Chris Voss - Negotiation Secrets From Former FBI Hostage Negotiator

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Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. On today's episode we have Christopher Voss with us. Christopher Voss is an American businessman and former FBI hostage negotiator. He is also the CEO of the Black Swan Group and co author of the book Never Split the Difference. Voss was a member of the New York City Joint Terrorism task force from 1986 to the year 2000. He was involved in monitoring of the New York City landmark bomb plot. After spending three years investigating the 1993 World Trade center bombing, he was the co case agent during the investigation of the 1996 TWA Flight 800 explosion in 1992. He received hostage negotiation training at the FBI Academy and spent 24 years working in the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit and and was the FBI's Chief International Hostage and Kidnapping Negotiator from the year 2003 to 2007. That being said, it was truly an honor having Christopher Voss on the podcast today. His book Never Split the Difference is one of my favorites. And that being said, make sure you subscribe to the Rise of the Young podcast. Screenshot this episode. Tag Chris Voss. Tag myself. Share it on your Instagram story. And last but not least, enjoy the show.

What's going on everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. Today we have Christopher Voss here with us, the former FBI hostage negotiator and the CEO of the Black Swan Group. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Chris.

Casey, My pleasure, man. Thanks for having me on.

So you were a part of the.

FBI for over 24 years, is that correct?

That sounds like a long time, doesn't it?

So I want to dive into it and start by asking during your time at the FBI, for those that may not know what a hostage negotiator does, what does the day to day Role look like?

Yeah, well, most of them start as an additional duty. You know, you got a day job, you're an investigator. My day job when I first started in negotiations was I worked terrorism in New York. And then. And then, you know, the universe, the stars, serendipity of everything, it lines up. You might get a shot being a full time guy. So I went to the FBI Academy, Quantico. You know, everybody's heard about Quantico, that sort of mystical place.

Yep.

And I was full time. And so then you spend your days combination of getting better, you know, reading, learning, writing, creating content, just like any other entrepreneur would create content. Yep. And then I be. They put me in charge of responding to all the international kidnappings. So once that kicked into gear, you know, somebody's being held someplace in the world pretty much all the time. So I was. I had at least one kidnapping I was working on every day.

Wow.

When it comes to the art of negotiation, I love your masterclass. I see it all over the place. And I want to ask you, what makes negotiations great and what makes them the opposite of that?

Well, you know, if you don't take yourself hostage, you know, you don't take yourself hostage by feeling like you got no leverage. Whether you can't say no, or you're afraid of the other side or you're imagining things or. I mean, there's so many different ways we can take ourselves hostage. Like if we say, I can't bring this up, you know, they'll never say. They'll never agree. I mean, I started a negotiation. I've got an ongoing negotiation going on right now where I brought something up that I thought the other side was not going to be comfortable with, and they're not. But I'm going to explore why. And I figured that their discomfort is an avenue to something better. And they knew that I was going to bring it up because they already know about it and they were worried about it. And I was talking to them on the phone yesterday and I said, you know, I think this is a chance for us to do some other cool stuff. You know, here's what I think we could do together. And the person on the other side went like, wow, wow. You know, I never thought of that. And that's kind of what happens when we imagine conflict with the other side. Most of us, the other side is probably imagining conflict and they're not thinking of new ideas. There's always new ideas. So get into it. Curious. Curiosity makes negotiation great.

Wow.

I'm curious what we could do. I Mean, what can we do instead? I mean, what kind of cool ideas do you have? That's what makes negotiation great.

Very cool. I want to bring it back. So I'm 19 right now. There's a lot of young listeners that are listening on this podcast. What was your life trajectory at 19 and what led you into becoming not only an FBI agent, but just getting into that field?

I was partying. What do you think my life trajectory was? I was partying, I was having a ball, having a good time.

Love it.

Yeah. You know, I mean, late teens into your early 20s, that's an awesome period of time in your life. I mean, most people don't realize your potential. There is ridiculously high, insanely high, you know, late teens, into the early twenties. Isaac Newton invented calculus at age 23. Wow. That has controlled our scientific thinking since he invented it in the 1640s or whenever the heck that dude lived. Einstein came up with a theory of relativity when he was 23, 24, had been working on it from his late teens into his early 20s. You know, it's an awesome time to be alive. Your mental abilities, you don't get in your way as much at that age. So what was I doing back when I was 19, I knew I wanted to be in law enforcement. I was hedging my bets a little bit. So I was in college, but I had a business, I took a business degree. I originally started out in college with a. First I was going to be an engineer and then. I ain't into that. That's too complicated. It's too much thinking that hurts my brain. Too much math, I'm not a math guy. And I switched to sociology, which was more in line. But then I thought, alright, so there are a lot of sociologists out looking for work. Let me get a really flexible degree. That opens my options. You know, one of the things we say in negotiation is never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn't take something better. I think that was always kind of my instinct to look for something better or the possibility, keep possibilities on the table. So I, you know, I was studying business. I was taking every class at the university. I was at that. Everything they had in from the sociology department about criminology, law enforcement, went to every class that anybody had on the law, you know, sociology, psychology. I mean, I'm trying to expose myself to as many ideas as I can. Sort of, you know, put it all in the hopper, if you will, and then see what came out the other end. So I was vacuuming up information.

After.

College, what was the first step into law enforcement that solidified your role not only in law enforcement, but in your career?

Well, my first step was I applied to the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department. I grew up in the Midwest, and I decided to kind of stick to the Midwest for the time being. And where I grew up in Iowa, small town in Iowa. You know, there were three cities that were kind of equal distant, you know, anywhere from, you know, St. Louis was three hours away, Chicago was six hours away. Casey was five. Everybody raved about what a great town Kansas City, Missouri was and the greater metro Kansas City area. Phenomenal town. It's a great town. And so I went down, I put in an application for the police department. I had a bit of an edge at the time. You know, they were giving preferences to people with college degrees, although it wasn't required. I got on with the pd and it was a great department. Phenomenal department, very progressive. At the time, the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department had a better computer system than the FBI did. That's how progressive a department was. And that, you know, that was my first step in getting into law enforcement, finding out whether or not I liked it. Very cool.

When it comes to the art of negotiation and how you carry these negotiations with hostages, do you have a certain case that stands out to you? Because I know inside of the masterclass, you talk about the bank robbery, but I'd love for you to touch on a story that really is a highlight through your career that you'd want to give to the listeners today if they haven't heard it already.

Yeah, well, you know, the bank robbery was a good one, and a lot of it, you know, everything we do prepares us for everything we will do. All right, so when I first. I'm in the FBI's, you know, a year and a half before the bank robbery went down, I get trained as the hostage negotiator. And they tell us. They say, look, you guys roll out here after two weeks. This weekend, before Monday even comes around, somebody's going to get into a situation. Somebody in this class going to get into a situation. Everybody's like, yeah, yeah, sure. So I get back to New York, and that weekend, there's a woman that has driven a van through the front gate of the UN and claims to have soaked herself with gasoline and she's going to set herself on fire. And I see that the PD is out. NYPD has got a great negotiation team, but this is the un I figured this is Bureau's territory, so I call my supervisor and I go, like, look, there's this thing going on at the UN now. The supervisor again, I said before, you don't start out as a full time negotiator. I had a day job. My day job was this terrorism squad call. My terrorism supervisor. And I said, should I go? And he said, did anybody call you? I said, no. He said, yeah, sorry, if I was you, I wouldn't go. Now, there's a saying that says, don't never take advice from somebody you wouldn't trade places with. Now, in that moment, as a hostage negotiator, my supervisor wasn't a negotiator as far as negotiations go, he wasn't a guy I would trade places with. But I listened to my stay at home. NYPD resolved it just fine. They did a great job. They always do. I roll into the office Monday morning and I go find a woman who's in charge of the negotiation team. And she looked at me and she said, never ask. Always go. If you wait till somebody asks you, you were going to be waiting far too long. Don't ask, just go. So flash forward to a year and a half later. The bank robbery. I had something to do that day. I'm in the office. I actually have a fairly important interview to do on a terrorism case. I'm sitting at my desk. My buddy Charlie, who's on the negotiation team, comes up to me and says, hey, there's a bank robbery with hostages in Brooklyn. Let's go. I'm like, you got it. And I get up. I. My partner, PD Detective, I'm like, tommy, can you. Can you handle this interview for me? You know, I don't know where it's going to go. Newark's coming over. They're bringing this guy. Can you. Can you do it? He goes, yeah, I got it. Go ahead. And Charlie and I jump in a car. Nobody calls us. We just went. And that ended up being a turning point in my career. And I got that reinforced over and over again in different themes and different places. Sometimes I'd hesitate and not go. Every time I hesitated and failed to go, I regretted it. Every time. I just went, Good stuff happens. There was a guy, a government official, a few years later, was giving advice to people in a GSA General Services Administration how to be successful. And he said, you know what? Run to trouble. Run to trouble. And, you know, cool stuff happens when you run the trouble.

So running to trouble in the sense of going to the bank when there's a bank robber that has a hostage, what is your first step to Making the situation die down, because that's something. That's a life or death situation. So you getting on the phone with this bank robber, what's your first step?

Well, you don't rise to the occasion. You fall to your highest level of preparation. So I've been studying the process for quite a while. I originally got into hostage negotiation by volunteering on a suicide hotline. Suicide hotlines, man, that'll give you a PhD in emotional intelligence. I mean, it is shocking how you learn to interact with people at high rates of speed.

Yep.

Like, when I first went to the hotline, they said, if you're on any phone call longer than 20 minutes, you're not doing it right. And I remember thinking, like, 20 minutes, like someone's gonna call in suicidal, and you expect me to talk them down off the ledge in 20 minutes? And they're like, yeah, if you're doing it right, it'll take that or less. So I knew through my practice, my preparation, that if I did the process properly, it was going to go really quick. So we're in. We're in the bank. You know, we're next door on a command post. I originally start out coaching a PD negotiator. Good guy named Joe. But Joe has got different training than I do. Joe's not got a PhD in emotional intelligence. You know, he's got. He's got, you know, street savvy, which is kind of like, hey, you know, how about this? How about that? You know, suggesting ideas. That's not the way you get to a deal quickly. So I try to coach Joe a little bit. He got no idea what I'm talking about. Joe's on the phone for about five hours, and the commander, PD commander says, we're gonna switch negotiators. Chris, you're up. We're gonna. He says, we'll put the phone in your hand. Here's the slight adjustments I want you to make being good coaching. Listen to somebody who's in a position to know what they're talking about. On that topic, they might know about other stuff. They might not know about this. Like my book never split the difference. Tall Roz, genius business writer. I wouldn't ask Tal to write a greeting card for me. I wouldn't ask him to write a poem. I wouldn't even ask him for a limerick. He's probably the best business writer on earth. So do they know what they're talking about? In this case, The PD commander says, I want you to do this. I want you to do this. There were two Slight adjustments in our normal protocol. I'm coachable, got to be coachable. I'm like, all right, they hand me the phone, I do what he asked me to do. I make the adjustments, I drop my process in. Hour and a half later, bank robber surrendering to me face to face outside the bank. I was ready.

From that moment of him surrendering to you, what did that prove to you? Being one of the first situations that you got yourself into of that level.

That the process worked. You know, learn the process and lean into it and learn, but keep learning, apply the process. Every time you apply it, you get a little bit smarter. You learn, you know, and then keep, keep getting up to bat. I mean, I was thinking the other day, because human beings, we feel so defeated by failure. You know, like if, if you were playing baseball and you quit every time you struck out or got put out, you never get good. And a successful percentage of baseball players is less than half life success. Percentage is a lot higher than that. You know your failures. Failures are learning opportunity, which again, you know, you talked about being 19 before. You know, in your late 20s and your late teens and your early 20s, you're more likely to see failure as a learning opportunity. Which is another reason why some of the world's greatest inventions have come from people of that age, because they're not rattled by failing. Now, what you got to watch out for what everybody, what you guys at 19 to 20, 23, 24. What you have to watch out for your mid-20s and on getting rattled by failure, because you start kind of getting good at stuff and then suddenly you get caught off guard by failure. And that's what I see the most. People who fall into a routine whose lives don't continue to accelerate, people that get rattled by failure. I mean, you keep failing, keep failing and learn.

Inside your book. Never split the difference. What inspired you to write the book?

Well, you know, the book was a part of the plan. I wouldn't say that there was an inspiration particularly. And I also underestimated how important the book was going to be.

Yeah.

Because as soon as I got out of the FBI and I was around entrepreneurs, I got a lot of feedback. And they were saying, write a book, write a book. You got to get a book out.

Yeah.

And I'm like, yeah, maybe. I mean, I'm trying to teach people. And so I underestimated its impact. It was a game changing move. So my son and I are, my son, Brandon, he and I are working on developing the whole system. We're teaching together in A couple of different MBA programs. Georgetown, Harvard, later usc, usc, California, University of Southern California, not South Carolina. And we're developing it. And finally after we've been teaching it for about three years and we've been teaching people and they've been applying it, we figured we had a game plan together, you know, the whole system, end to end. And then I thought, okay, now it's time to write a book. And so we started that process and so wasn't an inspiration per se. And then it just ended up being a massive game changer as soon as it came out.

When it came out. Now how has it changed your life?

Well, it's changed my life by my team is recognized as changing other people's lives.

Yep.

Like we're known globally now. The book is in 30 countries.

Yeah.

Which is, you know, a social indicator, social proof that is cross cultural, that human, human nature is very universal. And, you know, my agent has sold the book into countries he never sold the book into before. I mean, we're in Slovakia, we're in a Czech Republic, we're in. Good Lord. I mean, we're in like all these countries that this guy never sold a business book into before. So, you know, it's a global impact. We're helping people globally. And so it's changed my life because now we're recognized as. We're the guys. Black swans are the guys that are going to help you accelerate your life, take your life to the next level, probably farther than you expected.

So Black Swan, what is that? For those that may not know.

Black Swan, I was originally inspired by Nicholas Taleb Nassim. He wrote a book in 2007 called the Black Swan. And he used that metaphor to the the impact of the highly improbable, the little things that ended up making all the difference in the world. And he got that metaphor originally from. In 16th century Europe, people only ever saw white swans. And I thought, wow, what would happen if swan was black? That'd be crazy. That could never happen. And then they discovered black swans in Australia and went, wow, this is nuts. This is phenomenal. And Taleb was inspired by that metaphor to write his book about the impact of the Hylian problem. Now I'm just getting out of the FBI at the time and I'm searching for a good name for my company. And I thought, black Swans, you know, that's exactly what are the tiny little changes you could make to be better than everybody else that nobody else is doing. And then in the negotiation, there's a double meaning to the Metaphor. What are the tiny things you could find out? It'll change everything. Like this negotiation I've got going on now with a partner. Other people would have said there was an impasse. I'm saying, like now an impasse to me means there are little things here that can be real game changers. We just got to figure out what they are. So you open them up without being angry because it impasse, people are mad. Open it up. Let's. Let's see what kind of cool stuff we come up with.

Come up with in the company.

Ah, nice mirror. Very good mirror. Paraphrase. You're listening very carefully. Well done. Yeah, it's good communication. Well, yeah. We're constantly looking for black swans within. Within a company. You know, this pandemic that we're in the middle of, to us, it's an indicator that there are other things to add to our business. Like, we've never done much stuff online before. And not only we're coming up with new ideas that are selling out really quick. People that we're doing business with are changing their business model to come up with some really cool ideas. So if you're around people that are. That are adventurers, explorers, entrepreneurs, and they're saying, like, hey, this is a sign there's other cool stuff to do, then you're always looking for those kind of ideas. And that's what's going on. What's going on now. But the difference is, and this is what a lot of people get distracted by. You got to implement the idea. You know, an idea all by itself is. Not a cup of coffee, is more valuable than an idea by itself. You got to implement the idea. What are the next steps? How are we going to kick this into gear? I got one guy who's tried to start a company. He declared himself the CEO of his company 15 years ago, and he's still all by himself in a basement because he's got nothing but ideas, and he wants other people to implement his ideas. And we were working on a project together about 10 years ago, and I remember saying to him, like, well, dude, what are you gonna do? And he was like, oh, I'm the idea guy. And that was the last business conversation I had with him because that meant he wasn't gonna lift a finger to do anything. So an idea without a game plan that you're going to implement is worth less than a cup of coffee. They said on Shark Tank, an idea is worth $20. It's not worth that much. It's who's going to Implement it.

Yep. I want to touch on something you pointed out regarding mirroring. That's something that in your masterclass, it was one of my biggest takeaways. What is mirroring? For those who don't know? Because it is something that I wanted to try to do throughout this conversation, and I'm glad that you pointed it out.

Yeah. And you did a nice job on it, too. Mirror is just a repetition of one to three words. A lot of people get confused because they think the mirror, the body language mirror, is like if, you know, if I lean over and put my chin to my fist like that, then you got to do that, and subconsciously I'll go like, wow, you're just like me, and I'll tell you all my secrets. You know, that's nonsense. It's not. The body language mirror. The hostage negotiators mirror. The Black Swan's mirror. You want to be a black swan. You want to make cool stuff happen. You start with a mirror repeating the last 1 to 3 ish words of what somebody's just said. Of what somebody's just said. Yeah, just like that. The last one to three words that they just said. You get into practice with that. You get good at it. The other side loves it. The other person, they think for a second, then they say some more, they talk some more. It helps them connect ideas, helps them reward stuff. Then when you get really good at mirroring, you, you know, you pick one to three words from maybe in the middle of what they just said. You know, you move it around, use it as a surgical strike. And a lot of people are scared of it. They're scared the other side's gonna notice. They're scared of their own awkwardness. I once met a guy at a conference that for two days, that's the only thing he did. And I talked to him for a half an hour before I realized he was doing it to me. And my son and I branded. We nicknamed this guy Johnny Miris because, you know, we figured that he decided that for two days that was the only thing that he was going to do. And people kept coming up to him and going, like, wow, man, I love talking to you. You're so interesting. And he'd go, so interesting. And he'd go, yeah, man. You know, you're just. Nobody else around here wants to listen. You know, nobody's interesting. There's something about you that's just really special. And he'd go, really special. Yeah, you know. You know, you're an interesting cat. And they look at his Wife. And they'd say, you know, your husband is the best guy here. You should take him with him wherever you go. And she just roll her eyes because she knew that he was mirroring and that was all that he was doing. So it's a, it's a cool skill. It could be a lot of fun.

I was gonna try to mirror you right there, but I want to ask.

You, you attempted, huh?

Well, it's. It's something where I like this. I want to kind of do like a role play for someone. Like, if someone's utilizing this in their business and conversations, where should they start? Is it just repeating those one to three words in every situation or when is there a place to continue the conversation? Or can you just mirror it all the way through it?

Well, you can mirror all the way through it. And that's why I talked about it being a really surgical move. I mean, you start with the last one to three words of what somebody just said. And delivery is really important. You know, you probably, you know, this woman is. She's got a boss. And this, this is one of the stories in the book. And it's one of my favorite negotiations because he was an old school guy and they had this, this voluminous report, you know, must have been like 30 volumes. This whole thing is going to fit on a desk. But this dude wants paper copies, and he wants a paper copy for the client, and he wants a paper copy for their own company. Now, the client has not asked for paper copy. He just likes paper. And he come and this woman also knows that he's got nowhere to put this paper. So it's going to go in her office. They don't have the storage space for this. So he comes into her office, he goes, when, when, when, when you get done, I want you to deliver two paper copies, you know, one for us and one for the client. And she goes, one for the client? He goes, yeah, you know, I like paper copies. And even though we can put them on digital, I'm really comfortable with paper copies. She said, you're comfortable with paper copies? He says, yeah. He says, you know, but you had a client. I know they didn't ask us for one. So just make one paper copy and we'll keep it here. She said, we'll keep it here. He goes, yeah. And he looks around her office and it's like, yeah. He says, you know, you, you, when you finish making a paper copy, you know, just go ahead and put it my office. She says, put it in your office. And then he Goes, yeah, you know, I really don't have room in there either. So it's a good point. He says, we just make the digital copies and forget about the paper. She's like, oh, God. Because she's gonna have to spend the entire weekend making these duplicates, finding a place to store them. It's like 28 volumes. She knows the client doesn't want them, so she's gonna have to store two sets of these 28 volumes. And all she did. She mirrored him, but she. She didn't. She. Her tone of voice was real critical tone of voice. Make sure your words land and that, you know, they got. She was curious. She was deferential. She was curious. You can't let your tone of voice make somebody feel accused, attacked, or backed into a corner, because then they're gonna get defensive. And that's all she did. And that's, you know, that's one of my favorite mirroring stories, because she was a little bit. This is with a boss. A great negotiation skill is a skill that works with your boss. People constantly say, what do I do? When I have no leverage and you got no leverage with your boss, Your boss will want with the leverage. You know, get good at negotiating with your boss, and you can negotiate with anybody.

With anyone?

Yeah, man, with anybody. 360 degrees. You know, if it works with your boss, your peers are gonna like it because it's gonna make them feel good because they felt you were respectful. And the people that. If they're. You know, I hate to use the word subordinate, but if, you know, they're down the chain of command from you for whatever reason in the current hierarchy, you know, you're at a higher level than they are, they're gonna love it because they're gonna appreciate the respect. So everybody at all levels love deferential approaches. They're. They're flattered by it or they're satisfied by it or. Or both. So it's just. It's a phenomenal skill.

Where did you learn the skier?

The skill of mirroring?

It was originally. It was a hostage negotiation skill. That's a great question, because when I started out on the suicide hotline, which was about a year and a half before. About two years before I was at the bank, they didn't have the mirroring as a skill there. The mirroring skill, in and of itself was off a list of eight skills that the FBI, you know, my agency, was teaching and taught globally. So it's off of a listed accepted list of skills that every hostage negotiation team in every country in the world has been exposed to and they're supposed to be good at. So it is a negotiation skill that, you know, the guys that taught me where they got it, I don't know, but it was an MPI skill.

They're supposed to be good at it.

Yeah, man. You know, I gotta tell you something. A lot of hostage negotiators, problem with communication. Jim Camp used to refer to it as a human performance event because he was a coach. What does that mean? What that means is it's a perishable skill. If you don't practice, no matter how good you get at it, your skills are going to deteriorate just like any sporting event. Any is a perishable skill. Negotiation is not riding a bike. Once you learn to ride a bike and jump on a bike, you can ride it. You know, I could not get on a bike for 30 years. Hand me a bicycle, I'm going to be able to ride it. If I don't pay attention to my negotiation skills. They deteriorate every day. It's kind of like hygiene, you know, I got to brush my teeth today. I brushed them yesterday. Oh, no, that ain't going to work. Better brush them again today.

Outside of mirroring, what were other skill sets that you learned inside the FBI that you may not have spoken about as much as mirroring?

Yeah, well, you know, we. The whole eight list, labeling, saying it seems like it sounds like it looks like. Which is the really cool thing about that. In hostage negotiation, we call that emotion labeling. You know, now in my company, we just refer to it as labeling. I didn't think it was that important. My son and I, as we started working on this, we didn't think labels were that big of a deal. We thought everything was going to revolve around questions, particularly what and how questions, you know, which we refer to as calibrated questions. It's got to start with a what or how. And, you know, we just had labels on the list because we figured we needed a big list. And then after we'd been teaching for about two or three years, one of the students at Georgetown said something about labels, about getting somebody to open up in a situation when somebody didn't want to talk. And we went, wow. And we started to experiment with labels and learn them. And now I gotta tell you something, we are so good at them. Everybody on my team, we could probably work our way entirely through a negotiation with labels alone. Never ask a single question, not one. Get massive amounts of information out of the other side of the labels. It's, it's a phenomenal skill.

The skill itself. How does one build upon that?

Great question. So any one of these skills is just practice. You learn the format of the basics. You know, it's not practice that makes perfect. It's perfect practice that makes perfect. You're willing to take your time. You're willing to make a mistake so you can get better. You can't get better without mistakes. Mistakes actually accelerate how much you get better because you remember them and you go like, ah, I got to do it better next time. So label verbal observation. Seems, it sounds, it looks, look at somebody and go like, hey, looks like you're having a good day. Hey, you know, look at them. Give them a genuine observation. Looks like you're having a bad day. You know, looks like you're deep in thought. Looks like you love your job. Looks like you know what you're doing. You can say that to anybody. You say it to the person at Starbucks. You say it to the Lyft driver. You say that to the waitress that's waiting on you in a restaurant. I mean, now you get your practice in, watch them open up, watch them blossom. We're teaching a company probably about five years ago, and we're hammering them on doing labels and they're like, ah, you know, okay, fine, sure, I don't see how it would work. So we go, we go to lunch and one of the guys that we're going to lunch with, waitress, young lady, probably early 20s, she's tatted up a little bit. We're in kind of a blue collar diner in the South. She's tatted up, she's got facial piercing. She looks like a hard case. You know, she looks like if you asked her about her parents, she'd tell you she ran away from home. Who knows, what's your first impression? But she's real polite and she's clearly very competent. And the guy that one of the guys were with, he's trying to show us that these labels are just bs, you know, he goes, looks like you know what you're doing. And then he, and he gives a smile to his buddies, like, hey, you know, I just labeled, See, watch her ignore it. It's definitely a look on his face. And she goes, yeah, she goes, you know, I've been doing this a long time. She goes, you know, and I love people. I love working in a way in restaurant and helping people. As a matter of fact, kind of follow my mother's footsteps. My mother was in the service industry and she was a waitress and people loved her. And this woman is gushing about her mom, then not in 8 million years would you have ever thought that that's what she was about or that she was going to open up like that. And so this guy who thought he was a smart aleck, you know, he's got this. He's got this shocked look on his face because he was just being a smart aleck.

Yeah.

And when she walked away, you know, I looked at him and I'm like, hey, we told you, man. You just road test this stuff and see what happens. You're going to be shocked at how much fun it could be.

It looks like you're enjoying this interview.

You got me at a good time, man. I am having a good time talking about this. You know, I got a fresh cup of coffee in the morning. You're a pleasant dude to talk to.

I appreciate it. When it comes to the masterclass, I want to touch on this because I. Whenever I hear the word masterclass, I think Chris Voss, not only because of the importance of what I learned in that, but how did you partner up with masterclass and how has that been an important part of your brand? Because I see it everywhere. And everyone I talk to, when I say masterclass, they bring up Chris Voss. And that's how I really felt, like, fell in love with a lot of your content. So talk to me about masterclass.

Masterclass is phenomenal. I mean, I cannot say enough good things about these guys. They approached me, us originally, and we turned them down. We actually turned them down several times. And they're like, no, man, we got to work this out. And. But the stuff that we wanted, what the issues were, I pointed out to them what the issues were. And the people on the other side would be like, yeah, you got a point. Which meant that they didn't have the ability to step outside the parameters of their basic deal. So we're finally like, all right, look, you know, put us in touch with who can. Which was David Rozier, their founder, who's a great guy and ridiculous, insanely smart. I mean, just ridiculously smart guys. They're successful because David pulled together a great team. You want to go fast, go alone, you go. Want to go far, go as a team. They got a great team. And they laid it out. We laid out what our issues were. They solved the issues and we did it. And the highest quality production, ridiculous attention to detail.

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