FBI Hostage Negotiator Chris Voss on How to Get a Raise, a Better Job Offer, and Everything Else You Want

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“by U.S. Bank. What's the secret to getting more money? It's how you ask for it.”

Today, on money we have Chris Voss teaches us exactly how to ask for and get what we want. Chris has spent two decades with the FBI where he became the lead international kidnapping negotiator. He's taught business negotiation at Harvard at Georgetown. He's written best-selling

books on negotiation, including never split the difference, which is one of my absolute favorites,

and my husband and success, too. He tells us exactly what to say to get a raise at work, how to negotiate a better job offer, what mistakes kill negotiation before they even start, and the negotiation myths that are actually setting you up to fail. I'm Nicole Lappin. The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand.

“Chris Voss I am so excited to welcome you to money rehab. I'm happy to be here. It's cool.”

I got to tell you that my husband and I talk about you sometimes in bed. Like, you just threw me a softball and I'm trying to decide whether that's straight and whether I could hit it, but I'm going to take a pass. We love love love and our obsess. This is what happens when two entrepreneurs live together. We are obsessed with your

book. Never split the book. Never. So explain to people who haven't read it yet. What that means,

because when you think about negotiations, the most common thing is one person wants a thing for $10. One person wants a thing for $20. Let's meet in the middle and decide on 15. Right? Right. So theoretically, that's a good idea. The problem is law lost things twice as much as an equivalent game. That's one thing. A law's thing twice as much as an equivalent game. Ignore human nature your peril. You can't get around that. Daniel Kahneman, Professor Kahneman, Nobel Peace, Nobel

Prize in Behavioral Economics, 2002, Prospect Theory. The summary of it is a law's things twice as much as an equivalent game. So it's a rule of human nature. So what does that have to do with meeting in the middle? If I give in by five, I'm going to feel I gave in by 10. And I'm going to resent you. I'm not going to care that you gave in the same amount. I'm going to resent it because it felt like 10. So because I resent you, it's going to interfere in our implementation.

Resetment is a toxin for relationships. And so it's a poison that's going to continue to eat until I get you back, until I feel we're even. So I turn around and I do something an implementation and I sting you for 10. Now you get a reason to resent me. And so splitting the difference is a recipe for a downward spiral in a relationship. There's no way around it. Because what you're saying is that human nature and the way that we're wired makes us believe that we lost out on something,

even though we gained half and the other person gained half. You don't feel that there was a long time ago when I was teaching a Georgetown, a stumbled over this video where they were stopping people in the street and getting them to bet on money. And the guy would say, okay, so I'm first of all, I'm going to give you this $10. The $10 is yours. Now let's gamble it. Now the person who's playing with house money, they just got $10. And every time they lost it,

a loss. It just feeling like you had a loss and really the real key to empathy is in any given moment my experience is probably vastly different than yours. Empathy is comprehending with the other person who's going through at the same time. And my experience could be so strongly positive or so strongly negative that I don't see what's going on with you. It's one of the reasons why that we

teach people to stop using common ground, to connect. And the problem is when you share your common

ground, something happened to you as a kid, something that happened to you in your business, you feel so strongly, it feels great to share common ground. I feel like you just hijacked my story. I started to tell you, you know, when I was a kid and you know, I lost this game and you go like, yeah, the same thing happened to me and you go off on something that's not the same, even if it is exactly the same. I'm sitting and going like, I had to want to, you had to come

up with a better story. And so in an exact same moment, one person feels phenomenal and the other person feels squashed. So empathy is understanding what the other person's going through at the moment. And when you split the difference, the other person's going through a negative experience. But wouldn't that be vulnerability? Wouldn't that be an opportunity to connect as humans to feel

“the same human experience? But you have to understand what's going on with the other side.”

If I share my story, I'm connecting with you. You feel squashed. So I'm actually going to, I'm all about you sharing your story. I'm not going to jump in with my story. There's certain key moments in everybody's life that I want to dig into. And by not sharing my story,

I never interfere with you sharing yours with me. So just by your time, or just be fast and be curious.

Like, yeah, wow. And actually listen, the fun part about that is, is this going to sound crazy? I get people bonding to me all the time, much more than I realize. Because I actually listen, nobody listen to them. I'm, I'm talking to a friend of mine, Charlie, a few months back. And we get into a conversation just because I'm curious. And I, and I dig in to him about his mom. And I don't share a word about my mother. And to me, it's a routine conversation.

Because I am genuinely curious about people. Next morning, you walk up to when he goes like, I'm, man, you know, I really, really, really enjoy the conversation last time. I mean,

“I feel so connected to you. And I'm like, wow. Okay. Oh, yeah. That's why. That's why.”

Because the human connection takes place one way at a time. When I was a husband and

he goes, shit, there was always this ongoing conversation if we're going to salt the stronghold,

swathing, where we're going to tell us the negotiators. Because clearly, the negotiators have bonded with this guy. Listen to the way he's talking to them. This bad guy is clearly bonded to our hostage negotiators. And a hostage negotiators, there always be like, what are you talking about? Like, if we're going to take this guy out before he kills a hostage, I'm down. You know, to save a life, 1,000 percent, I'll walk him to the door. Tell him, I tell him we're going

to fit him for a suit, whatever kind of excuse. It was always ongoing because when you're standing outside of it and you see and hear one person bonding heavily, you know, realize it's not a two way street at that moment. It's a sequential thing. I want to get into a specific situations because this is gold, Chris. I want to understand this for how we can put this into our everyday lives in our work, in our relationships. And I know you really love teaching people

about the best ways to go about negotiating arrays. So before going into a conversation like that, what should you think? What should you do? Your mindset is not just the race. Your mindset is to negotiate a deal where you flourish and you prosper. And then also,

“you should, it's a relationship. It's a long-term relationship. You're going to spend a lot of”

time, almost an intimate relationship. You know, people talk about all the time, spend more time at work than you do with your spouse. Yeah, your work way, your work husband. Or just in the environment,

I loved when I was teaching a Georgetown U.S.C. given women advice and the classes on

they asked, you know, I'm getting ready, I'm interviewing with a company that's famous for not paying women as much as they pay men. How should I handle it? And my answer is don't interview with them. Because I'm going to answer you like a dad and you say, "Dad, this guy is abusive to me. How do I get him to be better? You don't, you leave him." So, if it's an abusive environment or even if the core values don't line up with you, don't take that job. It's like having a relationship with a

person whose core values don't line up with you. It's going to be painful. You're not going to change them.

So, you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you. Do you like their core values?

Do you like what they stand for? Because you can't flourish if you don't. So, those are the starting points. So, if you were going in for that conversation, should you try to time it around a time you've had a big win within the company? Or are you on a high? For a race? Yeah. It shouldn't just be confined to that because one big win maybe he had some bad losses previously. So, what's your average performance over six months to a year? How valuable are you overall? You want to be able,

“and you need to remind a boss if it's an existing job, it's easy for the boss to lose sight of your”

value. So, being conscious of that is really important because you're doing your boss a favor. When the boss got a lot of moving parts, feel reminded of how much you're worth on a when you have these conversations. It makes it easier for a boss whose heart is in a right place to pay you more. And if they don't pay you more, then it is hurts in a wrong place, then that's an indicator that you're in a wrong place because you can't flourish as a human being with a boss who's

not going to take care of you. So, you shouldn't wait for a time when you closed a big deal or you had a huge win happen that week. Depends upon the context. Is that the only big deal you close that year? Because you come rolling and I teach the salary negotiation course. I just started went back to doing it taught it last year. We got another one coming up pretty soon. And what I really, really, really tooled in it from last time around because I can help you get a better

salary. It ain't that hard. Keep in the salary is the issue flourishing and getting promoted so that it's a beginning of your prosperity. So, so you don't get fired in here because you need to live up to expectations. So, you got a big win but that's the only win for the year. The boss knows that. I've been waiting for you to come through. I've been sitting here paying you for the last six months and I haven't got a return on my investment. So, what you just did now was really

good but you're still in that loss and you're going to come to me oblivious to that. So, I want to teach when I teach a salary negotiation course as myself. What are the behaviors I want to see in you that's going to make me want to pay you more? What are they? First one is what you're appetite.

“Do you want to play in a big game? How do you express that and what does that look like?”

Friend of mine from high school gave me this question. Tom became and every job interview he ever had and in every one of his performance ratings

would always say how can I be guaranteed to be involved in projects that are critical to

this strategic future of this company? Now, how does that land? Your boss has team player holy cow. Team players automatically more valuable. Important stuff, ambitious. You want to play in a big game. You don't want to count paper clips and get paid like you're bringing in diamonds. You want to actually be worth the money. And so, I instantly, I'm going to

“rethink what I think about you. I'm doing, um, I could broaden to do a Zoom call with all the sales”

people of this company during a pandemic and the entire sales team is on 100 or so people and the CEO. Why are they all on in the Q&A? One of the sales people says how do I get this guy to pay me more?

And I say go to this guy and then you have to mean this and say how do I become involved in

products that are critical to the strategic future of this company? And before two seconds passed,

the CEO jumps in and says I wish everybody would ask me that. So how do you change how the boss sees you? You're asking to do stuff that's healthy for everybody. You're not selfish, just asking for US for a raise. You're selfish. US guy, you can make the team better. I want to invest in you. You've said that salary is just what you agreed to do in the past. You're kind of dead even at your salary. I love that. So explain because there's an order of operations. First you have to do more

or agree to more before you can get more. Let's not necessarily more it's more valuable.

“And that's why you need to understand the value that you're bringing to the table now.”

Now that's hard. But if it's a constant focus to begin with, you're more valuable to me because you're trying to pay attention to how you're moving the needle. There's a system I think it was invented by Vern Harnish is called scaling up. And you're supposed to have daily huddles that last about three minutes max. And these persons are supposed to say, "What's my priority? What am I stuck on? How's what I'm doing moving the needle?" Those are awesome conversations

to have. Anybody that talks to me, this is what I'm working on, this is how it's moving the needle. I'm like, "All right, good, good." Because I get to pay everybody. So we got to move the needle here. We, you know, ultimately, it's got to be revenue. But are you doing something that impacts revenue? So if you're even aware of that, you matter more to me than a person who's just count paper clips. Well, what about bringing up personal things? Like, I just bought a house or I have a sick kid or

I have some other hardships. Like, in the movies, the hostage negotiations always talk about

“the kids to try and gain something that they, I don't know if that's how it really works.”

But does that? No. Help? Well, I mean, so what am I, as a boss, what am I responsible for? You just bought a house? How is I involved in that decision? I mean, I want to put you in a bigger house. Actually, you just bought a house? Here's some stuff that I more valuable stuff or here's how you could be more viable so that not only you could pay that mortgage, but I want to put you in a bigger house. I mean, I genuinely want to put everybody that works for me in a bigger house. I genuinely

want them to live longer. I want them to be healthier. I want the kids to go to better schools. So let's talk about how I could pay it. But if you made that decision and now you're bringing

“it to me as if it was my fault. First of all, what was my fault? Secondly, okay, if that's if those”

are the ground rules, let's talk about how you could be more viable, how I can't pay you more. And again, it's not necessarily more. It's more valuable. So it doesn't garner sympathy. Like, in a hostage negotiation, all I've seen is in the movies, when the hostage is saying like, "But I have a kid, but I just had a baby." Does that work? Only indirectly. Like, if you're if you're laying it on them, they know what you're doing.

And it doesn't matter to them. In reality, it doesn't matter. In directly, it can make a difference. You want to increase your survivability in the same way because it creates your survivability at a hostage, the same way that you meet people in a business setting. How do you meet people in a business? You walk up, you offer your hand and you tell

me first name. And instantly you're human being. That is the same way. As soon as I become a human

on my own, you may be at some point of time, if you resonate with children, then maybe I can share that. If I found out that your kids mean something to you, then at some point of time, I might have the opportunity on down a line to share that. But if I want to weaponize that early on, then you're going to smell that.

This is probably an unrealistic scenario. If I'm ever hostage, Chris Voss, what do I say?

Just make sure that you're not in there. Yeah. That's it. Make sure they know what your first

name is. And then say you're responsible for me. I'm sweating. I'm sweating. All right, back to getting a raise. If you've gotten job offers elsewhere, should you bring that up or does that a road trust? Because you're looking elsewhere. It depends on how you say it. And if I had a job out offer elsewhere, and I wanted to bring it up here, first of all, understand it's very possible that it's not going to land poorly. They're going to feel like you're extorting them. They're

going to feel like you're trying to take them hostage. They're going to feel like you're playing

them off against somebody else. Those are all quite predictable reactions from the other side.

This then gets into our accusations on a strategy, which then is, you say, like, look, I'm going to sound like I'm trying to play it off against somebody else. I'm going to sound greedy. I'm going to sound like I don't care about you. I'm going to sound like I'm a complete mercenary that I'm only auctioning myself off to the highest bidder, which means I have no loyalty to you at all.

“That's what this is going to sound like. And then you let that sink in because you warned them.”

You haven't tried to hide it. You haven't tried to deny it. You've tried to warn them. And then the last thing is if you say, if you bring this up and you try to act like it's their problem, their instant reaction is going to be that ain't my problem at your problem. So then you say, this is my problem. This is not your problem. This is my problem. My problem is I'm going to look like a jerk. You got to hate me for this. I got an offer from another company.

Some self-effacing. Self-effacing a close friend of mine in New York, got a job offer from another company. And he needed to maintain a relationship with the company that he's leaving. And he says to them, I get something I have to share with you. And I'm really

“afraid you're going to hate me as soon as I tell you. No, no, no, no, no. What is it?”

And negotiating his exit, they asked to retain him as an advisor. So that's the right way to bring it up. Yeah, understand what the other side's going through. And recognize not what you hope they're going through. I would hope that you would want a better future for me. I would hope that you can't blame me for wanting to get paid more. Hope is not a strategy.

So never use the word hope. You got to know, you know, I don't like the word hope at all.

It's another thing that people are blind themselves. My friend Joe Pollish calls hope is in a approach. He calls it "Hopeiam." It's a drug. You can be, you can, yeah, you can get, you get all fired up about hope. What about body language? I know people will get a hung up on that.

“What should you think about your, how's my body language right now?”

Are you, are you scaring me? I'm scared to death. Can you see it in my face? I'm the most scary. I'm the baddest of bad guys you've ever seen. Yeah, you're like, I don't know. We need a swathing. There's nothing. You get an extraction. It dealt with a car. Oh, I'm your last thanks. Body language is widely misinterpreted. And so, you know, there are a few, there are a few universal signals that other people find very encouraging.

When you're listening simply nodding your head, universally is very encouraging. The, the look of actual curiosity and intrigue is universal looking. It's what I just did. You know, you turn your head to the side. You kind of, and you kind of like, oh, wow. Yeah, it's interesting. You're universally, that lands well. Now, interpreting somebody else's body language, you don't know if somebody's furious if they're thinking, um, I have been accused of having a

resting serial killer face. So that's the male equivalent of arresting pictures. Maybe, yeah. So, but I'm just listening internally. I've, I've literally had people say to me, I thought you were thinking about killing me. It's like, no, I was, I thought, I loved what you said.

I go through, uh, at the privilege to go through Harvard Law School's negotiation course,

“while I was still with the bureau, and we're doing these team negotiations and valuing listening”

in, in the exercises afterwards, the other side says, okay. So you, you guys were, you guys were playing good cop, bad cop, you were playing bad cop, horse cop, and boss was the horse cop. I'm like, dude, I was just listening. Well, that isn't the look that you had on your face. So what's my point originally? You got to be careful about the interpretation of body language.

You're accurate about a third of the time, which means two thirds of the time,

there's a pretty good change of role. What does that mean? Just gotta find out what's going to their mind. And the, the angry face, they're either listening or they're angry or the thing about something else that's bothering them. But is not more about the other person interpreting what they think you're thinking? We don't know what someone else is thinking.

“I can say to you, it seems like something is on your mind. And the change that you tell”

me really high, I can also say, I can't tell if you're listening or if you're mad. And my son goes dead silent a lot. So then you don't even have the visual feedback. We'll be

talking on a phone. He'll go dead silent. I'll literally say to him, I can't tell if you're

thinking if you're mad. And he'll tell me which one it is. More often is thinking. Yeah, he goes, he goes, but you can't tell if you don't have the visual feedback. But even if you got the visual feedback, they could be thinking intensely. I was in a very brief negotiation a number of years ago with Jack Wolves. I was pitching him on coming and speaking to my class that was teaching at USC at the time. And when I pitched him, he looked

furious and it scared me to death. Jack, Jack, well, Charlie, Jack, you know, when he was alive, he was just like, yes, he ifs is an intense look. And he didn't say anything for the longest time. And he looked back at me and we made the deal. So he was thinking, it wasn't furious. And thank God I sat there and I just waited and waited and waited and waited.

And finally, he actually, his, his furious look was him thinking through the implementation

details of me, him coming to speak to my class. And who he says, look, all right. So this is after he had this furious look on his face. He said, this is my personal assistant's name. This is special Twitter account. We have set up the communicate with her. I will call her and tell her who you are and what you want. I think we're going to be in Los Angeles in a fall if we are coming to speak to your class. So as an experienced businessman he understood, if you made a deal,

“you have to have steps. Who do I got to talk to? How do they know to expect to hear from me?”

What's the timing look like? He thought through every single step. So he was focused on the steps. Well, he looked angry. Because I'm so surprised that you say this because you've negotiated in the craziest, gnarliest negotiations over decades. Are you still, when you're in the middle of an negotiation, freaking out, shit in your pants? Like, when somebody's silent, is that still happened? What's going on? If I haven't dialed in enough, if I don't have enough data at the moment,

like I got in a McDonald too, I'm tired sometimes too. You know, our issue, the biggest chance we have as human beings is decision fatigue. Like the best time to make a deal is roughly about 10 o'clock in the morning, your time. You got plenty of mental gas in a tank, you're resilient, you're probably still in a good mood, you're not dealing from food coma, lunch, you're not hungry, you're nutritionist dialed in, you're at your peak. Those are the times that cut great deals.

And so what we deal with the rest of the time is what if I'm tired, what if four or five things happen to me that made me mad, disappointed, disappointed me? And so by the end of the day, my game is dropped by the end of the day. I'm more likely to snap at somebody, or, you know, I'm working really hard to try to get back in a good mood because it's been a long day and this didn't work out, that didn't work out, this didn't work out. And yeah, I'm human. I got

all the same human responses. Okay Chris, can we do some role playing? Cool. So let's say it's 10 o'clock in the morning. Right. You work for me, you put some time on my calendar to come and ask me for a race. Right. Action. Hey, Chris. Hey, I'm up. You know what, everybody that walks into your office at 10 o'clock in the morning comes in here with their hand out begging for more. You

help you? Yeah, no one's offering me money at 10 o'clock. I would love that. Right. And so you're

“breaking yourself trying to find out what the bad news is. And you know what? Well, what is it?”

You're going to hate me? No, I could never. How can I be more viable to the company? I don't

think I could love you more now that you say that. I wish everybody would walk into my office, asking for that. All right. So, you know, let's lay it out. I want to I want to bring more to the table. I want to do more. I want to I want to work on our future. Secondarily, I want to get paid more. But primarily, I want to build my career and I want to actually be more viable, which leaves you in a position where it's easy for you to pay me more. How much more are we

talking about? Triple. Get out here. Don't let the door hits you on the way out. Yeah, well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't go for a number right away. Tough thing about salary is really both sides got to be comfortable. Which means there's a real danger and overpaying people without the performance. Because if a boss is overpaying you, then a boss is going to be really demanding. Which you're going to create a negative vibe.

Nobody needs it. I don't need to have unrealix as a boss. I do not need to have unrealistic expectations for you. I have overpaid people in the past. On the hope that they would rise to the occasion. So don't go out a number. We've heard on the show other experts say if you don't

throw out a really high number, you'll never get anywhere in that vicinity. And you'll also

often get shown the door. The problem with high anchoring is it drives deals from the table. And you high anchor with me. I'm most likely to plan on showing you the door. Because the high anchor in a salary is to really not take into account the impact on everybody in the organization. So you have just to find yourself as not being a team player. So back to our role playing where you were joking and jovial and saying triple, you know,

you were intending it sounded like to pivot toward the value of what you could bring to the table, not actually the value of what you would want. Well, I'm going to actually. Yeah, I'm going to

want to find out what you think is valuable. How I can move the needle.

So ask more questions. Yeah, or ask some questions or here is a really counterintuitive thing about the Black Swan method, which is what makes it better than anything else.

“I'm going to get information out of you without asking you any questions. Oh, how so?”

They're called labels. And if I say to you, all right, so what's really valuable? That's an exhausting question for you to answer. Which means if I have a cot you at 10 in the morning, you're not going to be able to answer it. Also, if I say what's really valuable to you, I'm sending you the message that I don't know which makes me less valuable. I don't want to seem clueless. If I say to you, how can I help? When you expect me to know how you can help to start with?

Yeah, because you're giving the other person a cognitive load. And I sound stupid. Like, if I'm, I've been here for a year and I got no idea how I can help. So what I'm going to say to you, I'm going to say it seems like that's some things that you think would be really valuable. Yeah, tell me more, Chris. Yeah, I have my perspective, but it seems like you have some things. Yeah, I just want to make more money in this company so we can grow in scale. Sounds like you don't

“know how you want to make more money. Well, how do you think we should make more money?”

See, now we're getting into a back and forth. And if you're throwing a back on me that quickly, then you don't trust me. And my chances of us, we're not, we're not in a collaborative thing. Your defenses, if you're throwing a right back on me, your defenses are too high. All right, I'm going to lower my defenses. Yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of value that I, I think you can bring. We could continue to increase our sales effort. We could reach out to new

partners to make more inroads in other verticals. I'm using so much corporate speed. Yeah, well, okay, so what that kind of an answer is? It's vague. You, well, if you, if you really tell me the truth and you're a little vague on it yourself, but your gut instinct is, we need more proactive outreach to new corporate partners. That's right.

way to do more outreach to corporate partners, that would help move the business forward. It sounds

“like you think a binding constraint is only focused on inbound when not doing any outbound.”

100% you nailed it. Okay, so sounds like if I come up with a plan, how do you, that you want to review it and see how comfortable you are with it? Now, another thing, you know, and this is a hard thing for an employee to do, and I'll leave back on my friend Tom, tell me this. Tom loves to promote people that he could shoot down their ideas, and they would learn and come back with a better idea. So, the real tough thing is going into a boss. It's a pretty good chance that the boss isn't

going to know exactly what they want to do, but they're going to have a good idea of what they don't

want to do. They agreed more plans. Right. Or, you know, all right, so if I come back to you with a plan and you go like, no, that won't work for the following reasons. Now, that's very disheartening to hear that.

“But the boss is looking for somebody to took that into account and went like, okay, and then”

it come back in smarter. So, getting shot down by the boss, and this happens to me all the time. Like, I'm not sure what to do, but I'm pretty sure what not to do. And if somebody comes to me with an idea, I'm like, no, no, that won't work. It's probably going to trigger a better idea for me. But as a receiver of getting shot down, it's hard. So, what you're looking for from people is the ability to get shot down and learn and come back. And then, even if this person didn't have

good ideas, if you came back to me with a better plan or an adjusted plan, the message, I'm getting is, oh, you listened and you've processed it and you showed that you learned from the experience. So, there's a way to begin to develop yourself as an employee, which comes with your are you a team player and did you actually listen to what the boss had to say? The two years and one

“mouth, listen more than you talk. Five times, because you get two eyes and you should be gathering”

data with your eyes, choice myth on my team, because it's listening with your eyes. And then, you're gut instinct. I refer to it, you know, your sense, what do I smell is going on here? You know, that's sort of, you know, what's my gut tell me, the accumulation of everything is sense of smell. So, you should really, if you're pulling in all the data, you're really absorbing five times as much as you're talking. And what if you're in a new job situation where the salary you're being

offered is less than what you thought. This one is tough because you don't have history. Right. With the other person or camaraderie, it's a new situation that you're walking into. You can get a lot of information in the interview. If it's a two-way interview, the most viable person when you're being interviewed is by individuals or a panel person, it isn't saying much. Because they got a ton of data. And they've been taught that they're not opening

your mouth unless you're listening. Now, one of the job negotiations from one of my students at Georgetown, I told them to say, what does it take to be successful here? Which is not what are you looking for in a candidate? Everybody out there, every person that works in MBA programs in there, the student counselor is trying to help get jobs. Say, find out what they're looking for in a candidate. What do you look for in a candidate? That is not the same as what does it take to be

successful here. And as I recall, it was a female that asked a question. Four people on the other

side, one guy in Leans Ford and says, no one ever asked us that. Here's what it takes.

Now, she gets the job. She's talking to the people afterwards. And they say, that guy never says anything in an interview panel. That's the first time he ever spoke up. We're shocked that you got this guy to talk. Like the level of good things that happen there first of all, you want to know how you could be successful there. You actually asking as opposed to, well, I've done this and I've done that. Here's what you're looking for in a candidate. This

whole non-sensical sales job. Somebody that interviews you in the process is really going to know they're not telling you until you show them that you're actually going to listen. And if you're in there with your value proposition and how you resume fits and how you're all the selling points,

that are looking to see if you're going to listen from the very beginning. So you don't have to have

a history of people. You just got to show right off the bat you listen. So fine, you get the job and the offer is 100 grand. Right. You're looking for 150. Right. And so you want to advocate for yourself, but you also want to have a good impression with your new employer and there's a power and balance. So how do you navigate that? Yeah, I'd lay that out from the very beginning. And I'd say, all right. So because of the offer to 100, there's a difference between

what's the job market say you're worth and what can they afford to pay? Then secondarily, what's the future hold? These are not connected at all to what the job market is offering. Like I would go work as Warren Buffett's assistant for $15 an hour. I make a lot more

than that right now, but that job would be worth it. So what's in the job? And ultimately,

is there prospects for growth here? Do I want to learn these skills? So I would lay out from the very beginning. Okay. So you've got to feel for whether or not they're legitimately offering you a hundred. They're not lowball in you. Now, in point of fact, they have a range. In point of fact, they're going to come in at the lower end of the range.

“But there is a limit to how high they could go. So you need to find out what the range is.”

If you got a number that you want to get to, ask them how you can get there.

But be realistic. Yeah, be realistic. And, you know, what are the attributes of the job?

Because so much affects it. And the biggest thing is like, let's say you want 150. They got 150. And you don't like their culture. That is blood money. You're going to be so unhappy. They're going to age you. You're going to be a miserable human being. You're not going to learn. Like there's so much to go into real job satisfaction. Where is it taking you in your life? And are you going to enjoy the journey? Which puts a lot of latitude on the kind of monetary

compensation, which is necessary? There's no question that you got bills to pay. But if it's blood money and it ages you, you don't want to be there. Yeah, because, you know,

“I said, I give you $10 million, but you would die tomorrow. Would you take the money?”

Or if it was, if I was miserable, if it just, if it was, rely completely online people and bamboos on them. Some of the products they didn't need and were exposing them to health risks that was going to shorten that lifespan. But you could make a lot of money doing it. And nobody's ever happy that way. Well, you emphasized monetary compensation. What about non-monetary compensation? How should you go about asking for

more time off an expense budget, whatever else? If it's in a context of you being a better employee, are you going to get your work done? You know, are you a championship player? Context and some of the simple things that make people call it just simple, but they actually what makes you a championship player? Context in terms of the job, not context in terms of your life. So if you wanted to, let's say, work from home for one day, it would be less focused around

your kid and more focused on how you could contribute more by doing that. Well, if I'm delivering when I'm working from home, not really hard to work from home and deliver.

“And that's why people more and more. And today's competitive environment, you want to work remote,”

you want to work from home, look at your employer's position. Okay, you want to make a $175,000 a year working from home. I get somebody in the Philippines who works for $25,000 a year. Does the same job of you? Why do I want to pay you $175,000 when the job is the same? You know, you got to look at it from the boss's point of view. We made significant adjustments in my company and I got more of my assistants now, all of my assistants work out of my house when they used to work remotely.

Because we have, we work hard. And if you're working remotely, then the only interaction you have with people is when you're working hard. There's no enjoyable times. I come walking into the

nine to three. We don't have a lunch break, but I want you to get up and take a walk and clear your head. I want you to go get something to eat. People who work from me walk out back and forth in front of the house all the time clear their head. If I know everybody's out the door about $3, I come walking in about $245 because I want to tell them a stupid story about some stupid that I did or want to chat. You know, these moments when we get a chat with each other or something occurs to me off

the top of my head. If we're working remote, these golden moments that actually make us care about each other's human beings just don't occur. And if you're on a championship team, if you want a player, it's really hard to be remote and be an a player because you don't get to know people. You don't get to laugh. You don't, you know, the stupid stuff that makes this all human

“beings. It just doesn't come through working remote. Now if you want to work occasionally”

remote, people in my team do it all the time. Like I'm not coming in today. I got a, you know, I want to work remote and Nate might head of marketing. He stays in his apartment sometimes because he really wants to focus and having to people around in these interactions which are highly enjoyable to him or also a distraction. I get another guy who knocks himself out from you on a regular basis. I get a work from home today. Cool. You got it. You get, you get your stuff done. I get a worry

about you and you're always doing extra for me. I don't have to worry about you. I don't care if you're

working from home because you bring your A game all the time. So what's the context? Are you doing a better job? Have you, have you, have I got so much trust in you that I don't care where you are?

“Who you don't think you can have a winning career by working from home? No. You got to get together”

in person's son. Now how often do you get in person? My director of operations. Now current Chelsea, she lives in Virginia. We don't get to see each other on a regular basis but in the anxious issue that we have. We run a US entrepreneurial operating system. So we get together quarterly for that. We run our conferences. You know, we get together for that. It's harder. I'll call or

just to shoot the breeze. If I got work related stuff, I try to make the personal stuff always

be the last end of the conversation. I joke around with her a lot. It's much harder. She's one of a few people that's capable of working mostly remote, but we talk a lot. And we have a lot of personal interactions just to check in on each other. And I also tease her a lot and she almost always

“she almost always. She bites hard and on the on the jokes. And she's like, I give me a heart attack.”

So, you know, we joke around a lot too. But it's it's much harder when you're remote. If you can, as an employee, try to get in in person as much as you can. Or have personal interaction. If your excuse to work remote is so that you can focus on your personal life. How does it play out on the other side? It makes you a sea player. So how do we use empathy and vulnerability and connection for the most successful negotiation? Empathy seems like compassion. It's a precursor to it. It's not

compassion. It's it's very hard to be compassion without being empathic first. Empathy sounds

like vulnerability and a lot of a lot of the application of emotional intelligence. Everybody's familiar with self-effacing humor. It's a combination of two of our skills put together simultaneously. One of them is playfulness. Playfulness. You're 31% smarter than a positive frame of mind. So if you're playful, you're smarter. Emotions have a contagion for neuroscience reasons. So if I'm at a highly positive playful state of mind, the chances that you're going to catch it

is extremely high. So self-effacing humor, we got playfulness going on there, right? Self-effacing is you making fun of yourself. Like, you know, I probably seem like the biggest deity you ever met. Said like that. Well, the accusation is audit. One of our superpower skills is saying the negative things on your mind about me. So self-effacing humor is me playfully. If I can sense that you think I'm an idiot because I'm not catching on. I won't say I don't want you to think I'm an idiot.

I'll say I probably seem like an idiot. And I threw on this playfulness. So that's the application of emotional intelligence. Now, is that vulnerability for me to say, and I probably look like a

lean on self-deprecating humor all the time. And I've been criticized for that, saying that by whom somebody who's giving me a compliment, and then I put myself down or I dismiss it, doesn't lend from more connection context context. Yeah, um, as somebody was complimenting me, I'm not sure that I would throw it in that sequence. Now, you're using self-effacing humor a lot because you're finding it to be an extremely high-value strategy in a lot of circumstances.

Not all circumstances. And in point of fact, you're running your own human performance laboratory, which means self-effacing humor worked here. Let me experiment to see if I can develop a gut instinct to where it does work better or it doesn't work at all. Nothing works all the time.

“You just want to stuff the works more than anything else. Why can kill a negotiation before it starts?”

There are three conflict types. And what kills an negotiation before it starts depends on each one of the types. The types are fight, fight, make friends, which is a sort of analyst, a commentator. They're the cavemen that survive. When the cavemen and we have cavemen wiring, we've all inherited. Human nature has not changed since we've been aware of human nature. Now it gets affected and influenced by the social media the day, but the basics of human nature

has been the same for 10,000 years. So what we inherited from the cavemen, we all had, it's gender agnostic. The world splits evenly into thirds. The Black Swan Group has more than enough data to back that up. Fight, fight, make friends. So what kills a negotiation before it starts?

“The highly analytical person sees conflict is extremely expensive, extremely counterproductive.”

The loud negotiator, the analyst will never come to the table with them.

See, elephant crashing through the jungle, I heard you coming a long way away, we're not even going to talk. The assertive is allowed negotiator. Everybody thinks that the best negotiator or the best salesperson, the cliche is allowed as a person in a room. The analyst never gets to the table with them. They were driven from the table before anybody ever approached it because they know the assertive is not going to listen and it's going to snooze roll over and it's not going

to be thoughtful. So that kills the deal before it ever gets started. That's the biggest thing. Getting an analyst to the table with them is very, very hard because they saw this sort of coming from a thousand miles away. Now, assertive will talk to anybody. It assertives emotions heal up the way Wolverine heals up from being scarred or deadpool. Like you could stay up in a assertive in a heart and an hour later, here she's ready to talk to you again. They get over it fast.

The analyst, you know, they're like, all right, you stabbed me in a heart, you're going to do it

again. I'm not sitting down with you. And then finally, the accommodator of the make friends

“person, very hopeful oriented. The only thing that really drives them from the table, it's hard”

to get them back if they've been hurt and you don't apologize. Now, the the analyst and he serves to care less about apologies because they don't see it as being solution oriented. An analyst will be like, okay, you apologize. Number one, or you the one that committed to sin. If you weren't, then your apology means nothing. If you were the one that committed to sin with your apology, I'm sorry. You feel that way? That tells me you ain't going to

change. So, analysts and assertives tend to never apologize. Ecomodators have to know, have to hear

the apology. And they're a third of the planet. So, and that causes the disconnect on an awful out also because he's sort of is going to hurt the accommodator. And then not apologize because they see the apology as being useless. And they feel it's insulting to apologize. And he commented, it can't hear anything until they sort of apologize. Like, it's when you start, when you see the three types, your question started off with, how do negotiations get killed before

they started? It's going to be because of type mismatch. The same sort of question is, most impasses in negotiation are a result of type mismatch. And not necessarily that they actually

Here's how it manifests itself. An analyst is a thinker and loves silence. Two classic examples, Elon Musk is being interviewed on Lex Freedman's podcast and they're both analysts. So, Lex asks Elon a question, and Elon sits in silence for 22 seconds for answers. Now, most people can't get past three seconds. The other person. Either person. Because it's weird. If you're not comfortable with silence, Elon's center for 22 seconds. In a later podcast,

I'm listening to Lex and he's talking about how when he sits in silence with someone, he shares the silence. And he feels more and more connected with you by sharing the silence.

“That's how an analyst feels about silence. The accommodator, the relationship,”

hope-oriented person, when they're furious, they give you the silent treatment. They signal fury. Don't want to. By silence. So, in a moment of silence, if you've got

an accommodator, a third of the world, talking with an analyst, a third of the world,

the commenter's going, "Oh my God, what got you furious? I gotta say something. He hates me right now. He's angry." An analyst is thinking, "Thank God, they shut up. I need this silence to think. You see this massive type mismatch over silence with a not-in-disagreement that just misinterpreting the moment." And then you assertive if I'm going to assertive in your analyst and you go silent, you go silent because you want to think. As an assertive, I think you've gone silence because you

want to hear more. So I'm going to talk even more and even louder. And you're going, like, "Oh,

“God, I wish this guy shut up so I could think about the last thing he said." So that's why”

type mismatch. It's not a disagreement. It's a misinterpretation of the moment. So which type makes for the best negotiator or are the best negotiators the combination of all

the types? The combination of all the types. Each type has the natural attribute is both essential

and inadequate. Analysts just think of plans. That's essential. Planning with no action is an inadequate accommodator. Very hopeful. Very optimistic. Relationship focused. These things are essential in an adequate by themselves. And I think the phrase "hope is not a strategy" comes from the number of commoner accommodators. They're just hoping it works out without detail. So, but that's essential. I mean, I got to be optimistic. I have to be hopeful. I have to want to have a great relationship

“with you. And he accommodators are very strong on all those things. The assertive.”

I got to tell you what I want. If I'm not, there's a difference between being assertive and aggressive. But if I'm not assertive with what I want, I'm making you gas. And the chances of me getting it are much lower. I've done a number of deals where I've said

here's what it looks like for us to have a great relationship that will last for 20 years

where we both prosper. That's when you give me an inadequate offer. I won't reject that offer. I'm going to tell you what a great deal looks like for me. I got to be willing to be assertive and say that. Now, I don't say it aggressively. I'm putting it in light of, here's how we prosper. I got to have this in order for us to prosper. Because if I don't tell you, I'm making you gas chances of you getting it right are less than if I've actually told you. So it's a combination.

All three, people who are coachable, people who learn, they start seeing where their deals have fallen short. And they start seeing what the other people are doing that might have fixed it. Then they start to pick up the traits of the other side. I love this. It's very esoteric. And I'm trying to imagine these different types. Can you give us an example of a crazy negotiation where these types came into play? I'm going to use real visible types.

Because everybody knows them. Donald Trump's in a sort of. He gets into a big argument with the president of Ukraine. What year and a half ago, two years ago, guys first visits to the White House. I mean, it's his name calling. Everybody's back and forth. It's like two kids in a school yard

else loves to egg on a fight. But one on one, he's at the Pope's funeral with the president of Ukraine and they cut a rare minerals to you. So what he is like publicly, I think he's learned

“that one on one, if he's charming and he listens and all the feedback, if you want to, if you want”

to objectively look at all the feedback about him, never mind whether or not you love him or hate him.

Everybody that meets him one on one says he listens intently and that he's charming. Bill Mar goes and meets him in a White House and Bill Mar's been the biggest critic of Trump forever. And he says, look, I'm sorry, the guy was charming. He was engaging. He was dialed in. He was focused. He listened to what I had to say. So as an assertive Trump has learned that one on one, you need to be engaging. You need to listen all the other attributes of the other negotiators.

So that's an example of someone who has started out as one type and I think over the years has come to learn that one on one, he's got a dial into people and it's to be charming and to listen.

I want to stay on Trump for a second because I know you talk a lot about his negotiating style.

More recently throughout the Iran War negotiations, some political scientists say that Trump is using this madman theory of diplomacy, acting erratic and predictable to try and get leveraged.

“Do you think that's what he's doing here? No, I think what he's, I think what really catches”

everybody off guard is like he's an economics focus American president. He doesn't really care what regime is in charge in the other side. Hence, Venezuela. He takes out the president of Venezuela locks him up, you know, kidnaps him. You know, a rendition is a kidnapping that some government said was okay. Believes the government in place. He doesn't care who's in charge. Now, most American presidents in the past have won a regime change. If we're going to go, if we're going to have a conflict

with the country, we want to put boots on a ground, we want to beat them on a battlefield and then we want to change their former government, which makes most countries very leery of cooperating with us if they don't have democracies. And so Trump is a different breeder cat and he's eminently predictable. Like nobody's really surprised by anything he's done or said. Like we surprised when he started talking about moving military assets in a direction of Iran that he was actually

going to use them. Every time he moves military assets, he uses them. They're not a bluff. So he's very different. He's economics focused. He thought that Iran was going to fold up when he took out the main leadership and he was going to, and the rest of them were going to say, all right, so he's going to leave us intact as long as we cooperate and play ball. I think he's been a little surprised and the fact that they haven't caught on that he actually wants to collaborate with them.

He said a long time ago, and his first term he was talking about the problems with Iran. He

“actually said, "Make Iran great again." Like if you want to collaborate with us economically,”

if all our deals are two way streets, if you're not slaughtering 30,000 of your citizens, you know, who knows what the numbers of Iranians that were killed by the regime before reform stepped in. There's tens of thousands of people that that regime murdered in the streets. If you're not doing that, I don't care if you have a dictatorship. I don't Trump is like just play ball economically. Let's make fair deals. Let's prosper. Let's put up some hotels.

Let's increase your tourism. That's unlike any other American president we've ever had. Every other American president demanded that we put a democracy in your country, which is made every country in the Middle East, Larry of us, because they don't have democracies. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, we want cooperation for these people. But if we keep preaching democracy, what they hear is, you want us all to lose our jobs. You put us up for open election, and we're going to start

going through the same stuff you go through every four years, or that England goes through with the drop of a hat, you know, half of your paying government to get a vote of no confidence. The government falls and everything in the country's got to stop. And the UK's economy is not thriving because of this volatility. So do you think generally unpredictability is a good negotiating strategy? I mean, we've seen it in business to add a newman from we work. It was this idea that he's madman.

or you just not like what the other person's doing? To most of the time, when someone is,

you say they're unpredictable, well, they're not behaving with the patterns that you like. And so since you're not conforming to my rules, you're, you're the crazy one. I have the rules. So that's most of the time on predictability, you just don't like where they're the sides coming from. Like the Republicans can say the Democrats are unpredictable. And on unpredictable, they're very clear about what they want. The Democrats can say

their Republicans are unpredictable. And they're clear about what they want. You know, there's democratic approach to government is pretty clear. The Republicans don't like it. So, you know, they want to call them unpredictable when they simply disagree. Now, the we work guy,

“you know, again, did, did what he did makes sense. I think his pattern from what I know”

the documentary was he was pretty much the same guy at a whole time. I like spending a lot of money. You know, like partying, want to be in control. Then one is bored over rule. I'm a kick him out. Road to set of rules where the board couldn't overrule him. Which they all signed off on to begin with. And they all thought, well, we're more experienced business people. He's going to listen to us. Or he said, he wrote a set of rules where I can ignore you if I feel like it. And you can't kick me out.

I remember watching a documentary on Uber. You know, the old, and I can't remember the founder CEO's name. Travis Kalinik. But he was predictable every, every, you know, the doc, the doc series that I watched on one of his early investors said, you know, the guy runs through brick walls for you. Problem is, everything's a brick wall to him. That was early on. So he was predictable the whole time.

“To say that somebody's not predictable is usually, you just don't like what they're doing. You know,”

they were going to do it. Have you read the art of the deal? I have. I read it a long time ago. What do you think? And what do you think of his negotiating style? I thought the art of the deal was very insightful. I, my, the biggest chunk of time of my FBI career was in New York and it was at the time when Trump was really coming to the forefront. And I got to New York when it was an extremely

dysfunctional city. Now, there's always been time period of time in New York's head. It's dysfunctionality.

But Trump rebuilt, um, grant central station, uh, the grant high at next to grant central station. He started out because the city had dumped in thousands, if not millions of dollars into the woman's gaining rank and it never got fixed. And Trump would walk by it every day and see broken concrete and construction workers sitting around leaning on shovels and year after year after year. And he finally got fed up and said, I'm going to fix the woman's gaining rank. I can't stand

to any more. He fixed it. And everybody said, well, how could that be? So I read the art of the deal early

“on. I was always interested in, and negotiation books. And I think it's a good read.”

Love and were hate him. If you love him more, you hate him. You're not going to look at him objectively. Like one of the things that I enjoyed reading in that book was he takes over the Plaza Hotel. And he's micromanaging a little. And so the guy running the plaza is like, okay, you want to micromanage me? I'm going to make you make every decision. So he started calling Trump for, I don't know, what kind of paperclips should we buy?

He's trying to teach him a lesson. And Trump was like, oh, okay, I'm going to leave you alone. You're capable of comping a guy and going to stop micromanaging you. So I, you know, I enjoyed reading it at the time. There isn't anybody you can't learn from. If you love him or if you hate him, it's going to interfere with your ability to learn from him. Okay, so I'm going to give you some negotiation strategies and tell me, yes, if people should use them, or no, if they shouldn't.

Right. Silence. Silence is a great thing. Learn to learn to shut the front door. And a gather data with your eyes is a great strength. Saying you're willing to walk away. Only if you are, because if you're not your liar,

and lying is not a good long-term strategy.

Throwing out the first number. No, I don't like throwing the first number.

I want to gather data first before I throw it out. There's this whole anchoring thing. There's

mostly is the really experienced negotiators want to know what's on your mind before they throw

number. Because if you throw the first number, there's a significant portion of the time where

either going to be too low, or you're going to, which means you didn't get as much as you could

“or if you're too high, you drive a deal from the table and you should have made that deal.”

And I don't like either of those circumstances. So I'm going to want to get a feel from you what your range is. And I can't do that by throwing a first number. Should you ask for a higher number than you actually want? No, because again, that makes you a liar. Of interrogation. I'd say it's a ridiculously strong emotional intelligence skill. I love it. Introducing bargaining chips that you're willing to compromise on. No. Again, you're a liar.

You'd deceive in the other side. You throw something out. You intend to throw it away. I mean, that's deception. And deception is not a great foundation for long-term relationship, a trust and prosperity. You haven't heard you talk about in a hostage situation where you

wouldn't compromise of saying like the bad guy wants a jet and ten million dollars and be like,

you get an Uber and you don't 100 grams. Yeah, right. Supplemental messaging. So like there's a scene in the office where Mindy Kailings character has a crush on Idris Elvus character and kind of incept the idea when he walks into her office and says,

“you wanted me. And so she's basically saying she was incepting him with her language. Does that work?”

Yeah, there's very little in the movies of TV that actually work in real life. Yeah, so I mean, there are, there are, there's a difference between planning a seed in somebody's mind and nurturing that seed. Trying to plan a seed in somebody's mind is usually some act of deception,

which is deception has never a great recipe. And there's a lot of deception by omission,

which is widely accepted in the private sector and in a business world. And it always, always ends up badly. Yeah, and you know, I didn't lie to you. I just didn't tell you. Yeah, but you don't want to say everything. You don't want to be TMI. A lot of stuff that you're holding back could actually be reasons for a better deal if you didn't take yourself hostage. And what do I mean by that? Let's say you got a timeline. Let's say you got a bill. You got a pound Friday.

I can be scared to tell you that or I can say, look, if we don't work this out, I got to move on because I got a bill. I got a pound Friday. You know, it's, it's a holiday. She's looking for a job. Everybody in the, in a business is busy with the holiday party. You got to divorce settlement in January. You could say, look, guys, if I can't get a serious offer from you, now, I got to move on. So why are you holding something back? Because it's honest,

right? Because you honestly have that situation. You don't want to say that if you didn't have a hard deadline or it could be a reason to spur action right now, then you're being candid. People hold stuff back far more for reasons. It's like, it's a non-starter than I've ever given to me. Well,

“you should bring it up. Maybe they can't. You don't know for sure. I can't. I'll be vulnerable”

if I tell them this. Well, maybe it's a reason for them to actually take action. It's all in what you're doing to yourself and you're right. Should you play heart ball? If you know what you really need, you could be nice about it. I think people should stick to their guns. I think if, if you're, do you want it? Because you're trying to satisfy your ego? Because you've got a cousin that did it. Somebody that you want to beat got it. Like, what's, but stuff that you really need,

you should stick to what you really need. You just don't have to be mean about it. I get, as an assertive, I get asked all the time what what I do differently. The only thing I would have done differently was I would have been nicer about a lot of stuff. I played hardball plenty of times. I would have, I probably would have been nicer about the way I did it. So the last one is kindness because some people say it signals weakness. No, it does not. My friend Conrad Gomez

says that kindness is one of the, what is it? Long-term success strategies. Conrad, kindness is not weakness. Kindness contributes to the karma bank. I believe very strongly in positive karma.

you kind somebody might try, but that doesn't mean you got to give in. You know, I'm sure,

I'm sure people try to roll over Conrad on a regular basis. He doesn't give in. My friend Nick Nett, he strikes you as a guy. You could roll over easily. And you try to roll over Nick in a very polite way

“that's your last conversation with them. Well, I think there's a difference between kindness and”

kindness. Some of it could often be in how you apply it, how you define it. But so yeah, they could they're often synonyms. Yeah, you can be kind and give bad news or. Right. Yep. In a kind way. Yeah. But a nice person is giving somebody something they want because they're scared of coming across. Right. Yeah. As mean or they're doing something that's not aligned so that other people will like them. Those are the people that will steam roll you here in

the actual born and started to want you. What do you think? Yeah, a thousand percent. I think it might be a combination. Well, that doesn't mean that you haven't learned a lot of other skills. The complimentary skills that enhance what was the name of your book again? You know,

“say it. I love you know. You want me to say it. Yes, rich bitch. Yeah. And one after that was”

boss bitch. That's a niche. I like I bring it. That's a natural born assertive and you're very

you're kind about it. The reason why I see as an assertive, I always hated the word nice.

And so assertives tend to react. I'm not nice. How dare you take that back. Guilty. You clocked to me. So we share that attribute. I want to get your thoughts on a couple of deal making cliches. If you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice, ask for money. There's certain things that are a little bit of a sucker move. If people catch on to that really quickly, when somebody says, hey, I want your help. I need your advice on this. Like, I'm going

to figure out really quickly whether or not you try to create an emotional debt or whether or not you actually want to listen. And I figure out, I can figure out really fast. If you're weaponizing this advice thing, because you reaction to whatever it is that I say, are you actually going to listen to what I said? You asked me for advice and I know right away whether or not you're listening. If you just trying to get me to feel like I helped you and therefore

now you're going to help me get money, then I'm going to smell that real fast. When people go in really wanting money, but framing it as advice, because people are more likely to do it, if they came up with the idea. There's a whole separate issue. The other side has to have ownership in the outcome and the solution. That's one of the reasons why my Harvard brothers and sisters who I've tremendous amount of respect for, they're dead wrong on the yesable proposition.

I explain what that is. And I say, you know, just come up with a proposition that fits the other sides once and needs so perfectly that all they got to do is say yes. Well, they're not vested. Then it cared about it was all your idea. They had no interaction. They had no collaboration and they had no contribution. And nobody wants to implement a deal that was not their idea at all. So how do you get somebody to think it's their idea? The what and how questions are designed

to trigger somebody's thoughts, not get an answer. So how can I be involved in projects that

is critical to the strategic future of the company? That then begins to invest your boss in your

“success, which I think is what you were driving at a moment ago. Even in the blocking and tackling”

where you're repeating the last few words that you hear. How do you do that? How do I do that? Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. Can I drop this mic? Can you drop the mic? That was perfect. Is that something that people should think about if they're not as skilled as you are? It's all practice. It's all it's language. It's practice. It's a equivalent to a sporting event. What does that mean? First of all, if you haven't done it at all,

you can make big leaps right off the bat really quickly by just trying it at all. And so that's kind of fun. And then when you start getting some satisfaction back and getting people talking, then it just becomes that much more enjoyable and you start getting better slowly. So the advice is to try and repeat the last two or three words that the other person.

Black Swan method principally are labels or mirrors. Mirrors are repeating a couple of the words.

Labels that sounds like that's important to you. That's a label. Sounds like looks like seems like. What we're seeing on a regular basis is people either right-handed or left-handed. People either prefer labels or they prefer mirrors. I don't know which one is going to feel more natural to you. More people are right-handed than left-handed. More people refer labels than prefer mirrors. The one of the founders of a company we're advising even up law,

Ray is a mirror guy. Like he will mirror like crazy. And it's almost all he does. And he's phenomenal at it because that fits the way that he thinks.

And the mirror is the least amount of brain power required on your side for the maximum amount of

“talk from the other side. And I think that's one of the reasons that Ray likes it because he”

just says two or three words. And the other side talks for ten minutes. And the why beneath that is that people want to feel hurt. They feel like you're listening. It also helps them expand on their thoughts. It connects a lot of thoughts in their brain. And it helps them focus on all the connecting thoughts and a mirror really brings out a lot more from the other side. Okay a couple more cliches. You can't have a good deal with bad people.

Yeah, agree. You can't have a bad deal with good people. You could you could the accommodators will not focus on implementation, which will make a deal really bad. They're going to hope that everything works out. So an accommodator can be a very good people person and have left too much to change so much to hope. And you really got to focus on implementation details with someone who's really hope focused. And so that would make with a good person a very difficult deal

because nobody talked about how we're going to make an happen. Some people are, since different people are scared. Well, and a lot of people hate it. And sort of tend to love negotiating. So I was right before about you being inside of. Yeah, it's sort of tend to love it. But some people just hate it because they see as conflict or they see it as disagreement. And let's tend to really be negotiation adverse. They want implementation and they want, and they want plans.

“And negotiation has this aura of being combat. And some people that's the worst thing possible”

I know the people like, yeah, let's go because they love the combat. So it doesn't have to be either can be just great collaboration. What about how you were raised? Because for me, I feel like it's in my blood, both my parents were immigrants. And so the idea of negotiating was more natural, like asking for a discount where there wasn't a discount, was something I just grew up seeing all the time. That has an awful lot to do with it. I mean, I have a basic theory that

everybody's got to, for lack of a better term, two lines of code in your head. There's certain things that were just planted in your head. They were probably, and you don't know that they're

there, but they drive you. And they were probably planted in the first five years of your life,

“because most of your memories has been wiped away. I don't know why, but nobody remembers anything”

from age three or rarely. And then it was probably put in your head by your primary female caregiver, because in the first five years of the life, that's who you're around the most, probably. It was probably your mother. My girlfriend Wendy, the woman she spent the most time around was the nanny that her family hired. Hit him by coaching there. The woman he spent the most time around was his grandmother. But these are the people they're going to say stuff to you over and

over again. And your parents probably said to you, like this is, it's, you could do anything you want. And your, your mom probably said that to you over and over and over again. Oh, my mom did it, but, but I'm going to definitely do that for my daughter. So maybe, whatever you say over and over again, the voice in your head, they, they said stuff, they demonstrated stuff to you. That was not really, it was expectation versus encouragement. Or the encouragement was minimal, but it was

expected that you could do this stuff. Not that it was that hard. But yeah, you can, of course you could do this. Of course you can't. And that has a lot to do with how you start. Now you could

change than I can. Yeah, well, he could use a big superpower, too. But you, but whatever those two lines

“are, if you find self defeating behavior, if you can, Andre Andre Norman, good friend of mine,”

former prison gang leader. He had a lot of nasty stuff, bad stuff, plan and his head is a little

kid. He is now a phenomenal human being and is making a world a better place. So he went back

“in there and he changed that coat. However, however, we got it could be done. You can make new”

neural pathways. Absolutely. It's hard work, but it can be done. I now, I'm just going to have your TED Talk playing in the background of my daughter's nursery on repeat. She's going to be

“a phenomenal. Well, my mom, I talk about my mom and my TED Talk. My mom was a tough cookie and”

I attribute a lot in my life to her. So she's got a great mom. She got a great mom. Thank you. We end all of our episodes by asking all of our guests for a tip that listeners can take straight to the bank. We didn't get into personal finances. The show is money rehab, of course. So curious if you, you look like you have your shit together, but ever needed money rehab. Most of the cliche stuff is the best long-term strategy. The high risk, high gain stuff is a

lot of fun and in point of fact, you lose a lot of money. I did silver options when I was in my think I was in my 20s when I lost money doing that. The casino, somebody in every casino

they talk about. The guy won $2 million in a slot machine or this businessman walked away

from the roulette table with $3 million. That was one and a thousand. So the cliche stuff is often a best long-term strategy. Activate six.