The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – NO… The Psychology of Sales and Negotiations: 40 lessons in negotiation… from a street-smart negotiator (The Force Multiplier Series) by Brian Will

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

NO... The Psychology of Sales and Negotiations: 40 lessons in negotiation... from a street-smart negotiator (The Force Multiplier Series) by Brian Will https://amzn.to/4aQu0XB Every sale you make is a negotiation. If you’re not negotiating price, you’re negotiating with the customer on if they will … or will not … buy from you. This book is not about theory. These techniques have generated billions of dollars in sales. This book is also not about how to manipulate people into doing something they don’t want to do. It is not hardcore. It is a professional soft-sell, using human nature, psychology, and the power of the right words to move people where you want them to go. Brian Will Bio: Brian Will is a serial entrepreneur, an industry-leading business and sales management consultant, and a Wall Street Journal best-selling author. During the course of his career, Brian has created or co-created seven very successful companies in four different industries. These companies were worth over a half-billion dollars at their peak. He has also done multiple turnaround projects ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies, helping to drive billions in sales. His multifaceted background gives him the ability to understand and teach agile processes and principles and articulate their implications from multiple perspectives, from the development team to the executive board. Today, Brian owns a growing chain of restaurants, a residential and commercial real estate business, and runs a business mastermind and entrepreneur coaching program. He also serves on the city council in his hometown of Alpharetta, Georgia.

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There you go, ladies and gentlemen. When the Iron Lady sings it, that's when you know it's official. I'm so glad I don't have to sing that thing after 15 years. Folks, welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. Remember, the Chris Voss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you. At least not as harshly as your mother-in-law because she never liked you anyway. And we all know the reasons why.

She wanted her daughter to marry Bob. I don't know who Bob is, but it's a callback joke. Anyway, Bob. But, you know, Bob does have that great, swell job, and his life turned out pretty good. So work on yourself, will you? Anyway, guys, welcome to the big show. For 15 years, we've been bringing you the CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the U.S. ambassadors, congressmembers, governors, you name it.

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Today, we have an amazing author on the show and successful entrepreneur. You're going to learn so much from him because if you don't or else, I don't know why I think that's funny on the show, but I just like calling it back. He's the author of the latest book that came out June 3rd, 2023, entitled No, the Psychology of Sales and Negotiations, 40 Lessons in Negotiation from a Street Smart Negotiator, part of his F force multiplier series brian will is going to be joining us on the show today you may know him from his massive book he put out

in 2021 that was hugely popular as well the dropout multi-millionaire 37 business lessons on how to succeed in business with no money no education and no clue geez that's how i started my first company 18 wait is this my biography? And I still have no clue. So we'll be talking to him about on the show and all that's gone into what he's done. He is a serial entrepreneur and a two-time Wall Street Journal bestselling author and leading consultant in business and sales management. He's had a dynamic career where he's had the privilege of founding or co-founding seven highly successful companies across four distinct industries with valuations soaring over half a billion dollars at their height. His journey has been marked by spearheading turnarounds for diverse companies, from startups to Fortune 500 firms, guiding them to generate billions of dollars in sales.

He's a fractional COO, serial entrepreneur, LLC, 7X Startups, 3XX exits, podcast host, business consultant coach. Welcome to the show, Brian. How are you? Chris, I am excited to be here, but I have to start off and wonder how many of your guests got the reference to Bob. That's my life story right there. I love that song. You love Bob? Oh, there's a song about Bob? What is the song? George Thurgood, Get a Haircut and Get a Real Job. Oh, yeah. Like your big brother, Bob. Oh, yeah. I loveorge thurgood get a haircut and get a real job oh you like your brig brother bob oh yeah i love george thurgood man i was just that's where you're going with that

no we use bob as like a bob's like the token callback abuse name that we use like anytime we want to throw abuse at someone stupid you know you know your co-worker bob you know the guys you know we always just for some reason now you got to go listen to the song get a haircut by george thurgood it's all i love george thurgood i was just listening the other night to you know i was listening to who did he take the song from beer bourbon and uh yeah one whiskey one scotch and one beer yeah and i was listening to who originally wrote the song and i was like i gotta listen to george thurgood's version because i kind of like his his zamped up really nice and it's just because that that that swing drive or

blues drive whatever you want to call it anyway we're not getting any royalties from him so fucking so brian and we we should mention you're you're like a tiktok star now so you're you're that too i'm getting there i'm getting there i'm still in the baby star phase phase i think but that is how i met you so yeah that's how we met i i saw your videos and you're putting out this intelligent stuff and i just you know you're you're wrecking the chinese algorithm that's trying to destroy everyone's mind and putting out intelligent content i literally looked in and said holy crap chris voss just friended me on tiktok and i called my publicist i said i want to be on his show and And here we are. So there you go. Yeah. It beats the other show because he doesn't have a podcast. He hijacked our brand in 2016.

Yeah. Anyway, I wish I had an FBI manual to plagiarize, but I didn't. I wrote my own book. Anyway, so Brian, give us a 30,000 overview of what you do and how you do it in your words. You know, I spent 35 years building companies, did two venture capital exits, one private equity exit, but I started out in landscaping. So I'm a kid who failed out of high school, didn't have any place to go, started a landscaping company because all you got to do is dig holes, right? And mow grass. Yeah. And eventually turned that into two venture capital exits and sort of private equity in the insurance industry and internet marketing. And then went into consulting, did sales and management training for Fortune 500 companies, and then started writing books and bought a chain of restaurants and got into politics and ran for city council in one.

And I'm on the Chris Voss show, so I have reached my pinnacle. You've reached the pinnacle of the career. That's actually a joke we use sometimes with the bios when we read them. So there you go. You may have been watching the show before. So give us an overview of this latest book that you put out. You had a huge success with the dropout multimanager, which we'll touch on. But to know the psychology of sales and negotiations, what made you want to write this book and what's inside?

Yeah, I did sales training for years. Big sales teams with Fortune 500 public and private companies. And I kind of mastered the sales training course that I did. And I've got it on video. It's a sales training course on video. And I finally decided one day, I said, hey, why not just put it into book form? That way, when people call and ask me all these questions, I can say, hey, man, read the book. So we wrote the book. And it's really about the psychology of sales, not cheesy sales lines. It's not about how to get people to do things they don't want to do.

It's about understanding what that person's thinking, how they're going to react, and what you should say based on how they're going to react. Because if you can learn those things, then you can become a much, much better salesperson. There you go. And once you learn sales, sales is one of the most important things you can learn. And what a lot of people don't realize is everyone's always selling. I mean, I meet people and they're like, I don't like sales. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I'm like, you're selling everything.

You sell your girlfriend on why she should go out with you. Yep. Boyfriend, you know, you're selling, you know, people on your image, your brand all day long, the cars you buy, the things you own. Yep. You know, sell your image to people. You're selling yourself to employers if you work for other people. I don't have that ability because I don't play well with others. So what are some of the tips and techniques you give in the book to help generate what you did with Billion Dollars in Sales?

One of the first things we teach people in the sales environment is that they have to overcome the first objection. And the first objection we teach people in the sales environment is that they have to overcome the first objection. And the first objection is something that most salespeople miss. But it applies to literally every sales situation in the world, no matter what you do, no matter what product. And the first sales objection is that you are a salesperson. And people generally distrust salespeople. It's not that they distrust you. You might be a great guy, right?

You coach Little League. You got kids. You hang out. You have parties. But when you put your sales hat on, people get afraid of you. They're afraid of your voodoo sales magic. They're afraid of what you're going to try to get them to do. They're afraid you're going to make them overpay.

They're afraid of the unknown, and they're afraid of being sold. And so that is the first objection that most people miss. It sounds like me on Tinder dates. Yeah, you got to figure out how to get up through that wall of mistrust that is automatically between you and that client. And if you can figure out how to get through that wall of mistrust, then you will begin to get them to trust you and like you and your chances of success go up infinitely.

So let me ask you this. What are some of the keys to getting beyond that wall? Is it building rapport? Is it qualifying? I tell most people that the wall of mistrust is based on a fear of the unknown and it's based on a fear of being sold, right? So if I already know that you're afraid of being sold and I already know that when you start talking to me, you're in your mind, you're thinking, okay, what's he going to do next? Is he going to try to close me? Is he going to try to, what's going to happen next? And so your customer, your client is so concerned on what you're going to do next. And in that defensive posture, we got

to overcome it. So I say, listen, Chris, I know you're interested in my product, but this is kind of way, this is kind of how this has to work. I'm going to need to ask you a bunch of questions. And then I'm going to, if I feel like my product will satisfy what you're looking for, I will give you some options. I will go over your pricing and then I'm going to let you decide if that works for you. Now, is that fair enough?

Yeah. Yeah. And that way, you know that I'm going to ask questions and then I'm going to give you some options in pricing and then you get to decide I'm not going to sell you. And I always end with, Hey,

is that fair enough? Oh, and then you get to decide i'm not going to sell you and i always end with hey is that fair enough oh and when you say yes then i have permission to move forward in the process and now it's all about me asking a thousand questions too many salespeople try to pitch and pitching doesn't work oh yeah and you got your first yes too so you're on you got your first yes that's exactly right a few ziggler books in my day. The, which I had an honor to meet him. The man saved my life, made my life, saved my life. But yeah, I mean, it, it, we live in a really weird world with sales because you're probably like I am. You, you grew up in the old sales world where you, you qualify people, you build rapport,

you, you, you know, you got to know your customer first, laid a foundation, and then you usually sold them from that. Nowadays, people come right at you with the pitch, man. They don't even warm it up. They don't take you to dinner. They just go right for home base and try and close you. LinkedIn is the worst for it. Oh my gosh. Can't stand it. People will hit me up and they'll be like, hey, do you want to retail some steel that we wholesale? And you're like, where did you get on my profile that this is even in my wheelhouse? My favorite is the fact that my LinkedIn profile says I'm a city councilman. So I get messages saying, hey, is the city of Alpharetta tired of people showing up and not buying anything?

Was the city like to get more leads? I'm like, we looked at your profile and we were really impressed. Would the city like to get more leads? We can help. You know you can change that, Brian, right? You are lying to me. I don't even like you anymore. Yeah, it's like insane. It's the worst if you own a podcast like mine that's pretty successful we pump out live on on linkedin then we pump out the linkedin newsletter and we got 130 000 group and and then we we're usually pumping out tons of i think we're a little bit behind we're usually pump out 10 minute segments of the show and so

they see us everywhere and these these, these podcast promoters from India, Pakistan, I don't know what happened to the generation here, America, but for some reason, Pakistan, India, and I don't know,

some Bob, Bob, whatever has somehow become the central hub of podcast promotions. And, and then of course, a pack or the Philippines or the VA group, which is a little bit more legitimate, I think. But yeah, it's like, just tell me what country you're messaging me from and I'll tell you your pitch. But yeah, they just go right for it.

And, you know, I mean, one of the things that I used to teach my salespeople, this was like a law, because if you didn't follow it, you're going to fuck gonna fuck up our systems and i taught my sales people we'd monitor for it too on our calls and the first question i wanted to ask is what are you trying to accomplish and shut the fuck up and listen yep and it it was a great way you know i think i learned it from some consultants that came into the car business when i was very young and they said quit saying how can I help you how can I help you you know and people hated that it was you know immediate close off yeah what you've talked about yeah but that seemed to be a way in but I like your foundation where you where you basically build a foundation you say hey is this fair and then how do we move from there? And so, I mean, that's a great way to approach it and get people into it.

What are some other tips you want to tease out on the book? You know, the rest of it, when we go through the sales training with a team is, I like to say that no matter what product you're selling, your sales team is probably getting the same four or five objections all the time, 80, 90% of the time. So if we're going to redo your sales system, we're going to identify what those four or five objections are. And we're going to build a set of questions into your fact-finding portion of the process to overcome those objections before, this is a key, we overcome objections before the client has them. Too many people are trying to teach you how to overcome objections after you've pitched. If you're trying to overcome

objections and you screwed the whole sales process up, I should already know what you're looking for, why you're looking for, when you're looking for it, have you shop someplace else? Do you have pricing in mind? Do you understand what you're going to buy? I need to know all these things before I ever pitch you my product. If I'm waiting to overcome objections till later, I've already blown it. So our entire sales training system is about overcoming objections before they have them. That's usually what I do in my pitches. I'm trying to address the other things. And some people complain and be like, your pitches have been long. But then they'll go, but I understand everything else. I'm like, okay, well,

yes or no at this point. But laying that foundation where you pre-sell things, it clicks off the check boxes in their head and so they can clear from it. And if you keep getting them to positive affirmation after positive affirmation, we do what we call pause for effect and check in.

Does that make sense? Do You understand how that works? Does that pricing work the way you're acting? And by the time you get to the end, there is no close. They've already told you that everything is awesome. The price is awesome. The product's awesome. The benefits are awesome. And you go, oh, well, sounds like this is what you're looking for.

You want to go ahead and write it up. I mean, that's the whole close. I mean, that's the magic close. But you have to do the process to get there. Definitely. Definitely. Let's delve into your book, The Dropout Millionaire, 37 Business Lessons on How to Succeed in Business. No money, no education, and no clue, which is where I'm at after 55 years.

So at least the no clue part. No education either. I never went to college. So tell us why you wrote the book in that format with that title. You know, it's funny when I started writing that book, it was intended to be more of a technical how to start a business and build it. But the farther I got into the book, the more I realized that the people reading this book have so many different situations, different backgrounds, different challenges, different opportunities that there's no way to write a book that can encompass everything. And so I switched to more of the soft skills psychology behind why people succeed and

why people fail. I've done enough coaching and training and consulting that I see the same problems over and over and over. And those are the problems that are keeping you from succeeding. As I like to say in the book, if Joe, who's been a plumber, starts his own plumbing business, he'd been working for 15 years, he starts his own business, he calls it Joe's plumbing. If Joe's plumbing fails, it will not be because Joe doesn't know how to be a plumber. It will be because Joe doesn't know how to run a business. That's the key to business. It's the business inside the business. And that's what my book is about. It's really about the psychology and the soft skills and everything behind operating the business, not the technical side. That's really important. A lot of people don't

do that. Like attorneys, they famously go to school, but they're never taught the business side. And the business side of it is so key, especially because it's a turnkey, just about any sort of business format or industry you want to take and do. Once you learn kind of the basic mechanisms of running a business and how to do a business, how to innovate and stuff, you can pretty much go in and do anything like you have. You are exactly right. If you know business, you know business. If you can run a business, you can run a business, right? I own a little chain of restaurants and people are like, oh, the only thing that's important is good food and good service. No, it's not. You will go

bankrupt if that's all you're worried about, right? I had a guy come to me and say, hey, can you help me? I'm not making any money. And I said, what are your food costs, liquor costs, labor costs, and revenue over rent? He's like, I don't know. I'm like, what do you mean you don't know? Do you do a set of profit and loss statements? He goes, not really. I'm like, what are you even doing in business? He goes, yeah, but we have award-winning cheese steak hoagie. I'm like, well, la-di-da. There's that.

But that won't take you so far. We had somebody on the show recently who does a lot of blue-collar TikToks, and he's got a huge following. And he helps show blue-collar people how they can become millionaires building their business. But when he first started his company, the first year or two, he had immense success, but he was underpricing his jobs, which is kind of what he's doing. And he ended up, I think it was like 100 or 200 grand upside down within a year or two, and it was threatening to throw him into bankruptcy. Let me ask you something, Chris. You know how to build a billion-dollar company?

It's really easy if you spend $1.2 billion to do it. And you get a VC to fund it. Yeah. I mean, if I spend more than I generate in revenue, it's easy to build a big business, but that isn't going to work. I think they call that the WeWork model. I can't believe they gave that guy more money after all that i think they call it the theranos theranos theranos mark elizabeth is that her name yeah yeah but yeah it was interesting to me he he he and he talks about

on tiktok this young man he he talks about how he you know he lost like all this money and now now he's you know he's he's working through it and stuff. I'm sure probably some of it was maybe he wasn't paying his taxes right or something. But somehow, he ended up quite upside down. And so now he's fought it back. But yeah, if you don't know the business side of your business, you can be burning through money and upside down. You think you're making a profit. You're like, we're moving a lot of stuff here.

These 10-cent hoagies seem to be selling really well. be burning through money and upside down. You think you're making a profit. You're like, we're moving a lot of stuff here. These 10 cent hoagies seem to be selling really well. It must be because they taste so good. And you're like, oh, it might be the price is so stupidly low. People know what the good deal is. Yeah, it's so funny. I just, I was on Fox News yesterday. I don't know if you saw that segment, but, and I was talking about why our sandwiches cost $16 at the restaurant. And people kept coming on to my comment section on social media and going,

if you would lower your prices, you'd sell more sandwiches. And I'm like, but if I lower my prices, I'll lose money. And the more I sell, the more I lose. It doesn't even make sense. But that's literally what people think out there that don't understand business. Well, just lower your price. No big deal. Yeah, no big deal.

Just lower your price. Yeah. There's always that contingency that doesn't care if you stay in business or not they just want a free ride you know i was seeing this thing during covid where there were people that were like you know they're on there were farmers that were on tiktok and instagram why am i this is like a huge tiktok advertisement show isn't it the well you know you're on there. I'm on there. And these guys were talking about how much, you know, back then,

when the supply chain was all fucked up, you know, gas prices were out of control. And they're like, hey, you know, I remember there was one guy, he was in like this big storage facility for onions. And I guess they store onions for quite a long time before they sell them. And so you got to understand, we just paid like super high gas prices for gas over COVID, and our costs went through the roof on COVID. And this cost is coming at you.

And you're not going to see it now, but like a year and two years from now, you're going to see your food but like a year and two years from now you're going to see your food prices go through the fucking roof yep and you know we saw that with eggs i mean at one point you couldn't buy eggs milk and you know everything and and so that's really it hopefully things are calming down the system and we're kind of getting through it but you know it usually takes three to four years to to roll this stuff and clean it up. It is. Our wholesale costs on everything have gone up 30% to 40% in the past three years. And you're locked even while our revenue is going down, right? So there's that balance. I have this picture of this guy on a tightrope with that big long bar. And I always call that the balance of

business. You've got price on one side, you've got consumers on the other. And if one of those gets out of balance, you're going off the tightrope and your business is going to fail. So we have to charge enough to make money, but we can't charge too much. But while our costs are going up, our revenues are coming down because as costs go up, less people buy, right? So you've got to find that balance and then let the economy catch up to it eventually. But it's definitely a tightrope walk. There you go. Now, you talk about starting a business with no money, no education, no clue. I started my first company with that at 18. I talk about my book, Beacon's Leadership.

Our first multimillion dollar company started with $2,000 and a lot of sweat equity. So that was part of the no money, no clue. But we did have a clue at that point. I started enough projects and businesses that I kind of knew what I was doing when we finally hit. It's that practice sort of thing where you try a bunch of shit and then finally something. You finally hit the ball. And then a year later, we started our second company with $4,000. And both turned into multi-millionaire companies for profit within three months.

And this is in the brick and mortar days where you had to get government approvals and sign contracts for leases and you know this wasn't the time where you just call it go daddy and you got a business for 20 bucks so give us some insight into onto what ways people nowadays with no money no education no clue can succeed probably first to read your book. Yes. Read the book first, but you know, there's so much more opportunity today than there was when I did it. You know, I started when I was 21 and with no education, I failed out of high school. No, no, no college, no, I had no clue, but so I went into landscaping. I figured anybody could dig a hole or mow grass. And so that's what I did. That was my first business. Today, you can literally get online, start an online business.

I love what Elon Musk says. He goes, why are you going to college? You can learn everything there is in college just by going online on YouTube. Right? You have so much opportunity with the available resources to you today. The education, the video. There's a video on how to do literally anything. Pick something you want to do. Watch a video on how to do it, and suddenly you're educated and you can go launch a business.

Yeah. You can just sit and watch your TikTok feed from all the videos. Oh, my gosh. Yes. I mean, the opportunities are incredible. If you watch my TikTok feed, it's mostly drooling on the side of my mouth and, I don't know, rolling around in my rubber room in a straight jacket. Don't be weird people. That's not my only fan show.

I have this comedic picture in my head of a room filled with just rubbers hanging off the wall. Man, there you go. So there you go. And yeah, you're right. This data is everywhere. You know, when I was young, I skipped going to college. I was supposed to go to University of Utah. And I had a Pell Grant because my family was not rich.

And I flunked most of my classes on purpose. You can read the book. I'll tell you why I did it. But I was just a stupid kid. And then by accident, I started my first company. And no one, I mean, I didn't even know that I was an entrepreneur at that pace. I was just like, I'm trying to make a buck. And so I skipped going to college.

And so I didn't have an education. I still don't to this day, except for what you talk about, street smarts. And I don't even have that. But I knew I needed to educate myself. And that's really important because people see guys like you and me, they're like, oh, you sell this, you don't need an education sort of thing. And they're like, oh, I can just go do it. No. I mean, I ordered Harvard Business Review. I plotted to be a CEO of a big company. And so I would read Harvard Business Review, all the different business theories.

I read every Peter Drucker, you name it, Tom Peters book. I read every book I could get my hands on for business. I prepared. And that's the real key, but you're right. It's so easy now. There's almost no excuse for it. Yeah. I'm right with you there, Chris. If I can look over the balcony here into my library, I've got several hundred books. And the interesting story is my daughter was over here about a year ago and she's looking at all my books and she's like, Daddy, you got a lot of books on your bookshelves. And I said, honey, those aren't books. That's my brain. Because I've absorbed everything in every single one of those books, and that's why I think the way I do. That's why I do the things I do. And honestly, that's why we've had a lot of success, because I've

totally immersed my brain in what all these incredibly brilliant people have put out in these books, which you can do today in podcasts just as well as the books and audibles and Kindles. Yeah, podcasts too. So yeah, educate. What do you say, the difference between you today and you five years from now? The difference between you today and you five years from now are the people you associate with, books you read, podcasts you listen to. It's the information you put in your brain. If you hang out with drug dealers, you're going to be a drug dealer. You hang out listening to the Chris Voss show every day, you'll be a millionaire.

It's just the way it works. Or a drug dealer, probably. You know, and I didn't have any of this. I don't know how your life was back in the day, but, you know, I grew up poor. We didn't have a whole lot of people that were inspirational or whatever going on and i just had i don't know i was just i was just a stupid kid who somehow i knew the difference i would look at baseball and go this is dumb why do you go around four bases when you can just run to that second base straight and come back and that sort of brain thing and then growing up in a cult

so i had to kind of learn to think outside the box and learn to realize some of the brainwashing stuff that was going on and really taught me to analyze outside of the box where i could see things and and look at things outside of paradigms and belief systems and that really was life-changing for me so it kind of helps to grow up in a cult, people. Let's all join. As long as you don't drink the Kool-Aid, you're fine. Evidently. I don't know.

Or, you know, anyway. But I didn't have any of that around. Back then, you didn't have the internet. You didn't have anybody you could consult with. You want to know what my inspiration was as a kid? This is a funny story. So we're probably close to the same age. You remember the big fat JC Penney's catalogs we used to get? Oh, yeah.

I would flip through there and circle everything I wanted. Oh, serious? I would just, I want this, I want this, I want this, I want this. And from a very young age, I just remember thinking, I got to figure out how I want to get all these things that I want in the JC Penney's catalog. There you go. Yeah. I like how you did that. You're much more productive than that with you. I just never got out ofney's catalog. There you go. Yeah. I like how you did that.

You're much more productive than that with you. I just never got out of the bra section. I was 12. Give me a break. I wasn't going to go there. I mean, I'm right there with you, but I wasn't going to go there. Well, I take the hits on this show. So there you go.

We make the guests look good. But yeah, I mean, basically, if you want a consultant back then, or if you want an advisor, you basically had to hire some attorney. It was like a business attorney, and you couldn't afford that, dude. And so that was about the only advice you could get. But I mean, really, this is a world where you can be an entrepreneur, you can get ahead, you can start a company, you can start a business. I mean, I just don't think there's any reason not to be an entrepreneur at this point. And I think it's really the future of business where things are going because AI is going to replace so much. Being a business and using your brain and selling the wares in your brain or what lack you have.

If you want to. And you can even be a part-time entrepreneur. They call it a side hustle. That's a part-time entrepreneur. Build it up until you can replace what you're doing full-time. But yeah. And by the way, the tax advantages that come with it and there's just amazing opportunity to do all kinds of cool stuff by doing that. Yeah. The tax advantages, being able to write stuff off is the greatest thing in the world. So yeah, I'm writing this off right now. I don't know what that means.

That's kind of funny at the time. So you've gone on to TikTok. How's it like making that transition over there and getting your feet down? You're clearly not dancing and singing, so you're inspiring a new generation of people. As you know, all the different, there's TikTok, there's Instagram, there's YouTube, and there's Facebook, right? And LinkedIn and Twitter. We post on all these channels. it's amazing what hits on one channel is a complete dud on another channel like i can get my biggest tiktok is 1.6 that same video only got 50 000 on instagram and three on linkedin that's interesting it's just and then

you got i got one on instagram that got over three million they got a hundred thousand on tiktok and you know four on Facebook. It's just different audiences. It's weird the way it works. So you got to just go across the board with different genres of ideas and whatever to see who likes what. Yeah, and in building the audience,

I mean, that's one thing you always have to do is just curate the audience, start and go, and then build it. But I like your advice on putting it everywhere. I mean, I meet these people for a lot of years that they just treated LinkedIn as a turd, and now they're trying to scramble and catch up on it. We've always treated it like a bank of gold, which it is.

You know, the newsletter over there grows like a weed. We've got a 130,000 group over there. It used to grow. It rose. It used to go really good. And then Microsoft bought LinkedIn and, and they, they reworked the group.

So they put everything on hold for a year or two and kind of hacked it. But yeah, there's, there's just so many things you can do over there, but I'm glad you're over there inspiring a new generation, these young people. Cause now TikTok is not TikTok. Instagram's kind of just turned into

a glorified dating app and an on-ramp to only fan i mean it really has if you really understand what's going on over there um i think there's some small nuances i mean clearly you've curated some sort of audience over there but tiktok to me is just it's just so where it's at it's where the kids are at i wish i'd embraced it sooner and gotten into it. And it just seems like a great place to be. What do you find resonates with that crowd the most? Because I think a lot of them are Gen Z, right? Yeah. This restaurant TikTok I just put out was the biggest TikTok I've done over there. And it's just really about food costs. I don't know why everybody got excited about food costs. Although here's what I find out about my audience on TikTok.

I break them into four categories. There's which political party you assign or which political party you belong to determines whose fault it is because it's the other person's fault all the time. It doesn't matter what you say. So half the people hate me and half the people love me. Then because I do a lot of business stuff, there's the people that know nothing about business and then there's people that do. The ones that know business are like, oh my God, this is exactly right.

The ones that don't know business are like, you're an idiot. You don't know what you're doing. Look, 50% of the people hate me and 50% of the people love me, but they just love to talk about you on social media. It cracks me up. I have fun with them sometimes. I have fun with them. I make fun of them backhand.

Bless your heart. This other thing. You're from Georgia, I think it was. I love that. My mom used to say, bless your heart all the time, and she lives in Utah. I finally had to sit her down and say, do you understand what bless your heart means in South? Cause I don't think it means what you think of me.

Yeah. It's, it's, it's not, it's not good. She was into the good thing. And I'm like, I don't think,

I don't think she's no, I don't like, no, I don't think everyone here in Georgia thinks they're being insulted by your mom. So she doesn't have a lot of friends here. Yeah. It's a good thing.

She's never gone down that way. The, but, but yeah, tick to TikTok and the folks, we've had that problem for 15 years, probably 20 years now on YouTube, where half the audience hates you and half the audience does,

or they hate our content. We used to do a lot of videos back in the day with all the phones we get from AT&T where it would be the Android versus iPhone. So we'd start whole nuclear wars between that crowd. Drive up that engagement, baby. And people would be the Android versus iPhone. So we'd start whole nuclear wars between that crowd. Drive up that engagement, baby. Yeah. And people would be, you know, they're like,

you're stupid, Chris Voss, ugly and fat. And I'm like, what's your point? Yeah. But you just paid me like two cents to insult me. This is the greatest gift ever. When you get really nasty, you say, hey, man, I appreciate you keep commenting because you're just driving that engagement up. Please do.

Please insult me more. My bank account loves you. I'll take all the abuse. Please. The worst thing you can do is ignore me. Don't hurt my feelings that way. That'll do it. Yes.

TikTok's just a great place. So what are some of the projects you're working on? Anything coming on down the pike in the future? I think you mentioned a book. Yeah, I got a new book. The big book was a dropout multi-millionaire the new book is called the invisible multi-millionaire ah and it is scaling your business through delegation preparing for an exit and creating generational wealth ah and so that's that's the next book that's coming out it's hey a lot of entrepreneurs get into business because eventually they want to ride

off into the sunset too many of them are working 100-hour weeks and wouldn't know the sunset if it slapped them in the face, right? So we got to teach these people how to not work 100 hours a week, create a business where you can delegate your responsibilities off. So when somebody is ready to buy you, you're going to get the highest multiple possible, right? Nobody wants to buy a business if you're the mainstay of information and the customers all know you. If you can become invisible in your business, you create infinitely more intrinsic value in an exit.

There you go. And people need to really think about exits more. I was always an empire builder. And I was like, I'm building companies for life. And then 2008 came along and said, no, all that 20-year-old shit you built, that empire, fuck you. And our biggest gem was the mortgage company of all things. So good luck with that. And then a couple of years ago, we had Michelle Seeler Tucker on who wrote the book Exit Rich.

And we found another guy on who wrote Your Multimillionaire Exit Rich. And we found another guy on who wrote Your Multimeter Exit. And she exploded my brain to start thinking about when you build a business, start thinking about building it to exit, which I never did. Clearly, I named the podcast The Chris Voss Show, which good luck selling that to anybody without me being around. But there you go. But it did work out well because I can change the format of whatever the fuck Chris Voss wants to talk about. So I do love that part. People ask me, Brian, when should I sell my company? I said, when they give you enough money.

When they give you enough money. Just watch those exponents. But yeah, building businesses for exits, I think, is really more important. I was kicking myself going, what the hell was I doing all those years? I should have sold that shit before 2008. But that's the way to look at stuff now. So there's no more Chris Voss business names with my name on them anymore. And that's how we're going forward. So I think this is great. You're writing about this. Anything you want to talk about? Maybe what's going on in 2004, business-wise, anything you're forecasting? Looks like the rates might be coming down.

Any plays you see in the market? I got to be honest. I think the rates are coming down. I think the Fed is trying to help the Biden administration by doing that because they clearly want to see him back in office. So it's going to be interesting to see who wins the election, what happens in the economy after that. I have friends in private equity that are telling me they are keeping their powder dry because they need to figure out what's going to happen and who's going to be in the office, what new regulations may be coming out. I mean, just so much crazy stuff out there. I think, honestly, we're going to be in a period where interest rates are going to go down, the stock market's going to go up. I think real estate prices are going to continue to go down a little, and then they're going to go back up.

But what happens in 2025 is going to be the key and i and it depends on who gets elected politically yeah political politics play so big a role in this democracy is overrated it's it's had 249 years let's try something by friend yeah i want to be galactic supreme commander if they would do that i'd run galactic supreme i think the position is open i haven't seen anybody up on that on battleship galactica yet the what do you i haven't seen anybody up on that on battleship galactica yet the what do you think about ai do you have any thoughts on ai we talk about a lot what an amazing i use it as a i use it as an idea generator i haven't i'm not smart enough to figure

out how to do everything that they can do i literally use it as an amazing ai generator you know you write newsletters i write them i write articles and blogs and my podcasts and i'll be like what am i going to do a podcast on i just go and type in some ideas and it starts generator. You write newsletters, I write them, I write articles and blogs and my podcasts. And I'll be like, what am I going to do a podcast on? I'll just go and type in some ideas and it starts spitting all this stuff out. And you're like, holy crap. It's like the most amazing idea generator in the world. And I know that you can do a lot more with it, but that's as far as I've gotten because I'm not that smart. Yeah. I'm still trying to build my AI girlfriend and robot working on that too, but that's a side project I have.

But no, the AI stuff is just extraordinary. We were talking yesterday with my good friend, Gary Shapiro, who runs CTA, the Consumer Tech Association, and they put on the CES show every year. And so he comes by for the annual and we have a discussion about stuff. And I was talking about it. I'm like, so is everybody into AI this year? And he's, yeah, everyone's, you know, he wrote a book and talked about how everyone needs to think of themselves as a tech company.

Even if you're pouring concrete or collecting garbage, you need to think of yourself as a tech company. Collecting garbage, that's the other thing we do on the Chris Foss Show. We should put it in the model byline. But so everybody, I think, needs to really start thinking about the use of AI, utilizing it. Let me give you a conspiracy theory. You ready? Okay, sure. So you know that online Getty Images where if you ever put a picture of something, Getty Images is going to send you a letter and they're going to threaten you and they want money,

right? What would happen if somebody in India or Pakistan hired a bunch of people, a thousand people and put them in a warehouse at 10 cents an hour and said, just start typing into chat GBT, any topic you can think of. And we're going to take everything that gets spit out because a human touched it first, that makes it trademarkable or copyrightable. I don't know which one it is. And they literally copyright every word, sentence, combination possible to mankind posted on the internet and now they own every single piece of written language from now forever and you can't write anything without giving them money it would be an interesting thing to do i mean i don't think the copyright office is going to go for that but i mean they're starting to come down on stuff yeah well i mean

getty images does it but i mean you have to have the i mean for the most part you need to have the u.s copyright office to stamp off on it right i i don't know that much about it i just think i mean you could you can claim copyright if you're in the photo or if you took the photo so there's that but yeah i mean there's a lot of abuse i think i think one of the biggest issues we're going to have in in this plays back into politics which we don't want to get too deep in the show but one of the biggest issues we're going to have in this plays back into politics, which we don't want to get too deep in the show. But one of the things that they're talking about that we've talked in the show is there's going to be a ton of deep fakes of politics. You know, the fake videos.

There's going to be a lot of disinformation. One of the things I've been thinking about lately that I've been trying to write in my head to post about this is there's going to be so much disinformation that AI can put out. Like it's just going to go nuclear level. We already have a problem now of trying to figure out what objective truth is. And there is objective truth, people. Fuck you, people who think there's not. There is a plan. Pick your objective truth, whatever it is.

There is truth somewhere at the core of something. We already have enough people that are too dumb to figure that out i mean the george carlin bit of you know think of how dumb the average person is and 50 of the people are dumber than that of course none of those people are in my audience we have the 50 zero above the average but you know and we have people now that can't discern stern objective truth reality from misinformation and with with ai going nuclear level of what people can really spin out especially for political objective or disinformation i mean if you want to take out a ceo of ge or something or you know a professor of maybe a college and you just generate maybe he had an only fans account or something and you just generate, maybe he had an OnlyFans account or something.

I just saw a video of Elon Musk saying that he now has water-powered cars and electric's going to go away. I'm actually honestly trying to figure out if that was true or not. Because it is Elon. You have to look at it and you have to be like. But, you know, think of Elon, by the way, with Neuralink. What happens if he actually perfects Neuralink? Why would anybody ever go to school again? I mean, that's a good point,

but I'm not sure he's the sort of guy I should be talking about it, given his instability. He should get somebody else to sell Neuralink. I look at him and I just go, I'm not sure I want to buy Neuralink from someone who's on the spectrum there, buddy. I'm not being biased.

I'm just saying, you might want to back off the fucking ketamine cowboy so there you go whatever the fuck he's on this man matthew perry yeah too soon too soon too soon wow you you just you just blew out all three people we had from the friends contingency in the audience man what the fuck yeah and they loved sarah sarah sarah on the show i'm just yanking a reference but no i don't is there a sir i don't even know who the checkers are there's a i'm just making up shit as i go along that's how we do it on the show but no i think i think so i think what we need to do is we have some entrepreneurs create innovative ai systems that are going to combat the

disinformation and if i was smart enough i'd probably launch this company where it would be basically a snopes.com that would run on like ai snopes ai snopes ai sort of thing and it would it would try and you know get to the bottom of you know where is objective truth here we might have've caught that Harvard professor a little quicker. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and that way, you know,

I mean, the, the truth goes around the world, the old Churchill thing, fast, a lie goes around the world faster than the truth can get out of bed or whatever, pick your rendition. It's going to get worse and it's going to be so bad.

And like you, like you said, you and I, we see it over Tik TOK. You'll see Elon or Joe Rogan is another popular one. They use the, they use this about anybody famous and you'll see it over tiktok you'll see elon or joe rogan is another popular one they use the uses about anybody famous and you'll see their mouth isn't synced right and it's mucked with and it's some deep fake and you know selling stuff i've seen taylor swift's image used to sell some pots and pans they're like hey it's taylor swift here and we're out of pots and pans

like how is this still up what is it if i If I was Taylor Swift, man, I'd be CED and cease and desist in the hell out of that TikTok. But yeah, even I've had to look at some videos and be like, wait, that's not even a must talk. That's spoofed. I got my first couple of fake accounts on TikTok last week. Oh, did you? Congrats. You finally arrived. Yeah.

You finally arrived. I sent it to TikTok and I said, hey, you need to take this down. They were like, it doesn't violate our policy. You know what the trick is? This is why no one copies me. Be ugly and fat. Nobody copies the Chris Voss show. That's it. I'm getting some Twinkies.

If you do that, you get really fucking ugly and really fat. All my friends that are good looking, they always have these copies up. They're like, hey, somebody made this copy Facebook. I think maybe there's been two copies of Chris Voss online. You need to get Twinkies as a sponsor, man. Yeah.

And then there's the other guy who hijacked us in 2016 in our awards and brands, but he has a resting bitch face. Looks like he's taking a shit all the time. Fuck that guy. I just had to get that in again. Any further thoughts or pitch on what you got coming up? People to pick up your books, et cetera, et cetera. No, man. Brian Will Media, my website. Go there, buy everything. Hit me up.

My coaching programs, it's going to be awesome. Buy everything, damn it. He just goes right for it. That's my sales pitch. Just right for the, there you go. He's got the clothes down. So we got your dot coms, right? We're going to have people find you on the interwebs. Do we get a plugin for the there you go he's he's got the clothes down so we got your dot coms right we're waiting on people to find you on the interwebs do we get a plug-in for the podcast too everything is on there it's the dropout mm is everywhere all the social media channels and then brian will media.com is the website everything is on there as well that's the easy part there you go well thanks for inspiring this new generation z to finally get off their ass and get something

done with their lives and start businesses and stuff. Cause I need them to pay my social goddamn security. Chris, I appreciate you having me on the show, man. This was a lot of fun. There you go. Well, that's what we do on the Chris Voss show.

Come back anytime. I love to have you on. I'll talk to you tomorrow. What? Two o'clock. Well, let's not, let's not push it,

buddy. I mean, let's pace ourselves. Oh, okay. Yeah. But we'd love to have you on anytime and I'll keep watching what you're doing. And you're inspiring me to get on our asses moving on our TikTok account, which we've been ignoring because, I don't know, we've been busy.

So thanks for coming on, Brian. We certainly appreciate it. Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it. There you go. Thanks to our audience for tuning in. We couldn't do it without you guys as well. Please, for the love of God, refer this show to your family, friends, and relatives.

Go to Goodreads.com, Fortunates, Chris F.com fortunes chris fuss chris fuss one of the tiktokity chris fuss the 130 000 group on linkedin all the places damn it be good to each other stay safe we'll see you guys next time