The Words You Use In A Negotiation MATTER Feat. Chris Voss

What is the premise of persuasion? So let's go into, like, how does persuasion differ from or enhance persuasion? I guess.

Yeah. You know, in the book Influence, I talked about what you should put into a message to increase the likelihood that people would want it, would try to acquire it. That thing that you're talking about, your.

Offer, collaboration, is both people waiting in and being. You know, there's a difference between being assertive and being aggressive. I need you to assert your best interests. Otherwise you're relying on me to read your mind about what's best for you. So for everybody out there, you've got to be assertive. You don't have to be an asshole when you do it. You know, the trick is to be assertive without being a jerk. Now, cooperation is sometimes a little more passive. And I want you to be collaborative. I want you to wade in. I don't want you to leave it to my mind reading to know what's best for you. And sometimes if we lean too far in the direction of cooperation, we find ourselves in a resentful position, and that's not good long term. So, you know, I want all of you to step up and politely let people know what you need, because otherwise you're. You're relying on them to read your mind, and that decreases your percentage chances of success.

This is one of my favorite things that I've observed as I'm getting to know you, is the. You're a wordsmith, as I love the distinctions in words, and that's. That makes a big difference. I think people have linked assertive and aggressive as the same thing, especially people who are not likely to be assertive, that they kind of miscommunicate or misinterpret it, that they need to be aggressive when the. Really, what they're trying to be is a sort of. You can be assertive politely, like you just said, that's kind of a. That's a great thing.

Really good. I agree with you completely. One of the most assertive people on earth, somebody I'm a big fan of Oprah Winfrey. You don't think of her as being aggressive. You know, I've talked about her enough that I've had people close to her detail to me some very specific conversations she had with people where she was extremely assertive. You know, if you were to boil down her message to one second sentence, it would be, it's my way or the highway. But she says it in such a supportive and nurturing and loving fashion that people go, okay.

Yeah.

When you say it in A way that it's like, it's okay. That if that's not your way, that's fine with me in a way. Right?

That's.

Yeah, you know what? That's. That's it exactly. She always says, if it's not your way, it's fine with me. And no matter what, I will always love and support you.

Yes.

You know what? That's interesting because I have met Oprah twice, briefly. The second time, but the first time, I spent about 15 minutes talking with her at Maryville Resort over about 20 years ago, and she was at the resort for the first time. And my friend used to be the spa director there. And lo and behold, like, Oprah kind of walks around the corner and she looks so tired that I couldn't even bring it to myself. I wanted to ask her if she'd do an interview because even 25 years ago is when I first started doing interviews, but she looked so tired that I didn't bring up a single thing about business or anything. I was just talking to her about the equine experience using, like, horses as this therapeutic thing that they were doing at this spa. And people were coming up to her.

And she just, like, had to just dismiss them.

But you're right, Chris, the way she did it was, I mean, extremely assertive. But also the tone of her voice, the way she did it, but it, I mean, there was no doubt that, you know, like, don't talk to me.

And that sort of thing.

So it's.

Yeah, I think that.

So, I mean, to master something, Chris, from like, Mastering the Skill of Negotiation here, you obviously have a book. We wanted to have you come on because certainly what you can teach people can change the trajectory of their life and the results that they get and how they interact, not just in business, but in all areas in life. What are your thoughts on mastery? I mean, you even have a master class. You have trainings. I mean, what does it take for someone to get to that level?

You know, it's repetition, small stakes practice for high stakes results. Be willing to make mistakes and then learn from your mistakes. Now, that seems obvious, but first of all, most people over the age of 25 don't want to make mistakes. You know, you're horrified, you're embarrassed. You know, you find mistakes embarrassing. And so that's the first problem. I mean, that's a real problem. And then the second thing is then learning from the mistakes. You know, it's. It's practice makes perfect, but perfect practice makes perfect. Learn from your mistakes and be willing to get better, like we, you know, we get internally, we got sort of a game that we play. I'm getting sweet upgrades in hotels for free. It's that little bit of a contest. My son Brandon prides himself on always getting a better room in a hotel than me, and I'm paying the bills. But, you know, he taught us how he does it. And the last time I was in a hotel and I happened to be in Dallas for a football game just a couple of weeks ago, I did it badly, and I got the sweet upgrade. And afterwards, as I was going through it in my mind, I was like, ah, I made a mistake. I mean, you know, I got to do this better. But it was a learning, you know, it was a repeat experience for me. Practice and, you know, I was willing to make a mistake and then. And relearn, get back into practice. Because negotiation is a perishable skill. It's not riding a bike. If you're bragging about a negotiation that you did a long time ago, then you're out of practice because you should have a recent victory or not quite a victory that you could talk about and get better from. So it takes practice.

So, Chris, where is negotiation not utilized in life?

Yeah, you know, I don't know where it's. Where it's not utilized. I mean, when are you not trying to get smarter? When are you not trying to gather information? When are you not trying to have influence in a good way? Again, this was with this collaborative thing that I referred to earlier about, I mean, using your powers for good and not evil. If you collaborate, if you want to hurt people, it's going to catch up with you. But if I'm only information gathering, maybe, and I don't want to have influence on the outcome, maybe that's it. But negotiation is involved in everything. Negotiation. One of my favorite stories is negotiation involved when you order it. Starbucks, it's in everything. And the reason why it's involved at Starbucks, which most people say it's not, had a guy tell me that a Starbucks employee told him that he gave decaf to people that were mean to him.

Sometimes you're in negotiation, you don't even know you're negotiating.

Exactly. When you don't know you're in.

That's right.

Yeah, exactly. You're the recipient of what happens when you're an asshole to people.

Right, exactly.

So going back to collaboration, so let's frame it this way.

So.

You'Ve been in some pretty serious life or death situations. I mean, the top international FBI hostage negotiator was one of your roles that you've done in your pretty expansive life. How does someone who's threatening to blow someone's head off wanting money or whatever, that they're looking for freedom from their crimes. How do you view that as a collaboration?

Yeah, well, it sounds like a cliche, but what are their actions or their threats? In a larger view, what are they designed to get? Whether or not you're a terrorist or you're a CEO or you're a paperboy, it doesn't matter. We're all after a few of the same things. You know, we want a better tomorrow. You know, we want to live, we want to flourish, we want to prosper no matter what. You know, there's a higher purpose. You know. You know, bank robber says they need to call in 60 seconds or she dies, which is one of our favorite exercises. A guy wants to live, you know, a terrorist who is a demand, I'll kill this person. If we don't have this political demand, they have greater aspirations. I was training hostage negotiations in the United Arab Emirates a little over 10 years ago. They brought me in to sit down with the sheikh that was in charge. Brilliant guy, American educated, interesting dude. I mean, an interesting dude. And they told me before I sat down with the sheikh, if they had any, you know, if they had al Qaeda come in, the sheikh wanted to kill him. You know, he said, understand, the sheikh is not here for you to save terrorist lives. The sheikh is here for you to save lives of innocent people in the Emirates. The sheikh says to me, what are you going to teach my guys to tell? And I said to him, I want your guys to get on the phone and say to a terrorist, what you're doing is a great thing. And the sheikh's mouth fell open. And I said, and when they do, they're gonna have them the same way I've got you right now. You can't wait to hear what I'm gonna say next. Because there's a larger purpose to the action. So, you know, business person in. Somebody's demanding a price reduction. They're under pressure. You don't talk about. Don't talk about the price reduction. Say, sounds like you're under a lot of pressure here. Sounds like you're really up against. You're really up against. It sounds like you're backed into a corner. Get out of reacting to what they said and think about in a bigger picture, what are they really after? And it's pretty much always the same thing, because all human beings are hardwired the same.

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.

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Of this video or you can Simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. So what's the most stressful negotiation you've ever been in and how did you deal with it?

Talking to my sister earlier today. You know, the ones we all struggle with, the closer somebody is to us, the harder it is for us because it just becomes harder and harder to get out of our own way. Anytime that if I can step back at all, then I can get myself under control. And usually the way I step back is, you know, I'll vary my tone of voice. There's a couple different ways to step back. To get yourself out of a reactive judgmental mode, get yourself out of, you know, an angry mode. You know, they say give a speech when you're angry, it'll be the greatest speech you ever regret. You know, when your buttons are getting punched, you're actually dumber. And you're also simultaneously more self righteous. So it's not emotions that are bad, it's negative emotions. And anytime you can take a step back in any way, take a deep breath, I mean, you know, we're seeing all this stuff from traditional thought that now is being backed up with scientific data. Taking a deep breath is a way to step back. You know, that book breathe is out there. I was thinking actually earlier today, you know, because I got a little heated up in conversation with my sister and. But then I happened, you know, it was time for me to, I took cold shower, I take cold showers for health reasons. I instantly, my mental state changed, cool off, literally physically, you know, so I've, you know, I varied quite a bit from your original question. What was the most stressful negotiation you were in? Anytime that I don't have a sounding board, if I'm in it by myself and I don't have somebody on my side as a sounding board, then I'm not in as good a position. I've had some kidnappings that were ugly. You're not going to bat a thousand. You're just not. Anybody wants to give you a negotiation strategy that says works every time they're lying to you. I told somebody in a conversation recently, hostage negotiators had a 93% success rate, which is an enviable success rate for any sales or business person, 93% success. But that meant we shot the bad guy 7% of the time. So engage in skills that increase your batting averages and don't expect yourself to be perfect.

Okay, got it. So what is your process for, like, fleshing out a situation and then determining the best approach to take? Because you have to size things up and sometimes you have to size them up relatively quickly. So how do you speak to that?

All right, so the first thing is, Colin Powell said a long time ago, never let your ego get so attached to the position that if the position collapses, your ego goes with it. What does that have to do with what you just asked me? What it has to do with what you just asked me is when you size things up initially, understand that you're going to get in more data and your assessment of the situation is going to change. So, yes, initially, I'm going to size the other side up for collaboration. I'm going to size them up for whether or not they're elf or half. Everybody knows what that is. I live by those phrases. I use them every day. I'm going to try to figure out if they're elf or half. Are they easy, lucrative and fun? Are they hard and annoying, lame and frustrating? And then I'm going to be willing to adapt that as I go on. I'm going to use a couple of negotiation skills that are the diagnostic tools, mirrors and labels. I'm going to repeat something that they just said to get them to go on. I'm going to label what they just said. It sounds like this is important to you. Anything to give me more data as we're going through to back up whether or not they're L for half. Conversely, what am I to them? Am I the favorite of the fool? If you don't know who the fool in the game is, it's probably you. In point of fact, and I bet the ranch on this. 20% of everybody's opportunities, 20% of business opportunities are fake opportunities. We actually think that the number is higher than that. 20% of the time the person is coming to you for your good or your service. They're looking for you to be a competing bid only. They're looking for you to flesh out their due diligence. They're looking for you to be the rabbit to drive the price down on the other side. 20% of the time. Why do I think the number is 20 and it's actually much higher? There's a book out there called the Challenger Sale. They ran A survey. They asked business people, how often do you actually lie to a vendor? You have no intention of doing business with them, but you're acting like you do because you need a competing bid. You're only doing due diligence. Executives responded about 20% of the time. Now, did they exaggerate or did they minimize? Because basically what they asked the executives was, how long do you lie to someone? How often do you lie to someone about whether or not you're going to do business with them? There's no way they exaggerated. They had to have minimized. So part of my assessment at the very beginning is, am I the favorite of the fool? If I'm the fool in the game, I'm going to be Oprah. I'm going to be nice and say, go away. But I'm going to say, go away.

That makes anybody just go away and.

Feel good about nice. Always be nice. Abn. Don't always be closing. Always be nice. Always be nice.

I like that.

I got to mention this one comment. I'm going to try to see what goofball posted this because I don't see the name. It's from Windows PC. It says, I want to negotiate with my wife to accept my new girlfriend so I can be with both. Some tips, please. I would probably say a therapist for this person. Maybe an integrity class or something a.

Little bit less self centered. What about her needs? You're focusing on your needs. What about her needs? Maybe she wants another guy. How do you know? How do you know that's not the case?

Yeah, pretty sure that's probably the case.

That's awesome.

Who is that, by the way? Is it someone we know? I can't even see, but I would guess without even seeing who it might be.

But anyway, I was thinking the same thing, Joe.

That's funny.

I think you know, we gotta be thinking about the same person.

I know.

Yeah.

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. For it right away, without even dare you. 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 you 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 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 their 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 gonna say a bunch more afterwards. You know, 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 gonna 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 them, 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 Herjevic to commit how many tickets are going to buy now or they're going to 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 Brand says, and if he doesn't buy any, I'm giving away. I'm selling a ticket that was supposed to be given for free. So I'm like, all right, I got to cut this deal now. That'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 for them right away. Send me a link. We'll pay for them right now, within the hour. I send them the link, we get the money at 5:23. 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 are bargaining whatever you were charging anyway, which means if you tailor your service, your good or 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 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.

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. And those guys, 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, this is. 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, you.

Know.

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. 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.

Do 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.

What is the premise of persuasion? So let's go into how does persuasion differ from or enhance persuasion? I guess.

Yeah.

You know, in the book Influence, I talked about what you should put into a message to increase the likelihood that people would want it, would try to acquire it. That thing that you're talking about, your offer pre suasion, is about what you should say or do in the moment before you deliver that message to make people attuned to the strengths of that message, to make them inclined toward open, to receptive to the thing about your message that is its strongest element, the thing that will make it wise for them to say yes, because that's the essence of what it is that that you are offering.

Well, that is such an important concept that if someone was able to do that 5%, 10% more effectively, not just twice as good, but just little incremental things that would make a huge shift. But if you did it five or ten times more effectively, that would change your life, that would change the entire game. And so this is a way, like Joel Weldon, who is one of my friends, we had been speaking about him previously, before the cameras started rolling, is he made this comment about how to introduce a speaker as an example. And if you're going to go up on stage, if you have a beautiful piece of art and you duct tape it to the wall, it's going to look a certain way. But if you put it in a nice frame, it's different. And ever since I heard that, I've always thought about, you know, how you frame anything has a lot to do with how it Occurs to people, people, how they like it, how they buy into it. And then here you come out with pre suasion, which is an entire study of how you frame things. And I don't, you know, I want to do it justice because it's way beyond just framing things. There's a whole lot more into it. So what I'd love to have you do is talk about the scientific research around pre suasion so that people realize this is not just, you know, a really bright professor's opinion about how to set up the sale, setting up the request. This is like you have done some serious research on it. So I think people would really appreciate this at a much deeper level if they knew how hard you have worked on this. So if you could talk about that.

Well, there are some literatures in academic behavioral science about priming, about framing, about positioning, about anchoring. That all came together for me in terms of what they were implying about how you amplify the effect of your message. It's by what you do before you send that message. And it involves creating engagement, creating a focus in your audience on some aspect that they're yet to experience. They haven't encountered it yet. You just make them open and receptive to it before they ever encounter it. That's the idea. Let me give you an example. So suppose you want to sell somebody something that's new, or you want to bring them in. And you know that people hang back when they've got something that's new. They haven't yet tried it, they're unfamiliar, they don't like getting out of their comfort zone. But you've got this thing and it's really great. How do you. Here's a study. Researchers went up to people on the street, said, we have a new soft drink. It's untried, nobody's ever encountered it before. Would you be willing to give us your email address right now and we'll send you the information that will allow you to get this new product? Now that's a risky thing to do. If somebody comes up to you unbidden, unsolicited, Right. Unknown. Ask for your email address. That's a risky thing. Only 30% of the people were willing to do that. Under those circumstances, even that sounds to me like a lot. Right. But there are risk takers among us. For another sample of people, the researcher walked up and said, excuse me, do you consider yourself an adventurous person? People thought for a minute and they went on a particular memory track for times that they were adventurous because adventure was the Question that they were now engaged in. And we've all experienced, almost Everybody said yes. 98% of the people said yes just.

By planting that seed of getting them to focus, focus on where their brain goes.

And now instead of 30% giving them their email address when they were later told about this new product, 75.6% provide that risky, chancy thing.

That's fascinating. It's almost like the study you did with Hari Krishna's in influence where someone would go up and put the flower on their collar in airports. And it was more difficult for someone to step away than reach in their pocket and pull out a dollar and give them donation, walk away and then throw the.

What do you do first?

Yeah, so I mean, like the way that I look at that piece of information, which is again, so incredibly valuable by how you direct the brain to think, think about something before you then ask them for what you really want. So if a single person, if a guy was afraid of going up to a woman and asking for her email or asking for a phone number, if they said, are you adventurous? And just plant that and say, oh, by the way, would you like to go on a date? You've just probably in this case tripled your chances of getting a yes.

Here's a piece of research that shows how you can increase that even more. A study done in France, researchers had an attractive young man walk up to young women who were by themselves strolling through a shopping mall. And he stopped them and said, I wonder if you could give me your phone number so I can call you for a date later. Another risky thing to do. And indeed, only 13.5% of the time did he get a phone number. If he did that. This is an attractive guy, though. They, they got an actor, a matinee idol kind of looking guy.

That's part of persuasion also.

Right.

But even that, only 13.5, unless he asked in front of a particular kind of shop. And it doubled to almost doubled to 24% success. A flower shop. In the environment of flowers, women are put in mind of romance. And now romance is more important than risk.

Wow.

Where do you put people first?

So the environment has everything to do with.

It can be a word that you use like adventurous, it can be a setting that you arrange, or it can be an image that you provide on your website.

Right.

Wow.

Let me give you an example of the image.

You can talk about these examples for the next week and I would love them all because they're fantastic.

Study done with an online furniture store. They sell sofas they sent half of the visitors to their site to a landing page that had as its background wallpaper fluffy clouds. The other half they sent to a landing page that had as its background wallpaper coins, pennies. Now, they then track what happens to those visitors who were randomly sent to one or the other place with different images. The first thing they encounter is an image of clouds or an image of coins. Those who experience the clouds rated comfort as the most important feature for them to decide on a sofa. They then searched the site for information about comfort and they preferred to buy more comfortable sofas. Those who got pennies rated cost as the most important feature for determining their choice. They searched for price related information and they preferred to buy inexpensive furniture. And not one of them recognized. They were asked afterwards. So do you think the clouds made a difference or the. Not one of them believed that the clouds or the coins made any difference. This stuff flies under the radar.

Totally.

Well, you know, it almost makes you question all of the things.

Not almost.

It does. I mean, for me, the things of, you know, find a need and fill it. Find a want and fill it. Where you literally direct people to where you want them to go. In some cases, by just the setup, I mean, like, it's almost like people are thinking they know what they're looking for. But what you're showing here is. No, you're helping them to look.

This is a great insight, Joe, because there's an old saying, tell me what you're paying attention to and I'll tell you who you are. In other words, if you're always watching espn, you're probably a sports fan. If you're always getting gourmet magazines, you're probably a foodie, that sort of thing. Here's what the newest behavioral science says. What you're paying attention to doesn't just reveal who you are, it makes you who you are in that moment.

Right.

The guys in France could make those women romantics in the moment after they passed a flower shop, but not a bakery, because flowers are associated with romance. Not cheese Danish.

Right.

Here's a croissant.

Get out of here.

Either.

No, Right.

That's why if you've got a date, you don't send the young woman a box of Krispy Kreme.

Right, right, right.

You send flowers. All right, so what is the thing that is the essence of your message? You create attention to that concept before you send your message and people are attuned to it.

That's so good.

It is honestly, so good. I mean, you've already given Several here. One of my questions was if someone is an entrepreneur or business owner listening.

To this, what techniques or strategies could.

They utilize to better persuade in their business? I mean, what you just said is amazing.

Let me give you another one because I love this one. It's one word changing one word pre suasively. So suppose you want to co create with your customer base your new line of products or services, or you want to ask them about how to best improve what you have for new models and so on. And this is this co creation. It's the biggest thing right now in marketing. What we typically do is to ask people for their feedback. Ask for that information by saying, could you provide us with your opinion on this topic? It's a mistake because researchers have found that when you ask for someone's opinion, that person takes a half step, step back from you, a separating step, and they go inside themselves for the answer.

Interesting.

If instead of asking for their opinion, you ask for their advice, they take a half step towards you.

Wow.

And you've created a partnership, teamwork, collaborative frame in their mind. And here's what the research shows. Now when they encounter your products or services or your brand, they're more supportive of it because they feel more a part of it. They feel a merged identity with it because they've moved into that identity with you by providing advice instead of an opinion.

I love it. I love it. So one method of approach is repelling, the other is attracting. And so it reminds me of the quotes. People support what they help to create. And the others, if you let them plan the fight, they don't fight the plan. And I utilize that with my team in my own company by having everyone do teamwork together. But you just gave me a whole nother way of thinking about framing it.

In fact, what I like there's a quote people don't see sink the boats they're riding in, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you can get them to see them as part of your enterprise.

It'S.

Both of your boat now. You're both riding in that boat. They're not going to torpedo it.

Yeah.

Because you know, one of the things that I have always thought of in marketing and I learned this from studying sales persuasive words. When you're not having the advantage of being face to face with someone and you have to use words to persuade. And so part of it is the communication, how you say it, the frequency of it, the usefulness of it. And I've always thought, you know, the number one thing to do with clients is to bond and how to bond with them. And anything that breaks that bond is not good. And alignment is critical. Like in business. The way that I. My new marketing book, which is coming out, currently titled Joe's Marketing Book, and we're crowdsourcing different titles, although everyone seems to love the title. Joe's Marketing Book, it'll be out in a few months, is it's all about elf. You can have an elf business, which is easy, lucrative and fun, or you can have a half business, which is hard, annoying, lame and frustrating. And I think learning persuasion is going to give you an elf business. Because if you don't utilize what you have, have researched and proven and studied, then to do anything other than what you're saying is hard, annoying, sometimes lucrative and frustrating. And so I look at like any sort of thing that I can do that's going to give me a greater advantage, that is going to get a better result. To not only study it, learn it and apply it is just idiotic. And now in some cases you can't fix stupid. So some people, they just don't get it. However, knowing that there is knowledge out there, knowing there is a method that will improve things, is critical. And I only want to align myself with people that are aligned with me. And I think the greatest joy of using persuasion and getting someone into a better position to make their lives better is if they wanted to go along with it. It wasn't like trickery, it wasn't manipulation. Although sometimes you persuade people into directions that they don't want to go, but it's actually good for them. So you can argue that you're doing them a favor. However, anything that can be set up to just, you know, I think people love to be sold. They hate to be pressured. And if you do things in a certain way, it doesn't even occur to them that anyone's selling. When anyone is really, you know, conscientious and cares about us and gets us into something to exchange our money or our time or our energy for something and it actually helps you and you like it, that feels good. Everyone loves that.

Everybody feels good about that. And so they want to continue to do business the next round and the round after that.

Exactly.

Because the most expensive business cost is client acquisition. And once you've already done that, I always think of it as it's a lot harder to create momentum than it is to maintain it. Every once in a while I'll run into you guys at the gym because you work out consistently. And the thing is, if you just did that every three months. I'm going to go work out and do a really great workout. It just doesn't work that way. And I think what you teach is kind of the same way. These are just ongoing practices that if you put them into place, your business, your connection, your quality of clientele, your joy of how you do things just increases. So this is great. Well, you've already covered some of this, but I'm going to go a little more specific. So. So what specific steps could someone listening to this take to better persuade or prepare the moment or moments before the message is delivered that you've not shared?

So let's take a step back and provide a general approach. It is to focus your attention on your message. What is the strength of, of your mess? What is the strongest element of it? The thing that if people say yes to it, makes it most wise for them to say yes so that they will benefit. Right. What is it? Identify that thing and then reverse engineer the persuasion process to the moment before you decide. Describe that thing so that you've aligned people's consciousness and their sense of who they are with the strength of that message. We just saw. You could make me a comfort oriented buyer. You could make me a cost oriented buyer, depending on what you put first. If you put fluffy clouds or coins in the background of your landing page, I become that person. Now, if you know that and comfort is the strength of your product, you've got me.

Right?

I'm going to rate that as important, I'm going to search for it, and I'm going to use it to determine how to behave.

Well, I'm not sure if it's in the second chapter or third chapter in your book, you talk about playing French music or German music. Explain that.

So there's a study that shows that if a wine shop owner plays German music for a particular time of the day, people buy more German vintages. If he plays French music, they buy more French vids because they're put in a German or a French state of mind. And now they're going to behave in ways that are aligned with that state of mind that's been installed by something as background based as the music that they're hearing on the PA system.

I always listen for words that you say because it leaves so many strategic clues on what to do installed. So if you sit and think like, okay, I want to sell more of my thing here. What do I need to install in order to set it up in order to do that?

Let me give you an example. It's just worked for me. I've got a colleague who I've worked with for a long time over in the psychology department where I'm housed and I needed a big favor from him and I sent him an email. I said, don, I'm working on a project. I don't have the information I need in my files, but I know you have it in your files. I'm going to call you later to get that information. I would really appreciate it.

Just planted that seed.

So I called him up. He said, bob, I know why you're calling. I can't help you. I'm swamped right now. I know you've got this project with a time limit, but I've got projects where with time limits too. I'd like to be able to help, but I can't this time.

Sorry.

So I didn't say to him.

But.

Don, I'd really appreciate it if you could help me with this one. It would mean a lot to me. I said, don, you know, we've been in the same department now for 10 years. I really wish you could help me with this. It would mean a lot to me. I created a framework of unity. I had the information that afternoon.

So what happened in his head? I mean, explain what went down.

There was something that was true, that we had a relationship, a long term relationship, but it wasn't at the time top of his consciousness. It wasn't the thing that was aligning his subsequent behavior until I brought it to top of mind. We're relationship partners, Don, for 10 years. And inside relationships you say yes to people. I just moved it from somewhere at midbrain to top of mind mind. And it made the difference. So what did I. I didn't install the relationship. I installed a focus on that relationship that he was. That was now the thing that he was paying attention to. And what you're paying attention to in that moment changes who you are. He became a relationship or oriented respondent, not a selfish respondent about his own issues.

Right, right.

You know, you have a real power to where these sort of things could be used in very manipulative ways. And for the time that I've known you, I mean, I would like to think in the same way, you know, our relationship. I've never overly asked for anything. You've not either. You've always approached us. You're very cognizant of the ethical use of persuasion. And you know, this is filled with literally a ninja assassin methodologies if used in the wrong way and incredible human betterment methodologies. On the other side, what is your advice for the people out there about the proper care and feeding of others utilizing persuasion once you learn what is in persuasion? Because this is, I mean, you literally teach people how to get what they want.

Yes, it's dynamite. And dynamite can be used to build a bridge or blow up a bridge right between people. So, Joe, we've been friends for a long time and the reason we've been friends for a long time is what you said, that we share values. And the reason I've liked interacting with you over that time is that your ethical approach, you take an ethical approach to this. So here's why I am recommending that people who understand the pre suasive strategies that are available to them only use them in ethical ways. We've just completed a research program where we find that those organizations that use influence attempts in dishonest, deceptive, unethical ways produce two big damages to their viability. The first is there are some people inside the organization who are just not comfortable with the unethicality and they are stressed by it and they try to leave. They don't do very well on the job because of that stress. They try to leave. When they do leave, you get all these turnover costs that are associated with that big cost. But here's the one that was most interesting to me. When those people who are stressed by the deception leave, who remains is those people who are comfortable with dishonesty and cheating. And they're going to cheat you.

Wow.

They're the ones who are going to steal equipment. They're the ones who are going to run these under the table deals with vendors and partners and suppliers. They're the ones who are going to pad their expense accounts. Count on it. They've been selected for. They've been selected for. You've pulled the viper under your coat.

Yeah, exactly. You know, that says a lot about people that have toxic cultures and are toxic in general and cannot. And then they have a worldview that everyone's out to screw them because that's just their frame of how they view the world. I mean, I've always. Like the saying I said earlier, be nice to the people you meet on the way up. They're the same people you meet on the way down. And that, you know, I heard Dan Sullivan say this years ago and I've said it to so many people because I'm constantly trying to reinforce this to people, is that money earned ethically is a byproduct of value creation. And if you're going to go out and ask people to give you money, you better damn well give them value. Because it takes a lifetime to build a reputation. And like you said, with social proof. The one thing I do like about it is it makes it much harder for scumbags to exist for as long as they were able to. Because now it's out in the open.

It's out there.

Yeah.

In the next 540 seconds, I'm going to talk to you about some ideas, concepts, philosophies, tools that can help you prepare for excellence even when you're already very successful. My definition of success. Okay. Having a predetermined plan, successfully carrying it out over a long period of time and having a damn good time doing it. Damn good time doing it. So idea number one. Okay? Dig your well before you're thirsty. My father headed the association press for 35 years. Jack McKay got a hold of me age 18. Harvey, every person you meet the rest of your life goes in the Rolodex file computer today. All right, then a little bit of bottom on the back of the card. Now here's the key. Find a creative. Find a creative way to keep in touch. That's what I've been doing ever since I was age 18 years old. Like talk about publishing for a moment. Back in the late 80s, I have a manuscript, Swim of the Sharks. I'll being eaten alive. William Moore and company. One of the biggest seven in the world at the time publishing had three meetings with him. Now remember, a first time unknown author, which I am, okay. From the flyover state of Minnesota, wants to get published. Tom Peters in search of excellence. 10,000 books unknown. First time author Ken Blanchard, 7,500 books unknown. Okay, at the time I got the CEO, got the President VP National Association. 45 minutes into the meeting, I asked for the order. I said I'd like to seriously consider printing 100,000 hardcover copies. Swim with the sharks on the 37th floor. They told me to jump VP National Sales closes his books. Thank you very much, Mr. McKay. Obviously you're not going to get together. And he screams at me, who are you? Come in here and ask for 100,000. We never print more than 10,000. First time unknown authority. I brought in two humongous briefcases into the conference room boardroom. Then took out, put them on the table, two huge Rolodex files. 6,500 names. Since my father got ahold of me. Age 18 started to go through the list. Here's Pillsbury. 18,000 employees. Know a little bit about them. They're customers. Maybe they'll read the book. Maybe they'll pass it around. Here's General Mills, 23,000 employees. Maybe they'll read the book. Pass it along. Here's Honeywell, 30,000 employees. Go to the next Rolodex file. Do business in five companies. There's France, Germany, Spain. All right, maybe it'll be an international bestseller. Three weeks and three meetings later, they published 100,000 hardcover copies from the Sharks. Did I know when I was 18 that I'd be writing a book? Do any of you know? Okay, any of you know where your contacts are going to come from? No. So we dig our will before we're thirsty. Next. 3, 5, 7, 10, 12, 15 years. You have no idea. It's nice to hear speakers, but trust me, as long as you live, person on your left, person on your right, person in front of you, person behind you. Way more important, over a period of a lifetime, keep that antenna up without question. Now this is Swim with the Sharks. You don't have to look at it all. You all got a copy? Please do me a favor. When you get home, on the airplane, whatever. Do not read this book. Study it, underline it, highlight it, post it, notes, rough it up. Not only my book, self help book, but all the wonderful books that you have in the duffel bag. One more very quick aside World War 3 again with my publisher. I want to be the first. In the late 80s, money back guarantee if you like. If you don't like. Swimming with the Sharks. Four week fight. I prevailed. Five million copies sold. Eighteen people asked for their money back. Seven of them were my best friends. Next idea, start every day with a healthy dose of vitamin C. Creativity. Zip. Zero. None. No correlation between creativity and iq. Every single person in this room can. Way more creative than you ever, ever dreamed about. Without question. Creativity. No, no correlation between the two. Let me give you an example, if I can. All right, I go back to. Let me talk about Larry King for a minute first. I'm lucky he's a friend. Been on his show a couple times, got a book. Okay. Did you'd well before youe Thursday. Picked up the phone years ago, called Larry and said, larry, you know, might I be able to get on your show again? I just wrote a book. Did you'd well before youe Thursday? I think it's got merit. He said, are you going to be in New York on Thursday? I lied. I said, yes. I said, I'll see you at the Ritz Carlton Hotel where he always has dinner. 6:30. Hang up the phone. Ironically, there Is a newspaper right there. USA Today, I love it. King's got a column. Fifteen years. He met the champ Muhammad Ali at the Academy Awards. Here's verbatim what he said, said in that article. Biggest thrill of my life. Couldn't sleep last night. Chills running up and down my spine. I immediately faxed that to the Champ. I call him the champ Muhammad. 88 Acre Estate, Berrien Springs, Michigan. FYI, they called back, why could I do that? I interviewed him for 10 hours. We became fast friends. They called back, hey, thanks very much. We live in the sticks. Love the article. Hey, Champ. Lonnie, his wife. I'll greet Larry for having dinner with them. Thursday night. New York City. They said they're going to be in New York City. Oh, please. I begged them. Persistence, they said. Okay, get there half hour early. Six o'. Clock. Fine, six o'. Clock. Lonnie. Champ, myself. Back to the door. In comes King. Probably not looking forward to having dinner with me. Sees the champ. No exaggeration. Bear hug left, bear hug right. Chic. Left cheek, right cheek. Forehead on the lips, as I recall. And then he's got springs in his body. 45 minutes. Zaire Thriller from Manila. Angelo Dundee. He loves boxing. 45 minutes into dinner, a very nice looking woman came up with a pen and paper in her hand. Saw King, champ, myself. Oh, Mr. McKee, I've read all of your books. Can I have your autograph? King went nuts. Name is Marilyn. Sign a little note. She starts to walk away. King gets up, says, ma', am, would you please come back here? She heard that, she comes back.

Don't you know who this is? It's Muhammad Ali.

Don't you want his autograph? Looked at Larry and said, larry, you bit it hook, line and sinker. I paid her 50 bucks an hour ago to come and ask for my autograph, which I did. She was a catering manager. Catering manager. Ritz Carlton Hotel. Got there a half hour early. Set it up. Champ gives me five. Give me Harvey. Boy, oh, boy, this is. This is really something. All right. But I got on the show again. Moral? Don't be boring. Don't be predictable. All right. Think hardest, most valuable task any person performs. Next idea. All right. If Joe Pollard said, harvey, you got three minutes. That's it. Good luck, kid. All right, well. And here's the three minutes. Head and shoulders above the rest. People don't care how much you know about them once they realize how much you care about about them. Now, we've invented a new product at McKay envelope company 66 question. Customer profile. We require all of our salespeople to fill out. You wouldn't believe how much we know about our customers. IRS wouldn't believe how much we know about our customers. I'm not talking about their tastes and envelopes either. We don't know, based on routine conversation and observation, what a customer is like as a human being, what he or she feels strongly about, what he's most proud of having achieved. Any status symbols in his or her offices. In other words, want to know what turns that customer client on? At a customer in New York City last week. Just got home late last night. Now, before I went in there, there's no cold calls at our company for 50 years. No cold call. We prepare to win. We do our homework. We make out the 66 as best as we can. We add to it as we call into those people. Here's what I knew about the buyer. I wanted to say. Well, it's obvious. He graduated from Notre Dame, mba, as I recall, from usc. Married his high school sweetheart. They have three children. She works for a pharmacy company. He loves the Cubs, loves to play golf. October 24th was his birthday. June 26th was our anniversary. What's the probability I will sell this customer over a long period of time? You're doggone right. It's almost 100%. If I don't want any of this going in, I'll read the desk, I'll read the walls. Very, very important. Important. Oprah Winfrey. I got a big break. Okay? Five minutes on her program. Five minutes. Prepared to win 66. Found out everything, did my homework, got on the program, mentioned 4, 5, 6, 7 things I knew. 25 before going in. She kept me on for one hour. One hour, trying to add value to her life, as you all know, which Joe Talked about just 20 minutes ago. So really, truly important.

So important.

50,000 hardcover books. 50,000. You can't know enough. Okay? In one week. Can't know enough. No possible way. Enough about your customers, your clients, your competitors, your audiences, your suppliers, your employees. Example. Al, okay, gets a phone call. Al gets a phone call from Harold. Hey, coming to Rotary tomorrow? Al says, yeah, I'll be there. They got a problem. My guest speaker just canceled. Al says, hey, okay, I might be able to fill in. Harold says, what might you talk about? I don't know. I'll talk about sex. Fine. Next day, 45 minute speech, standing ovation. Al comes home. His wife says, hey, I don't understand. What'd you talk about? Now, he's smart enough to know that his wife thinks he doesn't know anything about sex. So he says, skiing. Oh, she says, I see skiing. Next day, there's Harold's wife in the supermarket. There's Al's wife an aisle away. Harold's wife hollers out, hey, talk to my husband. Heard your husband gave a great speech at Rotary. He must be terrific. And she says, I don't understand. He's only done it once and his hat blew off. And in closing, always act like your mother is watching. I want to talk about ethics for a few minutes. There's been a consistent, gradual decline in the ethical business practices in the United States for the last 50 years. And it's reached new extremes lately. Virtually every institution that can be measured, from congressmen to senators to state and local politicians, to religious institutions, to business leaders, to people cheating in college, to athletes, on and on and on. So here's an example of ethics if I can share with you. Mother was invited for dinner at her son Brian's apartment. During the course of the meal, Brian's mother couldn't help but notice how beautiful Brian's roommate Jennifer was. Brian's mom in law unsuspected a relationship between Brian and Jennifer. Over the course of the evening, while watching the two interact, she started to wonder if there was more between them. Met the eye. Reading his mom's thoughts, Brian volunteered, I know what you must be thinking, but I assure you Jennifer and I are just roommates. About a week later, Jennifer came to Brian saying, ever since your mother came to dinner, I've been unable to find that beautiful silver gravy ladle. You don't suppose she took it, do you? Well, I doubt it, Brian said, but I'll send her an email just to be sure. So I wrote, dear mom, I'm not saying that you did take the gravy ladle from the house, and I'm not saying that you did not take the gravy ladle. But the fact remains that one has been missing ever since you were here for dinner. Love, Brian. And several days later, Brian received an email back from his mother. Dear son, I'm not saying that you do sleep with Jennifer. I'm not saying that you do not sleep with Jennifer. But the fact remains that if Jennifer had been sleeping in her own bed, she would have found the ladle by now. McKay's moral, if you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.

Well, there we go.

That's a trauma. If you want to talk about trauma, when people talk about Poverty. They haven't seen poverty.

So when you're in those states, and I mean, when's the last time you've been in what you would consider when it's happening? This is a f d up situation. I don't know how to get out of. I don't know how to deal with it. How do you. How do you move past it? How do you. I mean, because you've been in, you know, you've been massively criticized. I mean, there's been all kinds of things you've dealt with.

But what are.

How do you deal with really difficult decisions?

So there are a couple of ways. One thing is you can never let someone else define who you are. You can never let someone tell you what makes you who you are. So you can't really please everyone. And when people criticize you, the best you can do is hold your head high knowing that you have done nothing wrong. But you can't let them control who you are. You can't control the world, but you can certainly control how you react to it. Other thing that I learned as an entrepreneur is that your life as an entrepreneur is like your heartbeat. You know, ups and downs of the life is what tells you that you're still alive. When you are smooth, that means you're dead. And you never want of a life, of an entrepreneur to be smooth. When you are absolutely at the bottom, you know, all you have to do is thrive. Just enough. As Tony said, get set for the winter. No, the summer is coming. The next beat is going to be up. And when you are on the top of the world, don't get too cocky. Don't get too arrogant because you know the winter is coming. The next heartbeat is going to be right down. So never get too depressed when things are bad and never get too cocky when things are. You are at the top because either way, you know that seasons change.

Yeah, yeah, awesome.

So.

You take control of situations. I mean, I've seen you do that. Now, for instance, we get up here, you take my questions, put them away. Now that's a funny thing. And it doesn't matter because I've interviewed so many damn people. I just like thinking things through. But the fact is that's an example of how you actually go about doing your life. You pretty much do what you want to do within reason, I think. I mean, I'd love to talk with you about, like, as we're discussing moonshots. A lot of this is, oh, it's one thing to have an idea, it's another to Behave in a way that gets people to do what you want them to do. And you're really good at enrolling people into your visions, into your missions. I mean, you started some, you know, insanely successful companies. So let's talk about persuasion.

How do you do it?

How did you learn how to do this?

So it's very interesting. It's a whole lot easier to build something that is audacious, that is actually going to change the trajectory of how humanity is going to live. It's so much easier to build a billion dollar business than to build a million dollar business, right? So you tell someone, hey, I'm going to go start a company that's going to help you find a roommate iPhone app. People say, great idea, good luck, have fun with it. You tell someone, I'm going to start a company that's going to make illness a matter of choice. We're going to eliminate all chronic illness from the face of this earth by understanding, empowering each individual to become the CEO of their own health. Because when you are sick and you don't know what is going on, you are helpless. And when you are helpless, amazing things happen. You're going to be victimized. You're going to be victimized by someone. And today we call those healthcare system. Our pharmaceutical companies have become a parasite on humanity. They are the parasite that must die. Right? These are the pharmaceutical companies that are taking advantage of people who are sick. When a CEO of a pharmaceutical company tells you the best drug that they develop are the drug that you have to take for rest of their lives, best drugs are the one that people have to take for rest of their life. They should be ashamed of saying that not the best drugs that cure anything. They want people to be sick and that's exactly what we don't want. So amazing thing is I have never started, I've started seven companies and not one of them have ever been in the same industry. And God, you know, knock on this leather. Every one of their company has been wildly successful. There has not been one company that has been less than $100 million. So when I started everything from space, I'm not the rocket scientist, I started the health company. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a scientist. Interesting things happen. When I set out the moonshot, we are going to make illness optional. The first call I got was the head of the Watts IBM Watson research working on AI. He said, For 20 years I've been developing artificial intelligence. This is the problem I would love to solve. Because if we can solve that that will be my legacy. I got a call from Dr. Messier. She is a Ph.D. in microbiology, Maryland. And she was working for Human Longevity Inc. For Craig Venter. As you know, Craig is one of the most genius person cover of Time magazine who invented life, a man who played God and he's working on human longevity. And she calls me and says, I want to work with you to solve this problem. What's the point living longer if people are going to be sick anyway? So let me help you solve this problem. It turns out at Los Alamos National Lab they have been working for 10 years for biodefense work at National Security trying to figure out if a bad actor were to get hold of something biological, how would they know what's making people sick? So I got a call from Dr. Youssevich and says, you know, we have been working on a technology for 10 years. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars developing it. And I want to come and help you solve this problem. Now I have this amazing team and a technology that government has spent billions of dollars developing that can look inside, inside your body and tells you what's going on and make specifically what you can do about it. Not here's what's happening, here's the food you need. Don't eat spinach, don't eat kale, don't eat avocado and eat more carbs, right? Amazing life. Now I put together an amazing team and great things happen. Every venture capitalist in the Silicon Valley says, what are you doing? Why are all these people quitting and joining you? I'm going to make illness optional. We want to invest in your company and you say, I don't need the money. And that's like raising a red flag in front of a bull. You never want to tell VC you don't want the money because now they think you must have something so good that you refuse to take their money. Now they are desperate to give you money at any cost, right? And that's an amazing thing. When you don't want something, everybody wants to give it to you. When you, you ask them to go to the bank and say, I need a loan. No, you're not qualified, sir, I don't need the loan. How can I give you the cheap loan?

So I think that's describing how you do sales, right?

So sales. Actually, I tell you what, one of the things I noticed when I come here is most people who are expert here, who are expert in sales, don't know a bit about sales. And I Tell you why you don't ever have to sell a thing. You want to inspire people to buy. So if you have to sell something, you're doing something wrong. What if you can inspire people to be part of what you're doing? And they buy, not you don't sell. Right. So the difference is you want to be as informative, as educational, and really make it bigger than themselves. So when I tell people that I want you to sign up for Wyoming, I don't say please go buy because it's going to help me make money. What I say is, please sign up. Not only you are going to feel better, but you're going to help the humanity gets better. All we need is couple of million people. Once the artificial intelligence has enough diversity of data for millions of people, we will be able to solve every chronic disease. So please help me achieve my dream. Please help us achieve our moonshot. Please help us come together as humanity and get rid of these parasites and implode the health care system. And that's how you sell.

So what are the biggest mistakes that. Let's start with that, that we make with negotiating, because we're all doing it. I mean, how would you even define negotiating?

Communicating to accomplish results in real broad terms? Information gathering is part of it. Herb Cohen wrote a book a long time ago called you can negotiate anything. And he defined negotiation as a use of power and information in a web of tension. Now, web of tension would be emotions. And the only tweak I think that we made on our, and our definition is we don't just use information, we gather it and use it. Because if you're saying the use of information, you're assuming you're coming to the table. And you know you should have gathered all the information before you come to the table. The table's the best place to gather information. And a lot of people will hold themselves back from going to the table because you want to be prepared. You don't want to be caught off guard. About a third of you in the room are horrified at getting caught off guard at the table and that's holding you back.

So in terms of the mistakes.

Do.

People like, what are some common ones that are easy to fix?

Like you have a whole way of.

Start with about no as an example.

I love the way that you, most.

People want to get a yes. Maybe we can talk about how yes could possibly not be the first thing you want to hear out of someone's mouth. Because everyone here is wanting to sell stuff. And you got a lot of the world's greatest marketers. And, and I've always had the conversation with Dan Sullivan that no's are great, yeses are great, maybes are what kill you. If someone says no, you at least know where they stand. And you can either it's done or you can now, knowing what you know, that's actually a starting point. But maybes where someone's like, oh, I'll.

Call you back, or whatever.

And so I'd love to have you talk about just the languaging and what to pursue and how to actually start the whole process of getting to, you know, something favorable in the result that you want.

Yeah, sure.

All right. So yes is a useless word. There is no more useless word. And the majority probably yes addicts. And recognizing that is one thing. Getting out of it is even harder because you're hardwired. If you're hardwired to hear yes, breaking out of that dynamic is really, really hard. But it could be one of the biggest issues. And if you're hardwired for yes, of course you're horrified. No, but in any important negotiation, I don't bother with yes at all. Give you an example. We ran a training in New York a few months back and I had recently run across Robert Herjavec. Wonderful guy. I mean, generous on a strength of just an introduction from one person. I'm sitting down with this guy and for lunch for 90 minutes and he's talking to me for 90 minutes and he's pieing. I mean, what else do you want, right? So through the course of the conversation, I tell him we got this training going on and I offer him, you know, give me a free ticket and he says, how many can I buy? Like, wow, even better. What an even more gracious guy. He loves so much. We're talking about, he's willing to pay too. So we're going back and forth on the tickets, how many he's going to buy. And the window's closing, it's going to slam shut and he's not going to get in. And my people are bugging me. They're mad at me because I'm giving away tickets for free that we'd be selling otherwise. So I'm in a doghouse already. Anyway, so it's, I'm in Los Angeles, my team is in New York, east coast, we three hour handicap in la and they're screaming at me. And he hasn't pulled the trigger on the tickets. So I sent him an email. Are you against committing for three tickets now? Are you against paying for those Tickets before the start of business tomorrow because we're going to be three hours behind the clock. If they wait until tomorrow morning, they're going to be gone and then I'm going to be embarrassed. I get an email back in less than 30 minutes. We'll commit to three now we'll pay for them and they pay for them within the hour after 5 o' clock in Los Angeles. So every, every time it's really. I mean, we don't bother with yes. You can flip any kind of question, any kind of commitment question from a yes to a no. And you'd be shocked at what people will say no to. I mean friggin shocked.

Shocked.

And yes is yes is commitment, yes is hesitation, yes is concern. That's why people are really good at the false yes.

Yeah, we'll talk about the falseheal vs that's right. Vs you're right. Yeah, this is a really good distinction and something I never knew or realized until.

That's what Tim was talking to me.

About that one time when we met.

Yeah.

Oh, by the way, I should say that too. When I first met Chris, it was a couple years ago.

And Tim Larkin, who many of you know, has been a genius in the work for. You know, I've known Tim for 20 years and he, Tim actually is. He's been on the COVID of Black Belt magazine. He's trained lots of Navy SEALs, MMA fighters, everyday people, men and women. And he, his book, the Science of Violence is the title of his book and he has this great.

Violence is the Answer.

Violence is the Answer.

Yeah.

And I've interviewed him on it. You think I would know this stuff? And when Tim is a badass and he's a great guy and he said that violence is never an option unless it's the only option. What do you do in a situation where someone is going to hurt or kill you? And when Brian Kurtz actually organized a dinner and invited Chris to it, and I sat next to Chris and Tim was there and it was a small group, there's maybe like, I don't know, 10 of us or something. And Tim said, you know, he's like, I don't mean to be total fanboy.

But I love your book.

And Tim said, this is the best book on negotiation he's ever read. And so right from the get go I was like, wow, this is an important guy. So there's lots of little things that most people would have no idea about, but you identify those and you teach people how to actually use them. So let's Talk about the false yeses and what you really want to accomplish to know that you are successfully, I guess, negotiating.

Right.

Right.

All right, so.

And the thing that Tim talked about to me about that one time, too. Somebody tells you you're right, what are they telling you they're right? No, they're telling you to shut up and go away. I want to maintain a relationship with you. I still like you, either because I want to or I have to. But I'm really. This is. It's designed to preserve the relationship. But please, please stop talking and please go away. And we might like your right more than we like. Yes, because we think we have to make a case. You think you gotta make a case. You think to negotiate, you gotta make an argument. You gotta make a compelling case. You gotta give your value proposition to the other person and you think you scored. When they look at you and they go, you're right.

And what happens is you get real.

Happy and you shut up, and you probably walk out of the office, you probably walk away, or, you know, you think you made the point with your significant other or whoever may. And Tim sits down next to me. He goes, like, you know, you saved me so much money, because I was. He was on a rant with a senior team, and he'd read the book, and he's trying to get everybody on the same sheet of music. This is the direction we're going. And he says, one of his executives said, tim, you're right.

And he said, holy cow.

If I'm so far off track with my guys that they're trying to politely get me to shut up, I need.

To stop the meeting right now. I need to back up.

I need to find out where I'm off track. And then I need to go to everybody and get myself corrected. Which it kind of blew me away that he was that enlightened about it. That's what he did. He stopped the meeting, he went back, he talked to everybody, found out where he was wrong. Because if people are telling you, look, shut up, you're probably off track. A 2 millimeter difference is. Use it. Tony Robbins phrase. Right? Another 2 millimeter difference. You want to get people to say, that's right, because that's right to what you say when you hear the complete and total truth, you agree 1000%. No matter which side of the political aisle you're on. The last presidential election, the last presidential debate, whichever candidate you loved, when they said something that you love, you didn't look at the TV and go, you're right. You Looked at the TV and you said, that's right. And that's right. What people, when they say, when they're all in and what they just heard is a complete truth. Now, the invisible fairy dust magic to that is they feel incredibly bonded to you in that moment. They don't know that. That's the other thing that's really powerful about it. Somebody once told me that's somebody saying to you that they feel empathy from you. And that's so powerful. For example, the greatest practitioners of this in the world are actually sociopaths.

They're also vulnerable to it.

Interestingly enough, the idea that sociopaths either can't feel it or use empathy. They do feel it and they do use it. But if you were willing to accept this premise, this outlandish idea that sociopaths are good at empathy, you should ask yourself why. Why is because it's quick and it's sustainable and they're lazy and it's a way that they maintain really solid relationships with very little maintenance from them. So empathy saves time. You put less time into relationships to keep them strong. Once you've established empathy, bridge and you've established it, when somebody looks at you and says, that's right. What I really was was an international negotiation coach. I coach negotiations in every culture on the planet. And they weren't asking for ransom for the American. They were asking for war damages for 500 years of oppression from the Spanish, the Japanese to the Americans, violations under Blackjack Pershing, all this sort of nonsense. This is another story that you should be tuning out right now because you were never in an argument with someone where they were bringing up stuff from the past that didn't matter anymore. Where are you?

So we, you know, we tried all.

Sorts of logic, all sorts of in and out, you know, tried to be clever. I thought I knew terrorism, I thought I knew Islam and thought I knew all this stuff. And finally one day we just said, we're gonna get a. That's right out of the guy on the other side, the sociopath. And make no mistake, a raping serial killer chopped lots of heads off. Personally was proud of it. And no shortage of rapes to his credit. And I coached my guy to get on the phone. And you just keep. Make their case. It's the Stephen Covey advice. Instead of seek first to understand, then be understood, demonstrate understanding. You gotta make their case. Not your case, but just recognize it, don't agree with it, but lay it out the way they see it. Lay out everything that this sociopathic terrorist has been laying out of all the nonsense of why $10 million is a bargain basement price for 500 years of war damages.

And he laid it out. And he laid it out, and he laid it out, and he laid it out.

I said, and if you're not laying it on thick, you're not laying it on thick enough. My guy finished it. And there was a short silence on the other end of the line. And the terrorists said, that's right. And we said, okay, let's talk again in a couple of days. And the $10 million ransom demand went away. They never brought it up again, ever. It went away. It was gone. It was completely gone. A couple of months later, the American walks away. We had done a number of things. We'd gotten them disorganized. We completely disorganized them. They didn't know we did it to them through our communication techniques. American walks away a couple of months later, military picks him up, flies him out. We take him back to the U.S. i'm back in the Philippines about three weeks after this on another case, and.

The guy that I coach says, you're.

Not gonna believe who called me on the phone. I'm like, I don't know who called you on the phone. The terrorist guy's name was Sabiner Zabaya. Still knew his undercover name, still had his undercover phone number, Was smart enough.

To know that he had to either.

Be with the police or the military, but didn't know and didn't care. Called him on the phone and said, have you been promoted yet? I have no idea what you said to me on the phone. You're really good at it. They should promote you. And also think about what he's saying, because would he deal with him again? Was he really saying when he made that call, I respect you, I deal with you again? So it's an example. Who would imagine that you can get to somebody like that?

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