S1E22 The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

[MUSIC PLAYING]

endlich den moment genießen.

“einfach die Welt mit Tui neu erleben, mit Tui reißt du so wie du willst.”

als Familie zu zweit oder einfach allein. Flexible, sicher und immer mit den guten Gefühl, dass jemand da ist, wenn es drauf ankommt. Gestalt, mit Tui urlaubt ganz nach deinen wünschen. überall im Reisewirur, ob Tui punkom und in App.

[MUSIC PLAYING] This podcast is a cast with a touchstone production. I'll tell you a funny thing about Tui late.

My very first day at Tui late.

After the Chicago Conference which lasted a week, got to meet everybody genuinely liked everybody, still in touch with most of them. And I went back to my new office in Tyson's Corner, Virginia, which is McLean, Virginia, where the CIA is located.

Nice to stop us overhead in my life. Beautiful view of the Virginia countryside, reserved parking space. I was making exactly double what I'd been making at the agency. Life is good. My very first day, the big boss calls the partner.

I should add, I was hired at what was called the senior manager level. So I was just one promotion away from partner principle. Partners have accounting degrees, their CPAs, principles, our partners, but who don't have their CPA. So I was just one promotion away from the principle level.

So he says, hey, we just got a tip that such and such happened, get out there people and talk to your sources. Well, that just meant picking up the phone and calling all the people, you know.

I didn't know anybody because this was my first day on the job.

I started hearing ping, ping, ping, as everybody's writing these intelligence reports and sending them around everybody. Wow, this is actually really cool. People are calling all their sources. They're getting answers to these important questions.

It's going to allow Deloitte to make whatever decision they need to make for revenue enhancement or new clients or whatever, this is going to be fun. But there are a couple of things I'd like to do my way. First of all, there was no standardized way

to interview new hires. I said to the partner, do you mind if I go talk to HR like global HR on my own? No, knock yourself out.

“So I went to HR, New York, I think it was.”

I said it would be immensely helpful if I could get a spreadsheet of everybody that Deloitte hires everywhere in the world every month. This is a major global company. There were some months where we would hire 25,000 people

in a month. Now in that industry, there's huge turnover too. So what I would do, she would send it to me, the HR contact I had, she would send me the list. I would pair it down to everybody

no matter where they were hired. Everybody who was doing work in the United States, but who had come from one of our direct competitors and who was at the senior manager partner or principal level, that usually got it down to between five and 20

people in each one of our national regions with six national regions.

And the partners like, why in the world did I never think

of that? I said, the intelligence is fresh, it's current, and even if they have non-disclosure agreements, we could just dance around those. If there's a non-disclosure agreement,

we'll just give those questions. So I then wrote up a standard interview sheet. It wasn't a sheet, it was like 15 pages where we were all asking exactly the same questions. And then once you ask all these questions,

you just write your intelligence report. There are six of us doing these every month. My first full month, I produced, I still remember this, 36 intelligence reports. All six of us combined produced 45 intelligence reports.

Of the 45, my five colleagues wrote nine. I wrote all the rest, the partner calls me, and he says, buddy, I appreciate your excitement about the job, but you gotta slow down. You're making everybody look bad.

And I said, nobody has ever said that to me in my life. Listen, you work what? Nine, 10 hours, I said no.

“Honestly, all my life, all my adult life,”

I've had trouble sleeping. I'll get up in the middle of the night and just log on and write something. Which I still do to this day. I'll get up in the middle of the night.

I think, well, I can lay here in bed staring at the ceiling or I can go downstairs and write an op-ed and make $500. So I go downstairs and write the op-ed. So he said, okay, how about this?

You take a two hour lunch instead of a one hour lunch. Go to the gym or something. I said, okay, if that's what you want me to do,

I'm a very quick writer.

I would get my list from HR, I would pair it all down.

“I'd send all my colleagues there, people for the month.”

I would bang my it out as fast as I could. Well, now what do I do? I've written 20 of these. Everybody else has written three each and I have to slow down.

So what should I do? He said to me, how about this? Well, send you on like a special assignment. We want you to get the inside scoop from all of our nine competitors

as to what special perks they offer, partners from other firms that they're trying to recruit. It's like, okay, that's a little tougher. I have to actually recruit somebody on the inside. I've each one of these companies.

It's gonna take a little time, but I did it. Everybody wants to talk about himself or herself. But what I did is I like, I joined the rotary, for example. 'Cause all these partners, there's a rotary right there in the center of Tyson's corner

and they're all sitting together and laughing and throwing in one dollar bills for charity and having breakfast once a week. And they just talk and talk and talk.

“I would excuse myself to go to the men's room”

and I would jot down notes as to what they were talking about and write intelligence reports. This was the perfect job for me. (upbeat music) I'm John Kuryakud, welcome to Dead Drop,

what makes us bi-tick. Before we get back to the good, the bad, the ugly. That's what we're calling this episode. Some good. Well, some thank yous anyway.

Thank you. That's for helping this little podcast of ours attract the kind of attention that it's getting. Your likes, shares, kind reviews and comments, just you listening to the podcast,

have helped it grow exponentially. Whatever it is, we thought this podcast was going to be when we started making it, it's become and becoming so much more. And that really is all because of you.

So thank you again from the absolute bottom of our storyteller hearts. We appreciate it more than you know. Since we're rolling in the good,

“let's stay there for a little while longer.”

Deloitte had me do two things that were really, really fun. They told me one day, "Listen, we want you to go to Hyderabad, India for six weeks." And we want you to identify a couple of open source intelligence companies that we might be interested

in purchasing. And I said, "Cool, I get in the plane, fly to Hyderabad, India." They had hired a driver for me. They gave me an office in the Deloitte offices in Hyderabad. And I started collecting.

There were six open source intelligence companies doing business there at the time. I narrowed it down to two. And I said, I would recommend that the firm purchase India tiger analysis.

I said, "Everybody's highly educated." And where in DC, we're charging out our time at an average of $1,000 an hour. We're going to pay the Indians $5 an hour. And we can still charge out the time at 1,000.

It may need a little bit of editing because maybe their English isn't as good as hours. But I mean, this is a serious revenue boost. They bought the firm.

They paid something like $50 million for it.

And they bought it just based on my recommendation. And then something happened that was literally the most fun I ever had outside the CIA. I had a source call me. He was a new partner.

He and I just hit it off. He was fascinated that I was from the CIA. And then even more fascinated that all of my colleagues were from the CIA. So he had come from a firm called KPMG Consulting

that had later changed its name to Baring Point. He called me and he said, "Something's up at Baring Point." Like what? And he said, "I don't know, but it's big." They sent an email to every partner around the world

and said, "Manditory, global partners meeting at the Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Next week, be there." I said, "What do you think it could be?" He said, "On us to God, I have no idea."

So I told my partner. He said, "Pick somebody, anybody, and get down to Orlando." Convention Center is attached to two hotels. There's one hotel on each side, the Ritz Carlton. And they took every room in the Ritz Carlton

and the Marriott on the other side. So my colleague and I, a young new hire woman, she and I were on the Marriott side. She was the least experienced out of all of us, which was good in a way 'cause I could sort of mold her

as to how things like this are done. And it was bad in that she took risks that were utterly unacceptable.

And I'll tell you about that in a second.

I had to go to New York first to meet with the general counsel of Deloitte and he said, "Here are the rules, the laws, that you have to operate under. You can walk into their meetings, so long as the door stays open.

If the door is closed, that's a private meeting, and you have to leave." I flew down there.

The first thing I did was I went to Radio Shack.

You remember Radio Shack. They would sell radios and phones and batteries and gadgets in this net. I bought an earpiece with one of those curly cue, wires attached to it, and I put it in my ear

and I ran it down my shirt, but it wasn't attached to anything. So it looked like I was security or secret service

on the first day of this conference.

They're all in the giant ballroom of the convention center. And I'm standing in the very back with this earpiece hanging out of my ear. If you put 600 people in a room, it gets hot in there. So they left all the doors open.

Okay, this is a public meeting. Well, I also bought one of those little pocket recorders, little digital recorders, and I recorded everything. The CEO of the company gets up. He says, "People, we're going bankrupt

and we have to sell the company. We can't keep this up." Well, as it so happened, they had the biggest federal practice of any one of the big four or the little eight consulting firms.

Deloitte as it so happened, had the smallest federal practice of any of them. So Deloitte would be very interested in purchasing bearing point.

“Everybody's like, "Oh my God, what are we gonna do?”

We're all gonna lose our jobs.

Oh, this is a catastrophe." Then they take a break. I run into the men's room. I go into a stall and close the door, and I sit down on the toilet seat,

and I just hold my recorder up. All these guys come in. They're all standing at the urinals saying, "This is bullshit. I just booked $150 million deal

with the department of agriculture, blah, blah, blah, just spillin' their guts in there." Well, no small business. They need the red-capital life-saving driver, with their milk, milk, and the kids,

who are all the same. They're inducted to our interactive exhibition with the elite tour with Audioguyte and a class and the next parvillion, the whole world of red-capital life-saving.

People want to be just one or more. Or do they want to be a member of the state? Or, actually, the moment they are.

“Just go to the world with Tui, New Year's Eve.”

With Tui, like you know, as a family member for two or just one.

Flexible, secure, and always with the good feeling

that someone's there is when it comes to it. To stay with Tui, you're going to have a nice lunch. I want to come back to Tui.com and in the app. Every hour, too, I would call the general council and say, "What do I do?"

"What can I do?" "What should I not do?" And I'm on the phone constantly with the analysts. We had this analytic team. I would give the recorder to this young woman

that I was with. She would run to FedEx King Goes, which is now FedEx office, and she would fax because we couldn't attach to emails back then.

She would fax all of it back to the analysts. That night, I see the CEO, the CEO, the CEO, and the CEO of Barry Point going to a breakout room. So I call New York and I told them,

"Oh my God, is the door closed?" I said the door is closed. So I can't go in,

“but it's just the three of them in there.”

They said, "Don't leave the door." So I stood there for three hours, and then at seven o'clock, that evening, they came out. They left the door open,

and they had left all their papers on the table. So I call New York again. I said, "They walked out of the room and they left all their shit on the table." And they were like, "Oh my God, don't look at it.

Don't look at it." I said, "I haven't looked at it." I called you first. They said, "If they don't come back in two hours,

it's considered abandoned." And you can take it. I'm just standing there in front of this open door. This cleaning lady comes up. Put it five odd, put it five odd,

no, come later, later." And I chased her away. Finally, two hours pass, they never come back. I go in there.

It was the crown jewels of the company. It was their complete client list. They had like 115 clients. All of their revenue projections for the next two or three years. It was their discount formula.

And one funny thing was, the CEO wrote a little note on the top of one page to the CEO and said, "How much of a Christmas bonus are you giving your secretary this year?"

And then the CEO wrote back 5000. She was a bitch to me. I took everything. I went immediately to FedEx. Can't go.

It cost me $700 to fax it all back. One of the analysts called me. And he said, "I feel like crying, having read it." My boss said, "Come home.

You hit a home run." When you're at the agency,

You blow the doors off in operation,

by God, you're going to get an exceptional performance award

“and a $500 bonus and Uncle Sam is very proud of you.”

They gave me a $25,000 bonus and a $25,000 raise. This is the best job I have ever had. This young woman though, she would do things like,

after we had gotten all this. We can't leave until the next day. So she says, "Let's just go sit in the barn and see if we can pull additional information out of people." We're sitting at the bar.

She and I together. And there's this morbidly obese bearing point partner sitting by himself at a table. They're all wearing bearing point badges. She and I didn't have a bat.

So she says, "What's your badge say?" Baring point. Oh, are you a partner there? Yeah. And she said, "There are so many of you

must be something important."

Oh, yeah. It's really important. It's about the future of the company. She says, "I would love to hear more about that. Maybe in your room over dinner."

I said, "Stop." What are you doing? Stop. And he was like, "That sounds like a plan." And I said, "Don't you dare."

Afterward, something like, "What the fuck are you doing?" Well, you wouldn't give me everything. And I said, "You're not safe." In a situation like that. So I wouldn't let her go.

Afterward, she's like, "Uh, John, let me go." And my boss is like, "What are you crazy?" He says to her. But anyway, gigantic success. Then my boss says, "Is there something we can do for you?"

You're just beating the pants off of everybody in terms of production.

You wouldn't do something fun."

I said, "Actually, yeah. There's a PhD program at Harvard Business School in corporate leadership. And I would like to get my PhD in corporate leadership." He says, "Done." I applied to Harvard Business School.

Low and behold, I get in.

“I can't believe how my life is changing.”

I'm going to get a PhD from Harvard Business School. And then I get a phone call from my doc. Hey, you haven't been in here in two years. And I am not renewing your blood pressure medication until you come in and get a physical and take the blood work.

I go in there. He draws blood. I will admit that. I was very active while at the agency because you're on the run constantly.

And I preferred foot surveillance detection routes rather than car surveillance detection routes because it was easier to spot somebody. And at the same time, I was getting a ton of exercise. I gained 50 pounds at the light.

The business lunches did me in. And then there's so much domestic travel. I covered everything from Philadelphia to Miami. I was traveling constantly, eating and steak houses every night with partners and drinking expensive wine

and just gorging myself if it was sickening. The doctor calls me on Christmas Eve. I was shocked when I saw that it was him calling. Hey, Doc, what's up? You're going to have a heart attack any minute now.

You've got arterial blockage. You've got high cholesterol. High triglycerides. High blood pressure. And buddy, you've got diabetes.

“And you've probably been diabetic for two years.”

I decided to take my health more seriously. I withdrew from Harvard. And I decided to go on a doctor supervised diet. And in the next nine months, I lost 77 pounds. Just by sheer willpower. It was when I was at my finnist.

My happiest and my most successful. That I got a call one day from Brian Ross of ABCD. Nah, I have no plans for that. I'm looking for the red captionaliveness world in Freiburg with orange melds on my face.

I'm looking for the right to find the right person. I'm looking for the right person. I'm looking for the right. I'm looking for the right person. I'm looking for the right person.