James Hamilton: The Personal Security Risk of Real Estate Agents

Tracy Hayes  1:13  
back to The Real Estate excellence Podcast. Today. I have a special show. I have someone who I have great respect for. I've known him for 35 years, he's nationally recognized personal security expert. During his 17 year career in the FBI, he was chosen to protect the FBI director and the US Attorney General, along with their families, he's trained new FBI agents on how to protect themselves at the FBI Training Center in Quantico, Virginia. After leaving the FBI to the private sector, he became a consultant and the most at risk, families and businessmen, security is more than buying a gun. He believes in individuals, empowerment and our natural instincts is the ultimate weapon. Real estate agents put themselves out there every day, walking into spaces with strangers. So I have asked my good friend, one of the most respected people in personal security and Citadel classmate, James Hamilton, to the show, James, welcome.

James Hamilton  2:04  
Thank you, Tracy, good to see you. Thank you,

Tracy Hayes  2:07  
and I'm so glad to get you on. When you told me you went over private, like, I gotta, I gotta get James on. I gotta build them up. And when I reached out to you, you're like, I'm ready. I'm excited of what you have to share, and because it's vital information in our ever changing world. And I don't know if it's getting worse. You could tell me the statistics, but, you know, we're going to go through some of those national association realtor statistics, and they're not good, and it can happen to anyone. And I think a lot of people are just, you know, gambling, sometimes not being prepared or not being educated in what we're going to talk about today.

James Hamilton  2:41  
Well, it's what we call low likelihood, high consequence. And even though, let's say statistically, I'm just throwing this out there one, let's say one in 10,000 realtors are assaulted. Well, do you want to be that one? Right? I don't. I don't want you to be that one. And so let's kind of help them all. And right, yeah, that's what we're gonna talk about today.

Tracy Hayes  3:00  
Well, and I think too, as we were talking pre show, you know, not only are you showing houses, but when you're out with your family, you know, just never know where you're at. Are you on vacation in a strange place? And we're going to touch on all those things. The listeners, bear with us. I want to build a little credibility of James and just go. We're going to go through his his background for a few minutes, and then we're going to dig into the real nuts and bolts of what we're going to talk about, and things that you can do to protect yourself, protect your family and friends. James, I know, obviously, when we're at the Citadel, you always had a calling for service. And obviously, after graduation, you go to Columbia, Richland County and you become a deputy.

James Hamilton  3:39  
Yeah, I got some great advice. When I was a senior at the Citadel. I went to the FBI and said, you know, what do I need to do to become an agent? And this agent said, either go to law school or go be a police officer. And so I was fortunate enough to get hired at Richland County, and it was probably some of the greatest training I ever had in just, you know, what kind of, who am I? What am I all about how difficult it is to be a police officer. Lost a friend there in the line of duty. And it really, you know, it really set me kind of on my course to the FBI, which, you know, five years after Sheriff apartment, I was lucky enough to be selected to being a special agent the FBI.

Tracy Hayes  4:19  
A lot of people think about this. You're, you know, in getting becoming a deputy, what does it take, though? I mean, because the FBI is just not hiring anybody you they want to hire the best of the best, the brightest of the brightest, too, because it's not only physical, it's also academic.

James Hamilton  4:38  
Yeah, they were, you are correct. I forget the numbers. I think it's like a couple million applicants, and they only hire 1000 people a year, or something. It's insane. It's an insane number. I remember my first day, you know, being super impressed with everyone in the room, lot of lawyers, a lot of accountants, doctors. There was an actual rocket scientist in there. There a lot of military police, but not just, you know, like I was a deputy and I became an investigator, and that's the only way I really got in, is because I had shown a pattern of promotion, I guess. And you know, not to say they wouldn't hire just a road deputy, but it did help that I become an investigator. But I really did feel overwhelmed. I did feel like, Man, I'm super, like, humbled to even be in this room with all these people, because they were, like, tier one operators, and, you know, super impressive people. So yeah, they they look at it all. They look at your academics, your background, clear history, physical fitness, you know, desire to serve. You know, all those things are

Tracy Hayes  5:40  
super important. Now, you, you know, we've talked a little bit, but they obviously, you know, you were set around the country. What are some of the cities that you, that you worked in?

James Hamilton  5:48  
Yeah, they, they give you a choice of the 56 field offices. My first office was Omaha, Nebraska. I have no reason or understanding as to why. It's just the government. They tell you to go somewhere and you don't complain or, you know, argue, you go. And I packed up and went to Omaha. It was a great experience, very cold environment. I got assigned a White Collar Crime Squad, which was just terrible. Luckily, I got kind of recruited over to the narcotic squad, and I spent about six, about five years there, and then I got on the SWAT team. So that was the kind of the beginning of my tactical path. Every FBI office has a SWAT team. So there's 56 SWAT teams. The kind of the big SWAT team is what's called the hostage rescue team at Quantico, Virginia. Every every field office, like where you are, I think you might be Jacksonville or Miami, I don't know Orlando, they all have a SWAT team. So Omaha had a team. I got on the team, and then we did some protection, and I realized pretty quickly that I really like doing this. And then I jumped into that world, basically with both feet.

Tracy Hayes  6:54  
What do you think the person so this is when the really in Omaha, you start to get that sense of of the because this is, like, a niche of, you know, law enforcement or whatever, however you want, okay to in personal security, because it's not just, Hey, I'm walking beside the guy and I'm carrying a gun and they're not so I'm protected. It's a lot more than that.

James Hamilton  7:16  
It is, and it's, it's very small, so that the it's not the Secret Service, where the Secret Service's primary role is protection. So every agent has, you know, a pretty strong training and experience in that world. The FBI is not about protection. You know, they're criminal investigators. And so what they would do is they would pull from the SWAT teams, because the tactical training that the SWAT operators had, you know, really lends itself well to kind of the way the details operate. And in the FBI they protect two people. They protect the Attorney General, United States and the FBI director. And that's done by FBI agents. There's a whole reason why they do that. But every three letter agency head is usually protected by their own people, CIA or DEA or whatever. And so the FBI director and the attorney general would solicit applicants, you know, a couple times a year, and I put in for the FBI director and and I got it, and was assigned to Director Bob Mueller, and was with him for four years.

Tracy Hayes  8:12  
So some of the Go ahead, because eventually you create a train. So this is, this is not something that they just started five years. They've been doing this, probably for decades, bringing guys who basically want to, you know, volunteer, or, you know, apply, to take that detail and but what you, if I'm not mistaken based on, you know, just listening back and what you and I have talked about before, you realize there's no real, like, formal training.

James Hamilton  8:41  
Yeah, they, man, I think from the 70s to the at least in the 80s. I know for sure the Hayes, they were doing this, but I think they've been protecting the Attorney General ever since Bobby Kennedy and but no, no formal training for them. Unfortunately, there's this common belief, and we're gonna touch on this later, but there's a common belief, I think, not just in the bureau, but in America, that, okay, they have a gun, they can protect people. That's like what happened in Parkland right after the Parkland massacre. They said, let's arm teacher. So that's a real good example of that theory come into reality. And the bureau was no different. They thought, okay, FBI agent, you know, they can guard people because they got a gun and all this tactical training, but I didn't know anything really about close protection that I needed to know that Gavin really Gavin de Becker really pioneered, and so we were kind of just winging it. And after my four years with the FBI director, I got selected or promoted to Supervisory Special Agent tactical instructor at Hogan's Alley Quantico, Virginia, and I was training new agents. And in that, you know, basically, the bureau decided, hey, we need our own standalone, you know, training program for these agents go into these details. And they asked me to create it. And I made a two week school, 80 hours of curriculum, and we started to train the agents. For the Attorney General and the FBI director. And then we started to train other agencies, NYPD, DEA, ATF, they would send their people. And so that that was great. I was, you know, honored to do it. I have a real passion for it. And that really kind of exposed me to Gavin de Becker, because I had already read the gift of fear. And then he had a book called just two seconds, and I learned that he added a close protection firm in Los Angeles. I had no idea. I thought he was just an author, and that kind of began that discussion. And then my ultimate departure from the FBI, well, I

Tracy Hayes  10:30  
got a statement that I'm going to go a question. What mind boggles me is like, you're in the city with, you know, your secret service, right? That's their job protecting people, but the FBI doesn't have a program, and they're just down the street to you would think there'd be some cross training, you know, just, you know, that's common sense, but common sense is not always common in that scenario. But so there was something about the gift of fear. And I know when you years ago, when we talked, you mentioned something that you use. You started using some of Gavin's methods or stuff, as sure, you described to us in this trainings that you were doing with the FBI that got his attention. And then you crossed over. What were some of those things that that you started to bring into that you shamelessly, you know, borrowed from Gavin to put into this training.

James Hamilton  11:21  
The first was the, you know, the book the gift of fear. And if your listeners have not read that, please, please read that book. That book is all about intuition. It's about listening to the, you know, the signals that your body's going to give you, that, hey, this environment is not particularly good for you, or this person is not particularly, you know, safe for you. We were given that book out. I had read that book, and I felt like I wrote it, because those were like, the same thoughts I had had for years. And then I heard that he had another book called just two seconds. I didn't know anything about it. I read it, and it was, you know, super impressive. And it was all about protection. It was all about spacing, distance. In fact, it taught me that, and this is going to be news to probably most people listening to me, but in America, at least, there has never been a documented example of a bodyguard preemptively using a firearm to stop an attack. Okay? It's never happened, ever. And so when people say, I have to have a gun to do protection, I would say, Well, statistically, that's an incorrect statement. Statistically, it doesn't happen. You will be the first one to ever do it. And the reason is, is because it happens too quick. If you remember Reagan, when John Hinckley did his shooting, no one shot John Hinckley, okay, they jumped on top of him. They put him to the ground. And that recurring theme is over and over and over again throughout history, because it happens too quickly. So the things that really matter are spacing and armor. And you know, those types of things are really where, you know, a professional protector makes their money. But anyway, in that book just two seconds, there were a bunch of drills called time and distance, which are the two most important things in close protection, by the way. And I was like, wow, these drills are pretty cool, and I just put them in the FBI school. I just didn't ask him permit. I didn't, I mean, it's a book, and you buy off a bookshelf, right? And so I started using it, and then I got an email from him, saying, Hey, are you using my stuff at the FBI? And I'm like, yep. And I thought I was in trouble. And he just was, yeah, he was super, like, supportive. And, you know, we started to have a discussion, and that led to a job interview and and a job, yeah, that was,

Tracy Hayes  13:22  
he has the same I mean, he's trying to share this stuff with him, with everyone, through his books, and he shared that out there. And I'm sure, obviously, as while you got the interview, he was flattered that you, obviously, you know, shared his information, and he was trying to share to everyone. You took it to another

James Hamilton  13:40  
level, yeah. And I think I've always, and I don't know if it was a citadel Tracy that taught me this, but I've always kind of believed in this common sense thing, right? So something makes sense. It's probably a good idea to incorporate it in that, you know, in the government, you don't get a whole lot of that. And I was reading these books and going, Well, that makes a hell of a lot of sense. And so that's what I would do. And I did a lot of protection that way. You know, I would do things that I didn't know they had names until I went to work for Gavin, but I would do things that just made sense to me from a safety standpoint and a common sense standpoint. And then I got to Gavin and I learned, okay, these things actually have terms. But, yeah, that was what drove me, was that common sense need to, hey, this is serious business. And that goes back to the police days when I lost a friend like I know that this works for real. And if you have a bad day, you don't come home. And that's different than any other job where, yeah, your stock might crash, or you might, you know, lose your your job, but, you know, that's an only. That's your bad day. Our bad day is people die, right? So it's super, you know, to me, it's, you know, there's high stakes, and I wanted to give the agents the best training I possibly could. And I thought this was part of it. And luckily, you know, I got to meet Gavin, and that was the beginning of an eight year relationship.

Tracy Hayes  14:55  
Now, I know you've over the years, told me a little. Bit about what you're doing, consulting. You know some of these big executives for some of these, the highest level companies that you know, whether you know, have to have some form of security because of their value, their their knowledge. Some of these CEOs have knowledge just like the President has knowledge of us secrets. These guys have knowledge of their companies and and what's going on. And they, you know, and they're some of them have to travel internationally. What if you could just enlighten us from an entertainment side, and obviously, and we not mentioning the high profile, you know, stars, obviously, Gavin's out in LA so we know a lot of the stars are out there, share with us and enlighten us a little bit, on, on without maybe, if you can use a name, that's great. Don't want to use a name, but some of the highest level people that obviously you're working with and consulting on their security,

James Hamilton  15:55  
we say, I think publicly, that we protect or gather protects. You know, six or seven of the 10 most at risk families in America. So you can go ahead and just assume who that might be, but I would tell you that, you know, the one thing that they have all the money in the world, ostensibly, but the thing they can't buy, is time, right? And for us, you know, that's for me, like I said earlier, time and distance is everything in our life. Well, that's for them, too, and so we don't want to waste it. And we certainly, you know, want to make sure that we do things for them that, you know, make their life more efficient, right? It's not always about the bullets and the bombs. It's a lot about service. But there's, it's unfortunately, you know, it's not like a doctor or a lawyer where, you know, they go through a school. Anybody can say they're a bodyguard in this country, it's literally the Wild West, okay? Anyone can hang a banner on LinkedIn right now say they're executive protection. And no one really can say they're not. And unfortunately, what happens is people go, Oh, I want to hire, you know, whatever, tier one operator, or I want to hire a FBI guy, or I want to hire blah, blah. But they never dig deeper and go, Well, wait a minute, have they actually done this work, right? And so that's kind of one big difference with Gavin. And reason they successful is because those protectors are full time employees. They're not 1099 Rolodex where you just call on a guy to do a job. These are real employees with real training. And I was in charge of that training. I still do that Tracy, so that's one of the primary differences, right? And those people at that level, I'm talking billionaires, not millionaires, they know the difference, and they pay for that difference. And it's, you know, that's one of the big differences between the government and the private sector. Is that, you know, this is pretty important, but if you are from the military or law enforcement, and you've been paid by the taxpayer your whole life. Okay, they don't get a vote. The taxpayer never gets a vote on how good you are. Or if you're incompetent, you're still getting paid if you're incompetent, by the way, but in the private sector, it doesn't work that way. If you're incompetent, they fire you. They don't like your shoes, they fire you. They don't like the color your hair, they fire you. And so it's totally different. And that's one of the big things people have to understand, is that, you know, these guys can buy anything they want, and they know good service when they see it. And that's a majority of what we do, especially in America, right? It's not about bombs, bullets and all that stuff that you might get in a very different environment. Yeah. I mean, I can't really tell many stories about them, other than to say they're normal people in my estimation, or being with them, and they have good days and bad days. One of the things I don't like to see is somebody, somebody guards say, you know, I protect Prince Harry, let's say, Well, okay, first of all, Prince Harry, don't want that out there, right? Peter doesn't, right? And if you're trying to develop trust with somebody, you want to be able to keep stuff quiet, and no person is going to trust you if you're putting their stuff out in a book or online social media to get some likes. And so I don't find that to be very professional at all. But again, it's the Wild West, and people are

Tracy Hayes  19:02  
doing it, the bodyguard or the bouncer at the bar isn't exactly your your best bodyguard. No, that's thinking about when you were just describing it so you had, you were telling we were talking a little bit about pre show. You obviously, you very intense, committed, you're passionate, and you really wanted to get in in and talk about or be more involved in the everyday person's personal security. Which leads us into what we're talking about, specifically real estate agents. Because our real estate agents around the world are out there walking into homes. They're going to places. Some of them, you know, are walking into homes they've never been to because somebody called them said, hey, I want to go see 123, Main Street. They've never been to. 123, Main Street. They don't know how many rooms are in there. They don't know, you know, what's going on, and they're walking in there. So we wanted to really talk about. Things that agents need to be aware of. And then, like we said, where can they go to get proper training? Should they have a handgun? Should they have pepper spray? What those types of things on them, and what your professional opinion is in that world? So dip a little bit into the creation of the Hamilton security group as we transition from Gavin to Becker, you're now on your own. What are you doing with Hamilton security group? And then, obviously, we also want you know somewhere where people I know, LinkedIn is one of your favorite spots to be, people can reach out to you there for more advice. But what do you what is the goal of Hamilton security group now that you're out there? And what are you? What are you trying to because you, I know you're you're trying to make the world safer for everyone and move needle.

James Hamilton  20:46  
Yeah, my entire goal is empower individuals to save their own lives. That's why I created the company. Is to bring all 30 plus years of experience protecting high net worth individuals and being advised for these people, the same stuff I was telling them is the stuff I tell people, right? Who can't afford a bodyguard, who can't afford a protective team, all that stuff I'm giving that I'm bringing that information to the masses to help people empower themselves. Why? Because I know, first of all, the police can't be there fast enough. I know that for a fact. I also know that we subcontracted our own security in this country. We basically said, Oh, I don't need to take care of myself, or, you know, be aware, because I can just call the police. Well, that's just not true. I know that for a fact. And then, you know, help people with time and distance, right? So understanding, like what you just said about being aware, that's the very first thing. The brain's the weapon. So literally, help them understand it is within them to take care of themselves. And then just help them by giving them expert guidance. I like to say frequently, I feel like a brain surgeon and a sea of chiropractors, right? There's a lot of people out there giving information, okay, but they don't have the experience like to give that type of information. I've been doing this exact thing for 30 plus years. I didn't go and and try something else in the FBI and and go be a cyber agent or whatever. I spent my entire time in protecting human life. That's it. And so I have 30 plus years of repetitions of giving information, seeing things play out, studying the craft, doing the actual work, so I can help people when they have those questions. You know, what type of gun should I get? What type of pepper spray should I get? What type of Taser should I get? What type of dog I don't care about any of that, because I can help them. But the very first thing is the brain. Get them pro, you know, start thinking about their life and their safety and then mitigate risk. Okay, that profession in and of itself. Just go into a home by yourself with somebody you don't know has risk, period. You can't eliminate the risk unless you just quit being a realtor, okay? But that's probably not very that's not going to work for your people listening. So what we want to do right? What we want to do now, and by the way, for the people listening, if someone, somebody, some guru, is saying, I can eliminate your risk, they're a liar. I'm just gonna tell you right to your face, they're lying. We can mitigate the risk, but we can never eliminate, okay, unless you just don't go into houses with strangers. I mean, you do something else, but there's gonna be risk in whatever else you do. First thing you know, like I went on the NAR safety the National Association of REALTORS has a safety video they put out. I looked at that. It's pretty good, but one of the things I'd like you to think about is the intuition piece. Trust your intuition. Pay attention to what is going on. Men and women have different intuition. I'm just gonna tell you right now, women have better intuition than men. That might be offensive to some people, but I'm sorry, it's the truth. Why? Because women are sexually assaulted more than men. That's a statistic, reality. That's not a political statement, right for a woman who and I'm sorry if this has happened, because it has, if a woman listening has been told, Oh, you're just being paranoid by a man, usually, you know, I'm sorry, and I'm sorry. He said that because he has no idea what you're dealing with. Women are sexually assaulted more than men. They live a different life, so they are more concerned. Tracy, you and I are worried about walking to our car at night in a parking lot. But a woman is right, and so that's the very first thing, is let them know they're not paranoid. So let's be prepared, not paranoid. How do I be prepared? Well, I use my intuition. So if you listen to that safety video, it talks about, you know, have them come to your real estate office with their ID, that's great. But what else could you do with that ID? If it's real, by the way, but what else could you do with that ID? Run it through the sex offender data? Database, those are open to anybody. Anybody can run a name through the sex offender registry in their county. We'll do it. I would right. That's the very first thing. So we know we're not, you know, going into environment with another sex offender. I think that's crazy.

Tracy Hayes  24:52  
Just yesterday was as we were messaging back and forth, forewarn is the app now that they have. I know my wife uses it, she's and you even uses it on on potential renters will run that. Florida Realtors offers that as part of their membership. I believe I may be correct, but forewarn is the is the product where they're running it through, and they're doing it, you know, within a few minutes they have basically a background check on,

James Hamilton  25:19  
oh, good, yeah, good. And then once that's done, okay, still list your intuition it, you know, I would caution your listeners about things. I've heard police say things like, you know, well, he we've done an investigation, and he's not dangerous. Okay, that's a lie. I'm just gonna tell you straight up, every human being is potentially dangerous depending on you know, what's going on in their life. So don't listen to that. But unfortunately, police get this like credibility, because they're police, and we think, Oh, they know everything, and they don't. They're just telling you, so don't listen to that. So you've done your thing, you're going to have the meeting. I think the video says something about make sure you have other realtors with you. It's in daytime. That's all great, but you know, think about establishing boundaries. Let's say you know you, it's a nine o'clock appointment. You're there, and the person shows up at 830 says, I need to get in now. Okay, well, you've already established the boundary of No, it's nine o'clock. And then they try to now convince you, you know, Gavin has this great saying, and to get the theory, it's like, you know, when a man says no, it's the end of the conversation, but when a woman says no, now it's a negotiation. Well, we're not having a negotiation, right? You, as a realtor said we're meeting at nine, and this guy shows up at 830 and he's not respecting your boundaries, and then he's trying to you're saying, No, you know, I can't show the house till nine, and he keeps pushing you, okay? He's not respecting the boundary. And that is a clue. Hey, give more distance to this person. Start thinking about extracting yourself from the situation, because if they're not gonna listen to your boundary, they're they're giving you a clue that, hey, I get inside, I'm gonna listen to you either.

Tracy Hayes  26:50  
Because right there, the typical person where you're saying, from your expertise in 30 years in this that's a sign of this may not be a good situation. Most of us are saying, well, he's, he's probably got to get to another appointment. So he needs to, you know, get in here a little earlier. That our first reaction is to appease, right? Or, for sure, you're, you're 100% right.

James Hamilton  27:14  
And that the reason we do that two things culturally. We do it because we don't want to be mean, right? That's culture. But then the other thing is, we don't really want to confront the reality of what we're feeling. That's why we don't go to the doctor when we have that, you know, big bump on our elbow. We know we should go, right? It's that denial, right? And that's what people do. The enemy of two of intuition is denial. People will deny it, and they'll go, oh, I don't want to be like that. Okay, well, you need to be like that. If your intuition is saying to you, hey, whoa. Red flags. You need to listen to it. Don't create an alibi for the bad behavior. Okay, don't say, oh, it's probably nothing like you said. He has another appointment. I don't care. I'm creating a story now. Don't create stories. Just know, hey, this person's not listening to me. It's the you know, I when I teach my classes, I'll tell ladies, okay, let's say you're pushing your, you know, you got a kid. You're pushing your buggy to your car, you got all these groceries, and this guy is like staring at you, and he's, you know, maybe suspicious there's something going on. He's dressing appropriately. He's mean mugging you, whatever. And he walks over, it's just gonna help you with your backs, right? And you say, No, I'm fine. If it's you or me, Tracy, we're, you know, nice guys. We're just trying to help. This lady looks like she's, you know, in distress. If she says I'm fine, leave me alone. You or I, we would just say, Oh, I'm sorry, and we'd walk away, right? That's what we did. But if we're bad dudes and we're trying to hurt her, rape her, take her kids or car whatever, we're going to start to negotiate. We're going to say things like, Oh, don't be like that. Oh, don't be too proud. I'm just here to help you. Don't be a, b, I T, C, A, right? That's clues. Okay, this guy's not listening to me. If he's not gonna listen to you, he's not respecting you. If he's not gonna respect you, he's probably going to want to hurt you, right? And so that's, that's a big piece of it for me, huge piece of it.

Tracy Hayes  29:04  
I have some of the statistics here from Gnar, and we can go down and talk about nearly 10 and they actually, these statistics were old that I pulled. They're not like real time. I imagine it takes some time to gather them, so they are a few years old. But I can't imagine they're any different today. Might even be worse. For all we know, nearly 10% of real estate agents said that they've either been attacked or threatened. 5% said they have used a gun to defend themselves. 41% of women agents feared for their safety sometime during the course of the year, as these are just obviously polls are put out today, the obvious risk that in the agents listening to we often the agents often work alone. They're meeting people they don't know we've talked about that don't have control of where they go. You're walking into a house that you've never even been into, and then obviously they're holding open houses. And advertising and putting signs in the yard, and people are driving up, or someone could, we're putting it out on social media. Hey, we're gonna have an open house on Saturday at this address. And so you're already putting it out there, your your pictures on Facebook or Instagram or wherever you're advertising that, that, or all the above, wherever you're advertising there. And so they know what you look like. They they're getting your your your background. You have kids. Sometimes, if they go through your social media enough, they even know what you drive. You might have a picture of your car in there somewhere, that type of thing. All these things are working against them. James, how? What are some of the mindset? What are the what should that agent being prepared because we talked about forewarn just a minute ago. I wonder what statistics of the agents who religiously use that app for every time they have a client in their meeting for the first time that they've never even met me?

James Hamilton  30:55  
Yeah, great stuff there. Let's talk the first thing attacked or threatened. Let's start there, and then I'm gonna work my way back. You said they were attacked or threatened. All bad, by the way. Remember, there's a big difference between a threat and an intimidation. Okay, if I say something that sounds like, if you don't sell me this house, I'm going to kill you. Okay, that's not a threat. A threat is, I am going to kill you. I am going to rape you. I am going to take kidnap your child. That's a threat. The if, if you don't sell me this house, if you don't return my phone call, if you don't return my email, I am going to hurt you. Is called an intimidation. There's an IF there, we would consider that favorable, because the other one which is unfavorable, I am going to hurt you. Okay, so just understand that. The other thing is, people are only targeted three ways, okay, completely random, group, association, meaning the church they attend, their sexual orientation, the college football team they pull for whatever or individually, right? So route 91 would have been a random Pulse nightclub. Would have been group, and then individually, the FBI director, the Attorney General, my high net worth clients, a realtor who's being stalked by name. So if you are being stalked by name, harassed by name, you need professional guidance from someone like me. Why? Because the police are gonna tell you, you know, get a refrain order. Okay, I don't know how many times I gave out that bad information as a police officer, but I did it a lot for five years. The challenge with that is the same challenge that is with the NRA that the video I watched, which says, you know, if you feel like you're in danger, call the police in the house. That's not what you want to do. Okay? You want to get away from the thing and then call the police. They're not instantaneous. They're not just going to show up like, you know, Star Trek, right? So you're wasting time trying to unlock your phone, trying to dial the thing when you should be putting distance between you and this thing that's making you uncomfortable, period. Okay? So that's kind of the the first thing. And then as far as obfuscating. So if one of your Realtors is being harassed or stalked individually, because, like you said, All that stuff's out there, very first thing is, don't put it out there. Only put out on social media. What you need to do to do business, putting out your kids photos is probably not the best idea. Putting out vacation photos while you're on vacation is a terrible idea, by the way, wait till you get home, but all that personal information that you're putting out there you're right, can be mined, and it has been right. So obfuscate a lot of things, your car ownership, the house you live in, okay, those things need to be obfuscated. And even if you obfuscate them through LLCs or trusts or Google Search maps, you know where you can blur the image, you still need to be cognizant that someone still can follow you, right? And so what does that look like? Well, I tell you, you're not going to see who's following you if you're driving and you're on that phone and you're not paying attention, okay, I don't know how many people listening are probably driven from their home to the first house they're showing today, and they've been there so many times, they don't even know how the hell they got there? Don't even remember the drive right? Because they're doing so many other things. Well, what they need to be doing is paying attention to the vehicle or the person that's suspicious in their neighborhood. That does something called correlation, which means as soon as you drive by, they start their car and now they're following you. That's called correlation. That's a problem. Okay, you need to make some rights call the police. Probably drive the police station to get this person off you. But you know, so even though you do all these obfuscating things, you still need to be aware on the daily Okay, so those are kind of my big takeaways for your folks.

Tracy Hayes  34:52  
Would you I was just thinking about that driving a car if you're showing a house on a residential street or not showing. House. But, you know, say you're coming up to your open house, you're going to get ready for it. And also, there's, you know, you look in your rear view mirror and there's a car behind you now, and maybe just be someone who lives down the street just falling, would you recommend just, possibly even just driving by the house you're supposed to be showing go down and turn around and come back and see if this person goes around and turns around, comes back and stays behind you, because they will absolutely, oh, you're going to start that open house at 10 o'clock. They may be trying to, you know, obviously, you know, they may be a buyer, but they wouldn't be following your car. They would have pulled in front of the house, right and stopped. They wouldn't have just kept following your

James Hamilton  35:36  
car, right? I would tell you that you kind of started the question with what I see all the time, which is, you know, you said something like, well, they could just be going to the open house. Okay, that's creating a story. I would tell you if you're looking in your rear view mirror and you feel your intuition says, Hey, there's something strange about that car. And it could be a lot of different things. It could be a car that's maybe incorrect for the neighborhood. It could be a car you've seen before. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great book called blank where he talks about thin slicing, and that's that deja vu thing. People always say, Oh, I feel like I got deja vu. Well, you may have seen that car earlier in the day. It's Starbucks, maybe it's your house, maybe your kid's school, and now you're seeing it again. Your intuition is like, hey, hey, pay attention. Okay, so I would tell you, yeah, definitely circle the block. Definitely go past the house, circle the block and see what that car does, right? Hell, I did it yesterday. I do it all the time, but just let it play out right then, okay, car goes away. Great. Let's say the car keeps following you. You're not going to open house. Drive directly to the police station, get on the phone, call 911, say I'm coming right to you. I got a guy following me. Blah, blah, blah. Get as much information as you possibly can from the play through, look into your rear view mirror, get his license plate, or if it's a male or female, get his description, but get to safety. That's the biggest thing. Don't be Junior G man trying to get all the information. Just go ahead and get to the police department. But then when you do, okay, go back to the house we're setting up for the open house. All right, for your listeners that maybe drink a bottle of wine, please. You'll understand what I mean by this. You know, when you pop the cork on a nice bottle of wine, what do you do? You let it breathe, right? Well, same thing you show up at the house. Don't be in a quick rush, and I see this to jump out, get in your trunk, get the sign, put it in the ground. Take a deep breath. Just look around. What you know, what's going on here? What kind of environment Am I in? What's this neighborhood? Is there a suspicious vehicle on the street? Is there anything out of the ordinary? Just take a deep breath. Collect yourself, look around, put your damn phone away, then go out, get the sign put in the ground, then walk in. But then as you walk in, like literally, have a plan for someone being in there. What would I do if someone is in there and they're not supposed to be okay? Probably leave, go back to your car, right? And what do you have on you? I was talking about tiering, right? So there's a tier tiering concept means Tier one is okay. What do I have on me? What are my capabilities? What am I armed with? If I'm armed with anything at all, what can I really do? Because your listeners may say, Look, I'm a boxer. I do Jiu Jitsu, I do yoga every day. I'm in great shape. I don't know, man, everyone's in their own unique situation, right? And then they might say, well, but I carry a gun. Okay? Well, maybe that's something, but mentally, let's make sure we, you know, are using the brain to avoid that shooting, if we can, and then think about something else, like I would, I would think it's crazy to walk to a house without a flashlight. I would think it's crazy, and I know what your listeners are doing right now. Tracy, they're going, I got a flashlight. It's on my phone. No, your phone is to call people your flashlight is to shine a light. Why? Because you might be going into a dark basement. You might have a home without electricity, and a flashlight is a tremendous self defense weapon. Why? Because you shine it in their eye and any predator, please hear me, any predator, if you take their eyes, you make them weak. Okay, I don't care. You can bring me Jason Bourne, I'll take his eyes out, and it's over. Okay, so the flashlight to the eyes gives you what. It gives you time. It's like coffee to the face, it gives you time. Okay, less lethal, pepper spray to the face gives you time. That's all. That's what you know. All these less lethals can do is they can distract they can take away the eyes, the vision, from the predator, so it gives you time to get away right before we have to get to the gun right there's great, less lethal, like a taser. I carry Taser a lot of times with me. Even though I'm authorized to carry a firearm in any state in America, I don't do it a lot of times I carry taser, and I'll tell you why it's less lethal. Yeah, I might be able to shoot somebody under the law, but guess what? Prosecutor might still charge me, and I don't want to go to prison. I'm terrified of prison. Okay, if I take somebody, I'm probably not going to prison. Prosecutors not get angry with me once I explain what happened. And the guy just took a jolt for, you know, 1020, 30 seconds versus killing him. Okay? I guess that's what, when you pull a gun out, that's what's gonna happen. So I can get hurt. And so I like less lethal, not I don't need a permit for that taser. I can go into places with it. Yeah, I like them. I think they're good tools to have. But again, they're just tools. They're things in your hand, the brain is the ultimate weapon.

Tracy Hayes  40:17  
So let's go back to the take a few minutes, maybe get out of the car, go to the end of the driveway. You know, our residential neighborhoods are, you know, houses are fairly close together in most places here in Northeast Florida, look up and down the street, check out, get an observance of what's going on. Who's around. Are the neighbors out, you know? But like you said, when you walk into that house the first time by yourself setting up for the open house. What should should they walk and try to walk through every room, maybe open every you know, go into bedrooms and open the closets or whatever. How? What would you recommend they do in that situation?

James Hamilton  40:58  
I'd walk around and look, and I'm not sure. Like, you know what your protocols are for turning the alarm off or accessing that little key and the realtor thing, but I'd walk around the exterior first, is there any visible signs of damage? Meaning, is there a fresh burglary for essence, okay, I'd walk around if I see any signs of visible damage. You know, broken window, a broken door jamb. I'm not even going in there. Go ahead and call 911, say I think there's a burglary here. Let the police clear the house. Okay, nice, right there, right like that, but you go around the perimeter, you don't see anything. Okay, I'm gonna go inside with my flashlight, right? I'm gonna walk in, then I'm gonna lock the door. Okay, I'm gonna show that someone doesn't come in behind me. Go ahead and lock the door. Turn on all the light, take my flashlight, walk the place real quick, make sure there's no one in there, right? And then when I set up for the the open house. Now, I don't know how you handle it. Let's say a buyer shows up. You've already cleared them. Well, what if they show up with a buddy and the buddy's not cleared, right? What do you do in that situation?

Tracy Hayes  42:00  
Well, the open house could be anyone, anyone could walk in from the person next door just being neighborly nosy to someone who actually wants to look at the house. And you may not, don't even know they were going to show up. Yeah.

James Hamilton  42:11  
Well, I'd recommend a couple things. And I think that NAR safety video was pretty good in that it said a couple things I really liked. One was, you know, try to show, definitely show during the daytime and try to show with another agent, right? Have strength and numbers and then don't let don't lead the person in front, like down the hallway or into a room. Don't give them your back. We would call it in the tactical world, you know, literally direct them. Say, Okay, here's the law, here's your new hallway. Go ahead and walk down it so you keep them in front of you, right? And then just start listening to your intuition. If that guy doesn't listen and he's, like, trying to get behind you, okay, that's it, right? Like, that's a clue. Like, what are you doing? Like, for me, if he does it more than once, it's over, I might close the whole thing and say, We're done. You're out of here because he's trying to do something. So those, those are some smart things I think people can do. And then just have a plan. Keep your distance. I do a thing in my seminar, you know, with a person, a volunteer, and I start walking toward them. I tell them, hey, raise your hand when you feel unsafe, meaning distance. And then they raise that hand, and then I ask, Okay, what's your boundary, right? And then I need to respect that boundary, even during the open house. And it's hard. You're explaining the square footage, you're explaining the features, all that stuff, but you also got to focus on the mission. This is super important for your listeners. Okay, the mission is not the commission. Let me say that again, the mission is not that. It is not get a commission and sell this house. The mission is go home today alive, right? That's the mission.

Tracy Hayes  43:50  
What do you imagine you're when you're you're teaching, coaching, training a polite way, or, you know, just some body language that that you can do as the as the individual, the real estate agent that we're talking about, to non verbally, set those parameters, those the distancing that you're talking about.

James Hamilton  44:14  
Yeah, I think both ways. I think they should pick up on non verbal, and they are going to obviously distribute show, nonverbal. So nonverbal is, you know, the collective mood. Person's angry, everyone else is happy. You know, that's a collective mood. Nonverbal, the the angry person who's, you know, always crossing their arms, giving you that mean, look, that's it. That's a tell. The closing distance getting in your personal space is a nonverbal it's a tell, and then you're backing up, is another tell that, hey, I'm not comfortable, and they should, you know respect. You know, respect that. And if they don't, your hand comes up, and that universal sign of no right, everyone knows that. I don't care what language you grew up with. If I hold my hand up, open palm, and put my hand up, that means stop. In any culture, and they should do that, and if they don't, then it's time to be verbal. Hey, you're inappropriate. That's what you say. You're inappropriate. I'm going to notify the police, or, in fact, I've already notified, no, you can lie to them. I've already notified the police. They're on the way, or my partner's on the way, right? Just give them something and see, okay, do they back up? And if they don't, then, okay, it's on. It's time for you to extract yourself from that situation. If you can, and if you can't, you're gonna have to

Tracy Hayes  45:28  
fight I know Gavin talks about this in his book. I mean, pretty much all the way through some different situations. You know that? I know just one that's coming to mind in the book, where the woman walks into an elevator. It's late at night, and the office building worked late. But can you in that article that you and I were, you know, you sent me, and I was reading and got some of these statistics from, was telling some stories, but when you when Gavin was interviewing people that had been victimized, all of them had these pre signs that came forward. Can you do you have any? And it may not be real real estate agents, but just kind of share with us, because, like, I always say, facts tell stories sell just some situations, or people that you've worked with, you've talked to, that have been victimized, that had all these signs and just ignored. Yeah, yeah.

James Hamilton  46:19  
It's called Prius of indicators, and they are there. They're like bread crumbs. They're like bread crumbs to the event. So when I give my safety seminar, that the one I like to really accentuate is the story of Gabby Giffords. Gabby Giffords was Congresswoman, you know, Arizona, yeah, he was shot. I like to tell that story from the standpoint of there was an intern that day named Alex, and he was very young and 19 years old, and he was taking names that day as people were coming up. People wanted to see her, and he was developing what we call baseline. So all your realtors have a baseline for their home, their office. They know what car should be. There the people walk, and they all are familiar with that. And then there'll be anomalies in that baseline that your brain will pay attention to. What we need to do is listen to those anomalies. And so what happened on that day was the ultimate shooter. His name was Jared. Laughter. He walked up, and there were a lot of pre incident indicators. Okay? He was wearing a big, heavy coat right now. That's odd if you're in Arizona, because it's super warm there. Alex saw that everyone else, their collective mood was they were joy, jovial. They were happy. They loved this. Gabby Giffords was doing a great job for for them, but this guy was pissed. Okay, he was angry. So that's another pre incident indicator. Everyone else would take the pin and write their email very nicely and hand the pin back to Alex. This guy ripped the pen out of his hand, scribbled something, threw the pin down and said, Where is she? Okay? Those are all preemptive indicators. Okay, Jared pulls out the firearm and starts to go to work, and Alex runs right, fight or flight response, he runs, and afterwards, he gave an interview to the Associated Press, and I'll never forget it, Tracy, as long as I live. He said, a shady looking individual walked up to me, but I did not want to be judgmental, okay? Well, he was judgmental. He said, the guy's shady looking, right? And it wasn't about race, it wasn't about sexual orientation, it wasn't about, you know, male, female. It was about behavior. It was behavioral anomalies, the big coat, the anger, the growling, the throwing stuff, the aggressive posturing, right? Those are pre incident indicators. That's what people need to be looking for, and they don't. They use denial. Oh, I don't want to be judgmental. I don't want to be like that. Well, you are like that, right? People make assessments every single day. They made an assessment about their spouse, about their roommate, about the school they went to, about where they work. They make accurate assessments every single day. But yet, when it comes to personal security, they go, Oh, I don't know enough. I don't want to be that way. I don't want to be judgmental. But you are right. I'm not saying you're judging. You're assessing, and you make good, accurate assessments every single day and everything else in your life. Why do you just not want to do it? When it comes to personal safety, it drives me. Well, that's why I'm here help people.

Tracy Hayes  49:32  
That's it. No that that is, I mean that really is actually good. I mean, all those things can happen to a real estate agent. They're having to open house. Someone comes in. They all want them obviously to sign in or get some information of who's coming in the house, so obviously they can follow up. But who's someone who has that short temperament and, like you said, not dressed correctly, all those things are. All signs to go. So let's, let's play through, and then I want to get into, you know, the training part. Want to finish with that. So I've got a single agent female working in open house, and a male comes in with a kind of an edge on, you know, whatever, however you want to anger or whatever. Because, in your experience in law enforcement, that person coming in isn't necessarily angry at the agent specifically in front of them, but they're taking out anger from somewhere else. Am I correct?

James Hamilton  50:34  
It could be. It definitely can be, what I think is always a nice thing to do, is the communication. Right? I love to communicate with people, because when I communicate, when I say, Hey, how you doing today, I get something back. Okay, now that what I get back could be favorable or unfavorable, meaning, he can go, why not having a good day at all? Once you go, f yourself, okay? Well, that tells me I need to give this guy a lot of space. He's having a bad day, right? Or I could get a very favorable communication, like, yeah, yeah, it's my third house I looked at this week. I'm getting a little frustrated, but thank you for you know, seeing me okay I feel okay about this person doesn't mean I'm gonna let my guard down. It means okay I've had a nice, favorable interaction if they are angry and visibly upset, you know, I don't think it's wrong at all. Just to say, Hey, are you okay? Something, all right, you know, just to tell a personal like you care, like you actually care about this person. Because I, my experience is a lot of folks, especially school shooters or people involved in massive violence, are really hurting they're hurting people right? It's not ever the star quarterback from the you know the football team, it's always that kid. Everyone's like, Yep, I knew it was going to be him. Yeah. In fact, the guy, you know the last couple, they nicknamed them school shooter, because they were so angry and they were upset all. So, nothing wrong with that personal touch. Hey, how are you? You okay? You know, just take some interest and maybe, like, they're not gonna fixate on you and their violence. Maybe they're just still pissed off at their ex wife or whatever. But just, I think that's okay. I think it's fine. And just show a little personal side, not vulnerable, not like, Oh, I'm easy prey. But just, Hey, are you okay? Right? And so then that would probably lead to, then where you're going to go next, which would be okay. Let's say the agent is equipped with something like a tool. Okay, well, first thing I would say is all your agents. It would behoove all of you to know your capabilities. What can you really do? Okay, maybe you work out a lot and you know, okay, I'm in pretty good shape. I'm pretty strong. I can defend myself. Okay, great. Or maybe you are very skilled at a certain thing, boxing, Jiu Jitsu, Krav, Maga, I don't know, sound like that? That's great, whatever. Maybe you're like, Well, I have a weapon, you know, I've got a taser, I've got pepper spray, or I've got a firearm. Okay, great. What's the law to use this? It's self defense. That's what it is right? You have to be is in fear of your own. You know, danger to yourself. It's called imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury. And it can't be because you thought maybe the guy would possibly do X. Okay, you can't just pull out your gun and do something because you thought maybe he could X. There has to be something that you can articulate. You know, he was armed. He was trying to grab me. He was, you know, closing the space in an effort to hit me in the you know, something that you can articulate. But what I see a lot of times Tracy is people have these things, but they don't have any practice with these things. What I mean by that is, they have pepper spray, and it's buried at the bottom of their purse. They have a taser. They don't know how to use it. The battery's dead. They never checked it. They have a firearm, and it's in a bag that they left in their car, or it's in the bag and it's in the kitchen, or it's not on them. Well, if it's not on them, believe me, your adversary is not gonna let you get it out. I promise you. Okay. Every altercation I've ever been in, they didn't tell me, Hey, James, go get ready. It's coming. They just brought it, and you better be ready. And so I would tell people, if you're gonna carry a firearm, hey, that's fine. I would beg you to get some training, understand the law, pick the appropriate firearm, and don't sweat. I see this all the time. People will ask me, Hey, James, you know, it's summer. What small gun should I use? Like, what use the same gun you had in the winter and the fall and the spring? Because keep it simple, right? The holster that you're using needs to be the holster you train with. It's not the new holster you just got. That's leather, let's say, and it's still sticky, because now the gun's going to kind of get hung up when you needed to come out quickly, right? So it's really professional time, meaning you keep it simple. You've practiced your craft. You know what you're doing. And you know when you can green light somebody, meaning the law, you understand the law, and you can green light somebody. Does that make sense?

Tracy Hayes  54:55  
Yeah, I want to touch on from a even using. And pepper spray, Mace, or anything, they should actually practice that, shouldn't they? I mean, oh yeah, hey, I got mace. You know, they should actually go somewhere where they can practice it in a real situation, or not necessarily real situation, but a mock situation, so they know when to pull it, how to pull it, how to aim it, or whatever Am I correct

James Hamilton  55:23  
1,000% let's, let's go back to your scenario of the agent in the home with the guy. What if that agent had, you know, a small little, like, I've got everywhere, a little, small tactical flashlight in their hand, right? And he sees it. He's like, What is that flashlight? She says, she says, flashlight. What does he think now? Well, she's got that. What else has she got? Right? Okay, what would be wrong with I don't know how they dress, but if they're not wearing something that has pockets, I would say that's a bad idea. I would have pockets. Let's say the right hand is already in your pocket on your pepper spray, right? So the pepper spray is in your pocket. You've got the switch flipped up. You got your finger on the your thumb basically works the on off switch, and you got it in your pocket. But your hand is in your pocket with this guy, because he's made you concerned, right? So now, when he takes that step and you douse him, now you win. But if you wait, oh, now I gotta go get to it, or it's buried underneath blah, blah, blah, it's too late, way too late, right? So be preemptive about it, right? Don't you're not showing him anything. You can have the whole interaction, hand in the pocket the whole time, and he walks out none the wiser. He never knew you had pepper spray in your pocket and you were getting ready to douse him because he was doing things that you felt were inappropriate, right? That's what I would say. I would say practice, you know, it's like the coffee you know, I talk a lot about, you know, I used to teach anti anti carjacking FBI agents, okay, you're getting car jacked. And guys like, give me your car and you got a gun in your face. Okay, he's not gonna let you draw your gun. FBI guy, you're gonna have to get that thing out somehow. And how do you do that? Well, you have to distract right? So we would teach throw the keys at their face. Step offline, draw your weapon and go, okay, but the keys to the face is that this, right? They're gonna react, especially if you start messing with their eyes. That gives you, what a little time, little time to draw, go to work. But yeah, you need to practice. It's not gonna come to you. It's not gonna come to you. I can't over stress that I cannot over stress. You will not rise to the occasion. You will default to the level of your training. Please, please, please, make sure your listeners are standing

Tracy Hayes  57:41  
what are some? Just a couple of things you he make. The person comes in. It's a open house. It's, you know, guy shows up. You're it's a little off, but, you know, but when it comes to positioning, should you just let them, let them wander around the house. Don't wander around the house one on one, with them. What? What? Where should they? Should they position themselves where they know there's an easy access to the door? And that brings about another thing. When you're actually showing the house, should you maybe unlock the slider out the back, in case? That's the way you have to run, so you're not having to fiddle with a lock trying to get away from some

James Hamilton  58:17  
1,000,000% Yeah, I would go ahead and set the house for that. So the open house is going to start at nine, by 855, you've already checked it now. You go around, you unlock all the exterior doors. All of it gives you that ability to get out, right? And so if you have someone that you I don't feel real comfortable with this person, if it was me showing the house, I'd say, hey, go ahead and take a look around. I'll be right here in the kitchen, or whatever room has, you know, an exterior door, and I can be positioned right next to it, right so that I can get out. I can get out and get moving quickly, not, you know, put myself in a position where I would have to go through him to get to the door. I don't want

Tracy Hayes  58:57  
to do that now, we talk a lot, just from a sales point to go and knock on, you know, a few of the neighbors doors, you know, the 55 Hey, we're going to be, you know, doing an open house. Just want to let you know, hey, if there's cars to park in front of your house, you know, there's a problem, come over and and see me. We do that as a sales thing to, you know, kind of hand the neighbors your card, let them know you're a real estate agent. But also, hey, you know, if they want to come over and see the house or whatever, but you should also have the mindset, especially, you know the women, that if they see something suspicious going on, or the neighbor sees something, a suspicious person walking up to the house, to know that you're there by your maybe by yourself, which hopefully you're not. But there's agents, you know, single women in those houses by themselves, that maybe alert a few of the neighbors around that, hey, I'm going to be here for a couple hours. You know, let the neighbors know that that they see something suspicious to please feel free to come over and knock on the door

James Hamilton  59:55  
absolutely and vice versa. You know, like you could say, would I be. Okay to come over here if I feel in danger while I'm in that house, and the neighbor might go, Well, sure, I hope you're okay, you know. And then when you're running over there and banging on the door, they're gonna let you in, right, right? Or just keep running. That's back to the you know. The other thing, you know, that self assessment, I talk a lot about self Well, everyone wants to talk about situational awareness, Tracy, but you know, the you got to do a self awareness first. Like, what are you really able to do? Right? Unfortunately, we tell people run, hide, fight, and we just assume people can run. Well, okay, if you can't run, well, this is going to be really, really much more difficult. So work on running. Right? Like, you need to get out of this house quickly. Well, you need to be able to physically do that. But I would move to that neighbor's home, and if they're not gonna let you in, you need to just keep moving. Keep moving.

Tracy Hayes  1:00:47  
If you in a utopia world and you were assigned by NAR to arm every real estate agent that's out there, what are some of the what are the basics that they should have? You know, obviously having a firearm is probably at the high end of that list. But what are some just the basics that you mentioned here today, a flashlight. You know, how difficult is it to use a taser? I've never used a taser for how difficult is that

James Hamilton  1:01:15  
it's simple. It literally has a little safety switch on it. You press it up, just like a firearm, a light comes out, a white light, annotated a red light, and then you just press the button and two prongs will come out and hit the guy. Pretty simple. I like

Tracy Hayes  1:01:30  
talking and tasers, like the deputies may use that actually fire our probe, yep, this is something. Those are, okay, we're talking about that.

James Hamilton  1:01:38  
Okay, yep, yeah. Company called axon makes the regular Taser the police officers carry, but they also make a civilian version called the pulse, and it's very small, very compact. It it gives a 32nd jolt instead of five seconds. So that's pretty impressive. Yeah, I like, I like less lethal things. I like lights, flashlights with a high lumen count. So back to what they should have. They should use their brain, use their phone as a phone flashlight with a high lumen count. That's very simple, very simple to use, meaning it's just a button on the back that you press. There's no safety switch, nothing like that. I like some type of less lethal pepper spray, or what's called OC spray. OC spray is a little bit more potent. I like that. If you can't get that some type of Wasp spray, any type of spray. Hell, I've used hair spray in Israel because I, you know, couldn't take weapons with me over there, but I was on vacation, so my wife had big hairspray that I carry around. And I'm going to douse you in the face with it. Fire. Sewing shirts work real well. They'll be in every home, probably under the kitchen sink. Those things work well. So less lethal taser, I like that idea. Firearm. I'm not super crazy about putting that out there unless you got a lot of time to train and you've really, really considered the consequences, because the consequences on using the firearm are far greater than using a less lethal device. Remember, if you kill somebody, you more than likely are going to be sued civilly by their, you know, their survivors, their family, and then you're probably going to be, well, you're definitely gonna be looked at by the police department for a criminal charge. Okay? They might look at you for involuntary manslaughter, for voluntary manslaughter, or even homicide. So it's very dangerous, right? I hear people say that crazy bumper sticker, I'd rather be tried by 12 and carried by six. Well, I don't know if that's true. I don't know if you really want to go to jail. Jail is bad. So, yeah, I think I wouldn't say no to a firearm, but I would definitely say you want to make sure you've trained appropriately for it. And the level of, like, the legal level, is so much greater to use that firearm than to use the less lethal.

Tracy Hayes  1:03:50  
Okay, training practice. Where can they go? You know, they get the different sprays you're talking about using that Taser that's shooting the prongs, even the police officers are practicing with that you're shooting that thing. And you know, if you just pull that out for the first time and never actually hit the button before and never actually saw those things fire out, is there places that that people can go to to get some training and some practice on that, just as if they would go to the firing range.

James Hamilton  1:04:23  
Yes, yeah, you can, you can do the pepper spray for sure, on your own. Just, I do that in my backyard, just to see what's the stream like, how far out does it go? Is it? Is it cylindrical? Meaning, does it go out in a big cone, or does it go, like, straight shot? I want to know that. And so that's easy to do in your backyard. You could fire a taser in your backyard, like, say, at a tree or something, but you're going to lose that shot. And those things are expensive, so each cartridge is like, you know, 2530 bucks. And so for me, I do practice it, but there are places you can go. Wherever you're buying that less lethal device, just ask them, Hey, can I shoot here? Or do you let me practice that here? No different than, you know, the firearm.

Tracy Hayes  1:05:10  
So they basically sell cartridges that don't have a charger, but to actually allow them to practice aim.

James Hamilton  1:05:18  
Yeah, and a lot of times Tracy, also on a taser is, once you fire it, you can turn the action off, take the cartridge out, and then you can turn it back on and press the trigger, and it literally is just like a stun gun. So you just touch the person with it. There's no cartridges coming out now, but you have to get close enough to touch them. And notice, I didn't say carry a knife. I know a lot of people like to carry blades. I would tell you, if you're not really good with that, I probably not a great idea, because it requires distance.

Tracy Hayes  1:05:49  
I think the distance thing, 16 feet is good. Yeah, yeah. Obviously a knife. You got to get up close and personal. You draw a knife. They might draw a gun, well,

James Hamilton  1:05:59  
and it could be really, really bad. I mean, there's a couple of really good books out there about people who did use a knife to defend themselves, and it was they went to jail. I mean, it was bad. It was really, really bad. So I like the Taser again, distance. It's about 15 feet. It's accurate. So that's it. That's a good safe distance for you. And also, just, if you're familiar at all with like the tactical world, there's a thing called the OODA loop, which means observe, orient, decide and act. And it's kind of a decision making process we all go through. Well, if I pull out a taser on somebody, and I've done this and it and they maybe are used to seeing a firearm. They're not afraid of the firearm, because they know what that is. But when they see that thing, and the laser comes on and it's got this yellow end on it where the cartridge is. They're like, what is that? And you say it's an energy weapon, right? Well, when you say energy weapon, now, they're like, What? What the hell does that mean? Right? We're holding me right. Like, now they don't know what to do, but their OODA Loop is kind of stuck because they don't know what to do. Whereas you're putting distance between you and this thing, or you're getting ready to press the trigger. And again, that, like I was saying earlier, the legal standard is far less, far less than pulling out a gun and shooting someone. That's a very high legal standard. But the Taser is a very low legal stand, 100%

Tracy Hayes  1:07:16  
James, you want to conclude with anything some final words.

James Hamilton  1:07:19  
First of all, great to see you, and thank you for what you're doing. I love this podcast. Also, if people want to kind of see what I'm doing or connect with me, like you said, LinkedIn is a good vehicle my website, and then I would encourage you, I've got a YouTube channel called safety seconds. It's called safety seconds with James, and it's these little 62nd or less vignettes on all kinds of the things we were talking about here, and just go check those out. And that's free, you know, educate yourself a lot of times. It's just free. But if I can help you, or anybody in your space, I like to do these all employee type conferences or big conventions or keynote speaking, yeah, give me a call. I'd love to help you.

Tracy Hayes  1:07:58  
I'm gonna, I'm gonna safety seconds, because I seen you do the ones on LinkedIn,

James Hamilton  1:08:02  
yeah, safety seconds with James is the YouTube channel, yeah?

Tracy Hayes  1:08:06  
Because we can, I can post them on my, you know, take that YouTube link and put it on my Facebook, yeah,

James Hamilton  1:08:14  
give me a I'll send it to you on like, what LinkedIn direct message or what

Tracy Hayes  1:08:18  
I'll watch. I'll subscribe to you so I get everybody, yeah, I could just take, I could just take it off your page, take that link and stick it on my Facebook page. Because all all of that stuff is, you know, even though you're just talking general protection, it all relates to the real estate agents who are putting themselves in unique situations every day, yeah, you know, one on one with individuals. But I'm sure, I know you also talk about sometimes just even being a crowd, or, like you said, going across, going into going at the grocery store, where you may think there's other people around in the parking lot and you're safe. They're not always paying not everyone else is paying attention all the time.

James Hamilton  1:08:53  
Yeah, that channel is really dedicated to awareness and the everyday things, like I've got, you know, the big box store, you're going to the big Sam's, or you're going on a jogging trail, or you're going into the diner, you know, everyone talks about, well, I still, I don't sell my back to the door. Okay, great. But then what you got to go further, right? I talk about it in that, you know. Okay, what do I do when I see that thing? Okay? Now, now is when the real stuff happens.

Tracy Hayes  1:09:17  
Well, I think it goes back to your, what you've said it several times, is knowing what you can do yourself. Yeah, you may not sit with your back to the door, but yeah, what? Yeah. What are you going to do next? You may be in the corner, and now you only have a left or right decision to make, and right is back towards the front door. Do you know where the back door is? The side door? You know, obviously, most restaurants have for fire hazard, obviously, and so forth, to be there to, you know, locate those places and know these things that are sometimes common sense. But when the pressure is put on you, someone comes in with a gun, right? Everyone just craps their pants. You know, your mind just, you know, goes blank and you don't know, what do you do? You're in freeze.

James Hamilton  1:09:59  
You. So the other thing is that people don't consider who they're with, so it's super it's simple. I think it's easier rather, if you're by yourself, but if you're with your family or with a friend or a colleague or your grandma, it's different now, because if you leave, you could get them hurt, or you make a move, you could get them hurt, or there's things called mirroring, where you basically do what your buddy's doing, then if your buddy know what the hell to do, well, you're both sitting there not knowing what the hell to do together, right? That's what's mirroring. That's what they were doing in the Uvalde hallway when all those cops were, you know, hand sanitizing themselves while kids are dying, right? They're all not doing anything, so they're just mirroring the behavior of the people around it's very dangerous. Excellent.

Tracy Hayes  1:10:43  
Well, I appreciate you coming on day. We're gonna get some clips. Like I said, I'll send you the raw footage. Hopefully you get some more clips out for your social media. It says, because this is great content that everyone needs to have. So thank you, bud. Great being with you. All right, my friend, we'll talk to you soon. All right,

Podcast Intro/Outro  1:11:01  
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