This FBI Trick Can Command Respect Without Saying a Word ft. JEFFERSON FISHER & CHRIS VOSS

Collaboration is both people wading 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.

Mm-hmm.

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.

Hmm.

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 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 that 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 really what they're trying to be is assertive. 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 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, that— 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, that's interesting because I have, uh, met Oprah twice, uh, briefly, uh, 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, uh, at, 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 would, 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 of life. What are your thoughts on mastery? I mean, you even have a masterclass, 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 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 on getting suite upgrades in hotels for free. It's a 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, uh, 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 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? You know, again, this is what this collaborative thing that I referred to earlier about. I mean, using your powers for good and not evil.

Yeah.

If you collaborate, if you want to hurt people, it's going to catch up with you. But, you know, if I'm only information gathering, maybe, and I don't want to have influence on the outcome, you know, maybe that's it. But negotiation's involved in everything. Negotiation— one of my favorite stories is negotiation involved when you order at Starbucks. It's in everything. And the reason why it's involved at Starbucks, which most people say it's not, I 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. The most dangerous negotiation is the one you don't know you're in.

That's right.

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

Exactly.

So, so going back to collaboration, so let's frame it this way. So, um, 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. Uh, how does one— how does someone who's threatening to blow someone's head off, wanting money or whatever, um, that they're, they're looking for freedom from, you know, their crimes. How do you view that as a collaboration?

Yeah, well, you know, it sounds like a cliché, but what are their actions, are there threats in a larger view? What are they designed to get? And whether or not you're a terrorist or you're a CEO or you're a paperboy, you know, it doesn't matter. I mean, we're all kind of 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, a bank robber says they need a car in 60 seconds or she dies, which is one of our favorite exercises. That guy wants to live. You know, a terrorist who has a demand, I'll kill this person if we don't have this political demand. They have greater aspirations. Yeah, 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 terrorists' lives. The Sheikh is here for you to save lives of innocent people in the Emirates. So the Sheikh says to me, all right, 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 going to have them the same way I've got you right now. You can't wait to hear what I'm going to say next.

Okay.

Because there's a larger purpose to the action. So, you know, a business person, if 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.

Yeah.

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. Now, 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, in angry mode. You know, they say, give a speech when you're angry, it'll be the greatest speech you ever regret.

Yeah.

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.

Mm-hmm.

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 a cold shower. I take cold showers for health reasons. I instantly, my mental state changed. Cool off, literally, physically.

Hmm.

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 1,000. You're just not. Anybody that— 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, you have to size things up, and sometimes you have to size them up relatively quickly. So, how do you, how do you speak to that?

Yeah. 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 getting 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 mean, I live by those phrases. I probably use them every day. I'm going to try to figure out if they're ELF or HALF. Are they easy, lucrative, and fun? Or are they hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating? And then I'm going to be willing to adapt that as I go on. I'm, you know, 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. You know, 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 or the fool? If you don't know who the fool in the game is, it's probably you. In point of fact, and I'd 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.

Wow.

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 or 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.

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 joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

So let me ask you this, Chris. Uh, 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 3 words of what someone just said.

The last 3 words?

Yeah. You know, the last 3 words, just repeat the— nice job, Dean. I know what you're doing to me.

I know what you're doing.

How dare you?

You fell for it right away without even—

How dare you? How dare you put me on me?

Nice.

You know, 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've said. And now that I'm thinking about it, now I see what I missed. That mirror technique, the last 3 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, you know, one of the crazy things about the mirror technique is it's a preferred move of the people that possess both a high IQ and a high EQ.

Hmm.

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 they're 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. You know, we hear this all the time, but here, you hear no and you're 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 our— 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, 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, 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 negotiating 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 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 to how many tickets they're 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 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 got to cut this deal. Now it's 5 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 5:03 I sent a 2-line email to Robert Herjavec. Is it a ridiculous idea For you to commit to buying 3 tickets now. Second line, are you against paying for them before the business day starts in New York tomorrow? Again, we're 3 hours behind New York. The timestamp on his email response is 5:04, 1 minute later. No, we'll commit to the 3 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 sent him the link. We got the money at 5:23. Get people to say no. You'd be shocked at the responses you get.

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

Well, yeah, I mean, first of all, in 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 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 overdeliver. So first of all, if you're overdelivering, you were 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 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, you know, 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 people—

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, Ben and Tucker. 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, and those guys, I think those guys, I think Ben and Tucker would die for Dan.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and that's, 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 HAAF 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, 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 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.

Joe, I'm gonna jump in real quick because there's one more tangent I wanna go on to on half.

Okay.

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.

Yeah.

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 to 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 counteroffer 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.

You talk about 3 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, um, the 3 voices, uh, are the 3 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 3 voices are what your natural voices are. And I'm not going to make any political statements in any way, shape, or form, 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 do an exercise called 60 seconds or she dies. And I do all 3 voices in the exercise. And if you were volunteering, I'd 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 1. Voice 2 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. If I 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. Because people— and they're not always the best deal, but they're probably pretty good.

But you—

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.

It's huge.

Yeah.

So, and it is actually a hardwired connection. If you force a smile on your face when you feel lousy, The chemical changes still take place.

Interesting.

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.

Mm-hmm.

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. Mm.

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 gonna 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 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.

Right.

And at the same time, I have some people that will try to take advantage of me and they ask for too much or they're just very demanding. And so what are words that are indicators? And so I'm asking you 2 things. One, 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. 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, that'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's business stories are like, I had them over a barrel, and they knew I beat them. And every time I hear somebody talk like that, I just shake my head. I think, like, you know, you are 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.

Joe doesn't show up and go like, hey, happy to see you.

Let's do a win-win deal.

Yeah.

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've articulated Let's do a win-win deal. In the first 3 minutes, I know they want to get our stuff for nothing. And now I'm already headed for the door. So what are the tells? Actually, there's 2 tells. You've 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 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 of 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. Like if—

or half.

Mm-hmm. You know, I'm in a conversation with a potentially extremely lucrative client 2 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. 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. 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, on—

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 say to people all the time. Like, well, 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.

Yeah.

Yeah, 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, when— you've said it in interviews, 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 Halbert would say that 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.

Like, if they're—

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.

Yeah.

And we used— we did this publicly. We started ISIS executions from the 2012 timeframe when Jim Foley, Steven 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.

Mm.

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, we went from chopping people's heads off in the springtime to in the fall, Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda number 2, actually put out an edict to stop killing people on camera because it was bad for business.

Wow.

Wow.

Even having you guys here and what we try to bring here is I was like, well, I think this will be useful. I'm very curious about it. And I'm always interested in what are the little hinges that swing big doors, and communication is one of them. Now, you had talked about struggle and when someone is overwhelmed and the people in this room, they take a lot of risks. They put themselves out there quite a bit. There's a lot of intense things that happen. The world can be very chaotic, or our own worlds could be quite chaotic, depending on to what degree we play the game. And what I love in your book is you talk about how to de-escalate. You talk about ignition, where—

Mm-hmm.

And then how to basically bring it down. So, I'd like for you to speak to that. So, someone—

how—

because one thing is the words, knowing— but it's the state you're in.

Mm-hmm.

And if someone's really stressed out or they're being attacked or they're fatigued, I mean, you talked about being antifragile. Well, you know, how well does one perform if they haven't slept the night before or if they're going through some illness? Or someone recently died, or they had a major betrayal, or there's some change in the economy, or AI's killing their business and their conversions are— there's a million things that the people in this room deal with that could totally throw them off. Then to be in an effective communication and not knowing how to be in control of yourself when the external is out of control, you really teach people how to first Control the internal. I mean, you had the same thing in the FBI, right? I'd love to speak about that. How do we keep ourselves in a great state so we're in the best ability to communicate? Then, if we're over the top, how do we extract ourselves from that so we don't say something or do something that either regrets— we regret, or could destroy a relationship?

Right.

It's a big question there, but it's really about the nervous system, I guess.

That's a great question. First would be self-awareness. There's a lot of people who are codependent on the control of others, meaning they like to control everybody else, but they know nothing of what it means to control themselves. They're good with making sure this works and that works, but they don't know how They work. And so they'll get mad at other people pushing their button but have no clue why there's a button. So every one of us, like that picture he showed of the 2 caged people with the kids inside, we all have the— I mean, what that's representing is inner child trauma, the inner child within ourselves. You know, I have 2 kids that are here. One has just turned 6, the other 7. They were just at that place playground not too long ago. My daughter went up to somebody and said, you want to play? Another little girl, and she said, yeah. And said, okay, let's be friends. Boom, there they went, right? We're still that way. We just grew out of it. We lost that. We want that same level of connection, that same level of trust, that childlike faith in everybody, in humanity, in ourselves. And we're all reaching for that. And what happens over time Is that we play old scripts. There are things— let me— here we go. I bet, show of hands, how many people can remember something when you were, you know, around the age of 8 or less, that somebody said something to you that for good made a big difference in your life that you still remember to this day? All right. Now, show of hands, how many people around that same age remember somebody saying something Negative to you around that same age. Now, isn't that something? Now, you question the power of words. I don't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, but I can remember what Billy the Bully told me when I was 8 years old on the playground. And you know what happened? Insecurity. Now I have that for the rest of my life, whether it's about my looks, my intelligence, anything about me. And it is an old script. It's like an old cassette that You just click, click play anytime life gets hard. And it could have been something by your parents, your grandparents, school. It doesn't matter. What matters is that it's here now. And when life gets hard, you like to play it. What does that script sound like? It sounds like, I have to be perfect. Everybody around me has to be perfect. I have to control everything. I cannot make mistakes. I do not want to be abandoned. These deeply rooted fears. They say if it's hysterical, it's historical. So number 1, have the self-awareness of what's happening within yourself. Number 2, time. How do you calm yourself? What I talk about in the book, that's rule number 1, is say it with control, is in any argument there's ignition and then there's cooling. You know exactly what that sounds like. Ignition means, you can't say that to me, are you kidding me right now? And it elevates, elevates and elevates. And then what happens? Somebody says something that's—

Calm.

Too far. They cross the line. And then all of a sudden, cools down. There's a period where things quiet down. And what happens? It's a change of voice. Cooling period sounds like, I shouldn't have said that. What I meant to say was— Whether that happens ever or if it happens within 5 minutes or 5 years, there's always a cooling period. So how do you get to where you remove the ignition? Is time. Time is a great sifter of things. Have you ever written an email before, real mad, maybe a text, and then something happens and you don't? The next day you look at it, you go, I don't really need to send that, not worth my time. All right, think of what matters now rarely matters later. There are arguments you had that meant the world 10 years ago, you couldn't remember anything about what they were. Or relationships, you go, God, that was so dumb of me. I don't know why I made that such a big deal. Time. How do you do that in real time? Is number 3, your breath. Did you just remind yourself that you're breathing right now? That's my guess. You just remember, oh yeah, I'm breathing. At the same time, I'm here at this conference listening and worrying about my business and everything else I have going on. Your breath. Most of the time, what happens in the given day is that you Hold your breath. Stress, you're typing, you're texting, you're driving, and all of a sudden you go, realize, oh, I'm not breathing. Not breathing puts your body in a low-grade state of anxiety. It's telling yourself that I'm suffocating. That's why you feel stressed. Maybe you have panic attacks. Maybe you have things that all of a sudden— you ever had somebody go, why are you yelling? And you go, I'm not yelling.

No.

It's because your breath has nowhere else to go. Except out. All right, so how do you do that in conversation? All right, what I teach is a conversational breath, and if it's cool, Joe, we can do it now.

I would love to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I'll tell— no, this is—

it's really good too.

And there's a lot of breathwork. We have Jason Campbell who does breathwork here. This is an applied way of using your breath to enter conversation. So yeah, I would love it. This is so good.

This is what I teach every single one of my clients, legal clients, taught them ever before I got in the car and made a video. It's based on a physiological sigh for a conversational breath. And what I tell them is make the first word your breath. I mean, before you say anything, put this breath as the first word, the first thing that you say. So it's all going to be through your nose. It's going to be a double inhalation. Ready? So it's going to be about 3 seconds, 2 seconds, and then out through your nose. Ready?

So— Inhale.

Hold. One more at the top. Then let it go through your nose. Now just right there, keep doing that while you're talking to me. We did that kind of exaggerated. Keep going. Keep doing it. You're going to find that you can do it whenever you're listening to anybody. And all of a sudden you're going to realize, hey, I'm listening to him with a little bit more clarity. Now I'm starting to observe the conversation. I'm not in the conversation. I am thinking about what's going on. I'm not reacting to what's going I use this anytime that somebody is creating the spark of conflict where there's friction. What does that friction create? Combustion, ignition. And so what I teach my clients is when you get a question from that mean, rude opposing attorney, is instead of responding immediately, put a breath in its place. It's as easy as, hey Jefferson, how are you? And I go, good, I'm good, everything's good, I'm good. You know what? So good. Versus somebody saying, how are you?

And I go, I'm good.

I'm good. And what's the difference? Same words. One says I thought about it, I'm intentional about it, and when you choose your words, people listen.

That's great. And, well, it's the difference between responding and reacting. So, and this is Navy SEAL stuff, 'cause you talked about that. And you have a line in your book where you show the example of one of your clients that you prepared her for trial.

Yeah.

And you went through role play and you became, you know, like the aggressive attorney that she was about. And then when she did approach the person that was trying to throw her off, you know, one of the things you say in the book is that, you know, she couldn't control the questions, but she learned how to control herself.

That's right.

And when you're able to— and I was like, that's just a big deal. Hazard Lee, this guy over here, he's a fighter pilot. He flies F-35s.

He's awesome.

Very cool.

And we've actually had that conversation too. He's talked about you have to control your state when you're in these things. And of course, I'd love to hear your take on this because you've been in— you're the former top international FBI hostage negotiator. You have dealt with people whose nervous systems are Threatening to kill people, and so what have you learned about controlling your state?

Well, there's kind of 3 parts to the answer, and a lot of what I liked about what Jefferson talked about also was in the moment, what happens if you feel yourself losing the state in a moment, and so there's mechanisms that you can practice, and a breathing mechanism is a great mechanism, that's in the moment, 'cause everybody's gonna lose it in the moment. I lose it in the moment. But then there's— then what's the other answer? When you're up to your ass in alligators, you don't think about how you should have drained the swamp in the first place. So when you're up to your ass in alligators, this is an alligator response. I happen to use, when I'm angry, I use the late night FM DJ voice. To calm me down as much as it calms you down. Calms the other person down. Like, I'll use it because I need to calm myself down. So that's another mechanism, what Jefferson talked about in the first place. Now, how do you keep from getting in the swamp in the first place? You guys rehearse getting angry, and that's how you get in the swamp. That's how you get up to your posterior and alligators, because you go back— I do it, it's human nature— you go back and review a conversation where somebody made you mad And you think about the perfect cutting remark. And what that is, is the rehearsal, this is what I should have said, damn, I would have enjoyed saying this. That's a rehearsal to do it wrong. So you keep yourself from getting up to your ass in alligators by rewriting the mental script so that you rehearse yourself doing it right. You imagine yourself doing it right. Maybe you imagine doing the breathing. What increases the chances that you're going to do the breathing when somebody triggers you? You go back and you imagine yourself doing it and breathing. Now, point of fact, professional athletes have known this forever, and the brain science backs it up. The mental rehearsals is as close to actually doing it in person, which is why Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, all the great athletes Right. Imagined doing it right, which increased their, the chances that they would do it right in the moment when the crowd is screaming and people are hanging all over. So go back over those arguments that you had, where you could just imagine that cutting remark, and instead imagine hearing yourself say, I could have said that better, or imagine hearing yourself Doing the breath response. And every time you go back on a conversation that went bad and imagine doing it in a way that would increase its likelihood of a successful outcome, with the late-night FM DJ voice, with the breathing, with the, I could have said that better, give me some more time to think about it, any of those things, then— You're going to get better. When you are up to your ass in alligators, then you don't get rattled. How did I not get rattled on the phone with somebody from Al Qaeda?

Practice.

We rehearsed all the time, and I practiced, in point of fact, using the late-night FM DJ voice on somebody who's screaming and threatening to murder somebody. And so then in the moment, since I'd done it in practice, And I imagine myself doing it, it's far easier to execute in the moment. So have the techniques. The breathing technique is a phenomenal technique. Go back into a situation that went bad where you lost it, and instead of thinking of the perfect cutting remark, think of yourself doing that physiological sigh. Isn't that what that's called?

Mm-hmm.

The 2 inhales and an And then, and you will in fact do it when the situation arises, you get smacked in the face.

Yeah, love it. Yesterday I opened up and I talked about focus, organization, communication, and connection, which spells FOC. So you can—

And why is it that you like to say that so much?

It's a different way of saying it. spelling the F-word. And by the way, how do we get you to use profanity like he does? You just don't seem to go there, which I think makes you a better person, or what do you think?

Chris has got this special voice.

Profanity is my love language. I use profanity because I love you all so much, so go fuck yourself.

Yeah, Chris has this voice that just makes you want to give him whatever he's asking.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, he could just be like, He's like, you know, it's a great couch you got. I love your couch. I'm like, Chris, this is my couch. He's like, yeah, but I really, I really want your couch. You're like, dang, I think I gotta give him my couch. That's just what— Whatever he needs. And I will tell you what I've learned that I love from all of Chris's content, and I've been a huge Chris fan for a long time, is that when it comes to crisis in your business, when you have to respond to crisis, You run, or excuse me, you walk, you don't run. And so I've applied that to my— when there's crisis in, let's say, my law firm or any cases, you walk, you don't run. And that also means in my voice. If I'm not sounding like it's hysterical, then nobody else is going to get hysterical. So they listen for that same level of that radio DJ voice that slows it down, because it slows them down. Nobody's better than, than that guy.

I would think that most people would agree that when it comes to negotiation, that all of us could have a little bit of improvement. Now, even if you are a seasoned negotiator, there are some times that you believe that you could maybe have said something a little different. So this talk is for you if you want to increase your negotiation skill sets, but also take it to the next level of how do you have deep connection in every one of your conversations. So through this 3-step approach, I'm gonna be teaching you that. So before we get into this, how do we define high-stake environments? Well, it's anything that is a negotiation, a high-stake conversation or presentation, and it's also an area where we have to connect on a deeper level because we're going through maybe a challenge or a struggle, and it can also affect your time, Your money, and even how you perceive your reality, so your, even your values. So even if you aren't in the, the situation where you might be fundraising hundreds of millions of dollars in your life, you're in difficult situations and conversations every single day. How many people in here are parents?

Awesome.

So having those deep connection conversations with your loved ones, And being able to have that, that effect that you want. What about you, your spouse, or intimate relationships? How many people are in those? Right? So it's slowing down, being able to get the most out of those situations so that you can get the results you're looking for. Team members and business partners. All of us, I'm assuming, even if we have those remote, that remote team member, we wanna be able to connect with them, get to the heart of the matter. And then we have clients and customers and patients. How many people are connected to them? Yes. Only 3 or 4? Come on! And then we have also team members, and we have investors, board members, and advisors. And so looking at how we navigate those situations. And so you're probably looking at me and saying, how did she get into negotiations and sales? Where did that start? Well, it started at the kitchen table. My parents were in real estate and real estate sales for over 40 years. So growing up in a very highly entrepreneurial atmosphere. I saw the highs, and I saw the lows, and everything in between. And so, in the early '90s, I was a teenager, and as you know, real estate, we're going through it right now, has some cycles. And we were in a deep recession, and it was a time where I got to wake up to a time in my life where I realized that if I was gonna have something in my life, I had to own my results. I had to take ownership. I had to take responsibility, and I had to make a decision. So you all in your seats right now, and at home, you might be in a spot where today is that decision to make, that you wanna take your relationships to the next level so that you can live the life that you want to live. And so that was a very impactful experience that led me to be in sales and to understand it on all different aspects, and doing extremely well at a young age, making a lot of money and helping a lot of people, and how to take things to the next level.

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 joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

So where we got to start here is negotiation strategy. And so in negotiation strategy, we have distributive and we have integrative. Distributive is that tug of war that you have, that maybe that one-time negotiation where you don't know if you're gonna see that person again. And so it's a lot of bargaining, it's, it's, you know, cards are close to your chest. And so you're trying to get that result, but you might not see that person again. What I really focus on is integrative, which integrative is looking at long-term relationships. That we all benefit, that we all win. But don't worry, Chris Voss, I'm not gonna say win-win, right? So it's looking at how do we get to that deeper connection so this is an ongoing relationship that everyone benefits. So as you know, in negotiation there's a technical side, which I could go into, which would be a 2 to 5 day intensive where we could go into things like pre-framing, reframing, framing to agreement frames, anchoring to sales cycles, all these different things. And what I'm gonna do today is really focus on the artistic side, because that's something that you have a lot of control over. And it's really looking at how we have this technical and artistic side combined, which really makes it so that we are able to be authentic and have your true essence come out. So the first concept that we're gonna go over is to breathe. And I love this group because we have Jason in the back right here who's done such an amazing job. I love being in groups and environments Where there's so much pre-framing and people are ready to go with breathing. And what I'm gonna try to do is take that breathing, how do we bring it into our high-stake environments? How do we get that artistic side with our breathing and start connecting those dots into those high-stake situations? So here's some, just some basic takeaways is you wanna elongate your breath, especially the exhale, because that stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is really where we wanna be in our rest and digest.

Mm-hmm.

So rest and digest. So we want to slow down and elongate that breath, especially the exhale, because at the end of the day, our breath is the entry point to increase our life force energy and really have that essence that we're looking for. And as you've heard, I'm sure from Jason too, but a lot of different cultures talk about this in ancient wisdom. We have ki, mana, prana, chi. And so it's understanding that there is this thing called energy, and how does that— we have this access point of our breath and using that and to be able to slow down. And the big thing that you're looking for is to have that alignment, embodiment, and congruency. Our breath is connected to so many things. It's connected to how we look at our values, which creates our beliefs and attitudes, which creates our thoughts, emotions, actions, behavior, and our words, and how we have clarity and how we execute. So slowing down and being able to Your body, your breath, really gives you that range of what we wanna look at. So something too, looking at your breath, a part of my background experience, you're probably thinking like, okay, she's teaching us negotiation and sales, why is she slowing down and talking about meditation and breathing? And so something that happened to me over 14 years ago, as I was a corporate sales executive, and I was also a competitive triathlete. I was in 2 consecutive accidents where I had to rebuild my whole entire body and relearn how to walk. And it was a crazy time, and literally I didn't know what to do. It was one of those things, and it's something you could relate to too, when you're in a situation where the difficult things become simple, that you're not— you just don't know how to navigate. You've had these strategies your whole life and you don't know what to do. And so I wanted to give tribute to some teachers that I met along the way that taught me this information. Narazi Magnolia, he was my first teacher coming out of these accidents where I could barely walk. And if it wasn't for this man, I probably wouldn't be here today. And he was a huge believer in tai chi and qigong and yoga. And he even got me to live in an ashram in India where I had a lot of healing and going through my breathwork. I also studied with Harada Roshi for over 10 years. doing silent meditation retreats in Japan and all over. And he taught me just the connection of our breath and how that is connected on all different levels and what we can do with it. And then I also wanted to highlight just one more person was— or 2 people, Catherine Bitz-Morris and Saul. And I did voice work for 3 years because I had major PTSD after my accidents. And so what I wanted to do is just go over some basic things you wanna do with your breath. So you wanna speak at the top of your inhale. stake environments, you wanna be able to be at the top of your inhale so that you have that range with your exhale and you can be able to do a lot of different things with your voice. So it's something to practice. You wanna do, also do a 360-degree breath. Most people do a 180-degree breath. And so you wanna use your whole entire body. Your lungs are in your back. And so to be able to do that. And you wanna do 4 to 7 cycles of, breath cycles a minute. So something to focus on there as well. Most people do 14 to 17 breath cycles per minute. And this is all to increase in being in the present moment. So breathing, the next thing we're gonna go over, the number 2 thing, is listening. So remember, you have a 3-step approach. So listening, and that is really looking at the levels of listening and breaking that down. And so the levels of listening, the first level is level 0, which is really no listening at all. It's no listening, speaking only. How many people have been that When you're in a conversation, you're not really even in that conversation. So it's something to slow down and look at what level are you at. Level 1 is looking at subjective listening. This is all about the listener and their agenda, and this is where 80 to 90% of people are, and this is where they're taking their reality through their filter and reacting to it. Level 2 is looking at listening and not being in the present moment. When you start slowing down and looking at the how and coming out of this, To be present. A lot of times we're thinking about the past, or we're thinking about the future, or something that is on our mind, or what we're gonna say. And so it's being able to slow down 5 minutes a day and just being present with our breath, and remember elongating especially the exhale. Level 3 is objective active listening. So being able to objective active listen is really about problem solving. It's looking at the facts versus the story. How can we get to the solution? What is actually going on here? We can move it forward. Forward, which is great in work environments. Level 4 is looking at intuitive listening, and this is where you're taking all 5 of your senses, so that's visual, auditory, kinesthetic, gustatory, and you're able to see what's happening in between the lines, because most of the time we're in these surface structures and we wanna get to the deeper structures. So you wanna slow down and be able to actually, like, ask questions and look at how this all connected. And so within listening, we have the levels, and then it's also looking at active listening and looking at things like, it's It seems, it sounds, what I've heard, and then asking, is that right? And with that, asking questions. So these are some of my favorite questions, just to go through this quickly to wrap up. Questions you want to ask when you're in negotiations, because it's really about the other person and listening. So what does success look like? What are you looking for specifically? Tell me the next step in the process. Tell me how you make decisions. These are all really great questions to ask. So here's a summary of that. Take a picture. And so it's about practicing attuned listening and elongating your breath in low-stakes situations so you can do it in high-stakes situations. And the last area I wanna talk about is connection, 'cause that really, when you're able to breathe, listen, we're all looking to have deep connection. And so deep connection starts with us being able to slow down and connecting to ourselves first. So how do we do that? How do we connect to ourselves first? And how do we look at kindness, empathy, and compassion for ourselves first? And then we're able to do for others. 'Cause most of the things that happen, that happen is that when, in most cases, anything we do to ourselves, we do to others. So it's being able to slow down and be able to connect with ourselves first. 'Cause at the end of the day, we're meaning-making machines. 'Cause we just, that's what we do on unconscious levels. We're making meaning out of our experiences and events. And I'm always curious what other people are meaning and making out of their events. And so understanding meaning is how do we bring the heart and the mind together, and when we're talking to people and connecting with them, that we might be talking about something and agree on something, but it might not, it might mean something different. So how do we slow down and actually ask, what do you mean by what you're saying? Or what do you mean by this? So you can connect on those deeper structures I was talking about, and so you can move the conversation forward and actually get to the heart of the matter of what's most important. And then just really quickly, I think people know about verbal and nonverbal communication 'cause it's such a huge component of connection. But you have physiology, we already talked about breathing and posture, and being able to do conscious gesturing. You have tonality, and what I want you to take away from this is tonality, the most 2 important things is volume and speed. So having that range, especially when you elongate the breath, you're able to do that. And then you have your words, which is only 7%. Everyone's always surprised by this, and I know some people have seen this before. And, and so it's looking at predicates, which is your verbs, keywords, common experiences, and content chunks. And so just to look at this all together, which is always interesting to me that 93% of communication is so nonverbal, and to slow down and really connect to all all those different aspects of how we're communicating. And to wrap up, it's looking at intonation patterns. So especially when you're in big deals and you're negotiating, or you're in those difficult conversations with your spouse or your loved ones, to when you're getting to certain important parts, especially when you're closing, for instance, you really wanna be aware of your pitch. So where are you, do you naturally go up Sometimes when it's a little awkward or uncomfortable, or do you go flat or neutral or a command? So for instance, I'm working with a security company right now that is pretty high up. They're doing a lot for Ukraine and they work a lot with the DOD and military. And so one of my CEOs and clients, we have to work on his intonation pattern of doing a command language because military is very command-like language at the end of a sentence. So these are just some things to think about. So what you can do is in your next high-stakes environment or negotiation or high-stakes conversation, you can breathe better, listen better, and connect better. And what I imagine for all of you is to slow down, and in that next conversation or negotiation that maybe the last time it didn't go the best way it did, but for some reason This time, with having that right approach and thinking about these 3 things, everything comes into place.

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, you know, 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. 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, right, and we'll send you the information that will allow you to get this new product? Now that's a risky thing to do. Somebody comes up to you unbidden, unsolicited, right, unknown, asks for your email address. That's a risky thing.

Right.

Only 30% of of the people were willing to do that under those circumstances. Even that sounds to me like a lot, right?

Yes.

But there are risk-takers among us, right? 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. We've all experienced— almost everybody said yes. 98% of the people said yes.

Just by planting that seed of getting them to focus on where their brain goes.

Now instead of 30% giving them the 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 Krishnaraj in Influence where someone would go up and put the flower on their collar in airports and And it was more difficult for someone to step away than reach in their pocket and pull out a dollar and give them a 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 about something before you then ask them for what you really want, is like, so if a single person, if a guy So if a guy was, you know, afraid of going up to a woman and asking for her email or asking for her phone number, if they said, you know, 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.

Yeah.

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 got an actor, you know, a matinee idol, That's part of persuasion also, right?

Right, 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.

A 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 experienced 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.

Right.

They searched for price-related information and they preferred to buy inexpensive furniture. Not one of them recognized— they were asked afterwards, so do you think the clouds Made a difference? Not one of them believed that the clouds or the coins made any difference. This stuff flies under the radar.

Totally.

The place fell silent. You could have heard a pin drop.

Charlie was still there.

50 years later, Charlie was still in his memory and in his psychological space. Charlie was there. Yeah, that's the kind of connections that you were talking about. Yeah.

You know, you got your wife over here, you got your granddaughter, you got a lot of people in your world that you care about deeply. What's the best way to influence love?

Give it.

Give it.

Warren Buffett.

He said the best—

this is Charlie Munger— the way to be the best spouse is to earn it. And then you get the best spouse. Well, earn it. That's how you, that's how you get love. You earn it.

That's great.

You show people the approval you definitely feel of them. You don't hide it. You don't try to worry about hierarchies and so on. You earn their love.

Yeah, you know, I think that's where a lot of marketers and a lot of people that just try to look at the technique, because, you know, you talk about the science and There is an art and a bit of science, right? It's using both of them, and one becomes skilled in these methodologies by integrating them—not just doing them or parroting them, but just actually going out into the real world and doing it. I mean, if someone wants to, you take a guy who wants to figure out how to meet women, you can read every pickup book, every book in the world about what to say and how to say. But if you never go out there and just meet people and talk and interact and show up in a certain way. It's, uh, you may have a lot of, uh, knowledge, but that doesn't mean it's integrated into, uh, into your world. So you, you, everyone here has been through 2 days of training here.

Uh, if—

what advice would you give them on, okay, here's how to make it part of you?

Well, it's in doing some things that you can't do a scientific experiment But you can try different forms of connection, for example, different forms of showing approval or affection and so on, and see which one fits best with the person that you're dealing with. Because not everybody's the same, the audiences will change.

Yeah.

But the concept of everybody wanting to have approval or relationships or closeness or trust and so on, you can provide different forms of it and see which ones resonates. So it's, it's kind of like being an experimenter and trying different things out and then, and then selecting the one that has the greatest resonance with the people that you're, you're dealing with. Yeah.

And what about fear?

What if someone's scared? What if someone's worried about rejection? What if they're not quite there yet?

How do, how do you deal with fear? Yeah, so I mean, how do I deal with fear as somebody who's If you've been afraid to approach someone or say something, or someone's utilizing the methods that you have taught so well on you, and you kind of are like, oh my God, you know, you're just, you know, you don't want to be offensive.

You also don't want to be rejected. You want to get what you want, but you also, you know, there's this resistance that you may have.

How do, how do you, how do you, um, how's that play out?

So we actually talked about it in an earlier presentation. I don't mind somebody using my principles on me as long as they're doing it ethically, as long as they're honestly representing the state of affairs. And then the way to overcome your fear— I'm blanking on the woman's name, you probably know it— who wrote a book called 3-2-1. What's her name?

No.

Anyway, she says when you're afraid to interact with somebody, Or afraid. She was saying, I saw this guy that I really wanted to meet for a job that I had and so on, but he was elevated high. And she said, here's what I tell myself. 3, 2, 1, and then you do it.

Mel Robbins has a 5-second rule.

That's it.

That's it.

5 seconds. So maybe 4 or 5. 4, 3, 2, 1. Mel Robbins. That's who it is.

I think 3 is even better. You beat her by 2 seconds.

Yeah, 3.

Just, you do it.

I mean, yeah.

Yeah, that's right. Otherwise that guy might be out there.

She's wasting 2 seconds on her completely.

But I mean, just give yourself a starting gun, essentially. Start, go. Somebody was asking me, I think it was Pratip, what are the things, the symbols that you can give? We were talking about how you get people to want to change. Right? What— and so what are the things that are associated with change? One thing we talked about was at the beginning of a period of time, right? And well, what symbols could we use to put in an email or a message that stimulates the idea of change? There's actually been some research on this. The number one image That leads people to be put in the mindset of change. It's a sunrise. A sunrise. We can put that in our messaging. We can put that in our PowerPoint decks. We can put that in our subject lines. Right. And number 2, You know how in the movies at the start of a scene there's a clapper?

Clap!

Start something. Start the scene. That's the number 2 one that's associated with the motivations and the intents to change.

Yeah.

Clap. Start. That's like 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Go.

Yeah.

That's good. Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that'll be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead, they're over here.

Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.