Avoid Time Wasters in Business Deals! Use This #1 Negotiation Hack Like a Pro! Feat. Chris Voss

You talk about three voice tones negotiators can use. What are they? And on a related topic, what is an example of mirroring and how is that important?

All right, the three voices are the three default types. You know, in our way of thinking, everybody in the entire planet, regardless of gender, regardless of ethnicity, either falls into fight, flight, make friends. Some people would call that fight flight, mate, but it's the caveman that survived from the caveman days. We saw a threat on a jungle path. We ran from it, we fought it, we made friends with it. And my Harvard brothers and sisters subscribe to the same philosophy. We've tested somewhere north of 2,000 people in all countries, and we believe that to be true. So the three voices are what your natural voices are. And I'm not going to make any political statements in any way, shape or form, but. But the assertive, the fight type, direct and honest, that's my natural born type, Donald Trump. And if I were to talk to you, we'd do an exercise called 60 seconds. So she dies, and I do all three voices in the exercise. And if you were volunteering, I look at you and I started with the assertive voice, and I just go, I need a car in 60 seconds or she dies. If you think of yourself as direct and honest, you're an assertive. You got a tone of voice that's combative, it causes problems. There's no way around it. It's not a good voice. My natural born type, I once had a hostage negotiator say to me, dealing with you is like getting hit in the face with a brick. And I didn't take that as a compliment, but that's my natural voice. So that's voice one. Voice two is the accommodator's voice. About a third of us are just relationship oriented. We naturally smile. We're naturally very happy. It's actually ridiculously strategically smart. You're 31% smarter. In a positive frame of mind, if you're smiling, you're hardwiring your mood, you're making yourself smarter. Everybody has something called mirror neurons. Why smile at you? Your mirror neurons trigger. Even if you fire it, you started to smile back. It's an involuntary response. There are chemical changes in your brain. You're smarter, too. That's a smart move. It's one of the reasons why naturally gregarious people make lots of deals, and they're not always the best deal, but they're probably pretty good.

Okay, so you just said you're 31% smarter when you're in a positive state of mind. So if you can flip yourself into that and become 31% more effective and smarter, that seems to be a pretty good advantage.

Huge. Yeah. And it's actually a hardwired connection. If you force a smile on your face when you feel lousy, the chemical changes still take place. You can override it. And then the third type is what we call the late night FM dj. That's a hostage negotiator's natural tone of voice. I mean, we learn that we drill it over and over and over and over again because it hits the mirror neurons, it triggers a chemical change and it slows the other side's brain down. Now, while we use that about 10% of the time, if we have a term in a contract that's completely unacceptable, that term would often be work for hire. I will not sign a contract that has a work for hire clause. Well, I would, but it has to be for $5 billion. Not kidding around because work for hire takes our intellectual property. I just don't say take it away. I'll sit down at the table and.

I'll look you in the eye and.

I'll say, we don't do work for hire. Late night FM DJ voice. You will feel that that's an immovable term. What I say, what you hear. If I say that's an immovable term, you're going to get mad and want to fight me on it.

I don't need that.

So I will just take the term and I will lay it out like that. Your brain will slow down, it'll stop when you recover. You'll come up with the answer for me. I also won't say I need you to take that clause out. I need you to volunteer that idea.

That's great. So I heard you say before that when someone says let's make a win win situation, they're usually going to try to. That's an indicator that they're going to probably either try to take advantage of you or whatever. And I found it very interesting because I have used that term. I have, you know, I'm willing to be seen that I'm delusional here. I have said it in ways where I really do look out for other. I want it to be a win win situation, not use it as terminology to hide dishonesty or hide attempting to be. And I know the whole thing of like a lot of people that brag about how their integrity is and how great they are and how they want you to win, a lot of times they're the most full of shit. I also know that some people that are the most smooth talking are sometimes wolves in sheep's clothing sort of thing. And when I heard that though, it really struck me as like going, huh.

So.

What do you do when you're really genuinely wanting to create a value for value deal? You're not trying to overly negotiate, if that's the right way to call it, or you're not trying to scam somebody, but you're giving too much of it away or you're letting people steamroll over you? I guess. What are some, without making this a confusing question, what are some indicators that should be red flags or warning signs that if someone says this, be careful. And what's the caveat to that? How could I better describe things? Because I do want things to be a win win situation for someone. I mean, like everyone here, they invest a lot of money to be in this group. I want them to get a hell of a lot out of it. I genuinely care about my clients and at the same time, I have some people that will try to take, take advantage of me and they ask for too much or they're just very demanding. So what are words that are indicators? And so I'm asking you two things. What are warning signs that when you hear them antennas go up, this is something. And then on the other side, how do you protect yourself from getting taken advantage of?

Right, right.

All right, so context, let's throw context on this. And contextual intelligence is a part of emotional intelligence. That's really what we're talking about here. We're talking military grade emotional intelligence, weapons grade empathy. How do you like that, huh?

That's actually good.

All right, so context. You should have a win win mindset. If you're in a win lose mindset, it's actually stupid because if the other side loses, why are they ever going to want to make a deal with you again? That's kind of dumb.

But a lot of people don't realize.

That in business negotiation, most people, business stories, like, I had them over barrel and they knew I beat them. Every time I hear somebody talk like that, I just shake my head. I think like, you know, you were losing so many deals.

No, absolutely. There's people that are in the transaction business versus the relationship business.

Right, right.

So now more context on win win. If somebody articulates it right up front, that's the tell. They're trying to cut your throat. Now, we talked about this a little bit also, you know, Joe doesn't show.

Up and go like hey, happy to see you.

Let's do a win, win deal. You know, you start talking about it further down into the conversation or you feel it or you try to live it. That's completely different than what we've seen over and over and over again. Nearly every single person that right off the bat, we've been in a negotiation with them. And if they articulated do a win win deal in the first three minutes, I know they want to get our stuff for nothing. And now I'm already headed for the door. So, you know, what are the tells? Actually, there's two tells. You got to watch out for people that are trying to cut your throat. What's worse is the people that are trying to pump you for information and never do the deal with you at all. One of the things that is not in the book, which is actually probably going to be much more the focus of the book that we're talking about now, we call Proof of life of the Deal. And if salespeople have a saying it's not wrong to not get the agreement, it's wrong to take a long time to not get the agreement. That's what's killing you. That's what kills more people and more business. And we shift what we refer to as proof of life, like right up front and then we walk away, which is. It's also, you know, it's been expressed a couple times here. Play the long game, play the long game. That's when you start being willing to walk away from stuff or also play the percentages game.

Or half.

I'm in a conversation with a potentially extremely lucrative client two days ago.

I get coached because I was on.

The phone by myself. And normally we like to negotiate in teams. But I got off the phone and I called one of our coaches and I said, this is my read. They failed the proof of life test. They did some other stuff. I think I need to email this guy back and tell him we're not interested. He's waving a billion. A company that's going to grow to a billion dollars. They want to change their culture. They got all these problems. He outlined all these problems. I know we have answers. I know they can benefit from us. But I strongly feel like they want us to create a program for us and then they're either going to implement it without us or they're going to go to who they want to go with in the first place and they're going to tell them to do our stuff. And I know there's a lot of people out there that are Telling their favorite vendors to do what we do. It's been directly reported back to me. So we get out of those really early on who are going to be the time wasters. Long way around, though, you know what you get taken advantage of occasionally and look at how well you do. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, be willing to be taken advantage of occasionally. Yeah.

That's one thing that I, you know, I say to people all the time, you know, like, well, you know, I try to help someone. Yeah, it's like it's par for the course. I mean, what I try to do is align myself with people that are aligned with me. And when I start seeing disalignment, even though I extend myself, even though I try and they just keep at it, they keep complaining and that sort of stuff. It's like after a point you just, like we're just not aligned. I mean, you just see the world different than I do. And so. But yeah, it's really good to have indicators early up front and be able to bail on it because there's always signs.

What are you looking for if you're.

Able to sniff it out and smoke it out early enough in advance. Now, dealing with people that want to kill somebody, you said, like you talk about it in the book and I've watched interviews with you and seen you speak. I mean, you have a great talk at Google.

Where.

A lot of people, I mean, even Gary Halpert would say that, you know, the problem with dealing with a terrorist is they've got nothing to lose. But from your standpoint, they always have something. And so you can, Is there anyone that you simply cannot negotiate with?

You know, I would say, or a.

Situation.

If they're communicating with you. We used to always say you always have leverage. If you're talking to me, I got leverage at all. So we'd have a problem with people that wouldn't talk to us at all. Or we're going to sniff out early on what they're trying to orchestrate. And we would look for indicators, we used to call them high risk indicators where this is going. If they're setting us up. And then you just have to recognize that you're being set up. But if you're talking to me, then I have leverage. And even if you're trying to set us up, if I can figure that.

Out before we get to where you're.

Going, I'll try to change the destination. And some of it might be by refusing to talk or it might be by calling you out. And we did this publicly, we Started ISIS executions from the 2012 timeframe when Jim Foley, Stephen Sotloff, some of the others were murdered. That was Al Qaeda 3.0. It's Al Qaeda in Iraq from 2004. They did the same thing. Abu Bakr al Baghdadi was an Al Qaeda lieutenant in Iraq in 2004. Zarqawi, I think, was the guy's name in Iraq. They started the same thing. And when we sniffed out that they were orchestrating murders, we basically went public with it and we changed the narrative from they were terrorists to they were.

Criminals, because a criminal will travel the.

World to go be a terrorist. And that's how they were recruiting. But a criminal won't travel the world to go be a criminal. I can be a criminal here. What do I need to go to Iraq for? So we changed the narrative. And what ended up happening in 2004 when we changed the narrative went from chopping people's heads off in the springtime to. To Nafal Zawahiri, the Al Qaeda number two, actually put out an edict to stop killing people on camera because it was bad for business. Wow.

So I guess you can shift extraordinarily violent people just by changing the. Bending their reality. You talk about bending reality. So let's. How does one. What are some, I guess, tools that people can use to bend someone's reality?

All right, so the vast majority of decisions that we make are based on how we're calculating loss. Danny Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in behavioral economics, prospect theory. It's over and over again. They said, loss things twice as much as an equivalent gain. So if you accept that. That your view of loss bends your view of the realism of the situation by twice. I saw an interview that Danny Kahneman gave that said, actually, that's not true. It's not twice as much. It's more like five to seven times as much. My partner Amos and I lowered the number to two because we wanted fewer arguments from our colleagues. So if I know that your view of loss will distort your perception of reality by five times, then all I need to do is figure out what loss you have going on in your head and change it. For example, I could say, do this and you'll experience a 20% increase in profitability. Or I can say, don't change a thing and you're going to lose 20% year over year. Each and every day you don't change, and the second one is going to eat at you, and you're not going to be able to get it out of Your head and what keeps you up at night, Mr. CEO. It's some sort of a loss. 70% of buy decisions are made to avoid losses, which means you shouldn't pitch value. You should start out by finding out what they see their loss as, which this whole idea of this communication approach, I need to get you talking because I need to know what you think the loss is and how you see it. And then you need to use the same set of tools to get you to see it differently on a process that therapists would call guided discovery. But I'm looking for very specific things, and that's why in the book, we refer to it as tactical empathy. We know somebody's asked me earlier about neuroscience. We know so much more about the way the brain actually works because of neuroscience these days. We know so much more about empathy that we're looking for very specific things that if I start talking to you, what I want to know first is what you're worried about losing.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video.

And I want to let you know.

That I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

What's a black swan? Your company's Black swan group. You, you know, black swans are. You write about it in the book.

It's Black swan is the unexpected tiny little thing that's going to change everything. That's sort of the theoretical idea. Now, the real world idea is there's a black swan in every one of your deals. How many negotiations have you approached where you're not hiding cards, where you're not holding information that you're not holding something back you don't want the other side to know? Pretty much every one, right? So, number one, you're not holding back unless you think it's important, so it matters.

So if you put it out on.

The table, it'd probably change the negotiation. You just don't feel safe doing it. If it's true for you, it's true for the other side. Now, the hard thing to see is where's the overlap on those cards that nobody's showing? Neither one of you have any idea what's in there. So you got to get to a point where you have a reputation for not hurting people so that then they might show their cards. Also, since there's stuff that's going to matter to you that they have no way of knowing it matters. You got to get them talking. Which is why picking out lies is not enough. Because you only lie about stuff that you know is important. And half of the black swans you don't know are important. So you're never going to give a physical tell. You know, do I look down when I'm hiding or do I look to the side when I'm hiding?

If I don't know what's important, I'm.

Not going to give you a physical tell. That's why you also got to get people talking about the whole environment sort of in an unguarded stream. And they'll blurt something out. Quick example, an organization is trying to get me to come and speak for free, which I'm not doing. All right, so how, what kind of constituency do you have? How many people? 300. We're a regional association. We don't have money for trainers.

We could buy books.

Really? Okay, they can videotape it. Really? I need videotape. But then the killer was. I said, what kind of publication have you got? Well, we don't have one, but there's a national publication.

Really?

What's the national publication got? Get you interview me, we place it in the national publication. They got to put stuff in their publication. They got 20,000 people that are immediately accessible to get them to put it on the COVID I'll come talk to you for free. National is like, of course we got to put something in a magazine anyway. This is the way we support a regional association to get a speaker that would come in and charge him a bunch of money and he'll come in and do it for free. Yeah, we'll do that. If we hadn't had that extended conversation.

About where you have access.

They didn't know I wanted to be in somebody's magazine, but it's the access to the people. So we just had to keep talking because they were sitting on assets that they had no idea would matter to me until we started talking about it. We're taught that you ask questions to do what? To gather information, you need to find out information two thirds of the time. Questions are not the best way to get information. If I say to you what's on your mind, that's a good open ended question. We would call that a calibrated question. All your questions should start with either what or how. If you ask calibrated questions, they're very deferential. There's great power in deference. When I'm deferential to you. You're more likely to be honest with me because you feel larger than in charge. There's a whole bunch of emotional intelligence reasons why that works. But you're still going to give me a fairly guarded answer. And so you'll answer, but it'll be guarded if, while we're talking, instead of saying what's on your mind, if I say, sounds like you've given us a lot of thought. It sounds like there's something on your mind that's just a verbal observation. We call it a label. It's going to bypass your prefrontal cortex. It's immediately going to re energize what you were thinking about, which brought us to the table. And you're much more likely to give me a solid download of what's going on in your head. It'll come out much more unguarded. So instead of saying to a CEO, I would never say, what's keeping you up at night, Mr. CEO? Because that's just so tired. Not that it's a bad question. CEOs are sick of not being listened to when they give the answer. But I might say it seems like there's something you guys are really struggling with. You probably, you're much more likely to come out with it. So we're going to design in advance two or three things that end up being pretty much really universal. And they're going to work in almost all scenarios. My favorite one, my son, somebody calls him on the phone, business related, and they say, how you doing today? And you know what he says back? Sounds like there's something on your mind. And he gets an almost immediate download of information.

That's great. You know, how do you spot a liar and what should you look for?

One of the things we talk about is a Pinocchio effect, which means the more words they use, the more they're trying to convince you. A liar knows they're lying. So they're going to talk at length and they're going to read your body language. They're going to try really hard to convince you. One of the real problems with if I'm telling you the truth and you don't realize I'm telling you the truth, I'm going to talk to you like you're an idiot and you're going to be offended and consequently call me a liar. So a strong indicator of truthfulness is the more concise people get and the more angry they get at you, it correlates more strongly with them telling the truth. If I tell you something you don't buy it. And I go like, well, you're an idiot. I don't even have time for you. I'm probably telling the truth because I haven't taken the time to convince you. So additional words, convincing words, correlate really strongly with people lying. Bob Mnookin wrote a book called Beyond. The first chapter is called the Tension Between Empathy and Assertiveness. Bob Mnookin is the head of the program on negotiation at Harvard. I tell a story about him at.

The beginning of the book. Brilliant guy, though.

And I'm reading this chapter and the title, the Tension Between Empathy and Assertiveness. I realize the title is a red herring because then he makes a case that they're a necessary combination, that there is no tension, but that empathy is required for assertiveness. So I want you to be emotionally, intelligently assertive for them to make a.

Great deal with you.

They got to know what you need. You have to assert your own interests. Never stop asserting your own interests. Just don't be a jerk when you do it right. You know, take responsibility for how it lands. Let it land in an emotionally intelligent way so they can hear it, so that they hear what you want them to hear. If assertion without empathy, what they hear is that you're a jerk and you're trying to take them hostage and you're trying to push them around. You're trying to make them lose.

Okay?

And those are going to. That. That's just. That's just a tweak. Still be assertive, but be it in a way that actually builds a relationship because they appreciate the fact that you were a straight shooter. Everybody loves straight shooters, right? Who doesn't like a straight shooter? They tell us the truth in an emotionally intelligent way. That's the whole design of it.

Here's one trap I see a lot of entrepreneurs get into, including myself, is if you become very effective at selling people or you become very effective at persuading, and there's always ways to be far better. I mean, certainly you, a lot of times can sell yourself into deals you shouldn't even be in. I mean, you just end up getting clients you shouldn't have. You're always in. And I know a lot of, especially marketers, that they go into these pitch modes because they've studied so much damn NLP or so much persuasion that they can't fricking help themselves. And so everything becomes a negotiation and trying to squeeze. And so part of it is like, I have about six hours of interviews with Arianna Huffington when I was helping her launch her book Thrive, a few years ago. And my favorite line out of the whole thing that she said was the best way to complete a project is to drop it. And there are some things in life you just need to unsell them. You need to negotiate yourself out of the deal. You're really damn good at just saying no and doing it in ways that are very effective. So advice that you would give for just knowing what to not get yourself involved in.

Well, all right. So the question started out with cutting ties with somebody.

Yeah. Dishonest, negative, or lazy people and getting them out of your life. Because I think all of those are negotiations also, especially if they're relatives. That's a tough gig for people.

All right, so the hard part about empathy is what? Empathy is their perspective.

We're happy to have empathy with people.

We agree with, but anybody could do that. So you're going to cut ties with somebody who doesn't want you to cut ties with them. What's their perspective going to be on? You anticipate it and then inoculate it, Go farther past it. Because you can't plant negatives with observations. You only plant negatives with denials. So if I was going to cut my relationship with you, my normal gut instinct to try to make it land softer was you're like, look, I don't want you to think I'm a jerk, but we're not going to work together anymore. So that was wrong because I denied the negative. Now my smart move is to say, look, I'm going to look like a jerk. I don't want to deal with you anymore. It's that simple. You know, articulate the negative. Just as an observation, and I might even. We do this all the time. You know, look, I'm going to seem an unappreciative jerk that doesn't realize your value, doesn't appreciate the amount of time that you put into this, and I'm gonna look stupid and lazy. I don't want to deal with you anymore. What do you got left to throw back at me? You got nothing. And you're gonna think, wow, he was really honest. Your reaction to that. I mean, and that's the really hard part about this. But this is one thing, and we talk about in the book a little bit. We refer to this as the accusations audit. Since we've been in the coaching. I mean, that's how we're cutting negotiations from 18 months to a week by just. We aggressively over diffuse negatives. I mean, extremely aggressive in it. And it's making a huge difference. So the negotiation is to negotiate, to agree to part ways. How are they going to react? Let me preempt it.

So let me ask you this, Chris. So what's the most valuable negotiation technique or strategy that you've ever learned and why is it so valuable? Because you know a lot of them.

You know one of the simplest ones. All right, let's go with simplest. Mirroring. Repeating the last three words of what someone just said. The last three words? Yeah, you know the last three words.

Just repeat the.

Nice job, Dean. I know what you're doing to me. Right away without even how dare you put me on me. Nice. No, if you can master that skill. Because a lot of times you just need some time to think. You know, everybody says, boy, you know, now that I'm thinking about it, I know what I wish I would have said. And now that I'm thinking about it, now I see what I missed. That mirror technique, the last three words buys you that time in the moment without the other side realizing that's what you're doing. Because they're going to go on, they're going to talk some more, they're going to add a lot in. One of the crazy things about the MERIT technique is it's a preferred move of the people that possess both a high IQ and a high eq. Now, I cannot explain why that is the case. I can speculate on it. I think if they are high in both areas, they love the simplicity of it and the lack of effort and the data loving people. So they love how little they have to do to get a bunch of information out of the other side. But that's probably the single most valuable thing that you could learn. Simply very good.

Very good. Well, so we've talked about this one before, but it's always so important because you've shifted. You've helped so many people just with this one. So why is the word no more important than yes?

And if you could give an example.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah.

Okay, so the key to negotiation, it's not about you. We hear this all the time. But here you hear no and you go like, oh my God. Oh my God, I hate no. I hate being told no. I think we get that conditioned every child on earth, regardless of the language. What's the first word they learn? No. Because they get told no and they get pointed at them and no, don't do that. No, no, no. So we get it beat into a hardwired into us. So when we hear it, something horrible has just happened. But the flip side, the person who's saying it feels protected and safe and they calm down and they relax. They feel like they just protected themselves. The other thing too is you can say no when you're tired and then immediately contribute to the conversation and think things through really quickly. So it's completely different if it's about them. People love to say no. They feel. And they're going to say a bunch more afterwards. I got a couple no stories that I love, but I'll tell one of my favorites. Robert Herjavec. We're negotiate with Robert Herjavec's crew over how many tickets they're going to buy for one of our training events. I've already offered him one. His response for free. His response to the one for free was how many can we buy? Not how many more free ones can we get? I'm a huge Robert Herjavec fan. Based on my interaction with him, I find him to be a generous, decent human being. So we're going back and forth and the event is getting ready to sell out. And my son Brandon, who runs my company, he calls me on the phone late in the day. I'm in la. He says, you get Herjavec to commit how many tickets are gonna buy now or they're gonna be sold out by the time the sun rises in New York tomorrow. Because my son's on east coast time. We're getting ready to sell the event out. And Brandon says, and if he doesn't buy any, I'm giving away. I'm selling a ticket that we're supposed to be giving him for free. So I'm like, all right, I gotta cut this deal now. It's five o' clock in la. When's the last time you tried to get a hard decision out of somebody? At 5 o'. Clock. At 5:03 and also an email. At 503 I sent a two line email to Robert Herjavec. Is it a ridiculous idea for you to commit to buying three tickets now? Second line. Are you against paying for them before the business day starts in New York tomorrow? Again, we're three hours behind New York. The time stamp on his email response is 5:04. One minute later. No, we'll commit to the three tickets right now. No, it's not a problem. We'll pay from right away. Send me a link. We'll pay for them right now. Within the hour I send them the link. We got the money at 523. Get people to say no. You'd be shocked.

At the responses you get.

Fantastic.

So there's some questions that people have, but what I'm going to ask everyone. Save your questions. When we open it up for Q and A, I might ask you to repost them because it's sometimes hard for me to track everything and be present here, too. So, Chris, how might an entrepreneur use these strategies and techniques that you teach to better understand and serve their clients?

Well, yeah, I mean, first of all, simply understanding them better will help you serve them, you know? All right, so let's say you're the favorite, and let's say that they're elf. They're not half. They want you to dial into them. You know, you. You want to be open to a better deal, which is you tailoring your services to them so that it better serves them, and it's more lucrative for you. Because first of all, I'm going to presume that everybody on this call believes the same thing that I do, that you over deliver. So first of all, if you're over delivering, you were bargaining whatever you were charging anyway, which means if you tailor your service, you're good of service so that it's a better delivery for them, you're worth even more. Yes. You want to get what you do. No, don't. Don't be greedy. Don't grab with both hands. But when you provide a service that's worth it, you are entitled to be paid. So the more that you listen to them and understand them, and I'm here to tell you there are ways that you can tailor whatever you're providing that would be easier for you to provide it, which means it would be more profitable for you and it would be better for them. So be willing to engage in conversations and be open to that. And then the other crazy thing is there might be something really counterintuitive.

That'Ll.

Make it profitable for you in unexpected ways. And one of my favorites is, you know our mutual friend Dan Sullivan. He's talking about his book deal. He's talking about listening to me. Never split the difference. And we pay.

Sorry, I pushed the wrong button.

We pay people what they ask. No, I don't pound people on price. So Dan turns around and gives every dime of the book proceeds to Dan and Tucker.

Ben.

Ben and Tucker. Sorry. And then Ben and Tucker. Tucker says, dan got the last drop of my blood. When you're not greedy on the price term, what the other side gives you back might be worth 10 times what the dollars were worth. I think those guys. I think Ben and Tucker would die for Dan.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's. See, the beauty of Dan, too, is. And I think it's one of the reasons. I mean, heck, me and Dan have done podcasts on this is we like reciprocal people. You know, we like people that are generous. We like people that are useful, and it's just so much easier to. That's what an ELF person is. People keep asking, what does ELF mean? ELF is easy, lucrative, and fun, and half is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. It's actually a term I got over 20 years ago from my friend Mark Schneider, who unfortunately passed away earlier this year, but I heard him say elf years ago. And I said, I'm going to develop that into something, because I started thinking of all the different business methodologies you can use in terms of marketing and the stuff that me and Dean Jackson teach on. I love marketing. It's ELF marketing. It's automated, it's robotic. But then I started thinking, how do you. You can filter everything through an ELF filter. What are people, what are projects? What are things that you're doing? Are they easy, lucrative, and fun? Or are they hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating? Sometimes people can be hard, annoying, lucrative, and frustrating. Not all money is created equal. So ELF is a really great filter. And I'm super happy, Chris, that you're referring to that, because I think it just offers some framing. So, yeah, I mean, once you become skilled at utilizing what Chris is teaching and what he's talking about here, you will find a lot of things in your life that were difficult become more elf. And that's the whole goal, is to bring ELF to people in all areas of their entrepreneurial endeavors.

I'm going to jump in real quick because there's one more tangent I want to go on to on half and out before you fire your half clients. And we just shifted into this recently. We got a couple of deals that were proposed to us, and they were half deals before we walked away.

And I had this conversation with my.

Son Brandon, and everybody else in our company. When it came up, I said, what's the counteroffer that would make this an ELF deal before we walk? Maybe they don't know that this is half. Maybe they don't understand it. And there's a pretty good chance of what, you know, the chances are that they're going to offer you a half deal because they don't know any better. They can't help themselves. There's a whole bunch of reasons. I said, let's counter with what would make this an ELF relationship. At that point, there's no doubt in anybody's mind what we're looking for. And they had the option to take it or leave it. And we have the option to take it or leave it. And we turned a couple of deals around with that by simply countering. Instead of saying goodbye so long, we said, all right, here's what would work for us. Here's what would make us want to do business with you forever and make us want, 10 years from now, look back on the last 10 years and say that was cool, and we threw it out there. And the batting average is actually pretty high on that. You know, we don't counter offer their offer term by term. We construct what would be great for us and how we would love to do business with them before we walk. And you'd be surprised at how many people will embrace that because they just didn't know any better.

You ever have situations, Chris, where you look outside of the scope of what will be the immediate terms that are.

On the negotiation to see, to draw.

In other things that might tip things some way or be an influence?

I was just thinking about how, you know, that's a great question, man. I'm glad you brought that up. We're trying for that all the time. And, you know, how do you know what you don't know? What we'll do is we'll start to say, let's brainstorm this a little bit. Like, here's some ideas that people have gotten in the past. Start throwing out wacky stuff that people brought up, and that will kick their brain into gear. So, yeah, try to kick them into a collaborative brainstorming process to look for how to get outside the scope. But, I mean, I love that question because that's absolutely what everybody should be doing. So ask for the top 10 greatest negotiation responses. Number one, is now bad time to talk? Now I'm going to dig somewhat into why you want to get people to say no versus saying yes. And there's a million reasons for that also. But I will tell you an initial indicator, in my view, because Dan talked before about if somebody says, hey, I want to talk to you about something that's mutually beneficial, that's an indicator, a behavior of a half. Hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. Dan's come to recognize that, and it immediately turns them off. We're actually developing, within my company, we've. We've developed this. We get specific profiles of what do halves say, what's an indicator of a half, and why you should want to walk away as soon as possible nicely. The last impression is lasting impression. But if you got a few minutes to talk is one of those things. So, I mean, how long is a few minutes? When somebody said to you, have you got a few minutes to talk? When was it ever actually less than 5, which is a definition of a few. Right. So it's now a bad time to talk. In place of that, why is that one of our top 10 lines? There's only, there's only one of two answers. And this is, this is why Howard asked me to do a fill in a blank, so you could take notes if you wanted to, to write it down. Because clearly if you write something down, you're more focused and you're more likely to retain it. It's an accelerator of learning. So there's only two answers you ever get. If it's now a bad time to talk, one of them is hesitation. And they say, why? No, no, it's never a bad time to talk. Go ahead. What do you got? When someone responds like that, you've got a thousand percent of their focus, which is what you called for in the first place. Their focus, their attention. As Dan said, you got their attention. Now, keeping their attention is a secondary issue, but you've got their attention. Now, what happens when you say, have you got a few minutes to talk? Well, they think, how long is a few minutes? What do you want to talk about? When's my next appointment? That's what goes through people's minds when you say, have you got a few minutes to talk? What does that mean? You do not have their attention. You just blew the first seven seconds by put clouding their brain with those thoughts. So it was now a bad time to talk. They stop, they clear their head and they go, no, what do you got? Or they say, yeah, it is a bad time to talk, but I can Talk Tuesday at 1. Now you just got an appointment for their focus and their attention, which is what you were after in the first place. That's what we say, that's what we get over and over again. I remember seeing this come up in a thread on LinkedIn once. And somebody on LinkedIn, you know the level of discussion in there of people clinging to their own beliefs. Someone wrote, well, I don't want to say, is now a bad time to talk? Because what do you do if they say yes? And my thought is, do you really want to talk to somebody who says yes to that? If they're willing to say yes, now is a bad time to talk. You want to keep talking, think about how stupid that is. So it's Now a bad time to talk. And if you that from this point forward, don't at least experiment with this, that loss is on you. I'm sorry, I'm blunt. All right, so extending. I never ask anybody if it's a good idea. We consistently ask over and over, is this a ridiculous idea? And this also will begin to get us some underpinnings of why no works. One of the reasons why no as an answer works is what we found from our own experiences. No matter how fatigued somebody is, somebody can say no and clear their mind. Every one of you listening to me right now, we all have the same problem. We suffer from decision fatigue. No matter who you are, you have capacity. So X number of decisions in a given day, you start running out of gas at some point in time, it's between the decisions that you've made. The number of clicks, every click is a decision. Your circadian rhythm, what you've had to eat, what a good night's sleep you had the night before, doesn't matter. You've all got so much gas in a tank. We see over and over and over again. And people on my staff are especially my assistants are told, never ask Chris a how or what question after 1 o' clock in the afternoon. Because if you say, what do you want to do? What do you want me to do? How do you want me to handle this? After one, my reaction because I'm fatigued is going to be, I don't know, stop bothering me, go away, don't bother me again. Which there's a couple of you do not want to trigger that sort of response from somebody because then my last interaction with you was you annoyed me. And the last impression is a lasting impression. So it also begins to put you on a slippery slope, if you're working for me, of a downward spiral where I don't think you're that smart because all you did was annoy me. Now, all they, they've all been taught, and I explicitly say this, never ask me a question ever after one o' clock in the afternoon where I can't say no because if you say, do you want me to do this? I'll say no, do this, this, this and this. And I will in fact ask answer. The question that they want to ask was how do you want me to do it? But something about saying no triggers my ability to think through steps. First time I ran across this Jack WELCH Book signing LA, I'm standing in line of 200 people. They're doing everything they can to minimize the amount of time that you spend with a book signer for a whole variety of reasons, not the least of which I'm at a book signing a couple years ago. There are 300 people in line. The people orchestrating the book signing walk up to me and they go, like, from the moment somebody walks up to you to the moment they move on, you've got 30 seconds. Otherwise, we're going to be here for six hours. We don't have that much time. We got to get everybody through this line. 30 seconds per person. We're going to ask them their name before they walk up to you. We'll write it on a piece of paper. They will hand you a book with their name. It's going to take you 30 seconds for you to look them in the eye. Sign to Bob. Nice seeing you. Good luck, Chris. And they're going to move on. 30 seconds. You're doing the same thing with Jack Welch. Because I got to move everybody to the line. Plus, they don't want me pitching Jack Welch. They don't want me asking him over to the house. They don't want me asking him over to dinner because my wife makes a great meatloaf. All that's going to happen. They're going to want pictures. So I know I get seven seconds. When I walk up to Jack Welch, I want to pitch him on coming to speak at the negotiation course I'm teaching at usc. I ain't got time to lay this out. And he doesn't have time to listen. And it's late in the day. I walk up to him and I say, is it a ridiculous idea for you to come and speak at the negotiation course I teach at usc? And he looked at me in the eye, and he started to squint. And then he looked up into the universe and he got this hideous scowl on his face, and he just froze. And my first thought was, has killed Jack Welch. He got so mad because he looks furious that he had a stroke and he died and he's getting ready to fall over. So when he initially doesn't die, I'm relieved. But now he looks furious. I mean, furious. I think he's going to start screaming, scaredy scurry. Get this guy out of here. I don't know what he's going to do. He finally unfreezes. He looks at me and he says, this is my personal assistant's name. This is special Twitter account we have set up to communicate with her. I will call her and tell her who you are. I think we're going to be In Los Angeles in the fall. If we are, we'll come in and speak at your class. Reach out to my assistant, I'll let her know what's going on. Decision fatigue. He said no. And he thought through all the next steps and he laid them out for me. Now is it a ridiculous idea and are you against the next two going back and forth with Robert Herjavec over him sending some people in one of our courses, I had lunch with Herjavec. Generous dude, sweetheart of a guy. Completely generous. He paid for lunch. It's my favorite kind of lunch. On top of that I was at a steak restaurant. So it was even better. He paid 90 minutes and he paid. Great guy. I look at him and I say, we got one of our in person sessions coming up in New York. Can I give you a ticket? He looks back at me and says, how many can we buy? One more indicator of a generous decent human being. We're going back and forth on the tickets. My son who runs my company, he doesn't care that Robert Herjavec, he's mad because we're going to sell out and he wants to sell the ticket and he's hoping Herjavec doesn't take it so he can sell it. He's on the east coast, we're on the west coast in la. Herjavec's offices in la. I was living just up the street at the time. My son calls me at 4:30 in the afternoon, 7:30 in New York. He says, you get Herjavec on the phone and get a commitment for the tickets before the business day starts tomorrow or I'm selling these ticket and we're going to sell out because we're on the verge of selling out now and you're holding up the whole circus. And I can't wait to start of the business day tomorrow because the business day starts three hours later in la and by the time we get up in la, New York's going to lunch. We're going to be out of luck. So I get needed a decision from herjavec now at 5:03 in the afternoon I sent him a two line email. Is it a ridiculous idea for you to commit to three tickets for our course now? Second line. Are you against paying for them before the business day starts tomorrow? That's a 503 email. Again, decision fatigue. Five o' clock in the afternoon. When was the last time you tried to close somebody with a hard decision after 3 o' clock in the afternoon, afternoon alone after 5 the email response from herjavec comes back at 5:04. No, we're willing to commit to three tickets right now. No, it's not a problem. My assistant will be within in touch with you within the hour and will pay for the tickets. Tickets are paid for at 5:23. I've got all the emails, timestamped.

Our.

Favorite negotiation, one liners and why. All right, number four, have you given up on what's the context? This is context driven. I see a lot of people trying to manipulate me who've learned this and they'll send me in an opening email. Have you given up on doing business with us? Well, now I have because you just tried to manipulate me with one of my tools. Now, I don't mind if you use my tools with me, but if you want to use them against me, I smell it really quickly. So any of you that want to try, have you given up on as an opening line? It's going to sound harsh. It's out of context. You deserve to have that door slammed in your face. On the other hand, it is the most effective restarter for people who are ghosting you.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

It's almost a 1,000% guarantee of a response, in many cases from three to five minutes. The person receiving it, seeing it, I'm not kidding you, when you send that one line text or one line email, sit there and wait because the response may come screaming back at you. It will restart the conversation literally. I know of two or three instances and probably 10,000 when it didn't. One instance when the answer was yes. Now, context, your system is perfectly designed to give you the outcome that you have achieved. If they're ghosting you, they're not responding, you're part of the problem. Which means they've gone dark on you for one of two reasons. Number one, you're not listening to them. It's a larger subset of communication with them with you is doing them no good. The first problem is probably that you're not listening, you're pitching and they get tired of giving you the counterfeit yes or the maybes and they just can't take it from you anymore. And they Just stop responding because you're not listening to them. Number two, they've lost all influence on your side. Again, communication with you is doing them no good. If communication with you was doing them any good, they would still be communicating. What does that mean? Is your takeaway when you send have you given up on. And they respond five minutes later. If you go back to the same type of communication that you were using that led up to that point, you've just blown your one shot reset. I was coaching an ex girlfriend probably about five or six years ago. She says, hey, this guy, we're pitching him on this investment. He's not returning our text anymore. And I said, perfect. Shoot him a text saying, have you given up on making this investment? He's going to get back to you right away. She did. He got back to her right away. She went back into the same pitch that drove him away in the first place, and she never heard from him again. If you send this, you have to rethink how you got into this in the first place, because your communication system is perfectly designed to give you the outcome that you achieved. You cannot go back to communicating with them the way you were communicating before. Chances are you were pitching and you weren't listening. You've got to go into listening and using one of our skills, principally summary, to try to get back on track. There was another point I was going to make on that, but it'll come back to me. All right, we're going into 5 and 6. Actually, Howard has a question. Go ahead. No, no, you gave me an alternative to that, which is you must have a legitimate reason for. He's saying, I don't know. Can. Can. Can anybody. Howard says you must have a legitimate reason for. We'll get it. We'll get into that in a minute. But here's the one that I wanted to get into.

We're coaching.

We're coaching a guy in a negotiation with Coca Cola, selling them a healthcare program. He says, they got to get. We gotta. We have an agreement, but they haven't signed a contract. Got to get the contract signed by the end of the calendar year or this is all going to go down the tubes. And a guy I'm working with has heard this. So we say, perfect. You send. Send the email, send a text. Have you given up on getting the contract signed by the end of the calendar year? So we get a response every time. Silence. This guy got back to us and he said, you said, this worked. We don't know what's going on. I said, no, we do know what's going on. The answer is yes. And it's really hard for people to say yes, especially this one. That's why you get silence. So he here's, you know, going from certainty, uncertainty to certainty, going with Dan Sullivan. Before, you didn't know if they've given up. Now you know, whether you like it or not, you have a solid answer. They have given up. You have to recalibrate all of your communication now to try to salvage this. And here's what's going on. I guarantee you that your counterpart has lost all influence on his side of the table. Coca Cola and the guy we're coaching says, yeah, but if he doesn't sign this, it's going to hurt him. And I say, all right, you know, you know what? That, that's not good enough. Here's what this guy's looking at. He's trying to make a decision whether to get his hand cut off, which is losing your deal, or getting shot in the head, which is what he's faced with. I promise you, this guy's fighting for his life. Here's how you get him out of it. You send him another email saying, like, look, all this business nonsense, I can't take it anymore. Let's go out, let's get a steak and a scotch. You know, we'll have a couple of drinks, we'll have a few laughs. I promise you, we won't talk business. He said if you can get him out of the office into a social environment and you don't ask him a single business question, if you get him out of there and get him laughing, he'll tell you what's going on. You won't have to ask. Sends an email, they make an appointment to have dinner together. They have dinner. My buddy is not pressing business at all. A few drinks in, this guy begins to explain to him how he's fighting for his life in Coca Cola. He's worried about losing his job. They've moved him. Somebody else has got the contract now. And he offers to tell him who it is and connect. So if you ask that no oriented question and you get a yes, you have to read what you're learning. You might not like the answer, but you're actually smarter. Having gone from uncertainty to certainty. All right? Moving down the line, letting out know a little at a time to encourage collaboration. Read the book. You know that how am I supposed to do that? Is a story of how the book opens. And a lot of people have picked that up as a way to bargain. Like Somebody says, one guy got back to me at lawn service. Guy said he wanted X number of dollars to do all the landscaping in his house. And he just looked at him and said, how am I supposed to do that? And a landscaper immediately cut the price significantly. A lot of people learn, how am I supposed to do that? Is a great way to get people to bargain against themselves. What it really is, is a polite way to start indicating to people that the answer is no. Friend of mine, Ned Coletti, was a GM of the Dodgers. Those of you that are baseball fans probably know who Ned is. Great guy. And Ned and I were talking about this one time a few years ago, and Ned said he liked to let out no a little at a time. What does that mean? Nobody should get blindsided with no, people should be given gently indicators that there are problems. If you got problems with what they're proposing, if you can't do it or you won't do it, or it's a bad idea to do it, no is an answer, but it's really about your fourth response and letting out no a little at a time. Now, how am I supposed to do that? A how question is principally designed to create implementation. If you don't want to do something because it's unimplementable, you say to somebody, how am I supposed to do that? Like, all right, I'll do it. Give me some implementation based on my constraints. Every now and then somebody says, well, what if they tell me how to do it? Well, you just push them to their limit without making them angry. Because when somebody turns around and gives you implementation as a negotiator, in many cases your job is to find out where the boundaries are. And maybe one time in 10, somebody will turn around and say, this is how you do it. Well, perfect. You've just learned a lot. You've been given implementation that they think is reasonable. Plus you push them as far as you can on that issue, which in many cases is your job as a negotiator. The other thing it is again, my son Brandon, he said, how am I supposed to do that? Is forced empathy. You don't ask the how question so much as to get an answer. As you get. You ask a question in order to make them think what Danny Kahneman would call triggering slow thinking. If you look at somebody and say, how am I supposed to do that? And you say it deferentially, you don't say like, how am I supposed to do that? Where your tone of voice says, I think you're stupid. You Say it deferentially. You make them stop and look at you and see you as a human being, at least potentially as a collaboration partner who's looking to collaborate but just needs some help. So it's forcing them to empathize with you, which is one of the things that's a good thing to do in your negotiations. So it's forced empathy. Number six, your offer is very generous. I'm afraid it just doesn't work for me. That hits a number of awesome psychological buttons. Positive attributes are reinforced by the recognition of them. If someone's being stingy with you to their in their brain, they're being generous. That's what empathy is about. What is it to them, not to you? You need more generosity at somebody when they've given you a stingy offer. You start out by saying you've been very generous. It makes them want to be even more generous. And the story they're telling themselves in their head is that they're being generous anyway. You want to encourage more of it. It has a tendency to turn that dial up by saying you're being very generous. And to say, I'm afraid it just doesn't work for me, I'm afraid is important part of that statement. It just doesn't work for me. The beauty of that is that it takes away external criteria. One of the things that I think Bob Cialdini talks about a lot of, or he may even speak of, because I think we're going to see him tomorrow. Some people say, well, in negotiations, go to external criteria. Go to an external set of criteria that you can both agree on. Well, look, what if the market price is X and you don't have the money? The external criteria is a market price. Does that mean you got to pay the market price if you don't have the budget or the funds? It's a stupid idea. So saying it just doesn't work for me takes away external criteria as a way to take you hostage. We have never had anybody say, I reported back in. Any response when someone said, that just doesn't work for me. Have somebody fired back, say, yes, it does. You made a lot of money last year. No, it doesn't work for me. I've never had that fired back at anybody. What typically happens, One of the students in Georgetown was doing this in a negotiation in his day job in a business. And his partner sat down, some people across the table, they came in with a low ball offer. And he looked them in the eye and said, you know, you guys offer is very generous. It Just doesn't work for us. He said the people on the other side of the table looked at each other and looked back at him and said, you're right, it is low, and gave him a higher offer. How often does that happen? How often does it have to happen? All right, number seven, you call the Black Swan group on the phone, and you get my son on the phone, and you say to him, how are you today? And he's going to say back to you, it sounds like it got a place you want to start? And you were immediately going to get into the conversation. Now, of the number of people that asked you, how are you? How many of them actually wanted to know what is. How are you really? How are you? Is a temperature check where someone is trying to get a bead on what mood you're in to find out whether or not they can lay out what they called to talk to you about in the first place. You've just gotten around all of that, dancing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and gotten right to the heart of what they had on their mind anyway, which is what they went through in their head before they dialed the phone and called you. And you just put time back in your day and in their day. Now, the only time Brandon's ever gotten any pushback on this, he said one time, one guy did say, okay, I'd love to get into that, but really, how are you? The guy wanted to know he wasn't mad that he tried to get right into it right away. And my son was like, fine, you know? And then they had the social conversation this guy wanted to have, because then it was about serving the person on the other side of the phone. And that guy, who's a minority, wanted to have that how are you? Conversation, which, if it enhances the moments in the interaction, is cool. But at least two out of three times, they really don't care how you are. My back hurts. My. My legs hurt. My.

I got.

I get varicose veins. They don't want to hear that. What they really want to know is, are you in a mindset where they can talk to you? So how are you? Is really a probe on the other side's part to find out if they can talk to you about what's on their agenda. And when you say, sounds like we've got a place you want to start, bang, you just hack that and you move forward. All right, responses to questions number eight and nine. You answer a question at your peril. Everybody knows the question behind a question is much More important. So why is answering a question at your peril? Well, number one, most people usually don't have the ability to ask a good question. Like, when I ask a question, I'm pretty good at it because I listen and I actually want an answer. But most people, they ask you a question and you answer the question, they start talking about something like, good God, I had no idea that's what you were talking about. If I'd have known that before I answered, I'd have given you a completely different answer. What makes you ask again? What makes you ask? What makes you ask? Upward inflection. Genuine curiosity, inquisitive. You got to find out what's driving them. I'm in a presentation a couple years ago while I'm still doing security stuff. Insurance company thinking about getting into K and R Insurance. Kidnapping, ransom. There's insurance for it. There's insurance for everything. They say, have you kept your government security clearance? And I have intentionally not. And what I think for brilliant reasons. And I think the answer to that of no is so startling that people are going to ask me, follow, why not? What's going on? Have you kept your government security clearance? No. Conversation then goes in another direction. We don't get back to this topic in the entire presentation. I never get the opportunity to come up with my brilliant explanation why I don't have the government security clearance. It never comes up and we don't get the contract. To this day, I don't know why they asked. What makes you ask might have changed.

It.

Seems like you have a good reason for asking that same thing. You're not being disrespectful by digging into the motivation behind somebody's questions. Finally, number 10. Seems like you have a.

A good.

Reason for not doing that. When people are failing to perform and you want them to open up.

This.

Is what you've got to say. Seems like you have a good reason for not performing. Seems like you have a good reason for not meeting the deadline. They are never going to tell you what the real reason is or what's going on behind their side of the table. If you say, why didn't you do that? Do you know you failed in an agreement? All the accusatory stuff, they're not coming out of their shell to let you know what's going on. Contractor, subcontractor, negotiation, Washington, D.C. subcontractor completely failing to perform. Contractor sits down with the subcontractor who's been making excuses, blaming it on other people for lack of performance. Sits down with him, says, Seems like you got a good reason for not.

Performing as per the contract.

Guy on the other side of the table kind of shrugged his shoulders, said, no, I don't. And they worked it out, and they fixed everything. You don't sit down to find out what's stopping them because you want to hang them. Maybe you do, but you really sit down because you want to get people back on track, and this is a way that gets people back on track.

Today I'm going to talk about how to become a key person of influence, because I actually figured out I had been doing this for a long time, but when I met a bunch of the other sharks, and there's now 10 of us, and each one of these, you're going to see some new ones. John Paul DiGiorio on the end there, and Steve Tisch this year coming out. Jeff Foxworthy was a shark for a season. I did three seasons, 170 segments. I learned a lot from these sharks, learned that they were key people of influence in their industry. And so I said, you know what? Let me write down how I became a key person in my industry. And it was really kind of simple when you think about it. It's the old 9010 rules. 10% of the people make 90% of the income. But actually, really, today, it's almost 2% of the people are making 98% of the income. So, you know, that's, you know, this middle 10% actually have 90, but it's now becoming even closer to a 98.2percent ratio. So there's five things that I say that you need in order to become this key person of influence. We're going to go into each one of these very shortly today because of the time constraints. But get a perfect pitch, publish your ideas, productize your value, raise your profile, and also then seek great partnerships. And I think that's one of the reasons why many of us are here today, is to seek great partnerships. So the perfect pitch, I have a formula I use for this. T's, please, and C's are the three steps of that. And the guy that gave me the most unbelievable perfect pitch, the first I realized it, his name was Arnold Morris, and he was at the Philadelphia home show with the knife. He's cutting through a Coca Cola can, then a hammerhead and a muffler. And then he said, it's so powerful, this knife, that it can still cut to a tomato, and you can read the Sunday newspaper through it. This was called the Ginsu knife. I said, arnold, that pitch you just gave, I'M going to put it on tv, take a camera, capture it and take it to millions. Because he'd only been taking it to 10 people at a time for 30 years. He had a perfect pitch. But I said, let's take it to the masses. That was the perfect pitch. Not somebody like this that came on Shark Tank and couldn't even talk. Okay, so that makes a bad pitch when you cry.

All right.

In fact, you know, when I got done with Arnold, we went back to the Philadelphia home show and watch this. Billy Mays, I'd like to introduce to you the washmatic International. It's the only washing system in the world that works direct from a bucket. Who cares?

All right, all right.

That was not a good pitch.

All right.

That was Billy's first infomercial. God bless him. I did that infomercial. Fortunately, I didn't lose a lot of money, but I learned early on you need to create a perfect pitch. And here is Billy's last infomercial.

The dual saw is no ordinary saw. It uses counter rotating technology to cut through all types of material with unmatched.

Safety, speed and precision. It's a process that took eight years.

And cost millions of dollars to develop.

That's a perfect pitch. $100 million in sales. God bless Billy Mays. His family still gets a royalty to this day now that he's passed away a few years ago, but that when he passed away. 62 products on television when he died. God bless him. So, yeah, there's other people we can talk about. Lazo Freeman, a personal trainer over in the uk, came to us and I said, what's your perfect pitch, Lazo? I get a kick from motivating individuals to be the best they can be. That sounds a little bit generic to me. Not a great pitch, but this is what we turned it into. I only do exclusive radical 12 week body transformations with business leaders, celebrities and public figures who achieve amazing things at work. But ordinary things naked. Okay, how about that one?

All right.

This guy has a 12 week waiting list now for people that want to use his services. That's what I call a perfect pitch. And by the way, you should have a 32nd perfect perfect pitch. A 62nd, a 92nd, 122nd. You never know when and who you might have to make that pitch to Tease, please and sees publish now. There's a lot of people here. I've seen a lot of people have their own books already. So yes, having a book is great. I had my own book and that helped me get on Shark Tank. Actually, I can talk a little bit about that afterwards maybe, but books and blogs and newsletters, trade journals, newspaper articles, magazines, publishing creates credibility. And without a doubt, I know there's, I see folks here that go on the Today show. We know who we are here and things like this. So everybody knows they need to get the publishing credibility because, you know, you keep your customers. If you have a newsletter that comes out, you get new customers. We, we talked about credibility. You stand out from the competition, you enhance your reputation as an expert, you build your brand. And it has a longer shelf life than other marketing because you can give your book out, your newsletter continuity, you can do clubs, et cetera. So yes, publishing is very, very powerful. And this lady, Hadi Hassan, she was a struggling female publisher, plumber. And she said, what can I do? You know, I don't know. What, what, what do you have for me? I said, well, let's come up with something. We've now published over 350 books for people through our organization now. And what we did with Hadi is we said the Joy of Plumbing. And that book now has taken off. It's a best seller over in the uk. This book has positioned her. Now she started her own association. She does radio talks shows, television shows. She's got a 16 DVD set of DVDs that she sells on an ongoing basis. And she now is a rock star plumber. So publishing has put her into a whole new league. Third step, productize. Because a product never sleeps. I have friends that are chiropractors, doctors, lawyers. They can't bill while they're sleeping, all right? So I say, you've got to productize your assets. We live in a global idea economy right now, and productizing is what it's all about. In fact, when I met Tony Little, he was a bodybuilder, personal trainer. All right, look at Tony. He looks a little different today, but Tony Little, I said, how do you make money, Tony? I get $40 an hour. I start at 5 o' clock in the morning and I work people out all day long. So at the end of the day, he made a couple hundred, 500 bucks maybe if he had 10, 12 sessions like Tony. How can we unpack your unvaluable, your valuable ip? He said, kevin, he says, what I do, I get. I can target train women primarily if they got a little bit of arm fat here. Love handles, glutes, you name it, I target train them. I said, boom. Okay, brought him into the studio. We shot six one hour DVDs, created the target training DVD set. Here it is. $300 million in sales for Tony Little. He was getting a check for about a million dollars a month actually at one time. So this was all by productizing his valuable ip, Tony's done billions. We went on to do the Gazelle with Tony Little, which actually has now done over $1 billion in sales by productizing. Here's another guy, Jack Lalanne, he's a healthy old fitness guru. Another guy that's passed away, God bless him. But I said, jack, he hadn't made any money. This is about 20 some years ago. And I said, what do you do to stay so healthy? I drink juice every day. Okay, Jack, here it is. We're gonna make you now a healthy and wealthy old Fitness Guru. Okay, $1 billion in juicer sales. Jack Lane, unpack your valuable IP. Fourth thing. Profile. Raise your profile. So important, you know. Let's talk about the evolution of the industry. It took radio 38 years to get to 50 million people. Took television 13 years. The Internet four years. IPod three years. Facebook two years. But guess what? This guy, he did it in six months to a billion people. Psy. Okay, the Gangnam guy, this guy just blew the market away because what did he do? He didn't use the old media. A few channels broadcasting to millions. He used new media, which is millions of channels broadcasting to a few. And that is the new big. Small is the new big. Big companies have a harder time competing against you because just like this right here, I have a 35,000 square foot studio. I shoot my infomercials. I can shoot the same quality on this little iPhone that I do in my studio. And that's where we're going with this because here's a guy, Phil Geer. 810 million views. What mattered to me today, Michelle Phan, 580 million views. She gets seven figure sponsorships from companies that pay her to show how to put makeup on for Asian girls. And Jenna Marbles. Over a billion views. How to trick people into thinking you're good looking. So you know who would want me on tv? A lot of people say, well, if a blanket with arms can become a TV sensation, so can you. The Snuggie. $400 million in sales. 26 million units. Last thing, partnerships. And I'm out of time, so I'm just going to wrap it up here. I went to Guthy Ranker. They do beauty, I do hard goods. I said, let's form a venture. We'll take people that come to you with hard good products. You bring them into the venture. People come to me with beauty products. We formed a 50:50 joint venture, very successful. Everybody in this room has the ability to put partner just like invent help, which helps inventors. They come to us. We have a program where we line up 7,000 companies to invest in inventors ideas. And that's because we have engineers, we have manufacturing companies, we have every kind of company that can help an inventor with his idea.

Back in 1960, back when Joel was a young man, or a younger man, I should say, there was the very first ever televised presidential debate between president back then Vice President Nixon and candidate John F. Kennedy. And something very interesting happened out of this debate. First of all, when they did the polling after the debate, it wasn't divided on political lines like it is today. It was divided between people who watched the debate on television and those who actually heard it on the radio. And overwhelmingly, the people who actually heard it on the radio totally believed that Nixon won the debate. But the people who watched it on television absolutely believed that Kennedy won the debate. In my opinion, this was the very first ever selling through the screen incident before they sold products. This is the first time people had to sell themselves and their ideas. So why did that happen? Let's make sure this works. Now, why should you care about the way that you see yourself or you are seen on the screen? Well, if we think about all the research that's been done all the way back to 1967, we understand that our words make up about 10% of our communication. Our tone is about 35%. And then 55% are the gestures that we use when we look at the problem that's happening in our world today. After Covid started, something really unique happened. Now there are people who, like Michael Bernoff, who do amazing things with words, but when it comes down to it, that human interaction, being together with somebody, really feeling the energy of the room and feeling who they are, is very vital to your sales process. However, now this is what we are dealing with. We're missing out on the entire picture and only seeing about 15 to 20% of people's bodies on the screen. And if you haven't watched Mike Koenig's 25 Ways to Do Better Zoom calls, you probably have been on a call where you've seen something like this. Even celebrities like Hugh Jackman surprisingly don't know how to use a computer. This is an actual screenshot from a interview he was doing with Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show. People have a very big challenge when it comes to actually communicating Their message through the screen. So how does body language actually happen? It's important for us to understand that body language happens because of an emotion that happens in our subconscious and then comes through our brain. As a matter of fact, what happens about every one minute? We have about 450 words that are developed inside of our subconscious to answer a question or to reply to something. Now, to be clear, for women it's typically a little bit higher. For men it's typically a little bit lower. But average is about 450 words per minute. But your consciousness knows you can't say all of those words. So it narrows it down to about 150 words per minute for you to actually use that. You can choose. Yes, I want to use that. This is a safe place to say that. Oh, remember when I said that last time this happened? I don't want to say that. So what happened to those other 300 words? Where did it go? It's not clicking. There we go. 300 words inside of our subconscious. Those energies actually exist inside of our subconscious. They have to go somewhere. And that is what is created body language. That's what goes into all the other parts of our body and comes out. I want to know that story. Because what they've brought up in their head is very important for, for us to understand. And the body will tell us what those things are. So today I want to walk you through. Oops, sorry. This is something that's really important here. There's always a Jim do joke going around somewhere, so I figured might as well throw one in here. But this is actually a really weird picture. But when we think about what the brain connects with first, when we meet somebody, a lot of people will say it's their eyes that we notice first. It's actually not the brain notices first. And this scale or this image here is by scale. The first thing people notice or the first thing the brain notices is the hands first, Then the lips, then the tongue, then the ears. And this is showing you exactly what your brain sees when you meet somebody new. So it's important to know this.

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Get a copy there.

So I've created a shell system that I like to Use with my teams when I'm teaching them about what to look for when they're through the screen. When they're talking to somebody through the screen, it goes shoulders, hands, eyes, lips and language. Language is something we're not going to talk about too much today or at all today, because there are other people who talk about that a little bit better. Shoulders. Shoulders are the first thing you want to look at and recognize. According to a study by Harvard, it's the number one missed movement when it comes to body language. Because shoulders show uncertainty if somebody doesn't know the answer to something by saying, yeah, what is the square root of 386? And they go, I don't know. That makes sense. But if they say, if you ask somebody, hey, would you like to move forward with this contract? And they say, yeah, sure. Well, there's uncertainty there. And you better be careful to stop and actually ask a question around that. How was your day to get. Oh, it was wonderful. But they shrugged their shoulders. Well, there probably wasn't something wonderful about that day. Ask a better question. One of the things I love most about body language, it gives us an ability to ask a better question. Next would be your hands. Our hands are actually, actually our secondary communication device. When you are seeing a speaker, when you're talking to somebody or seeing somebody on stage, if they walk around with their hands in their pockets the entire time, your brain starts to mistrust them, thinking they're hiding something. Ever since we were cavemen back in our DNA, we looked at hands first, as you saw on that image there, because the hand would show me, are you going to feed me or you're going to kill me? And I like to hear myself, so it's good. So we want to make sure we're looking at the hands. The hands will also tell us when people are nervous or concerned. They will soothe themselves with soothing gestures, whether it be from their clothing. Like you see this person down at the bottom picture there, or wringing their hands together. Or women often will go and cover up the little. It's called the supersonal notch right here in their body, or the decollete. If I were to get fancy with women's clothing, right, so they cover this up. Any type of hair movement or twirling of the hair, those are all hand movements used to show you that they are uncertain or that they are trying to soothe themselves. So watch for hand movements. Now. This is important for you as somebody who's on the screen oftentimes because of the way that we position ourselves on the screen. We're not showing people our hands and using our hand gestures. But people will trust you more if they can see your hands. Matter of fact, if you look at TED Talks, there's a great statistic here at TED Talks that the least popular TED talkers use an average of 272 hand gestures during the 18 minutes. But the most popular TED talkers had 465 hand gestures. That's almost double. Use your hands more often when you are talking. Sorry, this should have said eyes. It says hands there. It says eyes. It's supposed to say eyes. Eye blocking is the next thing I want you to look at. When people close their eyes, there's usually either one or two reasons. They're either trying to see it and focus in on the thing that you're asking them, or they're trying to avoid it and disassociate their emotion with what you're asking them about. These are two really great examples of people who are either on a Witness fan or this is probably Obama hearing another Biden gaffe. Who knows? But on the last slide here, this is called eye blocking with their hand. If somebody raises their hand and shuts their eyes at the same time, it'll most likely be around something financial, money driven. So you want to make sure that they're showing because. Sorry, you want to make sure you ask a question around that because they're actually looking at some sort of shame around the thing that you're talking about. That usually shows us that they have some sort of shame with it.

All right.

Now, lastly is lips. And I love lips, because lips will tell you everything. If somebody has a question to ask in the middle of your presentation, they will often first just close their lips slightly and then they'll start to eat their lips. If you see the lips disappear, you know, there's a challenge there. If you're going through contracts, this is really important for you to be able to watch what's going on with their lips. Because the moments their lips go from natural, which would look like this.

To.

Close or at least have a concern, you want to stop and say what questions you have around this area here, or let's talk more about that part of the contract because now you know they had something to say. The best people to look at for this is children. If you have children in your home, go home tonight and ask them to listen to your story. You're going to tell them a story. It doesn't matter what the story is. But they cannot ask a question or speak during that story. And you will notice as you are talking, they will shut their lips, they will start to bite their lips, they will chew on their lips, and suddenly they will raise their hand to cover up their mouth because they want to.

Say something that you told them to shut up.

You do that, too. When you're sitting in a room like this or you're sitting here watching on TV on Zoom, if somebody is saying something and you have something to say, you will notice, you will close your lips, too. You might even raise your hand to your lips. When your lips are disjointed, like you see here with President Trump, his pursed lips, he disagrees. His pursed lips pull to the side. He disagrees very strongly. Here's a clue. I want you to remember this saying. When you don't like what you see or hear, your lips disappear. So if you're watching somebody on the camera and you see all of a sudden their lips disappear, they're not liking what you're saying. Make sure you stop and ask a better question. Shoulders, hands, eyes, lips. Those are the areas of the shell that you want to look at. Even though we only get to see 15 to 20% of somebody's body now, you can learn so much with just these areas. And more importantly, they can learn so much about you. Now, let's go all the way back to Nixon and Kennedy. Why did Nixon lose this debate? There are three very specific things he did at the very beginning of this debate. And you can actually go on YouTube and watch the introduction of President Nixon, Nixon and Vice President Nixon and Kennedy. Here are the three things that happened. Number one, we always look to the most authority in the room or the authority figure in the room. Especially when we're nervous, we're finding out if we're doing what is right. So America saw this and saw him continually. And if you watch the videos, see him keep looking at Kennedy, then his hands. His hand looks like he's holding on for the ride. But also from tv, it looks like a fist and it looks like it's dominant. And people don't want to feel like they're being pressured to do anything. And lastly, were his feet. His feet are in what we call the runner's position. He's ready to get out of there. He doesn't want to be here. Look at his posture compared to Kennedy's and how much more relaxed Kennedy is of being there looking straight at the audience as opposed to Nixon, like he doesn't want to be here. And oddly enough, who won that presidential not debate the debate. Yes. But also the presidency was President Kennedy and went on to be the president United States. So what does it really matter to you? It really matters because if you truly are somebody who wants to connect, communicate and close more often in your virtual cells with your teams, you must understand the shell and understand how to properly sell through the screen.

Okay.

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