CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER ONEHello! I’m Andy McNab.
You may have heard of me from one or two of my previous books. If you have, all well and good. But if you haven’t, the introductions might as well start here.
I was in the British army for eighteen years. Eight as an infantryman and ten in the Special Air Service. I’m probably best known for my first book, Bravo Two Zero. It’s the story of an eight-man Special Forces mission behind enemy lines in Iraq during the first Gulf war. I was decorated for bravery along with three other soldiers from the BTZ patrol. In fact, our BTZ mission became the most highly decorated action since the Boer war battle of Rorke’s Drift in 1879.
Since then I have gone on to write more non-fiction, thrillers, film scripts, and to produce films. I am considered to be one of the top thirty writers of all time. The thing about success is that you need to control it. If you can do that and then use it correctly it’ll breed even more success. That’s why I’m also involved in business both in the UK and the US – particularly with start-up ventures.
But it’s no big deal.
One challenge is pretty much like another to me. I’ve gone from enemy lines to movie lines and from battle plans to business plans without even thinking about it. Maybe that’s why it’s been so easy – because I don’t think about it. Either way, I’ve never had a problem with problems.
I think they’re scared of me.
The reason I’m telling you this is because I do know one reason why I’m successful – the main reason, in fact.
It’s because I’m a psychopath.
But don’t panic, I’m a good psychopath.
It comes as a bit of a surprise when you first hear it, doesn’t it? It did to me. I had no idea until a few years ago when I met Kev – and discovered his liking for exotic suits and even more exotic perfumes. You’ve just met him too – and though he may not look like it (and certainly doesn’t sound like it) he is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oxford. The man knows his psychopaths – and he’s impressive.
But enough of me (for now!). YOU want to know what this book will do for YOU. How will it change YOUR life?
Well, it works like this. In the pages that follow, we will reveal SEVEN SIMPLE PRINCIPLES that will make you more successful. And then we’ll help you apply them.
We’re not interested in what kind of success it is you’re after. It could be big:
•Maybe you want a raise?
•Or a promotion?
•Or to clinch the deal that will get you that raise and promotion?
Or maybe it’s the small things in life that you’ve never been able to nail:
•Putting off making that awkward and embarrassing phone call.
•Telling the neighbours that you LOVE their chihuahuas. . . but don’t like them dumping on your lawn.
•Dealing with that friend or relation who still owes you money. You haven’t forgotten but they are hoping you have.
Whatever it is, this book is designed to meet the EVERYDAY needs of EVERYDAY people in EVERYDAY life:
•in the workplace
•outside the workplace
•with colleagues
•with friends
•with family
It can:
•make you money
•save you money
•get you out of trouble
•get you into trouble!
•get you preferential treatment
Whatever kind of success it is that you’re after, we are going to show you how to get it. But we’re going to do more than that. We’re also going to offer you a PHILOSOPHY FOR LIFE.
A philosophy for a SUCCESSFUL life.
A philosophy that WORKS.
Trust me – this book is a one-off.
Nothing else even comes close.
And as if that isn’t enough, we also do . . . SCIENCE! To be honest, that’s more Kev’s department than mine. But I chip in when I can. He’ll be examining how people like me tick – and how you can, too. I do the sleek stuff. Kev does the geek stuff. Basically, I’ll be firing the gun and he’ll be telling you why it goes bang.
So, I guess we’d better hear from him. The Geek . . .
Thanks, Andy. You’re too kind, mate.
It’s May 2010 and I’m at the launch party for my first book Flipnosis.
Picture the scene.
Twelve new magnums of vintage champagne have just appeared from nowhere, the world’s supply of vol-au-vents is doing the rounds, and Blondie’s ‘Hanging on the Telephone’ is blasting out of the iStation behind the bar.
Everyone is nicely plugged in and the place is in full swing.
Suddenly, from across the room, I hear someone call my name.
‘Hey, Kev! Come over here a minute and sign these for us, will yer?’
I look round. Over in the corner, by the publisher’s stand, a familiar face waves a handful of books, and a pen, in my direction. I edge through the crowd and we shake hands.
‘Hello, mate. How are you?’
‘Yeah, not bad. Just got in from Hawaii.’
The first thing I notice is the tan. More radioactive than Fukushima.
Then there’s the shoes. So shiny they’d probably be banned in California in case they started a bushfire.
The suit is Armani. Charcoal, single-breasted.
I take the pen and pull up a nearby chair. If I didn’t know better, I’d say this guy had class.
I open a book at the title page and pause.
‘Who’s it for?’ I inquire, routinely.
‘No one,’ he says. ‘Just sign it.’
‘You sure?’ I lament, therapeutically. ‘What, Billy No-Mates, is it?’
He smiles and opens a Coke.
‘I’ve got plenty of mates on eBay,’ he says. ‘And these little fuckers go for three times the price if they’re signed!’
Who else could it be but the legend that is Andy McNab?
Hello, folks, I’m Kevin Dutton – Andy’s immeasurably more fragrant, inordinately less tanned, and inestimably more domesticated other half.
If Flipnosis passed you by (which isn’t beyond the bounds of possibility), you might have heard of me from the follow-up: The Wisdom of Psychopaths – Lessons in Life from Saints, Spies and Serial Killers.
In it, I argue that psychopaths possess wisdom. And to back up my claim I cite evidence from saints, spies and serial killers.
It took me ages to think of the title.
It’s dayglo pink – exactly the same shade as Andy does his nails on a night out.
And oddly enough, he’s in it.
I first met Andy when I interviewed him for a radio show I was doing for the BBC World Service. It was some time later that he showed up in my lab. I still get flashbacks today. When I checked out his brain scans in response to disturbing images – images that have most people’s grey matter firing faster than Alan Sugar after a night on the piss – I did a double-take.
Far from it being the brain’s answer to Guy Fawkes’ night that I was expecting, the graphs were as flat as a pancake. He made Hannibal Lecter look like Dale Winton.
It’s a good job he joined the SAS. He’d have scared the shit out of them in Broadmoor.
Andy has always been a bit of an outdoors person and he’s got his mother to thank for that. He started off life in a Harrods bag on the steps of Guy’s Hospital.
When he first told me my initial thought was: well, that’s something we’ve got in common. After screwing up a gilt-edged education and a scholarship to Cambridge when I was at school I ended up working in the Harrods warehouse up the Great West Road in West London. I stacked shelves, took stuff off them and put it into lorries, then stacked them up again.
After two years of that it dawned on me that maybe university wasn’t such a bad idea after all, so I started again at an adult education college down the road.
Most of the courses on offer were A levels – and I’d already made a balls-up of those – so I decided to branch out a bit. As luck would have it, Birkbeck College was running a two-year diploma course in psychology at the time so I signed up.
I never looked back.
Ten years later, I was teaching in Cambridge where all those years ago I should’ve been a student.
All things considered I reckon they got off lightly.
People often ask me: why psychology? And, apart from the teenage aversion to A levels, I often wonder myself.
I suppose, from an early age, it was in the blood. My old man was a market trader in London. I used to help him when I should have been at school – just one of the reasons why Cambridge happened later rather than sooner.
‘You’ll learn more on the stall than you ever will in a classroom,’ he used to say.
And in my case he was probably right.
One summer, when I was around six or seven, I was about to break up for the school holidays. There’s a star chart in the classroom and I’m second in the pecking order.
By two stars.
Mum cuts me a deal.
‘I’ll buy you a Monopoly set,’ she says, ‘if you top that chart by the end of term.’
Given the timeframe – a little under a week – I’m not getting my hopes up.
And so it proves.
When the bell sounds to signal the end of the year, the standings haven’t changed. I’m two stars short of passing ‘Go’ and permanently stuck on Water Works. I’m not a happy camper.
Outside the gates Mum and Dad are waiting to pick me up. Dad takes my satchel and shoves it in the boot of the car.
‘Kev,’ he says, ‘I’ve never seen your classroom. Any chance you could give me a quick tour?’
I sigh wearily.
‘OK,’ I say and lead him down a rabbit warren of empty, echoey corridors deep into the bowels of the school. The place is deserted. All the other kids left ages ago and the teachers are long gone. Only the caretaker remains, pottering about in the playground.
When we get there, Dad walks over to the star chart and inspects it.
Two short.
‘Kev,’ he says, ‘go and get your mother from the car, will you?’
‘Let’s just leave it, Dad,’ I say.
‘Go and get your mother,’ he repeats.
A couple of minutes later, when I return to the classroom with Mum, Dad’s got a grin on his face the size of the South Circular.
‘Just look at that, Clare!’ he says, pointing at the chart. ‘I knew he’d do it! I’m proud of you, boy!’
Mum shuffles forward and peers at it.
I peer at it.
We all peer at it.
I can’t quite believe what I’m looking at.
Somewhere in the space of the last few minutes I appear to have accumulated three more stars.
All of a sudden I’m the cleverest boy in the class!
‘Well,’ Mum says, as we traipse back to the car, ‘you really did pull your finger out this week, didn’t you?’
I feel a dig in the back from Dad.
‘I bet you can’t wait to get your hands on that Monopoly set, can you, son?’ he says.
A couple of days later – true to her word – Mum buys me one.
It’s fabulous.
All colourful and shiny and new.
Later, when I’m ripping it out of the plastic in my bedroom, there’s a knock on the door.
It’s Dad.
‘Here,’ he says, throwing something on to the table, ‘stick this lot in a drawer for next year. You never know, they may come in handy.’
He pulls the door to and I get up and take a look. It’s a set of cheap, sticky-back stars from the newsagent down the road.
Three are missing.
Stuffed down the back is something small and bendy . . .
. . . a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card.
My old man probably wasn’t the only reason I took up psychology after concluding my packing and stacking tripos at Harrods. There must’ve been others, I’m sure. But his sheepskin-coated spectre can certainly be glimpsed in the books I’ve written since.
Flipnosis: The Art of Split Second Persuasion tells the story of how I hung out with some of the world’s top con artists, both here and in the US, to see who knew more about getting people to do things: me or them?
The idea was to bring together the very best insights that the science of influence could offer with the top tips, the insider knowledge, that the great persuaders – past and present, good and evil – had amassed.
Having worked for much of my academic life as a social psychologist, I was fascinated by the science of persuasion. That science had thrown up some clear rules of engagement over the years, cogent guidelines as to what works and what doesn’t – and my primary aim was to emancipate these tactics and principles, incarcerated, as many lamentably were, in obscure periodicals and quarterlies, and present them, unfettered, to a wider, less specialized audience.
I wanted to sequence the genome of persuasion. Uncover its DNA.
And then go one step further.
I was also intrigued by a highly mysterious subgroup of persuader, ‘natural born persuaders’ as I called them: influence black belts – like my old man – who wouldn’t know one end of a psychology textbook from another, but who seemingly possess a God-given ability to derive the functions of persuasion from first principles and to bend lesser mortals to their will.
Many of these influence virtuosos – which count among their number some of the world’s most venomous psychopaths – are the elite of the persuasion world: evil geniuses of social influence who learn their trade on their toes.
Could their deadly skills somehow be distilled into a few key principles of persuasion, I wondered?
Did the techniques they had honed in the bars, salesrooms and boardrooms stack up with what the academic study of persuasion had discovered over decades of painstaking research?
To find out, I spent a couple of years crisscrossing the globe interviewing this ruthless elite while, at the same time, running studies in my own lab and trawling the literature for scientific booty.
Once all the pieces of the influence jigsaw were in place I took a careful look at both sets of evidence – the scientific and the not-so-scientific – and slotted them together to form a number of common themes.
What I was left with was an elixir of success: an irreducible model of influence comprising five core principles of persuasion that are a sure-fire winner in any situation.
Which don’t just turn the tables, but kick ’em over!
But more on that later.
The Wisdom of Psychopaths – Lessons in Life from Saints, Spies and Serial Killers, the follow-up to Flipnosis, took things one step further.
If (as I had found) psychopaths were brilliant at getting what they want, then how, I mused, precisely, did they do it?
What dark psychological thunderstorms lurked behind the madness in their method?
To find out, I interviewed psychopaths from every walk of life you can think of:
•from ice-cool hedge-fund managers to nerveless neurosurgeons
•from silver-tongued barristers to ruthless CEOs
•from brutal, cold-eyed killers to Special Forces soldiers
The result was a vast, labyrinthine subway map of the psychopathic mind. A sprawling, interconnected snakes and ladders board of the psychopathic personality – with as many ladders as snakes!
But quite a few readers wanted something more.
The Wisdom of Psychopaths, they pointed out, is a popular science book.
Not a self-help book.
And while it comprised a decent enough brochure for the Psychopathy Tourist Board, what it did NOT comprise was a list of bite-sized, step-by-step instructions on how we can all ‘psychopath up’. On how we can each make friends with our own ‘inner psychopath’ and use psychopathic principles to become more successful during the course of our everyday lives.
It was never meant to, of course.
But suddenly there was an appetite for exactly that kind of book – a need for the ‘bottom line’.
In particular, there seemed to be an overwhelming demand for a basic, no-nonsense guide summarizing the key things I’d learned during the writing of The Wisdom of Psychopaths. People wanted straightforward, in-your-face advice about what to do in familiar, day-to-day situations.
•How can I use psychopathic principles to get served first in a busy bar?
•How would a course in ‘method psychopathy’ help me to get an upgrade?
•How do I make friends with my inner psychopath to get that job. . .to get that guy?
This book – The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Success – is here to fill that gap.
It integrates:
•niche, lightning-hot science from cutting-edge psychology labs around the world. . .with
•fun and revealing personality tests. . .with
•cloak-and-dagger Special Forces tips from one of the British Army’s most famous and highly decorated soldiers. . .
to present:
•handy
•bullshit-free
•easy-to-follow
success recipes for practically any situation you can think of.
And some you can’t!
You will learn, among other things:
•Why 8 p.m. is the best time to sell insurance.
•Why taking a cold shower might help you get a raise.
•How much of a GOOD PSYCHOPATH you are.
As Andy mentioned earlier, you won’t just learn how to fire the gun, but also why it went bang.
That’s something he’s been trying to figure out for years.
Time we put him out of his misery.