Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Christopher Voss: Negotiate Like a Boss | Sales | E23

Episode Date: April 8, 2019

Negotiate like a BO$$! This week on YAP, we’re talking to Christopher Voss, a former leading FBI international hostage and kidnapping negotiator. Now Chris spends his time as an author, professor and coach, teaching others how to apply his learnings from international crisis and high-stakes negotiations to the business world. Chris is regarded as one of the most influential negotiators of our time. He wrote the massive best-selling hit, “Never Split the Difference,” which lays out actionable negotiation strategies which we'll uncover in this episode. Tune in to hear Chris' negotiation secrets and tactics like labeling, mirroring, unlocking that's right breakthroughs, diffusing negativity with empathy and more! Want to connect with other YAP listeners? Join the YAP Society on Slack: bit.ly/yapsociety Earn rewards for inviting your friends to YAP Society: bit.ly/sharethewealthyap Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com

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Chris was formerly the FBI's leading international hostage and kidnapping negotiator. Now he spends his time as an author, professor, and CEO of the Black Swan Group, teaching others how to apply his learnings from international crisis and high-stakes negotiations to the business world. Chris is regarded as one of the most influential negotiators of our time. He wrote the bestselling book, Never Split the Difference, which lays out actionable negotiation strategies and is known as the Bible of Negotiation. Chris joins us on Yap today to teach us how to negotiate as if our lives depended on it

and how to become more persuasive in both our professional and personal lives. Hey, Chris, welcome to Young Improfiting Podcasts. We're delighted to have you on today. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Thank you very much. So you've had an illustrious career. You've crossed in and out of police forces, academia.

You're the CEO of Black Swan Group, and you were even an international hostage negotiator for the FBI, among other prestigious titles. Can you just spend a few minutes giving us highlights of your career journey so far and how you came to become a leading authority in negotiation? Sounds like it can't hold a job, huh? No. It's a long journey.

I mean, I wanted to be in law enforcement. I started with a police department, went to the FBI. I grew up in a small town in Iowa. I know I don't have the Iowa accent anymore, but when I found out in federal law enforcement, they'd pay you to go to other countries and hang out. I thought, wow, how cool is that? I'd never been anywhere.

So I got interested in negotiation because I was actually originally on a SWAT team and decided to make the transition from SWAT to negotiations because I had a bad knee. And then negotiations was cool. Since I was a swatter before, I wasn't qualified to be a talker. Swatters don't say a lot. They say, put the gun down. That's about what Swaters say.

So they told me to volunteer on a suicide hotline. I found that experience so extraordinary that I was just fascinated by it. So suicide hotline, FBI studying it at universities, You start throwing this stuff together, and it's consuming. I've always loved it. So is this something that you knew you wanted to do when you grow up? Because not many people think, like, oh, I want to be a negotiator when I grow up. So how did you know that was your true calling?

I had no idea, none whatsoever. At about age 16, I decided to want to be in law enforcement. What really attracted me to law enforcement was the idea to be creative and innovative and do some good at the same time. I saw a movie about a couple of cops in New York City called the Super Cops. And these guys were just creative guys. They thought up all these creative ways to catch the bad guys. And then the community loved them because they got rid of bad guys. And no community, no matter how tough it is, in any neighborhood,

there's still more good people than bad people. I don't care what neighborhood you're talking about. And the good people appreciate the cops. And I was just fascinated by that. So I knew it wanted to be in law enforcement. But negotiation, I had no idea that was going to be it. I thought SWAT was cool. I wanted to do SWAT.

I actually studied martial arts for a short period of time in college. That's where originally hurt my knee. But I like crisis response. And we had negotiators. And I decided I could still be a negotiator and still be in crisis response. And that's when I found out to my great delight, how cool it was to talk people out. Very cool. And so I think when people think of negotiation, they tend to view it.

in a formal term. So a salary negotiation, a hostage negotiation, or negotiating business deal or so on. But I really want my listeners to realize that it's a skill you can use beyond a formal, traditional sense. So what is your definition of negotiation and how do we negotiate in everyday life? Yeah, well, in the most dangerous negotiation is one you don't know you're in. And you're negotiating all the time. And the good thing about that is, you know, you practice and small-stakes stuff does everyday conversations so you can do well in the formal conversations. And I'll give you a great example I came across recently, which we love to ask people when they say, I don't have a chance to practice negotiations. I say, well, are you in a negotiation when you're at Starbucks?

Well, there's a guy that started a website called Post Secrets. And he said, send me your secrets anonymously. Send them to me on a postcard or something like a postcard, but send them to me anonymously. So he gets an anonymous, brand new, still in a rapper, Starbucks coffee cup as proof that it was from somebody at Starbucks. And the note said, I give decaf to people who are mean to me. So you're in a negotiation when you're at Starbucks. They might not be giving you what you ordered. If you're a grumpy person and you think you're developing a tolerance for caffeine, maybe you're not developing a tolerance for caffeine. Maybe they're giving you decap to get back.

back at you. So practice your everyday interactions. Tied into that is the saying, never be mean to somebody who could hurt you by doing nothing. Well, if you practice being nice on a regular basis, you find that you get a lot more stuff. The hotel I'm in right now, I was just really nice when I checked in. When my assistant was calling for my reservation, she couldn't get a late checkout. When I checked in, I was just super nice. and they were happy to give me a late checkout. You know, those are the practice negotiations. And you get a lot more by being nice. You know, everybody likes to be table pounding and name-calling and demanding.

And that's really satisfying to, quote, win a negotiation and make the other side lose. But actually, long-term, that's bad. That's not good. You don't do great long-term. So if you practice being nice, you negotiate all the time. Get a lot of cool stuff. Yeah, that's so true. And I can't wait to dive into all of that.

as usual, we studied a lot for this interview, especially because my listeners love topics that touch on psychology and influence. My top episode is hacking human behavior to gain influence. It was actually another FBI agent who I interviewed. And I'm sure this episode's going to become an instant classic as well. In relation to classics, you have a classic of your own. It's called Never Split the Difference. Now, I think all my listeners will recognize this book. It's a huge mega hit. I think you put it out in 20, 16, and I highly recommend it to anybody who's interested in negotiation. It was one of the best reads that I've came across so far. Thank you very much. Yeah, as a matter of fact, I checked the charts today, and we are number six in the world on Amazon's most sold list, so we're doing all right. It's crazy, and it's crazy how much of a longevity this book has, and it's still the leading authority,

I think, on negotiation out right now. So I definitely want to spend a majority of the time covering some of your key principles from that book. So let's start with human nature and how negotiation plays into that. No matter how we dress up negotiation and mathematical theories, we still act like animals. We're driven by our fears, our needs, our perceptions, our desires. Can you talk about these animalistic urges and why it is our emotions that guide our decisions and not rational thought or logic? Yeah, that's a great point. We're driven by our fears at three times the rate that we're we're driven by the stuff that we like, which means our concerns over loss. Distorts our thinking by three times than our desire for game.

There's an old saying, like you watch somebody lose a game, and they say losing a big game hurts twice as much as winning the big game does. And most people accept that, but how do you factor that into your thinking? Well, hostas negotiators' skills are specifically designed to diffuse feelings of loss. so you come to agreements faster by understanding how to diffuse people's fears because they distort our thinking by so much than you do by trying to pitch game. For example, we got an exercise we do in our training session and I asked for volunteers. Now, at that point in time, that's a negotiation. People don't realize it is, but if I'm asking for your time, you're in a negotiation. The commodity is time. And time is always a commodity in every negotiation, trying to get a,

somebody to do something. But they don't see it as a negotiation. They just think they're going to volunteer. So I will always say to them right up front, look, I get to tell you, if you're worried about volunteering, it's going to be horrible. Now, another instructor might say, look, I don't want you to worry about volunteering. I don't want you to think it's going to be bad. It's all denials. I don't want you to think. I don't want you to worry. I don't want you to feel this. That actually makes fears worse. But the crazy shift is, and this was backed by a neuroscience experiment, by just saying like, it's going to seem like X versus the denial. You know, it's going to be horrible. That actually diffuses the fears. And when I do that with volunteers, I always get more hands

than I need. If I'd have taken a different approach, the traditional deal-making approach, If you volunteer, this is what you will get. I could say if you volunteer, you're going to get better training than anybody else in a room does. Most people will be reluctant to volunteer because they're still concerned about their fears. So it's just changing up the order of things and then understanding how to get rid of fears. And that's the magic. It's the negotiations. How to diffuse fears.

Yeah. And I think you call that labeling in your book, correct? And there you have done your homework. That is exactly what we call it. I have. We're going to get into all of that. In your book, you also talk about something called cognitive bias and how it distorts the way that we see the world. Can you give us some examples of cognitive bias and how we can avoid this framing effect when we're in a negotiation? Well, a couple of ones. First of all, there's what we refer to as emotional anchoring, and our first biases are how we're driven by our fears. And one of the second ones then, too, is that we have to get people out of early on is that everybody makes the following assumption, I am normal. And what that means when you think to yourself, I'm normal. And when somebody else is an act in the way that you think is right, that makes them, by definition, abnormal. humanity kind of splits up into three conflict types. The caveman that survived, the saber-toothed

tiger, and we still got caveman wiring in our head. We haven't evolved out of it. Our response to threat is fight, flight, or make friends. If something threatens us, we want to fight it, or we want to run from it, or we want to make friends with it. You know, the caveman responses. And the world splits pretty much evenly into thirds. What does that have to do with what I'm talking about? whatever conflict type you are, two-thirds of the time, your counterpart's going to be one of those other two types. You're going to be in the minority. So normal is a relative term. It normal kind of breaks up into thirds. Classic example of how this really breaks down is silence. Like I'm a natural born assertive. I'm the fight type. If there's silence in a conversation, if you go silent,

I'm going to think that means you want to hear me talk some more. That's why you're quiet. You're quiet so I can talk. Now, if you're the flight type or the very analytical type, you love silence because you want to think. So you've gone silent because you want to think, and I'm on the other side of the table, and you can't get me to shut up.

Or if you're the make friends type and you go silent, since having a great relationship is the number one thing for you, going silent is the way you signal anger. So you're trying to show me that you're angry in a really quiet way, but you're probably furious and I won't shut up. So I've made the wrong assumption on silence just based on my type. And that's where our cognitive bias is getting our way, because we figure the way we think is the way other people think.

So then how do we avoid that? How do we avoid assuming that everybody else is like us? We got nine negotiation skills, and the labels that we were just talking about a minute ago, you know, we've sort of surveyed all three types across the world, and all three types like labels. And so you start with, hey, look, it seems like you might be angry. That's just a label of the dynamic that's going on in the moment. Now, all three types like to respond to that, because it's kind of an observation. It's not really a question.

It's just kind of laid out there, which gives you the option to respond. Now, all I have to do to avoid the assumptions is to say something soft and gentle like that that you're likely to respond to and then just pay attention to what you say. If you're mad, if I say, hey, it seems like something's bothering you. You're going to say, yeah. You know, as a matter of fact, here's what I'm unhappy about. And then you'll tell me, if you're going silent because you want to think. And I say, it seems like something's bothering you.

You're going to say, no, no, no, nothing's bothering me. I just need a few moments to think. Now you're starting to give me feedback right away. I got to actually pay attention to the feedback. And if I do, we're going to end up having a great conversation. Okay, so let's talk about the tone of voice to use in negotiation. In your book, you mentioned three different voices that you can use. Are there really just only three?

And can you break down the main ones and describe them, perhaps while using the tone, of voice that you're suggesting, so we can really understand the difference. Yeah, and be happy to. Each one of the caveman types that I talked about before, the fight, flight, make friends, they get a natural tone. Now, I've kind of learned the tone I'm using now, which is a little bit of the analyst voice, which is a little bit of the late night FM DJ voice. And it's a calming and soothing voice.

It actually reaches in and hits your mirror neurons. I said before, a lot of this is based on neuroscience. not psychology, but neuroscience. And so the neuroscience is, if I hit your mirror in neurons with a soothing voice, it actually triggers a chemical change in your brain, and it soothes you, it calms you down. It's a natural voice of the hostage negotiator, and that's why one of the crazy difference between business negotiations and hostage negotiations are that hostage negotiations tend to be calmer.

How is that possible that a terrorist is criminal, a kidnapper, is calmer than a businessman? Well, the hostage negotiator used a late-night FM DJ voice on them from the start, calmed them down. It was an involuntary response. And if I can calm a terrorist down with that voice, I can probably calm pretty much anybody down. That's the first voice. Now, the assertive's voice, which is my natural tone that I had to learn to practice, and you can learn your way out of anything. You know, it's a direct and honest voice. I'm just telling you what I need.

I'm just being honest. I'm just being direct and honest with you. Well, when I fall into that direct and honest voice, and if you're a human being that thinks of yourself as simply as direct and honest, you know, I once had a colleague tell me that they said, Chris dealing with you is like getting hit in the face with a brick. That's probably not going to help me. You don't get what you want on a long-term basis by hitting people in a face with a brick. And the assertive's voice is the only voice that is really counterproductive all the time. I reach a lot. I hit your mirror neurons with assertion. You feel attacked. You react angrily.

It triggers the negative emotion of anger. And it's not emotions that are bad. It's negative emotions that are bad. So I trigger your anger emotion. And there's an old saying, give a speech when you're angry, and it'll be the best speech you ever regret. You're going to say things that in the moment you feel very self-righteous about.

And when you look back on them, they are just not going to help. So the assertive is a type that you really got to be careful on how you come off to people. Now, the last type, which everybody likes, is the combinator's voice. And you can just feel the warmth in their voice. And when someone smiles, you can feel it. They don't even have to be on a phone with you. You can feel the smile in their tone of voice. And that's what I'm doing now.

And that hits the mirror in neurons. And you feel good. because chemicals are actually being released in your system that make you feel good, the dopamine, the serotonin, the stuff that gives you mental endurance, the stuff that makes you smarter. You're 31% smarter in a positive frame of mind. If I can trigger you into a positive frame of mind, we're both smarter. We're probably going to make a better deal.

So that positive voice, you know, the charming person, the likable person, you make more deals with people that you like. It's a powerful mercenaries tool. If you just want to get your way, you want to do it. If you love people, you want to do it because it's really good for relationships simultaneously. So smiling of people is a powerful way to negotiate. It seems like negotiation is really all about getting the other person to just like you. Likeability is a powerful skill.

Now, I was on the phone with some people the other day. We were doing a training session. And the fine line is, if you need to be liked, then suddenly you were taken hostage by it. And you don't want the need to be like to take your hostage, but you do want to be likable. So my mindset is like, I will think to myself, I like you. Now, do you like me?

But if my inner voice is saying over and over again, I like you, I like you, I mean, that's going to come through and I'm not going to take myself hostage by needing to be liked. Have a great negotiation or to get what you want, but not at the other person's expense. you got to let them know what you want. And some people, if they're taken hostage by the need to be like, they're afraid to let people know what they want.

And you can't make a good deal if you don't let people know what you want. You want them to read your mind? That's just not fair. Aside from voice, what are some other qualities or characteristics that you can tell us that can give us an edge as a negotiator? Take the phrase, negotiation is the art of letting the other side have your way. That sounds cool. How do you do that?

You got to let them talk. Most people, they're scared to let the other side talk or they want to talk first. Either being afraid to let the other side talk, that's a bad practice. Wanting to talk first is actually a bad practice. The only way that you're going to talk yourself into my deal is if I get you talking, if I shut up, if I go silent, if I encourage you to go on, I get you talking and pretty soon, you know, I gently try to steer you, guide you. Sometimes we call this guided discovery. You know, I encourage you to think about different things. But I don't interrupt you. I encourage you. You're going to talk long enough that you're going to throw some stuff out that we both can use. And you're going to do it because since you threw it out, you thought it was your idea and you're going to love it. That's the secret to letting the other side have your way. So let the other side talk. They may. may just delight you with what they have to say and let them feel like they won. And that's how

you get a great deal. Awesome. Well, that was great advice. Thank you. So I also read that mirroring is super important when it comes to negotiation. So mirroring for my listeners who aren't familiar is an unconscious behavior in which we copy each other to comfort each other. It helps to build rapport and leads to trust. We've talked about mirroring on the show before, but really that was focused on body language. Chris, you talk about mirroring in a verbal context. So can you explain what that is, how and when to use it, and why it works? Yeah, the hostage negotiators takes your attention off of body language and onto the actual words themselves. And it's ridiculously simple, and it's astonishingly effective. I mean, all you've got to do is repeat the last three words

of what someone has just said. You can repeat the last three words with upward inflection, which might be the last three words. Or you could repeat it with downward inflection, which would be the last three words. People find that enormously encouraging. And the great thing about it, like, I don't ask somebody what they mean as a question anymore. Like, if there's something I want to know about it, I don't say, what do you mean by that? Because at least half the time when you ask somebody what they meant by that, they'll repeat it with the exact same words, only louder. Kind of like an American overseas trying to be understood.

They just say it louder, but they don't change the words. And when you mirror someone, actually, they're going to change the words and they're going to go on. Or they're going to blurt stuff out that they shouldn't blurt out. I just put a video up on our YouTube channel where I mirrored a bank robber. Now, the bank robber ended up making an admission that led to one of his colleagues, the getaway driver, being arrested and convicted. We didn't know there was a getaway driver at all because he got away before we got there. But their vehicle was left behind. We thought the vehicle was left behind because all the bad guys were inside.

And the bank robber was a really controlling guy. He was a classic CEO. He was hiding his influence. He was manipulating everybody in all the conversations. He just kept saying, I don't have any power. I don't have any authority. I'm worried about these guys. I don't know what they're going to do.

Intentionally diminishing his. role. That is the mark of a powerful negotiator. Didn't know it at the time. But anyway, about five hours in, I finally, I asked him about the van outside, the getaway vehicle that we figure. And I said, hey, there's a van out here. We identified

all the drivers except this one. And he says, well, you chase my driver away. Because I caught him off guard and you want to catch people off guard in a non-threatening way. So I mirrored we chased your driver away? Because I was shocked. I didn't know what the hell he was

talking about it. Amir's a great skill. Like when you're really startled by what somebody's just said, so I said, we chase your driver away? He said, yeah. When he saw the police, he cut and run. Not one witness linked this guy to the bank robbery. That was the only evidence we had, and it was an admission from the ringleader of the group that they had a getaway driver that got away. We got ready to go to trial, and our investigators didn't know we had this on tape, and they said, we got to let this guy go. We got no evidence. And I said, no, we got great evidence. We got an admission by one of the other bank robbers. They went and got the transcript and the tape. They showed it to the attorney. His defense attorney played guilty on the spot. Mirrors caused people

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Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registeredagent.com slash Yap free. Wow, what a cool trick. I can't wait to use that. You can't wait to use that? Yeah, I've never used that before. I can't wait to try it out.

I just married you. Oh. I remember in your book, you also mentioned saying that I'm sorry before a mirror can be really impactful, especially when dealing with strong A-type personalities like yourself. Can you explain that hack to our listeners too?

A lot of people say it's a bad thing to say. Those aren't bad words. It's where you drop them that's really important. Again, I talked about catching people off guard in ways that triggers them that makes them more curious. You could do something wrong or do something potentially offensive and say, I'm sorry. That's the bad sequence. But if you say, I'm sorry before you do something they might respond to negatively or I'm sorry just before your assertion, which am mirrors a little bit of assertion. It's a prompt. It's provoking them to go on in a good way. If you say, I'm sorry out of the blue, you actually get people's attention right away because they're like, what are you sorry about? Which means in that moment, they're really glued into what you have to say

and their guard is down. Because to say, I'm sorry beforehand makes people feel powerful. They're like, oh, you know, I got a less power here. You know, this person is all worried about me. It's an emotional intelligence application of deference. And deference is very powerful because, you know, I got to be able to it helps you catch people off guard. So to say, I'm sorry up front is to warn people a little bit, to intrigue them a little bit, to get their attention to make them curious. And then when you drop something on them, like a mirror or an assertion or a label, it's going to have a much deeper emotional impact exactly the way that you want. So I'm sorry is a great phrase if you just put it in the right place. Awesome. Okay, so let's go back to emotions, empathy,

and labeling. So traditional negotiating advice says to separate people from the problem, but that's extremely hard when emotions are actually the problem. It's scientifically proven that we make our decisions based on emotions and not logic. And you say that good negotiators precisely label emotions belonging to others and themselves and then talk about them without getting wound up. So I know you mentioned labeling at a high level, but can you give the exact steps that we should take to label and use that tactic in real life? So you start out, you probably just label kind of what you feel, kind of what you're hearing right off the top of a conversation.

You get real good at that with just practice. You get into a lift driver and a lift driver says, how are you today? And you can say, ah, it sounds like it's been a tough day. Or you pick up on their affect and they seem happy. And you go, hey, you seem happy. You get your practicing by just labeling what's on the surface. And that's how you get started. Now, emotions are kind of crazy in that if we label a positive, you sound happy, that increases

a positive. If they're frustrated and you say you sound frustrated, the interesting thing is the labeling of a negative decreases it. It has the opposite effect. So you get some practice in and you get used to hitting those emotions, which now you're clear in the way they feel understood. They want to cooperate with you. They're more collaborative because they instantly feel more understood.

So it's a little bit of the karate kid wax on, wax off thing. You just start labeling people and just label whatever you hear. After a while, your ability to distinguish and understand what you're doing is really going to catch up to you fast. And that's how you get into people very, very quickly. Awesome. If I remember correctly, you also have to shut up and listen after you label. Is that correct? Yeah, because a good label, you got to let that baby.

sink in. You got to let it hit all the different parts of the amygdala. And a lot of people have real trouble with this because before, you know, I talked about the accommodator type, you know, the make friends type, their gut instinct for being silent is I'm signaling to you that I'm upset with you. And after a label, they're horrified that that's the signal they're sending off. And they have a heck of a hard time shutting up. But this is a critical time to really go silent and let your label sink in really well. My son is my chief operations. He likes to say, when you go silent, start counting thousands to yourself.

You'll never get to three. And why is not saying the word I and being indirect by using phrasing like it seems like or it sounds like important to remember when using labeling? Yeah, a lot of people learn labeling by saying like, well, what I'm hearing is, and a problem with the word I is it's a self-centereding word. and particularly when you're observing the other person's reactions and you're trying to make them feel attended to you, trying to make them feel heard.

When you use the word eye, you don't make them feel heard. You make them feel like you're interested in your own reaction more than your observation of them. And so eye interrupts in the pattern there that works against you. That's why you've got to be really careful with the word eye. Cool. One of your chapters in your book is called, called beware of yes and master no. And you say that going right after negativity brings a conversation

to a safe zone of empathy and that hearing no is really the start of a negotiation and not the end of it. So explain to us why no is so powerful and why we should give permission to our counterparts to say no and why pushing for yes is actually not a good strategy and not a good thing. Yeah, people try to take us hostage with yes all the time. I mean, it's this nonsensical approach out there called the yes momentum or momentum selling. And it says every time you get a yes out of somebody, it's a micro agreement or a tie down. And with every micro agreement or every tie down you get, then when you get to the big yes, they have to say yes because you got them. You got them cornered. I mean, that's really bad. That's taking away somebody's autonomy.

And they know it. That has been done so much that that's why we say there's three kinds of yes. There's commitment, confirmation, and counterfeit. And most people are used to give an counterfeit yes because they know you're trying to tie them down and you're trying to get micro agreements, you're trying to trap them. And that's why there's so many false yeses out there.

And the problem with yes is we love hearing it so much. Simultaneously, we'll do this, but we'll hate it when somebody tries to do it to us. Like, I don't know anybody that when they pick up the phone and the voice on the other end of the phone says, have you got a few minutes to talk? I don't know anybody that said, Yes, I love to say yes. Thank you for letting me say yes. You know, everybody gets a bad feeling

in the pit of their stomach when a voice is, have you got a few minutes to talk? Because you're thinking, like, what if I let myself in for? How long is this going to last? What if I don't want to talk about this? How, you know, they're going to try to trap me? All this yes nonsense that's really bad. Now, the stupid thing is, you get the complete opposite experience when you get people to say no. Like, I don't say, do you agree? I say, do you disagree? I had an email conversation not that long ago with Robert Herzewik from Shark Tank. By the way, Robert Herzvich is a great guy. I mean, generous, decent dude.

Good businessman, but a really good guy. And so we're talking with him about his company buying tickets to one of our trainings, and they're enthusiastic, but they're not giving us a number. And I've got to get a number out of them. I've got to get an agreement for a number and agreement for payment now. I know when I need it now, I go for no. So I sent him an email that said, are you against committing to three tickets now?

Are you against paying for them before the business day starts tomorrow? Because I'm sending them this email at 5 o'clock in L.A. Not only is at the end of the day, but we're three hours behind the rest of the world. And the tickets are going to be gone by the time the business day starts tomorrow. He got to buy now. But notice I went for no both times. And when you go for no, if there are more problems, they'll say no, but here's what I need. Or no, and here's the rest of it.

And then they'll tell you how to make the deal. Or they'll just say no, period, and they'll say it instantly. I get an email back from him less than 15 minutes later that says, no, we're happy to commit to three tickets now. No, we're happy to pay for them immediately. My assistant will send you an email, send her the link we will pay now. Instantaneous commitment. Also, the subtle part of that that's important is people are decision fatigued at the end of the day, and they can't say yes to stuff.

But shockingly enough, when you're decision fatigued, you get a burst of clarity and you can say no no matter how tired you are. And if there's more guidance that's necessary, you can give it. That's awesome. So you guys heard it. No is actually your way forward in a negotiation. So don't be scared of people saying no. Yeah, don't be scared of no.

It's not the boogeyman. Okay, so let's talk about another phrase, that's right. You say that the phrase that's right is magical. So how do you get people to say those magic words? Yeah, and it is. And there's a really important distinction between that's right and your right. Now, your right is what people say when you're pitching your argument, when you're pitching your deal, when you're making your case. And your right is what we say to people to get them to shut up.

I mean, if I want someone to just lay off and I want to make them happy at the same time, it's the polite way to say, please shut up. And you tell somebody you're right, they shut up. And they're really happy. They're not mad at you. They shut up. They think they made their point and they go away. And we do this to people simultaneously having it done to us all the time. We don't see it.

So what's the shift? The shift is instead of making my case, I'm just trying to summarize your perspective. And I'm really focusing on the parts that I don't like. And I'm not denying it. I'm saying, like, look, you feel that this is an unfair deal because we're a big company. and we got the dominating market share, and we got a reputation of just pushing people around. That diffuses the negatives, what I talked about before.

You're laying out that you're not planting negatives, you're diffusing them. Nobody ever made the elephant in the room go away by ignoring the elephant in the room or trying to keep them out by denying them. They just recognize them, and people go, yeah, well, you know, I guess that elephant isn't that bad. And so a great summary is to summarize their perspective. and when somebody says that's right, that means they are all in. It's an epiphany moment.

It's a moment. It's when people feel completely understood. Like, no matter what side of politics you are in the last U.S. presidential election, as deeply different candidates as you could possibly have, whichever candidate you supported in their last debate, when they said something that you loved, that you were all in on, you didn't point at the TV and go, you're right, you point at the TV and you said, that's right. If you're a Donald Trump supporter and Trump said

something that you believe in, you go, that's right. If you're a Hillary Clinton supporter and Hillary said something that you believed in, you said, that's right. That's what people say when they're all in. And that's how you as a negotiator. You get a that's right out of somebody. They're now all in. They are working with you. And that's another important time to shut up. because there's a really good chance. The art of letting the other side have your way, that's when they're going to give you their way, and they're going to lay it out in their words

which is exactly what you want. Awesome. And speaking of what you want, you titled your book, Never Split the Difference. Never split the difference. Yeah. So you obviously advise to never compromise.

This really goes against common convention because it goes against fairness. It goes against meeting down the middle, which is what everybody teaches you since you're little. So can you talk about why compromise is failure in negotiation? First thing on splitting a difference. There's an old saying in negotiation. A person that offers to meet you in the middle is often a poor judge of distance. I'm at a conference and I'm talking last night.

He says, I split the difference. All the time works great for me. I just ask for more than what I really want. Well, you know, you're splitting the difference with that guy. You're not splitting a difference. they're putting you where they want it all along. They lied to you about what they want just to get you to move and to get you feel like it was fair.

So you were hoodwinked, you were flimflamed, you were bamboozled. That's what happens. Most of the time they split the difference move is a con job from the other side. That's problem one. The sharks are just going to ask for three times for what they want so they get what they wanted all along. And you feel like you were treated fairly.

But unfortunately, you were treated anything but fairly because you were kind. First prop. Second problem was splitting a difference. If you genuinely split the difference, if you genuinely compromise, then both of you are unhappy. Do you compromise your core values? Do you compromise your principles? In a marriage, if you compromise, is then, okay, so this is a great marriage, we're both

unhappy. Well, a business deal is kind of like a marriage, for a short of. period of time, you need a collaborative relationship where you trust each other, you can count on each other. Is a prescription for a marriage? We have a great marriage because we're both unhappy. I mean, you start putting it in those terms, like, no, compromise is a bad idea. Now, the spirit of compromise, we should have the spirit of being open to new ideas. That's what the spirit of compromise really needs to be about. And the crazy thing about never split the difference is, I got to be willing to accept your answer completely if you got a better idea.

Never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn't take something better. If I'm completely wrong and you're completely right and I'm determined that we got to compromise, I have just cheated myself. I need the best deal possible for me and I got to leave the possibility that you're completely right open so I can hear you out. And I can take something better than what I originally had in mind. Very cool. So would you say that it's better to have no deal than a deal that's settled with a compromise? Absolutely. One of the rules that we live by in my company is that no deal is better than a bad deal. A bad deal is unhappiness. A bad deal is anxiety. A bad deal is ongoing disappointment.

A bad deal is ugly implementation. I mean, yes, there's nothing without how. and if your how is ugly and bad, then it's one to three years of blood money and five to ten years of resentment. I mean, we came to that from early on in my company, we signed a deal that ended up being a bad deal. And it was for a lot of money. That's how you get into bad deals in the first place.

People are going to lure you in with a lot of money. A lot of really vicious investors will pay you a lot because they're going to kill you with the terms. And they know that most people are suckered by big dollar signs. And that's exactly what happened to us. And the terms got ugly. Now, we ended up getting a lot of money and we got all of it. And it took us three years to get paid for one year of work.

And I remember after the fact when we discussed it, because my son was in business with me then. He is in business with me now. And he said, man, that aged you. Now, I can't get that back. I can take the lessons learned from it and be absolutely determined that we'll never sign a bad deal again. And we won't. That's what we live by. We don't sign bad deal.

Yeah. So I know that you're a professor and in your negotiation class you have a game that really gives color to the concept that there's no such thing as a fair deal. It's called the ultimatum game. Would you be able to explain this to our listeners? This has application in real life all the time because it's about bringing other people opportunities. So the ultimatum game is just a splitting of $10. And I say, look, we get $10. So we found it. We fell out of the sky. I don't point it out at the time, but that's like any opportunity that falls out of the sky. All right. So one of you stumbled across this first. So you get to propose a split. The other person came on it right afterwards. So they got to accept what you propose. Now, how do we split this $10? You could propose whatever you want, but you got to write down what you'd propose and the other person's got to write down what they would accept. Now, what I love about this game is because game theorists globally hate this game. And that's why we play it because the game theorists hate it.

So the only rational response, because then if you propose and accept, you put your numbers down, that has to match or the proposal has to exceed what the person on the other side would accept. So if you say that you're happy with five and I offer you six, we got a deal. But if you say we're happy with five and I offer you four, then there's no deal and nobody gets any money. The only rational answer is for either side to say, if I'm a proposer, I'll give nine, I'll take one. If I'm an acceptor, I'll take one, I'll give nine. Because that's the only guaranteed split. Any other split is rolling the dice, and it's a reaction, but the math is that one is always better than zero. We're talking about guaranteed money with no effort, by the way. It's not like you sat here and worked for two years on this.

I mean, you walked over it, split the money, and move on, probably less than a minute of interaction. But people begin to react emotionally that, well, look, I got to have half or it ain't fair. Or, you know, I might take four, but I would never take three. That makes me feel dirty. That's disgusting. That devalues me. None of those answers are rational. There's only one rational answer because there's only one guaranteed split.

And everything that you think about after that point is driven by your emotions, your sense of what's fair, your sense of what your value is, your sense, relatively speaking, look, if I got three and you got seven, that's not fair. That's more than double what I got, which actually happens to be kind of the dividing line. We'll do a deal. But as soon as the other side gets more than double what we got, we're not disgusted by it. I could offer you. you a job to work really hard for a year and I could offer you a salary of a half a million dollars. And just based on that offer, you might go like, cool, you know, I made $60,000 last year. I'll take a half a million dollars all day long. But if you find out that in me offering you that job that you worked for a year for a half a million dollars and I actually worked for a week and I got $8 million, now you'd be mad. You think you got cheated. Do you have a different amount of money in your bank account? You still got the exact same amount of money in your bank account. But your perception of what I got took you from being delighted with your salary to disgusted by it.

And that's how people react. Now, you got the same amount of money in your bank account. It was the best year of your life that you ever had, money-wise. In an instant, you can go to feeling like this, the best year I ever had to, oh, my God, I just got cheated out of a year of my life and I'll never get over it. Happy New Year, Yap, gang. I just love the unique energy of the new year. It's all about fresh starts. And fresh starts not only feel possible, but also feel encouraged.

And if you've been thinking about starting a business, this is your sign. There's no better time than right now. 2026 can be the year that you build something that is truly yours, the year where you take control over your career, and it starts with Shopify. I've built plenty of my own businesses on Shopify, including my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. So it's a two-day workshop. People buy their tickets on Shopify. And then my mastermind subscription is also on Shopify.

I built my site quickly in just a couple of days, payments for setup super easily, and none of the technical stuff slowed me down like it usually does, because Shopify is just so intuitive. And this choice of using Shopify helped me scale my masterclass to over five. $500,000 in revenue in our first year. And I'm launching some new podcast courses and can't wait to launch them on Shopify. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online and in person, just like the millions of entrepreneurs that they power. You can build your dream story using hundreds of beautiful templates and set up as fast with built-in AI tools that help you write product,

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This new year was Shopify by your side. Hello, Yap gang. I know my young and profiting listeners want bigger businesses and a better life. And the new year is the perfect moment to reset and commit to your growth. But let's be real. You can't build an empire if your finances are all over the place. That's why getting into it QuickBooks is one of the best first moves you can make this year. They've got powerful money management tools built right into their platform. And they have them for every stage of your business, whether you're a solopreneur or a small business.

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Start the New Year's strong, take control of your cash flow with QuickBooks Money tools. Learn more at quickbooks.com slash money. Again, that's quickbooks.com slash money. Terms apply. Money movement services are provided by Intuit payments and corporate. licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. That's so interesting. Let's move on to deadlines.

After I studied this topic, I've come to realize that deadlines are really complicated. Some people say you should keep them a secret, while others say that you should be up front. So what's your take on how we should treat deadlines? Well, deadlines are this artificial prompt for action. Like nobody drops a deadline in to a negotiation if you're making progress. If you've got a deadline for getting stuff done, I mean, really understanding progress. Like I might say, look, my TEDx talk came out about three, four weeks ago. I did a TEDx at Reno.

And I was trying to get a collaboration going with a company. And I said, look, I want to have this done by the time my TEDx talks comes out. Now, the reality is we've got to get started on it now because we've got to make progress. You know, my deadline was a TEDx talk. But in fact, we have to get to work now. Now, most people are like, all right, so when's your TEDx talk? oh, we got to the end of February. We'll get plenty of time. I'm telling you a deadline now, but I'm trying to prompt action now instead of the end of February. So deadline psychologically,

you really got to kind of understand them, and they're an attempt to make progress. People drop a deadline because they're unhappy with what the other side's doing, because the other side's probably not doing anything now anyway, and you're just trying to get people going. So we share deadlines on a regular basis because I don't want us getting to the end of February and you then find it out that I'm trying to coincide this project with my TED talk. You're like, well, why don't you tell me before? I mean, it's not fair of me not to let you know what the deadline is, but I also got to let you know, like, look, we got to get to work now. We got to line up the following people. You know, we got to get distribution. We have to get started now. So the deadline, you really got to be

careful, the politician's deadline. That's why, you know, they're deadlocking on the budget all the time. They go like, oh, we got until October 1st. Okay, well, let's start talking about it on September 29th. That's what most people do, but then that's why most people miss many deadlines. And how about numbers? So the next question is submitted by a member on Yap Society on Slack. It's our fan group on Slack. Tim asks, when is the right time to name your rate? Don't drop your numbers naked. He who names price first loses, especially if you name price quickly and easily. The other side is always going to go, oh my God, that's too much.

So first of all, before I give you a price, I want to know that you actually want to make a deal, or maybe you're just shopping for prices. Maybe I'm the competing bid, and you've got somebody you want to buy from. You just want to know how expensive I am so I can compare. Well, I'm not going to give you that price for that. I'm nobody's fool, and that's being the fool in the game. So I need to start to diagnose right up front real early, whether or not I'm the favorite or whether or not I'm the fool.

Now, if I'm the favorite, I'm probably going to get the business. I still got to be careful about my price because you're going to overreact to it. You're going to assume that there's leeway in my price. You're going to assume that there's softness. You're going to assume that I'm like most negotiators are asked for more than what they actually want so they can end up with what they actually want. When my company gives a price, when I come, coming off our price. Don't bother trying to get our price down because we don't get the price down.

Now, we will make high value trades. If you want my price to come down by a dollar and you give me something worth $10, I'll listen to that because I know what their value is for me. We'll make high value trades. When I finally get ready to drop my price, I'm going to look at you whether I'm on a phone. I'm going to say, look, it's high. And I'm going to shut up. And you'll say, yeah, okay, fine. Everybody says this is high. I'm be like, no, no, I'm going to be like, no, I'm I'm not kidding. This price is high. It's more than you can afford. It's more than you want to pay. It's probably more than what you have in your budget. And then I'm going to shut up again. I'm going to let this sink in. Now, I can do this because we overdeliver. This is predicated on the idea that whatever they pay, you're going to over deliver. And we over deliver like crazy. So you can't do this with a cheap product because that makes you a liar. But if you're going to over deliver, and we do. Then when I give my price, your first reaction was like, well, I imagined worse.

So that isn't actually that bad. So that's reasonable. And let's talk about how you're going to deliver. And now instead of you arguing with me about price, you're focused on the more important aspects, which is the how that price is going to be made valuable. And now that's how we overdeliver. Because if you agree to my how, we're going to hit it out of the park for you. And you're going to think that the price that we cost while relatively speaking in the marketplace is expensive.

But the value you got when it was over was cheap money. Got it. That plays into the whole concept of being direct about negativity as well. Totally direct about the fact that your price is high. Yeah. And I got to tell you, every now and then somebody tell me up front, they'll say, you know, I don't care how expensive. if you are, you know, we need you, we're willing to pay it. And I'll be stupid enough to give them a price. And each and every time I'm stupid enough to believe them, they always react like,

oh my God, that's too high. And I think, you know what, I deserve that. I know better. You know, ignore human nature at your peril. And that's the way human being's going to react. Yep. All right. So last question before we ask everyone where they can find out more about you. So speaking of numbers, you mention that whenever you give a number, you shouldn't end. end in zero and that you should offer a range. Can you just talk a little bit about that and why we should take that approach? First of all, the combination of two ideas there. I mean, offering a range is a really smart thing to do. You know, I might say, look, I'm selling a car. If I really want $500 for the car, I might say, look, I'll take anywhere from $500, $750 to this car.

Now, you're going to leap on that $500. You're going to leap on the end that is advantageous to you and disadvantageous to me. And you're going to feel like you want. So that's a smart move on my part to throw out a range. Just make sure that you're happy with the short end of the stick, if you will. Because if you throw that range out and you don't accept a number, then that made you a liar. People will not drop the middle of that range. You're hoping they will, but they won't. And I had a student of mine at USC.

He put out a range for an internship. He wanted $21 an hour, and he knew the range was from $18 to $25 an hour. And so they said, well, what are you looking for on an hourly basis? And he said, well, my research indicates that the price is between $18 and $25 an hour. He's hoping that they meet him in the middle and throw it 21. Well, they say, cool, we'll give you 18 right away. So he's like, ah, damn it, now I've got to go with 18 because I threw that number out. So if you throw a range, it's a smart move, understand they're going to take the end that is their advantage.

And they're going to stick to it. They're going to dig. Now, when you start talking specific numbers, hey, look, Odd numbers feel real. They feel real to the other side. I got another student in Georgetown. He's in a rent negotiation, and he's got the other side in a counteroffer using our techniques

when it was a hot market. And then he's getting ready to counteroffer the person on the other side. He asked for a piece of paper and a pencil, and he started write numbers. Now, I don't know what numbers he wrote down because he already knew the number he was going to throw out. He'd calculated it in advance. he may have written down his birthday, he may have done a little math problem, which is where we were a pie, but he made like he was writing all these numbers down.

Then he looked at the other guy and he said, you know, 1,823 a month. And the broker looked at him and said, wow, you must be an accountant. And he wasn't, but he goes, yeah, I am. And they made the deal at 1823. That's hilarious. Because it was odd and he wrote it down. So this stuff works. It's human nature stuff.

Awesome, Chris. Well, I want to be respectful of your time. It was such an honor to have you on the show. Where can our listeners go to find more about you and everything that you do? Best thing to do is to subscribe to our newsletter. It's short and sweet. It's free. It's a good price. It comes out every Tuesday morning, short, sweet, concise article, and it's the gateway to everything that we do. It's a gateway to the website, the training. It is the gateway. The way you subscribe is you send the message, FBI empathy, all one word. Don't let your spell check, make it two words. FBI empathy, one word. Text that message to the number 22, 8. 28 and it's 22828. If you put the message in properly, you send it to that number, you'll get an immediate response back asking for your email, sign it up, and get the gateway. Awesome. Cool. And I'll share that out on YAP Society on Slack. Thank you so much, Chris. It was so nice to

have you. Thank you. This is a delightful conversation. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to write us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the show. Follow Yap on Instagram at Young and Profiting and check us out at young and profiting.com. And now you can chat live with us every single day on YAP Society on Slack.

Check out our show notes or young and profiting.com for the registration link. You can find me on Instagram at YAP with Hala or LinkedIn. Just search for my name, Hala Taha. Big thanks to the YAP team for another successful episode. This week on YAP, I'd like to give a special shout out to Prince for supporting the creation of new videos, for the relaunch of our YouTube channel.

And to his sham for securing exciting guests for later this spring, including Gretchen Rubin, William Backegill, Jay Samet, and more. This is Hala. Until next time.