December 30, 2025 • 23 mins
In a time when personal safety is increasingly top of mind, author and former CIA officer and security expert Tim Beard launches LOOK TWICE, a groundbreaking new series of three books designed to give readers the practical tools and mindset to stay alert, aware and protected in their everyday lives. Volume I, available January 27, 2026; Stillwater Books, lays the foundation with Tim’s signature “Look Twice Mindset” — a simple yet powerful approach to recognizing risks before they become threats. In Tim’s timely new books, he introduces the essential security concepts that anchor the entire series. With clear, relatable guidance, he shows readers how to stay Safe at Home and at Work, from identifying vulnerabilities to mastering basic precautions that greatly reduce risk. The book also offers step-by-step advice for navigating ordinary outings — what Tim calls Out in Town — including running errands, using ATMs and moving through public spaces confidently and safely.Recognizing that transportation plays a major role in many safety incidents, Tim devotes a full section to Transportation Awareness. Readers will learn how to stay secure while driving, riding subways, managing encounters with road rage, and more. Each chapter blends real-world insight with actionable strategies, empowering readers to make safer decisions in every environment.“Safety isn’t about fear — it’s about preparation,” says Tim. “My goal with the LOOK TWICE series is to help people build everyday habits that increase awareness, protect their families and give them peace of mind.”
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do you think life is moving quickly? I've got a
decade's worth of conversations with everybody who's appeared on NBC's
The Voice. You can check them all out one place
Aro dot net, A r r oe dot net. It's
the podcast titled That Voice. How are you doing, mister
Tim Beard.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I'm doing very well. Thank you, appreciate you having me here.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Dude. I bet you you are on alert these days,
especially these days because I mean with your knowledge. I
mean it's like, how are you finding peace in your heart?
Is it through by teaching people, you know what it's
time to be aware more than being that person that
faces the chariots.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I'll tell you it's it's it's teaching people to know
what to do. You know.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I have.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I have a lot of experience over the past few decades,
and I've basically tried to go through and look at
all the stuff that I did. It came on my
heart to do this and to put this book series together,
which the first book is coming out twenty seven January,
Look Twice Your guid Just Staying Safe and Unsafe World,
Volume one. And so what I've tried to do is
I've tried to capture all the stuff I've learned just
(01:07):
for normal everyday people. I develop something that I call
the look twice mindset. So good security. It's about awareness,
it's about planning a head, it's about focusing on the fundamentals.
It's about making good, smart choices and doing the right
thing every time. But here's the thing that this is
(01:28):
what's unique about somebody with my background who as a
retired CIA Clandestine Service officer and a former Marine Infantry
officer prior to that, but being a retired intelligence officer,
I have a very different approach to how I do
this stuff than say somebody who is from a what
we even term a more kinetic background. What I try
(01:50):
to do is it's about avoiding problems. They should speak
to your listeners, to normal everyday folks who just want
to go about their lives. They want, I want to love,
their love their families and their friends, and they want
to you know, live their life. And they want to
be safe, and they want to go to work, and
they want to come home, and they want to shop,
and they want to you know, go to their house
(02:11):
of worship, whatever it is they choose to do. They
want to avoid problems. They don't want to engage. You
may get forced into a corner where you have to
and I speak about that and later on in volume three.
But it's about planning, and so I developed this look
twice mindset of things that I want people to look for,
(02:31):
I want them to watch for, I want them to understand,
and I use I try not to use any jargon.
I have a few concepts I present and I'll throw
a couple out just to give you a flavor for
what I'm talking about. Please I use in the book,
I talk about avoid, avoid, Avoid. Why would you say
that three times? Because it's that important. It's about awareness.
(02:53):
Awareness is everything. And when you are what i'll term exposed,
when you're on the street, you're exposed because you're not
in a safe place, a safe place that we would
call a hard point. A hard point is a place
where you're basically separated from somebody, an adversary, a potential
criminal that may want to do you harm. So what
(03:15):
happens is you turn your home essentially into a hard point.
I'm not talking to prison. I'm talking a place where
you are comfortable, where you feel safe, where if you
need to call for help, you don't have somebody who's
right on top of you. If you're in a hospital,
or if you're in a government building or a large
commercial establishment like a big business, where there's a lot
(03:36):
of people, where you're not isolated, separate alone. Those are
what I define as hard points. When you're not in
a hard point, you're basically exposed. So remembering all and
we'll cover a couple of things here in a moment,
but focusing on the fundamentals and keeping yourself aware is
the key thing. I've got a couple of concrete things
(03:57):
I want to share with your listeners. First thing on
this one here, what's one of the first things you
can do to improve your security. Put your cell phone away.
Put your cell phone away until you're in a safe place.
If you go out on the street and you will
look around, you'll see people who are staring at their
cell phone. They wander into stuff, they're not paying attention.
(04:18):
If your attention is centered on your phone, you can
have no idea what's going on around you. You've eliminated
your reaction time. Somebody can walk right up to you
and you have no idea until it's too late. You
give up all your advantages and you're what we call
a soft target. A soft target is somebody who's vulnerable
(04:39):
and somebody who's an adversary a criminal. They'll look and
they'll see they're looking for soft targets to go after.
So if you're the person who's staring at your phone
walking along oblivious to everything going around, you've just attracted attention,
especially if you have a handbag that's exposed, or you're
carrying a bag, or you're the something that they may
(05:01):
want to just a smash and grab robbery where they
want to grab it and run away. You've given up
your advantages. That's a real easy thing to do. Another thing,
don't wear earbuds or headphones until you're in a safe place.
You'll see people walking around and I mean you can
walk up right next to you can put your hand
on their shoulder and they have no awareness. And some
(05:22):
of your listeners may say, well, everyone knows that this
is simple stuff. But these are the fundamentals, the basics.
When I was overseas committing espionage, when I was out
doing something, nobody's coming to help me. I'm out on
my own, and so I have to be able to
do everything myself. I have to be paying attention. I've
got to be aware, and that's the same thing I
(05:44):
want folks to be able to do here in the
United States or if they travel overseas. So that's another
one there. Don't eliminate your reaction time, and don't take
away one of your senses by wearing headphones or earbuds.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Please do not move more. With Tim Beard coming up
next the name of his book, look twice. This is
the first of three. We are back with Tim Beard.
One of the things that I do as a third
degree black belt instructor is the fact that I will
I will teach them what I call the flypaper philosophy,
(06:18):
and that is is that I mean, I'll sneak up
behind them. They won't even know I'm there, and I
go because I mimicked your body movement. Any sound you
heard might have been me, but your mind developed it
as something you were doing. Therefore, you didn't know that
I was standing right there beside you. And that's how
you're going to be taking advantage of.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Undred percent as somebody who's i'll call it a well
educated criminal or well educated adversary. When you're walking, they
will adjust their age to their pace yes to move
the same as you. So when your foot hits the ground,
their feet are hitting the ground. They go at the
same pace. They may just stretch their legs a little
longer to close on you. So the thing is when
(07:00):
you're on the street, when you're exposed, you have to
keep your head up and look confident. You have to
move deliberately. Its something I encourage folks to do through
the mindset that I've written about in volume one. You
want to move between hard points. If you're leaving your
home and you're going to your car, say you're parked
down the street because you live in an urban area, Well,
what are you going to do when you leave your home?
(07:21):
First thing you're going to do is you're going to
scan the area and you want to say, hey, is
there anything looks weird here? And this is my third point,
is about developing a baseline. Do you want to know
what is normal and what's not? And this is critical.
We tend to do this intuitively, but what I want,
what I want your listeners to do is I wanted
to really focus on this and be deliberate in their
(07:42):
thought about it. So when you come out of your house,
you should have a baseline for what is normal and
is not normal At the rough time of day when
you're leaving your house, who is normally hanging around there?
Who are there? Is there anybody there? Do you leave
earlier early in the morning? Do you leave? Are there
some workers on the street or are there some people
who are maybe sitting on their porch down the block?
(08:05):
Are there people out walking their dogs? What's normal? Everyone
has a baseline for You want to develop that for
every activity of your life. What's the baseline at work?
What's the baseline when you go to your house of worship?
What's the baseline when you go shopping? Where do you
go shopping? When you're in the grocery store. If you
start to see something that deviates significantly from your baseline,
(08:28):
that's where you need to stop and go, hey, hold on,
I'm minute here. That warrants or further investigation. I need
to look over there. That's weird. You come out of
your house and you're going to walk to your car.
As you're doing that, you're skinning, just not in alerting way.
You're just keeping your head up and looking around gently.
And you see somebody who's paying way too much attention
(08:49):
to you or staring at you, boy, that's a clue.
That's something that deviates from your baseline. It may be nothing,
but it warrants a little bit of your attention. Now,
as you get close to your car, or you see
that you have a pop tire, well, what could that be?
Maybe you ran over a nail. Maybe the person or
a couple people who are paying a little too much
attention to you and they're not too far from your car,
(09:12):
Perhaps us le versus probably which one is it? They
popped your tire because they want to distract you so
they can do something to you. They can rob you,
et cetera. So that's that's where you have to keep it.
Keep the attention now. Flat tires. If you have more
than one flat tire, that's definitely a blow. There's a couple,
you know.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
One of the things that I try to share with
people is when you talk about the awareness is that
when people find out that I am a third done,
and I don't brag about it because you don't want
to brag about it. And the thing is is that
I will teach them we're not we're not trained to attack.
We are, but we're not. And the thing is is
that they go, I'm so afraid of you. Now I'm
the one you want to walk with, because we will
(09:52):
walk around a situation in question and not walk into
that situation. And that's what I love about what you're
doing with look tow is that you're saying, by the way,
there's something you already know. I'm just reminding.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
You, right, and you're being delivered about it. Yeah, And
you're you're putting this stuff in the front of your
mind and you're paying attention to it, and you're building habits,
good habits fundamentals. You know, if you're if you're practicing
for football, if you practice well and you practice correctly
and you do the plays over and over, you're going
(10:26):
to perform better on the field. If you have sloppy
practice or you're making all sorts of errors, you're going
to do the same thing when it comes to the
time for the game. So it's it is important that
you are thinking ahead on this stuff, developing that baseline.
And so if something seems strange you're concerning, make sure
that you are looking around and go, hey, maybe it's
time to go right now.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Like we talked about the pop tire. One of the
things I recommend in the book join a travel club,
or pay for towing the labor insurance for you from
your insurance fly. If something like that happens and you
feel unsure, go back into your barb plunk, go back
into your house and call and say, hey, I got
a flat tire. Can you send somebody out to help,
and then you can join them when they're there. You're
(11:08):
not alone, you're not isolated. And also when you change time,
when you start adding time on, if you're waiting for
somebody on the street or you're waiting for something to happen,
it seems like it goes on forever. So that criminal
if fifteen minutes goes by, they're probably going to be
pretty uncomfortable and leave because they're burning a hole in
(11:28):
the ground, is what we say.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
One of the things that I'm really disappointed with when
it comes to businesses is the fact that businesses want
you to park as far away as possible because it
leaves open spaces for your guests that are coming in.
I totally get that, but when you're walking out there
at nine to eleven PM or even three o'clock in
the morning, where you parked at two o'clock in the afternoon,
that right there is every reason why you should come
(11:50):
under attack, and.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
So how do you do that? It goes back to
the concept of avoid avoid avoid, that's right. I say,
for example, you're going to get gas. One it's called
fuel discipline. I cover this thing. This is. This is
scattered across the three books. The mindset is the first
chapter or part of volume one, and then I have
fifteen more chapters, parts as I call them, where I
(12:15):
apply that mindset to things that will be in your
reader's lives. Whether it's safe tech, whether it's business travel,
whether it's living. You know, your home, your workplace, it's
being in your car. What do you do when you
get in your car, when you approach your car, it's
about transportation, subways. But gas you go to get gas.
(12:36):
Why are you getting gas at eleven thirty at night. No,
that's just a bad call. Get gas first thing in
the morning. Never go below a quarter tank of gas. Ever,
if you live in an area like I live in Florida, well,
in Florida weave hurricanes during hurricanes, then you never go
(12:57):
below half a tank of gas. Because if you got
to get off the peninsula and get back into the
main part of the country to get away, you may
not be able to. So that's the fuel discipline piece.
So you shouldn't have to get gas at eleven thirty
at night. Planning is really important and when you choose
to do stuff. If you go to the gas station,
(13:18):
if you do have to go at some odd time,
again being thoughtful about this, don't go alone. Go with
somebody else. Your job's to pump gas, but you're going
to be distracted because you're pumping gas. The other person's
job is in a non alerting way. Just keep a
heads up about what's going on around you, but try
to do it when it's not during a period of darkness,
(13:40):
which gives an advantage to an adversary. There was I
was in Houston one time years ago, and they actually
had in the area of Houston that I was in.
It wasn't that particular part, wasn't the greatest area. They
had stickers on the gas pumps that said stop, look
around while you're pumping gas because they had so many
(14:02):
people who got their cars jacked while they were pumping gas,
and so.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Well, see, that's that's one of the reasons why I
try to teach and let people know that when you
when you are pumping gas. Lock your doors in your
car because you're you're facing the pump. You're not facing
those doors that are wide open and oh my god,
I just slipped in your butt's grass. When you get
back in that car and start that car, and.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
If you're you know, for the ladies out there, don't
leave your handbag sitting on the seat. Put on the floor.
That way, it's less less visible. Somebody trying to get
they're gonna have to reach into your car. Even if
they break the window it's down, it's not visible. But
the other thing you can carry too, keep your keys on.
You don't keep your keys in the vehicle because a
(14:48):
lot of people, you know, their key fob these days,
if it's with the car, then they have access to
your car or wherever they go because you left it in
your car. Put them in your pocket. If something goes wrong,
if something starts, it happen, that's bad. Then we call
that the X. The X is you want to get
off the X. I talk about this in volume one.
(15:10):
The X is kind of like think back to war
movies that people see. It's the ambush site. It's where
the crime is going to take place. And the first
thing you want to do maintaining your wits is you
want to get off the X. So if you're at
the gas pump and you have your keys in your pocket,
or you have your keys in your handbag, but your
handbag's on your shoulder and something starts to go wrong,
(15:32):
you can run away. And this is a key piece
about the whole book. Again, we talk about planning all
you're clear in mind before something happens. You got to
come up with some type of a general game plan. Hey,
I go to this gas station all the time. It's
not too far from my house, it's on my way
to work. This is where I go. Okay, take a
(15:52):
look around when everything's calm, and develop a basic plan.
We call this writing something to the hard drive in
your brain because when things go bad and you have
and you know this is a martial artist, you have
an adrenaline dump in your body. What happens when the
adrenaline dumps into your body you lose your fine motor control.
You can only do large scale movements, your mindset, your
(16:17):
ability to think clearly shrinks dramatically. And so what you've
written to that hard drive in your brain during periods
of calm and preparation beforehand. Your mind is going to
go back to whatever you wrote there. And this is
another thing I'm sure you know as a martial arts
if your mind goes to a blank card drive, the
(16:38):
chances of you going into shock or freezing go up
a ton. I've seen people freeze before because something happened
that was so far outside of their worldview and their playing.
They're like, their mind goes, what's just happened here and
they just lock up.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Well, see, that's the reason why. That's one of the
reasons why we put a lot of training into what
we call verbal taekwondo, because if you need to clear
an area, or if you need to get yourself out
of there, you've got to be able to speak with
a clear, present voice and make sure there's authority in it,
because that's the only way you're going to snap out
of that blank spot.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Right. And if you've notice all the stuff we've talked
about here in the past few minutes, it's about planning ahead. Yes,
it's about avoiding problems. And this is what's I think
unique about my approach as a retired CIA Clandestine Service officer.
I have a very different background. You know, the books
I wrote here. I put this in the introduction. They're
(17:36):
not written specifically for people with a law enforcement, a
security or a military background, although those folks may gain
from the knowledge I have. But the approach that I have,
and they certainly have good ways that they deal with
stuff they're trained for that the approach I have is
for normal, everyday folks who maybe didn't have any of
those experiences. And then this is me helping write things
(18:01):
through case studies and scenarios and tips. In addition to
the rest of the text. I have that scattered throughout
the books, where I'll say, hey, here's the scenario on
something that happened, and I say, this is what they
did right, and this is what they did wrong. Wow.
And so your readers were the readers of the book,
your listeners, they can read that and they can say, hey,
(18:21):
that's like me. I can do this. You can do this.
This is not hard stuff. It's being thoughtful, it's avoiding.
It's having somebody with my background and expertise to say, hey,
here's some ideas that may work for you. We have
a phrase in the agency we say we call it,
we say it depends what should I do it? Depends.
(18:45):
That's not super helpful, but it does. It depends. In
order to do something, you have to thought through an advance,
and you have to have a few potential solutions, and
then when something rough is going on, you jump to
one of those solutions. Because some of your listeners may say, well,
you know, if your plan as soon as something happens,
(19:06):
it all falls apart. That's true, but at least you
have a plan to go back to. You have a direction.
You're moving back to that gas example, So you go
to the same gas station every time. You know you
developed a baseline. You go there and you see people
who are sitting there just loitering, waiting for something to happen,
(19:27):
or they're going to cause something to happen. Maybe time
to not get gas right now, and you fuel this upon.
You got at least a quarter tank, So we'll get
it another day, or we'll get you know later when
I come home from work, you know where you can
run to. You have thought through all right, I'm going
to go ahead and pump gas. I'm going to go
ahead and lock my car. I'm going to have my
handbag on my shoulder, or I'm going to have my
(19:49):
keys in my pocket and my fob. If something happens,
I can run away, I'll come back. My car is
still going to be there because I have the fob
on me. And this is all going to be recorded
on camera. But that camera isn't going to save you.
It's recording it for forensic purposes. So law enforcement love
law enforcement, so they can come back, Hey, this is
(20:10):
what happened and figure it all out. But you got
to handle it on the spot instantly. That's really important.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Wow, Where can people go to find out more about you, Tim,
because twenty minutes with you is not enough. And I'm
going to be knocking on your door a lot in
twenty twenty six because I think that what's happening here
is you're being called to help educate a group of
people not only here in the States but around the
world on on that key thing of being awareness. And
I want people to really know who you are, where
(20:37):
you are, and what you've been up to.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Okay, the other on my website, which is up is
Tim Beard b e ar d so tenbeard author dot com.
So if they go there, you say picture of me,
you know, do you just do not have pictures of
me around now? There's a picture of me out there.
So there's a picture of me. It has a little
(21:00):
bit about my background, the things that I'm allowed to
say that the government lets you say. And yeah, I
always have to run everything through the government because I
signed secrecy agreements when I retired for the rest of
my life and I adhere to those. Those are very
important for me because that's my commitment to what I
did for the course of my career. But I wrote
(21:23):
three books. The first one is coming out on the
twenty seventh of January. There is a link right there
that goes to my Amazon author central page right from
the website, and the ebooks are currently up for pre order.
There will also be print and audio versions that will
come out on the twenty seventh of January when that
first book comes out. The second book is going to
(21:44):
come out the tenth of February. That book is called
Look Twice Your Guide is Staying Safe with Tech, travel
and natural disasters. And then the third book, which I
call Look Twice Your Guide When Danger Comes to You
at home and overseas is that one will be out
in March. And there's three books in the series total.
(22:06):
It's about six hundred pages between the three books. You know,
it's interesting when the second book, for example, something again
that's different. Because of my background. I have a lot
of tech knowledge, a lot of computer knowledge, stuff like that,
which I cover in depth in the second book. But
the important stuff for your listeners right now, the first
(22:27):
book coming up first here is that Look Twice Mindset,
and in that book I cover personal security. I cover
safe at home, safe at work, out in town, some
of the stuff we just talked about. And then transportation.
I say transportation. It's kind of boring now. I talk
a lot about cars. What are you doing around your
car where you are a lot? What do you do
(22:49):
in the subway system, things like that.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Tim, you got to come back to the show. In fact,
I need to put you down in my notes for
February because I want to talk to you about your
your February as well as your March book. You've got
to come back to this show.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Love to come back, love it. I appreciate the opportunity
to come talk to your listeners. My desire is to
help people with my background, and I hope that some
folks who hear this today come away with more of
a plan and they understand you can do this, you
can succeed. And I'll say, if you're not planning, you're
planning to fail. Oh that's something we say in the Marines.
(23:23):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Well, you have yourself a brilliant day today, and thank
you for serving our nation, sir.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
Do you think life is moving quickly? I've got a
decade's worth of conversations with everybody who's appeared on NBC's
The Voice. You can check them all out one place
Aro dot net, A r r oe dot net. It's
the podcast titled That Voice. How are you doing, mister
Tim Beard.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I'm doing very well. Thank you, appreciate you having me here.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Dude. I bet you you are on alert these days,
especially these days because I mean with your knowledge. I
mean it's like, how are you finding peace in your heart?
Is it through by teaching people, you know what it's
time to be aware more than being that person that
faces the chariots.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I'll tell you it's it's it's teaching people to know
what to do. You know.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I have.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I have a lot of experience over the past few decades,
and I've basically tried to go through and look at
all the stuff that I did. It came on my
heart to do this and to put this book series together,
which the first book is coming out twenty seven January,
Look Twice Your guid Just Staying Safe and Unsafe World,
Volume one. And so what I've tried to do is
I've tried to capture all the stuff I've learned just
(01:07):
for normal everyday people. I develop something that I call
the look twice mindset. So good security. It's about awareness,
it's about planning a head, it's about focusing on the fundamentals.
It's about making good, smart choices and doing the right
thing every time. But here's the thing that this is
(01:28):
what's unique about somebody with my background who as a
retired CIA Clandestine Service officer and a former Marine Infantry
officer prior to that, but being a retired intelligence officer,
I have a very different approach to how I do
this stuff than say somebody who is from a what
we even term a more kinetic background. What I try
(01:50):
to do is it's about avoiding problems. They should speak
to your listeners, to normal everyday folks who just want
to go about their lives. They want, I want to love,
their love their families and their friends, and they want
to you know, live their life. And they want to
be safe, and they want to go to work, and
they want to come home, and they want to shop,
and they want to you know, go to their house
(02:11):
of worship, whatever it is they choose to do. They
want to avoid problems. They don't want to engage. You
may get forced into a corner where you have to
and I speak about that and later on in volume three.
But it's about planning, and so I developed this look
twice mindset of things that I want people to look for,
(02:31):
I want them to watch for, I want them to understand,
and I use I try not to use any jargon.
I have a few concepts I present and I'll throw
a couple out just to give you a flavor for
what I'm talking about. Please I use in the book,
I talk about avoid, avoid, Avoid. Why would you say
that three times? Because it's that important. It's about awareness.
(02:53):
Awareness is everything. And when you are what i'll term exposed,
when you're on the street, you're exposed because you're not
in a safe place, a safe place that we would
call a hard point. A hard point is a place
where you're basically separated from somebody, an adversary, a potential
criminal that may want to do you harm. So what
(03:15):
happens is you turn your home essentially into a hard point.
I'm not talking to prison. I'm talking a place where
you are comfortable, where you feel safe, where if you
need to call for help, you don't have somebody who's
right on top of you. If you're in a hospital,
or if you're in a government building or a large
commercial establishment like a big business, where there's a lot
(03:36):
of people, where you're not isolated, separate alone. Those are
what I define as hard points. When you're not in
a hard point, you're basically exposed. So remembering all and
we'll cover a couple of things here in a moment,
but focusing on the fundamentals and keeping yourself aware is
the key thing. I've got a couple of concrete things
(03:57):
I want to share with your listeners. First thing on
this one here, what's one of the first things you
can do to improve your security. Put your cell phone away.
Put your cell phone away until you're in a safe place.
If you go out on the street and you will
look around, you'll see people who are staring at their
cell phone. They wander into stuff, they're not paying attention.
(04:18):
If your attention is centered on your phone, you can
have no idea what's going on around you. You've eliminated
your reaction time. Somebody can walk right up to you
and you have no idea until it's too late. You
give up all your advantages and you're what we call
a soft target. A soft target is somebody who's vulnerable
(04:39):
and somebody who's an adversary a criminal. They'll look and
they'll see they're looking for soft targets to go after.
So if you're the person who's staring at your phone
walking along oblivious to everything going around, you've just attracted attention,
especially if you have a handbag that's exposed, or you're
carrying a bag, or you're the something that they may
(05:01):
want to just a smash and grab robbery where they
want to grab it and run away. You've given up
your advantages. That's a real easy thing to do. Another thing,
don't wear earbuds or headphones until you're in a safe place.
You'll see people walking around and I mean you can
walk up right next to you can put your hand
on their shoulder and they have no awareness. And some
(05:22):
of your listeners may say, well, everyone knows that this
is simple stuff. But these are the fundamentals, the basics.
When I was overseas committing espionage, when I was out
doing something, nobody's coming to help me. I'm out on
my own, and so I have to be able to
do everything myself. I have to be paying attention. I've
got to be aware, and that's the same thing I
(05:44):
want folks to be able to do here in the
United States or if they travel overseas. So that's another
one there. Don't eliminate your reaction time, and don't take
away one of your senses by wearing headphones or earbuds.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Please do not move more. With Tim Beard coming up
next the name of his book, look twice. This is
the first of three. We are back with Tim Beard.
One of the things that I do as a third
degree black belt instructor is the fact that I will
I will teach them what I call the flypaper philosophy,
(06:18):
and that is is that I mean, I'll sneak up
behind them. They won't even know I'm there, and I
go because I mimicked your body movement. Any sound you
heard might have been me, but your mind developed it
as something you were doing. Therefore, you didn't know that
I was standing right there beside you. And that's how
you're going to be taking advantage of.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Undred percent as somebody who's i'll call it a well
educated criminal or well educated adversary. When you're walking, they
will adjust their age to their pace yes to move
the same as you. So when your foot hits the ground,
their feet are hitting the ground. They go at the
same pace. They may just stretch their legs a little
longer to close on you. So the thing is when
(07:00):
you're on the street, when you're exposed, you have to
keep your head up and look confident. You have to
move deliberately. Its something I encourage folks to do through
the mindset that I've written about in volume one. You
want to move between hard points. If you're leaving your
home and you're going to your car, say you're parked
down the street because you live in an urban area, Well,
what are you going to do when you leave your home?
(07:21):
First thing you're going to do is you're going to
scan the area and you want to say, hey, is
there anything looks weird here? And this is my third point,
is about developing a baseline. Do you want to know
what is normal and what's not? And this is critical.
We tend to do this intuitively, but what I want,
what I want your listeners to do is I wanted
to really focus on this and be deliberate in their
(07:42):
thought about it. So when you come out of your house,
you should have a baseline for what is normal and
is not normal At the rough time of day when
you're leaving your house, who is normally hanging around there?
Who are there? Is there anybody there? Do you leave
earlier early in the morning? Do you leave? Are there
some workers on the street or are there some people
who are maybe sitting on their porch down the block?
(08:05):
Are there people out walking their dogs? What's normal? Everyone
has a baseline for You want to develop that for
every activity of your life. What's the baseline at work?
What's the baseline when you go to your house of worship?
What's the baseline when you go shopping? Where do you
go shopping? When you're in the grocery store. If you
start to see something that deviates significantly from your baseline,
(08:28):
that's where you need to stop and go, hey, hold on,
I'm minute here. That warrants or further investigation. I need
to look over there. That's weird. You come out of
your house and you're going to walk to your car.
As you're doing that, you're skinning, just not in alerting way.
You're just keeping your head up and looking around gently.
And you see somebody who's paying way too much attention
(08:49):
to you or staring at you, boy, that's a clue.
That's something that deviates from your baseline. It may be nothing,
but it warrants a little bit of your attention. Now,
as you get close to your car, or you see
that you have a pop tire, well, what could that be?
Maybe you ran over a nail. Maybe the person or
a couple people who are paying a little too much
attention to you and they're not too far from your car,
(09:12):
Perhaps us le versus probably which one is it? They
popped your tire because they want to distract you so
they can do something to you. They can rob you,
et cetera. So that's that's where you have to keep it.
Keep the attention now. Flat tires. If you have more
than one flat tire, that's definitely a blow. There's a couple,
you know.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
One of the things that I try to share with
people is when you talk about the awareness is that
when people find out that I am a third done,
and I don't brag about it because you don't want
to brag about it. And the thing is is that
I will teach them we're not we're not trained to attack.
We are, but we're not. And the thing is is
that they go, I'm so afraid of you. Now I'm
the one you want to walk with, because we will
(09:52):
walk around a situation in question and not walk into
that situation. And that's what I love about what you're
doing with look tow is that you're saying, by the way,
there's something you already know. I'm just reminding.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
You, right, and you're being delivered about it. Yeah, And
you're you're putting this stuff in the front of your
mind and you're paying attention to it, and you're building habits,
good habits fundamentals. You know, if you're if you're practicing
for football, if you practice well and you practice correctly
and you do the plays over and over, you're going
(10:26):
to perform better on the field. If you have sloppy
practice or you're making all sorts of errors, you're going
to do the same thing when it comes to the
time for the game. So it's it is important that
you are thinking ahead on this stuff, developing that baseline.
And so if something seems strange you're concerning, make sure
that you are looking around and go, hey, maybe it's
time to go right now.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Like we talked about the pop tire. One of the
things I recommend in the book join a travel club,
or pay for towing the labor insurance for you from
your insurance fly. If something like that happens and you
feel unsure, go back into your barb plunk, go back
into your house and call and say, hey, I got
a flat tire. Can you send somebody out to help,
and then you can join them when they're there. You're
(11:08):
not alone, you're not isolated. And also when you change time,
when you start adding time on, if you're waiting for
somebody on the street or you're waiting for something to happen,
it seems like it goes on forever. So that criminal
if fifteen minutes goes by, they're probably going to be
pretty uncomfortable and leave because they're burning a hole in
(11:28):
the ground, is what we say.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
One of the things that I'm really disappointed with when
it comes to businesses is the fact that businesses want
you to park as far away as possible because it
leaves open spaces for your guests that are coming in.
I totally get that, but when you're walking out there
at nine to eleven PM or even three o'clock in
the morning, where you parked at two o'clock in the afternoon,
that right there is every reason why you should come
(11:50):
under attack, and.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
So how do you do that? It goes back to
the concept of avoid avoid avoid, that's right. I say,
for example, you're going to get gas. One it's called
fuel discipline. I cover this thing. This is. This is
scattered across the three books. The mindset is the first
chapter or part of volume one, and then I have
fifteen more chapters, parts as I call them, where I
(12:15):
apply that mindset to things that will be in your
reader's lives. Whether it's safe tech, whether it's business travel,
whether it's living. You know, your home, your workplace, it's
being in your car. What do you do when you
get in your car, when you approach your car, it's
about transportation, subways. But gas you go to get gas.
(12:36):
Why are you getting gas at eleven thirty at night. No,
that's just a bad call. Get gas first thing in
the morning. Never go below a quarter tank of gas. Ever,
if you live in an area like I live in Florida, well,
in Florida weave hurricanes during hurricanes, then you never go
(12:57):
below half a tank of gas. Because if you got
to get off the peninsula and get back into the
main part of the country to get away, you may
not be able to. So that's the fuel discipline piece.
So you shouldn't have to get gas at eleven thirty
at night. Planning is really important and when you choose
to do stuff. If you go to the gas station,
(13:18):
if you do have to go at some odd time,
again being thoughtful about this, don't go alone. Go with
somebody else. Your job's to pump gas, but you're going
to be distracted because you're pumping gas. The other person's
job is in a non alerting way. Just keep a
heads up about what's going on around you, but try
to do it when it's not during a period of darkness,
(13:40):
which gives an advantage to an adversary. There was I
was in Houston one time years ago, and they actually
had in the area of Houston that I was in.
It wasn't that particular part, wasn't the greatest area. They
had stickers on the gas pumps that said stop, look
around while you're pumping gas because they had so many
(14:02):
people who got their cars jacked while they were pumping gas,
and so.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Well, see, that's that's one of the reasons why I
try to teach and let people know that when you
when you are pumping gas. Lock your doors in your
car because you're you're facing the pump. You're not facing
those doors that are wide open and oh my god,
I just slipped in your butt's grass. When you get
back in that car and start that car, and.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
If you're you know, for the ladies out there, don't
leave your handbag sitting on the seat. Put on the floor.
That way, it's less less visible. Somebody trying to get
they're gonna have to reach into your car. Even if
they break the window it's down, it's not visible. But
the other thing you can carry too, keep your keys on.
You don't keep your keys in the vehicle because a
(14:48):
lot of people, you know, their key fob these days,
if it's with the car, then they have access to
your car or wherever they go because you left it in
your car. Put them in your pocket. If something goes wrong,
if something starts, it happen, that's bad. Then we call
that the X. The X is you want to get
off the X. I talk about this in volume one.
(15:10):
The X is kind of like think back to war
movies that people see. It's the ambush site. It's where
the crime is going to take place. And the first
thing you want to do maintaining your wits is you
want to get off the X. So if you're at
the gas pump and you have your keys in your pocket,
or you have your keys in your handbag, but your
handbag's on your shoulder and something starts to go wrong,
(15:32):
you can run away. And this is a key piece
about the whole book. Again, we talk about planning all
you're clear in mind before something happens. You got to
come up with some type of a general game plan. Hey,
I go to this gas station all the time. It's
not too far from my house, it's on my way
to work. This is where I go. Okay, take a
(15:52):
look around when everything's calm, and develop a basic plan.
We call this writing something to the hard drive in
your brain because when things go bad and you have
and you know this is a martial artist, you have
an adrenaline dump in your body. What happens when the
adrenaline dumps into your body you lose your fine motor control.
You can only do large scale movements, your mindset, your
(16:17):
ability to think clearly shrinks dramatically. And so what you've
written to that hard drive in your brain during periods
of calm and preparation beforehand. Your mind is going to
go back to whatever you wrote there. And this is
another thing I'm sure you know as a martial arts
if your mind goes to a blank card drive, the
(16:38):
chances of you going into shock or freezing go up
a ton. I've seen people freeze before because something happened
that was so far outside of their worldview and their playing.
They're like, their mind goes, what's just happened here and
they just lock up.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Well, see, that's the reason why. That's one of the
reasons why we put a lot of training into what
we call verbal taekwondo, because if you need to clear
an area, or if you need to get yourself out
of there, you've got to be able to speak with
a clear, present voice and make sure there's authority in it,
because that's the only way you're going to snap out
of that blank spot.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Right. And if you've notice all the stuff we've talked
about here in the past few minutes, it's about planning ahead. Yes,
it's about avoiding problems. And this is what's I think
unique about my approach as a retired CIA Clandestine Service officer.
I have a very different background. You know, the books
I wrote here. I put this in the introduction. They're
(17:36):
not written specifically for people with a law enforcement, a
security or a military background, although those folks may gain
from the knowledge I have. But the approach that I have,
and they certainly have good ways that they deal with
stuff they're trained for that the approach I have is
for normal, everyday folks who maybe didn't have any of
those experiences. And then this is me helping write things
(18:01):
through case studies and scenarios and tips. In addition to
the rest of the text. I have that scattered throughout
the books, where I'll say, hey, here's the scenario on
something that happened, and I say, this is what they
did right, and this is what they did wrong. Wow.
And so your readers were the readers of the book,
your listeners, they can read that and they can say, hey,
(18:21):
that's like me. I can do this. You can do this.
This is not hard stuff. It's being thoughtful, it's avoiding.
It's having somebody with my background and expertise to say, hey,
here's some ideas that may work for you. We have
a phrase in the agency we say we call it,
we say it depends what should I do it? Depends.
(18:45):
That's not super helpful, but it does. It depends. In
order to do something, you have to thought through an advance,
and you have to have a few potential solutions, and
then when something rough is going on, you jump to
one of those solutions. Because some of your listeners may say, well,
you know, if your plan as soon as something happens,
(19:06):
it all falls apart. That's true, but at least you
have a plan to go back to. You have a direction.
You're moving back to that gas example, So you go
to the same gas station every time. You know you
developed a baseline. You go there and you see people
who are sitting there just loitering, waiting for something to happen,
(19:27):
or they're going to cause something to happen. Maybe time
to not get gas right now, and you fuel this upon.
You got at least a quarter tank, So we'll get
it another day, or we'll get you know later when
I come home from work, you know where you can
run to. You have thought through all right, I'm going
to go ahead and pump gas. I'm going to go
ahead and lock my car. I'm going to have my
handbag on my shoulder, or I'm going to have my
(19:49):
keys in my pocket and my fob. If something happens,
I can run away, I'll come back. My car is
still going to be there because I have the fob
on me. And this is all going to be recorded
on camera. But that camera isn't going to save you.
It's recording it for forensic purposes. So law enforcement love
law enforcement, so they can come back, Hey, this is
(20:10):
what happened and figure it all out. But you got
to handle it on the spot instantly. That's really important.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Wow, Where can people go to find out more about you, Tim,
because twenty minutes with you is not enough. And I'm
going to be knocking on your door a lot in
twenty twenty six because I think that what's happening here
is you're being called to help educate a group of
people not only here in the States but around the
world on on that key thing of being awareness. And
I want people to really know who you are, where
(20:37):
you are, and what you've been up to.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Okay, the other on my website, which is up is
Tim Beard b e ar d so tenbeard author dot com.
So if they go there, you say picture of me,
you know, do you just do not have pictures of
me around now? There's a picture of me out there.
So there's a picture of me. It has a little
(21:00):
bit about my background, the things that I'm allowed to
say that the government lets you say. And yeah, I
always have to run everything through the government because I
signed secrecy agreements when I retired for the rest of
my life and I adhere to those. Those are very
important for me because that's my commitment to what I
did for the course of my career. But I wrote
(21:23):
three books. The first one is coming out on the
twenty seventh of January. There is a link right there
that goes to my Amazon author central page right from
the website, and the ebooks are currently up for pre order.
There will also be print and audio versions that will
come out on the twenty seventh of January when that
first book comes out. The second book is going to
(21:44):
come out the tenth of February. That book is called
Look Twice Your Guide is Staying Safe with Tech, travel
and natural disasters. And then the third book, which I
call Look Twice Your Guide When Danger Comes to You
at home and overseas is that one will be out
in March. And there's three books in the series total.
(22:06):
It's about six hundred pages between the three books. You know,
it's interesting when the second book, for example, something again
that's different. Because of my background. I have a lot
of tech knowledge, a lot of computer knowledge, stuff like that,
which I cover in depth in the second book. But
the important stuff for your listeners right now, the first
(22:27):
book coming up first here is that Look Twice Mindset,
and in that book I cover personal security. I cover
safe at home, safe at work, out in town, some
of the stuff we just talked about. And then transportation.
I say transportation. It's kind of boring now. I talk
a lot about cars. What are you doing around your
car where you are a lot? What do you do
(22:49):
in the subway system, things like that.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Tim, you got to come back to the show. In fact,
I need to put you down in my notes for
February because I want to talk to you about your
your February as well as your March book. You've got
to come back to this show.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Love to come back, love it. I appreciate the opportunity
to come talk to your listeners. My desire is to
help people with my background, and I hope that some
folks who hear this today come away with more of
a plan and they understand you can do this, you
can succeed. And I'll say, if you're not planning, you're
planning to fail. Oh that's something we say in the Marines.
(23:23):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Well, you have yourself a brilliant day today, and thank
you for serving our nation, sir.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
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