Jocko Podcast - 354: Everything in Life Is A Negotiation. With Chris Voss.

Episode Date: October 5, 2022

Businessman, author of "Never Split The Difference". Former FBI hostage negotiator. CEO of The Black Swan Group.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 354 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. In August to 2000, the militant Islamic group Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines broadcast that had captured a CIA agent. The truth was not as newsworthy or as valuable to the rebels. Abu Sayyaf had kidnapped Jeffrey Schilling, a 24-year-old American who had traveled near their base in Hollow Island. A California native, Shilling became a hostage with a $10 million

price tag on his head. At the time, I was a supervisory special agent attached to the FBI's elite crisis negotiation unit, the CNU. The CNU is the equivalent of the special forces of negotiations. It's attached to the FBI's hostage rescue team, HRT. Both are national counterfeit terrorist response assets. They are the best of the best. I was a natural for the Schilling case. I had spent some time in the Philippines and had an extensive background in terrorism from my New York City days assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, JTTF. A few days after Schilling became a hostage, my partner Chuck Regini and I flew to Manila to run the negotiations. Along with Jim Nixon, FBI's highest official in Manila, we conferred with the top Philippine military brass.

They agreed to let us guide the negotiations. Then we got down to business. One of us would take charge of the negotiation strategy for the FBI and consequently for the U.S. government. That became my role. With the support of my colleagues, my job was to come up with the strategy, get it approved, and implement it. Our principal adversary was Abu Sabaya, the rebel leader who personally negotiated for shillings ransom. Sabaya was a veteran of the rebel movement with a violent past.

He was straight out of the movies, a terrorist sociopath killer. He had a history of rape, murder, and beheadings. He liked to record his bloody deeds on video and then send them to the Philippine media. Sabaya always wore sunglasses, a bandana, a black t-shirt, and camo pants. He thought it made him a more dashing figure. If you look for any photos of Abu Sayyaf terrorists from this period, you will always see one in sunglasses. That's Sabaya. Sabaya loved, loved, loved, loved the media.

He had the Philippine reporters on speed dial. They'd call him and ask him questions in Tagalog, his native tongue. He would answer in English because he wanted the world to hear his voice on CNN. They should make a movie about me, he would tell reporters. In my eyes, Sabaya was a cold-blooded businessman with an ego as big as Texas, a real shark. Sabaya knew he was in the commodities game. In Jeffrey Schilling, he had an ice. of value how much could he get for it he would find out and I intended it to be a surprise

he wouldn't like as an FBI agent I wanted to free the hostage and bring the criminal to justice as a result of the shilling case I would become the FBI's lead international kidnapping negotiator and that right there is a book is an excerpt from a book the book is called never split the difference, which is written by a man named Chris Voss. Chris Voss spent 24 years with the FBI, where he spent time as the lead crisis negotiator for the New York City Division of the FBI was also the lead international kidnapping negotiator. He was trained as a negotiator not only by the FBI, but also by Harvard Law School and Scotland Yard,

which is London's metropolitan police. He worked the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the TWA Flight 800 explosion, the kidnapping of Jill Carroll in Iraq in 2006, as well as countless other dynamic situations around the world. And incredible experiences. And it's a privilege tonight to have Chris Voss with us here to discuss what he's been through and what he's learned.

Chris, thanks for joining us. Thanks, man. Happy to be here. Yeah, it's, uh, by the way, if I ever have anybody else read my book, I'll have you do the reading. Let me know.

Let me know. I'm here to, I'm here to help out. Yeah, fantastic book. Yeah, if people, if you don't have this yet, you, it's never split the difference.

The subtitle is negotiating as if your life depended on it. So fantastic book. And we actually tried to do this before COVID or maybe right before COVID. Oh, yeah. But it didn't work out. And so glad you could finally get out here and definitely looking forward to this conversation. Before we jump into the book and all your lessons, let's get a little bit of background on you and how you ended up here today. So where'd you grow up?

Where'd you come from? Small town in Iowa. son of Richard and Joyce Voss. My dad was a blue-collar entrepreneur owned his own business. My mom was initially a stay-at-home mom. That's what they were back in those days. And then ultimately, you know, as their kids grew up,

got involved in my father's aspects of my father's business. What was the dad's business? Oil job originally. A middleman between show oil and the end user, which would usually be large, farms, small companies. And then really the business, when he bought it, was home heating oil. And I can remember my father going out in the middle of the night in the middle of winter

because somebody's furnace shut down. He had to fix it. They're going to freeze. And then after he got into the business, according to him, not independently verified, but it certainly was a case. Gas company came in and gave everybody that had fuel oil furnaces, free natural gas. furnaces, took away all those customers. By the time that I graduated high school, we were one of the only houses that I knew that was still burning fuel oil for heat.

But he adapted. You know, you got to adapt. He expanded his business, bought some gas stations, built some convenience stores, saw himself as much in the energy business as a fuel oil business, and just adapted. And so what were you doing growing up? Were you playing sports in school? Do you like school? What was the deal there? Yeah, well, I played football and basketball.

And if I wanted to run track, I was allowed. There were certain things that wasn't allowed to do. Like, well, one year I want to play golf. You know, every high school has got a golf team. And the old man just wasn't happening. He wasn't seeing that as legitimate sporting activity that could divert me away from working. for him. So, you know, I had to, my father believed he put a roof over your head. He fed you,

he closed you. You owe. You're going to go to work. You got paid. But yeah, you're going to work. So what were you working at the gas stations and whatnot? Mostly, the only time I ever worked at a gas station, it was for one that he didn't own, and it was a business associate wanted to hire me on. But most of the time, it was whatever needed to be done, maintenance, driving trucks, driving tractors, cotton grass painting like I did a painted a lot of stuff in the summertime I to this day I hate to pay you know he needed he needed a house painted he had kids here here's here's a bucket of paint here's a brush here's a scaffold get down well my favorite one was he wanted a new garage want to build you

know the house we bought had a single car garage you barely fit that one in he wants a new garage, I'm probably about 11 or 12 at the time, my older sister's 13 or 14. He hands his crow bars and says, go out in the backyard and tear down the garage. And so we pretty much tear the whole thing down. And then we got the foundation left. And you got to knock the foundation out. And the old man thinks, all right, well, I'll go run a jackhammer. I put my kid, my 12-year-old on a jackhammer on the foundation.

And I don't know. I'm like, all right, Dad, you know. And the foundation was so big, I couldn't break it up with a jackhammer. So he financed a higher contractor. And this guy comes in with a backhoe. And I'm thinking, an adult man needs a backhoe to take this out, and I'm out here with a hammer and nails and a jackhammer, and I'm 12. Jack.

So are you doing good in school? Fair. I was capable of better grades than I felt like getting. mostly a B student. Did you have interest in going to college? What was your future looking like when you were like 16 years old? College was always part of the game plan.

Like for whatever reason, it was just always accepted that all of us, oldest sister and two younger, accepted we were going to go to college. Your man was going to spring for four years of tuition. If you graduated or not, that was on you. Finite amount of money,

you know, got a certain amount of money. money put in my checking account start of every session if I spent it or not it was up to me um and I just you know it was just and then whatever happened after that was pretty much up to us and so where'd you end up going to college Iowa State University my older sister went there one reason to go um you know I really idolized her growing up and she was there sort of plowing the ground it was far enough away from home that I wouldn't have to work work in evenings or be expected to work on the weekends you know because you had to get out of that work radius had to get out of work radius three and a half hour drive on a whim he can't call me

back at four because he needs something done of five but it was also close enough to get back on a weekend if I needed to for whatever reason and no wrestling for you growing up in Iowa uh good observation No, I wasn't into wrestling. Home of a lot of great wrestling. Dan Gable, a bunch of folks. Iowa State Cyclones were running championship after championship in those days. The 190-pound wrestler Frank Santana, I remember him. But no, I was a basketball player.

I wasn't a grappling. Those seasons clash. Now, at what point did you start looking at law enforcement? Actually, when I was 16, a buddy of mine and I went and saw based on a true story, true life movie, the super cops. Two cops in New York. Somebody recently actually found me

a DVD of it sent it to me. These guys worked in Bedstai, back when Bedstey was a really bad area. White dudes, very black area, community loved them. Love them. These guys locked up, bad people, and the good people in the community,

you appreciated the heck out of it. And these guys were extremely creative. I didn't realize that at the time. The other thing that really attracted me to them, complete mavericks, like didn't pay attention on what the bosses told them. And put a lot of bad people in jail. We're very, very creative about it.

And the community actually nicknamed them Batman and Robin. That's awesome, except for the dude that got stuck being Robin. Yeah, who wants to be Robin, right? But then me and my buddy saw this when I remember we was 16 and we both got struck at that moment of time. We wanted to be in law enforcement. And I stayed and law enforcement is occasionally a harsh reality. And my buddy went to Phoenix, got on with the police department there, and the harshness of it, he just wasn't built for it. Needed and last.

This was the guy that saw the movie with you? Yeah. What did you study in college? Ultimately, it was a business degree. They didn't call it that back then. It would call it industrial administration, but it was a business degree. And I started out originally,

I got in the engineering school, I switched out as soon as I was there, switched to sociology. But then I realized that a lot of sociologists out of work, what if I changed my mind about being a cop? So I decided to go to business, just to have the flexibility of going, whatever direction I wanted to go.

So do you graduate in four years? Four, you got out four years. And then was it straight to the Police Academy somewhere? Yeah, I went, well, initially, I wanted to go to Kansas City, Missouri. I'd never been there, but everybody in that part of the world, the three cities for choices were principally Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago. Now, originally, I had my heart set on San Francisco. and because we had visited there,

my family went there when I was about 18, and I thought, this is a cool town. It's a really interesting place. And then a thing called Proposition came through in California, Proposition 13 came through in California where they cut back on all the property taxes. I figured they were going to impact the municipal budgets negatively, probably a guy from out of state was going to have trouble getting hired.

So then I just decided to stay local and everybody that I knew that had been to Kansas City He said, this is a great town. And so I just went out and applied completely out of the blue. They were, they told me they were not hiring when I graduated. I remember when I graduated, I was really depressed because I didn't know where I was going to go. Didn't want to go back home and work for my father. But I had nowhere else to go.

And Kansas City, although they knew internally that June 1, it was going to be a new fiscal year in a new world. they were telling me at the time now we got no idea when we're going to hire just no idea this is May so they had to have known they were going to hire in June and the new fiscal year came in they started a new class I was in a class

how did they notify you oh interesting I may have gotten a letter I don't I don't even actually remember so you didn't think you had a job then all of a sudden you got a job suddenly I had a job and then in the meantime like I'm I'm back working for my dad driving a truck

your dad's like got your life plotted out for you at this point. You're fine here, kid, you know. And also, like, just to get into law enforcement, I remember I applied for Sheriff's Department, got turned down, and then I had done an internship with the Iowa Department of Public Safety. And I can't remember exactly why. I don't think I wanted to be in the Iowa. I didn't want to be in the Iowa Highway Patrol.

If I was going to be uniform, I want to be in a city. And I remember being told from the plea people in the Department of Public Safety, like you could walk right into the highway patrol. Because I'd had an internship with him the year before. So they knew me. They knew I was an honest guy. And that however innovative I was, I also really wasn't a rule breaker.

You know, I was going to follow the rules. But I didn't want to be a highway patrolman. So I held up for Kansas City, want to be in a city, and got in there. So you end up in Kansas City. How's that like going to the police academy? Is that a boot camp scenario? Is it a gentleman's course? Is it you go home in the afternoon? Are you staying in barracks? How does that all work? Yeah, they had just moved the police academy into a local community college, I think for budgetary reasons. They had their own academy in its own standalone campus where they controlled all aspects of it. And for what

whatever reason, which I'm sure is budgetary, they abandoned that. So we're in a community college. Combination of classroom, not quite boot camp, plus you're going home to your own apartment every night. Six months, PT, every day, and something that I think law enforcement has really lost sight of, like the neck restraint, the karate restraint. We worked on that every single day for six months. Like nobody that I ever worked with ever heard anybody by misapplication of the neck restraint. And they knew that it was potentially lethal.

And if there was one thing they were going to do, we're going to be in condition, relatively speaking, not seal condition, but in condition. But we weren't going to hurt anybody putting a neck restraint on them. We worked on that every day for six months. Yeah, it's just a horrible thing. to see happening right now with law enforcement.

I mean, I talk to a lot of police officers around the country, and in most places right now, you cannot use a neck restraint. It's considered lethal force, and you cannot use it. Right. And as anybody that knows anything, it is absolutely the best way to get someone under control that's out of control without hurting them. And if somebody had to restrain my wife or my daughter, I would beg, that they please use a neck restraint

because they'll be fine. So it's great to hear that at some point in time you were training that way and you did it every day so you learn how effective it is. You also learn what to be careful of. Right. So yeah, that makes sense. Like one cop and I,

we had to corral this gorilla and just, you know, Caucasian just for the record. But this monstrous dude at the mental hospital, which means like normally somebody's is nuts and big as that once you corral them, you take them to the mental hospital.

So when a mental hospital calls you to get somebody out of there, you know you got a problem. If we wouldn't have been able to choke that guy out with the proper carotid restraint, I don't know how we'd have got him out of there without shooting him. Like, and we got him out of there completely unharmed. Yeah, yeah.

That's a horrible escalation. to go from, oh, this guy's a problem, and now I have to shoot him because I don't know what else to do or I'm not allowed to do anything else. That escalation from this guy's going to be perfect, literally perfectly fine, to now he's dead because I didn't have,

I wasn't authorized to use the tools that I should be authorized to use and should be trained properly. That's awful. So it's a six-month school. Six-month academy in a community college trying to maintain quasi military discipline, which most law enforcement kind of quasi.

And it was, yeah, it was a good classroom working out occasionally a couple of times a week going to the range. And like when you're saying classroom, is it like four or five hours of classroom a day? You learn about the laws, you learn about what you can and cannot do? Yeah. That kind of stuff.

Combination, constitutional law. some understanding probable cause, administrative rules and regulations that we're going to have to know just to get by on a street. You know, I can remember the first time the standard report form was a form 189. And so they say,

we're going to learn how to fill out a form 189. I remember thinking like, I can't remember 189 forms. I was relieved that I didn't have to memorize There's 189 forms. So did you feel pretty good? Do you feel pretty prepared when you ended up, you know, you get your badge, you go to the street? How did you feel like you were pretty prepared for it?

Well, I felt like I was. Certainly did. There were a couple things that took getting used to. Like initially I was so nervous. My breaking officer was scared to let me drive. And then, you know, the complexity of being on patrol listening to the radio. listening to the radio and actually being on patrol. Initially, you can't do both.

So if you're really paying attention to your environment, if you're looking around, if you're listening, you're not going to hear the radio. And finally somebody's going to come by and say, we've been calling you for 20 minutes. And then you just keep doing it every day, every day, every day, and suddenly something clicks, and you're pulling in all the information and you're dialing.

So you have a break-in officer? the term you used? Yeah, yeah, for two months, they want to see whether or not they're going to turn you loose. Kansas City at the time ran one-man car patrols, so when you got cut loose off break-in, you were riding around by yourself, which is for a variety of reasons actually I'm here and now, really good patrol strategy. Why is that? What I just heard recently, unsourced, that a male police officer is less likely to overreact to a challenge if he's by himself. And if there's two males there, two male police officers at the initial challenge, you're a little more likely to overreact because there's another male there that you're afraid of losing face in front of.

I don't know how true that is. it makes sense to me for a variety of reasons. There's some more complexity to it. You know, I held off before talking to you about the different people you've had on. Huberman, I'm a huge Andrew Huberman fan. And I saw you had him in. I think he's brilliant.

He's brilliant, dude. I had the good fortune to have lunch with him one day. And so I'm very much into the neuroscience aspects these days. and on one of his podcasts, he was talking about, again, separating out the problems with law enforcement. And it happened to be a podcast on love and relationships, I think. And as I recall, he's talking about the basic four neurochemical hormones that drive us. And as I recall, it's primarily testosterone, serotonin, oxytocin, serotonin. and he said if you're essentially a testosterone type

you're more likely to see things as a challenge so let's get out of race and get into type you got a testosterone driven cop stopping a testosterone driven male and they're both going to see almost everything that happens as a challenge you can expect that to turn into a downward spiral absent better training. It's got nothing to do with race.

The dynamic that I thought you were going to say is, if I'm pulling you over and I'm by myself, well, I'm by myself. So I better de-escalate, right? I better be thinking. Another point, yeah. Whereas if I'm with Echo and he's my partner and you start getting mouty,

well, you know, we're going to kick your ass. I feel more confident, more, just like in a bar, right? Exactly. The guy that's in the bar that's by himself, he's not causing any problems. It's the guy that's with three of his friends It's all of a sudden he's getting mouthy Right, no, that's exactly right

And most police departments are running Two-man patrols Two-person patrols Yeah, it's weird for me because in my background In the SEAL teams, you If any possible way, you have a buddy with you As a matter of fact, if you don't have a buddy with you You're kind of getting in trouble

So you're always, because you know, you can't watch your back You know, you just can't Right So you always have someone with you. So I've always thought to myself, man, if I was a police officer, I'd really like to have a partner. Well, you're trained too. I mean, you're trained to not let your negative emotions get out of control.

Yeah, I would definitely, you know, this is the same thing in the SEAL teams. I mean, you've got to learn to de-escalate things. And just being in a leadership position, you've got to de-escalate things because someone comes in and they're mad about something. And if you're in a leadership position and all you do is go back at them,

see they you know boss this plan sucks and you think oh you're challenging me instead of saying oh what sucks about the plan do you want to make some adjustments to it like that's what you do that's how you de-escalate it you don't say well you don't understand the whole problem how dare you so right yeah uh yeah that takes some training so that takes some uh some mental gymnastics to get to a point where you can do that um so now you're out there in kansas city a couple months was there any moment where you felt like, like, oh, I messed up, or did you ever feel like, okay, now I'm a cop? You know what I'm saying? No, I loved it.

My first year there, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I was in a commercial area, you know, a fair amount of street life, a little more fast-paced, and that suited me. I'm not a real, meticulous, super-organized, super-patient. by nature or nurture, I'm not sure which, but neither one. So my first year, I had a ball. I mean, I had a ball.

I mean, I was putting bad guys in jail. You know, I really loved it. I can you remember my parents came to visit me one time, and we met at the, they came by the precinct, towards the end of my shift, and I was told they were there, so we drove up, and my mom said when she saw me get out of the car, She said the way you moved when you got out of the car, I saw a cop get out of that car.

So then after I was there for a year, they switched me to a residential area, which is a different kind of work. You're not making, locking up multiple guys in a night. You're looking for residential burglars. It's much more painstaking, meticulous patient work. And so I went from an area that I just loved to an area that I just,

I just wasn't built for and I started getting bored while I was there. Is that when you started looking for something else to do? Well, you know, I don't know that I looked so much for something else to do. I was going to, I was planning, I wanted to become a member of the SWAT team. And it took three years to get on the SWAT team. So I'm there, you know, two-ish years. And the guys, I knew most of the guys that were on a SWAT team. and they said, well, you know, put in for the selection process, you know, just go through it.

If you put in, then the commanders, cabs and sergeants are going to get to know that you're interested. They're going to keep an eye on you. Then next time around, you got a better shot. So, all, cool. So I put in for the selection process, ended up number one on the list. Number one. Nope. Shocked everybody. So the captains went to the lieutenant colonel and said, let's waive the three-year rule on number one guy here.

isn't going to have three years for 10 more months. And Lieutenant Colonel said, I don't care. Rules are rules. We're not waiving them. So I'm in a precinct on board by. They're taking everybody on the list under me one at a time. And there was even the discussion of the possibility that if they took everybody, they still wouldn't take me.

They'd be a whole new selection process. So I'm a little annoyed by this. And that my father says, what you think about federal? I'm like, I'm happy in Kansas City. So he introduces me this guy with the Secret Service. And I talked to this guy, and he says, you know, I've traveled all over the world with the Secret Service. And I remember thinking,

somebody paid you and paid for your flights and paid for your hotel to go all over the world. like I'm from Iowa. Like I, you know, I'd seen Canada from a distance. That was the extent of my international travel. So I'm like, that sounds cool. And so I didn't know one federal agency from another. No idea.

Secret Service, I would go down there. We're not hiring. Not hiring. So I see an article in a newspaper, FBI's first billion dollar budget. I knew enough about budgets that I thought, it's got to be salaries, they've got to be hiring. I went down and I put in. It was the first of a three-year hiring push, and I got in.

And just like that, so how long is it between when you get accepted and when you're going to the FBI Academy? Yeah, well, October 31st, I'd had three years on the police department, and I would have gone to the SWAT team. The Bureau hired me on October 15th. And I remember, you know, I'm a dumb 20-something-year-old. I put in for the Bureau. And I remember literally telling people, you know, whoever offers me a position first.

SWAT team comes, I'm going with a SWAT team. The Bureau comes, I'm going with the Bureau. And then they kept, the police department had had a, the chief at the time hated the FBI with a passion, hated the FBI. So they had a rule that if you left the police department, the only job you couldn't come back from was if you became an FBI agent. You go take a job as a dog catcher.

They'd take you back. You go take a job, you know, think of something, a hairdresser. You know, I don't know what, but the only job, and in my accident interview, they literally told me, they said, do you understand you can never come back if you join the Bureau? I'm like, well, that's not my intention to come back. But so consequently, I had to keep my application a secret

until it was in the final stages. They couldn't go interview any of my commanders until Jeff, they were sure that they were going to hire me at the last minute. And, you know, that led, I was still a mouthy 20-something, so that led to a couple of problems as I was leaving a police department. What's the beef? Where's the beef?

Did this guy have a specific beef with the FBI? Was it like a case where the feds came in? straight out of a movie. He had jurisdiction, been seen talking on the street with ladies of the evening.

And that a couple of bureau guys spotted them on the street with these ladies of the evening on the way to a meeting and it made it

back to the city council because the agents were wondering whether or not they could trust the guy. And they said, you know, I don't work with this guy. Then he went on to, like the FBI, this is how bad it got under this guy. I don't know if you're familiar with the FBI National Academy. Yeah.

But if you get sent to the National Academy, Bureau pays all your expenses, pays for your flights. Like it doesn't cost an agency a dime to send somebody to the National Academy. And it's a stepping stone and a lot of police departments to becoming chief of the next promotion. It's a big deal. Yeah.

I spoke at the last FBI National Academy meeting. Yeah, it was awesome. So I get there in the FBI Academy, you know, October 15th, and they start talking about how they pay all expenses for cops. And I'm thinking, nobody from Kansas City has come here in 10 years. It can't be that it's free. Like, no, it's free. That's how much this guy hated the FBI.

So you get picked up for the FBI. You show up to the academy. How's the academy? Yeah, it was good. You know, running, shooting, mostly academic. The physical aspects of it were not super challenging. You could, if it would help you. At the time, you could be in no condition at all

and they'd whip you into shape. They ended up having problems with that later on, and so now you can't get in unless you're at least a minimal physical condition. But you could come in and be fat completely out of shape. If you put in the effort, you'd meet the minimums. And they weren't huge. Like FBI agents are not wrestling people to the ground on a regular basis. So they want you to be physically capable, but, you know,

it was more rigorous than a police department. because you might get into a wrestling match with somebody every day. And the Bureau's tactics is to outman, outgun the bad guys so that physical confrontations are unnecessary. So they want you to be able to handle yourself, but it's not that big of the deal. They really want you to do the classroom work. They want you to be able to shoot well.

My shooting improved significantly when I was there. And it was good solid 16 weeks. It was transformative. How are you looking at it? because you're a cop coming off to the mean streets, and how are you looking at the college kids? Is there, like, fun with that interaction? Yeah, I was a lot more harsh, so to speak,

more aggressive, more blunt than the vast majority of them were. I was, and they come from all walks of life, and they're going to turn them into agents. But I was, you know, I was a street cop. What percentage of people are previous cops rolling in there? Pretty small. Pretty small. At the time, they hired in five categories.

I was, cops are in the modified category, which is all others. Like you're not a lawyer, you're not an accountant. You're not a scientist. You're not a female. You're not a minority. You're not any others. You're not a language. You're not already fluent.

So everybody else goes into a large category modified, and, you know, it's a more competitive, theoretically. just more people there. And I was modified. So not that many cops. Was there any, did you have any challenges when you were there?

Or is anything hard for you? No, I don't think so. Nothing, nothing there then. I mean, I was already in decent condition, took care of myself pretty well. I could study when I felt like it and I already knew how to shoot. Do people get kicked out of the academy?

Like, what percentage of people make it through? I mean, they got a good screening program, so I'm sure it's not that many. No, yeah, it's, well, it's even better now um uh and no not that many did not not that many did like if if you got if you got caught lying about anything you should you should be shown the door um any any any any cheating should be shown the door if you that was they had a problem with physical conditioning because they tried to they would enforce the physical conditioning rules in the academy but then not once you join

we're actually in a field office as an agent. And somebody brought up, well, if legally your full FBI agents from the moment you walk in the door, you shouldn't get fired from the academy on something you won't get fired from if you're in a field office. And you shouldn't be fat out of shape in a field office. I just weren't firing people for that. So then they just raised the physical minimums to get. in the door. Are you, when you're there,

so is everyone getting trained just to be an agent? Yeah. And is there, do you go to specialty training after that? So if I'm an accountant and they think I'm going to be looking at tax fraud, do I go there, I become an agent, and then I go to an advanced school to be,

you know, a tax fraud guy? Pretty much exactly, yeah. The theory then, and I think it's still all pretty true now. Like, being an FBI agent first, specialize, We've got to make sure that you understand how to be a generalist

before you follow your bliss for lack of a better time. Like somebody's breaking a law on every cool thing you could think of. Like if you were into collecting postage stamps, somebody's engaged in an active criminal enterprise, making money from counterfeit court. I get a matter. So the cool thing about the FBI is that ultimately if you take your time, you can have the best time investigating crimes around stuff you're really interested in. But if I speak Spanish or I speak Russian, are they going to throw me into an assignment where this is my main gig as soon as I get done?

Spanish guys for a while, everybody had that, if you got hired in the Spanish program, everybody was going to have to do a stint in Puerto Rico. Those were the only ones at the time. Puerto Rico's, Bureau's got its hands full in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico doesn't know if it wants to be a state or a commonwealth, you know, infrastructure problems on the one hand, still, you know, back in my time in the bureau, still a couple of active groups that

engaging in violence for independence. So this just crazy combination of very difficult things to work in Puerto Rico. So if you're a Spanish speaker, you're going to do time in Puerto Rico. That was the only language. So as a normal agent, for you, for instance, do you get any say in where you're going to what you're getting assigned to? No. They're just going to give you what they're going to give. Not then. At then the Bureau's policy, which made, was made complete sense. Like, starting your life over as an FBI agent,

it's a big jump. And the easiest way effectively is to go in a witness security program. It's a complete new identity, no ties to your old identity at all. Because it's the easiest way to become an FBI agent. Like, nobody, you're not around people you went to high school with. You're not around your neighbors. You're not even around family. Oh, so you're saying not literally like it's a witness protection, but they take you and they're not going to send you back to where you're from. Right.

They're going to send you to some other city so you don't have to run into the people you used to know. You're going to be. Right. It's a new life. That was back then. Now, the problem with that, it was very expensive. I'm in Kansas City. They send me to Pittsburgh for two years.

They get me ready to go into one of major offices. Is this what they actually? did with you? Yeah. So this is your first assignment is Pittsburgh. Two years in Pittsburgh. Do you get some kind of a special assignment like you're going to be working gang, you're going to be working drug, or are you just working? Most offices start you out working applicants because you got to get used to laying the credentials on somebody in a low stress environment. So if you're doing a background investigation, you're walking into a bank because somebody that used to work in a bank wants to become an agent or something else. the background's required. Jeez, that's not the rush you were looking for, wasn't?

It's a little slow to start out. But, you know, the first couple times, you know, crazy things where you hold your cred's up in front of somebody. You get used to that. And, but, or if you're going into a bank to lock somebody up, that's a whole different. So they, they warm you up in applicants and then depend upon where you are, where you're going to get assigned to.

I initially get assigned to foreign counterintelligence, FCI, working spies, which is not for me. again that's slow meticulous work and so I within the rules now I'm scheming on how to get out of there you get there you get assigned this foreign counterintelligence you already know this is really not your gig well so what's your scam what do you run how do you try and maneuver well as it turns out the guy is ahead of the office his kid is getting ready to go to college and I'm Iowa State. So I'm not that far from out of Iowa State. I'm like, look, you know, I'll connect you with some friends. You know, we'll help make sure your landing is a soft landing. And, you know,

I helped look out for his kid. Building some relationships. Relationship building. And so then he initially, I want to go to the drug squad, drug and organized crime. The different choices, they get a bank robbery squad, great squad. I got no shot at the bank robbery squad. Drug an organized crime or white collar. So I'm going to let me do the drugs and organized crime. This guy, I'm told he's going to send me a drug and organized crime. And then when the transfer comes through, I'm on surveillance. Which ended up being a great thing.

It was better than FCI. But then, you know, that assignment played into where I ended up in New York. And surveillance is, you get experiment with stuff. And all the field divisions, surveillance is a light undercover. That you got a name, different last name, you got the ID, you got credit cards. In the event that you got to, somebody you're following, whether it's a drug dealer or a spy, gets on a plane, you've got to go with them. You got to be able to pay for it, you know, you've got to be able to go.

So I got a chance to do some undercover work there also because then they're borrowing the guys surveillance teams, you've already got an undercover backstop, you go out do drug buys. And that's when I found out to be an undercover is to lie for a living. And it didn't fit me, didn't suit me. Some people, it's fine. It works for you. But lying for a living didn't work for me. And undercover sounds sexy.

Everybody wants to do undercover. I mean, that sounds sexy. I want to get out there. I want to buy drugs. You know, I want to go in and organize crime. I want to do all this stuff. and until you try it, something that sounds sexy, you don't really know if it's for you.

So I got a chance to try it a couple, a few times in Pittsburgh, and I just realized it just wasn't for me. I had two friends. One of them went to the FBI, or was trying to go from the SEAL teams to the FBI. The other one was going to another agency inside the government. And they both went to the screening. and the guy that was going to the FBI comes back.

He says, God, I took the freaking lie detector test. That thing was crazy. You know, as soon as they said, pick a number between one and five and tell us, you know, don't tell us the number when we ask you if it's the number. And he goes, okay. And so he's, you know, thinking of three. And they go, is it one?

And he goes, no. And the thing's all flat. He goes, is it two? And he goes, no. And as soon as he says that, he goes, the thing starts going wild. Is it three? He said it's off.

He goes, they knew exactly because I told him that. And he was one of those guys. Like he just wasn't comfortable lying and it just called him out. Now my other friend who went to another agency, he comes back from his interview. And he goes, yeah, I took that lie detector test. And I go, how was that? He goes, I flat lied it. And he said he just, yeah, that thing couldn't.

I just blew through it. And here's the thing. I actually don't know if he was like, because he lied a lot, this guy. You know, he was one of those guy that told like small, small lies all the time. You know, we talk to do a girl. He's a hell of little crazy stuff. He's talking to some other dude. He's telling him some crazy.

Even when he's talking to you, you know, you know those kind of friends that you have where they, you know, they're kind of lying about stuff. Like, you know, and you're good with it. It's just white lies, but it's all the time. He was one of those guys. And so I kind of believed him when he told me he flatlined the thing. He probably, yeah. But he may have been even lying about that.

I'm not sure. But that idea, you know, for me, I'm like you. Like, I don't want to be, I don't like to have, like, I don't like to have to cover like lie about stuff and make stuff up and it just doesn't sit well with me I wouldn't be a good undercover guy so how long did you have to do that for I was I worked surveillance for about

a year and a half a year now a lot of times you're just straight up sitting in like the plumbing van on the corner just about the camera taking pictures that's what you're doing yeah or even if even if you're in a chase vehicle where you're following them like they're moving

for of an eight 10-hour shift, they're moving for an hour max. So you're sitting around no matter what. So this is still not what you came in to do? No, yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't. You know, I'm bide my time in Pittsburgh at the time

because I knew that, you know, I'm going to be out of there soon. What is it a two-year assignments that you guys get? Roughly, at the time, it was roughly two years before they moved you on to one of the top offices. They called it the top 12 the time, but everybody was going to New York. At the time, every FBI agent, everywhere in the country,

you got paid the same amount of money. If you were an agent in Kansas City, if you're an agent in my hometown, Mount Pleasant, Iowa. You got paid the exact same amount of money as somebody in New York got paid. So consequently, there were people in New York were quitting right and left. They were having trouble staff in the office.

And they said, look, you're going to New York. I mean, the orders aren't here yet, but nine out of ten of you coming out of this class, you guys are all going to end up in New York. So you're going. Don't be shocked when your orders for New York come through. So I'm in Pittsburgh. I'm waiting for the orders to New York to come through.

And so what year is this that you finally get orders to New York? 1985. 1985. The day my son, Brandon, was born, was the exact same day I got my orders to New York were printed. You roll up to New York and what do you get us? signed when you get up there? I catch a break. Since I got surveillance time and since I've been a cop,

the Joint Terrorist Task Force, the surveillance team dedicated to them, needed bodies, and because of my surveillance time, I got put right on. So that was a huge break for a whole bunch of reasons. It was, I saved a lot of money.

Didn't have to pay for suits and dry cleaning. that's a you know this cost of living is now increased so my living standard is taking a step back and then the second thing was at the time the surveillance teams were the only guys that took cars home surveillance and SWAT took cars home and so this takes care of all my commuting expenses

which is another significant chunk of cash so and then I'm with New York City cops as partners a joint terrorist task force surveillance team but the coolest thing of it was we were the only surveillance team in New York that actually got out on the street with people, went into the subway. You had to be prepared

to end up anywhere in New York City at 1 o'clock in a morning, toughest neighborhood, by yourself, no comms with anybody. Like totally on your own. And you develop, you know, it's a New York very dangerous time, 19, mid to late 80s, very dangerous.

So if you're into this job, like, this is great. This is a Disney world every day. Like, how do you end up in the South Bronx and the bad guys leave you alone? I remember the first time I'm going through bedside about 1 o'clock in the morning and we could use pay phones. You know, you had special number.

You could use a pay phone that cost you. I called some friends of mine in Iowa to say, guess where I am at right now? I am in bedstai in a drug neighborhood hanging out. Now, you said you're the counter-terrorist team. Is that right? Yeah, well, joint terrorist task force. Joint terrorist task force.

Yeah, I think I know there's some terms of anti-terrorist versus counter-terrorist. I think we're counter-terrorist. And so who are you tracking? How are you ending up in, you know, some drug-infested part of the city? Who are you tracking? It was a very cool trend. transition time. The terrorist task force started out mostly all domestic terrorism and had every ethnic group had a terrorist group. Puerto Ricans had the FLIN, the March

of Taros, Jewish JDL, bombers, black Panthers had turned into the Black Liberation Army, and the most dangerous one of all, the May 19th Communist Organization, which was mostly white female lesbians. And they were the smartest, the most organized, the most effective of all the groups. Like we had more respect for their organization and the way they, and at one point of time, domestically, all the groups got together

because it's like a professional association where you have conferences. They hang out together. They know each other. And they did a couple joint operations. and the May 19th were so disappointed in the organization of the other groups that they finally said, you guys go on your own.

So the first generation of terrorist task force put them all in jail. I mean, knocked them out. They won awards right and left. Books were written about all the cases they made. So I get there and I joined that just as that's going away and simultaneously just as the Islamic radicals are starting to come to town.

Like I get there just a couple of years before the First World Trade Center bombing and we're seeing a shift, but the bizarre part of it was no one believed this. No one believed you. No one, FBI headquarters, New York City Police Department,

they were actually in the process of disbanding the terrorist task force when a first world trader center bombing occurred in 93. Some of my supervisors, a deputy chief famously said to one of my supervisors, you're telling me about pink elephants walking down Broadway because they felt there was no terrorism in the United States because none of the incidents were occurring on American soil. And we had all been reassigned to gang crimes.

Gang crimes was a really big thing at the time. And they took us, they disbanded the terrorist task force. And he reassigned us all the gang cases. So you're there. They disband this terrorist task force after they kind of broke a bunch of these domestic terrorist groups up. They say, yeah, there's no more threat. Were you guys already saying, hey, no, there's an Islamic extremist threat? Or were you not quite there yet?

We weren't quite there yet. We sensed something was going on. And so we took all our terrorist cases and made them gang cases. because they qualified as gang cases. Okay, so you guys are now part of this gang task force. We're working gang crimes, you know, the different groups, wherever they had originated from. At the different time, at the time,

there were a couple of bank robbery crews that were, they realized if we call where we hang out a mosque, then we just pulled another layer of the First Amendment over us. and it's not much harder to get at us. So they said, you know, criminals, and every religion has legitimate practitioners. So it's not the legitimate practitioners' fault that the criminals changed the name of the building

and they hang out in to a mosque. And that's what a bunch of them did. And we went from literally, the First World Trade Center bombing, a couple of guys that were investigating to some bank robberies were trying to get a wire in a building that the bank robbers said was a mosque and the prosecutors wouldn't touch it.

They're like, we are not, we don't care what you find. We're not putting a wire in a church. And then the trade center happened and they turn right back around and with all the probable cause we'd previously established, we got the wires that we needed

right after the first trade center bombing. So were you, in that, gang task force doing surveillance when the first World Trade Center attack happened? I had been, I had shifted from surveillance to what we call going inside, being part of the investigative squad. So I was no longer doing light cover. And I had been doing investigations overtly for probably about two years when a first Trade Center bombing happened. How surprised were we on that first, Trade Center bombing?

Yeah, completely. There were some cases that we had had working. We just, we didn't imagine, we didn't have our arms around the guys that did the bombing. We actually had, we were looking real hard at a particular group that engaged

in a test blast of the Trade Center explosive. They were tricked into the test blast. They didn't even know what was going on. The obsequent of the guys that hit the first trade center was really, really good. And Ramsey Yusuf, mastermind, in the first trade center bombing, who is in fact Caled Sheikh Mohammed's nephew, 9-11 mastermind.

His nephew, Ramsey Yusuf, did the first, he came to town, he brought the plans with him, he found a bunch of disorganized guys. You know, nobody really appreciated what he was, how organized he was. He pulled the whole thing together and left New York shortly before the bomb went off. And we got lucky on that bombing. I mean, the amount of damage that that bomb could have done. Ridiculous. Ridiculously lucky.

And their intention was the first time was to take the tower down. They placed a bomb in a position to try to drop one tower into the next. And when Ramsey came back, when we brought him back, collectively, I'm told that they flew by the trade center. And he told the guys that I'm playing next time when he was. taking it down. How did this impact your job? So once this happens, is it like full focus? Now you realize you got to pay the FBI needs to pay attention to the Islamic extremists? Yeah. Well, we got we got on them in a hurry. We'd been working different aspects of the group for about five years. And everything they did, there was tremendous restrictions on terrorist

investigations because they saw it as a political investigation. So the oversight, like we had to rejustify the cases every six months. And if they hadn't committed a crime or we hadn't turned up a crime in that six month time frame, the investigation just got shut down. You couldn't pursue it. So, but consequently, we had little bits and pieces all along that when they hit the trade center, we could go back to the previous cases, well, here's a piece here, here's a piece here, here's a piece here. and we now saw how the group had coalesced in the United States by not breaking a law in their own way. For example, one guy, one of the ringleaders got stopped in a car,

pulled over in a car, stopped trunkload of weapons. One of the passengers in a car had a federal firearms license. It had dealer tags on a car. It wasn't the right, the reason it got stopped was because the tags didn't match the car. they had legitimate reason for having a dealer tax. Dealer license plate, you put on any car you want driving around. You're golden.

So legitimate car stop within the laws of the United States, no reason to take anybody to jail. When we start backtracking, we see same guys in a car with a bunch of weapons on a way to a firing range. So when we could bring all the pieces together, it all came together pretty fast. at what point did you get interested or start to get involved in negotiation yeah i had uh i had i would say it would be fair to say utterly no interest in being a hostage negotiated when i first joined a bureau

i was on a swat team in pittsburg i got to new york i tried out for hr t uh that i was ridiculously underprepared when I tried out for HRT. I was just like sad but knew that I could do it if I worked at it. You can't train a couple of weekends. You got to train your tail off

for a year. It's got to become a lifestyle. I don't have to tell you that. I mean, that's what it is. It's a lifestyle. So I tried out for HRT and failed miserably and then started working out again

and re-injured my knee, had my knee put back together for the second time. And then I thought, all right, so, and as probably as you well know, there's a shelf life, there's special operation, special forces. And you were expired. You're going to expire at some point in time.

You know, something's going to break too many times and you're not going to be able to do it anymore. So then I thought, all right, so we got negotiators. I've seen these guys out there. They're there all the time. Crisis response. I'll be a negotiator. because crisis requires the decision.

Somebody's got to decide what to do and decide now. And I wanted to stay in that game and do it. So I thought I would angle myself towards a negotiation team and had to jump through some hoops but eventually made it. So this is, what year is this that you make it to the negotiation team? I get trained in 92. 92. 19 last century.

1992, before cell phones. And so this is inside the FBI, there's a detachment of negotiators? Is that the way it's set up? You can do it as an additional duty. Like when you're a street agent, there's something in you, there's four basic additional assignments.

Something in you's going to resonate with one of those four. You can be an undercover, you could be a negotiator, you could be in SWAT, you could be a bomb tech. Each one of those are a little bit, different breed of cat.

And something in you is really going to line up with one of those things. And so... Swat was out for you. Yeah, swat's out because the knee. And I was interested in negotiation. And what you do, if they take you on the team, then they send you to Quanticle for two weeks

to get that training. There's three schools in the world that every hostage negotiator wants to go to. You want to go to the Bureau School. you want to go to London, Matt, Scotland Yard, and then you're either going to want to go down to Australia, you're going to want to go to Canada because both of those run great courses.

So the Bureau's course, as opposed to the Scotland Yard's course, the Bureau's course will turn you into the best hostage negotiator you could be. Scotland Yard turned you into a great team player, which I had no idea there was a difference then. But there was a huge difference. So I went to the Bureau school and learned how to negotiate. So this is when you're still part of the gang task force. Right.

You get this collateral duty as a negotiator. So if something was to pop up where a negotiator was needed, they'd call you'd get brought in. Right. Whereas some other guy that became a bomb tech, all of a sudden there's a bomb. They find a pipe bomb somewhere. They needed someone to go work on that. They call one of the bomb tech guys that's been to that school. Exactly.

And so forth. Okay. So you've been trained. Now, once you've been trained in that, did you start to, realize this is kind of something that you're good at? Did you realize it was something you were more interested in you thought you would be? Well, I had volunteered on a suicide hotline before I went to the negotiation training. Wait, you volunteered on a what? Suicide hotline. Okay, got it. That was the hoop I had to jump through because I went to the head of the negotiation team in New York. I said, I want to be a hostage

negotiator. Oh, this is in the book, the woman that you said. Turn me down. Yeah. And so I volunteer on a hotline so then when I get to the Bureau's negotiation school and they're playing tapes I say to myself I've been doing this for a year and a half I just didn't have a SWAT team outside so I've already felt that it was something that I was going to be good at and enjoyed while I was there how was that learning curve at the suicide hotline yeah it's really counterintuitive I had like it's an invisible skill it's ridiculous it's ridiculous effective and it's completely invisible. And you go to training for that?

Did they train you to be? At the hotline? Not only they train you, but at the beginning of the training, they give you a piece of paper with 10 possible statements that somebody in the hotline might make. So write down what you think of good response is. They're going to give you back this piece of paper at the end of the training.

They gave me back the piece of paper at the end of the training. Now, I write like, it looks like I write with my feet. My handwriting is very distinct. Like there's no way you can fake my handwriting. So they hand me this piece of paper, and I know that's my handwriting. And I remember thinking like, what moron wrote those responses?

That was how far they take you in two months, and you don't even know it. What's an example of what you instinctively might think you should say to what you actually should say? So, and one call that I did get, this guy calls in and says, look, look, I'm just, you know, I'm just, you know, I'm trying to put a lid on this night.

I'm trying to put a lid on this night. Now, before training, I might have said, have you tried watching some TV? Have you tried working out? Like, when I'm really stressed, I know if I can go get a good workout, it clears my head. Or have you tried meditation?

Like jumping right into problem solving. That is the wrong way to do it. That is, that will prolong the same thing. situation like the speed accelerator which is neuroscience based I didn't know at the time is to deactivate the negatives by calling them out so I just say to this guy because I've been taught to just like call out what you're hearing so I go he sounded frantic so I said sound frantic and immediately his voice started coming down several notches instantaneously and that that tiny like people listening to that conversation would be like what he the guy what he just said

seems unhelpful however if I'm watching the person that he said it to instantaneously came down and since you don't see examples of that in real life or on the movies or TV on a movie the TV, the guy'd say, look, have you tried working out? And then in the movies of TV, they'll depict it as the guy, as the other person saying, like, wow, that's a great idea. I'll do that. So what's psychologically going through my head when I tell you, I want to put a cap on this night, I got to put a cap on this night, and you say, you say back to me, you sound like you're frantic. What's going through my head that's making me de-escalate. Right. So it's probably a neurochemical reaction. There's a, and from listening

to Hubram and others, I'm fascinated by finding the science behind it. It's been duplicated in a number of experiments that if I put you in an fMRI, where I can watch the electricity moving around in your brain, and I show you a picture that induces some sort of negative thought. And what the picture is, it doesn't matter. The experiment's been done a number of times. They might have shown them puppies in a rain, a starving child in Africa, anything that induced a negative thought. And so seeing the picture, they watch areas in your brain light up

that either for you or predicted in advance where the negativity in your brain is housed. That bounces around a little bit based on person, but it's essentially about three quarters of the amygdala and a couple of other things that are. involved. So they watch it light up when you see the picture. Now they just say to you, what are you feeling? Just asking you to label it, call it out. Simply call it out. And every time they ask the person to simply identify the negative emotion of their feeling, the electrical

activity in the areas that it lit up start to diminish. Every time. Not sometimes, not 75% of that time, every time. Now the amount they diminish changes. which is why I happen to hit the nail on the head with this guy in a hotline, he starts coming down significantly. Sometimes you can call out somebody's negative emotion and there won't be any perceivable response. It doesn't mean it didn't work. It means you just need to do it some more.

But it happens every time. Now, what triggers it is, is it a neurochemical response? Is it a conscious response? It's probably some sort of neurochemical response. but what we learned in hostage negotiation and on the hotline actually we do this extremely aggressively now in all our business negotiations

like you know I get some contentious to talk about I'm going to call you on a phone and send you a text and an email saying like yeah I like what I have to say is it's going to be harsh this is going to be insulting and so I started in a funny kind of way

I started applying this when I'm running our international kidnap response. I go to an embassy that's kidnapping to Philippines, I think you read about earlier. I am unwelcome because somebody from Washington, D.C. shows up. The locals in the embassy, the message they get is they're screwing up. You either screwing up or you're inadequate. Somebody from D.C. is not welcome. And I'm walking into a hostile environment every time.

because they were new to it, they didn't know exactly the response, they'd usually be doing something wrong. And I'd walk in, I started pointing out what they were doing wrong. And my partner, Chuck Regini, who you, who's in the story, whenever we walk into room, he would start to flinch because he knew that I was getting ready to lay into these guys. And somewhere along the line, I learned to say, before I started criticizing him,

I'd say, this is going to sound harsh. And then I'd criticize them. And they'd be, okay, they'd go from being mad to, you know, it preempted the negativity by letting them know what was coming. And I've seen it work on a regular basis. Something about it makes it worse. You could say, you could probably get away with saying this in the Navy, in the teams. You could say, you know, captain, this is going to, I don't want you to think I'm being dissonable. disrespectful and you're probably not going to get to say the sentence second sentence second sentence

or he's going to have shut you off but if instead you said captain i know this is going to sound disrespectful he'd sit down and listen to you he'd appreciate being warned and there's something about that reaction that tiny little shift that i'll learn way back on a hotline so you worked this suicide hotline for a year? I was actively on a line for probably a little over two years, two and a half years. I stayed very involved when a first trade center kicked off, then our follow-on case, which was a larger, larger, broader conspiracy on a couple of different groups that were all linked together. Through the course of that following year, I just didn't have time to volunteer on a hotline anymore.

So this is kind of how you get started in this negotiation, learning this skill. And I kind of told you this before we started recording. And we're going to see all kinds of overlap between what I talk about from a leadership perspective. You know, there's a lot of skills that are transfer. It's like if you're good at baseball, there's a lot of things that are going to transfer over to softball. If you're good at wrestling, there's a lot of things that are going to transfer.

over to, you know, Jiu-Jitsu. So there's a lot of stuff that's really, really similar. And there's some differences as well. But this skill of negotiation, as I read through the book, it's evolved a lot in the last 40, 50 years. Right. And, you know, some of the stuff that you talk about in the book,

you know, hostage negotiation used to mean, you know, stall them until we get a chance to assault. Like, that, that was. was what it was. There was a mindset change that you outlined in the book that occurred around 1971, October 1971, a guy named George Giff. Am I saying that right? He's a guy that took a plane, took a plane, took hostages on the plane.

The plane lands to refuel. The hostages had actually negotiated their own release, but the FBI, got frustrated and shoots the engine of the plane, the guy loses his mind, kills the hostages. The FBI gets sued and actually loses the lawsuit. So all of a sudden they realized they need to make some adjustments to the way they're negotiating. Right. Another thing that you kind of detail in the book is 1979, Harvard starts this negotiation project. and they're starting to look at negotiation theory and practice.

They're trying to improve it. A book ends up coming out of that. The book is called Getting to Yes. That was written by Roger Fisher and William Uri, who were also the co-founders of that project. And the theory that they had was that, look, the people are emotional and they're animalistic and they're unreliable and they're irrational and you just need to overcome that. Right. With, you know, rational, logical, you know, problem solving mindset, which is, which is actually

an idea that doesn't turn out to work so well because it's a lot harder to overcome that irrational, emotional, emotional, animalistic human. So those are some of the, those are some of the evolutions that start to take. take place when in the book that you that you run through. And in fact, going to the book here, you say, you say this about their system was easy to follow and seductive with four basic tenets. One, separate the person, the emotion from the problem. Two, don't get wrapped up in the other side's position, what they're asking for.

But instead, focus on their interests, why they're asking for it so you can find what they really want. Three, work cooperatively to generate win-win options. and four, I'm putting a little tone on those aren't I, sorry. And four establish mutually agreed upon standards for evaluating those possible solutions. So this is like one of those just detached academic things. It was a brilliant rational and profound synthesis of the most advanced game theory and legal thinking of the day for years after that book came out. Everybody, including the FBI and the NYPD, focused on problem solving approach to bargaining interactions.

It just seems so modern, and smart. So that was what was kind of happening. Then you go on to say halfway across the United States, a pair of professors at the University of Chicago was looking at everything from economics to negotiation from a far different angle. They were economists Amos Tversky, am I saying that right?

Tversky and psychologist Daniel Kahneman, Kahneman. Conman. Conman, yeah. And he wrote Thinking Fast and Slow. together the two launched the field of behavioral economics and connemines won a Nobel prize by showing that man is a very irrational beast feeling they discovered is a form of thinking as you've seen when business schools like harvards began teaching negotiation in the 1980s the process was presented as a straightforward economic analysis there was a period when the world's top

academic economists declared that we were all rational actors. That means on both sides. That means considering that both people on both sides are rational. And so it went in negotiation classes, assuming the other side was acting rationally and selfishly trying to maximize their position. The goal is to figure out how to respond in various scenarios to maximize one's own value. This mentality baffled Conneman, who from years in psychology knew that in his words, quote, it is self-evident that people are neither fully rational nor completely selfish and that their

tastes are anything but stable, end quote. So there were these two schools going on with negotiation and one of them took this kind of logical approach and the other one realized that you had to deal with these emotional, the emotions was a way of thinking. You're not something you're going to have to deal with. And you must have realized that on the suicide hotlines as well. Yeah, you know, and I didn't really understand why all I knew is that taking that approach accelerated things. Just complete acceleration in situations that I thought would have taken hours.

And so I just saw, and again, Connman and doesn't win the Nobel Prize had like 2002-ish. So just saw that it worked, didn't understand why. I didn't really care. My first issue has always been what works. Now, understanding a mechanism is important sometimes that people need to understand a mechanism. Some people need to understand a mechanism. I care about, number one, what works.

Number two, secondarily, is it moral. You know, missionaries and mercenaries. Mercenaries, if it works, missionaries, if it follows your basic moral code, if it qualifies on both of those, then I'm good. Got it. Now, you go into the book a little bit about how the FBI sort of started to adopt this.

You know, the FBI, they were deep into that book at one point getting to, yes, that was what they were using. A lot of guys were using that. But then, you know, you get Ruby Ridge up in Idaho. You get the, the Waco, Texas, right? These things are kind of disaster. These things are actually. They are just kind of disastrous. They're very disastrous.

And you throw this in the book. I'm going to go to the book here. I mean, have you ever tried to devise a mutually beneficial win-win solution with a guy who thinks he's the Messiah? It was becoming alarmingly obvious that getting to yes didn't work with kidnappers. No matter how many agents read the book with highlighters in hands, it failed to improve how we as hostage negotiators approach deal-making. There was clearly a breakdown between the book's brilliant theory and everyday law enforcement experience. Why was it that everyone had read this best-selling business book and endorsed it as one of the greatest negotiators and texts ever written? And yet so few could follow it successfully.

Were we morons? In 1994, fast forward a little bit from the book. And again, I'm reading an excerpt for the book. The book is awesome. I mean, we're hitting some wave tops. So just order the book right now so you can get all these details. In 1994, FBI director Louis Free announced. Louis Free.

Louis Free announced the formation of the critical incident response group, a blended division that would combine crisis negotiation, crisis management, behavioral sciences, and hostage rescue teams, and reinvent crisis negotiation. The only issue was what techniques were we going to use. And you go on to say what were needed were simple psychological tactics and strategies that worked in the field to calm people down, establish rapport, gain trust. elicit verbalization of needs and persuade the other guy of our of our empathy we needed something that was easy to teach easy to learn and easy to execute in the early years the FBI experimented with both new and old therapeutic techniques developed in by the counseling profession these counseling skills were aimed at developing positive relationships with people by demonstrating an understanding of what they're going through and how they feel about it it all starts with the universally applicable premise that people

want to be understood and accepted and by the way again I talked about like leadership this is exactly what I talk about from a leadership perspective I mean if you don't know me at all I'm absolutely trying to get you to trust me how do I get you to trust me I put some trust in you I listen to what you have to say you're gonna listen to me same exact thing here look back to the book listening is the cheapest yet most effective concession we can make to get there by listening intensely a negotiator demonstrates empathy and shows a sincere desire to better understand what the other

side is experiencing exactly why you listen to your subordinates exactly why you listen to your peers exactly why you listen to your boss what are you trying to tell me boss let me listen you know whenever I get asked the question you know my my team's not listening to me what should I do yell louder it's like no you want your team to listen to you listen to them be quiet listen to them hear what they have to say you go on to say psychotherapy research shows that when individuals feel listened to you They tend to listen to themselves more carefully and openly evaluate and clarify their own thoughts and feelings. In addition, they tend to become less defensive and oppositional and more willing to listen to other points of view,

which gets them to calm and logical place where they can be good getting to yes problem solvers. So again, this is one of the things that I am talking about all the time with people. I always say, you know, if I'm, if I want you to see something, if I want to, if I know the truth about something, if I've got some great plan and I want you on board with my plan, the best thing I can do is not tell you what the plan is, is let you come up with the plan. Let you, let the truth be revealed to you by you, not by me. Right. That's my goal. And you go on to say this whole concept, which you'll learn as the centerpiece of this book is called tactical empathy. This is listening as a martial art, balancing the subtle behaviors of emotional intelligence and assertive skills of influence to gain access to the mind of the other person. Contrary to popular opinion, listening is not a passive activity. It is the most active thing you can do. Once we started developing our new techniques, the negotiating world split into two concurrence.

Negotiation as learned at the country's top school continued down the established road of rational problem solving. While ironically, we meet heads at the FBI began to train our agents in an unproven system based on psychology, counseling, and crisis intervention. While the Ivy League taught math and economics, we became experts in empathy and our way worked. So that's how the shift took place. That's good stuff in that book. What book you read from again? I tell you, it's good.

I'm impressed. Who the hell wrote that? Yeah. No, it's great. And I'm telling you, I mean, I just, I was really, really stoked to read it and got so much out of it. Just seeing, you know, that whole section right there. I mean, this is what I'm talking to people all the time about from a leadership perspective. You know, the big difference, the big difference between when I talk about leadership and if you and I are negotiating, the big difference is as a leader, I don't really care at the end of the day what plan.

we use. I just want the best plan. So I, you know, if we're going to attack a target, at the end of the day, I don't care if we attack it from the north or from the south. I just want which one is best. So I don't really have, I'm not trying to make you think something. I actually just want to find the best solution. Now there's a chance that my solution is the best. There's a chance that your solution is the best. If I go and try and ram my solution down your throat, what are you going to do? You're going to get defensive. We might not get to the best solution. Right. If I hang on to my idea too tightly, we're not going to. going to get the best solution. So the main thing that I can do to help us get to the best

solution, not to my solution, not to your solution, but just to the best solution. The best thing for me to do is listen to what you have to say. Because I can't make you listen to me. I can't. But I can't listen to you. That's going to open up your mind. It's going to move us in the right direction. So that's probably the big difference between the two is that when you're negotiating, you have a goal that you're trying to get to. Well, and here's what I'd add to that because that description is really the way we negotiate is we're just looking for the best deal like you say you're looking for the best plan yeah like the the the real hard part in negotiating is your goal you need to see it merely as a suggestion if you get too goal oriented you get

tunnel vision and you miss better answers never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn't take something better and by definition you're never going to know the best possible outcome. It's not possible because the other side's holding stuff back. You're holding stuff back. Getting people to accept that intellectually is often really difficult with really experienced business people. And I'll say, when are you not holding something back?

Budgetary problems, pressures to make the deal. Pressure to not make the deal. Internal politics. Personal pressures. Is there every time you're not holding something back? And no one ever said, I negotiate and I'm completely honest all the time. Nobody ever says that. People are always holding stuff back.

So if you are, they are too. And you're both holding back information that would change the course of the deal if revealed. That's why you're holding it back. Now, so now what happens if you exponentialize this, so to speak? There's an overlap of the unknowns. So it's impossible to know the best deal going in. It's not possible. But very few business people will accept that.

It is what it is. I know what it is. I'm experienced. I know what the outcome's going to be. I know what they're being driven by. You know, you are stroking your own ego when you say stuff like that. Yeah. Well, that means this stuff is even more in line with what I talk about all the time.

I think it's completely in line. The other thing that's interesting is, you know, I forget if we'll cover this today, but I talk to business people, and occasionally, and it's usually, it's very rare that, you know, you and I are working at a company and we can't come to a conclusion.

We can't come to an agreement. You want to do it this way, I want to do it that way. And when that happens, and the reason it happens so rarely in business because if you and I work for the same company, well, we both want to make money, we both want to take care of our client,

We both want to take care of the team, right? Like we're ultimately aligned. And so we're trying to do something that's going to make us money and take care of the client and take care of our team. We're going to figure out a solution. That's 99% of the time. One percent of the time you don't want to, you either, you either don't want to help the client. There's someone on the team you don't want to take care of. There's something going on where we're truly not aligned.

Maybe you want to break off and start your own company, so you want us to fail. And if it comes to a point where I'm saying, Chris, hold on a second, this is going to make us money. It's going to take care of our team. It's going to take care of the client. And we can't come to an agreement. That means we're not aligned. And you talk about that. There are some deals where you want to sell the car and I want to buy the car, but we just can't.

There's no possible way that we're going to do it because you want, you know, $30,000 for the car. And I literally can only pay $20,000. It's not going to happen. We're not aligned. So that does occasionally happen. But yeah, it's very interesting that the meatheads at the FBI were the ones that started trying to listen and empathize and see the other people's perspective. Right, right. Let's get into the book.

And I'll tell you what, when I was reading the book, one thing that was a little bit tricky for me is as I was reading the book, I'm like, I want to read a bunch. It's kind of written, you know, I've written a couple books too. And in my books, I tell the story, the combat story, the business story, and then give the principle. And that's what your book is, too. There's a lot of that. Hey, here's a combat story, an FBI story or a business story, and here's the negotiating principle that comes out of it. And I kind of was going back and forth. Do I read a bunch of the stories because the stories are great?

But I figured since you're here, it'd be great. You know, I'm sure you'll tell some of those stories. but just to get into the techniques, the negotiations techniques that you outlined in the book. And that's kind of what I decided to do. May or may not have been the right decision. We're not sure yet. Maybe you'll have to come back just for pure story time. But I wanted to get into the tactics that you talk about because, again, I think they're so prevalent.

And in your intro to the book, you talk about negotiating being, negotiation is life. you're negotiating all the time. Right. So these are things that you, that everybody can use all the time. And the other thing is kind of like leadership. People think leadership, you either have it or you don't.

But really, leadership is a bunch of skills that you can learn. And negotiation, you know, how often you hear, oh, that guy's a great negotiator. You hear that a lot. Or that guy's not a good negotiator. But what you don't realize is negotiation,

just like basketball or just like playing guitar. There's a bunch of skills that you can learn. There's a bunch of moves. that you can make. And once you know those skills, once you know those moves, you can utilize them. And so this book,

awesome book for pointing out some of these tactics, techniques, and procedures. So let's get into a little bit. The first technique that you talk about, or the first one that I'm going to highlight,

is called mirroring. Yeah. And you say mirroring, also called isopraxism. Is that right? It had a lot of syllables in that word, uh?

There you go. Luckily, you've only got it in here once. I don't have to say it again. It's essentially imitation. It's another neurobehavior that humans and other animals display in which we copy each other to comfort each other. It can be done with speech patterns, body language, vocabulary, tempo, tone of voice. It's generally an unconscious behavior. We're rarely aware of when it's happening.

But it's a sign that people are bonding in sync and establishing the kind of rapport that leads to trust. It's a phenomenon and now a technique that follows a very basic but profound biological principle. We fear what's different and are drawn to what's similar. As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. Mirroring then when practice consciously is the art of insinuating similarity. Trust me, a mirror signals to another unconscious. You and I, we're alike. Once you're attuned to the dynamic, you'll see it everywhere.

couples walking on the street with their steps in perfect synchronicity. Friends in conversation at a park both nodding their head and crossing legs at about the same time. These people in a word are connected. While mirroring is most often associated with forms of nonverbal communication, especially body language. As negotiators, a mirror focuses on the words and nothing else. Not the body language, not the accent, not the tone or delivery, just the words. It's almost laughably simple. For the FBI, a mirror is when you repeat the last three words or the critical one to three words of what someone just said.

Of the entirety of the FBI's hostage negotiation skill set, mirroring is the closest one gets to a Jedi mind trick. Simple yet uncannily effective. By repeating back what people say you trigger this mirroring instinct and your counterpart will inevitably elaborate on what was just said and sustain the process of connecting. Psychologist Richard Wiseman created a study using waiters to identify what was more effective What the more effective method of creating a connection with strangers? Mirroring or positive reinforcement one group of waiters using positive reinforcement Lavish praise and encouragement on Patriots using the words such as great no problem and sure in response to each order The other group of waiters mirrored their customers simply by repeating their orders back to them

The results were stunning the average tip of the waiters who mirrored with 70% more than those who use positive reinforcement. So that's pretty amazing. It's nuts, isn't it? Yeah. You point out later in the book that it can feel weird to mirror when you first start doing it. Yeah, it feels weird to everybody, pretty much. Yeah, it feels weird to everybody.

You know, and I don't know why that is, maybe because it seems so obvious to the user. I mean, like, it seems obvious. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I feel like saying some more based on you doing that. I don't know what it is. Yeah, it's just, and that's one of the ones, again, I was talking about Huberman before.

Like, if I could get him to do a ton of experiments, like, try this, try this, I've got to find out this. And that'd be one of them as to what makes a mirror work so effectively with so many people. And it does. And then who's attracted to it? I find interesting who's attracted to it. And then I also find it's different circuits in a brain.

Like the majority of the people on my team, we get really good at labeling. And I find as a performance skill, then in myself and others, we might not mirror enough. And then those that are really attracted to mirroring and will use it almost exclusively like what isn't that makes you tick that makes you like that mirroring so much and i think it's they're attracted to the simplicity of it and then they're not offended by simple concepts which actually in many cases takes a more sophisticated approach to really like simple stuff and i'm seeing regularly people that really mirroring is a sophisticated skill and if somebody rejects it off off the top of their head,

I think you're worried about appearing stupid. And if you're so confident in your intelligence that you've got no problem looking stupid, then you're happy to mirror. Got it. One piece of advice that I give to people is when Chris rolls into my office and you're pissed about something,

I got to talk to you right now. One thing I tell people is like, cool, I get out my notebook. Get out my pen. And like, what's going on? Chris, talk to me.

And to me, that's showing you that I'm listening to what you have to say and I'm taking it seriously. And it seems like mirroring is a, is another way of doing it.

If you're repeating what I'm saying, then I'm like, oh, he's paying attention to me. He's listening to me. You're proving that you're listening to the person, which also is a really positive thing. Never mind the whole

psychological connection that we're making, just the fact that when I'm repeating what you're saying, back to you, it shows you I'm listening to what you're saying. Right. I often, when I talk about listening and how important it is, people don't realize how important it is. And I think one of the ways that I use to explain how important it is, is I use the opposite,

which is if you're talking and I cut you off, everyone knows that's disrespectful. Everybody knows it. It's like a sign of disrespect. If someone's talking, I jump in there and cut them off. Oh, you're not listening to me. that's being disrespectful. The opposite of that is when I actually listen to what you have to say,

and now we've got a little technique to prove to you that I'm listening to what you say. I'm going to mirror those last couple words back to you. So there's no doubt that you got the words if you repeat them back. Nice little technique. Moving on a little bit. Again, we're hitting the highlights of this book.

You got to get the book. The book is definitely going to leave a mark on your brain. So get the book. In a good way. Yes, in a good way. Yeah, not psychological damage, but in a positive way. I'm going to fast forward a little bit here. The language of negotiation is primarily a language of conversation and rapport,

a way of quickly establishing relationships and getting people to talk and think together. Here are some key lessons from this chapter. Remember, a good negotiator prepares going in. to be ready for possible surprises. A great negotiator aims to use her skills to reveal the surprises she is certain to find. My note next to that was role play. How often are we role playing if we're negotiating?

What do you mean? So let's say from a leadership perspective, you know, it's you and me, we're peers and I go, hey, Chris, I got to go meet with Echo. You know how he's all mad about, you know, us cutting his hours. I'm gonna got to go talk to him right now. I know he's pissed.

Can we run through this a couple times? Oh, right. So I'm just gonna roll play. So that way I think about what could Echo possibly say, you know, he might get mad about this. He might talk about his family. He might talk about how long he's been here.

And I want to kind of have some contingency plans here, right? To do what you said, prepare, be ready for possible surprises and actually be ready to take those surprises. And when he says, you know, what about my family? And I said, well, the important thing is, Echo, I know we got to give you some less hours right now. But the main thing I want to do is keep you here.

The only way you can do that is if we cut back your hours a little bit. It's hopefully going to be temporary. It should be when the market picks back up. Are we in an actual negotiation? See where I'm going here, Ecclachl. Echo's not in his head. He's kind of on board. Let's take care of the family.

What are you thinking? I get more free time. It's true. So there you go. There's another point. Hey, now's a little time to make all those baseball games you got to. to make. So that's a point that you made role play, something that we did, that we do with our clients all the time. Right. If you're with a good role player. Right. Great tool. Right.

Like if you get somebody who has dialed in enough emotional, enough emotional intelligence to make some good predictions for you. It's probably not bad, even if they're not good at it. You just got to make sure that that's not exactly the way you expect it to go down. Yeah. Yeah. All right, so this is a possibility. This is how it's going to happen. Definitely. You say don't commit to assumptions. Instead, view them as a hypothesis and use the negotiation to test them rigorously.

To me, my note I wrote down on this one was the most important characteristic for a leader to me is to be humble. And if you're not humble, you know, I go and thinking I'm right, you're wrong. Or I'm just right. It doesn't even matter what you are because I know I'm right. this word of, or the way you put it, viewing your ideas as a hypothesis. View my plan as a, it's beautiful. Yeah, and one, a thousand percent I'll attribute to my son Brandon.

Because we'd be talking about this developing it after I left the FBI and kicking the ideas around. And he'd have an insider. He'd say something. And I know that the word hypothesis in our vernacular came from him. And it's a good word. when you're going into a discussion with somebody. Don't say this is my idea.

Say this is just a hypothesis. It's one I came up with. Could be right, could be wrong. Let's see where it's out. You say people who view negotiation as a battle of arguments become overwhelmed by the voices in their head. Negotiation is not an act of battle.

It's a process of discovery. The goal is to uncover as much information as possible. And that goes back to what we already talked about. I'm looking for the best way of doing it. You're looking for a deal that works. Best deal, best plan. What's the difference, right? To quiet the voices in your head, make your soul and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say, which means we're listening. The most underrated tool of leadership is listening. Slow it down. Going too fast as we're listening. Going too fast as we're

one of the mistakes all negotiators are prone to making. If we're in too much of a hurry, people can feel as if they're not being heard, you risk undermining the rapport and trust you've built. Got to get used to that silence. And you talk about it in here. Many, many people are uncomfortable with silence. Yeah, for a variety of reasons. It's just, happened in the last 72 hours last few days um what i love about what i do for living now is i get in interesting conversations with people with fascinating people that i just like aspire to be in the same room with so ari emmanuel you know that the art that that ary from hollywood the guy that you know the character on um entourage is based around right right so he gives me calling once to

about something and he says, speakers bureau, Don Walker runs it, we'll get on the phone with him. Cool. So I get on the phone with Don and Ari at the same time and Don has done his homework. But he's one of those guys that's not comfortable with silence.

So fortunately, he's so smart about what he's doing and he's done it for so long that everything that's coming out of his mouth is exactly what I'm thinking. However, I've done a talk a couple of times that you get seven to ten seconds to get somebody's attention or you'll lose it. And so he starts out by saying, I know I got seven to ten seconds to get your attention. And he must have talked for about three minutes and finally, I already goes, that's the longest seven seconds I've ever heard in my life.

Because I just couldn't stop talking. Next one. Put a smile on your face. When people are in a positive frame of mind, They think more quickly and are more likely to collaborate and problem solve instead of fight and resist. Positivity creates mental agility in both you and your counterpart. All good stuff. Now you go into this section here and you talk about it in the book already.

You tell. And again, I'm skipping the stories that you wrap around these where people can get the examples of what you did and where you use these. So get the book so you can get some of those examples. Three voice tones available to negotiators. Number one, the late night FM DJ voice. Use selectively to make a point. Inflect your voice downward, keeping it calm and slow. When done properly, you create an aura of authority and trustworthiness without triggering defensiveness.

Number two, the positive playful voice. This should be your default voice. It's a voice of an easygoing good name. Your attitude is light and encouraging. The key here is to relax and smile while you're talking. Number three, the direct or assertive voice use rarely will cause problems and create pushback. He did a podcast a while ago on something called psychological reactance. And what this is is the instinct that everyone has, that when I tell you to do something, you don't want to do it.

Right. It's just a natural reaction that everybody has and it causes, that's what allows reverse psychology to work because when I say oh Chris you can't do this you go yes I can't right when I say you couldn't paint that fence all by yourself you go yes I couldn't you go do it so that direct voice is something to watch out for moving on to this next section and you already mentioned this the idea of labeling you say don't feel Don't feel their pain, label it. Emotions are one of the main things that derail communication.

Once people get upset at one another, rational thinking goes out the window. That's why instead of denying or ignoring emotions, good negotiators identify and influence them. They are able to precisely label emotions those of others and especially their own. And once they label the emotions, they talk about them without getting wound up. For them, emotion is a tool. Emotions aren't obstacles. They are a means. The relationship between an emotionally intelligent negotiator and their counterpart is essentially

therapeutic. It duplicates that of a psychotherapist with a patient. The psychotherapist pokes and pronds to understand his patient's problems and then turns the responses back onto the patient to get him to go deeper and change his behavior. That's exactly what good negotiators do. Getting to this level of emotional intelligence demands opening up your senses, talking less and listening more. Can learn almost everything you need and a lot more than other people would like you to know

simply by watching and listening, keeping your eyes peeled, your ears open, and your mouth shut. Talk to me about labeling a little bit. How are we using it? What does it look like? Simple again. It seems like it sounds like it looks like. Seems like something's bothering you. Seems like you don't know when you're going to need me.

Seems like you're giving this a lot of thought. Just hanging a label on something. it hits the brain in a different way than anything else does. And even questions. Like me and another guy, Steve Scholl, we're doing a lot of stuff with real estate agencies these days. Got a book coming out for residential real estate agents in about two months. What's the name of the book so everyone can pre-order it?

The full fee agent. Okay. And the agent sweep coach, for example, you go through an open house. You walk around, you look around, and the agent says you're on the way out the door, what did you see that you liked? Basically, pretty good question as questions go. Starts with a word what, not a great way. Good word to start a question with, calibrated question, if you will.

And people stop and think, and they go like, ah, well, you know, we're kind of like the kitchen. They'll give you a thoughtful answer. Same scenario, somebody's walking out the door. The agent says, seems like you. saw some stuff you liked. Oh yeah, look, I can tell you something. We were looking at the bedroom and we could see our daughter in there and, you know, the backyard is perfect for the way our kids and like a complete download of what's going through somebody's brain. Like just straight, like from layman's perspective, bypassing the prefrontal cortex entirely shoving up, a listening

device in the side of your head and hearing what's going on in your head. another example and the labels when you're exhausted when you're tired it's hard to give a good answer so i'm on my way back from a trip to the uae a couple of months ago and i'm in seattle waiting to get on a plane and i'm exhausted shoot a text to a buddy take care of this now he could have come back at me with a good question, what makes you ask, to make sure they were aligned. But instead, he texts me back. Seems like you have a reason for asking. Now, I was so tired at that point in time that I saw the difference.

Seems like you have a reason for asking. I must have thrown back at him at 10-line text. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And then afterwards, I thought, if he just said, what makes you ask, I was tired enough that I'd have thought, you know, just, I had texting him back, just do it. Stop bothering me. There's something about the way the label hits the brain that there's a complete mental change in the response and the amount of information you get out of somebody.

It seems like we're danger close on this one to the borderline catastrophic mistake that we can make, which is you come into my office, you're all mad, and I look at you and say, calm down, you're mad. Right? So the difference here is, it seems like you're really mad about this. Yeah.

Well, it seems like this is important. Because the great skill works with your boss also. He's one of the students in my class at Georgetown. boss comes by come on we got to go right now we got we got something we got to take care of right now he called it the boss drive by now we is you we got something we got to do right now that means i got something for you to do right now and he's in a really he's loud about it you know so this guy gets drug into his boss's office and immediately says sounds like this is important well the boss is coming at you like that because it is important,

which is the first thing he wants, or she wants you to understand. So if you demonstrate, sounds like this is important right away, boss immediately comes down, three notches, starts thinking things through. If somebody's angry, you know, sounds like this

has made you angry, sounds like this is important, sounds like this is upsetting. You want him to come down several notches, so the lizard brain is out of the driver's seat, and the human brain is back in, right? I got this book here,

Leadership Strategy and Tactics, I talk about one of the tactics I talk about, I call it reflect and diminish, which means when Chris comes into my office and he goes, I can't believe the supply department didn't get this stuff here on time. What I do is reflect some of that anger,

but I diminish it. So I say, are you serious? It didn't show up yet. How much gear is it that you're missing? So immediately, I show you that I'm on your side, I show you that I'm also mad about it, but we start moving towards a solution, as opposed to like, you need to calm down before you come in here or, hey, you need to take ownership of this. Like, cool, we can get there. But this is like a very similar idea to reflect and diminish. Yeah, well, and I love that question, how much gear is missing because, like, on our list of calibrated questions, we hold people almost exclusively to what and how.

and so how feels good to the other side and through touch on what Connman would talk about it triggers in-depth thinking so the how question to immediately even think about the answer let alone answer it you put them in a completely different frame of mind which takes all you know all the steam out takes all the gas out of the tank takes all the wind out of the sales

whatever you want of their reptilian brain, and you've now gone them in a deep thinking moment. How's a great question? How is a great question? Talk me through the next sexual here, tactical empathy. How do you use that? What does it mean? First of all, we put the word tactical in front of it

to destigmatize the word because in common usage, the word is thought of as sympathy or compassion. and it's not. In usage it's been convoluted and distorted, I can empathize. You know, I've been there. I feel that way, I agree.

That was not the original origin of the word or how it was meant to be applied. That was why I started collaborating with Harvard in the first place because Bob Mnuchin wrote in his book, empathy's not even liking the other side. It's not agreement, it's not liking. It's demonstrating that you understand. Now, and people equate understanding to agreement.

In my terrorism days in New York, we're trying to get Muslims to testify against other Muslims in open court. And they were shocked by that by a whole bunch of reasons. You know, if you want to be proud to be an American, you know, have an Arab Muslim who's in this country just trying to work really hard. they said to us after the trial, you know, when you told us ahead of time, this was about the truth, we thought you were kidding. And having gone through the process, we realized that your system is about the truth.

And so how do we get those Muslims to come in and testify honestly? I would sit down with them and I'd say right off the bat, you think for the last 200 years there's been a succession of American governments that have all been anti-Islamic. And they would go, yeah. Now, that's empathy. I never said it was true. I didn't say I agreed. I didn't say I disagree.

I took no position whatsoever on that statement. I'd say, you think this. And I'd nail it on the head. And none of it is that hard when you really, you know where the other side's come from. You're just scared to say it. Like, I'd say it to these guys, and you just watch them be shy.

and then dialed in with me, having said what was in the back of their mind. That's all it is. And that is a similar thing to labeling. You say here, labeling is a way of validating someone's emotion by acknowledging it. Give someone's emotion a name and you show that you identify with how that person feels. It gets you close to someone without asking about external factors you know nothing about. Think of labeling as a shortcut to intimacy.

a time-saving emotional hack. So this is similar to, oh, this is what you think about a certain subject, which now I'm reading back to you, hey, you think that the past 200 years has been anti-Islamic governments. This would be, it seems like you're angry about the way the Islamic world's been treated. Yeah, that'd be a great start. A good start.

Like some of this stuff is ridiculous, too, and especially talking about politicians. Like, I'm surprised more politicians don't get this. Mario Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo's father, Chris Cuomo's father, Governor of New York, I saw him addressed a hostile crowd

of African Americans that were waiting for Winnie Mandela. This is just before Nelson Mandela gets out. Winnie Mandela is doing a world tour. They're keeping the pressure on the South African government, make sure they let them go. She's in New York. Heavy-duty African-American crowd,

almost all African-American. Cuomo isn't just not African-American, he's Italian, which in New York is a much different dynamic. At the time, a couple of black guys had been chased out of an Italian neighborhood into traffic and had gotten killed by getting hit by cars. Tensions with the Italians are very high.

Cuomo steps up into a crowd that is just short of throwing rocks at him before he said a word. He starts out and he starts going, you see a world that doesn't take your skin color into account. You see a world that doesn't give you a chance because of where you came from and how they perceive you. And he just started laying out thing after thing after thing after thing, that they were in fact feeling and thinking, not agreeing with any of it. I guarantee you

before he stepped out on the stage, he probably said to one of his age said, watch me turn this crowd around. They start cheering him inside of about five minutes before he's feeling. Before he's finished with him, they loved him. Like they were so in favor because he dialed into them and what they were thinking and feeling and he wasn't afraid to say it. And to this day, I'm shocked that more politicians don't do that. Because it's not agreement. He takes no position on it whatsoever.

This is what you see. Yeah. Yeah. It lets that person understand that you understand at a minimum. That's what we're looking for. you say here is you try and insert tools of tactical empathy into your daily life. I encourage you to think of them as extensions of natural human interactions as not and not artificial conversational tics.

In any interaction, it pleases us to feel that the other side is listening and acknowledging our situation. Whether you are negotiating a business deal or simply chatting to a person at the supermarket, butcher counter, creating empathetic relationship and encouraging your counterpart to expand on their situation as a basis of healthy interaction. Now, this is something I say to people a lot. I say, hey, listen, you can't pretend to do this stuff. You're not Robert De Niro and you're not Meryl Streep.

So don't pretend to be curious about them. Don't pretend. Just really feel that way. You need to say, hey, I really want to learn what you, you know, I really want to understand what you're thinking here. Because if you're trying to act, you're going to fail. Most people are going to fail when they're trying to act. And I always say intent has a smell.

So if you come in there and you're just trying to butter me up with some little conversation, I'm going to smell it. Most people are going to smell that. I know when I, the reason I know that is because when I was a young seal, I was the youngest and most junior guy in my first two seal platoons. So when, you know, the boss would come in, we all, we, you know, whatever bullshit he was throwing, we'd see right through it. Like, okay, I see what's really going on here.

Intent's going to have a smell. So it should be earnest. All this stuff should be earnest. You go on to say some key points here. Imagine yourself in your counterpart's situation. The beauty of empathy is that it doesn't demand that you agree with the other person's ideas. You may well find them crazy, but by acknowledging the other person's situations, you immediately convey that you're listening. And once they know you are listening, they may tell you something you can use.

So boom. The reasons why a counterpart will not make an agreement with you, are often more powerful than why they will make a deal. So focus first on clearing the barriers to agreement. Denying barriers or negative influences gives them credence. Get them into the open. What do you mean by that? Which part?

You and I are talking and what barriers are you looking at? What barriers? Sometimes you're saying barriers, the reason I'm not going to agree to a deal isn't because I can't find common ground. It's just that there's these barriers that I have that are worse. Right, right, right. So first of all, there's kind of three different things there, and I'm going to try to drive the state through the heart of common ground to start with.

And this is my theory on common ground. First of all, the strongest common ground is usually ethnicity or geography, and geography is more powerful than ethnicity. Like if you and I grew up in a same neighborhood, and I don't know what all combination of ethnic groups, you are because like if you were in New York, you'd be one of five, and I wouldn't know which one it is. He's talking to Echo Charles right now, by the way.

Yeah. So, but if we grew up in the same neighborhood, like you and I'd resonate. Now, if you and I had the exact same ethnicity and you grew up in New York City and I grew up in Mississippi, we're like, I don't know what this dude is talking about. There's going to be some resonance, but geography is stronger. Now, then Common Ground also. Why do I want to have Common Ground with you? So you understand me.

So we share core values. You understand where I'm coming from. So if I just demonstrate that I understand, I don't gotta be one. I don't gotta be from your neighborhood. Because what common ground is, does this guy or gal understand me? So that just shows somebody you understand

and common ground is unnecessary, not a barrier. example, one of my favorites, Bob Eiger's book, The Right of a Lifetime. He's sitting down to negotiate what ends up being the sale of Pixar to Disney. At the time, Jobs hates Disney. Seas with hatred for Disney. And when I went to school, everybody writes up

that purchases, you know, it was obvious, it was a great move, it was great for both companies. Not how this thing goes down. Iger gets put in charge of Disney. He reaches out to Jobs because he knows there's been bad blood. Agger's been the number two guy at Disney for nine years. Reaches out to Jobs and some congratulatory thing.

And Jobs immediately shoots back at him. How long were you Michael's number two? Because he's blaming Michael Eisner. How long were you the number two guy? Well, this was always going down. Not willing to accept. any compliment. So Iger says, let's talk about this.

Jobs says, come on down. Yeah, you want to talk to me? Come into my backyard. Go to the Apple campus. I think you're ready to set out jobs wants to work off a whiteboard. Pros and cons. Offers the pen to Iger.

Says, you go first. Now, Iger knows how much bad blood there is here. He is not anxious to say a word. And this is in his book. So he says, not Steve go ahead Steve gets up jobs starts writing all the reasons why not to do it all the barriers he effectively does this approach on himself and writes some nasty stuff about Disney like just short of out now profanity insulting your culture sucks you guys suck everything

about you is horrible your children you know I mean he everything he's laying all the stuff out there. And he kind of gets done and he looks to hand a pen back to Iger who's not just crestfallen because he just feels like he's gotten the stuffing kicked out of him. And he says, well, I guess there are a lot of negatives there. And jobs look back in him and says, you know, sometimes the positive outweigh the negative because he deactivated all the barriers. They got all the barriers out. They got them out. They got them out. into the open air, they cleared their head by first discussing and just calling them out. Like, Bob Eiger does not offer a bit of explanation for any of this.

No, Iger never says, but that wasn't true or but, oh, yeah, you know, nothing. He doesn't say a word. He just lets all the negatives get out there. And when he lets jobs run the full course of the reasons for not doing it, then Jobs is left with the positives, which is in fact the way humans make decisions. You will reconcile in your head how do you live with the negatives, deal with them, deactivate them, before you decide to do something. If you can reconcile all those negatives, as soon as you do, your brain then goes to the positive.

And then the positive picks up this tremendous amount of velocity having been unshackled from the negatives. We do it all the time. We do it constantly. I've had this thought a couple times already during this discussion. It's, and it just hit me again. The idea of talking about the negatives, you know, right now in the veteran community, there's a huge, you know, issue with PTSD and veteran suicide.

And I've talked about this before. When I've lost my friends in combat, every time I've been a guy that was like, okay, you're giving the eulogy, you're giving a memorial speech. So I had to go and sit down in the pain and sorrow and write down what I'm going to say to a crowd of people, you know, in a day or two days. And what you end up doing is you end up thinking through and putting on paper like, you know, this terrible situation. And then, you know, coming out of the military, when I got out of the military, I was talking to people telling the leadership lessons that I've learned. But in telling the leadership lessons that I've learned, you're also talking through some of the really bad things that happened. So as I hear you say that, look, you got to get those negatives out there. I tell veterans that a lot, you know, it helps when you talk through these things.

You know, they say that about World War II versus Vietnam. World War II, you got to. Wow. You got done with World War II. What did you do? You got on a ship with a bunch of other guys that just were in combat and you sailed back to America for six weeks and you sat below decks and told stories to each other about the friends that you lost and all the stuff that you've been through. Well, in Vietnam, what did you do? You got done with your tour.

You got on a plane for 15 hours and then you got dropped off in Main Street America. You didn't get to process it or you didn't get to talk about any of this stuff. So it was stuck there. Yeah. And then you got yelled at. So, yeah, this idea. of getting the negatives out there, even though it's uncomfortable, and it is uncomfortable.

It sucks. No one wants to do it. But if you do it, you start to deal with them. You start to contend with it. And I can tell you right now, the more you do it, the more you process it, the better you're gonna feel. So it's not even just a negotiation thing. This is like a life thing.

Yeah. Another note, you make a pause. After you label a barrier or a mirror or mirror a statement, Let it sink in. Don't worry. The other party will fill the silence. Getting used to that silence thing. Label your counterpart's fears to defuse the power.

We all want to talk about happy stuff. But remember, the faster you interrupt action in your counterparts, amygdala, the part of the brain that generates fear, the faster you can generate feelings of safety, well-being, and trust. Same idea, right? If we talk about that thing that is pissing you off or that thing that's scaring you, The minute you let it out of that cage, it like loses some of its power. Right. You know, when we work with explosive, we do something called tamping the explosives,

which means you compress that, you hold that thing in, and it's going to cause more damage. So when you cover up an explosive, it creates a bigger explosion. That's why you see like a kid puts a firecracker in a microwave oven and it causes a, because the microwave oven is shut and there's massive overpressure and it blows the door, you know, 150 yards because you compressed it. Well,

it's the same thing with this fear that you're talking about. You let that thing out. Let it breathe. It's going to take the sting off of it. And that's why, you know, you just talked about this with Steve Jobs.

List the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. This is counterintuitive. What's counterintuitive about this is I think to myself, you know, if I actually tell Chris that it seems like I'm ripping him

What if he doesn't think that he probably won't know and why should I admit to it? It's like he knows. He knows. He's thinking that you're thinking if I'm thinking that hey this price is probably high. He's definitely thinking the price is high. Remember you're dealing with a person who wants to be appreciated and understood so use labels to reinforce and encourage positive perception dynamics. There you go. I mean this is just some awesome techniques here. The opening to chapter four here is kind of a surprise. Beware of yes and master no. At some point in their development,

all negotiators have to come to grips with no. When you come to realize the real psychological dynamic behind it, you'll love the word. It's not just that you lose your fear of it, but that you can come to learn what it does for you and how you can build deals out of it. Yes and maybe are often worthless, but no always alters the conversation.

Talk us through that. Yeah, I think I first came across this idea. Jim Camp wrote a book in 2002 called Start With No. And I remember seeing that on a bookshelf and like doing a double take on like, start with no. I thought we were supposed to get the yes. I thought yes it was a magic word. And he had discovered inadvertently that if you just tell people it was okay to say no,

that they were more likely to agree. He's right up front. He called it the right to veto. and he'd say, you know, I just want you to know before we get into this. You can say no at any time. You say no to me at any time. And I'll go away. And he made more deals.

So accidentally, one of my hostage negotiators in Pittsburgh tells me, she says, you know, because I'm making everybody read this book. Did I do this? Now, she was going to be removed from the negotiation team in Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, because her boss was jealous of how much the police department loved her. So she finds out she's going to get removed, which is going to hurt the office's relationship

with the police department. But this guy doesn't care because he's jealous. She sits down with him and she says, do you want the FBI to be embarrassed? Now, I remember when she first told me that, I remember thinking through at the moment, like I would never have had the guts to say. Like, that sounds so manipulative.

I imagine this guy just burst in and a flames on a spot. But instead, this guy relaxes. He leans back in his chair. You know, he steeples with his hands. Like, it's what people do when he feel really good about themselves. And he goes, no. She says, what do you want me to do? And he says, well, you know, stop letting this stuff interfere with your investigations.

Now go back to work. So he calls her in to fire her from the team. She walks out no problem. So I'm like, there's something here. And then I start thinking about other conversations I've had, a lieutenant on a police department that I thought got in his guy's way a lot because he was overmanaged him. I remember him saying to me once,

you know, a lieutenant's job is to say no. And I thought, no, it's not. You know, lieutenant's a leader's job is to encourage people, not to say no. So why is he saying? It makes it feel good to say no. It makes them feel safe. It makes them feel protected.

And we start experimenting with, instead of letting people say no, what happens if you actually get them to say no? Like, how does that change feelings the way they react? And it makes such a massive difference, like instantaneous. Like, if it's important, I don't say, do you disagree? I say, do you disagree? I don't say, is this a good idea?

Is this a ridiculous idea? I don't say, you know, what, I'm never going for yes, I'm always going for no. And, you know, if I can't, because I know I'm all over the place here. I'm on a plane from JFK to L.A. Where it's a red eye and a black businessman sitting next to me. He's kind of loud. He's got a big, colorful sweater on. But I just, you know, not crazy out there, but I just think, you know, interesting.

Interesting cat, clearly a businessman. He's got people on his team because people that are sitting, you know, back in the economy are walking by and, you know, hey, boss, how you doing? And finally, but I hear him on a phone and he's just trying to force people to say yes. And finally I can't take it anymore in between calls. And I tapped him on the short and I said, look, get him to say no. Change your questions. You drive me crazy.

I can't take it anymore. I'm hearing you shove this down people's throats, switch from yes to no. And I go, and again, instead of, do you agree, do you disagree? Instead of, would you do this? Are you against doing this? And I give him a quick rundown of how to make the switch. And he's smart dude, picks it right up really fast. So he gets back on the phone.

And I also say, you know, the reason you should listen to me is because I wrote this book, never split the difference. So just do it. Smart dude. Learnable, coachable, does it, instantaneous. It looks back to me, says, thanks. He says, let me introduce myself. My name's Trevor.

You may know me by my stage name Buster Rhymes. I'm like, wow, okay. You know, your hair's a little shorter right now. I didn't recognize you right up to bat, but I do recognize that name. You go on to say no has a lot of skills. No allows real issues to be brought forth. No protects people from making

and lets them correct ineffective decisions. No slows things down so people can freely embrace their decisions and their agreements they enter into. No helps people feel safe, secure, emotionally comfortable, and in control of all their decisions. No moves everyone's efforts forward. And there's a thing that you point out here, which is important. Because you say using this chapter's tools and daily life is difficult for many because they go directly against one of society's biggest social dictum's that is be nice Right especially because in the book you're like hey smile be pleasant and and you know getting people to say no is one of those things You say we've instrumentalized niceness in a way as a way of greasing the social wheels yet it's often a ruse

We're polite and we don't disagree to get through daily existence with the least degree of friction but by turning niceness into a lubricant, we've leached it of meaning. A smile and a nod might signify, get me out of here as much as it means nice to meet you. That's death for a good negotiator who gains their power by understanding their counterpart's situation and extracting information about their counterparts, desires, and needs. Extracting that information means getting the other party to feel safe and in control. And while it may sound contradictory, the way to get there is by, by, letting the other party, by getting the other party to disagree, to draw their own boundaries,

to define their desires as a function of what they do not want. In other words, getting them to say no. Yeah, it's nuts. It's, it's, of the, you know, the different skills are counterintuitive to their own degree. Like the extremely strong degree that getting somebody to say yes, makes them uncomfortable concern, worried about what kind of traps are walking into, where's the hook, what have I forgotten, complete different 180-degree turn on getting them to say no. Like the comfort level from saying no and then the ability to think things through immediately. Like if I were to say to you disagree,

do you disagree? You go, no, I don't disagree, but here are the following problems. And you'd lay them right out, one, two, three, four, five. Right off the top of your head. Have no. problem if I just said do you agree and you don't want to say yes I agree but here the following problems you won't do it the second way because you would have felt that the mere utterance of the word yes hooked you and so then anything that you lay out after that feels like you're digging yourself in deeper but having said no you don't feel hooked so now you're gonna lay out the next four or five things that you might need because you don't feel like you're digging yourself in deeper.

And the next four or five things after the yes or no are what's critical. It's never right there. It's never at the point of decision. It's really here are the problems or here's what you got to accomplish. And you've got to get past that. And you get past it freely when people say no because they feel safe and protected. They feel no sense of obligation. They don't feel like they're digging themselves in with each thing they say after that. I got that emotion from that.

You got an example in the book, a real common example. The two examples is now a bad time to talk versus do you have a few minutes to talk? Like when someone calls you up on the phone and says, hey, do you have a few minutes to talk right now? I want to say no, but I also kind of feel like when I say yes, like what do we get? But when someone says, hey, is it a bad time to talk right now?

I'm like, no, it's not a bad time. I'm like, okay with it. You're just one of those things. The other thing that you got in here that really aligns a lot with what I talk about a lot is negotiate in their world. Persuasion is not about how bright or smooth you or forceful you are. It's about the other party convincing themselves that the solution you want is their own idea. So don't beat them with logic or brute force.

Ask them questions that open past your goals. It's not about you. I say all the time written in these books, make it their idea, right? How can I make this their idea? And the other thing I say a lot is the truth doesn't matter if I punch you in the face with it, right? I mean, if I punch you in the face with the truth,

you're not going to be open to it. You're going to be pissed. And you're going to find a way to defend yourself and you're probably going to stab me in the neck with your facts from your personality. From your perspective. So. With a dull spoon, right?

Stabbing a neck with a dull spoon. Yeah. Now we get into this section here. Trigger the two words, the chapter five, trigger the two words that immediately transform any negotiation. You say the crisis negotiation unit,

the FBI crisis negotiation unit, developed what is a powerful staple in the high stakes world of crisis negotiation, the behavioral change stairway. model BCSM behavioral change stairway model the model proposes five stages active listening empathy rapport influence and behavioral change that take any negotiator from listening to influencing behavior the origins of this model can be traced back to the great American psychologist Carl Rogers who proposed that real change can only come

when a therapist accepts that the client as he or she is an approach known as unconditional positive regard. The vast majority of us, however, as Rogers explained, come to expect that love, praise, and approval are dependent on saying and doing things people consider correct. That is because for most of us, positive regard, for the positive regard we experience as conditional, we develop a habit of hiding who we really are and what we really think, instead calibrating our words to gain approval, but disclosing little. So they come up with this thing, active listening.

That's the first step. Empathy. All right. I kind of see where you're coming from rapport. Now we're starting to understand each other Influence. You're starting to listen to what I have to say and then behavior change. You're actually going to do Something different based on the influence here. If you successfully take someone up the behavioral change Stairway each stage attempting to engender more trust and more connection there will be a breakthrough moment when unconditional positive regard is established and you can begin exerting influence after years of refining the staircase and its tactics I can teach anyone how to get to that moment but as legions of B school grads weaned on the most famous negotiating

book in the world getting to yes I've ultimately discovered you more than likely think more than likely haven't gotten there yet if what you're hearing is the word yes you'll soon learn the sweetest two words in any negotiation are actually that's right that's what you're looking for you're looking for the other person the person that you're negotiating with to say that's right the that's right breakthrough usually doesn't come at the beginning of a negotiation it's invisible to the counterpart when it occurs and they embrace what you've said to them it's a subtle epiphany so talk to us about that's right well it's what people say when they're

completely all in on what was just said like and if you look for it you see it everywhere And one of the great examples that I like to use is people that are devoted to Donald Trump. And my son pointed this out, I mean, if that isn't the proof of that's right moment, somewhere in a speech or in the presidential debate, when he articulated something, when you bought in completely, you looked at the screen and you pointed it at it and he said, that's right. and it's not just Trump it's any charismatic leader anywhere when the charismatic leader is articulated something that you believe is totally true

and it totally gets you nobody ever says you're right they always say that's right and there's that statement is when when you were totally bought in on what was just said and as as our co-author Tall was the one that pulled out

the description of it being a subtle epiphany tall contributed brilliantly to the book I mean he brought a lot to the table besides just being a writer and so then as I was getting more into neuroscience I look up neuroscience

the neuroscience of epiphany what neurochemicals do you get hit with you get hit with serotonin and oxytocin and oxytocin is the bonding drug So they

Hence people bonded To Donald Trump or any other leader You're bonded to Obama You're bonded to whoever Has uttered The things that you believe to be completely true There's this it's a one-way bond And there's a feeling of a bond

And then again back to Huberman's podcast You know for me just being bonded is enough On another one of his podcast he points out oxytocin inclines people to tell the truth. So now not only are you bonded to me, you're more likely to tell me the truth. And then he points out on yet another podcast, serotonin, the feeling of satisfaction,

which means you're not as demanding. So if I get a that's right out of you, you're going to bond to me, you're going to tell me the truth, and you're going to make fewer demands. What else do I want? Yeah, the example. Again, the details in the book are outstanding, but the example that you give goes back to the thing that I opened up with.

You had Sabaya, this mastermind terrorist, and you were in negotiations with them, and you're actually working through a translator, and the translator was a hard-ass, you know, pretty much, we need to go at him type of attitude, and you kind of convinced him over time to take a more indirect approach.

And eventually, the negotiator kind of read back, hey, look, you've been oppressed for this long. The Spanish came here. They converted your people against their will, and you've been suffering underneath this government. And Sabaya says, that's right. And that's what changes it.

That's what changes his attitude. Yeah, yeah. And if I can, a couple of tangents. Because, you know, that was also when I was working with McCraven. Oh, okay. Not Admiral, but Captain McCrae. And he was phenomenal. And he chaired, he created the hostage working group,

the National Security Council. His leadership, you know, what a great guy to work with. I can remember in particular when we're working that case and the one that followed on. Like there was some stuff that the U.S. government was very nervous about. And you needed a guy who stood up properly for everybody and for the right thing, if you will.

And I can remember being at one meeting. in particular Captain McCraven McRaven I don't mean to be disrespectful I'm sure it sounds disrespectful just call him a Craven but McRaven stands up and he says you know what I'm not gonna stop talking about this till somebody tells me to sit down and shut up and they're gonna have to tell me twice and I remember thinking that's the guy I want talking to the White House that's the guy that I want talking to the Department of State and we're in the midst of that Schilling case And the last thing that we need when we're in a forward operating base is any sort of insecurity, indecision from Washington, D.C.

And when you're out there on the front lines having a guy like Captain Bill McRaven, Admiral Bill McRaven, holding things together back in Washington, D.C., it's just a ridiculously reassuring feeling to have. He was a great guy. No doubt about it. That's awesome. There's a big difference, and you pointed out in the book, there's a huge difference, and you mentioned it, but I just want to cover it again, just to make sure people catch this.

There's a huge difference between that's right and you're right. Because you're right, and here's a good way to translate this. You're talking to your wife, and you know, you say something, she goes, oh, you're right. That is not what we're looking for. That means she's,

She wants you to shut up and she's going to carry on and you haven't come to any kind of conclusion. So there's a big difference. Getting someone to say you're right, in fact, there's a lot of times where that's an increase in hostilities. That just means they're looking for another way to attack you. Yeah,

and they haven't quite got it yet. But they're waiting, they're laying in wait, and if they're giving you your right, you got problems. Look for that's right. Next section, bend their realities. And you get into this here, don't compromise, which is an interesting thing.

We're going to talk through. The win-win mindset pushed by so many negotiation experts is usually ineffective and often disastrous. At best, it satisfies neither side. And if you employ it with the counterpart who has a win-lose approach, you're setting yourself up to be swindled. Of course, as we've noted previously, you need to keep a cooperative rapport building empathetic approach, the kind that creates a dynamic in which deals can be made. But you have to get rid of that naivete because compromise, splitting the difference can lead to terrible outcomes.

Compromise is often a bad deal. And a key theme will hit in this chapter is no deal is better than a bad deal. Even in kidnapping? Yes, a bad deal in kidnapping is where someone pays and no one comes out. To make my point on compromise, let me paint an example. A woman wants her husband to wear black shoes with his suit, but her husband doesn't want to. He prefers brown shoes. So what do they do?

They compromise. They split the difference. They meet halfway and you guess it. He wears one black shoe and one brown shoe. Is this the best outcome in fact? No. In fact, it's the worst possible outcome. Either of the two outcomes, black or brown, would have been better.

I'm here to call bullshit on compromise right now. We don't compromise because it's right. We compromise because it's easy and because it saves face. We compromise in order to say that at least we got half the pie. Distilled to his essence, we compromise to be safe. Most people in negotiation are driven by fear or by the desire to avoid pain. Two for you are driven by their actual goals. So don't settle.

Here's a simple rule. Never split the difference. Creative solutions are almost always preceded by some degree of risk, annoyance, confusion, and conflict. accommodation and compromise produced none of that you've got to embrace the hard stuff that's where the great deals are and that's what negotiators do amen at the class say amen what point did you realize that was the title of the book tall came up with that um the original title was killer deals we started working with tall brandon and i my son brandon uncredited co-author of the book

and tall says right so we're going to we'll we'll see we'll start with killer deals and at some point of time the proper title of the book will occur to me and I'll tell you what it is. Now you're free to disagree, but I can tell you when I get deeply into that it's enough, I'll give you the title. And probably

about halfway through the whole writing process was when he said titles never split the difference. It's the essence of what you guys are talking about. If you completely understand it and understand why he says that's what the title is and we're like you got it that's right yeah he came he talked came up with it probably about halfway through the writing process now how is that

we're gonna get into I think I would have covered but the the the Ackerman approach right now in the Ackerman approach you're shooting for a specific number right And, you know, you're kind of compromising to get to that number. Nope. Why? If you're shooting for a specific number, why is that a compromise? Okay, as long as you get your number. But that's my number.

Meaning you want to sell me this car for $10,000. I only want to give you $7,000. My first offer is a low ball offer. Right. And then I come up, well, my first offer is 65% of what I want to pay. then I go 85, 95, then 100% of what I want to pay. Right. So I guess we didn't split the difference.

No, it's not, and there's also a very specific sort of rationale behind the offers. Each offer has to be effectively half as much as the previous increase. Right. You got to always have diminishing increases. The other side is going to feel like they're beating you into a position. They can just be very gratifying for them. Deadlines. You talk about here.

Time is one of the most critical, crucial variables in any negotiation, the simple passing of time, and its sharper cousin, the deadline are the screw that pressures every deal to conclusion. Whether your deadline is real and absolute or merely a line in the sand, it can trick you into believing that doing a deal now is more important than getting a good deal. Deadlines regularly make people say and do impulsive things that are against their best interests because we all have a natural tendency to rush as a deadline approach. Yeah, not only rush as a deadline approaches, but not rush at all until it's looming. No. And people lose track of that it's the process. And deadlines are really just designed to kick the process into gear.

But human beings being what they are, if you give somebody a deadline a Friday, don't expect to get into any kind of conversation before Thursday. She's not going to have. Yeah. I've done a lot of deals like on the way to the airport. We're on our way out. And that's when the discussion actually starts.

Right. Not optimal. Right. Skipping ahead a little bit in the book, the F word, why it's so powerful, when to use it, and how. The most powerful word in negotiations is fair. Right. As human beings were mightily swayed by how much we feel we have been respected. People comply with agreements if they feel they've been treated fairly and lash out if they don't.

Once you understand what a messy, emotional, and destructive dynamic fairness can be, you can see why fair is a tremendously powerful word and you need to use it with care. In fact, of the three ways that people drop the F bomb, only one is positive. The most common is a judo-like defensive move that destabilizes the other side. This manipulation usually takes the form something like, we just want what's fair. Think back to the last time someone made this implicit accusation of unfairness to you. And I bet you have to admit that it immediately triggered feelings of defensiveness and discomfort.

These feelings are often subconscious and lead to irrational concession. The second use of the F-bomb is more nefarious. In this one, your counterpart will basically accuse you of being dense or dishonest by saying, we've given you a fair offer. It's a terrible little jab meant to distract your attention away from, distract your attention manipulating to giving in. If you find yourself in this situation, the best reaction is to simply mirror the F that has just been lobbed.

That you fair, you'd respond. Pausing to let the words power do to them what it was intended to do to you. Following that with the label, it seems like you're ready to provide evidence that supports that, which alludes to the opening of their books or otherwise handing over information that will either contradict their claim to fairness or give you more data to work with than you had previously. Right away, you declaw the attack.

The last use of the F word is my favorite because it's positive and constructive. It sets the stage for honest and empathetic negotiation. Here's how I use it. Early on in a negotiation, I say, I want you to feel like you're being treated fairly at all times. So please stop me at any time if I'm being unfair and we'll address it. It's simple and clear and sets me up as an honest dealer with, that statement, I let people know it's okay to use the word with me if they use it honestly. As a negotiator, you should strive for reputation of being fair.

Your reputation precedes you. Let it precede you in a way that paves success. When I read all that, I was like, oh, we all, it seems like human beings have this sort of natural, we're just raised that fairness is a big thing for us. and you know what I sometimes when I think of when I can't quite make a connection I think of the opposite and what that triggers in people so what's like the epic insult that guy's a cheater right that guy's a cheater oh yeah you won but he cheated you know you hate that guy you don't want to be that guy when someone says you cheated

you get all defensive so it's the same thing here this this f bomb when it gets dropped on you And someone goes, hey, we just want what's fair. What do you mean I'm not being fair? And it can trigger you to making a deal you shouldn't have made. A lot. And the amount of time, like it's rare that in a negotiation that has any sort of contentiousness to it at all, the word will always come up. I mean, it's a great manipulative device, and people often say it out of defensiveness. but for the same for the same ends you know get the other side to change your mind

providing no evidence whatsoever as to why they should that's not fair yeah exactly yeah yeah that's uh you see it and usually it's when the tables and gotten turned on somebody in an unexpected way that's when they'll drop the word what does that look like um a person i know who's an eminently fair person was in a real estate negotiation right after the housing market where they were at drops substantially. And they got the buyer to increase the offer above market by simply saying, we just want what's fair. Now, the person that used this phrase had gotten the tables turned on them by a drop in

a market. So it wasn't even the buyer's fault. Buy it didn't do anything. Buyers following the market. So this person out of simple defensiveness, having had the tables turned on them, they felt that it was an unfair series of circumstances. Now, is that the buyer's fault?

Buyers are buying in a real estate market that is dictated by the dynamics of the market. And that was the first time it really jumped out at me, and then I started looking for it across the board, because a person who told the story got the buyer to raise a price. And I remember thinking like that, wait, wait, as an innocent bystander here, that, you know, that's not fair.

There's no fairness there. And I thought if a good person can do this and completely changes the dynamics in a relationship in the negotiation, how often does it come up? And then you start looking for it and you see it over and it is so effective that the manipulators had, seen the good people use it and change the dynamics that they've gotten really good at using

it to cover up manipulative behavior. Watch out for that one. Got a section in here, bend their reality. You start going to some of the methodologies of that. Anchor their emotions. To bend your counterparts, reality, you have to start with the basics of empathy. So start out with an accusation audit acknowledging all of their fears by anchoring their emotions in preparation for a loss, you inflame the other side's loss aversion so that they'll

jump at the chance to avoid it. You talk about loss aversion and people are people don't want to lose. Right. And and this accusation audit is sort of what Steve Jobs put up on the board when he did it himself. Right, right. Iger could have done it if he if he had stepped up to the thing and said, well, you're probably going to say this and this and this, but he got Steve Jobs to do, which is even better. But you anchor those emotions. The other thing you say is let the other guy go first most of the time. I suggest you let the other side anchor monetary negotiations. The real issues that neither side has a perfect information going on the table. This means if you don't know enough to open up with confidence. So this is what we hear all the time in negotiations.

You know, you don't say the number first. How much do you want how much were you giving me for the car? Well, what do you think it's worth? Like we do this around. Round and around, right? What are the disadvantages, advantages of opening or giving the number? Well, very much, as a general rule, I'm going to want the other side to throw the number first because it's information. It's going to tell me data. It's going to tell me mindset where you're coming from. It's going to tell me a lot, none of which am I getting if I go first.

So as a general rule, we don't go first. Again, a general rule. At some point in time, to keep from going around and around around, I'm going to throw a number out. Now I'm going to characterize it before I throw it out. And if I'm going to say this is a lot. When we quote prices for our coaching, first of all, our coaching is more expensive. If you can find negotiation coaching anywhere, which is very hard to find, we're going to charge you more than anybody else this. So I'm going to say that.

I'm going to charge you more than anybody else does. Somebody wants to bring me in for a talk. I'm going to be so expensive, and we're going to quote you a heart-stopping price. Now that causes you to reflect on your value. It causes you to run the numbers. One of two things, you're going to ask me what the number is. And you're going to say,

well he said it was expensive or are you going to say wow it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be and then we don't bargain so if I got to throw a number I like to refer to as I never throw the number out naked and if otherwise I want to know where you're coming from I also want to give you a price that you want

because price is a term and I need to hit the sweet spot on your price if I go too high you're not going to over deliver you're going to feel like you undervalued yourself and you're going to do the same amount of work if I pay you too much. I found that out the hard way.

If I go too low, you're going to do a lousy job. So what I really want besides you throw in a number first, I want to know what number do you think a good number is that you're going to work really hard for and feel like you earned your money and not change

that you just undervalued yourself in a past and now all of a sudden I'm worth this much more money which means you're not going to put in extra effort. You're also talking here about if people are stuck on the money you can start talking about other things. Right. The non-monetary terms.

Right. So like if you're negotiating for a job, you start talking about things that don't have anything to do with money. Right. And that can be a good way to start to move the conversation. conversation forward the this is just interesting psychology the biggest thing to remember and when you start when you when you when you do get to numbers you say

the biggest thing to remember is that numbers that end in zero inevitably feel like temporary placeholders gues estimates that you can easily be to get negotiated off of but anything you throw out that sounds less rounded say 37,263 dollars feels like a figure that you came to as a result of thoughtful calculations Such numbers feel serious and permanent to your counterpart, so use them to fortify your offers. Yeah, it's nuts, right. I mean, it's just, that's voodoo. It is so true, and it's just complete voodoo.

That's, and yet, go look at the prices in a store, right? We see examples of it everywhere. They're all $9.95 or whatever. And there's a psychological thing to be, you know, $10 seems like a ton of money. 9.95 I can afford all day. Right, right, right. Yeah. Well, the original magic one that I love, like iTunes, 99 cents for a song. Back when Napster, and you could get all your music for free. Like Jobs and Apple, like let's put a number on this that seems so small and it's not a, it's not a round number. And suddenly people were paying for music again. 99 cents. Still 99 cents for a song, isn't it? Is it some songs?

Yeah, I guess it's all like streaming and all this stuff now you don't really buy well actually I don't I buy like the whole thing Whatever that is 1 29 sometimes So they jack the prices some so yeah Some key points all negotiations are defined by a network of subterranean desires and needs don't let yourself be fooled by the surface Once you know that the Haitian kidnappers want a party want party money you'll be better You'll be miles better prepared and there's a whole section in here about that about these Haitian kidnappers. You'd worked all kinds, like dozens of cases of these Haitian kidnappers.

One of the things you've identified is they would like kidnap early in the week. They wanted that money by Friday so they could go out and party. And so how much do they need to have a great party that weekend? That's sort of the number that you would end up looking for. I mean, it's awesome. Splitting the difference is wearing one black and one brown shoe. Don't compromise. Meeting halfway often leads to bad deals for both sides.

Approaching deadlines entice people to rush the negotiating process do impulsive things that are against their best interest. We talked about the F word. You can bend your counterparts reality by anchoring his starting point. Before you make an offer, emotionally anchor them by saying how bad it will be. When you get to numbers, set an extreme anchor to make your real offer seem reasonable or use a range to seem less aggressive. The real value of anything depends on what vantage point you're looking at it from And last people tend people take more risks to avoid a loss than realize a gain Make sure your counterpart sees that there's something to lose by inaction

That's why the that's why the website says today only Yeah, you'll miss out You got a section in here that's about fast forward a little bit Calibrated quest Calibrate you your questions. And we kind of discussed this earlier. I don't know if we were recorded or not, but I talked about asking earnest questions. As a leader, you're asking earnest questions,

and you've got this a little bit similar approach, but different verbiage here. Calibrated questions are not just random requests for comment. They have a direction. Once you figure out where you want a conversation to go, you have to design the question that will ease the conversation in that direction while letting the other guy think, think it's his choice to take you there. That's why I refer to these questions as

calibrated questions. You have to calibrate them carefully, just like you would calibrate a gun, sight, or a measuring scale to target a specific problem. The good news is that there are rules for that. First off, calibrated questions avoid verbs like can is, are do, or does. These are closed-ended questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. Instead, they start with a list of words people know as reporters questions. Who, what, when, where, why, and how. Those words inspire your counterpart to think and then speak expansively. But let me cut that list even further.

It's best to start with what, how, and sometimes why. Nothing else. Who, when, and where will often just get your counterpart to share a fact without thinking. And why can backfire regardless of what the language, what language the word why is translated into. It's accusatory. There are very rare moments when this is to your advantage. The only time you can use why successfully is when defending, when defensiveness that is created supports the change you are trying to get them to see. Why would you ever change from the way you've always done things to try my approach as an example?

So I found this very useful because, you know, I often talk about something. from a military perspective called the indirect approach, which means I don't want to attack you head on. I want to, you know, I want to attack you from a flank where you're not defensive. And this applies to everything. It applies to leadership. It applies to approaching people.

It applies to, you know, if you've got an ego, which everyone does, and I attack your plan. That means I'm attacking your ego. You're going to get defensive. So, you know, oftentimes it's in order to get around your ego. I'm going to ask you earnest questions about the situation. But the key thing that you've got here is, I don't say, well, why do you think this is a good plan?

Because that's an accusatory question. Instead, a better question would be, hey, can you help me understand the outcome that you're looking for with this plan? And all of a sudden, we've taken away any possibility that you can see that I'm accusing or attacking your plan, which thereby is attacking your ego. How did you come across this calibrated question's idea? Yeah. Camp's book, 2002, he called them interrogatives, the reporter's questions. In the FBI, we called them just open in the list, who won't win, where, how, and why.

And I noticed that he leaned heavily on one in particular, which was, what's the biggest challenge you face? And realize that at the time, first of all, it's a what question, what's deferential, people like to be asked what to do. Secondly, now, we now know in a Black Swan method, what is principally designed to uncover problems? What's the biggest challenge you face? What gets in a way? I'm coaching some dentists recently. People are balking at how much their dental work's going to cost.

The question is, what happens if you do nothing? You know, so what question? It's deferential. And so then began to look harder at the questions. I thought that was the only overlap between business and hostage negotiation at the time. Then in the Burnham case in the Philippines, it goes bad, train wreck all the way around.

And somebody got proof of life on our hostages in the midst of that case. And I just remember it blew my mind because a hostage was overheard on our. a phone. And I'd never gotten a hostage on a phone. So between how does somebody get a hostage on a phone and who the heck is getting proof of life on our hostages? Like there was more than one buyer. Like I didn't know what to do with this. So the case is an ongoing 13 month long train wreck. A lot of people died, including two out of three of the total Americans that were taken. Listen to a drug dealer

kidnapping in Pittsburgh a few months afterwards. Drug dealer on drug dealer. One drug dealer's got the other drug dealer's girlfriend hostage. Who do you go when somebody important to you has been kidnapped? Even if you're a drug dealer, you go to the FBI. So our hostages negotiators are riding around, listening to the drug dealer talk to the other drug dealer. And just on his own, he goes, hey dog, how do I know she's okay? And the change in the tone of voice,

the kidnapper drug dealer went from thinking he was in. charged to being, having lost all control of the negotiation and not knowing it at the time. And it was just a how question. So then we changed all of our negotiation kidnapping strategy to how and what questions. Just hammering them with how and what questions. Because you want to test some, test it out to kidnapping. And finally, I'm coaching another kidnapping in the Philippines, coaching a brother, his brother's been grabbed by a serial killer, lone kidnapper. Only time in my entire experience with one kidnapper. They're always operating gangs.

And the guy was a, we found out after the fact because we caught him. He was a multiple kidnappings and it killed, at least, well, didn't have the evidence that he killed a hostage in another case. Just a ransom was paid and the hostage never appeared. So there's only one conclusion. We're coaching a brother, again, a good guy who would learn pick up fast. How and what questions, how and what questions, how and what questions. And at one point in time, the kidnapper wants a daily predomom to keep the hostage alive,

which we got to fight over that because it's a way to test financial resources, not to keep the hostage alive, test the family's resources. So on his own, the brother says, when we run out of money paying the daily amount, what's going to happen? And there's a silence in it, this serial killer on the other end of the phone says, it'll be all right.

My negotiators in country call me, they, we think we got a positive breakthrough today, but we're not sure what it is. And they told me that, I said, this guy just promised never to kill a hostage. Like I had no idea that it was a loan. guy. I thought we were just talking to the boss. Didn't know he was a killer. It was another case where he chopped a victim's ear off, sent the ear and a video of him chopping a ear off to the victim's

company. They got paid. I knew about that. I'd been told for a variety of reasons I'd heard about that. I didn't know it was this guy. Take him completely out of his game with a version of a what question. Saw another one, took another guy completely out of his game with a version of the how question. in a dynamic where you just said we had no leverage if you thought in terms of leverage, but you got influence. How do you get influence through deference? And that's when we really began to dial in collectively,

principally my son Brandon and I, another guy Derek Gaunt, very involved in the development of our thinking, and we really narrowed it down to how and what is a way to really get the upper hand in a negotiation. Fast forward a little bit here. You've got a couple things that are awesome points. Don't try to force your opponent to admit that you are right. Aggressive confrontation is the enemy of constructive negotiation.

I always say when you're dealing with someone, give them an out. You know, you just give them an out. You can say, you know, it seems like this is the best way to do it, but I know you're smart on this stuff too. Does it make sense? And they go, yeah, you know, go ahead and do it that way. You know, they give them an opportunity. that they don't have to say, I was, I'm wrong, you're right, go do it your way. No, never do that.

And the other one, again, this isn't just for negotiation. This is for life. Bite your tongue. When you're attacked in a negotiation, pause and avoid angry, emotional reactions. Instead, ask your counterpart a calibrated question. Just such a, such a solid move that will keep you out of trouble you want to say something back you know I actually go I tell people you know someone starts attacking you or someone someone starts getting aggressive with you you know take a step back kind of nod your head show them that you're listening don't say anything back to them instead ask them a question you know that's going to be a good way to go forward the 738 55 percent rule and two famous studies on what

makes us like or dislike somebody. UCLA psychology professor Albert Mahabrian. Totally murdered that one. You're not Persian. I am not. You know how to say that if you're a Persian. I don't know how to say it either.

Arabian. Okay. We'll go with it. That's good. Sorry there, Albert. We'll call them Albert. Dr. Albert. Created the 73855 rule.

That is only 7% of a message is based on the words while 38% comes from the tone of the voice and 55% from the speaker's body language and face While these figures mainly relate to situations where we are forming an attitude about someone the rule nonetheless offers a useful ratio for negotiators you see body language and tone of voice not words are our most powerful Assessment tools Important to remember that important to pay attention a lot of us a lot a lot of people are your face gives away so much and it doesn't even matter what you're saying. The look that you have on your face is just giving away the way you feel and it doesn't even matter what your words are.

Did you feel like you had to learn to, you know, control your facial expressions? I got my business partner and my friend, Laif Babin, you know, he, when we first started working together, when he was pissed, you knew it. And so did everybody else. It was like his face would turn red. You could see how mad he was. And, you know, over time, you know, as, you know, he started to realize that that didn't help him, started to learn how to not do that.

Is that something that you see people have to recognize and then get themselves trained up on? Yeah, depending upon the person, there's underlying currents. so it could be for different reasons. The short answer is yes. And the longer answer is how do you align your thinking in the moment? A little bit of what you mentioned earlier.

Like if you're really interested in what the other person is saying and then you worry about evaluating after the fact, you don't have to worry about the look on your face. As a matter of fact, if you're really interested, the more interested you look, the more they're going to talk. So if you can separate the two things out from, evaluating, judging what somebody said to just being, making sure you fully understand, then facial expressions are not a problem.

The people that have a problem with them, you know, your guy who's faces turn a red, making all, that's a characteristic principally of the assertive negotiator who can't wait to disagree and is holding it in. The highly analytical type, you know, the people that seem completely, emotionally detached, when they think you're not looking, they reveal everything. And like their facial expressions, their body language, I mean, sometimes they look like they're twitching.

And so if you know who's highly analytical, if you're faced with a team of people, do not talk to the analytical guy or gal, but keep an eye on them. You got to kind of watch them out of the corner, you're right because they're going to be rolling their eyes and they're going to be sneaking peaks at people at moments. I mean like they are they are the most honest most unguarded body language you ever saw in your life if they don't think they're being stared at. Let me ask you this

so I've been talking about leadership you're talking about you write about negotiation. How much interaction because there's also a ton of similarities with interrogators. How much interaction did have with interrogators I mean I obviously worked with a ton of interrogators and a bunch of different organizations how much how much work did you do with interrogators a fair amount and there's probably about three schools of thought out there the great well the bad ones are just brute force you know I'm gonna I'm gonna make you uncomfortable physically or emotionally and I'm gonna try to force something out of you and that's that's just that just doesn't work it's kind of

counterproductive. If you only care about what works, then you won't be harsh, because it doesn't work. Now, the other two that are left, there's one thing called eliciting information, which there are a fair amount of interrogators out there that like it, and they want to get you into a very short-term mindset

and get you to say things that you know to be against your interests. The problem is, if you're getting somebody into a short-term mindset, they're going to come a point in time when they regret saying it to you, and you're going to lose their cooperation. everything's going to fall apart. So it has a shelf life. Now, the rapport-based people, those are the magicians

that make cases nobody else can make or make deals no one else could make, and the other side still wants to talk to them. Like when I left surveillance in New York and went inside to investigate, what we were talking earlier became an inside, you know, open investigator, I was surrounded by guys.

guys that had gotten cooperation from witnesses voluntarily that people would just say, like, I got no idea how that guy got that cooperation. One agent in particular, his name was Larry Wack. And even on the task force, people admired how he got people to cooperate because he was, he developed rapport, relationships with people. Even if he had a hammer, the rapport and the relationship, you know, the belief that we will always be able to talk to one another, as opposed to me tricking you into a short-term mindset,

which at some point in time you're going to feel betrayed. Like the rapport-based approach to deal-making interrogation wins every time. Same thing with leadership. We might as well throw leadership in there as well. Agree. The time I say, well, you know, if you don't do this, I'm going to fire you or whatever, it'll work for that task. but eventually you're looking for another job.

So, yeah, those similarities, building relationships across the board. So you just mentioned the analyst. That's one type of person. And you got a whole section in here about not only what kind of negotiator are you because you got to know yourself, but then also how are you going to interact with these people. You got the analyst that you talked about,

which is methodical, diligent. They're not in a big rush. You talked about them. Tell me about the account. accommodator. Just, so being an assertive, the accommodators is a weird animal that neither the analysts nor the assertives can really figure out. But the accommodators really is a very hope-based person and very focused on that the moment is pleasant. And then if the moment is pleasant and we hope hard enough, then everything will be fine. Now, when we wrote, when we,

we wrote the book, we said the accommodator was focused principally on the relationship, having a positive relationship. And that's pretty close to true. Like they want the relationship to be positive, but, you know, we worked with people that would see a train coming at us rhetorically, figuratively, not literally. There's a problem coming at us. This person was on a team and we had a training and all the books that were supposed to be there were gone. This guy knew about it for days. The last minute tells us none of the manuals were here. Because he'd been, and we're like, you know this is, the train is getting ready to hit us.

We've been here for three days. You haven't said a word for three days. That's not relationship focused because I'm standing on a railroad track and you see a train coming my way and you're not warning me. So you notice the relationship is coming to a close. and then we realize in hindsight and we see it constantly they're hoping something good happens at the last minute everybody's saved

my colleague Derek would say an accommodator walk you into a minefield knowing it's a minefield hoping you don't step on a mine and so the accommodators I think are the source of why in a business world people often say hope is not a strategy because the accommodator will

with hope alone. And it'll work out, hope alone is probably good somewhere between 20 and 45% of the time. Maybe that's being generous, maybe 20% of the time. And they're going to remember the 20% and ignore the 80% when the world turned into a disaster. So the commenters are really, are very positive people. they're very upbeat and they're very hope-focused, which is in and of itself,

it's not a strategy, it's a necessary element, you've got to be hopeful that it's going to work out. What it is is inadequate. Now, simultaneously, people love dealing with somebody like that. So what we'll see on a regular basis, the accommodators will make more deals

overall than anybody else will, but there'd be mostly really sloppy deals. that are nowhere near as profitable for either side as they should have been because they simply hoped that things would fall into place. And then the last one, which I think you just self-identified as. Certive. Assertive. So what's the deal with the assertive negotiator?

Just honest. I'm just being honest with you. You know, I'm saving you a lot of trouble because I want you to be honest with me, so I'm going to be honest with you. That was stupid. That's a dumb idea That's never going to work You didn't think this thing

You know The assertives Anybody that describes themselves As simply Open and honest And it's always a punch in the face It's always Just that approach

Like you The other side's got to know where you're coming from You do have to be honest But it's how you deliver it And the assertives Are the Typically the worst

At making you I had my partner once tell me, dealing with you is like getting hit in the face with a brick. And I remember thinking like, how could that be? I'm the nicest guy I know. Yeah, no, it's like what I talked about earlier, like me punching you in the face with the truth is not a good way to get you. Listen. Exactly. Echo always brings up the example of the person that says, you know, I'm just a direct person, but I got to tell you, you were totally screwed up.

And again, there's not a lot of people like, oh, thank you for being that direct person and telling me how jacked up I am. Usually, look, the occasionally get someone that loves to get coached and love to get told what they, yeah, you get some people, but a lot of times it just offends them. So when you take these three different personality types,

negotiator types, are we looking to blend? Yes. That's what the goal is. Each type has something really critical they bring to the table. the assertive I mean you got to tell the other side where you're coming from

otherwise you're making them gas and you don't make good deals based on gas work the analyst you gotta think things through you gotta come up with it run some number you don't have to run them all

run any run some and the accommodator like so many people look at the accommodators and say that person's making tons of deals what are they doing it's in their demeanor It's in their approach.

Just FYI for people that are about to order this book, you also kind of give, how do you deal with the accommodator? How do you deal with the assertive? So you give both sides of the spectrum. I'll fast forward a little bit. We mentioned this briefly, this Ackerman bargaining. And I call the system the Ackerman model because it came from this guy named Mike Ackerman,

an ex-CIA guy who founded a kidnap for ransom consulting company based out of Miami on many kidnappings. We'd constantly be paired with Ackerman guys. Never Mike himself who helped design this haggle. And you lay out this haggle. It's a systemized and easy remember process that has only four steps. Well, you go to six steps here. Number one, set your target price, which is your goal.

Then you set your first offer at 65% of your target price. Then you calculate three raises of decreasing increments, 85, 95, and then 100%. Use lots of empathy in different ways of saying no to get the other side to counter before you increase your offer. When calculating the final amount, use precise non-round numbers like 37,893 rather than 38,000. It gives the number credibility and weight on your final number. Throw a non-monetary item that you probably don't want to show you're at your limit. So this is a pretty cool little system.

Yeah. Is that something you could advise someone to use when they're going to shop for a new car or used car? Yeah. Yeah. It's not a bad model. It's, if you're going to bargain, it's the most effective bargaining model out there. Nothing beats it. Getting into this last, it might be the last chapter.

Find the Black Swan. And we haven't mentioned this yet, but you've got the Black Swan group. This is your consulting firm. and a quick description of the Black Swan. Black Swan theory tells us that things happened that were previously thought to be impossible or never thought of it all. This is not the same as saying that sometimes things happen against a one in a million odds, but rather that things never imagined do come to pass.

The idea of the back Black Swan was popularized by Nassim Teleb in his best-selling books, fooled by randomness, and the Black Swan. But the term goes back much further until the 17th century people could only imagine white swans because all swans ever seen had possessed white feathers in the 17th century London it was common to refer to impossible things as black swans But when the but then the Dutch explorer William de vlaman Sorry people of Holland went to Western Australia I did indeed apologies to Holland uh went to Western Australia in 1697 and saw a black swan suddenly the unthinkable and unthought was real. This is a crucial concept of negotiation.

In every negotiation session, there are different kinds of information. There are those things we know, like our counterpart's name and their offer and our experiences from other negotiations. Those are known knowns. There are those things we are certain that exist, but we don't know, like possibility that the other side might get sick and leave us without another counterpart. Those are known unknowns, and they are like, poker wild cards.

You know they're out there, but you don't know who has them. But most important are those things we don't know that we don't know. Piece of information we've never imagined that would be game changing if uncovered. Maybe our counterpart wants the deal to fail because he's leaving for a competitor. These unknown unknowns are black swans.

So this is obviously something highly important to you since you named your company, The Black Swan. How did you stumble upon this idea? Well, the idea first, Talib's book in 2007, A Black Swan, got me thinking about it. I like his stuff. I mean, he's highly in-depth thinker.

He's got a writing tone that is not for everybody, but really in-depth. And so I saw that idea, like the impact of the highly improbable, Well, that's what we did all the time in negotiation. It's a combination of two things. We're going to change ourselves in subtle little ways that the other side is never going to see, and we're going to gain the upper hand. We're going to steer it.

We're going to steer the negotiation to the best possible outcome. Now, that doesn't mean that everything's going to a positive outcome, but you've got to recognize what the best possible outcome is. So it's a great metaphor for making tiny little subtle changes in your negotiation approach. The other side is never going to see. where you're going to make all the difference. It's completely invisible. And then while you're in the middle of it,

there's always stuff to eat. Great stuff will fall out of the sky if you let it. The other side's going to say something that works for you. They're going to talk to, they're going to be softer in a position than you realize. There's going to be pressures on them that you don't understand. Something is always, always there. And in many cases,

the other side doesn't imagine it. And to draw a real fine point on this that a lot of people miss, it's a reason why reading body language to detect deception is almost a waste of time. Because for you to deceive me, you've got to know it's important to have a tell. You have to be consciously covering it up. But a significant amount of that time, you don't even know it's important. So if I'm just looking for towels and not getting you talking, the stuff that you didn't know was important is never going to come out.

So what if you're lying? Number one, that doesn't tell me what the truth is. And if we're only focused on what you're hiding, rambling conversation, what might that look like? A woman who's getting funding for a film she's doing in Los Angeles, a couple years ago, he's trying to get $300,000 out of an investor. Very focused on this film being shot in L.A.,

very focused on this amount of money, very focused on the point they're trying to make in a film. But she's mirroring and labeling, and out of the blue it comes out that the financier owns a castle in France, which would be a great setting for the next film. Something she never would have brought. up. The financier, they're talking about a film being shot in LA, martial arts, this and that,

all these other little things. You know, female martial artists beating up bad guys. Like, how is she going to say, oh, by the way, you don't have, I'm working on another film. We want to, it's a medieval film. You don't happen to have a castle in France, do you? Like, that is never going to come up, ever. But she's talking and she's labeling and the next thing, you know, this thing comes out that the other person has no idea. makes any difference. Changes the structuring of the whole deal. Now instead of talking about one film,

they're talking about multiple films, completely changes the complexion of the finances that are needed on the first. If she can go back out, she's already got partial packaging on a second film. Like, it changes everything. And there's no way that she would have known to ask it, and the person on the other side was,

well, instead of 300 grand, what about my castle? Because that's not going to do any good for a film in L.A. Just little things like that. one thing that emphasized the importance of listening is, you know, at one point you're talking about a case, you've got a guy that's, you know, drives to, drives to Washington, D.C. in a tractor, he's going to blow himself up.

He's going to blow up some of the. Blaine Watson. Yeah. And, you know, he's saying he's going to blow himself up. But when you actually have, you're having conversations with him and you've got multiple people listening. Right. Because listening is so important that if you can get more more than one person you get two or three or four people listening to the conversation and

They're going to pick things up that someone else might miss and studying the transcripts. So you had someone on the team that realized number one he was a veteran how can we utilize that? And then someone realized he was like a I don't want to say fundamentalist Christian but a very strong Christian and you had a certain religious thing going on so you're able to utilize these things that people caught just through listening and it changed the dynamics of the whole of the whole negotiation. Right, right. Kept him from getting killed, got him out a day early. And so that was, you know, shorten a timeline. Because he was really at the end of his rope and each hour went by, he had less sleep, which increases the likelihood that he's going to do something stupid.

We're still not 100% sure that there are bombs there. And so if he had made a particular move towards where the possibility, He had his Jeep and a flatbed. They said, we don't know there aren't explosives in a Jeep and a flatbed. If he goes there, we've got to take him out. And we're talking to him, and this comes up, and he's agreed to come out 72 hours.

We want to try to cut 24 off of it. And one of the female negotiators, Winnie Miller says, you know, tell him to Mazadona the third day, which is 48 hours. and I'll come out. That's what he says. And he had talked so much about the military

and his 82nd airborne experience. Somebody else listening heard the underlying strong Christian beliefs in there. His religion, if you will. Everybody's got a religion. Everybody has got a religion. Just depend upon what it is and how broadly you define it.

Just going to hit some of these. Last section of the book, I'll cover, but I just want to hit some of these highlights here. Let what you know, your known knowns guide you, but not blind you. Every case is new, so remain flexible and adaptable. Black swans are leverage multipliers. Remember the three types of leverage, and you go over these in the book. Positive, which is the ability to give someone what they want.

Negative, the ability to hurt someone. And normative, using your counterpart's norms to bring them around. Again, there's more detail on the book, inside the book. Work to understand the other side's religion, which you just mentioned. Everybody's got a religion. Digging into worldviews inherently implies moving beyond negotiation table and into life, emotional and otherwise of your counterpart. That's where black swans live.

Review everything you hear from your counterpart. You will not hear everything the first time, so double check. Compare notes with team members. You use backup listeners. Exploit the similarity principle. People are more apt to concede to someone when they share a culture, someone they share a cultural similarity with. So dig for what makes them tick and show that you share common ground.

When someone seems irrational or crazy, they most likely aren't. Faced with a situation, search for constraints, hidden desires, and bad information. And last, get FaceTime with your counterpart. Ten minutes of FaceTime often reveals more than you. days of research. Pay special attention to your counterparts of verbal and nonverbal communication at unguarded moments at the beginning and the end of the session or when someone says something out of line. So really just awesome points that apply.

To me, they apply to business. They apply to interacting with any human. Obviously, they apply to negotiations. but there you go. I mean, we hit the wave tops of some of the last. I mean, I probably read less than 5% of this book. So many good stories. And again, I feel kind of bad that I skipped a lot of the stories themselves,

but get the book, and that way you can hear some of the examples behind this. So what do you up to right now? What do we got? We got the Black Swan Group, right? Yeah, we're coaching and training negotiations. All the companies out there you can get training from, very few and we'll coach you, which sort of shocks me. Like, how do you not believe in your stuff enough where you'll coach?

I mean, literally, the real definition of a coach is somebody, you go into the game, but the coach is right there, prepping you, you come out of the game, you could talk. Like, how do you teach this stuff? and not be willing to coach it. And so we coach across the board. It's a much bigger aspect of the business than I ever thought it would be. We got to just finish the documentary film

called Tactical Empathy. Looking premiered at Beverly Hills about 10 days ago, taking our time on a distribution deal. We'll see what happens with that. Outlying a lot of stuff that we talked about. Is it a full-length documentary? 54-minute documentary.

54-minute documentary. Got a book for real estate agents, the Fulfi agent coming out. Steve Schull, the guy that did the book with me, interesting cat. I know Steve for well over a year before I find out he played in the NFL. Like most NFL guys, you know, the first five minutes. Not only that, Steve was a Super Bowl captain. Dang. he didn't just play in the NFL

he didn't just play on a team that went to the Super Bowl he was a captain of the team like I think I finally found that out after I knew him like four years like he just he doesn't lead with that stuff but understands the value of coaching because he played

for Don Shula he played for some real coaches so he shares a coaching philosophy that you know the stuff that we coach you on if you do what we ask you to do it's going to work so the full free agent's coming out in about two months and then uh my son brandon and i and another colleague are working on a follow-up to never split the difference should be in about a year nice uh yeah the coaching piece i always tell people with uh with leadership it's not an inoculation you don't just get like a shot and now you're good

now you get it you don't go to the gym one time and now you're in shape you don't pick up a guitar get taught and now you know how to play it. And it's the same thing with the goal. You're not going to say, oh, I read the book and now I'm good to go. No, you actually need to train it. You need to get coached on it. That's why you got to do that follow-up. So that's awesome.

And we do the same thing at our company. I mean, most of the companies that we work with, we do long-term engagements with them. Black SwanltD.com. That's where people, if they want coaching, if they want to get deeper, on this stuff. You're also on social media. You got on Facebook and Instagram, you're at Black Swan LTD. You're on

Twitter at Black Swan GRP. You personally aren't on Instagram. Big social media guy over here. At the FBI negotiator. So did I get all those things right? Is there anything else we

need to know about? Yeah, those are good. On the website, Blacksworn LTD.com, We got a lot of free stuff. To get your skill level up. Like wherever you are, we can meet you where you are. Another thing we put out that is free, but that's not what makes it valuable.

We got a weekly newsletter, concise, actionable. Not 10 articles where you're trying to decide what to do next. Like one article, roughly 700 words, complete, actionable, concise stuff. The newsletter is free. You sign up for it on the website. You get an email to you on Tuesday mornings, wherever in the world you are. Take the free stuff. You can get a long way with the book and free stuff alone.

Yeah. And everybody that's listening just beat the king of negotiation because you're getting the stuff for free. So just get in there and get it. Take it from them. Otherwise you don't win, right? You want to get one up on the FBI negotiator. You got to go, hey, I got this from the master of negotiation. I got it for free.

That's how good you are. So get in there and sign up for that. So that gets us up to present day. Yeah, pretty much. Masterclass is out there. You know, you and I were talking earlier, but the master class is good. It's also, it's insane how cheap that is as far as costs.

Like the master class might be the best deal on earth. And my negotiation course and a whole bunch of other cool stuff's on there. Iger's got a course, and Sorkin's got a course. Like whatever you want to learn, you're going to find it on Masterclass. So you're on there as well. Awesome.

All right. Well, now you know what time it is. Echo Charles. Yes. Do you have any questions? Yes. Oh, here we go. I took the master class, by the way.

Very help. Very good. That was a very well done one. What's your thoughts on like the whole good cop, bad cop interrogation? Anything that's a manipulation or were you not being genuine and honest? and if you're good cop, bad cop, you're probably one of you's play acting. And it's as a long-term strategy, like you might get short-term what you need, but you're always going to find, always going to find that you need long-term cooperation

and to engage in something that's guaranteed to cause it to go bad is not just from a mercenary standpoint, you don't do stuff you know is going to hurt you in a long run. So back to the accommodator. So if I'm running late, not that I ever run late, but hypothetically, if I'm running late and then Jocko texts me, how long is it going to be until you get here? And I know probably it's going to be like 20 minutes, probably. But I say in my head, if there's no traffic light stopping me, if traffic is good, I could probably be there in six. So I tell them about five minutes.

Because I want to avoid giving him the bad news up front. You see what I'm saying? and then I'm hopeful that I make it in the five. Is that me being the accommodator? Yeah, I think so. And I think that's probably one of the biggest mistakes people make on a regular basis. Constantly. Like, and the fix is the opposite.

Like, if you know you're 20 minutes away, tell him 25. Yeah. Here's my thinking, if I would have that ever were ever to happen. I'm thinking I give him the good news so he's not that mad at me. Is I'm saying? So if I give him the worst possible news, for that 10 minutes or whatever, he's going to be mad. See what I'm saying?

Then he's already mad when I walk in there. But if the small chance arises that I get there in the five minutes, boom, easy money. See what? Yeah, that's how it plays that in your head. And that is so common. Like, and my girlfriend is an accommodator, a wonderful human being, brilliant, entrepreneur, like so many things about her that are just brilliant. And she's also, she's gorgeous.

I'm talking to her on the phone the other day. She's nice enough. She's in a middle of a Zoom call. She takes a call anyway. She's, hey, she's, I'm in the middle of a business call. Okay, you're back in 15 minutes. I go, okay. And then that night I called her,

and I said that was the longest 15 minutes I ever heard. Like I didn't, I knew when somebody gives me a vague amount of time, and it's not just her, anybody. I go on about my day because you're trying to be nice. You know, you're trying really hard to keep the other people. person from being in a bad place. And time after time after time after time,

the lights are not all in line and the data that you get overwhelmingly says that's going to go bad and almost everybody still does it. That was one of my favorite stories from McCraven's book, C stories. And you might have been one of those guys out there. They're

running some op in a Caribbean and a helicopters are late picking them up and they are not outfitted for the water temperature. Water's warm, but it still ain't 98.6. And a chopper's, one of the choppers is going to show. And a chopper's 15 minutes. And they were there for three hours. They wait, you know, and that's, that's not a military op.

That's human beings trying to be nice to other human beings. And, you know, it just doesn't work out. So the flip side is Overestimate the time You tell them 25 minutes You're here in 20 He's delighted with you He thinks you're great

Delighted might be a strong But I'll tell you You know The airlines do this Oh yeah Like when was the last time No but the opposite Now they caught on

Because their biggest criticism was Whether or not their planes are late So it doesn't matter What airline it is I fly all the time. Plain lands and they go like, well, our gate's not open yet

so we got to wait another 20 minutes before we get at the gate. And the first couple times that happened, I remember, and I said out loud in the airport, was it a surprise that we showed up? Like, this plane is really big. I know they picked it up on radar. They saw us coming from a long way away.

How is the gate still occupied? We're not here as a surprise. The airline knew all along when they were going to get there. But to fool you, they told you they were going to be there at 3 o'clock. You made your plans around 3 o'clock. They land at 2.30, which is a half an hour early. You think the airline's great and you're mad at the airport.

Nobody ever blames it. The airline knew all along when they were really going to get there. So when you show up early, when you overestimate at the time, the people you're doing business with love you. They think you're fantastic. You put time back in their day. Yeah. Dang.

This thing goes deep, man. Well, plus just like building a relationship with people a more you tell them things that's really going to happen, you know, the higher the trust level goes. Yeah. As opposed to telling someone you're going to be there in six minutes and you show up in 16 minutes. Hypothetically, yeah. This is a hypothetical. Yes, sir. I don't know.

What about if someone has food in their teeth and you don't want to tell them, a comment. right yeah that's gonna go bad you gotta know right just gotta tell them right it helps them out big picture but you don't want to deliver that bad news is kind of the deal that's the plight right of the accommodator just hopeful if you're like fallout and no one has to say if you're over there trying to figure out if you're an accommodator or not I'm gonna go ahead and say let's I'll solve that riddle for you right now you're an accommodator not sure hey we're all doing the best we can right on right on anything else echo Charles that is it is honor I've I've followed Actually, I got that book right when it came out.

Thank you. That's good. That's really good to you. What year did the book come out? 2016. I've been out for a while. Awesome. Chris, any closing thoughts from you?

No, I've enjoyed the conversation. Delighted at how thoroughly you understand how this applies to leadership and everything else. I mean, you're seeing the parallels right away. You know, I've listened to your other podcast where you talk about like, you know, left high school, not educated dude. But you're a learner. Which is really cool. Which is really cool.

Well, thank you. Appreciate it. And thanks for coming on. Thanks for coming down here. And thanks for sharing your experiences and all these lessons learned with everybody. I mean, it's just awesome that people can pick up this book and learn what you've learned over the decades of work you put into this. And of course, more important, thanks for your service.

Thanks for your service in law enforcement and the FBI. Thanks for fighting terrorists and kidnappers and drug dealers and criminals to keep us safe here on the home front. And the same to you, brother. Yeah. It was an honor to be able to serve. Yeah, amen. Exactly. It was a privilege.

All right. Thank you. And with that, Chris Voss has left the building. Equatorals. Yes, sir. excited about that one, huh? Yes. You liked that one.

I liked that one. A lot to learn. Yeah. What was your big takeaway besides the fact that you're an accommodator? I know. I felt it right when he was explaining it. I was like, man, that's... Well, he also said they make the most deals.

There you go, right? Establishing rapport or all that. And I, look, am I an accommodator? I don't know. But if I'm not, I know I have accommodator traits from time to time. We know that you're not analytic. And we know that you're not assertive. There's only three options.

Yeah. Okay. Whoa. No, no, no. We go for a blend, right? Yeah, you blend, blend. But your high percentage accommodator maybe. We'll go with that from now on.

I'm going to keep an eye on it because I like to know what I don't know. So he seems saying so it did shed some light on that thing. The interesting takeaway, geography is more influential than ethnicity. building and it makes sense because in Hawaii everybody's mixed and you know there's all different kind of community but if you're from Guamanalu and I'm from Wyomingalo and I'm from why I'manalo yeah we're good we can be in Dubai me and you brothers 100% so boom so that made a lot of sense to me and what did what did did shed some light on is some of your tactics as well oh in a good way expand so um okay one

you called me out for clicking the pen. I edited it out so it's not on any episode, but it's... And the way you said it was, is that clicking going to show up on the recording? Do you think? You said, you think. Like me, it was like my idea kind of a thing, you know? Like, I have to figure out for myself if it's going to,

as opposed to, hey, that clicking is annoying, and it's going to ruin the take or whatever, you know? I was like, oh, I see. because it was effective. And if you look back on the video, I think I published that outtake somewhere. Okay. If you look on the video,

I responded like totally, like, it worked. Mm-hmm. That little tactic. Yeah. It really was cool to read the book and to identify all these things that they're psychological, their psychological traits or psychological characteristics or psychological maneuvers.

Yeah. So they work with human beings. So it doesn't matter your leadership, your interrogation, your negotiation, they're all, they're all going to have some similar approaches. And they are. And so, yeah, it was really cool, really cool to read about, really cool to go through and then be able to sit here with Chris and talk through it. And, you know, it's awesome.

And again, I kind of did go through. I talked about it on the podcast, but like the book has a bunch of cool stories in it, right? Yeah. And there's temptation just to jump into like negotiation, hostage negotiation, all that stuff. But I felt like I really kind of wanted to dive into the tactics, the principles themselves.

So maybe I was a little bit selfish on that one. Yeah, you know what I realized about you? I think I might have told you this before, where your interest is like, it's like an 80-20, where you, like, like how things work for sure, but only like 20%. 80% is you're interested in, okay, so what do we do about it? So like, and I think I'm kind of the, if I'm like really trying to be introspective,

I'm kind of the opposite. So I'm like a 2080 kind of a scenario. So anytime I start going deep on how things work, I see your eyes kind of glaze over and then you snapped and you'd be like, okay, this is what you do. This is what you do. It's like you interrupt it with the next step kind of a thing. So I can see why you'd be really into the stories But yeah, I think the tactics are the ones that a lot of the time anyway

If you listen to them, it's like okay, now I can use them in my particular life I think they're both together are the most effective for sure Yeah, the other thing that I thought about look I don't care how long a podcast is gonna be I don't care for 12 hours But I also You know you have to think all right if we start getting into all these cool stories he's gotten here They all have their own branches and, you know, sub-stories and details, that's going to be, you know, we get to a point where diminishing returns, right? We just have a 19-hour podcast, in which point, just get on,

just go and read the book yourself or go get the audio book and go with it that way. So that's kind of the, kind of how I went with it. But just, just awesome to have them on here and, and learn from, you know, the subtitle of book is negotiating as if your life depends on it, depended on it, right? So he has countless times negotiated stuff that where someone's life or lives were on the line. It doesn't get more, you know, I used to say about extreme ownership.

Combat is like life but amplified and intensified. Yeah. Well, if you can negotiate for someone's life, you can negotiate for the car that you want, the used car that you want to pay, you know, $2,700 for instead of the $4,200,000. that they're offering it. Yep, you are.

So there you go. Thanks for joining us, everybody. If you want to, if you like this podcast and you want to support it, and you want to actually support yourself cognitively, you want to be cognitively ready for those moments. That's why I'm three deep right now with Jocko Fuel. I dig it.

With discipline goes. Now, normally you'd be thinking, oh, you drink three energy drinks today. You've had a bad day. You have to, you have to mark this day. as a negative on your overall health. We're actually not doing that at all. Not even doing that at all. Because I had one, what times it's four o'clock right now?

I had the first one at like 10.30 prior to a Eshlam front academy call. Then I had another one as we kind of started this thing. And then I had another one as we kind of got halfway through this thing. So what does that mean I've had? Does that mean I've had a bunch of sugar? Does that mean I've had 82 grams? No, I've had zero sugar. I've had some monk fruit, which is a beautiful.

thing I've had have I had what would that be three times have I had 600 milligrams of caffeine no I haven't even had 300 milligrams caffeine haven't so we're good over here plus I've got some vitamin B six 12 you know I'm good you know doing good so if you want to be good too but you want that energy yeah go to joccofuel.com get yourself some mulk which is dessert Get yourself some go. You can also go to Wawa. We got the ready to drink protein.

Available in Wawa. You can, joccofuel.com, you can check it. We're getting there. But the ready to drink stuff is kind of a game changer. Yeah, it's good. I told you about the chocolate milk versus mulk, right? Yes, sir.

With my daughter. Yeah. Who is not going to pull any punches? Yeah. She looked peaked. She looked peop. We know we sat down at table at camp and Pete was all like, bro, it's better than chocolate milk.

And she looked at him like he was just a liar. You know what I mean? I was had to get her to settle down, you know? You can't look at a, you know, a grown man like he's a liar. But she kind of looked at him like, and he, the good thing is Pete was like, oh, let's go. Yeah. Let's go.

Get him out. So we got out the straight regular like chocolate milk. Yeah. and milk side by side taste test well blind taste test she she was like dang that's the that's the true that's probably the truest and most awesome test that's ever been performed

for taste in the world yep in the world probably right so there you go get yourself some milk get yourself some ready to drink milk vitamin shops got this stuff as well go in there thing is hey got remember about wahwa somebody somebody hit me up on social media they cleared the shelves in Wawa,

thank you. Because look, it's a war out there. Have I explained the war to you a little bit? It's a war. The big companies don't like the little companies. The big companies have overwhelming firepower

in the form of cash, money that they can throw to try and crush the up-and-comers. They don't want that competition. They want to smash. They want to smash Jocco for a while. They want to smash discipline go.

So what they do is they make maneuvers. They throw money at stores. And the stores like to offer something else, but they got to be able to, got to make sense. So when you go and you clear the shelves at Wawa, thank you. When you go in any of these stores, when you go in there and get after it, it shows them that there's demand signal to retail

and they want to keep us. As opposed to when somebody throws a bunch of money I'm saying we want you to get rid of those guys. Think about that. That's called a monopoly. Yeah. Right. Those are monopoly moves.

Those are monopoly moves. And so we appreciate it when you help us fight the man. Right? The corporate entity. That's not a person. There's no person. Those other companies are not people. They're not people.

They're just big corporate entities. There's big giant corporate entities. No people there. No humans. We're human. We're here. We're getting after it. So anyways, appreciate it.

Joccofuel.com. Go get some of that. OriginUSA.com. Get yourself some American made for everything. Hunt gear. We're getting it out. Certain pieces are out. The pants are out.

Some of the shirts are out. Just get on there and order it. If it's not available, right now. We're making it. And if you want to get it, you got to order it now. I'm sorry. But you got to order it now. And then we'll get it to you as soon as it's ready, as soon as it's been made here in America, buy American hands. Jeans, boots, jujitsu geese. We don't put that jih Tzugee on sometimes. Raskards. Put that on. So that's what we're doing. OriginUSA.com. Get yourself some of that. Support America and support yourself.

It's true. Also, jaco store. Jocko's store called Jocko store. Dislin equals freedom shirts. New one is out. It's been out. It's a good one. Standard issue one? Standard issue. Multiple forms.

Multiple forms. Get one. Look. Is Christmas near? Is Christmas near technically? Maybe. Maybe not. But.

Bro, they already have Christmas stuff available. Where was it? My wife came home and said they, like, she went to Target or Walmart or something. And they were like, she's like, Christmas gear is up. You know, available. So is it near? This is something to think about. say that so yes we got some good stuff on there some kids stuff on there were your

kids stuff on there as well so we kind of got everything something for everybody if you want to check it let's face it the warrior kids need that Christmas hitter it yeah it that'll be a good clothing gift I don't got some excess we got some good stuff on there also we got the shirt locker mm-hmm that's a that's a good Halloween one is legit Halloween kind of something like that one let's say we like it no another good gift idea by the way got some gift cards too on there the gift that keeps on giving That keeps 100% every month. Get somebody to the Sherlocker and then they get a new t-shirt every month.

Yep. That has layers in it. Layers. Could be one layer. Could be seven layers. You get seven layers. Do we charge by the layer? No, no.

The layers is just part of the package. Included. You're right. But yes, cool designs. People really like the designs is what I'm finding out. And thanks for everyone for the feedback. So yeah, really good. Shere Locker.

Men stuff, women's stuff, hoodies, hats, all that cool stuff. There's stuff. Stuff across the board. Subscribe to the podcast. You know that. Jocko underground.com. We've been recording those. Putting word out,

answering your questions. If you go to jocco underground.com, people are getting censored right now. People are getting banned, whatever. That's not going to happen to us, at least on the platform that we could happen on this platform, whatever platform you're listening to. They could ban us.

If that happens, we'll be on jocco underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. If you can't afford it, no big deal. We're still here to support. Look, we know hard times right now, right? If you can't afford it, email assistance at jocco underground.com. If you can't afford it, cool.

Support the cause. Capital T-H-E, the capital C, A-U-S-E, the cause. Freedom. Psychological warfare. We've got flipside canvas.com. Books, obviously, never split the difference by Chris Voss. that book out and then all the books I've written get that book only cry for the living by holly mackay just a great book we put it out on jocco publishing check that one out and then all the

books I've written you know what they are so go get them get the warrior kid books let's face it that book would have helped you set out so much if you had it when you were a kid it would help me and if you know kids any kids get them that book once again christmas cool get it make it happen uh ashton front you heard me talking about a lot about leadership today? Well, we solve problems through leadership at Eshalonfront. Go to Eshalonfront.com. And also, up and coming, we've got a little something that we call the roll call, which roll call is an event. And we've got one, October 17th in St. Louis, Missouri. Had to just check this because they told me they still got some seats. Our stuff sells out

quick. So roll call is for police, law enforcement, first responders, military, October 17th, St. Louis, Missouri. If you can, if you're in that category, go and check that out. It's going to be, it's, it's our leadership principles kind of geared toward that group of people. Also, we have online training. Said this today. You're not going to get good at leadership with one book or with one rehearsal or one practice. No, you need to get in there. Go to extreme ownership.com. Learn about life. Square your life away. Extremeownership.com. And if you want to help service members active and retire, you want to help their families, check out Mark Lee's mom. Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to

America's Mighty Warriors.org. Also, check out Micah Fink. He's got his program taking you up and taking vets up into wilderness so they can find themselves again and rebuild heroes and horses.org. If you want to follow Chris Voss and the Black Swan Group, it's Black SwanltD.com. Facebook and Instagram is Black Swan LTD. Twitter

at Black Swan Group And Chris is on Instagram He's at The FBI Negotiator And of course We are also on Social media and whatnot

Twitter, Graham, Facebook Echo's at Echo Charles I'm at Jocko Willink Of course, watch out Because that algorithm's sitting there waiting to grab you By the throat And drag you into oblivion Don't let it

Thanks once again to Chris Voss for joining us, for teaching us about negotiation. And thanks to Chris for his service in the police department and the FBI. Thanks to all the FBI agents that are out there right now doing their best to keep us safe. And the same goes to the rest of our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all first responders. Thanks for everything that you all do to keep us safe. And of thanks to our military men and women who are on the front lines around the world right now we live in freedom because of the sacrifices you make thank you for your service and everyone

else out there life is a negotiation not rational they are filled with emotions and biases and judgments and that includes you so pay attention and listen more than you talk Not just in negotiation, but in leadership and life. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.