The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Difference That Makes the Difference: NLP and the Science of Positive Change by Josh Davis, Greg Prosmushkin

Episode Date: July 5, 2025

The Difference That Makes the Difference: NLP and the Science of Positive Change by Josh Davis, Greg Prosmushkin https://www.amazon.com/Difference-that-Makes-Science-Positive/dp/1250349087 Take control of your life and create profound change today using NLP and the science of positive change! Learn why people resist change, why they sometimes embrace change, and how to lead change quickly and in lasting ways. It all comes down to finding the difference that makes the difference for each person and context. Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) is great for finding that difference. NLP helps us understand what makes people tick. When we understand how they think, feel, and act in key situations, we have the raw material with which to make change happen, often quickly and profoundly. In the 1970s, a linguist and his partner studied the language patterns and nonverbal cues of great psychotherapists, as well as how people are affected by the systems they’re part of. The two pinpointed key aspects of what enables human beings to change. Their findings formed the basis of NLP. Since then, NLP has often been taught to therapists and life coaches aiming to master one-on-one interactions in those contexts. When the lawyer Greg Prosmushkin discovered NLP, he realized how incredibly valuable these tools could be outside a therapy context. How to communicate with confidence, model excellence, and influence your own and others’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are useful for many people in many situations. Greg used NLP to make huge breakthroughs in his trials and to step into his own as an entrepreneur. In 2022, Greg met Josh Davis, PhD, a Columbia University PhD who studied psychology and neuroscience, and the Founder and Director of the Science-Based Leadership Institute. Josh is an NLP expert who grew up in the 1970s and 80s as the child of two pioneers in the field of NLP. He’s an NLP native. He’s been training others to use NLP for over a decade. Josh is also the internationally best-selling author of Two Awesome Hours, a science-based set of strategies to work less and get your most important work done. Greg and Josh set out to make NLP easily accessible for everyone. They show how the tools of NLP can be used by anyone in their daily work and personal lives, and connect these actionable tools to the science of change. The Difference that Makes the Difference is a result of their rigorous and dedicated collaboration. In this book, readers learn how to: -Communicate with confidence -Model excellence, to learn and master new skills -Influence their own and others’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in positive ways -and much more! You’ll get: -Step-by-step instructions with tips -Guided prompts to follow that help you apply these time-tested tools to your own specific needs -Examples of how to use the tools in everyday situations -Simple explanations of the theory and science behind the tools -Clear explanations of why the tools are so powerful NLP has been time-tested for fifty years, but until now it has only been accessible for a select few. Books and methods of teaching NLP were complex because the subject matter was highly sophisticated and derived from the work of professional psychotherapists. Greg Prosmushkin and Josh Davis, PhD have spent a combined 35+ years studying and unlocking the value of NLP. Josh has been teaching these concepts and tools in specialized NLP trainings, as well as one-on-one and group coaching settings, to Fortune 500 audiences and beyond. They have been using these concepts and tools in their professional practices of trial law, entrepreneurship, and leadership development. They have made a careful study of how to make the complex simple to learn and apply. It’s time to move past simply waiting and wishing for your life to be different―dive into the tools of NLP and the science behind change that supports those tools,

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain.

Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. This is Voss here from the ChrisVossShow.com. Woo hoo hoo. Ladies and gentlemen, there are ladies and gentlemen, things that make this official, welcome to 60 years and 24 hours episodes of the Chris Chris Voss show and we need you to refer the show to your family friends and relatives go to Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Voss, Chris Voss won the Tik Tokity and all those great places in it.

You better do it now don't even pull this car over I'll come back there. Anyway guys we have some amazing young men on the show we're going to be talking about their hot new book that's hot off the presses. It is called The Difference that makes the difference NLP and the science of positive change. It's out July 8th 2025 by Josh Davis and Greg Brosmuskin. There we go. So we'll be getting into with them and some of their experience and what goes into the book. Greg was born in Moscow in 1968. You're as born there and he immigrated to the United States at the age of 11. He grew up in Philadelphia, earned degrees from Dr. Chalune University and Temple University of law and spent a decade practicing law, securing millions in settlements for clients.

Josh Davis is an international best-selling author of two awesome hours, a PhD, and a certified trainer and master practitioner of NLP. The new book he has helps make NLP simple, understand, accessible, and shares the science to support it. He earned his PhD from Columbia University where he studied psychology and neuroscience. He's been studying NLP for 25 years and teaching NLP for decades to individuals, parents, sole entrepreneurs and everyone else. Welcome to the show.

How are you guys? Doing great. Doing great. Outstanding, Chris. So give us your dot coms for you guys. Where do you wanna have people find you on the interwebs? NLPdifference.com will be the main one NLP difference dot com So give us a and did you have anything you want to throw in here Greg?

No, I think we're here about the book Okay, well cuz outstanding and NLP difference dot com is the website that Josh and I have put together for our readers So give us a 30,000 overview guys of what's inside your new book. I'll give each of you guys a shot at it. All right. Well, this is a book about how to be able to make changes very quickly and in a lasting way. Even if you've been struggling to make a change for a long time, let's say you want to,

you've been wanting to start that business or you've been struggling to make a change for a long time, let's say you want to, you've been wanting to start that business or you've been trying to get in shape or you're trying to make some breakthrough in a relationship. Sometimes we just, we want to make a change and we just never are able to. Sometimes we make a change and it changes back. And sometimes it's just, it's something that we've never even really tried. There are ways, there are ways to make all kinds of changes in our life, often more quickly than many people realize, and in lasting ways. And I'll say that everyone who's listening to this has had some things they've tried to change where they haven't been able to. And it might have been a real struggle. We're not saying that it's always easy, but also my guess is everyone listening has had something where one day they just changed

in on instant. It's like all of a sudden, you know what, I just got that, that health scan back and I actually am going to change the way I eat or I had some meaningful conversation with someone. The way they said something made me really shift my thinking and it stays that way forever. So a lot of people actually have had that. And the thing is, there is a powerful set of tools for very quickly dialing down into what is it? What's going to be the difference that makes a difference for each person and their individual context to be able to make that change? These are tools that come from a world most people don't usually turn to. It's the world of psychotherapy where people have been

doing this day in and day out, helping people make these kinds of important changes. And what we've done is to try to take it and democratize it. So, outside of that context, anyone, we've tried to make it simple for anyone to understand and to apply. We've shown the science behind it, we try to explain it in simple terms. And it's, In terms of making it simple to apply, it says we've gone so far as to in each chapter, there's just prompts that if you reflect on them, you're applying the tool even with no background. So that's kind of our goal is to let people know about and help them use these tools for change that many people just don't know about.

Greg, your thoughts? Yeah. Josh is a scientist, so he's much more smarter than I am. I've been a lawyer for 30 years and I've been a business guy for about as long. So this is the way I describe the book. It's a manual for the brain. It's like when we're born, we get this computer in our head that nobody tells us how to use, not our teacher teacher not our parents

We just wing it and we usually get it right after we try everything else that fails What this book does it tells us how to use our brain better and as a result it makes us better at everything So that's the way, you know, I described the book to my friends to my family in simple terms It's just it's a way to make your brain more efficient and for you as a result to become better at everything. And I'm glad you guys did a deep dive on this where, you know, you've got a PhD, Josh, or you guys are, you know, analyzing the real science of it. In social media for, I don't know, since the beginning of social media, when we came

huge on, on Twitter, there's been lots of these NLP coaches that are out there. And it seems like there's a lot of mixed opinions of the people have a one NLP is or something or not really a professional sort of outlook. If that makes any sense to you, it seems to me like there's a lot of people out there just talking about NLP, saying they're NLP pros, and I've never had one of them convince me of anything. Any of your thoughts on that, what the difference is between

some of the pseudoscience folks out there that we hear about with NLP and what the real science of it is? I think there's a few things going on. One is that there's a lot of variability in what people can say is needed for you to get certified. And there has been work amongst a number of leaders in NLP globally, especially more recently, to try to hone in on, can we have a common set of standards so that we know that when people are learning things, they're learning them?

I think there's also been a handful of people over the years who have tried to use tools from NLP in a manipulative sense, kind of transactionally, can I just trick someone into doing something? Paying me some money to... Yeah, you know, and of course, that's not going to serve anyone long term, but I think that that has occasionally left a bad taste. And the thing is, when you have something very powerful, you have to approach it ethically. And so you've got to, so it's sort of like, I think the plus and the minus of it is that

people say it's very powerful, in either case, it's just, you know, do you have someone using it ethically or not? That's one thing that we've certainly tried to, you know, point to, give examples of using it ethically, talk about the importance of it and so forth. You mentioned also the pseudoscience, you know, NLP, this is an important part of the history. One thing that motivated us as well, it is important that things are supported by science, that it makes sense according to science, and if it doesn't, then you should drop it. And we've been guided by that as well in the book. But early on, nobody was really claiming that NLP was a science. And a lot of where it comes from is studying how great psychotherapists, people in the fields of family therapy, Gestalt therapy, hypnotherapy, a lot of things that have

come to be called cognitive therapy, how those were done. There was no research on, there was very little research on the stuff back in the 70s, 50 years ago when this was happening. So, it wasn't about science yet. What NLP did, the founders of NLP did an exceptionally good job at figuring out what really mattered in what these great change makers were doing, so they could teach it to other people. Now, 50 years on, just about everything has been studied, but under different names, because these various forms of therapy have been studied. And that's some of the connection we've made. So for people who do care about the science, this is a great resource. For people who have just vaguely heard about NLP, they don't know what it is, and they said, oh, is that a pseudoscience? That's where some of that history comes from.

And I think, yeah, you want to find a reputable place that's teaching it, that really does a rigorous job of certifying and making sure people use it ethically. You want to find a book that's going to do the same. And those are some of the things that I think we're helping. One of our aims is to make that be more of just what NLP is in general. When this book really gets out there, I think it's going to help people really understand what is NLP, how to use it ethically, what does it really encompass and so forth. Pete Slauson From a science-based background. Greg Larson As well as the science.

Pete Slauson Yeah. Greg, I don't know if you have any thoughts on that? Greg Larson I do actually. You know, when I went to law school, there used to be a saying, those who can't teach. And, you know, you see, I agree with you, Chris, you see a lot of these coaches that are NLP coaches on Facebook or Instagram or any other social media, they have never accomplished much in their life other than taking a 90 day course for a couple hundred bucks and now they are NLP coaches.

And frankly, I wouldn't let them teach me shit. I mean, that's just me. What you have here with Josh and myself, you have two real guys. Josh is a smart dude, man. He's a PhD. He got his doctorate from Columbia. He knows his shit.

I've been a lawyer for 30 years. I've recovered millions from my clients. I've won numerous jury trials. I'm a business guy. I've used this technology to go into business. I had multiple exits. I had an eight figure exit using this technology. So we are, we're well matched.

Josh can tell you how it works. He can give you the theory behind it. He will guide you through it. And I can come in and prove to you that this stuff works because it worked for me. And what NLP says, if it works me, theoretically it should work for you. Yeah, you're right. In the social media age where things kind of converted this whole sort of I'm an expert in stuff or I'm a guru, I think that's where it started. It started with the Twitter gurus and I was accused of being one back in the day because we were pretty huge.

But we just figured out the system for social media, but there were people who would call themselves gurus and they were taking on all sorts of ways to coach and you know, usually the NLP coaches like, well, I do NLP coaching, I do crystals and I do astrology and, uh, what are those sort of wacky shit? Can I come over? It has to be like, oh, crystals or NLP. All right, cool.

And, uh, we throw in a shade of crystals on the show. It's a running callback joke. But so we saw a lot of that and I would meet the folks and I'd just be like, you know, like you said, they took a course and stuff. So I'm glad you guys have put out a book on it that deepens the science of it and the reality of it so people can discern from quacks and people who really know what they're doing. Did Tony Robbins, I remember going to Tony Robbins in 1989, I saw him when you could walk up stage and shake his hand if you wanted to. Did he bring that to the forefront as a, did he mainstream NLP?

Because I'd never heard of it before that and I remember that was kind of his big thing there for awhile. He kind of did. I'm a huge Tony Robbins guy, Chris. I love Tony. He, you know, when I was a kid, I was, I was an asshole. I was lazy. I just, uh, you know, I, I wouldn't be friends with that guy today, but, you know, he got me off my ass.

He got me to believe that if you set a goal, you take action, you figure out if your action is working, if it is, keep going. And if it doesn't try something else. And that's NLP. That's what that's chapter one in our book, how to make an outcome. So absolutely. I love Tony. I'm a huge fan.

And while he didn't start NLP, as Josh told us earlier, was some scientists from San Francisco in the 70s, but Tony took it to the masses. He is filling up arenas and he's great. I have nothing but great things to say about Tony Robbins. Now you guys talk about assuming good intentions and people's brains are kind of hardwired to assume the worst. They're out to get me, they don't care, kind of a victim mentality. And you guys teach how to overcome that and think from a different sort of perspective. Is that

correct or how does that flesh out? Jared Sussman Yeah, I mean, this is one of the core beliefs that in NLP we encourage people to take on and just presuppose in all contexts that everybody and every behavior actually has a positive intention behind it. And now somebody might be a total jerk, they might be doing something terrible, and we're not saying that those are good behaviors. we're not even saying that that's smart or the best way to handle something. We're just saying that there is necessarily behind it some positive intention. So maybe if you've got someone who's being a bully, the bully wants to make friends with other bullies. The bully wants to feel powerful. The bully wants to, right, it's a positive intention, like a positive motivation to want to feel powerful. The bully wants to, right? It's a positive intention, like

a positive motivation to want to feel powerful or to want to make friends, right? But it's a terrible way to go about doing it. But now the thing is, it is serving them in some way. It's serving them in some way, but it's also making their lives more difficult and the lives of other people difficult. So, when you kind of recognize that every behavior has a positive intention and you choose to focus on that, then you have tremendous leverage for helping somebody make a change because they won't change unless they can serve that good intention that they have. The bully is not going to stop bullying unless you can find some other way to feel powerful and to make friends. But if you can speak to that,

you can often help them move past the resistance or wherever you need to take them much more quickly. And the same thing for yourself. If you're not doing something for some reason, there's probably some unmet, there's probably some thing that it serves you to not do that thing. What is that positive intention? And if you then address that, you're going to make breakthrough. Pete Now will that work for, you know, I was laughing because I was thinking of, you know, when I procrastinate, is that something that can help me stop procrastinating? Jared How is it serving you to procrastinate?

Pete Well, it's, I don't have to do the work. Uh-huh. You don't have to do the work. There's lots of ways it can. The answers I've heard for procrastinating, it's like, well, actually it means that I can lower the bar because if I only have a little bit of time, then the pressure's off because I lower the bar. Or it could mean like when I have to do something I don't care about, that gives me enough energy to do it because the pressure of the time for it, there's all kinds of ways it can serve you. For you, it might be serving you because you don't have to do as much work.

I suspect we could dig deeper actually and find other ways it's really serving you even more. Yeah, I did hear once though, the creatives like myself and visionaries, they sometimes they put off the procrastinating because they're looking for inspiration. They're looking for that inspirational spark and that's very true of me. I have to find the juice and then once I find it, I'm on it. That or sometimes I just have to go take the attitude that I've got to eat the elephant one bite at a time. I'm like, you got to get this

done. But yeah, usually I put myself in a compression situation where I'm like, all right, you got a gun to your head. You got to do it now. Stupid. So if you could find a better way to either put the gun to your head differently or a better way to find the inspiration while doing the work now, you'd be much more likely to do the work now instead of procrastinating. That's kind of the idea. There you go. Any thoughts you want to throw in here, Greg? Greg Yeah, I think it goes even further than that. If you are in my line of work and in my life, sometimes I am in situations where there's conflict. And I'm sure that happens in everyone's life, be it our kids, our wives, our friends,

our parents, whatever the case may be. If you can instill a belief in yourself that they're doing what they're doing for positive intention, you're not gonna get us triggered. You'll be like, okay, they're not doing this to piss me off, they're doing this because they're serving their own needs. And that allows you to be more calm when you're communicating.

Does that work in politics? When I see politics online on Facebook, I can say, or just people are just being bad behavior, you know, you can just say they're, they must be doing it for some reason, I suppose. I remember when I was in high school, there were two twin bullies that used to bully me and my friends, and they were tall, so they kind of had the advantage of height and coming at you. We eventually got into scuffle with them, got sent to the vice president's office, and

through that process, we found out that their parents were beating them at home. And so this was just, I don't know, an extension of their thing. But it was kind of interesting to learn that, that the violence was passing through and maybe they just, I don't know, maybe you can say they had good intentions of some course or something or other, at least for themselves, I guess, feeling better about themselves or something. And I bet, Chris, after you learned that they were getting there, should be that of them at home, you looked at them differently. Yeah, it's true. I did like victims.

Yeah. And it still didn't make what they were doing. Okay. Right. That's right. You're telling us that, but you looked at them differently. You behave differently, non-verbally you showed up differently and you met, you drew the connection to politics.

That's a big one. I, there's a lot of people listening that thought about that. I'm sure. Right. And I, you know, yes, this is one of the most profound things we can do right now to break through the divides that we have. When people choose to show up and say, you know what, I'm going to assume good intentions. I'm not going to say I like what this person's saying. I'm not going to say, even if they're insulting me, right? Even if they're saying that there's something wrong with me because of my beliefs or saying I'm stupid, right? Of course, when we say that stuff, people shut down, they fight back. But even if they're saying that, I'm gonna think about, okay, what could be the good

intention that's driving that? If I can identify that, now I can suddenly talk to that person. I'm also getting less offended and less triggered, just like you were with the bullies when you understood more about them. That is how we can go about actually getting past this. I take pride when I discover that, when I see like some kind of like blame that's sitting out on somebody's phone or something,

and I'm like, oh, you're the other political party, right? I take pride in pausing in that moment and thinking like, all right, let me think about, let me try to think about this person as a person, what they're, the good things they're trying to accomplish for themselves by doing this. And like, and I tell you, it's like, it's so much better. I can have a conversation with anyone. Pete Slauson Yeah. So so what are some other aspects of the book that we, uh, need to talk about that, uh, people should know? Greg, I, I, I see you looking at me to start.

I'll jump in this fine. Um, I think one of the biggest, we kind of touched on it earlier. One of the biggest presupposition. And what a presupposition is NLP, it's a belief. It's a belief that's inherent in your resident memory. And that belief being, if it's possible for him, it's possible for me. And what that does, it kind of makes us limitless. When you look at that belief, there's another belief.

I have what's in, what I need inside of me to take the next step, not to accomplish the goal, but take the next step. And when you take these two beliefs, and for example, say I wanna be a podcaster, and Chris Voss is a kick-ass podcaster. So theoretically, by model Chris, if I take a chapter from the book,

I ask Chris certain questions about what his beliefs are, how he views things, how he visualizes, if he hears, if he sees, if he feels, and I do the same things that he does, I may not be as good as Chris, but I'll certainly be better than I am today. And Josh, you're the smart one, so please, redact or edit what I just said.

Yeah, you know, here's one piece I'll add to what Greg is saying. I mean, this is kind of the core. Other people have done things, success leaves clues, but you do need to know what kinds of things to try to learn. So let's say we want to learn how to approach the world of podcasting like you and have that kind of, right, and be able to kind of learn from that and build on it. So yeah, there's a few, there's some actions that we can look at, sure. And that's typically where people go though, because that's all you have access to. So you say like, okay, well, what steps has he taken? You know, he bought a microphone and he, you know, registered on this and that, you know, okay, well, what steps has he taken? You know, he bought a microphone and he,

you know, registered on this and that, you know, channel, right? He started posting things regularly online, right? But I think we all know that if those are the only things you do, you don't really get somewhere. You know, you're going to give up, you're going to peter out, you're going to kind of like, or just feel like, what am I doing? This is hopeless, and so forth. But I wouldn't be surprised if you have certain beliefs about what you do in those moments when you kind of get down that we don't necessarily have. So what are those beliefs? And maybe you're even thinking of one right now. Like if you ever feel like, you know, like, hey, this isn't going where I want to go, what is something

that you say to yourself? Pete I started looking, I started looking for why is it bothering me? So what is the irritant point? And then I also try and approach when I have dark times, I try and approach with gratitude and sometimes I need a time out and just maybe take a break, maybe I'm driving too hard. So I think, I don't know if that answers your question, but yeah, I usually kind of look for what is the irritating trigger? Like when you get triggered and you guys talk about triggers that believe in your book,

when you get triggered, some people just, they live in reactionary, low emotional intelligence where they're very reactionary to it. Look at the book. And I've been guilty of that in my younger years. But we needed sound effects on the show. What the fuck? And I've been guilty of that in my younger years. We needed sound effects on the show. Thank you. We threw a good sound bite in there.

But sometimes what I'll do is all gratitude is important, but I'll look at the trigger and be like, why am I being triggered? What is the trigger going on? And from that aspect, it's kind of a little bit of, is NLP a little bit of higher emotional intelligence? You definitely get to a much higher emotional intelligence with these tools. And you know, you said, let me just pause for a moment. You said, I'll look at the trigger and say, why is that getting at me?

Then the way you said it, it was a little bit of like, why is that? Could it, it almost seemed like there was a calm curiosity about it. Did I get that right? Yeah. Yeah. I try not to be triggered. If I, if I, if I'm triggered and my high emotional intelligence goes, what's up, dude, right?

Why are you freaking out? I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people wanting to start a podcast are, would be more likely to go to like Why am I getting triggered? You know, what's wrong with me, right? Yeah, and and so like this is just one piece of what we call the mental model that you have about podcasting that we can try to learn from and And do something we call modeling excellence so that we can then then help somebody else take it on We need to unpack I'll bet if I asked you questions about how do you see yourself

when you're podcasting, what are you capable of? What's important to you? There's a lot of things that we can unpack about, you know, and what do you do in this context? And what strategies do you have when you're, you know, you have a guest and it isn't going how you want or when marketing isn't going where you want it to. There's a lot of stuff we could unpack and those are the pieces that help us understand the mental model of someone who is really succeeding. We can contrast that with whatever mental model we have and then we see there's a lot of options, a lot of opportunities. We might have had limiting beliefs, we might have been missing strategies, we might have been jumping to the wrong, like I have lots of times in my life when I can be calm and curious

about something, but maybe I haven't applied it to this particular context. And so these are the kinds of ways that because someone else has done it, success leaves clues, but you have to know what to ask for and you have to know how to ask. NLP helps you know what to ask for and how to ask. And approach it from a way that's, you know, it takes steps back from that conflict and emotional reactivity. You know, I'm just, and I've learned that throughout all my life. You know, if I'm on Facebook, we're joked about Facebook politics and stuff online. You know, if I see that sort of stuff, of stuff, trying to not have that emotional reaction.

A lot of people that have trauma have high emotional reaction, low emotional intelligence because it's sometimes whatever something happens to them that's similar to that trauma or gaslighting, et cetera, et cetera, they react in the same way. And so one of the things you guys talk about in the book is how to interrupt those negative thought patterns and the anxiety spirals. Anxiety spirals, that's something that a lot of people need some help with, especially in 2025 when you go to the store and see the prices. How did you guys two, how did the two of you guys get together and meet up? How did you, what formed this co-author bond between the two of you?

You know, I owe so much of this to Greg. You know, he was the one who planted the seed and got it done. Did he sue you? No, no, no, stop it. I don't sue good people. Important belief, important belief I'm seeing. Wait, I took Chris, I took Josh's public speaking NLP class. Oh, okay. And there were three people in the class. I was certified in NLP 10 years ago. But one thing I learned from Tony Robbins is success is one of the secrets to a successful

happy life is constant growth, being better, trying to be better in some area of your life. Because anything in life, if it's alive, it's either growing or it's dying. Nothing stays the same. So I tried to improve, be a better speaker, be a better father, be a better husband, be a better friend, be in better shape.

I always try to do something to be a little better in something. So I took Josh's public speaking class and there were only three people there, myself and two other people. So we split off in an exercise. I was with Josh and the other two people were with each other. And we got done pretty quick. We started shooting the shit and I'll let Josh tell you what happened at that point.

We were talking, Greg, I think you kind of pulled it out of me, but Greg was just like, you know, interested in what, you know, what kinds of vision I had and stuff. And I was talking about that other ventures I was looking for and different, different ways to teach NLP. And Greg, Greg kind of looks at me is like NLP for lawyers. And like just in an instant, I got the whole thing. I was just like, wow, wait a second. This stuff, you work so hard to learn it in an NLP class, especially, you know, like, like it's a lot of complex stuff. This is like real material that takes some learning and applying. And there's not that many people that are going to do it, but there's

a lot of people that could use it. What if we just take it to them? We're going to focus in on your needs. You're a lawyer, you communicate for a it. What if we just take it to them? We're going to focus it on your needs. You're a lawyer, you communicate for a living. Here's the specific context here. And these are the tools, these are the ways you can use it, the ways you can use it responsibly. It's, we're not making you an NLP practitioner. You're not going to be able to go out and say, hey, I'm an NLP coach, but you are going to be able to use it in your work, right? And then, of course, what always happens is people apply it to their home lives as well. But, but like, you know, and then as soon as we're talking, then it's like, wait a second, and then there's NLP for managers, NLP for, you know, HR, NLP, right? But that's that gap just

hadn't been filled, and certainly not in any satisfying way that we knew of. And then, so, Greg convinces me, we start talking, and then he talks me into writing a book first, which I was saying, let's get the class going, you know, let's write the book later, but he talked me into it. And then we realized it was a much bigger deal than we even realized. So there's a, this needs to be a book for everyone, not just for lawyers, for one group. And of course, the classes, we focus on that with the groups, but there's a lot of people that really can benefit from this stuff when it's taught in a simple, easy way to apply. And we just felt like that didn't exist yet. And the thing is, Chris, we use NLP every day,

just that we don't know that we're doing it. Yeah. And, you know, as lawyers, I would go to these conventions, they would, people would say, oh, NLP, NLP, NLP. But nobody really knew what it was. It was just like the snobulous NLP in the sky. But really, really top-notch, effective lawyers are using NLP without even knowing that they're using NLP. Oh, wow.

And what we're doing is we're demystifying it It's really not that Mysterious, it's really not that complex. It's actually pretty simple if you break it down other NLP books Or impossible to read. I don't know if you ever tried if you read the books that were written by the founders They're impossible because they're written for therapists and I'm not and for me to read a're written for therapists and I'm not a therapist and for me to read a book written for a therapist is I'm not going to say impossible, but it's very improbable that I'm going to finish it.

And what we did, we really made it accessible to everyone. That was my, by the way, addition to the book, I took Josh's language and I said, we got to dumb it down, dude. This is, this is for guys like me. We can't use big words. Okay. So that's what we did. Just stick the, the, they, and them.

Right. Yeah. No, the, and, and I think that helps kind of democratize this better. As you guys mentioned earlier, where you can, you can take in, uh, or more people can understand it. And we can avoid the pseudoscience folks who are like, you want crystals? You want NLP.

Both will make it so I never have to be self accountable. Anyway. I love how that works. One final question as we go out that I have for you guys. You talk about helping create a psychological safety at work and home. Is that to avoid the stuff that's coming at you? What does psychological safety mean at work and home? Does that mean my wife isn't gonna ask me to take the trash out anymore and yell at

me? Jared Suellentrop It means that when those things happen, because they will, right? Pete Slauson It will. Jared Suellentrop It means that when those things happen, you don't have to get triggered in the same way you used to. It is actually possible to have a new automatic pattern that you get to, where most of the time you're able to handle that and, you know, either take the trash

out or have the conversation you need about it, but in a way where it can even strengthen the relationship or not cause other triggers, that we actually can learn how to choose our emotional state, we can learn how to have new reactions, we can learn how to speak to what other people really need, we can learn how to identify what it is that might be bothering us about something and meet our needs another way. There's a lot of stuff. These things do matter. They're ongoing things that gnaw on us throughout our lives and they don't have to. You really can. And one experience that Greg and I have talked about so many times, in writing the

book we then go back and edit it and we had to submit it at different times for the publisher, right? And each time we're having to reread things and just, we would just, you know, each time in the book there's, it says, think of a situation like this with a person where you, you know, are having some difficulty right now, or think of a situation like that with some goal, right? And so, we just think of whatever was on our minds, go through the chapter, and by the end have some important breakthroughs. I can tell you, there are several things that my wife used to complain about that I would do that were really annoying, and she hasn't complained about them in a couple of years. Because you know, I mean, this book now we started working on two and a half years ago,

or started talking about it at least, right? That there's, I mean, there's several like notable things, some of them we talk about in the book, in fact, you know, that have actually just changed as a result of just us doing that process. We just take a particular challenge or goal and work on it as we read the chapter. Pete Slauson Well, this should be very – go ahead, Greg. Greg Sussman I'm just going to say, there's a thing in the book called universal quantifiers. And what that talks about is people tend to generalize. Your wife ever tell you, you always do this. Mine tells me this all the time. You always don't close the door. You never do this. And, you know, NLP teaches

you to ask a question, really? Have I ever done this? And, you know, that's a nice little pattern change because when you're actually, you never take out the trash. I'm like, really? Didn't I take it out last week? And I understand that it's kind of silly, but it's enough to put her in a different state at that moment. It interrupts the pattern for one, and it also just helps people kind of think about what's actually true.

Because when we start to overgeneralize, we tend to get upset, but it's also typically an overgeneralization. It's not actually true. So we help people kind of whittle it down. You know, it's like always, really that always, or it's never been one time, or it's like, hey, everybody thinks this or people will think this really who specifically, let's get down to that. And it makes it much easier to handle and talk about. My favorite, my favorite applies. What are we negotiating? What is the problem? What

is the real problem? Which is why I've been single all my life. Anyway, so guys, thanks for coming to the show. Final thoughts as we go out, tell people on where they can pick up the book, dot coms, etc., etc. Jared Yes. So, the book's available at all the, you know, all the places you can buy books. If you go to nlpdifference.com, we've also created some additional tools. Of course, there's links there to buy the book, but you'll see some tools that you can play with to get more into the book. We have some guided things where you can hear us kind of walking you through certain tools and techniques in the

book and some written things there that you can find. And the book's coming out July 8th, so if you put in the order now, you're going to get it pretty quick. There will be an audio book version that should be out right around that time too. Greg? You know, I read a lot of self-help stuff. I always did. I read, you know, I read the Brian Tracy's, the Carnegie's, the Tony Robbins. I read a lot. And and Tracy's, the Carnegie's, the Tony Robbins. I read a lot and a lot of these books are theory. This book, what's good about this book, we give you both. We give you the theory and the practice. As Josh said, at the end of every chapter,

there is a set of questions. You can apply the concepts in that chapter on yourself. And once you get it in the muscle, it's a different experience. Because once you actually try it and you're like, oh my god, this shit actually works You make it encourage you to keep moving This should actually works well

Yeah I'm glad you guys have put out a book with a PhD behind it in the science and and all that sort of stuff to break it down because It really needs that sort of approach I to break it down because it really needs that sort of approach. I mean, we've had NLP practitioners on the show and sometimes I've been kind of like, I don't know about all this, but, and it seemed like there's sometimes there's some difference of opinion. So I'm glad we've put a scientific approach to it. Thank you, Josh, and Greg for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.

Thank you, Chris. Yeah, my pleasure. Our pleasure. Thanks. Thank you. And thanks, John,. Our pleasure. Thanks. Thank you. And thanks, John, for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Forchess, Chris Foss, all those crazy places we are on the internet. The difference that makes the difference. NLP and the Science of Positive Change out July 8th, 2025. You can get it to an advanced copy right now, or if you're watching this 10 years from now,

it should be on the show there. So thanks for tuning in. Go to Facebook.com, Forchess, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Forchess, ChrisFuss, ChrisFuss1, Tik Tok, all those crazy places. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. Sorry.