Everything You [PROBABLY] Don't Know About Negotiation | Chris Voss

Hi, I'm Chris Voss and I'm the author of Never Split the Difference, Negotiating as if your life depended on it. And you're about to go behind the brand with Brian Elliott.

Everyone, welcome to another episode of the show. Chris, welcome back. I should say it's been a little while. It's been a minute.

Life goes by quickly, doesn't it?

It does. I hear good things that are happening. Bring us up to speed. I mean, it's been, it's been about 18 months, I think, since we last talked. I heard rumors of a little documentary film. CHRIS Voss, Documentary film. Bring us up to speed. What's happening with Black Swan?

Yeah, well, we got a documentary film. Nick Netton, DNA Films, did a documentary. Basically the story of, you know, what I used to do as an FBI hostage negotiator, kidnapping negotiator, and how I took those skills and put them in regular life, business and everyday life. Wrote Never Split, wrote Never Split the Difference based on those ideas. It's a best selling business negotiation book. And what we're doing in the Black Swan world and the documentary also, what we're going to touch on a little bit is how to take the skills that I learned in law enforcement. We're actually working on taking them back into law enforcement to help settle things out a little bit between the police and the minority communities, like getting better at talking to each other. Empathy is a sneak attack on racism. Empathy is better decision making, tactical empathy.

So I was going to ask, is it tactical empathy that you're employing or is it just because there's a difference? Right.

Well, it depends upon your point of view. I mean, we put the word tactical in front of empathy to get people to think about it differently. Because unfortunately, empathy today has become synonymous with sympathy or compassion. And it's not now. You got to have empathy to get the compassion. A friend of mine, Steve Kotler, who wrote the book the Rise of Superman, among others, says empathy is about the transmission of information. Compassion is the reaction to that transmission. But unfortunately that's not the way it's looked on in today's modern vernacular. So put tactical in front of it just to look at it as a skill like a cell phone or a scalpel. Either one of those instruments can either do good or evil, depending upon whose hands they're in. Cell phone is not evil by definition. Somebody orders the murder of another person via cell phone. That doesn't make the cell phone evil, it's whose hands the tool is in. So empathy. I've even seen articles that said the dark side of empathy, because of how much influence you can gather with somebody if you really understand how empathy works. So tactical empathy is to understand it principally with what we've learned from neuroscience guys like Andrew Huberman, who we were just talking about. How does neuroscience tell us a brain probably works more accurately than psychology did? Because neuroscience can. You can put a person in an FMRI and watch their brain react.

Yeah, we know where it's happening in the.

In the brain much more. And then also you can. You know, one of the experiments that backs up tactical empathy on a regular basis, because if you're in a bad mood or if you're not going to like what I have to say, the wrong way to say it would be, you're not going to like what I have to say. I don't want you to react negatively. That would be the wrong way to say it. Now, the 2 millimeter shift would be for me to say, you're going to react negatively to this. You're not going to like it. This is going to sound harsh. Now, that keeps those circuits from lighting up in your brain. It's like being warned before the doctor gives you a shot. If the doctor says it's going to hurt and he hits you with the needle, you appreciate that you were warned and you were braced and prepared for the pain. If the doctor all of a sudden just stabbed you, you'd be mad. Also, if the doctor said, I don't want you to think this is going to hurt, and then he stabbed you, you'd be like, look, dude, you were lying to me. That hurt like hell.

Yeah. Trust is gone.

The trust is gone. So the warning, it's how you give the warning. Now. They did this. This experiment's been duplicated a number of different times. The first time I read about it was in a book called the Upward Spiral. I can't remember the author's name, but they put people in FMRI to watch the electricity in their brain, and then they show them a photo that causes them to have some sort of negative emotional reaction. I don't know what the pictures were. Could have been puppies in the rain, you know, could have been little old ladies, could have been homeless children. I don't know. They show the people the picture and they watch the circuits that are associated with negative emotions light up. And then they simply say to the people, what are you feeling? Identify. Self. Label. You know, we would call this a label. You sound angry. You seem upset. I feel angry. I feel upset. Whatever it is, every single time the person Simply called out the emotion, the negative emotion. The electrical activity diminished every time. Now the only change in calling out the negatives is how much does it diminish. So tactically, if I know that if I call out a negative versus denying it as a means of my empathy, it'll accelerate the effects.

Right.

And hence the term tactical.

Gotcha. I appreciate that distinction. Can you just define then sympathy for us, just so we have a counterpart?

As a layman, I would define sympathy as me feeling what you feel. You feel sad. I feel sad. On the hotline that I. Crisis hotline. I volunteered on a long time ago, they drew a real distinction because sympathy is when someone's an emotional quicksand and you try to get in the quicksand with them. Now you're both in quicksand. Nobody gets out. Empathy, on the other hand, is identifying that they're in quicksand and then helping them figure a way out.

Yeah. The image that came right to my. And this is probably just.

A little.

Clue into how my brain works. I thought of, you know, myself eating an ice cream cone, and then the scoop just falls right on the ground.

Yeah.

And you're watching that from a distance and you go, oh, that's the sympathy part. Right.

Well, you know, that could be either one. You know, that's really close. You know, if I watch your ice cream scoop dying, like, oh, I feel so bad.

Yeah.

Your actual reaction is going to be like, I don't care how you feel. You know, that doesn't help me in any way, shape, or form. I appreciate maybe that you want to be there with me, but that doesn't get my ice cream back up. It doesn't change my sense. You sharing the loss with me does not diminish my loss at all.

Right, right, right. Yeah.

And, you know, unfortunately, that's. So many people learn it the wrong way. Because. What are our examples? The examples that we see are movies and television, and it's always wrong. You know, somebody says, yeah, you know, I lost somebody once, too. Like, I don't care who you lost. Right.

He just made it about you.

Yeah, yeah. It's. It's completely about you. But in the movies or in the tv, when somebody says that, the person goes, oh, thank God. Or when a person says, you know, we've all felt that way one. One time or another. Right. Like, you really don't care.

It just invalidates the other person's feelings right away. Right.

Unfortunately, it has a tendency to do that. But we see these bad models in movies and TV and people say, oh, well, it worked MacGyver. Or worked in the Avengers or worked in Justice League. Yeah, I'll try that in real life.

Yeah.

And you try it in real life. And the other person, if they, if they don't get angry, maybe they're in an emotional place enough to at least appreciate that you tried.

Yeah.

And that, that's the best you can. Well, you know, you screwed this up, but I, thanks for trying.

Right. My favorite pseudo attempt at feelings is the I'm sorry you feel that way. Right. As if that's an apology.

Yeah.

Oh, sorry you feel that way. I have no responsibility in this. But you're like dodging.

I'm sorry. You think I lied, right? No, you are. You lied and you're sorry that I caught you. That's what you're really sorry about.

Right, right, right. Or you lost a deal. So in the context of this discussion, this time, you know my audience, that they're made up of founders, entrepreneurs, you know, people at different stages of the startup mode, maybe they're more in the middle of the game and small business owners. And today we're here, and we worked here in this little studio too. I'm sure there's a makeup of that.

Audience in this variety of miscreants over there.

Yeah. All the misfits like me, like us, trying to build a business, build a brand new. So one of the first things I, I've heard you talk about a little bit, I wanted to maybe unpack further is this idea of the result, like, so if you're in charge, if you're the boss. Because I, you know, I'm, I'm my own boss. And one of the things you work for, a jerk. That's right. It's one of the things Seth Godin told me. He says if, if you are your own boss, chances are you know, you have it worse than you've ever had it. And he's totally right. I'm very self critical anyway, so I'm always wrestling with this idea of, you know, I have people now working with me or working for me or partnerships, Collaborations.

Right.

How do I get things done? Do I need to be the jerk to get things done? What's, what's the advantage or disadvantage in your, in your worldview of negotiation? Let's say because you go into a negotiation, you think, I'm not, I'm not that guy. Like, I don't come in guns a blazing or like I don't even have a voice that carries back to the back of this room, let alone you know, I can't really talk with authority. I get made fun of all the time. When I get mad, it's like my voice goes up just maybe a decibel or two anyway, I'm just not that guy. I'm more calm and relaxed. But I feel like sometimes I can be a, like, perceived as a pushover or perceived as weak. If I'm coming into a negotiation without, you know, huffing and puffing my chest out or whatever it takes, you know, that I see other people do. Who I see are more extroverted than me, I tend to be more introverted. So can you talk about that? Give us some advice in the. In terms of negotiating, you know, coming in as the jerk or coming in as the nice guy or nice gal. Talk about that a little bit.

Well, a couple different parts there that are. That are really interesting. The first one is, you know, I feel like I don't want to look like I'm a pushover or, you know, I got to come in, you know, I got to demonstrate authority and all that. So that problem there is your amygdala. I feel like I'm afraid if I don't do this. And the real challenge for all people, which actually, we just started talking about a lot more lately, is separating your amygdala from your intuition. Like, are you listening to your gut or you listen to the voice in your head? If you say, I'm worried about. I'm worried about this. That's your amygdala. That's a voice in your head. That's the negativity that we were born with. We're born with basically pessimistic, negative wiring. It was required to keep us alive.

Right. Which may or may not be true. Right.

Which part?

The thought or whether it's rational or irrational. We don't know.

Well, it's fear driven is what it is. It's predicting 13 out of the actual three problems that are going to occur now when you're fighting for survival and with Saber Tooth Tigers, you need to pick. You need to anticipate more problems than a curve, because if it's the other way around, you're gonna die.

Right.

That's why we are inherited, basically negative wiring. And we play it safe because of that.

Yeah, I got you.

So. But that's. That's the amygdala, the voice in your head. I'm worried that I'm gonna be perceived as being weak or I'm gonna be perceived as a pushover. That's not your gut instinct that your Gut instinct is what Aristotle talked about, what he really meant by common sense, which is your intuition that's fed by all sorts of great data points and your intuition is actually great. It's a supercomputer process. If you can listen to your gut and understand the difference, and your gut gets better all the time, each and every time out, because it's a great processing supercomputer. Now, in terms of negotiation, what's your definition of negotiation? Is it win, lose? Well, that's a mediocre. That's a recipe for mediocre outcomes. My definition of negotiation is great collaboration with long term prosperity for both sides. Trusted collaboration. The adversary is the situation, not the person you're talking to. The adversary is not your employees. The adversary is the problem that you're trying to solve with your employees.

Can I just underscore that you did not say win, win.

I am avoiding that for sure.

Yeah.

For a whole variety of reasons.

Let's put a pin in that. We'll come back to that. Okay?

Okay. Yeah. So if you view negotiations, collaboration, where both sides improve, prosper, at least emotionally, which is in many cases all people really need, then yeah, you negotiate with your subordinates, your colleagues, your superiors. Negotiations 360. You negotiate with your spouse. Long term collaboration with your spouse.

Yeah.

If that's how you view negotiation, that we win together versus when I win, you lose.

Right, Right. I think Mark Cuban wrote that book, you know, business, A Sport or whatever it was. It seems like it's a very sum zero game based philosophy.

It can be. And I don't, I don't think Cuban is a, you know, I've had, I've had a conversation with him about negotiation. And I, and I think he's a collaborative oriented guy. Very collaborative oriented, as a matter of fact. I know he is. But he also knows that business world is a tough environment. And if you're going to be his business partner, you got to have an A game. Right. And the way he's going to find out if you got an A game is he's going to test you. Right.

Throw you a curveball or, or he's.

Gonna throw a fastball right at your head.

Yeah.

You know, no curveballs. He's coming at you hard because he knows if you represent him, somebody's gonna come at you hard out there.

Yeah, I got you.

And you know, like, and I've heard him do it on Shark Tank also. And one of the great responses was, I'm gonna make you an offer and you can't, you can't listen to any other offers from anybody else. You give me yes or no. My offer right now.

Yeah.

And. And the entrepreneur said, would you want me to get pushed around like that if I was out there representing you? And he was like, oh, no, flip the script.

I like it.

Yeah. And then. But Cuban was testing him.

Yeah. Earned his respect. I like it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so let's go back to this idea of collaboration. I still, I want a definitive, or more of a definitive answer on should I be. Should I like come in, you know, with, with force? Should I come in with ease? Is it more of like a case by case? Am I reading the room? You know, I'm naturally introverted. Right. So I feel like I'm sometimes at a disadvantage to someone who's more extroverted. Right.

It's got in your head only.

Yeah. Okay, fair. So what I'm hearing you saying is just be myself at all times.

You start with being yourself. You start with understanding what are your natural attributes that make you a great negotiator. And then you don't get rid of those. You add complementary skills. So understand human nature then. Understand the human in front of you.

Okay.

Human nature is driven by not a whole lot of rules. Danny Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for behavioral economics in 2002 for prospect theory. And to paraphrase that a loss things twice as much as an equivalent gain. People react twice as negatively to losses as they do to gains.

Right.

So what does that mean? What that means is somebody's perception of loss is the single biggest decision making factor in their head. Not the only factor, just the biggest factor. So people make decisions based on what they perceive the loss to be, how it affects their identity, what their vision of the future is. Vision drives decision. Somebody who wants to sell his business at a 10x multiple because his buddy got a 9x multiple.

Yeah.

Not because the business demands a 10x multiple.

Yeah.

Got an investor wants to come in and buy it for a 6x multiple, leave the guy intact so he can cash out in 10 years for $200 million. Now, the seller today is more worried about the hundred thousand or the million dollars that he's worried about losing. Now, in comparison to his buddy versus the $200 million he's going to make down the line if he sells for less now, but his focus is on today's loss.

I see.

So that's going to make up that guy's mind and then, then he's got a vision of loss now. So you get, you use empathy, use tactical Empathy to gently get in somebody's head, knowing what you're looking for. What's the vision of the future? How does it affect their identity? What kind of losses are they looking at? I'm going to tease that out of you to find out what your vision is. Now, since I didn't force my way in, then I'm in your head as a guest, an invited guest. You're going to allow me to drop ideas to see if I can get you to see a different vision of the future.

Right. Because maybe. And you don't know what you're walking into, I would guess maybe that person has got to make a mortgage payment in two weeks.

The hidden information that you need to get to find out what's driving behavior.

Yeah. So let's talk about how to. How to draw that out. Because to me, that's. That's everything. It's like, you know, you're walking in, you're meeting someone maybe for the first time, or you're used to working with them, but you don't know the context of what's happening in their life. How do you then draw. What are some of the tools you can use to get that out of them?

Well, the short answer is two of our negotiation skills. Mirrors and labels. Yeah, Mirrors are just repeating the last couple of words of what somebody just said or in specific phrases. If you say something I don't completely understand or I saw your voice change when you say it, I'm going to repeat those exact words. That'll take your thoughts back to that moment. And if I repeat those exact words, you'll go back to that point and you'll expand on it with different words.

And that's mirroring.

That's mirroring. Yeah. Yeah. That's just. It's just. It's a ridiculously simple skill that's remarkably effective.

It's like restating to make sure you got the story straight.

Well, which would be paraphrasing, which is a similar, but. But a different approach. Mirroring is just. I'm. I'm surgically. I'm. I'm nudging you in different directions where I need more information.

So you're surgically nudging the person to get more information. Is that right?

Yeah. And also making a person that was close also get to make the person feel heard.

Yeah.

Like, if you said something I didn't understand, I could say, what do you mean by that?

Right.

And you're gonna go. You're gonna say it exactly the same way, only louder, just like an American asking Directions in Paris. Where is the Eiffel Tower? That's exactly what people do.

Yeah.

But if I mirror you, if I just repeat the words, I don't know why. The brain takes flips a switch and you say to yourself, oh, well, I need to expand with different words because since he said the words, he heard them and for whatever reason it's inadequate. So I got to change words.

Yeah. It's like your little internal thesaurus starts taking over.

Yeah. For whatever reason, I don't know why. I just know it does.

Yeah.

Now everybody likes to be mirrored because everybody likes to expand, expound, they like to feel, listen to.

Yeah.

I'll co sign that nobody has a problem talking if they're being listened to. Introverts will talk and not shut up if they're being listened to.

Yeah.

The introvert shuts up when the other person wants to talk instead. Introverts shut up around extroverts because extroverts won't shut up.

That's right. I feel steamrolled sometimes.

Yeah. Introvert is like, what do I need to open my mouth for? Yeah. I just, I can look at my watch while you talk. We'll be here for an hour.

Right.

So introverts, they tend to be more introspective. We think probably if I had a choice to recruit somebody to the team, I'm going to be very leery of an extrovert and I'm going to lean in the direction of an introvert because we got to analyze what's going on. Introverts by definition are up in their head a little bit more. So they're probably going to lean more towards analysis, unpacking, diagnosing what's going on.

Yeah.

Much more than an extrovert will.

Which one are you?

I'm probably, I don't know, you know, I'm probably an introvert.

Okay.

Probably. Yeah.

So I had Susan Cain on the show. Susan Cain wrote that book about introverts where she did a lot of taxonomy or labeling. And there's a category I didn't know about called ambivert.

Yeah.

Which is, you know, a little bit about the hybrid.

Right.

And I know I, I probably toggle between that because when I'm on stage or I'm in front of people, maybe just because I'm used to it, I don't get nervous anymore. I don't mind speaking.

Right.

You probably relate with this.

Yeah.

It becomes like a callous. But anyway.

Yeah. I don't, I don't know that there are that many actual extroverts like the only for me, the test was my former boss, Gary Nestner. The guy ran the negotiation unit when it recruited me into it. Like, we'd teach all day long, which would be exhausting for me. Me and everybody else on the team, we get done at the end of the day. Like, I'm gonna go back to the hotel. I wanna sit down. I wanna be left alone.

Yeah, you're recharging.

Gary would wanna go out. Let's go out. Let's talk to people. Let's meet more people. I mean, he would gain energy the more people we interacted with. That's an extrovert. Like, he never ran out of gas around people. People energized him. Yeah.

He fed off of them. Yeah.

You know, none of the rest of us did.

Yeah. Okay, let's go back to win win. Why is win Win not a win win? Why is it bad?

So in terms of the vernacular, the terminology, what I found to be true, what I found to be true is if somebody uses the term win win in the first five minutes of our conversation, they're trying to get me to do something for nothing. Got a great win win deal for you. You know what the deal is? Win for you and zero for me. But people, when that terminology first came out, the sharks, the cutthroat people learned that that phrase is a great way to get you to drop your guard.

Okay. Right. Because it sounds good.

When. When. Yeah. Okay. I can trust you.

Right?

You know, the really vicious negotiators are like, ah, I say this, they'll do this for free.

Yeah.

In the Harvard early days, they did a. The guys at a business school sort of did an analysis. They called them claim value negotiators. And create value negotiators to claim value were the win lose guys. To create value were the quote, win win guys. And then they put them up against each other to see what would happen. So if a claim value and claim value, two cutthroats go head to head, it's pretty much a draw.

Okay. Cancel each other out. I got it.

Cancel it. And you know, nobody wins. Nobody really loses. It's a tie.

Right.

They're both playing offense to create value. Guys create value and create value go together and they do fairly well. But it's not a home run. If you were to grade it on a typical grading scale, maybe they get a B plus. The claim value go against the create value. The claim value destroys the create value guy. The claim value hits a grand slam home run to create value gag gets Slaughtered. How does that translate to business terms?

Yeah.

Until you understand how to navigate both the claim value, hits, home runs or ties, the create value gets B pluses or gets fired.

I'm gonna guess that's because the first sort of knows exactly what she wants.

The, the claim value. Yeah.

And, and it's like, you know, there's the goal and she goes after it and then she either gets it or she doesn't. So it's a, it's a win or it's a tie.

Yeah.

I would guess the other guy doesn't know it's undefined. Is that the reason? Why is it, why is that happening?

They probably leave themselves open to it being undefined. Yeah, yeah. You know, let's, let's talk and let's see what we can create together.

Yeah.

And so then the real evolution is being able to navigate with either one, hostage negotiation skills. Like, I come off as very understanding and you're not going to push me off my position.

That's right. Back to the tactical empathy, then.

That's you're talking about like, I'm not giving in. You're not, you're not going to exploit me. I'm not going to strike back. What I'm going to, you know, what I. In hostage negotiation, what I learned was just to wear you out.

Okay.

And one of my heroes and a mentor was a UN hostage negotiator. He said the secret to negotiation is learning to exhaust the other side. So if you're a claim value guy, you know, I'll just, if you're that guy, I'm going to wear you down. I'm going to use passive aggressive aggression on you. You know, I'm going to peer compliant. I'm going to say, what do you want me to do?

Right.

What, you know, what's, you know, you could tell me what you want me to do and I'll say, how am I supposed to do that? Right. And. But I know that asking you those questions going to tire you're out. Right. And they are going to. Even, even in great negotiation collaboration, those questions will tire you out.

Yeah. If you're results driven, you become impatient. You're just like this, I need to make a deal. This guy's either going to do it or not. And usually it seems like those types of people who, maybe they're in that kind of sales cycle, they just know it's law of attrition. Right. It's like I got to get through so many nos to get to the yeses and they're either Going to wear you down. Or you're either going to wear him down or he's going to walk away. Right? Is that what you're talking about?

To some degree. And then that gets into the definition of what's a legitimate yes and what's a false yes and what's a legitimate no and what's a false no? And the people that say I got to get through this many no's to get to these yeses, you're losing track of the number of times you're being played. Okay, Because I'm. If, if, if you love yes, which those people tend to, then I'm going to say yes. And what I'm going to do is I'm gonna. I'm gonna use you for free consulting.

Okay, so that maybe is a good transition into my next question, which is talk about the illusion of control.

Right.

So how. You know, I think before we talked about the fool. Right.

Favorite. And the fool. If you don't know who the fool is, it's you.

It's probably me. Yeah. We're talking about the illusion of control. How do we know? You know, I'm actually asking you very selfishly because I'm in negotiations. Well, I mean, we're probably all in negotiations every single day with, you know, our romantic partner or our, you know, where we're having lunch or, you know, doing deals. But like, help me understand the illusion of control.

Well, the secret to gaining the upper hand in negotiation is given the other side the illusion of control. Now, that starts with asking what and how questions. What do you want me to do? How do you want to proceed? If I say to you, how do you want to proceed? You know, what have you got in mind? You're going to start laying stuff out for me. You're going to feel in control. When you say something that I really like, I'm gonna go brilliant. Secret to negotiation is letting the other side have your way. I get you talking and I gently just either say, how's it gonna work if I don't like it and you think of something else? And you. I get you to throw ideas out until you land on my answers. And then I go like, holy cow, you are so smart. That was brilliant. Why didn't I think of that? Which you're going to feel great about it, plus you're going to implement.

Okay, so let's back into that then. Sort of the pre prep to do that. If that's me and that's what I want to do, do I come to the negotiation already prepped? And ready with what I wanted to do. My non negotiables, my break evens. Do I have all that planned out, set in stone?

Well, a lot of people do, and it's really bad prep. Okay, because think of a negotiation time. When you entered into a negotiation, when you weren't holding anything back, they knew your budget. And if they didn't know your budget, you told them your budget.

Right.

They knew your deadlines. And if they didn't know your deadlines, you told them your deadlines, you told them your mortgage payments.

Yeah.

You told them all the pressures you were under. When did that happen? Never.

Right.

Those are all the things you're holding back.

Right.

What are your deadlines? What are your pressures? What are your mortgage payments? What's your desire for it?

Yeah.

What's your appetite? What's driving you. Is anything driving you to the table? Are you on a fishing expedition?

Right.

Lots of fishing expeditions. That's called trying to get free consulting. And point. The fact you're holding all of that back now, that's a massive amount of important information that I, as your counterpart, do not have. I can't be sure of what I want because I know you're holding back important information because I am, too.

Yeah. I mean, you say it out loud and it makes sense. And I'm nodding like, yeah, of course you're holding back. But I. I don't know how everyone else feels in here, but, like, maybe I'm just too trusting sometimes or too.

Just.

I come into a negotiation most of the time thinking that, man, I assume people are like me. Like, they're just gonna be honest and forthright and say, I either can do that or I can't do that. You know, even.

Even at that point, there's stuff going on with you that matter to me, but you don't know it matters. For example, there's innocuous information. Young lady that was learning the Black Swan method several years ago here in la. She learned mirroring. She's doing an independent film. She's talking to this woman about funding her film here in Los Angeles. And just through the course of the conversation and her just letting it go where it goes, out of the blue, she finds out this woman owns a castle in France. Okay, that changes everything.

Serendipitous.

There's another movie deal here. This is not for this movie, but this is setting for another movie I've been thinking about. If you own a castle in France, we don't need dollars from you. All you're going to do is give US access to the castle.

Yeah.

Now, she's got no way of knowing that going into the conversation.

Right.

How often are you in a conversation with somebody in LA where you say, oh, by the way, do you own a castle in France? What are the chances you got a castle in France? No, that's innocuous. You know, the woman, she said, well, I'm being approached for money. She must want funding. There's no way that this castle I own in France is going to make any difference to her. Yes, this is innocuous information. Also, besides what you're holding back, there's also stuff that we just don't know matter. And that's why detecting deception is like one of the biggest ruses in the business world. Because, like, if I was teaching body language, you know, detecting deception, everybody in the business world wants to get training on reading body language. So I know when somebody's lying.

Right, right, right.

But to lie, you have to know it's important. Then you hide it, and then you have a tell. You look down, your eyes get big, your breathing changes, whatever your tell is, but you have to know it's important. Again, the castle in France, there's no tell there.

Right.

Because she doesn't know what's important.

Right. She doesn't have context. Yeah.

So understanding, detecting deception is a fool's errand. You'll spend a lot of time, and if you're the best at detecting deception in the world, you're still going to miss all of the stuff the other side just didn't know was important.

Okay. So let's say a little bit more about then drawing out some of those innocuous facts, which could turn out to be game changer. You just didn't know it. Is it back to what and why questions is.

Well, all right, so let's deal with the why questions to start with.

Okay.

Because everybody in business is taught to find out the other side's why. Very common, you know, why do you want that? Why what? Your why is your motivation.

Yeah.

And motivation is very important.

I ask that all the time. I say what's important to you.

No.

Is that a good.

I just said I asked that all the time, which is why is that important to you? There's a difference between what and why, which is what I'm driving at.

Okay, good.

Now, what's important to you, if you're going to ask it in a question form, is the way you should always ask, why is that important to you? Should never ask anybody why.

Okay.

Because when you were an infant and you were just becoming able to toddle, and you pulled yourself up onto some table and there was a glass statue on it, and you knocked it down and broke it. What did the nearest adult say to you? Yeah, why did you do that?

Yeah, and it's like, I didn't even know that was bad.

Didn't know it was bad. Everybody everywhere, if you're human, that happened to you. Okay? Regardless your religion, your ethnicity, the continent that you grew up on, you busted something when you were little, and the nearest adult said, why did you do that?

Okay, so I'm doing it right. Then I'm asking what's important to you exactly.

Okay, if you're going to ask now. So first, switch, Change all your why's the what's. Okay, if you're going to ask the question. Now, the next problem, because I talked to you before, I mentioned the questions that wear you out no matter what. If I say what's important to you, you're going to do what Danny Kahneman described as slow thinking, which is in depth thinking. You stop and you reflect and you do some in depth thinking. Now, you got to have enough mental gas in a tank to do that. Now we've all. In the morning. We've all got enough mental gas in a tank to answer a what or how question two, maybe three times, and we're out.

Okay?

That's in the morning. You don't have the gas in the tank in the afternoon.

So timing is important. Okay? Make a mental note.

Now, you can get the information, but you can't ask a what question.

Okay?

I'm on the phone. My girlfriend the other day, we're talking in the morning, we're having a good call in the morning, and she asked me what question? Like, you know, what do you got going on today? What are your plans? And so I lay it all out without really realizing it. She's kind of using up all the gas in my tank.

Okay.

And then later on she goes, so, so what, what do you want to do this weekend? What you. What do you want us to do? I'm like, you know, I don't know, leave me alone.

Because I already answered that.

I. I was out of gas. Yeah, okay, that's in the morning. Now in the afternoon, you're gonna be out of gas.

Okay?

So you can't even ask a waterhow question because the other side's gonna be, you know, I don't know, leave me alone.

Right?

What do you do instead? A label. And this again, I know this works. I can't explain the neural mechanism. I'm coming back from the Middle east six, seven months ago, jet lagged. I'm on a plane in Seattle, it's nighttime. I text a colleague a question now, great response to the question. Never answer a question until you know what's behind it is what makes you ask great, what question. But I don't have the gas in the tank to answer that. I sent him a text question and he texts back, seems like you have a reason for asking. And in an exhausted state, I laid out all my reasoning fast. Text went out, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And I was like, wow. If he'd asked me what makes me ask, I'd have texted back angrily, just answer the question.

Yeah. Or never mind.

Yeah, never mind. You know, I'll tell you tomorrow. I wouldn't have texted back at all.

Yeah, with friends like you, who needs.

Yeah, yeah, it wasn't bad. But you know, he put it in a label. And that's really the one thing. The biggest difference in the Black Swan method today versus when the book came out six years ago, we have a much greater appreciation that labels are the information gathering skill and questions are not. Questions are mediocre at best. What you want to do when you ask a question is actually to shape someone's thinking, not get an answer. Now, nobody in the business world knows like that, say, well, look, you need information, you got to ask good questions. Well, a good question is only good if the other person has the capability to answer.

Right.

When what you really want is what's in their head. And we've seen the difference in the mechanism. I don't know why. I just know if you use a label with me, I'm gonna start gushing information. If you ask me a question when I stop and think I might not say anything.

Yeah. What's, what's the downside? Because if you guess wrong, they're going to correct you. But like, if you're in the heat of the moment too, like, seems like you really hate me right now or you're pissed off. Yes, I am. They're gonna, they're gonna.

Well, then it depends upon, like, empathy is about what the other person's perspective is.

Okay.

And so, and that, that, that's actually a really good point because the answer is going to be, yes, I am. You should have seen that. Yeah, depend upon our relationship. Right. Like if you, if you threw back a label of a dynamic that to me is blatantly obvious.

Right.

Then it's going to annoy me.

Right. If I'm sitting here And I fall asleep in my chair. And you say, seems like you're really sleepy. It's like, no. Right.

Well, it depends. Like, did I keep you out last night?

Ah, okay.

Did I have you out drinking all night last night? And now we walk in and sit down, I go, seems like you're sleepy. And you're like, well, listen, your reaction is, look, bozo, you kept me up all night.

Yeah.

This is not. You made me sleepy. You caused this.

Yeah.

However, if you just sat down, I saw you nodding off, and I. And I go, like, see, it seems like you're really tired. You'd be like, oh, yeah, man, you wouldn't believe this friend of mine kept me out all night last night. It's because your perspective on my knowledge, did you cause it or are you have legitimate reason to not know? And you're just being observant.

But it's actually a really good point because as you are labeling, right. You throw that down and it gives the other person a chance to explain what's really happening or really how they're feeling to either agree with you or not agree with you. It could also reveal other things. Like, actually, I was out all night listening to the competitors pitch. If you're pitching me today. Oh. You know, and then it gives you a chance to then find out more.

It's exactly.

I got you.

Yeah. Yeah. Is. Is my. My. We call it labeling on the surface. Yeah. Or, you know, what the drivers are. What are the underlying dynamics?

Yeah. I mean, what you just said right there is actually so valuable to me personally because sometimes, again, falling back to this sort of more passive stance that I usually take, if I'm observing something that's obvious, like someone's tired or maybe I mislabel them and they're not bored, they're just exhausted because they're out last night drinking, whatever, I tend to not say anything. I'll just kind of let it go. And then I maybe lose that opportunity to really find out more or get more facts or find out that they have a castle in France.

People love to be seen.

Yeah, that's super good. Talk about going first versus going second. This is not a new negotiation concept or tactic. But what do you do when both parties are just sitting there silent? Both know it's not good to go first. And you're sort of at this like you're playing chicken, sort of emotional chicken.

Like, well, all right, so you and I sit down and you're trying to get me to go first, and I'm trying to get you to go first.

Let me give you a scenario. So in my case, you know, if I'm doing video production or commercial projects with someone, they'll say, you know, how much is this going to cost? Right. And they want me to say my budget first. Let's take it in that sense, Right?

Yeah.

And I never want to volunteer the budget. I learned that the hard way.

He or she who names price first loses.

And I've done that before.

Right.

So I can attest to that. And so what I usually do is I say, what's your budget? Right. And, and then there's usually this dance, which is, well, I don't know how much it's going to cost. And we do this whole, you know, this, this, it's a dance, Right?

Right.

So what do we do if I don't want to go first, but the other one's sort of forcing me to go first?

Well, everybody's got stuff they're dying to say, you know, price doesn't make deals. Price breaks deals. Price is a term and everything around it is either going to make it a good price or a bad price. So if you're really price focused, let's just talk about the stuff around it. Like what, what I give, I, I get paid a lot of money for my keynote speeches. Would I give one for free? If Warren Buffett's looking for my services, he's going to sit in the audience. Who's going to be in the audience? Have they ever bought negotiation training before? Are they really interested in negotiation training? Everything around a price begins to either make it a good deal or a bad deal. How long is the delivery? How detailed oriented? How complicated is it? How many people do I got to bring? How long is it going to take? What's the turnaround time? Where is it going to be shown? So if you're really focused on price, there's a reason for your focus on price. I'm going to say, sounds like, sounds like price really important to you, right.

And then it gives the person a.

Chance to say, now I want to pivot away to the non price stuff to find out, you know, maybe what you want that's non price makes the deal much more profitable for me. So it's easier for me to be a little bit more flexible on a price because it's going to be a great deal for me. So I want to know what everything around a price, people get. So price focused. And in point of fact, price doesn't make deals, it breaks them. Your salary doesn't make your career your Salary gives you the ability to pay your bills while you try to make your career. They pay you more money, they could fire you in a year. Salaries don't build careers. Prices don't make deals, they break deals. You get, you get underpaid, you can't pay your mortgage, you're not going to do a good job working. The price is really much more of a sweet spot for both sides so that then we can implement a great deal together. So Black Swan Group, we don't, you know, we don't negotiate price.

We just don't do you line list it. Here it is. It's, you can read it in black and white like a sticker price.

If we got to give a price, we put a sticker price. I, you know, I had a very, very high profile, very well known company that we were talking to the other day that I would love to have for a client and you know, the hundreds of millions of dollars that they have at stake. And so we outlined what we wanted to do because I don't just want to give you negotiation training, I want it to actually make a difference in your bottom line.

Sure.

Which means it's just not a day of training. There's a lot of stuff. There's a perishability of knowledge, there's periodic follow up, there's changes in your culture. We got to make it sure it sticks.

It's a whole package.

Yeah. So the guy said, okay, so this is a package with all the bells and whistles. Now give us a price without the bells and whistles. Just stripped down for the basic two day training. I said, we're not doing it.

Oh, you said you're not doing it?

Yeah, I said, no, this is the price.

Oh, he asked for two prices.

He asked for three prices.

Okay.

He wants to see, I want to see three different versions.

Bronze, silver, gold, that kind of thing.

And I said, we're only doing one.

Okay.

Period. This is the price. This is what I need to do in order to get it to stick on your end. It does me no good for you to take negotiation training no matter how much money I make and have it not work for you because either you're not going to repeat or you're going to tell people. Yeah, we took the Black Swan training. It didn't really make any difference. I'm not doing that.

Yeah, you set yourself up for failure.

Here's what we're going to do for you and this is what the best effort that we can give you. I'm not giving you a mediocre effort. I don't care how much you pay me for it. You could pay me the same amount of money for a mediocre effort. I still wouldn't do it.

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, ours is on delivery, and our price is going to be a bargain if we deliver. There's, you know, there's some integrity issues here, too. Right. I'm not selling snake oil. Right. If you learn how to negotiate like a black swan, 10% difference is you did a horrible job. You know, and they told me we got to, you know, we need a 10% return on our investment. This is what those dollars would look like. And I thought to myself, if you do what we tell you to do, you're going to 30% return on your investment.

Yeah.

So we're a bargain. So I'm not cutting my price. We don't. And then if you give me a price, I'm going to pay your price. But I want to know what comes with it.

Right. What's the return on it? What do I get for that?

Right.

Yeah.

You're going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. I will pay a premium price for a premium product, because a premium product is going to be worth far more than a price.

Yeah. And it goes back to knowing that you're the favorite. Then in that case, if price is not an issue, you're the favorite. You've been sought out. Right.

More likely, if price is not an issue, they still might be after the how and looking for free consulting on the how do you guys. What? How do you guys implement your secret sauce? They may be looking for that because they want to duplicate the process themselves internally.

Okay. So you kind of gave us a short answer of how to say no, but can you say more about saying no and how to how important it is to end on a positive note than a negative note?

Well, yeah. Let's start with how do you say no? You got to let out no a little at a time, and you got to be prepared to say no clearly, hard and draw it in the sand. But it's really the fourth way you say no. The first way you say no is how am I supposed to do that?

You put up some sort of barrier.

Well, it's not necessarily a barrier. That's really an implementation question. I'm trying to get you to see that that implementation is impossible for me, and I'm trying to do it in a deferential manner.

Okay.

And so I'm forcing you to take a look. I'm forcing you to Engage in some problem solving. How is generally a question that's designed around uncovering implementation. If you're asking me to do something that's impossible, my first answer to test you is, how am I supposed to do that? Now, you might fire right back at me. About one time in ten, you're gonna fire it. That's your problem.

Or I definitely thought that before.

Here's how you're going to do this, okay? You're either gonna put the problem back on me or you're gonna explain it to me.

Well, I love that. I love that answer. Because what you didn't say is, that's impossible, or that's ridiculous.

Right.

Or you're an idiot for even suggesting that.

Right?

Right. These are things you might be thinking, but you rewarded it in a very diplomatic way.

Right. Right now. And then we're stepping all the way back, roughly, towards no. But I never want you to get blindsided by no.

Okay?

If you ever hear no from me, you're going to see it coming. Right? And you're going to appreciate that you weren't caught off guard. We say no all the time. I'm involved in another negotiation right now. Then I'm politely, clearly, gently saying no. And because I'm saying it politely, clearly and gently, they're working on solving the problems, okay.

Because they want you so bad.

And also because I'm not being a jerk about it.

Okay.

I'm like, look. And I'll say, really, Look, I understand why you're asking for what you're asking for. I can't do that. Here's why.

Right.

You know that. Here's why. That doesn't work for me.

It could be logistics, it could be timing, it could be budget.

Could be a lot of reasons.

Yeah.

Now, if I lay that out to you, then you get to make a decision on your own. You preserve your autonomy. You either walk it away, no hard feelings, or you see if you can solve it.

Right.

I haven't demanded that you solve it. I said, here's the problem. And under this set of circumstances. I'm sorry, I'm afraid the answer for me is no. The circumstances change. I'm always open to conversation.

I'm curious. Do you ever play hard to get on purpose?

No.

Okay. So you're always just a.

That would be disingenuous. Yeah. And integrity's got to be your currency.

I feel like that happens to me a lot. People are either sandbagging yes or they're fronting yes. And it's hard for me to sometimes cut through what's true.

Right.

I got to get to the bottom of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, that's very common. Depending upon the industry, it ebbs and flows in different places. But when people are successful doing it, they crow about it. And then it gives a skewed perception of how often it works. It tends to be very successful short term, very self destructive. Long term.

Yeah, self destructive long term. Because once you get burned, you're not gonna do business with that person again.

I can't trust you, Right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that makes no sense. If you plan to be in business for, you know, more than a couple of years, you gotta think long term.

Yeah. And then you do one thing, you do something right, three people know about it, you do something wrong, 12 people know about it.

Right.

It gets around really fast. Yeah. And get back to Cuban. You know, a conversation I had with him about negotiation. He likes to spend a lot of time up front getting to know the other person, their core values. Get building trust, because then it accelerates every subsequent negotiation. If I can trust you. If the first business deal we did together, it took us two weeks to get to know each other. The second business deal, maybe we only got to talk for three days. And the third or the fourth deal, you call me up, let me know what you want, I agree or disagree, and we move forward. Trust is an accelerator. It increases your velocity of the number of deals that you can make. So you got to be trustworthy and you got to deal with people and you get burned occasionally. That just made you smarter.

Let me dig a little deeper on that question, which is how long do I give the other person until I. If I want to do the deal with that person, let's assume I trust that person. The deal seems reasonable, it's collaborative, but for whatever reason, that person's dragging their feet or hasn't made a decision or. And I've got other options, you know, how do I know when to cut bait or when that other person is just trying to wear me down? Like, is there a.

No, really early on. I mean, either you're making progress or you're not. If you're not making progress, it's for good reason.

Okay.

The other side, disorganized. It's not important to them. They're playing you. If you're not making progress, you need to get out.

Well, they're not the decision maker. That's happened to me too.

Well, you know, there's the decision makers. There's this great mythology about the decision maker. The deal killer is Every bit as important as the decision maker. Probably more important than a decision maker. A long time ago, we were competing for. We were in, you know, a bidding process for negotiation training for Verizon, and we didn't get it. And another company was leading for a broader group of training and wanted to make us part of it. And so we're like, all right, if you can get us into Verizon and they buy the negotiation training, we'll happily do it. So we didn't get the contract, but in the process, the company that was leading the proposal said fully 50% of the deals that Verizon signs are never implemented.

Wow. Half.

And then you start looking around and you start seeing. That's really common.

Wow. Okay. So they say, yes, and you're like, we won. And then it doesn't happen.

And you're like, well, they got a signed deal, except for. And everybody knows the TNC phase, the terms and conditions.

Right, right, right. The attorneys get a hold of it.

The attorneys. And there's always outs.

Okay, yeah.

So. And the attorneys may decide to tank the deal because they're annoyed at the person assigned it.

Yeah, yeah.

Or they're annoyed that they weren't consulted before it signed. An attorney who's not consulted before a deal is signed in order to show that they're earning their living.

Right, right.

Has to do everything they can to tear the deal apart.

Yeah, good point.

So they're the deal killers.

That's how they put points on the board.

Yeah, that's how they put. But what would happen if you found a way to involve the attorneys in even thinking about the deal before it gets signed?

How do you do that?

What do your attorneys. How do attorneys feel about this? The other deals the attorneys in the past have had problems with, how's it broken down for you? How does your attorney. How does your. How does your internal counsel feel about this deal? Now, I'm going to ask you that three or four times again. How questions not designed to get an answer. How questions get you to think. Now, the first time I asked you, how does your internal legal counsel feel about this? They're gonna say, ah, they're fine. Don't worry about this. You know, they're good about it. But it's gonna bother you that I asked, and you're gonna wonder, and you're gonna start thinking about, you know, the last deal I signed before checking with them, they killed it, and you're probably gonna write it off. But if I ask you that the second time or the third time, you're gonna think, you know, I really hate it when they kill my deals.

Yeah.

And that's embarrassing.

Yeah.

So I'm gonna go check with the internal counsel to see what they think of this deal.

Yeah. Send them a draft ahead of time instead of wait till the end.

That's what I'm thinking about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, and here's what I'm dealing with. And here are the pressures I'm under. I'm trying to get you to engage in a negotiation with a team behind you that are not coming to the table. And the minute you start to coordinate with them, then I start to diminish the deal killers. Mm.

I love that. That's like preventive maintenance in a way. Right?

Like, you're very much so. Right. Yeah. You don't put preventive maintenance in your car engine. What happens?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're dead. You're done.

I mean, I think he hit it on. Yeah. Yeah. That is excellent advice. Can we talk about criticism? How we should interpret criticism?

Should ignore it all the time.

Okay. How. How have you mastered that? Because I am not good at that sometimes. Well, let me just say I'm my own worst critic. I'm very self critical all the time.

That's your amygdala again.

Yes, I know I have.

Listen to your gut, not your amygdala.

The first. First step in solving the problem is to admit you have a problem.

I've met the enemy and it is me.

Yes, yes. Okay. So ignore all criticism. Okay. Say more about that.

Never take advice from somebody you wouldn't trade places with.

Okay.

Don't take directions from somebody who hasn't been where you're going. You'll never be criticized by somebody doing better than you.

Okay, I've heard all those before. I think those.

So if they're not doing better than you, they haven't been where you're going. Now. They might be right, but the percentage of times that a critic might be right are so low that it's a bad gamble. We don't live in an ivory tower world where everything is black and white. Everything's nothing's 100%. We live in a Las Vegas world where you're playing the odds. The chances that a critic is wrong is 99 times out of a hundred good odds that they're wrong.

Right. I'll take those out.

So you're gonna bet on the critics advice when they're wrong now, they won. They're right one time in 100.

Yeah, sometimes it does.

That's a low Stakes, percentage. You need somebody who's right more than they're wrong. Now, the person you would trade places with, the person who's been where you're going, are they infallible? No, they just write more than a critic is. So you seek out the people who've been that you would trade places with.

Have you ever been in a negotiation with someone who, you know, starts to. To criticize your either approach or your.

Like my counterpart is criticizing me.

Yeah.

There's something out there called the Cartman the drama triangle, or AKA the Cartman triangle. I learned about it on the suicide hotline back in the 1990s. It's relevant then. It's relevant today. Somebody's criticizing you in a negotiation. They're playing a role of persecutor. They're trying to knock you off balance and trying to get you defensive. Yeah. It's not, it's. It's. It's not a really an ethical thing to do.

Right.

It's to exploit you, to take advantage of you.

Well, this is, this goes back to my original question, which is sometimes I feel like I get bullied or critics.

Or bullies or persecutors. Yeah. They're not on your side.

It's not always so overt, like, you know.

Right.

It's. It's sometimes subtle or passive aggressive, but it's, it's.

Here's one of the most subtle ones out there that people are repeating all the time. Look, I'm really disappointed in you.

Yeah. I expected more from a varsity letterman. Right. It's like that type of approach.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and like, that's very manipulative. Right, right.

You know, you've been in business for this long.

You know, anybody that uses that phrase, you got to take a close look at them.

Right.

Because the very manipulative type learns it. Learn, learn, learn it.

Yeah.

Like. And if you, when you're looking for it, it's hysterical. There was a, I think a Republican congressman somewhere in the south, not, not U.S. house of Representatives, but I think a local congressman had been involved in affair for a really long time. But in. Deny it, deny it, denying it, until finally a reporter basically gave him the text messages that he'd been going back and forth with the woman.

Right.

He was caught red handed.

Sure.

So immediately goes, I'm very disappointed in myself. I'm like, oh, this guy knows how to weasel out almost anything. Because if he's disappointed in himself, then now he's the adult again. You don't got to punish him because he's punishing himself.

Right.

So yeah. I'm so disappointed. I let down my family. This guy's work, you know, he's ducking, dodging responsibility. When you're the victim and the persecutor at the same time, then who's going to punish you?

Yes, Chris. Okay. This, I mean, it's almost like a trauma response. I have experienced this a lot. I think it's just been insidious. Like I haven't been aware of it. It's been like under the radar probably. As I'm thinking back, these are kind of classic narcissists who have been negotiating with someone who, who thinks that they're negotiating from a point of view. Power or, you know, like they're up here. Perception.

Right.

I'm right here.

Right, right, right.

You know, maybe, who knows? But like that sound that sounds really familiar. So what do I do? I just throw up the red flag and go, I'm out?

Well, first of all, you become aware of who you're dealing with.

Right. Okay.

You know, I used to say when I was an FBI agent, you know, all informants were manipulative. You got a tiger by the tail. Don't kidding yourself that you're holding on to a tiger's tail. Don't. Just because it's not growling at the moment doesn't make it a pussycat.

Right.

So when you're dealing with a cutthroat counterpart, don't kid yourself about whether or not it's a cutthroat.

Right.

Beyond. Do not project your sincerity into someone who has not.

Right. Don't pretend like it's going to work out somehow. They're going to see it your way.

Right?

Yeah. They're not going to be reasonable.

Now, knowing that this person is this type of person, do I want to proceed in the deal now? This relationship is going to come to an end. Okay. It's going to.

Right.

Do I want to proceed knowing that this relationship is coming to an end? One of the two of us is going to walk.

Yeah.

There is no long term relationship here right now. Maybe the value, the short term value is worth it for you.

Yeah. There's a risk reward calculation.

It was early in a Black Swan group's history, before the book sold as well as it's selling now. We were doing business with a company and the president was not trustworthy and we knew it. But the experience that we were gaining at the time and the development of my personnel for being involved in implementing the deal was. Was worth it. But I had no illusions about the fact that I was dealing with a liar and the relationship came to an end. No matter how hard we delivered phenomenal value, how hard we tried, we always over delivered. We were always a great return on investment for the other side. They never stopped lying. And eventually I couldn't take the lion anymore, the manipulation. And the liar doesn't like to be called a liar. They hate it. And I got really angry once and I let them know that I thought they were a liar and they didn't want to deal with us anymore. And we were like. Because it's been painful dealing with you.

Right, Right. That is a good feeling when you can, I mean, if, if they're your client to fire your client, that's, that's perfectly acceptable to do.

It's one of the hardest decisions for any business person to make. And when they get to that point, it always accelerates everybody's success. I have never seen any business that didn't really begin to really become successful as soon as they started firing clients or firing customers or firing counterparts. As soon as they start shedding baggage, everybody thinks that it's a scare. The world is scarce in point. The fat. It accelerates everybody's business.

I love that answer. Let's, let's wrap things up. Maybe. Is there a couple questions from the audience to do a quick. We've got maybe time for one or two. If we have a question for Chris before we go. Anything you want to ask about?

There's a hand there. Yes.

I'll repeat the question so you can hear on camera. Go ahead.

Like human nature, basics are universal, period. Everybody's born when we come out of the womb. We're pretty much exactly the same. We get a basic wiring. It's a lot like your respiratory system. Everybody has the same respiratory system. Our emotional wiring is referred to as the limbic system. And there's a lot of great analogies to the respiratory system. For example, if I were to ask you to control your emotions, you could control them for about as long as you can hold your breath, eventually it's going to go back on autopilot, just like your breathing will. So culture is on top of how you're wired as a human being. So if you focus on what resonates with people as human beings, then you can begin. If there's any cultural adaptation that's necessary, you can make that easily. Plus, if I'm really intently trying to understand you, it doesn't matter if you're Muslim or Buddhist or Christian or Jewish or even vegan, you're Going to appreciate being understood. And so that's what makes the skills work in every country. So you use an, an email is to land one point. Now what do I got to do to the email in order to get the point to land? If I got bad news, my email is going to start up by saying, you're not going to like this, then I'm going to say what the bad news is and then I'm going to follow up with either a how question or a no oriented question. Is it a ridiculous idea for us to talk about this? Is it a ridiculous idea for me to give you some options? But I'm not going to give you the options and the problem in the same email because you got to get the cadence of the email the same way as you would like to have the conversation, a good conversation. You speak and you shut up and you let the other side respond. Whereas emails, we want to give our whole speech in one email and then the other side reacts negatively to the one thing we didn't want them to react negatively to. So you can do it in writing. You just got it, you got to chunk it down.

Can I ask what's the follow up question to that? What's the psychological benefit of asking what sounds like a negative? Is this ridiculous that we're doing so and so or is this a terrible idea? Why not go in with positive?

People feel safe and protected when they say no. When people say yes, most of the time they're concerned. Yes is commitment. What am I let myself in for? What's the catch? What did I miss? If I say yes, what kind of problems is that going to trigger? You never think that when you say no, you feel safe and protected.

When you say no, does that have a caveat at all? Like even if it's something simple or an obvious, like if I say, do you want to have a follow up meeting? That's a yes or no. Or should I say would you be against or is it a ridiculous idea to have a follow up meeting about this?

Very much like the problem with why is the problem with yes. You know, I may be asking you why and I may not be accusing you of doing something wrong, but if you did do something wrong, I'm always going to ask you why. So you've been conditioned. I think in Africa they have a saying, once you've been bitten by a snake, you're afraid of ropes. You've been conditioned on why. Now what's the problem with yes? The hustler, the con artist got you with yes. Would you like to. Would you like to sleep better?

Right.

Would you like to make more money? Would you like to live longer because you slept better? Right. Now you know I'm going someplace with that.

Yeah.

And the minute you say yes, you're going to be worried that you've just committed to buying a $35,000 mattress.

Right?

Right. And so everybody that hustles other people, the flim. Those are flim. Flam that bamboozle you. They bamboozled you with. Yes. Now, you've been. Yes. Battered. So once bitten by a snake, you're scared of ropes. Even though you. In a completely different circumstance is you're a genuine guy. You're not trying to flim. Flam me. You're not trying to bamboozle me. But the problem is you engage in behavior that the con artist engaged in. And so there's an institutional, instinctive reaction that's already been built into me that I can't help but get worried on any. Yes. It creates some anxiety. No matter what.

Okay.

So we just get out of it entirely. You.

You call out the elephant in the room right away.

Call the elephant in the room. Or even if I call you on the phone, is now a bad time?

Yeah, I do that a lot because I guess I want people to do that to me. Sometimes it's. Well, most of the time it's a bad time. If someone just calls me these days.

And if they say that, what's your answer? Yeah, it is a bad time. And now you're both on the same sheet of music. Okay, I won't waste your time. Are you against suggesting a time? But in point of fact, if I say it's now a bad time and you say it is a bad time almost every single time, you're going to tell me when a good time is. I can't talk to you now. I could talk to you in an hour. I got an hour tomorrow. My Wednesday afternoon is completely open now. I got your undivided attention at a scheduled point in time.

Mm, I love it. We might have time for one more. Let's go in the back.

Somebody that keep track of somebody that is only focused on price. How often you close that deal, you're gonna find that close rate is probably really low. Now, what's that behavior begin to look like? The first response. If somebody just wants a price, my reaction to that is the label sounds like price is really important to you. Their answer is going to give me more of a clue as to whether or not I'm being played, whether I'm the fool in the game? Am I the rabbit? Am I there to drive the price down on the favorite? Also in the do we have a previous relationship? Have I dealt with them before? They're most likely going to price shop somebody they've never dealt with. So if you've never dealt with them, that continues to gather evidence that they're only looking to you to drive down a price on a favorite. So start to look for the behaviors that you're concerned about. Let your gut instinct start to begin to accumulate the data, and you're going to get a much better feel much more quickly as to whether or not you're being played. If you can't get them off price at all, then the chances that you're just there as a competing bid are very high. That's also quite likely that whoever you're working for doesn't see it that way. That's why you need to start to collect your own data on a profile of a real buyer, the profile of somebody who's just price shopping or feature shopping or looking for free consulting. If you can then show the percentage of people that you close who start out with that phrase is very low. And if you can't get them out of that phrase, then your boss is going to forgive you for moving on to the deals that you will close. Because in point of fact, you're going to increase your deal velocity. Challenger the challenger says a good book. Philosophically speaking, it's not great at teaching you how to be a challenger. They lay out to you why you should be a challenger. And if those of you that aren't familiar with it, if you're in sales, they basically lay out the prototype that the challenger mentality is a sales mentality that tends to thrive in all environments. Recessions, economic booms. Challengers do well all the time. They're not real clear on how to be a challenger. You take that idea, take the tools from never split the difference. Teach yourself how to be a challenger. They're great supplements to one another. Challenger sale is also where we got this statistic that 20% of the time you're being played. Now, since we've taught people how to sort of tease that out very quickly, we think the numbers are closer to 80%. And if you wanted to be in play, they basically asked business executives, how often do you lie to the other side? You never have any intention whatsoever of ever buying from them, but you engage in a negotiation because you're looking for your price shopping, you're looking for free consulting. What any of the Reasons are the thousand plus executives that they surveyed said yeah, probably about 20% of the time. Now ask yourself, did they exaggerate because they said how often do you lie to your counterparts? Are they going to underestimate that number or overestimate it? They're going to lie about how often they lie. So if they admitted the lying 20% of the time, that number's got to be north of that. And the people that we teach you know how to, how to. We call it proof of life. Proof of life. Of the deal. If. Is there a deal and is the deal with you people that adopt and really understand proof of life, we're seeing numbers up as high as 80%.

Yeah. In my world they would call it be called an rfp. Like they want to request for proposal. We stopped doing RFPs 10 years ago because we felt like that statistic, 80, 90%, we're just getting played or they're just doing due diligence. Like, yep, they already have a friend who they want to give the deal to. But like they gotta, you know, put it out there for fairness or whatever. And we're just, we're just one of those.

Yep, yep. If you didn't help write the description for the rfp, if they didn't consult you on how to describe it, you're not getting it.

Right, Right. And then you give them all your great ideas anyway and it's like.

And they implement them.

This happened to me actually with, with a show concept with a major publisher in this neighborhood. I give away. And it ended up being one of their best performing series of all time. Right. It's one of those like ah, I won't.

That's painful.

I won't mention that it could have been someone like, because they, they have ethics, I think.

There you go.

It couldn't have been them, right?

Couldn't have been. No, no, they would never do that.

Well, this has been terrific. We'll put another pin and all some of the other things that we've been.

One thing I wanted to touch on real quick, please. It's really important that you did it. Last impression is a lasting impression.

Yes.

Everybody focuses on a first impression. You get away with a mediocre first impression. You just don't want to make a bad first impression.

Right. Did I wear the right thing today?

The shoes made a great impression on me.

Okay, wonderful.

But the last impression is a lasting impression. You can't get away with a mediocre last impression. How do you fix that? For example, in emails, you getting ready to write an email. First of all, let the email flow out naturally. You're probably going to put wonderful, lovely, flowery regard regarding statements at the beginning of the email. Hey, how are you? Want you to know we care about you. We'd love to make a deal with you. We, you know, we believe in your product. Copy and paste that. Delete it from the front of the email, put it at the back. You're going to write exactly how the email should end naturally at the beginning. I do that all the time. But I realize that the last impression is a lasting impression. So I sit down, I bang out that email. Hey, how are you? You know, I'm looking forward to being in Los Angeles. I want to be on your show. You know, hopefully the episode is the best ever and I'm sharp the whole time because I love your concepts, I love what you're doing in the world. I will copy and paste that and put it at the end. Now, maybe I write it twice. Maybe it's so brilliant I can't bear to not have it at the beginning. But it's best at the end because the last impression is the lasting impression. Long time ago, Gallup Organization. I'm sitting in a lecture at a seminar they gave that said people don't remember things how they happen. They remember the most intense moment and how it ended. You remember how things end on Broadway. They say, give them a big finish, they'll forgive you for anything. I'm listening to Aaron Sorkin's masterclass and he says your movie could be an hour and 30 minutes of phenomenal entertainment. And if the last 15 minutes stink, the critics are going to kill you. Because the last impression is the lasting impression. Your first impression just can't be bad. It could be mediocre, but your last impression can't be mediocre. It's got to be great. So the brilliant stuff you put at the beginning of your email, put it at the end.

I love it. Let's give Chris a round of applause.

Talk about the newsletter, please. We got a free negotiation newsletter. If it's free. I'll take three famous FBI saying, government saying. But that's not what makes it valuable. It's actionable and it's concise. That's what makes it valuable. Something that's free doesn't matter if the advice is useless or if it takes a long time to get through. Simplest way to get the newsletter is a text to sign up function. The number you text to is 3-3-TRIP-733777. The message you send to that number is Black Swan method. B L A C K space S W A N space Method M E T H O D Not cap sensitive. That's the best way to sign up. The newsletter is a gateway to everything. Training announcements. When are we going to be in la? When are we going to be in New York? You get a concise, actionable email on Tuesday mornings. Any announcements on special stuff? We're putting out and you're rocking and rolling.

I love it. And then for enterprise level consulting, you know, people can go to Black Swan Group. Where do they find you?

Yeah, the. The website is blackswanltd.com B L A C K S W A N L t d like love untildaylight.com the info blackswanltd.com it's gonna get rooted to the right person. Whatever you're looking for, the right person will get back to you.

Awesome. Chris, always a pleasure.

Thanks, man.

Can't wait to see the doc film. Can't wait to see all the things that you're doing. Appreciate you.

Yeah, thanks, man. Thanks for having me on.

Let's cut.

I mean, we were just sitting back, you know, chopping it up, reminiscing about the good old days and all that, you know, tracking my roots, where I came from and where I'm going. But like I say, man always said it, it's not about the destination, it's all about the journey. Ain't nothing changed with the weather the dangling carrot it hang from the rear view your dreams in the past ain't nowhere near you Backseat drivers got nothing but 2 cents shotgun riders too biased they all liars. I should get an A forever I'm too tired but I'm never giving up. That's why I'm kind of in my role model. Like it or not, I gotta play it.