LaRae Quy, Author of Secrets of a Strong Mind

Hi there. My name is Avil Beckford, and I am the host of the One Problem podcast. There are tons of problems in the world. We will not get overwhelmed. We'll be tackling them one problem at a time. Now, a colleague introduced me to this week's guest. Her name is LaRae Quy, and she's an author and former FBI agent. Over to you, LaRae.

LaRae Quy

Thank you. Thank you so much for that lovely introduction. The biggest problem I had was as a female special agent, I was often the only female on the squad. So it was like, How do I fit in? I mean, I'd seen other women, and a lot of them just tried to be one of the guys. They walked with a swagger, and they always had a gun on their hip.

That's just not me. I knew, however I fit in; I had to be authentic as well. These guys, it's not like they were mean. But they were their own clique. They were the guys. So after work every day, they'd peel off and go have a drink somewhere. And I was never invited. Little things like that. Just to let me know that while they respected me or put up with me, I guess would be the right word; I wasn't one of them. So the question became, how do I fit in? And I decided right then. You hear a lot about mentoring these days and how women need mentors. There's no way I was going to get one of these guys to mentor me.

The One Problem: LaRae Quy, Author of Secrets of A Strong Mind, Former FBI Agent

They just would laugh in my face. So I did it my own way. I identified a couple of senior agents who had a great success record. They were respected by the squad. And they had great cases. They were just good agents. I thought, I don't have to have a formal mentorship with them. So, I just watched everything they did, and I copied it. I knew how this one guy, in particular, worked and how he went out and met people and how he interviewed them, and how he approached the case.

LaRae Quy

That's what I did. He would probably roll over in his grave because he has since passed, if he knew I considered him a mentor. But I did. It wasn't like he or any of the others, again; they didn't disrespect me. But I knew I had to show them I was as good as they were. When I started imitating the tactics of this one senior agent, I found I had great results as well. It was just his demeanor; it was the way he treated people; and it was the way he spoke to them. I'd come back after an interview or whatever, and they'd go, “Wow, you got some really good information there.”

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It became a situation where they almost had to respect me as an agent, as a fellow agent. Not just as a person, as a fellow agent on the squad. The other thing that I resisted doing, I noticed a lot of the other females would move in groups. They are the ones that got together and would go to lunch. And they just created their own solidarity system. I knew the guys made fun of them. They just call them the solidarity sisters. And I didn't want to be part of that.

I wanted to be LaRae without being identified as part of a group. I just wanted to be who I was and for them to see me for who I was. And not who I hung out with or whatever. So that was another way I found my way. I inveigled my way into the squad. And earned the professional respect of my fellow agents.

Avil Beckford

That's so good. I just want to touch on something you said, to make a comment, because my website is The Invisible Mentor. The definition of an invisible mentor is someone you can learn from by observing them from a distance. And that's exactly what you did, LaRae.

LaRae Quy

Yes. One thing I learned as an investigator, you just circle a case until you find a soft underbelly. Then you move in. To me, that was the most logical and most authentic for me. I appreciate what you just said. We don't always have to have that official mentorship relationship where we check it once a week or whatever it is. It doesn't have to be that formal. And that wouldn't have worked for me, anyway.

I think I would have felt very self-conscious. And it always felt performance oriented. Whereas the way I approached it, it was just very authentic to me, very natural. And it also led to results. So I appreciate what you just said about the invisible mentor.

Avil Beckford

Thank you so much.

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