BigDeal - #44 FBI Hostage Negotiator: The Art Of Negotiating To Get Everything You Want | Chris Voss
Episode Date: January 2, 2025🚀 Main Street Over Wall Street is where the real deals get done. Join top investors, founders, and operators for three days of powerful connection, sharp strategy, and big opportunities — live in... Austin, Nov 2–4. https://contrarianthinking.biz/msows-bigdeal Codie Sanchez sits down with Chris Voss, former FBI hostage negotiator and author of the bestselling book Never Split the Difference. Together, they explore how the high-stakes strategies used to negotiate with criminals can be applied to business, personal relationships, and everyday decision-making. Discover powerful tactics like the "tactical empathy" method, why "no" is not the end of the conversation, and how to use mirroring to create deeper connections. Whether you're negotiating a business deal, managing a team, or navigating tough personal situations, Chris’s insights will give you the tools to communicate more effectively and achieve better outcomes. Want help scaling your business to $1M in monthly revenue? Click here to connect with my consulting team. Topics Covered: The psychology of negotiation: lessons from FBI hostage scenarios How to diffuse tension and build trust in any conversation Practical negotiation tactics for business leaders and entrepreneurs Why listening is the ultimate superpower in any negotiation -------------------- Learn more here: https://www.blackswanltd.com/negotiation-mastery-summit-2025 -------------------- MORE FROM BIGDEAL: 🎥 YouTube 📸 Instagram 📽️ TikTok MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ: 🎥 YouTube 📸 Instagram 📽️ TikTok OTHER THINGS WE DO: 🫂 Our community 📰 Free newsletter 🏦 Biz buying course 🏠 Resibrands 💰 CT Capital 🏙️ Main St Hold Co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Chris Voss is one of the FBI's former lead hostage negotiators.
He has negotiated with terrorists like ISIS.
He has stopped live hostage situations.
He has also negotiated across some of the biggest boardrooms and billion-dollar companies all around the world.
If you haven't read his book, never split the difference.
You should absolutely read his book.
It's one of my favorite books when it comes to negotiating.
And every time I speak to Chris, my mind gets blown wide open with new ways to make more money
and get people to do the things that I want them to do.
This podcast has all of that.
He has stories in here.
I've actually never heard him share before anywhere.
And he has things that you can take today to make you more
and also to make you maybe even a better human
and how you communicate with those you love
and those you don't like very much.
Without further ado, my friend Chris Voss.
What I wanted to talk about to you today is like we've been talking a lot lately
and you've been everywhere, Prague, Helsinki, you know, all across the world.
And I was wondering, what are you,
talking about now? Like, what are you obsessing on? Well, more ways to help people understand why this
works. And then a talk I just gave in Riyadh, which, by the way, Saudi these days is fascinating,
like fascinating. I think they told me 60% of the country is 35 and under. Like youngsters that want to
get at it, they're careless for about the past and more about the future, which is what that
age groups about. Like we don't care how you guys did in the past. We want to see what's the best
way to do it going forward. So what I talked to them a lot, particularly in the Middle East,
like why are we all the same and yet simultaneously all different? Which was at one point
of time I thought it was an academic distinction that just made academics happy to talk about,
the difference between feelings and emotions. The first time somebody brought that up, I thought,
you know, I don't care what the difference is. I'm a layman. I, you know, I make stuff work.
And we're going to use the black swan skills,
whether or not there's a distinction between feelings and emotions.
I don't care.
And so a friend of mine, Eric Barker, wrote a book called Barking Up the Wrong Tree,
and a blog by the same name.
And he's written that different cultures have terms for feelings
that other cultures don't have.
Like in this island of South Pacific,
they don't even have a term for this feeling or emotion.
So how do you explain that?
And then the consistent multicultural experts who say, yeah, you got to understand Arabs,
you got to understand Germans, the difference between Germans, Italians, Arabs, all this.
And my response to that is like, look, dude, you're just keeping yourself employed over nonsense.
So what's the answer?
or the hypothesis which I haven't seen it,
how you prove it,
but I'm not seeing anybody disagree,
that you're born with five basic emotions.
It's original equipment.
You come to planet Earth with five core emotions.
And I think there are angers, sadness, disgust,
happiness,
and I can't remember what the other one or two are.
and the only argument I'm seeing is whether there's five or there's seven,
and is it happiness or joy.
But I'm not seeing anybody contend with that.
So part one, that's why we're all the same, because you're human, period.
You're born with these emotions.
Now, me being an observer of navigating them,
my first observation is four out of the five are negative.
Only one is positive.
And the Black Swan approach is let's deactivate the negatives,
and then the positives will take off on their own, which is the case.
That's why we got the skill of the accusations audit, listing the negatives,
and then why, if you're not angry yet, I might say to you,
it's going to make you angry.
And it doesn't plant anger, it inoculate you from it.
So, you know, we got a strategic advantage as soon as you understand this.
But then as you go through life,
your emotions interact with your experience, creating feelings, which then begins to explain, you know,
there's a detachment disorder syndrome of people that aren't held enough in the first year of their
life. Most commonly shows up with orphans because they're in an orphanage, you know,
prior to probably this century, they didn't know they need to hold them. They didn't understand
detachment syndrome, and a lot of people that were adopted in the past, you know, they
get to their mid teens, their parents adopted them at age two, three maybe, showed them nothing
but love. But in the mid-teens, they're lying, they're not, they have an attachment,
detachment syndrome. Like, where did this come from, first year of life? I heard that too with
preemie babies. Like, they originally said you can't touch the preemie babies because bacteria
and they have compromised immune system. And then they tried to study, I think it was here in New
York where they allowed for touch like for an hour a day just holding them and the
preemie babies grew faster and survived more just from human touch yeah yeah which is
wild yes yes so but that's you interacting with the world the explanation for
social paths has the bureaus always try to figure that out when we're you know how does one
become a serial killer what happened and one of the hypothesis is when they were five six
seven years old, they did something, made a mistake, parents punished the hell out of them.
Three months later, they made the same mistake, parents didn't do anything.
What's that teacher child? There are no rules.
So, but then that's, again, you interacting with the world.
So, yes, we're all the same and we're all different, but if I understand the fundamental
rules of how to navigate emotions, no matter where you grew up, no matter what your ethnicity,
your culture, your diet, your religion.
I know that you've got these five core emotions.
And so empathy, tactical empathy,
works with Arabs, works with Persians,
works with Latinos because you're a human being.
So in pointing that out these days
and what I'm talking about,
it makes it easier when I'm in Riyadh.
And it's an international audience.
And they go like, well, you're an American.
It's an American.
and it's an American book.
This is an American methodology.
And I'm like, no, it's not.
As a matter of fact, it's human.
And so that's why I'm talking to people about this a lot.
What exactly is tactical empathy, and why does it matter?
It's effectively proactive listening based on patterns of behavior that are predicted by things like your five core emotions and neuroscience.
Now, originally, empathy was originally designed to not be sympathy.
It's been contorted, convoluted into usage.
These days, people say if you have empathy, that means you sympathize, you have compassion.
Empathy is just observing the other person's emotions and where it's you getting out of the way.
Empathy from an Israeli to a Palestinian is to the Israeli to say, you hate us because you think we're a colonizing power that's bent on your extermination.
That's not agreement.
That's observing the other side's.
view, Palestinian to an Israeli.
The world persecuted you.
You feel that this is your homeland, which is taken away from you two thousand years ago.
Ultimately, there was a global effort to exterminate you perpetrated by the Nazis in the 1930s.
Most of the world stood back and watched.
And then finally, after all these years, you finally have a homeland, and this is the only place you feel safe.
there was no agreement from either side on that.
That's empathy.
That's stating the other side's perspective.
And that's the true application of empathy.
We called a tactical empathy originally because it's a little why you tell a seal guy,
no, we're not teaching you yoga breathing.
We're teaching you tactical breathing.
That's so good.
And then the guy go like, oh, okay, I'll do tactical breathing.
I'm not doing yoga, but I'll do tactical.
That's right.
So we're trying to make the term more usable.
I like that. You know, it's interesting because I was actually talking to Chris, my husband,
about this the other day, that I remember when I was a journalist. And at the time, I was talking
to cartel members. And these were young cartel members, you know, so, you know, they were really
human. You know, they were like young guys at a club. You could find them often by their tattoos
and some of the outfits that they would wear in northern Mexico. And these are people that
that have done categorically awful things, right?
Rape, murder, violence, lawbreaking.
And I remember at the time talking to them
and saying to a girlfriend afterwards
because we were cut writing a story,
like, you know, it's fascinating
because I can understand
why they are the way that they are
based on the conversations that I have with them.
And her response was,
why the fuck would you talk to somebody like that?
You know, that's like talking to a white supremacist.
Like, why would you even want to understand
where they came from?
And I thought that was,
really interesting. Like, how do you talk to somebody that you physically, like,
viscerally disagree with and should you? Yeah. Yes, you can. Yes, you should. And
you don't equate understanding with agreement. And most people have trouble drawing that
distinction. And that was actually the, you know, as an FBI hostage negotiator, that was the first
time they had teachers. Because how the hell am I going to agree with the guy on the other side?
You know, I'm Al-Qaeda on the other side. ISIS on the other side.
How am I going to agree with them?
I'm not.
However, on behalf the American people,
you guys are putting me in there to have an influence on his behavior.
And so if I'm going to get in my way,
then you should fire me.
So, and I actually learned that previous to that on the hotline,
suicide hotline.
You know, you don't believe in suicide at all.
I don't for religious reasons and spiritual reasons.
so then what are you going to do?
Get on the phone with somebody's suicidal and say,
and be judgmental, tell them they're doing the wrong thing.
It's not going to help.
It doesn't help anybody.
It's a waste of time.
Yeah.
So when you can decouple those,
then actually you give yourself the ability
to influence people in a way nobody else can.
And I was kicking this around just the other night
with Derek Garnett,
head of my training.
We teach curiosity as the ultimate
attribute for you
to make you smart
and more resilient
or even anti-fragile
is Nassim Nicholas Talib would say
so
curiosity could be a very
self-centered thing to do
simultaneously
I can
open anybody up
like anybody
with my curiosity
because curiosity
is impossible to resist.
And so you can talk to a member of the cartel
and they will not be able to resist your curiosity
because you're not judging,
since you're not agreeing,
then you've got no problem internally.
You're not violating any of your core values to talk to them.
Because you're not agreeing with them.
But they will open up to you
in ways they will not open up.
to anybody else which gives you a superpower.
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That's so interesting.
So today, we yell at each other on the internet.
We have massive judgment for each other.
We think it's wrong often to associate to date or engage with somebody who has different views than us.
Right. Right.
And what we're actually doing is maybe killing our own superpower with that.
Yeah, well said.
That's right.
Interesting.
So if you wanted to influence somebody, what is the way to do it?
Is the way to do it, curiosity?
Yeah, and then they'll feel it.
And everything that they say that would be encouraged,
because they want to tell you.
Like there isn't anybody out there that doesn't want to open up to you.
They still want to be judged.
And as soon as you're delighted, because curiosity is highly positive.
I'm in a conversation, how we got into this with Derek,
I'm in a conversation three nights ago with a woman.
We're describing another conversation.
I interviewed somebody for a marketing position on my team.
And shortly I found out that they had a formative moment in their life
was during a seance on a Ouija board
and his ex-girlfriend's haunted house that she grew up in.
Okay.
And because I find that stuff out about people.
I find a thread.
I start digging in.
I'm going to find out about you.
And so this woman is listening to a conversation.
She says, how do you get from an instance?
interview for a marketing job to Ouija board in a haunted house.
I'm like, you know, it's, I don't know, it's just me doing my thing.
She's, I don't see how you got there at all.
So I turn a conversation on her to draw her out, and she's being very guarded
because she knows I'm getting ready to come at her with the skills.
And she's like, you can't do this on me.
And so we started out asking her about her background where she grew up and her dad,
and she's like, I don't remember anything about that.
I don't know anything about that.
I don't know how he got there.
I don't know, this and that.
15 minutes later, I'm getting a detailed history of this guy, her father,
and it's utterly fascinating.
It enlightened me about Cuba.
It enlightened me about the relationship between Spain and Cuba.
I found out that Castro's parents were Cuban.
Now, he was born in, or his parents were Spanish.
Yeah.
Now, he was born in Cuba.
But your first set of values from age zero to five is what you grew up with in the house.
So even though he's Cuban, he started the world of Spanish values because his parents were emigrated from Spain.
Oh, shit, those are my people.
That's not good.
Which then puts a whole other spin on the history.
Now, I'm fascinated by this.
I'm curious.
This is exactly the same thing that she told me 15 minutes earlier.
She didn't know.
Interesting.
Because she's blocking me.
She wants to know, am I using a technique on her?
And is it safe to open up?
And am I going to criticize?
But I'm just, I'm fascinating.
I'm curious, which then comes out in how I respond.
She says something sort of innocuously about some member of a family.
And I'm like, yeah, really?
Like, how does that work?
Because I know this and I know that.
And how does it play?
And I'm intensely curious.
she opens up
and not only that at the end of the conversation
she wants to have another one
having been opened up
against her will
she found the experience
great
which means she doesn't resent it which means
she'll talk to me in the future
which means I can ask deeply
core value related questions in the future
if we're working on something together
and we have an issue she's going to trust me
this is the beginning of a great
working relationship, great person, whatever you want.
And that's what curiosity does.
You can open anybody on earth up
with curiosity.
Do you think, I mean, young people, especially today,
you know, there's lots of studies that show that
we have less face-to-face communication than ever
before, lots of async communication.
We don't really like to pick up the phone.
You know, we like to do a lot of text communication.
Do you think young people are worse?
at communicating than prior to generations?
Without question.
Communication, emotional intelligence
is an unlimited skill and a perishable skill.
So if you haven't built it,
you haven't built it.
You know, it's like going to the gym.
You're not going to be in shape unless you go to the gym.
Stop going to the gym, you start sliding back.
Now that doesn't mean they can't do it.
And so the interesting thing we found about that is
the one percenters, the top performers, in my view,
no matter what the generation, they're all the same,
whether they're 20s, 30, 40s, 50s, 60s.
So they do have an innate curiosity and a desire for innovation.
And a desire, first to beat the competition,
but then the real revelation is how do I be the best I could be?
That's the other thing I'm talking to people a lot about now
because you may be best in class.
but for you, you're only at your C grade level.
And you don't know it because you're best in class.
So then how do you get to a level that you don't even know it's there?
And the top performers, as soon as they discover empathy,
they're like, wow, this is cool.
I can't get enough of this.
And I got a 22-year-old, a 28-year-old, a 32-year-old.
And when we're doing our live in-person training,
they are some of the most interesting
because the world has said,
well, you only want to text,
so I'll just text you.
Or, you know,
the educational institutions,
kids these days just want to be digital.
So we'll feed them what they want.
And they don't know that they've been blocked from this.
So when they discover communication,
like the world has opened up.
So yes,
they tend to be less skilled in it.
but when they discover it, they're more delighted than anybody else is.
Interesting.
Yeah, it's almost like we've forgotten what we knew.
Yeah.
So what about, I want to go back to something you said before because it's fascinating.
You were negotiating with what we would call terrorists.
Bad guys.
Yeah, as bad as you can imagine.
What is your process for getting interested in them?
Do you have to fake it for a point?
Do you have to fake non-disgust?
How do you have a conversation with somebody
that you hate like a terrorist?
No, you don't have to fake it.
You don't have to fake curiosity.
Like, I didn't realize that at the time,
like I knew how influential the process was from practice.
I didn't understand all the moving parts of the time.
I just knew the abilities it gave me,
which was if I'm listening, if I say a couple of things,
if I understand how they see things,
and I can feed it back to them,
then I'm going to gain traction with them very quickly
in a way that they are not prepared for.
They're prepared for arguments.
They were never prepared for empathy, ever.
Bad guys who rehearse in advance, what to expect.
Hezbollah in the 80s,
when they were kidnapping Westerns all over the place,
they were told what the kidnapped victims were going to say.
You know, the jailers had bosses,
and the jailers would say, you know,
they're going to say they're innocent. Here's a predictable dialogue and so it would wall the
jailers off that were holding the hostages. So soon but then nobody ever prepared for empathy.
Arkite didn't prepare for empathy. ISIS didn't prepare for empathy. It catches him off guard.
And I'm delighted that I know it's going to catch you off guard. So as soon as I understood
how influential that was in a very short order, what would catch them off guard, I'm
15, 20 years ago, I'm being brought in to train the hostage negotiation team nationally for the United Arab Emirates.
Sheikh that's in charge counterterrorism at the time.
I'm walked in and they say, look, understand ahead of time, if anybody takes hostages here,
shake wants to kill him.
You know, if you take hostages on Emirati soil, he doesn't care who you are.
you have violated our sovereignty
and we are going to deal with you accordingly
and so don't pitch the shake
that you're going to save lives
across a board
he wants to know how you're going to make
his people more operationally effective
his SWAT teams
how are we going to end this as soon as possible
we don't want any Emirates to get killed
but we're in here to save bad guys
so I sit down with this guy
fascinating dude
American-educated, deeply insightful thinker.
And also he walks in with no entourage by himself.
So he said, Donnie looks at me and he says,
what are you going to say?
What are you going to teach my guys to say?
And I said, here's the opening line I wanted to say.
What you're doing is a great thing.
And his mouth drops open.
And he said, now I got you because you can't wait to hear what I'm going to say next.
And that's exactly the power I want to give you all guys.
The bad guy's mouth is going to drop open and he's going to be sitting here waiting to hear the next word.
And that's when they have influence.
And he says, you're hired.
I would hire you too.
That's wild.
How did you know, did you know you're going to say that before you went in there?
When you start thinking about the dynamics and the patterns for the other side,
if some terrorist has taken hostages, how do they see it?
They're doing a great thing.
And, you know, with my colleagues, we talked about it, we understand empathy.
How does the other side see it?
How do I get into your head?
I have to say something that's really close to what the voice in your head is saying at the moment
because otherwise a voice in your head is going to distract you.
So as soon as I start lining up with a voice in your head,
you don't listen to that, you start listening to me.
Now I've got influence.
That's so true.
Even in fights.
I can think of that same thing in like interpersonal relationships.
It's like when somebody's telling me something that is not aligned with the voice in my head,
I'm ignoring it.
I'm not listening to you.
That makes all the sense in the world.
And so if you start from that standpoint,
the most important part of this conversation
is really probably your research and preparation
on who the human is.
Are you doing a lot of preparation ahead of time?
Or do these come back to the big five?
Yeah, well, you know, in point of fact,
it comes back to the big five.
In point of fact, we were taught initially
what we called emotion labeling.
Just label the emotion you hear.
Now, that emotion was always going to be negative.
And so then we made the presumption, well, yeah, of course, it's a bad history, bad situation.
So you're going to hear negative emotions.
And I didn't really realize at the time, you know, of the big five, four out of five are negative.
So I've just started to increase my percentage chances because they're human, not because they're bad guys in a bad situation, but because they're human.
and then the brain science, what little there is, the neuroscience that backs it up,
none of it contradicts it.
There just hasn't been that much to support it.
It has shown consistently that calling out negatives, not denying them, calling them out,
diffuses them.
So that's why one of our, you know, I'm teaching a Black Swan method,
I sit down at an opening meeting with you in a business setting.
I'm probably going to say right off the bat, you know,
At some point of time, you're probably going to wonder where you're here.
At some point of time, you're going to ask yourself, is this worth my time?
At some point of time, you're probably going to say to yourself, this guy's just greedy.
He's only looking out for himself.
I'm deactivating your negatives.
And inoculating from them, too.
That's the other thing.
Most people don't realize you inoculate.
A lot of people fear, you know, speak the devil into existence.
Their experience has been from denying negatives.
and the thing that nobody ever notices
instead of saying,
I don't want you to think
I'm grabbing with both hands here.
That's a denial.
But if I were to say instead,
it's probably going to feel like
I'm grabbing with both hands.
Your reaction is going to be like,
well, you've got to look out for yourself.
Yeah, that is.
Why do I want to say that?
Like, why do we want to say that back to you?
Because that's my gut reaction.
Yeah.
I think there's,
there is a fundamental,
fundamental human instinct for fairness, which the exploiters use against this on a regular
basis.
Like we call fair the F word.
And so why is it so powerful on a regular basis when somebody says to you, like, I just want
what's fair.
You know, the manipulative negotiators learned that using that phrase will cause you, probably
cause you to compromise your position.
inside you'd be like, I don't want to be unfair. You don't want to be unfair. So I think when we
call it out in the other way, then you say, yeah, you know, I got to look out from my side,
but you have to look out for yourself too. I know that that's the trigger. Now, why that's
the trigger, my hypothesis is that, you know, we are in fact wired for fairness.
Yeah, otherwise we wouldn't exist as a society, right? I mean, if we, if we, if we
We were all Machiavellian to our roots, dark triad, sociopaths that went after our own interests, we wouldn't be able to have a cooperative society.
Right.
We wouldn't be able to innovate the level that we have.
So at some degree, in order for humanity to continue, we had to err more on the side of, you know, peace, sex, continuation of species as opposed to violence and destruction.
Otherwise, we probably wouldn't be here.
I mean, New York, how many people are in this city?
Tens of millions.
And if we were all destructive and self-interested at all times, I don't think the city would work.
it'd be mad max wouldn't it yeah that's right um that's right what about you know um when i've heard you
say before that you don't really lie is that true is there ever been an investigation or a
negotiation where it was life or death so you had to lie or you think you should have to lie no i i don't
think it's ever necessary and very much against it um first of all uh liars are really good at spot
lying lies. And so we'll often invite you to lie to test you. Number one. So it's number two,
even if you're great at lying, it's exhaustive. And if I talk to you long enough, you're going
to say something contradictory, and I'm going to figure it out. So even if I'm good at it,
you're going to catch me ultimately. And then the relationship is destroyed. So it's often,
it's often a test.
And we know of instance after instance where being determined to tell the truth was what made the difference.
And everybody appreciates, like, it's just don't lie.
Just, it's really hard.
Business these days, deception by omission tends to be accepted.
And it's out of defensiveness.
People don't know how to tell the truth.
and you get really caught up in short term.
And this is another reason why, an example, Egyptian business deal.
And I'm picking it out because it's in the Arab world, you know, but they're people.
So Egyptian businessman has got a contract with the Egyptian government for a $4 million contract.
It's whatever's company's selling them.
And $4 million.
And, you know, he's going to get big commission.
Company's going to make a lot of money.
But he knows it's not going to work.
and finally he can't take it anymore,
and he reaches out to his government contact
and says, look, this thing you guys are buying from us,
it's going to fail you.
They cancel a contract on a spot.
Now, because he was such a successful salesman,
he doesn't get fired.
You know, I'm sure he was worried about losing his job,
but he just couldn't compromise his integrity.
He couldn't live with himself.
And his boss, since he was a performer,
it's kind of like, all right, we're going to live with this.
three months later, same government point of contact comes back to awards him a $12 million no-bid contract.
So long-term, it's going to work out for you.
And even as I'm riffing on this now, listened to an interview by Jordan Peterson the other day.
And he says, the truth is the best long-term strategy.
But we get caught up between short-term success and short-term fears versus long-term.
I'm long term.
And when you start looking around for it,
the truth is the best long-term strategy.
But it feels like it's going to cost you now,
and it scares a heck out of you,
which is why often people defer to deception by omission,
and so many people are kind of forgiving of it.
But when I find out that you deceive me by a mission,
I'm probably not going to be angry with you,
but I'll never trust you again.
Yeah, you have to be.
it just like in the back of your head a little bit.
Yeah, you know, were you always like that?
Like, were you like that as a kid?
Or is that something that you became after being in the bureau?
No, and my father was very high integrity.
Uh-huh.
A hardworking, high integrity.
I'm proud to say a very blue-collar guy.
Yeah.
So he kind of instilled that in you.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Because it definitely, you know, even if you look at a lot of our politicians today,
on whichever side, it's almost like, you know, I always, I kind of laugh watching the debate,
because they're like, well, who lied more, you know? But it's not like who didn't lie. It's like,
who lied more? So we do have this, we have this natural proclivity, I think, in society to say it's,
it's cool. Like, we know they lied, but like, not that much. And I do think that that negates
our institutions by large. Yeah. Well, it's, we start with what's a white lie. And then
how big does that
latitude get? And then for what purpose?
Yeah. What are some of the
tells about somebody lying to you or not? How can you tell
if somebody's lying to you? Yeah. So it's a great
question. So I don't believe in tells per se.
I believe much more in the way a polygraph works.
Polygraph
tries to figure out what you look like when you're telling a truth.
So then when you come out of that profile,
then you're lying. Or you're deceived.
prosecutor's southern district in New York, Pat Fitzgerald, brilliant dude.
You used to always say the truth comes out the same way every time.
So I will talk to you not looking for tells,
but I'm going to try to draw a beat on what you look like when you're telling the truth.
Every now and then somebody wants to play, they interview me,
they want to play there's two truths and a lie game.
And so what I do typically is I just start firing questions at you,
and then we go through any one of your stories.
And then the minute you're out of sync,
I'm like, all right, so two truths and a lie,
which two stories came out the same way,
which story came out differently,
what did you do differently?
All I know is it's different.
So what does that mean?
That means tells our situational to the person
in very broad terms.
You can kind of guess.
But another interview that I'm hearing recently,
the person who's kind of this body language expert says,
all right, so if you got a frown on your face,
if you look angry, you could be angry.
You could have gas.
True.
If I go, oh, I're angry and they're not,
then you've blown it.
You went down the wrong rabbit hole.
So tells per se are strictly within context
to the person
and I will talk to you long enough
until I get an idea
what you look like when you're telling the truth.
That's what I'm looking for.
Interesting.
And so how do you beat a...
Do you think you can beat a polygraph test?
You can't beat a good polygrapher.
And it's whether or not the polygrapher is any good.
And a really good polygrapher
will tell you before they put you on the box
whether or not you're lying.
And a good polygrapher either
if you tell the truth, you tell the truth one way.
Maybe you never tell the truth.
And a polygraph will pick that up.
And so that's why a good oligrapher will say,
we detect deception across the board.
So we don't know what they're lying about.
We don't know what they're telling the truth about.
All we know is they're not into telling the truth.
And so you don't beat the polygraph per se.
nobody ever
if they if they if they if it comes back
inconclusive which was
the good polygraphers in the bureau
say it's inconclusive
they're like okay good the guy's hiding something
we just don't know where it is or what it is
and so every now
and then somebody will take a polygraph
we asked them five questions and he passed a polygraph
no you got to ask about 30
questions
so I know
if you if they
asked five questions
then it was a lousy operator, not the machine.
And so the operator varies so wildly.
That's why it's generally not admissible in court.
That makes all the sense in the world.
So it's really expertise as opposed to equipment.
Yeah.
Oh, I didn't know that.
I heard about a, I never met him, but I heard about a guy in a bureau,
he'd ask you a question and write down everybody,
body movement that you made after asked a question.
Very patient, dude.
Here's a question, would you have for breakfast?
What day is it?
What city you in?
Baseline questions.
If you tell the truth,
you're going to answer each one of those questions
exactly the same way.
He's going to get a complete beat on that.
Now, where were you last Thursday?
For the first time,
he held your breath for just a moment.
he's going to see that.
And so he was really good.
He'd put him on a box afterwards,
but he'd tell you what was going to happen
because he was so observant of everything.
Yeah.
You said in the beginning something crazy,
which is...
I hope so.
It's some good stuff.
You said that obviously the Bureau is trying to figure out
what makes psychopaths,
what makes serial killers.
And you mentioned that it could be
what happened in them with kids,
with inconsistent, really bad,
parenting, basically.
Yeah.
Like, go deeper there.
Like, if I have a kid and he hurts his sister and the first time I spank him and the
second time I don't, does that create psychopaths?
Like, what's the level of the game here as far as you guys found it?
There are a variety of ways that could happen.
One of them is, first of all, if there are no rules, if there really are no rules,
if there's no right and wrong, then,
then you can act on impulse because what do you have to feel guilty about?
You feel guilty because you did something wrong.
What if there is no wrong?
What if it's all in your head?
So how do you learn right and wrong from your parents, from your religion, from your government?
That's how you learn right and wrong.
So the profilers, you know, they start looking first at what happened is did the parents teach them there were no rules?
and then subsequently what did the parents believe in?
Because your parents can teach you there are no rules,
but if you believe in religion,
you know, every religion's got a set of rules.
Or what if you're in the Soviet Union
or you're in a country that doesn't believe in religion
or actively discourages religion as a set of rules to government behavior?
We start finding out we, collective hostage negotiators globally,
every nine in, we'd get somebody from another country
that would take hostages and they would kill indiscriminately
and we couldn't understand why.
They were from countries where the governments fell.
So if you're from a country where you got your rules from the government
and the government failed, fell, what did you learn?
There are no rules.
So where you get your rules and at some point in time did something happen
that caused you to believe that it was,
was all made up and there was no right and wrong.
And then there's some other behaviors that, you know, might interact to lean you in one
direction or another.
So do you think that, like, today in society, we know that religion is declining, like
organized religion uptick, maybe not over the last two years.
It seems like there's some trend reversal, but I haven't seen the data.
But we have seen, let's call it over the last hundred years, real decline in organized religion
uptick in America.
Right.
Also, we've seen, I mean, we're in New York, it appears to me that we have a little bit of a, we've got a disagreement with rules here depending on who you are.
You know, it's like, is it lawful? Is it not?
Kind of depends.
So do you think that means that we're creating more psychopaths today?
Yeah.
I don't think so.
Although the number has fluctuated.
Like when I first started looking at the number, you know, they used to say like one in every hundred, twelve, hundred,
16 and now they're saying roughly 1 and 35 which then I really enjoy talking to groups of
more than 35 that's horrifying is that true because then I'll say look around a room
shit look around the room see if you can spot psychopaths because there's more than 35 of us here
that means there's at least one so are we creating more or are we just increasing our ability
to detect them so while there may be a decline in organized religion I'm not sure that correlates
with a decline in spirituality.
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And so then that makes it a different question.
And organized religion, bureaucracy-based,
then it always gets watered down.
You know, I think Bono said some of the effect of Christianity today
is what you have when Jesus has left the room.
You know, he's very much a believer in Jesus.
He wouldn't describe himself as a Christian.
or again Jordan Peterson
talking about his
I think he said his favorite writer
or his favorite thinker is Nietzsche
who famously said God is dead
and my paraphrase of Jordan's description of that
well that was his copy it was good copy to get attention
and then he pointed out that in all of
Nietzsche's criticism
he criticized organized religion
but he didn't criticize the gospels
so then all right so now we got a departure
or what spirituality versus organized religion.
Interesting.
You know what's kind of fascinating?
I know that a lot of people today think that it's weird
to talk with somebody that you don't agree with.
But I...
Both to throw a rock at him, right?
Yeah, I guess so.
Yeah, beat them with a pulp.
Beat them to a pulp.
But do you think it makes us weird that both you and I, like, really...
Like, when I was talking to those cartel members
or when I'm talking to somebody that I think is totally out of the...
loony bin, I'm, like, so intrigued.
Yeah.
I don't think there's anything more fascinating than getting to sit down with somebody that, like,
it's almost hard to understand their worldview.
And, like, does that mean that we're actually less empathetic in a way or less emotional in a way?
Well, I would, you know, according to my definition of empathy, we're more empathetic.
Yeah.
So more empathetic.
And then, you know, this is going to.
to sound very self-serving.
I think
there's a deeper love for humanity
to want to understand every human.
Like there's,
do I love humanity?
You know, some people say, you know, I love people,
but I don't like individuals.
You know, I don't know where all these lines are.
Or I love
learning systems and origins,
which is anthropology.
Like, I'm fascinated.
How did you get to be how you are?
So I think there's a deep appreciation and a deep optimism there too.
I think there's a very deep optimism behind that, which I think everybody has,
but we haven't had it covered up as much.
Again, Jordan Peterson's contention in an interview recently was that people obey the law
mostly out of cowardice.
They're afraid of what's going to happen to them if they break the law, which is a harsh way
of describing fear.
Just because you're fearful, does that necessarily make you a cowardice?
that depends upon your definition of what being a coward is.
But so I think that we've had it less buried in us.
Because if we start with a five original equipment,
and then as we've interacted through life,
somebody said something to us,
either mom or dad, probably mom because we were around mom more,
that somewhere deep inside us put an optimistic thing in our brain.
after we were born, somewhere in the first five years of our life.
And I think that has stuck.
And we've been lucky enough at those two lines of code that somebody embedded in this early on was optimistic.
Yeah, fascinating.
What about, you know, so you don't think, so psychopaths aren't born, they're created.
Is that what you think?
Like, are people born with a psychopathic gene?
Yeah.
I'm there.
I'm on that hypothesis, yeah.
So if you have a kid that becomes a psychopath,
is it largely your fault as a parent?
Fault versus accountability.
What's the difference?
Yeah, you're going to have to live with it.
Maybe there's a politician's answer.
I once heard Chris Christie say,
it wasn't my fault that it happened,
but I am accountable for the results,
which was an interesting distinction.
So maybe somebody else did it.
And I think that's what some parents really struggle with.
Somebody else damaged their kid under their nose,
and they didn't see it.
And then by the time it manifested itself,
it was extremely difficult to reverse, if irreversible, at all.
So, you know, that's a hard thing.
A kid's going to go out in a world.
They're going to be people around you
that you should trust that betrayed you.
it's a tough thing to lay it all on appearance
it's a tough thing
yeah do you think that
do you think you can reverse
psychopathy
is that the right way to say it
can you reverse psychopathy
there's some forms of damage
that can be reversed possibly
you know we're getting into new areas
all the time with neuroscience
um
chemical journeys
that previously had been completely illegal
and are starting to become experimental in the United States.
Meaning like psychedelics.
Yeah.
There are probably certain things that can never be reversed.
We are never going to get away from the reality
that there are going to be some people
that we're going to need to lock up and never let out.
Now, how many of them are like that?
That's a tough one.
You know, what's going to happen to him?
Andre Norman, a friend of mine,
doing serious jail time.
convicted for attempting a homicide eight times.
Has a moment when effectively
God comes to him in a jail cell
and says enough.
Maybe before that, you'd have been convinced you.
You'd never get to get Andre out of what he was.
Third-ranking prison gang leader in the state he was in.
Very, very, very dangerous, very bad guy.
Everybody's scared of him for good reason.
Now I'm making a world a better place.
before that moment,
you'd have said,
you probably would have said you never let this dude out.
Now he's making a great contribution to planet Earth,
so it's a little bit hard to say what's irreversible.
How do you know he's not lying?
My gut.
And his action since,
you know,
we cross past early on,
introduced by a very good friend, Joe Polish.
And Andrew's just doing too much good in the world.
And just too straightforward.
Like, you got a kid who's on drugs,
Andre will find him, bring him out.
And he said, what did he say happened?
He was, two epiphanies hit him at the same time.
And he was in his description, in his jail cell,
plotting two murders so that he could rise to number one.
And two simultaneously things hit him.
he was going to become the king of nowhere.
I'm going to be king.
And then I'm like, what am I the king of?
I'm the king of nowhere.
And then I've also heard him say that God just said that's enough.
So the only answer is, it's not like a, here's steps one through seven to stop becoming a psychopath.
There's no four-hour work week to psychopath's behavior changing.
Yeah.
How do you solve the riddle?
I don't know.
Keep trying.
Don't give up.
heard you also say that
a lot about
tone with your voice, which every time we
talk, I always notice with you. You have like
really good intonation. And I was
reading a study that I thought was fascinating
that shows that
38% of communication
after studying hundreds of people in the workplace
came through tone.
Not even the words that we said, but the way
that we said them determined our
outcome. So if somebody got what they wanted
or somebody didn't get what they want,
it was often the way they said it, not the
thing that they said.
Right, right.
What was the percentage again?
38%.
Does that seem right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yep, yep.
I've seen a 38% number crop up a lot.
Okay.
Do you think that that's true?
And what do you know about tone and how to use it in conversations?
Tone is like the spin on a football or a baseball.
Like a baseball player wants to throw a strike for the tone to, for the ball to hit its target.
it has to have spin.
And so they throw a knuckleball,
your baseball player pitches a ball that has no spin.
The thing flies all over the place.
Nobody knows where the hell it's going.
The catcher doesn't know where it's going.
And nobody knows.
It's going to miss the mark.
So tone is very much like putting spin on a ball.
It's essential for it to hit its target.
And so then when you begin to experiment with it
and are fascinated by it,
curious about it. And you start picking it up different ways. The great comedians. Chris Rock
delivers his monologue in a monotone. Nobody's going to laugh. But he starts saying his tone of voice.
And it's, then everything hits the mark. So if you're interested in communicating verbally,
you start studying tone. You notice tone. And then if you want your words to be effective,
and I start realizing a certain tone,
just it doesn't matter how nice I said what I said,
or how nice the words were.
If my tone was off, it ain't going to land.
And so I want to be effective.
And so I start to pay attention.
And then hostage negotiations
and the suicide hotline,
they taught us, you know,
the downward inflecting, calming tone,
the late-night FM DJ boys.
And then I'm doing a training
after I understood how powerful that was,
psychologists in a room,
hypnototherapist comes up to me afterwards.
He says, that's exactly the same tone of voice.
Hypnotherapists are taught.
So I'm like, ooh, there's more to this than meets the eye.
And then the neuroscience starts to kick in.
And your response to my tone of voice
is a neurochemical response,
which means it's not a choice.
And if I can trigger neurochemicals in your brain,
then you can't stop me from triggering them.
Now, you can fight them, but I can initiate the process,
which then is why curiosity is impossible to resist,
because my curious tone is going to dissolve your barriers.
And whether you like it or not.
Yeah, do I get to tell my husband now next time we fight if I don't like
tone that it just it's not going to land at all do you ever do you ever say that to windy she's like
listen your tone buddy ma'am oh i get i hear about my tone from wendy every now and then
windy wendy occasionally gets the real me we joke around uh we refer occasionally to me as
her emotional support porcupine actually that's my chris too maybe it's a chris thing
it's a chris thing he is literally the best emotional
support animal, but he is a porcupine.
Oh, my God, he's going to hate this, but that's true.
Okay, so apologies to Wendy, but let's imagine that you're not with your beautiful.
By the way, she told me, she wanted me to tell you, and I try to get the specifics out of her,
you've got some place where you encourage people that are struggling with their businesses
to get help and, you know, sell off assets or write themselves.
and she had a cosmetic perfume endeavor with a celebrity social media influencer that didn't do the work.
Oh.
Let them down in a big way.
And she saw what you had and she took the issue to some advisors.
And now not only are they not going to lose money, but she's going to end up putting her investors in a black.
So she wanted to thank you for that.
Yes.
I love hearing that.
That's so cool.
I got to ping her on that.
You know, what's interesting is I found, and I would be careful.
curious your take.
One, we didn't learn this stuff.
We didn't learn about, we didn't learn negotiation, which is why your book was so important.
Then we really didn't learn deal structuring and dealmaking, which is like taking your
negotiation tactics and applying the language that is money or finance, okay, dealmaking terms.
Two separate skills.
Right.
Putting them together.
Yeah.
And especially for women, we really don't negotiate deals typically as often as our male
counterparts.
Right.
Like I've found by and large, women will be the ones that let the business go down or like, you know, don't want to engage in the really tough conversation that's like, you fucked this up, you didn't do what you said you were going to do.
You know, this partnership is not going to work.
And obviously it would be better packaged than that.
Yes.
But instead of doing that, we just kind of let it slide.
And I see it because we have like 3,000 members in our group.
And I watch the difference between men and women.
And it's a weird female phenomenon that I've seen.
So I'm really excited that she did that.
She seems like a badass overall.
But a lot of women don't do that.
Have you found there's big differences
between the way women and men negotiate?
Is my little qualitative study at all real in the world?
No, it's real.
It's, in my view, it's due more to nurture than nature.
So little boys, are you getting a dust up when you're a kid?
You go home, dad tells you, shake it off, walk it off,
go back and kick his ass.
Stand up for yourself, fight.
Women are generally nurtured by older women
to work on the soft skills.
Think about long-term, think of their relationship.
So I think the nurturing for women there
is to be more hopeful,
to be more soft-skilled, more long-term relationship-oriented.
So then getting into a world that appears to be combative
and women as generally to be nurtured
not to be combative.
They have been nurtured into assertion.
But then if they can blend assertion with the soft skills,
then suddenly they're superstars.
And so then how does it get blended?
The blending has been picked up most recently in the last decade or two,
which I'm delighted to see.
because I'm a last century guy.
Last century women were told
be one of the guys
which would extinguish their femininity
and in today's world
women are encouraged to retain their femininity
in the business world
and it's starting to take hold
where they can
be very feminine at work.
They can be a lawyer Grenier, very feminine.
And Laura Gunner is still going to kick your ass.
You know, I love it on Shark Tank when in a super sweet way,
she tells Mr. Wonderful to shut up.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, and you like her while she's doing it.
Yeah.
Which is kind of nice.
Yeah, so it's becoming more acceptable to become a badass,
somebody like you,
as the opportunity hasn't sacrificed a bit of your femininity
and being a badass.
on the fireside app, the fireside show that I have.
Fallen Macbeth, Phile emphatomy.
Younger, badass, female.
Very, very feminine.
So it's becoming openly encouraged instead of openly discouraged.
And so women are still catching up.
There aren't as many role models, but the role models are starting to emerge.
and like when I'm again Riyadh you know supposedly the Islamic Sharia police and a male dominated culture
which was them 15 years ago which you know the current leader MBS says that ain't taking us into the future
so at this at this conference if I'm surrounded out in the hall by women of all ethnicities
because they they can't get enough of this and they're being asked
in Riyadh to be in implementation,
influence, get it done, lead positions.
And so they're looking to get into it
and they're looking to get it done.
They don't want to be jerks.
They don't want to be kicking chairs
across the table as a default mechanism.
Now, every now and then you've got to kick a chair
across the room, but not as your first move.
Have you ever actually kicked a chair across the room?
No.
Throwing one?
Not yet.
Not yet.
You know, well, I'm sure people who work for me have told it, said that they, it felt like it.
Yeah.
You know, I remember when I was younger, you're right, I remember the generation of women right
before me that were tough.
Like, and in a lot of way, I think they had to be.
And, you know, and so they were more masculine, more like the other men.
Right.
And I thought I had to be like that, too.
I don't know if Wendy ever went through that, but I, like, cut my hair real short and didn't
wear makeup and wore the suit.
and all the things.
And it was kind of ridiculous.
And it really makes you, like, less endearing in a way
because you're like, yeah, bro, what's up?
And you're like, don't call me, bro.
And so it doesn't feel very real.
It's almost like you're lying, but not on purpose.
Yeah, I think so.
I think if you're extinguishing part of you
to try to fit in, it's a bad idea.
And for women that is called for less now,
you know, you've got a large audience.
and they're not being ridiculed over it.
They're not being told me, if somebody tells them to be one of the guys,
they were like, yeah, I don't think so.
Yeah, exactly.
No, they won't.
The other thing that I thought was interesting was,
I read this other statistic that instead that there's a study done
on a couple big corporations, but across thousands of individuals,
that showed that it isn't intelligence as measured by IQ that increases earnings.
It's instead that those with higher-ranking emotional intelligence,
earn on average 29,000 more than those with lower emotional intelligence?
That's annually.
You think it's true?
1,000%.
Interesting.
So if you have higher emotional intelligence, you could make more money.
Yes, and you can cultivate it, and you can learn it, and there's no limit to it.
And it's perishable, which means if you don't pay attention to it, it'll go away,
but you can rekindle it by paying attention to it.
And by paying attention to it, that just means, like,
asking more questions and really wanting to know the answer?
Well, being more curious and then also, you know, it's, we call it cold read.
Like, I walk into an airport and I'm getting ready to check in at the counter.
And the woman behind the counter is not meeting my eyes.
I'm next in line.
And she's not looking up.
She's not looking up.
Finally, she kind of, okay, looks at me.
So a very well-intention, but really wrong.
approach would be, how are you today?
Well, I've seen
that she's not good.
And if I go, how are you today?
I'm telling her that I'm not,
I have my own agenda and I'm not paying attention to it.
I walk up instead and I go, tough day.
And she'll go, and this has happened.
She'll go, no, no.
And smile.
To me, that's just practice.
You know, get out of how are you?
today and a little bit more into, it's a tough day.
Because you're not going to plan it.
It looks like you're having a good day.
You look distracted.
You look like something's on your mind.
That's practice on your emotional intelligence.
And I do it on a regular basis because I know it's perishable.
Also, I'm very intentioned about my important phone calls.
I don't take a call while I'm driving while I'm walking.
I'm sitting and listening, but I might get a call that I've got to take in the airport.
So I'm going to do some cold reads, emotional intelligence, at the TSA guys, at somebody else in line.
Because the phone might ring, and it might be somebody that I've been trying to get on the phone for weeks.
And I've got to take the call.
So you can work on your emotional intelligence in little ways.
You work on it with your spouse, your significant other, and say, look,
Look, you know, I'm just, I'm trying to be more attentive.
So there's all these opportunities to stay sharp.
Okay.
When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice.
I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community.
Ooh.
Then it's the vacation of a lifetime.
I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting.
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And so simple.
That doesn't really take much time.
Simple stuff.
Yeah, it seems like most things in life that have outsized return
are not that complex, which doesn't mean they're not easy,
but they're pretty simple.
Very good point.
And simple is often, if it takes you out of your comfort zone,
most people over the age of 25 don't want to get out of the comfort zone.
But after 25, if you find that you like it,
then out of your comfort zone is where accelerated learning takes place.
And if you then understand that, then like, oh, wow, I can get better faster?
I'm in.
Yeah.
I want to ask you one more question to close out, but I wanted to tell you, too, I meant to tell
you last time that I had a bunch of our employees take the quiz at Black Swan, which I thought
was so useful for us and for them.
Yeah.
And so we talked about it a little bit.
Yeah, the types.
Yeah, exactly.
And so what is the name of the quiz again?
It's the three types, three negotiator types.
Yeah.
And so this really helped me because we hired two new executives that were materially different.
Wow.
Okay.
And I am not always the best with, with, I kind of can get in my lane where I go, I'm doing this, I'm going, and I could not pay attention to cues.
And that really helped me, actually to think about, oh, here's, here's how they, not only
negotiate, but just like communicate through life.
Yes. So if, if anybody at all is
wondering how to get a team to work better,
you know, how to understand your partner,
I think that quiz is super, super helpful.
So that's just at blackswan.com.
Yeah, black swanltd.com.
Blackswanlted.d.com. Obviously, Chris
Voss and all the socials. I really like the Instagrams
that you're doing lately. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, they're my
little also reminder of the cues and the things I can do daily to get better at
negotiation. Like Chris had a big negotiation yesterday and I saw him be like,
Took a big breath beforehand.
Very good.
Yeah.
Kind of like reset his adrenal state and then jumped in.
Yeah.
So I know that's from you.
But the last question I wanted to ask you is,
do you think that you can be interested in anyone?
Like, is there a way to have any human be an interesting conversation
and to never be bored when talking to somebody?
Yeah.
I mean, it's kind of, that's the way I delightfully sort of try to go through my life.
Yeah, you can.
It's if you're interested in where people come from, like I may not like you, but I want to know how you got to how you are.
Or I also know if I'm deeply curious in you, there's a really good chance I'm to be able to gain some influence in you.
So to me, it's a combination of being both a missionary and a mercenary.
So do you ever have a moment where you're meeting with someone?
You're like, God, I'm so bored right now in this conversation.
And how do you get out of that?
board, if I find somebody whose core values are vastly different than mine, like if they're
way into manipulation.
What if they just yammer about a bunch of stuff that you don't care about?
Like, what if it's like PTA meetings and their dogs and something else that is unimportant
to you in this situation?
How do you flip your script on that?
Well, for me, if my energy level is there to intervene.
Like, if I'm tired and I'm burned out.
I don't know if I'm an omnivir or an outgoing introvert,
you know, I don't know what it is.
So if they're yammering on away,
and I just don't have the gas in a tank,
I'm not going to fall asleep in front of them,
but I'm not going to engage.
But if I can rally the energy,
then I'm going to be able to get them out of it.
I'm going to, whatever they're yammering on about,
there's an interest in there that's probably fast.
fascinating. So I'm going to trigger into it. And then also my favorite question these days,
let's say they're yammering on about the PTA. I'll probably say, what do you love about the
PTA? Now, that's probably going to trigger an instantaneous state change in them and change
the conversation. And then I can dig into it deeply. And pretty soon I'm going to find out
fascinating stuff about them. Then it's like straight to daddy issues deep.
deep talk. Yeah, whatever it might be. You know, ethnic issues, their perception of the world,
you know, how somebody, how the world kicked their ass unfairly. But it's going to change from a boring
conversation to an interesting one. If I, if I can rally the energy to do it. I love that. I think
that's kind of nice because there's no excuse then to not have a conversation to go to a deeper level
with a human. And sometimes I make too many jokes about like, I'm so over small talk. That's pretty
lazy on my part. And if I'm skilled enough, I should be able to go deeper than the small talk.
Yeah, well, exactly. You can, you can, you can, you can, small talk doesn't do anybody any good,
but what's driving a small talk and it's probably fascinating. Yeah. And so let's make the change.
I love that. Chris Foster, the man. Thank you very much. I would like to add in a shameless commercial.
Yes, let's do it. All right. So March 17th and 18th, 2025, we're doing a negotiation mastery summit in Louisville.
And we ended up in Louisville because actually my company is going to put out a bourbon next year.
Get out.
I also love Louisville.
It is a cool city.
We found ourselves tasting bourbon and Louisville and we thought, this got to be a great place to have a conference.
Love this.
So the purpose, why should anybody go to a two-day conference?
Because you make a quantum leap forward when you immerse yourself.
Now, your husband or anybody else that's reading our self.
stuff, you know, I'm going to want you to get better incrementally. I'm going to want you to
know before negotiation, take a deep breath. You should be constantly working on getting a little
bit better each day. But if you're working the skills and you want to, then in two days, you want to
make six months of progress. Then you go to a two-day immersion. And we're going to have some
cool stuff there. I'm coming. It's going to be enjoyable. I'm going to send some of our team, too. Can
anybody come? Absolutely. Okay. I like it. We'll be in,
Louisville, there may be some occasional sampling of bourbon involved.
I'm into that, too.
We've got to lessen everybody's guards.
Where do they go to learn more about it?
Black SwanltD.com.
And it's going to be, it's a pop up there or something, they'll see it right away.
Live in-person event, Louisville.
Amazing.
I love that idea.
We're going to be there.
You're the man.
Chris Boss.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
