EFR 731: Chris Voss on Mastering Negotiation, Unlocking the Art of Tactical Empathy, and Navigating Black Swan Events in Everyday Life

0:00:00 - Speaker 1 Chris, how you doing today. Thank you so much for coming on Ever Forward Radio.

0:00:05 - Speaker 2 Hey man, I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me on as a guest. I appreciate it.

0:00:09 - Speaker 1 Absolutely. Just. Like I said, your work with the FBI and your work as a police officer and just what you're doing now and bringing negotiating to the everyday person just completely blew my mind. I never thought that I would be getting a book, or listening to a book, about hostage negotiating, but it's just. It is amazing of how negotiating plays into every component of pretty much everyday life, and so I would just love to kind of hear your backstory and how you got into negotiating and how you have seen this just excel into the corporate world, the personal world, relationships and anything and everything in between.

0:00:48 - Speaker 2 Yeah, happy to man, and I'm glad you make that point that it kind of plays into every aspect of your life, because I really started on focusing on this journey. I had to volunteer on a suicide. I was told to volunteer on a suicide hotline. I probably wanted to become a hostage negotiator and I got on the hotline and the stuff was so. I mean it was so impactful. Really it's such a short period of time that I thought you know this stuff has to have application to everyday life. I mean this just makes too big of a difference and again, it didn't take that world to do it right. So, yeah, I think this does pervade so many of our everyday interactions and just understanding each other better.

0:01:32 - Speaker 1 So getting started as a suicide hotline operator, right.

0:01:36 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

0:01:38 - Speaker 1 How did you negotiate that situation?

0:01:40 - Speaker 2 I was a member of the SWAT team with the FBI and I tried out for the bureau's version of the Navy SEALs, which is the hostage rescue team, and a lot of former SEALs on the HRT, and then I re-injured my knee and so I knew I was going to completely destroy my knee if I didn't stop pounding the heck out of their own obstacle courses. So I want to stay in crisis response. I knew we had hostage negotiators. I didn't know what they did, but it didn't sound that hard. You know how hard can it be. You just talk to people. But I went to Amy Bondra, the head of the team in New York City, and presented myself kind of like ta-da, and Amy was suitably underwhelmed. She just was not. She kind of you know, died her nose over glasses at me and was like all right, she's, everybody wants to be a hostage negotiator. It sounds fine. What are your qualifications? And I like qualifications. I'm here, yeah, I breathe, you know I can talk, okay, and you know she goes. Look, you got. You got you were the police department, were your hostage negotiator there.

I said no. She said you got any background in a hostage negotiation training at all. I said no. She said you got a degree in psychology, you got any sort of educational in the area at all? And I go like new. And she said go away. Wow. I was like wow, shut down, yeah she's.

You know I'm sure I didn't actually stamp my feet, but I'm sure I felt like I did and you know I'm like come on. I said, but I said there's got to be something I could do. She says all right. She says go volunteer at a suicide hotline. Now tape, done that, go away. And I'm like all right, you know, one of my philosophies, which seems crazy but so few people follow it, is find the right person to ask what to do, ask them what to do and then actually do it, which most people don't.

Take that third step Did she say go volunteer on a suicide hotline. So I did and as you know, as fate would have it, it happened to be the same hotline that she volunteered on. And then the stuff to me was transformative. I mean, and I had no idea how bad I was, I mean this is how bad I was in communication. We, at the beginning of the training, they gave us a series of 10 things that somebody on a hotline might say to you and they said write down what your responses are. And thank God I write like a four year old. I mean my, my, my handwriting is almost equivalent. Stick for your writing.

0:04:27 - Speaker 1 We're in the same boat, chris, it's. I should have gone to med school with my handwriting. Could have been a doctor.

0:04:34 - Speaker 2 Yeah. So when they handed that sheet back to me if I didn't know my own handwriting so well at the end of the training two months later, I'd have called you a liar If you gave me that sheet. I looked down at those responses and they were so, so emotionally tone deaf. I was stunned and I'm like I can't. I can't believe how far I've come.

And that was part of you know, just be, it's just the most on intelligence. It's. You know, it sounds simplistic, but so few of us practice it on a regular basis and I found it so effective and so transformative. I'm just and the other thing that was crazy about it too like a typical hotline call, they say you got to, you got to be off the phone in 20 minutes and I remember thinking 20 minutes, that's so fast. Yeah, you know, you see the stuff in the movies and on a phone for hours of, not days, with people you know and dragging everything up. And the crazy thing about it is if, if you're taking an emotionally intelligent approach to the interactions, they're, they're much faster. I mean this whole approach. Actually, if you're in a hurry, this saves more time than anything else. It's crazy.

0:05:45 - Speaker 1 They were saying they were expecting someone to talk, literally talk someone off of a ledge in 20 minutes. 20 minutes, yep, wow, yeah.

0:05:53 - Speaker 2 Yeah, it's crazy, right, did you have?

0:05:55 - Speaker 1 anybody on a ledge when they would call Like that close to suicide.

0:06:00 - Speaker 2 Not on a ledge per se. I had several people that were like they were. It was right there. Their means was at hand.

0:06:07 - Speaker 1 They were just so depressed and they were just seriously contemplating suicide.

0:06:12 - Speaker 2 Right, right, and one of the things you know. You know there's a thing, um, um, threat assessment called specificity. You know, and, and that, and we would look for specificity, like somebody calls them, I'm going to kill myself and we, we'd literally say how? Because you have to. You have to immediately gauge the, the immediacy of the threat. And if they say, you know, I got a 357 sitting right here and it's loaded, that's pretty immediate.

0:06:38 - Speaker 1 Oh, an immediate, specific threat? Absolutely. That's no stranger to my military training, yeah.

0:06:43 - Speaker 2 Yeah, right and so, but if they go like you know I'm thinking about taking toes well, you know that that person's not getting ready to go out the door in the next 30 seconds, and so that you know that'd be part of it. It's also some of it is understanding is the legitimate questions you can ask in a situation While there are questions in any situation in the interaction that you would imagine would be offensive, in reality they're legitimate questions and it's a great test of the situation.

0:07:15 - Speaker 1 Referring to specifically asking hey, how do you envision you taking your own life? That's what you're referring to.

0:07:21 - Speaker 2 Yeah, you know, and taking that principle and then just putting it into any other interaction and so you know if somebody, if you're in a business or social interaction that's going bad, you can literally say to the other person how are you gonna do this? I mean, what have you got in mind? You have to know what's in somebody's head Because, as a friend of mine who also is a business negotiation guru, jim Camp, used to say, you know, there is no decision without vision. Wow, awesome. You have to know the vision that's in somebody's head to know how to proceed.

0:08:01 - Speaker 1 And that was one of the biggest takeaways that you make very, very clear early on in your book, and that is just being able to establish this basic rapport. You can't even begin to negotiate with someone unless you understand what's going on in their head, and this concept of mirroring is something that, like I said, I've gone back and listened to the audio book two times from start to finish, but definitely the section on mirroring man I go back to probably on a weekly basis, anytime I have a big meeting coming up for my workplace or just something personally. That is gonna be a lot of back and forth. This section on mirroring has been a huge advantage for my rapport establishing skills, my negotiating skills. Could you maybe talk more about what mirroring exactly is and how to just establish this basic rapport to then go into the concept of negotiating?

0:08:50 - Speaker 2 Yeah, you know what I love that you picked up on that, because mirroring has to be the simplest, most actionable yet initially most awkward skill.

0:08:59 - Speaker 1 I mean if you can Awkward, yes, yes, sometimes very much so.

0:09:04 - Speaker 2 If you could count to three, you can mirror. That's how simple it is, because this isn't the mirroring that a lot of us have learned about, where you reflect someone's body language or if they put their right hand to their chin and you put your right hand to their chin. It has nothing to do with physicality or tone of voice and, literally, if you can count to three, you can mirror. Mirror is repeating the last one to three words of what somebody's just said. Or when you become comfortable with how insanely effective it is, then you'll pick out a selected one to three words from maybe in the middle, and it doesn't have to be the last three words of what somebody just said. But it couldn't be simpler and because of that then it takes a little bit of effort to get people over their feeling of awkwardness, but then, yeah, it might be the single most rapport building diagnostic, like people use it for so many different reasons and it's so simple.

0:10:08 - Speaker 1 And it's one of those things that it's so simple on paper but then once you apply it, where you can expand from, and the detail and the conversation that you can get from that simple concept of just repeating back the last three words is so profound. I mean because I think A it helps us, it gives the person time to just really think about something before you say it and just think and respond, but then also it forces that other person to really explain more what they're talking about so that maybe they give up some leverage.

0:10:40 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, you know what exactly? You had two real distinct points exactly on the head. And the first one it's actually even better than saying to somebody what do you mean by that, Because a lot of times if you say to somebody what do you mean by that, they'll repeat the exact words. They're like an American over trying to be understood in Europe, you know. You just say it again louder or more slowly.

0:11:02 - Speaker 1 I'll be there soon enough. I'll leave at the end of the month for three weeks in Europe, so this is good timing for my applications, yeah.

0:11:10 - Speaker 2 Yeah, so because when you repeat the exact same words that somebody just said, you send a message to them. Look, I heard the words. You don't have to use the same words again. I need more. And then people do expand and I can't. You know, I know the brain science behind why a lot of this works. Because there's so much brain science now. Neuroscience, oh, absolutely. And we haven't, and we haven't, I haven't yet seen yet the functioning that backs this up, to know what, to be able to explain why. But people go into more depth and I, you know one of the business men that we advise on a regular basis. Not only is it so, heat does is mirror the other side's proposal because, it said it always it always tells him how weak or strong their proposal is. And you said they give up leverage Without question and the expansion of what they're talking about. They will let you know, if you're listening, where those leverage points are and give you a huge advantage in the discussion.

0:12:12 - Speaker 1 Chris, have you ever seen the movie the 40-Year-Old Virgin?

0:12:16 - Speaker 2 I have seen parts of it.

0:12:18 - Speaker 1 When I first heard this part, it immediately reminded me of this scene where he walks up to the girl that he kind of has a crush on in the bookstore and his, his guy friends are just coaching him along. They're like don't say anything, literally just repeat back everything she says. And so she's like you know where's the do it yourself section? And he's like do you like to do it yourself? And it's the most ridiculous phrases, but literally just repeating things back, he got like the most information out of her. It forced her to expand upon.

I mean and this is I'm making light of a situation, making light of a point here but just in like, an application of something like that is so simple as just talking to a stranger, talking to someone that maybe you're trying to, you know, ask out on a date or just learn, learn more information about. If you think that you don't possess the skill set there to have a strong conversation, just using this concept of mirroring helps you build your conversation, helps you steer the ship in that conversational direction in just such a simple way you're right.

0:13:24 - Speaker 2 It's ridiculously simple, and I think that's what some people they expect it to like. If something is really effective, it's got to be like an algorithmic equation that goes all the way across a page.

0:13:36 - Speaker 1 You don't expect something this simple to be that effective and then I love how you tied in I believe it was in the same section of just when they do propose these points or concepts or even demands, and not only are we mirroring back to them so we learn more about what they're really asking or what we can bring to the table, but it's this concept of, well, how am I supposed to do that? I I've used that probably a handful of times since the first time I listened to your book and it's just amazing of how you gain so much clarity around what the other person wants from you, but also it really limits what you just kind of word vomit and set yourself up for success or failure for right away by creating either these outlandish demands or just getting specific tasks from the other person yeah, that's it, that one of the subtleties of a great and we even call them calibrated questions now, instead of open into questions but a great calibrated question that starts with how, like, how am I supposed to do that?

0:14:39 - Speaker 2 it hits the other side on about three levels, one of which is it puts sort of parameters on them that they don't realize. Yes, um, uh, you know it's, it's the art of, uh, getting the upper hand by giving the other side the illusion of control. And that's one of these great things, that someone they have no idea how much you really box them in with that question. Because they feel empowered, because you said how, and because they feel empowered, then their desire for control is satisfied and they drop their guard. And there's another process of my son, brandon, who's my director of operations he refers to is forced empathy. It forces them without them knowing that you force them. Yes, yes, yes, take a look at you. And they have no idea that you forced them to look at you and your situation before they respond. And it's really, it's, it's, it's. It's one of the things that some people pick up on really fast, on how much power that question gives them.

0:15:44 - Speaker 1 Chris, what are some areas maybe that someone could apply the basic concept of mirroring and everyday life as well as maybe in the professional world? What are, maybe, some specific areas that you see are the best applications for mirroring?

0:15:56 - Speaker 2 mirroring is pretty unlimited. It's only going to be limited by how awkward you feel doing it. So, fair enough, you know some people. You know I tell people like, oh, look, uh, if you're not too sure how this is going to work, do it, pick an hour and all you're going to do is mirror and let make it an hour where you probably got no skin in the game. So make it your lunch hour, or when you go to the water cooler or wherever you work or where you go to get coffee. You know, just mirror everybody there, just to test drive it in um, no skin in the game conversations, just to get a feel for how fast and how quick this changes the dynamic.

And as soon as you've got that down, then there's a lot of things for you. It's also a great go-to skill, like even now, then someone's going to say something to you that is so utterly crazy that you are not going to know how to respond. And if you got your mirror um move practiced. It's one of the great uh skills to buy time in a moment when you're so shocked at the craziness that you're hearing that you need just a few minutes to recover and also you need the other side at the same time, to expand, and it's one of the the go-to skills um and during tough moments, to buy yourself more time and work your way out of tough situations what, uh, without giving away your, your secrets, what's maybe your go-to way from earring to kind of just without the counterpart recognizing, to set them up for the angle of conversation, the good negotiation that you want.

I, you know, I like getting. I like getting people talking, I want to get them expanding and what I'll actually typically do is I'll wait, like the next level of listening for most people is they get good at the aha moments. Um, where they go aha, gotcha, where the gotcha moment, you know, they listen and tell you they they hear contradiction what you've said. Oh yeah, it's almost like an attack. They, you know gotcha, aha, but what about this? That's actually the perfect moment for a mirror. When you hear the gotcha moment, when you hear the aha, instead of attacking, because at that aha and gotcha moment, that's your opportunity and that's that's. That's what you've been listening for. That's the way to make a deal.

But you don't make a deal by attacking. You don't come to the agreement, you don't come to the resolution. Well, it's a business deal or whether it's a personal interaction. So if you got your mirror scaled down and you're good at picking, at picking up stuff in a middle, then you go back to those three words where the gotcha was and you just mirror them innocently. You go before something else happened or whatever those words were, just word for word. That is the opportunity expansion.

0:18:53 - Speaker 1 You need to get a better deal and sometimes, when it comes to basic conversation or in this instance, you know we may be negotiating something very, very high level or something very simple it's not so much just the words but it's the emotions that come across a lot of times with it, and you definitely touched on that in the book in the section around tactical empathy and and I love I had a quote mark down here about how, when you're talking to your students, when you're teaching this curriculum, you talk about how empathy is the ability to recognize the perspective of a counterpart and the vocalization of that recognition. That's an academic way of saying that empathy is paying attention to another human being, asking what they're feeling and making a commitment to understanding their world. Can you maybe we talked about the wording can you maybe talk a little bit more specifically about the emotional aspect of conversation and negotiation?

0:19:50 - Speaker 2 yeah, which is the most important aspect. And and then the other thing that a lot of people don't realize in that definition is what's not there and what's not there is. Empathy is neither agreement nor disagreement, and it's not sympathy. But a lot of people have have either equated empathy with sympathy or they feel at some point in time. If I have empathy for you, then I agree with you, and if you can walk this fine line where understanding does not equate to agreement, then you give you like. Empathy becomes this unlimited superpower because you don't have to agree and it really kind of is and you also don't have to feel with their feet. And that's the great misnomer that sociopaths don't feel empathy.

Sociopaths practice empathy better than anybody else because they don't let their own emotions get in the way. They'll read you like a book, and empathy is reading someone like a book, and particularly the emotional aspects of it, because we don't like the way people react emotionally. But emotion drives behavior and emotion drives performance and emotion drives agreement. And emotion also drives screw-ups. And when you come to this realization, it gives you the ability to navigate all this. And negative emotions drive disagreements more than positive emotions drive agreements. The negative emotions are really the obstacles. So you start putting this together and you understand what the real problems are, which are the other side's negative emotions. Then you use empathy in a very tactical way to simply dial those up or down. That's why Adam Grant wrote this great piece called the Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence, because if you can wrap your mind around this and understanding how you reach over and dial these emotions up and down, your ability to influence is massive.

0:21:49 - Speaker 1 Where, would you say, people mostly falter in their conversational or negotiating skills? Is it in the wording and understanding literally what is being said, or misreading or missing entirely this emotional connection piece?

0:22:04 - Speaker 2 I don't think it's so much misreading, I think it's misreacting, so to speak. Misreacting, okay, yeah, if your gut instinct is you don't like how someone's coming at you or how they feel about the situation. If you've got a gut instinct that something negative is going on, that means your intuition is hitting on something proper there. So you're reading it properly. The mistake people make, especially with negatives, is they either want to avoid or deny them and it's like all right, look, I don't want you to think I'm being a bully here, right? I don't want you to think this is a bad idea. I don't want you to think this is a loss of proposition. Those are all denials, right? So your emotional intelligence is working good. There's stuff there that you know is a problem and you're trying to make it go away by denying it. The two millimeter switch is just simply identifying it and then identifying it in a way that's not an agreement and they're disagreement. And you say I'm sure it seems like this is unfair, I'm sure it seems like I'm being a bully, or I'm sure it seems like I'm disregarding.

There's a classic example of somebody was interviewing a sports program, was interviewing Michael Vick a few months back, and I don't remember the quarterback they brought up, but they were asking Vick about his behavior. And you know, michael, vick is a guy who turns his life around. Oh yeah, absolutely. And so many people will talk to him like having turned your life around, what's your take on what this guy's doing? And Vick said look, I don't want to be disrespectful. But and then he laid it all out and, as soon as he got done talking to the commentator, say you know, soon as somebody says, I don't want to be disrespectful, the very next thing they're going to be is disrespectful.

0:23:53 - Speaker 1 Everything after, but is usually BS right.

0:23:56 - Speaker 2 Yeah so, but he denied it. I guarantee you, if Michael Vick would have said instead, I'm sure this is going to seem disrespectful. Here's how I see this. Afterwards the commentators would have said you know, vick is a straight shooter. It's a huge impact difference. But there was only a two word change in the delivery.

0:24:19 - Speaker 1 Speaking of two words, after talking about the mirroring aspect, after talking about learning to best interpret the emotional aspect of yourself and your counterpart negotiation, getting them to these two words of that's right was another really big takeaway and kind of just like sealing the deal, so to speak. The takeaway that I got was that once you kind of hear your counterpart say these two words, or, if you can get them, steer them in that direction, of saying, yes, that's right, everything you're saying is exactly what I'm looking for. So once we kind of corner them towards the end, how do we kind of quote unquote, seal the deal?

0:25:00 - Speaker 2 Yeah, well, a really important distinction for everybody to understand is there's a difference between that's right and you're right.

Yes, yes yes, you're right, is the deal killing phrase? When that's right is the deal sealing phrase? Very great, great observation on your part. And it's either a deal sealer or it's a breakthrough moment. We consistently see like massive breakthroughs in stalemates when you get a that's right out of the other side. The full depth of it we're still trying to totally figure out and I just sent out emails today to one neuroscientist and another guy who's a specialist on human performance because these create what we refer to as an epiphany moment, which is a powerful. Any of us who've ever experienced an epiphany, I mean we feel physically changed in that moment. That's why oh yeah, you're exactly religious term has been applied to a non religious interaction. You know, when we've a moment of clarity, a moment of insight, you create a moment of clarity, a moment of insight and epiphany and another person and banged. Your influence with them at that moment in time is huge.

0:26:23 - Speaker 1 It's so huge that in many cases they'll either close the deal for you or they'll open up the impasse for you Just because I and going from that's right, that's where you kind of shift gears into getting into the brass tacks of the conversation. That's isn't that usually where the final agreement kind of comes up like well, I'm giving you this, you give me that kind of thing.

0:26:45 - Speaker 2 Right, right, that's when. That's when they'll make the deal for you, the. You know the old negotiation phrases. You know negotiation is about letting the other side have your way. That's how you get there.

0:26:58 - Speaker 1 Would you say that negotiation is just tricking for lack of a better term the other party into thinking they're getting their way, or is there something more to it?

0:27:08 - Speaker 2 No, there's so much more to it and I'd also like that in as to take off from something you said earlier. We weren't four or five negotiations a day Anytime the word yes is in the air. You don't have to have money involved to be in a negotiation. The commodity that's always involved is not money. The commodity is always involved. This time I'm trying to get you to do something. I want something from you. I need you cooperation, collaboration.

That's a negotiation and you know to almost get into like a spiritual, metaphysical conversation about it, but in reality most of us have got pretty much all we need. If you have some deed, you've got a place to sleep, you're just darn close to everything you physically need. If you're not going to die today, you may. As well as hierarchy, then everything after that is based on what you think you need or really more, what you want. And you want those things for emotional reasons.

So you can change the object of what people want when you understand what emotions are driving. It's kind of crazy, but it's the reason why people have causes they'll die for. People will dedicate their lives, will live in poverty and dedicate their lives because of the emotional satisfaction they're getting out of the basic activity. So that's how we're wired as human beings and when you get into the middle of that, again, the amount of power it gives people is insane in terms of influence. Because, again, adam Grant, the dark side of emotional intelligence it's crazy what you can get people to go along with as soon as you start to change your frame of reference.

0:28:49 - Speaker 1 Oh, look at all of the crazy for lack of better term. Look at all of the insane people who create this. Following that, these occult leaders who, when you get down to it, I mean it's just a negotiation of their time, of their mindset, and they get people to go along with what they're talking about.

0:29:07 - Speaker 2 Right, right, right. And there's always discussion in even regular people's everyday lives about purpose. What's your purpose? How much of your life will you set other things aside for when you have this emotionally driven purpose idea? And then it just kind of gets us into crazy abilities to influence others, which is why social paths love these tools so much, because all they want to do is influence others.

0:29:36 - Speaker 1 Influencing others. That is such a big takeaway. A big part of my world and a lot of people's worlds in this day and age is influence, particularly through social media. But even in day to day life, what would be an example of where we are being negotiated where we don't even realize it? What is an example of where we are being influenced by someone or something else and we're just passively letting it happen?

0:30:03 - Speaker 2 Well, marketing advertising, you know you call customer service. You buy a product. That was a negotiation through the market. There was an influence on you to take you there in the first place. Product doesn't work out that good, you call customer service to try to fix it. That's a negotiation and there's an old saying never be mean to someone who could hurt you by doing nothing. Now you're talking about the people who test service. All they got to do is go. I'm sorry, sir, there's nothing I could do.

0:30:41 - Speaker 1 Pretty sure we've all been there.

0:30:43 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. So and then the recognition it's kind of a universal definition of everybody that we interact with could probably hurt us by doing nothing. Flip side of that coin is, if you're willing to accept that, then pretty much everybody we interact with could help us if they felt like it. And this is how you get the person to feel like it, with a very counterintuitive approach. One of my favorite stories recently my son again my director of operations has been negotiating with a hostage negotiator since he was two years old.

0:31:14 - Speaker 1 right, it should be good at it, right now Matt, but that's an amazing follow-up dynamic I would love to read about.

0:31:21 - Speaker 2 It's a lot of fun. So he was supposed to fly here to California. He missed his flight. He called me to tell me he missed his flight and he was like remarkably upbeat about it, which kind of blew me away. I'm kind of shocked, because normally it would be mad about this. Well, he was so upbeat because of the deal he negotiated after he missed his flight.

0:31:39 - Speaker 1 Oh, I got to hear this. How did he get something out of this situation?

0:31:43 - Speaker 2 He walks up to the airline counter at the airport, to the customer service lady who probably has just been battered by the last other 75 people who missed her flight, and he says he's 20 minutes late, the plane's gone. And he says I'm here to sign up for the mistake of the day award. And then he says what I'm getting ready to do is making your day incredibly difficult. And she kind of looked up at him and took it positively as a challenge and she was like really All right let's see what you got.

0:32:20 - Speaker 1 Challenge accepted.

0:32:22 - Speaker 2 Yeah, in a, in a, in a in like in a, in a upbeat way. Five, five minutes later he's rebooked on another flight, which is actually it ends up being a better flight for him. He's coming out here business class and most of the time if you miss a flight to get rebooked, they're going to put you in coach. He's got a business class seat, there's no penalties, there's no extra charges, and he had so much extra time in his day that he went home and cut the grass.

0:32:55 - Speaker 1 How did he do this? Just by pitching it from an entirely different starting point.

0:33:00 - Speaker 2 Right, because the person on the other side of the counter, she's at that keyboard, she can do anything she wants to do, all the power. And so she looks for flights. Not only is she looking for off-flight, which, if she's annoyed, she's going to say I got this one flight here. It's the only one and there's one seat left and it's in economy. It's in the middle and my son happens to be a rather large human being. But instead she looked at all the flights. She looked for the flights that had room in business class. She looked at the timing and she took the time and she could do it quickly because he put her in a good mood and his brain sense it shows her with 31% more effective, mentally, in a positive frame of mind. So she's got more mental agility to sort the information because he put her in a good mood, she's happy to do it, she likes his approach and when she was done so quick, he actually said to her like I'm shocked at how quickly this went.

0:34:02 - Speaker 1 Wow, you know that's so funny. It really reminds me a lot of my interactions when I'm grabbing a coffee or I'm shopping at a store and I just thought maybe it was kind of my typical, somewhat annoying, just general happy go lucky personality where I always tried to catch this customer service person, this server, this barista, whatever semi-off guard by you know. When they say, hey, how's it going, I take the time to ask them the same question back. I ask them their name and it immediately puts them in a different starting point. They usually go from a frown to at least looking up to me, make eye contact. Sometimes, you know you get to smile. But I think that's a big takeaway in that, just catching the person off guard where you going into the situation you already know it's probably not the most ideal where you can just read the body language, read the face of the other person and just immediately put them in a positive mood. No wonder it's going to help you out in the long run.

0:34:58 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, 1000%, you're a 1000% right.

0:35:01 - Speaker 1 And it also makes me chuckle because I drive my wife crazy with this. You know, anytime or anywhere, if I'm, whether I'm buying a t-shirt or a piece of furniture, I'm always looking for the deal. You know, I guess I've been negotiating for years and never realized it. I'll ask, hey, when I was in school, do you have a student discount? No, Okay, how about a military discount? And this one time we were I forget what we were purchasing, but they said no to anything and everything. There was no discount whatsoever. And at the end I was just like, how about a cool guy discount? And the guy behind the counter chuckle, he goes, I'll take 10% off. So I mean, there you go. I guess I've been negotiating for years and never realized it.

0:35:44 - Speaker 2 Nicely done. Yeah, nicely done.

0:35:46 - Speaker 1 And people say I was just being cheap.

0:35:49 - Speaker 2 Yeah, but I tell you what you know if you made that guy smile, you probably brighten his day in a way that was more viable to him than that discount.

0:35:58 - Speaker 1 Oh, no, no, no, no, that's a great move. No doubt. I mean he had a better day and had a happier customer and you know, 10% of the sale was lost, but I definitely see the ripple effect being much bigger. Yeah exactly.

Chris, kind of getting towards the end of the conversation here, there's one thing at the end of your book that I think is probably the biggest takeaway, the most important thing that we should be looking for without really realizing we need to be looking for something, and this is something that you label the black swan theory, which is the name of your consulting group, and you describe this as the theory that tells us that things happen that were previously thought to be impossible or never thought of at all. This is not the same as saying that sometimes things happen against one in a million odds, but rather that things never imagined do come to pass. Could you maybe expand upon that and just really explain what this black swan theory is and why we should be looking for the thing that doesn't exist?

0:37:00 - Speaker 2 Right? Well, the thing is like double concealed, double secret probation. Yes, there we go. You know, it's the little things that change everything. I mean the impact of the highly improbable things that were innocuous and in a thousand other situations made no difference, but in this one it is a will, or could make all the difference in the world. You just have to think two layers down to see that there are always black swans in every situation, and the reason that's true is because in every single interaction, war and there's always there's always cards we're holding, so to speak, to use a sort of a poker metaphor or a spades metaphor, depending upon what your game is.

0:37:43 - Speaker 1 Yeah, always the ace in the pocket, so to speak.

0:37:46 - Speaker 2 There's always something we're holding Now. We're holding it because if the other side knew it would make a big difference. That's why we're holding it. We wouldn't conceal it otherwise if it wasn't impactful. And there's. I've asked this a thousand times. I've asked people is there ever a situation when you're not hiding cards? And their answer is no. I'm always no, of course. You know, whatever it is, I'm always hiding something. Well, if that's true of you, it's true of the other side, no matter how smart you think that you are. Because a lot of people say I know the situation. It is what it is. I got all the facts, including the ones I'm hiding.

0:38:21 - Speaker 1 We like to think that.

0:38:23 - Speaker 2 We like to think that, but there's going to be stuff the other side, and if only how they feel about certain things. And so here's where the hard part to imagine there's an overlap of the unknowns. If you're hiding cards and they're hiding cards, we don't know what happens when those unknowns overlap. And that's where the black swans are, which is why you trigger people into saying stuff accidentally that they might not have said otherwise. And that's how you make the better deals.

0:38:54 - Speaker 1 Where does this black swan origin? Where does it come from?

0:38:57 - Speaker 2 Well, it was originally. You know, I first came across a phrase from a business book from about 2007 called the Black Swan, and the subtitle was the impact of the highly improbable and Nicholas Nassim Taliib. He'd come across the idea that people originally thought they were only white swans and then in Australia they found swans that were black and they were like this is crazy, this is black swans. So it goes all the way back to the 16th century as an idea, but it's said that the impact there could be. There are not that it could be. There always are little things that will make all the difference in the world, and we first applied that in terms of methods. You know I talked before about a two word change having all the impact on the conversation. So these are the innocuous changes that you can make in your behavior have huge, big, huge impacts in the outcome, and also the idea that you don't know everything and because you don't know everything, there's always a better deal to be at.

0:40:10 - Speaker 1 Chris, this is a really timely conversation. Are you a Game of Thrones watcher by chance? I'm a big fan, so I don't know if it was the most recent episode or the one from last week where Littlefinger is talking to having a brain cramp. Now what's? Oh my gosh, what's her name? Sansa? Yes, where Littlefinger is talking to Sansa and he's explaining. You know, evaluate every situation from every angle. Imagine all your friends are also plotting your death at the same time and I may be butchering the exact quote, but basically he was teaching her to always look at everything from every angle and always expect the unexpected. And you know, for lack of a better term, look for this black swan. Yeah, there you go. Good advice, huh, yeah.

So DB Wise must be picking some highlights from your book here, so you should be seeing. Let's get some royalties over here for you, chris. This book, like I said, was amazing. I've listened to the audio version a couple of times and it has from start to finish. It's just a great learning experience. But I love how each chapter could be a standalone lesson and application in and of itself, and so I highly recommend anyone who, if you're looking to just better become a speaker, learn how to create more meaningful small talk to better go into a powerful negotiation. If you're a manager, c level executive you know just to best set yourself up for success in every situation, whether you're negotiating a deal or buying a car, or getting a coffee or looking for a cool guy discount. Like we learned earlier, it's just amazing how negotiation skills can play into seemingly every component of your day, with every interaction with another person.

0:41:56 - Speaker 2 Awesome, yeah, and Chase, let's turn everybody on to my newsletter. What do you think about?

0:42:00 - Speaker 1 that? Oh, absolutely yeah. Where can we connect with you?

0:42:03 - Speaker 2 All right. So the newsletter is called the Edge. It comes out once a week. It's complimentary I got an old complimentary. It's free. I got an old friend that used to like to say, if it's free I'll take three. And you know, short, digestible newsletter comes out. There's about well, there's one article it's about 500 to 800 words long, which it pays pays in half, which means it's quick, easy read, actionable stuff. You can make yourself better at negotiation. The other thing the newsletter does too is it tells you about where to get our other training products when we're doing training. We got a training coming up shortly in DC. We're going to do New York, after that we're going to come back to LA. We bounce around the country how to find out about that, how to find out how we can help you. It's a great gateway to everything that we do. The name of it is the Edge and a simple way to subscribe is to text the words FBI, empathy and make it all one word. Don't let your spell check.

0:42:58 - Speaker 1 Make it two words Be careful about what You're not correct.

0:43:01 - Speaker 2 Yeah, don't put a space in there. Get the FBI empathy and send that word to the number 22828. That's 22828. 22828. And you get a dialogue, a response back. That'll sign up for the newsletter and we'll help you get better. We'll help you have a not just a more productive get more for your family, but enjoy it. Have a lot more fun too.

0:43:27 - Speaker 1 It is great supplemental, complementary material. Ever since we've been in communication about scheduling this interview, I've been signed up for the newsletter and I find the content very valuable, and that's even how I found out about your upcoming event here in DC. Unfortunately, I'm going to be traveling at the time and I'm going to miss that event, but I would definitely love to attend one of these in the future.

0:43:48 - Speaker 2 Well, we'll keep doing it that we like DC.

0:43:51 - Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, come on down anytime, let's negotiate something, all right you?

0:43:56 - Speaker 2 know what you might get?

0:43:58 - Speaker 1 the cool guy discount, I'll take it. I'll take it. If not, at least I'll ask for it. Right, never heard this, chris. One final question. You'll kind of just explaining the backstory behind EverFord radio and the message, and you know why. I try to bring people on such as yourself who are putting such a great purpose to their passion, and you are yourself living this life, everford, in your own manner. How would you say your book never split the difference. How would you say you're teaching and coaching around negotiating and life skills? How does this help others live their life? Everford.

0:44:32 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and I love the idea of EverFord also. I love the idea. It's a great philosophy, thank you. You know this is about winning collaboratively. You know it's moving forward with the people that are in your life, whether or not they're in your personal relationships, your business relationships. You don't move ahead by beating other people. I mean great collaborations is where and I don't use the phrase win-win but it's good for the people that you're dealing with and they want to continue to deal with you and they continue to feel better about themselves for having dealt with you, and I think that fits very much into the EverFord philosophy.

0:45:16 - Speaker 1 That's an amazing explanation I always go back to. You can be good on your own, but you will only be great with a team or at least one other person at your side. It's amazing what people can do when you come together. Yeah, agree, chris. Thank you again for your time. I very much look forward to the weekly newsletters and your upcoming events and very much look forward to connecting with you in the future here in DC.

0:45:43 - Speaker 2 Thanks, it's my pleasure.