use to support yourself. It definitely seems like it. That's like kind of your lane, though. You like to pick a difficult career. Yeah. I have a buddy who said that to me because, you know, again, I was an actor and I was a working actor and as you both know, I did, you know, 50 major TV shows and my college roommate when I, he came in one of the book releases back east and he said, "Only you would pick something harder than acting to do now." Well kidding. I know. Really.

56:39 I know. I think I didn't expect it. I figured that the only connection in terms of, you know, the true crime genre would be the rusing. But I have to say, when you got to shooting the exercise video with OJ, I was just like, "Oh my God. I'm going to be reading this book multiple times, obviously." Oh, you know, that is so funny. I never made that connection. Believe it or not, of I've written a true crime book while also being part of the true crime trial of the century.

57:22 Yeah. Wow. It's crazy. Yeah. I mean, humble brag, right? Yeah. Well, look, I only played a small part. I was not involved in, you know. Sure. Sure. No, but it's such an interesting part of the story. And I can see where, again, it goes back to, this is your lived experience. And in some ways, you realize that, you know, it's like this very unique thing, but it's like just kind of flies straight overhead how significant that is and how people are just blown away by, I mean, I'm sorry, you did what? Yeah. Yeah. No, my wife and I were recently, we read an event and we ran into the man that was the district attorney of Los Angeles during the OJ Simpson trial. His name was Gil Garcetti.

58:15 And his son, Eric was recently the mayor of Los Angeles. And my wife, because, you know, I wasn't going to say anything, but you know, my wife's a booster. And so she's telling Gil Garcetti, who is really lovely, wonderful man. And she was saying, oh, my husband's got a crazy OJ Simpson story. And Gil Garcetti's like, oh, my God. Like, if I had, yeah, enough. Like, you know, I, you know, I've heard every dead and so she started to tell the story. And he was like, okay, that is pretty funny. Like, even he got the whole thing that here I am, you know, a, basically a dancer in an exercise video with OJ Simpson witnessing this guy, you know, and his behavior and his reprehensible behavior literally right before the murders took place. And developing this very weird bond with him, you know, obviously, you know, for whatever reason he took a liking to me, I think, because my dancing in the video was so bad it made him look good. You know, they were literally the choreographer was going to fire me until OJ went, whoa, you can't get rid of Rob because his dancing is so bad it's making me look good. You know. And that would be me. So I feel not very relatable as well. That's why, that's absolutely why a celebrity would keep me around. Like, I need someone less coordinated to, you know, make sure that other people have someone to point and laugh at. Exactly. Yeah. That's why I keep you around. Yeah. Yeah. So for your listeners, you can Google OJ Simpson workout video, OJ Simpson

59:51 outtakes from the workout video and you'll see two things. You'll see OJ doing horrible, terrible things that at the time we were the only people on the planet that knew about because there was no YouTube back then. And the other thing is is looking at me in the background, sweating profusely in this gray shirt with a very stern expression on his face, you're going to go, he looks like the guy that might have committed the crime. I know I have seen it before, but I'm going to find it so that we can link it in the show. Oh, that's fine. You should do that. Yeah. Because I mean, even now when I look at it, I'm like, why did they not bring me in for questioning? I have no idea. Yeah. Because I'm in the background doing my bad exercise moves. I mean, I look like there's something wrong with that guy.

1:00:45 I really thought, oh, this is where Robert has to tell like a very different side of his, like celebrity stories. Like, I thought for sure as well. I'm thinking, yeah, I think he's going to get dragged in maybe. We'll see how this plays out. Yeah, that would have been that really would would have been a true crime, true crime show, right? You know, like different book, different double dip. Yeah, double dip. Yeah. Well, perfect. Before we lose you to, I mean, my goodness, that gorgeous Malibu glow. I'm not jealous at all. Okay. I'm going to grab our tarot deck. Oh, yes. I very sure. Yes. It was a, I know I saw the credit card charges come through for $39.99. It was on my debit card, though. I don't know what the heck. I didn't even know that debit card. Yeah, you're not supposed to use those. I heard. That's what I heard. Yeah, you know, I never listen to any of these corporate security experts. Well, who does? Exactly.

1:01:51 Okay. So Cassie, I did our shuffle here. Do you want to select card number one? Okay, is this for the book? I'm going to go ahead and say I'm pulling a card just for more inside about the book. Anything that we want to do. Okay, and I'll pick Robert's card. I'll take, I'll, I'll, yeah, step in front of that. Bullet drain. This is funny. We got the justice card. We just got that one recently. And it's not in reverse, though. It's in, it's right. Side up. Wow. Well, I mean, that could not be more appropriate.

1:02:32 I know. Isn't that funny? That is really incredible. That the corporate spy gets the justice card. And a little taste of justice, spoiler alert, right? Let's see, I'm going to go to the interpretation. And we have our deck is PNW themed. So it has a bunch of different animals from the Pacific Northwest on it. And I think this was the Osprey, right? I think you're right. Yeah. Holding a fish. Yeah. Well, surprising. No one are keywords for the justice card. Our rectification, decision, finding balance, legal matters. I don't, I mean, does any of that seem to ring about?

1:03:17 I love rectification. I think that's great. Because you know, that's one of the things, you know, when you write, when you, you know, you spend so many of your, so much of your life, you know, basically your job is lying for a living. You know, you know, there's, there's, again, there's a lot of that that I'm not proud of. And so there's been this, you know, rectification process in writing the book, coming clean, being honest. And then, of course, now trying to be of some small service to people so that they're not getting scammed or ripped off. Now, look, at the end of the day, do I feel bad for Goldman Sachs, the Goldman Sachs and the Wells Fargoes and the blah, blah, blah, blahs of the world? Not really. No. No. No. I'm really certainly hope not. No, not really, you know, and that's what I think is that most of my rusing was targeting, it were all of the rusing was targeting corporations. Now, of course, there were people that I was tricking at those corporations. So those individuals were, you know, being rused. And that's the part that I don't feel great about. So I'm, I like that word. That's, I mean, I think that's what makes us human, right?

1:04:20 Yeah. You can feel bad for those, you know, specific instances, but yeah, I'm with you. If anybody wants to give you a hard time, they can, I'll send them, I'll send them your right. Yeah. Yeah. Send as many people as you know our way. So the mall. Okay. And that's interesting. We got another major arcina card. I'm curious. Have you ever had your cards read before? Oh, I'm going to say I have, but it was so long ago I don't remember it. You know, I mean, I would, I think I had to have had it want somewhere, you know, it's kind of one of those experiences that I feel like everybody does at some point or another. Yeah. We got the temperance card. It was in reverse. And there's some sort of turtle on it. The turtles mean anything to you?

1:05:15 Well, in Hawaii, turtles are good luck. So if you see a turtle, because, yeah, because I think they believe the Polynesians believe that your soul like, like it can be reincarnated as turtles. You know, yeah, something like that. I'm probably getting this really, really wrong. But, but I do know that the Polynesians believe that your, the spirits of your ancestors are in turtles. Not I'm sure that's other creatures too, but specifically turtles. So it's good luck to see a turtle. What do you know? I like that. Well, and I think this, I don't, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this might be more in line with you as a person currently in your life. Keywords for this card are moderation, harmony, acceptance, resolution, cooperation, and patience. Okay. I mean, my, my wife is where is she because she would be telling you that that was the exact that that card is nothing to do with me. We did get it in the reverse. You did get it in the reverse. We got it in the reverse.

1:06:29 Well, then, then that makes sense then because patience, cooperation, no, no, no. There's a cute little quote in the in the PNW books specifically. Do you want me to read it real quick? Sure. Okay. So the first little part of this is there is wisdom and staying in my shell. I'm safe from the raccoons prying paws and the hawk will think me a rock. Now, the one thing I think, I do think about the turtle thing and you know, that other part I think is true, but I think what it is is I have felt like I've been coming out of my shell because you know, I was as a, you know, as a young person, as you know, I only took the corporate spying job because I wanted to be an actor and I was trying very hard to be an actor and I did work a lot as an actor.

1:07:18 But ultimately, my acting career didn't pan out the way I had hoped. And so, then I circled away from the creative part of me, which was very disappointing and did all of the spying and then took the job in corporate America, which was so miserable and then had the proverbial midlife crisis. And now I've circled back to the creative person that I had always wanted to be. And so, I mean, that goes back to your college day. Yeah, and I mean, and I think that's the turtle is really, that's really cool that I'm coming out of my shell as a writer now. And that's, that's, I think that's true and I'm really excited about that. And I hope I continue to come out of my shell as a writer.

1:07:59 Yeah, that's great. I like that. That's a good, I feel like we feel the same here. So, I know we're going to be watching for updates about the fiction as well, because that one, I'm, I'm like too excited for that. I mean, I'll try to temper my excitement and patience, right? And, and you know, we didn't mention it. And I'll just briefly say, you know, keep your fingers crossed because, because Frank Abbott, Nail said such nice things about the book, Hollywood, you know, their ears pricked up because they're like, well, if they catch me if you can's name, this guy's name is on the cover of your book. And so, Ruse is in development for a TV series. Now, you know, yeah, which is great. And it's gone pretty far, but development, you know, there are a lot of things in development in Hollywood. And most of those never get made. So, I have a healthy dose of skepticism, but I got an email earlier today from the executive producer who has 20 shows on television saying, you know, excited to pick back up on Ruse now, because, you know, obviously the holidays, there was a little bit of a lag. And now we, you know, so, you know, who knows? Maybe at some point I can come back on and we can talk about the TV series.

1:09:13 I hope so. Yeah, I mean, luckily for you, you have a little bit more of a background, you know, from your days where, you know, you were acting quite a bit and had a lot of roles and you understand how the industry works in that respect. Because otherwise, that would be a tough, tough thing to do. Yeah, that's right. I mean, you, you, you, to, to enter this business, you have to be prepared for a lot of disappointment and heartache. Yeah. Yeah. And you're like, I've made it. And that's on a good day. No kidding. Yeah. Disappointment and heartache. That's a good day. I like that. Normally it's so crushing, you know, throat ripping out, you know what I mean? Yeah.

1:09:59 Yeah. Yeah. You had some, you had some stories in that vein, for sure. Right. Yeah. Right. We're not going to tell everybody everything, you know, save some things for the book. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. Well, thanks for coming on. That was really fun. I loved it. I loved the book. Well, you guys are fantastic. And anytime, you know, you, if you'll grace me to come back, we'll maybe pick an earlier spot in the day. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm sorry. I'm not doing. Yeah. But I definitely, I definitely am getting a sunburn. So, oh no. It's a good problem to have in winter. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. We are living in the greatest part of the greatest, just everything is great. And it's rainy. And I love Oregon. I like it here.

1:10:55 Are you convinced? Yes. I really do. But I'm ready for the change in season. So. Well, I tell everyone that is kind enough to have me on a podcast. If you're ever in SoCal, please let me know. You know, we'll meet up for the proverbial, a couple coffee or cocktail. I've had three people take me up on it already. And we've had really lovely times. So, I hope you guys will, you know, take me up on it if you're ever down this way. Oh, perfect. Well, I have to plan a trip. Yeah. I was going to say is if I needed another reason to visit Malibu. And come on. Yeah. Thank you so much, Robert. I'm super excited. I hope we'll be chatting with you again about your television re-day view. Okay. Well, thank you both. And have a great great weekend.

1:11:47 You too. Thank you. Bye. Bye. So for all of you that are listening, if you have any true crime or paranormal stories that you want us to share, maybe with a whole Pacific Northwest. Yes. We would love to read them on the pod. Yes. We will read them out loud. Not just in our heads. Yes. They don't have to be from the Pacific Northwest. If you would like to share email us at pnwhauntsandhomicides@gmail.com. It's all spelled out. No special characters. Super duper easy peasy. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Same thing as the email at pnw hunts and homicides. All spelled out. No special characters.

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