Chris Voss - FBI Hostage Negotiator | Everything in Life Is A Negotiation

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All listeners can save 30% off their first order. Just head to cornbreadhemp.com slash success and use code success at checkout. That's cornbreadhemp.com slash success code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing gummies. You encourage people to become straight shooters and how do you do that? You deactivate their fears. How do you do that? You're saying this probably stuff you're holding back, you're scared. If you tell me it's going to blow off the deal. What if everything you thought you knew about negotiation was wrong? That the key to influence persuasion and success isn't logic, but emotion. Chris Voss spent 24 years as the FBIs lead hostage negotiator facing life or death conversations. When Chatchee PT and the AI stuff started really hitting the business community hard about a year and a half ago and I was confused. One of the guys on the panel said this is being a great intern that'll give you a good first pass at the information. So I'm like, oh, okay, then realize it's not going to be all the way there, but it's going to get you more than halfway there. If you look at it in that capacity, then it's very helpful. Now he teaches the world's top businesses how to win every deal. In this episode, he reveals the surprising power of tactical empathy, the secrets behind high stakes negotiations, and why the best deals aren't one with aggression, but with understanding. This is the conversation that will change how you communicate forever. AI is a copy of the knowledge as it exists in a given moment time and it freezes it. Great entrepreneurs, great business people begin to learn to their gut instinct, which is overriding their hopes and fears early. Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot not only supports this show, but they support entrepreneurs. That's why it's such a huge fan of HubSpot, and I'm very grateful for HubSpot for supporting the show because they help entrepreneurs, and as a fellow entrepreneur, I know it takes a lot to grow your business, a lot of audience attracting, a lot of sales, a lot of marketing, a lot of lead scoring, a lot of channel management, a lot of content, a lot of long days, late nights, a lot of weekends, a lot of wishing there was an easier way, but there is. With Breeze, this is HubSpot's new collection of AI tools. It's easier than ever for marketers, for entrepreneurs, to attract audiences, to increase leads, to score customers, and to close deals fast, which means pretty soon your company will have a lot to celebrate. Visit HubSpot.com slash marketers to learn more. People know your story. People kind of know you for never split the difference. They know you for speaking about negotiation tactics in your past life and business, and otherwise, I don't just want to rehash the same stuff that you've spoken about before. So right now, in your world, what's exciting you? What's new? What's different? Yeah, well, thanks. Appreciate that. Same Patrick state. We're doing a two-day March, yeah, same panties days March, 2025. We're doing a two-day negotiation mastery summit in Louis, Wilkins, Turkey. This is the first big summit that we've done, and I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be great. First of all, Louisville. Different. It's going to be fun to be in Louisville. Now, why do we pick Louisville? Well, actually, we're putting out a bourbon called the Difference, which is we're going to screen it. We're going to give people an opportunity to taste it at Louisville. And while we're getting ready to put the bourbon together, I'm like, Louisville's a fun place. It's a lot of the beaten path. If we're going to put together monstrous learning event for mastery of negotiation, let's do it here. It's a cool place to go. So it's going to be a fun place Louisville is interesting. Two days, what makes a difference between two days and one day? Two days is because you need the intervening night to bake the information in your brain. You don't just get the same amount of learning if you go to one day training. So we're going to immerse people the first day in the skills. It's going to bake in overnight. And when you come back the next day, you're going to be better ready for day two. We are doing a fair amount of prep. We've got a, we've done a couple of webinars. We're going to do another one, the seven baby steps to prepare for the quantum leap. We teach people you want to get a little bit better every day. And for a variety of reasons, that's a great approach to improvement, just a little better every day. Because then if you have a bad day, if you're hung over, if you're significant in other yells, if you're dog bites, yeah, dog bites, a male man, and you lose that day, you haven't lost a lot. You can pick yourself back up, go in the next day. But now, what do you want to do if you want to do a quantum leap? What if you want to get seven months of improvement in two days? You come to a two day immersion. So the Black Swan groups, two day negotiation mastery summit, it's either the 16th or the 17th or the 17th and 18th of March. But you find it, I'll put in the show notes too. So we'll have the links and everything in the show notes too. Yeah, it's, it's going to be awesome. And we're also, we've got some additional benefits for attending the two days. So to be cool, I'm looking forward to it. It's the first big one we've ever done is why I'm really excited. It's the first time we've gone big and we're going big this time. First of all, I don't know what's, I don't know what's harder. They're killing negotiation or to put on like an exceptionally well planned two day super large event. That's also not so easy. We're looking forward to it. Yeah. No, I'm looking forward to it too. Tell me, when you, when you think about all the topics that you're going to talk about and discuss, I know that you speak now on business, empathy, AI, these are very hot topics. So what's the content that you're going to discuss that is something people are asking you about now that maybe five years ago, I'm assuming some do with technology, something that people are asking about today that they weren't so concerned about when it comes to AI negotiations, how it's going to impact it to any degree that that concept. Yeah, well, there's two really interesting topics there. And I'm going to sort them out. I'm going to set AI off AI off to the side for a second. In terms of learning, everybody wants what's new to start with. So there's a phrase, nobody steps in the same river twice. You're not the same person and it's not the same river. So even if we were to go back over information that we said exactly the same way we did five years ago, which we don't, you're going to hear it differently. You are going to be a different person. If you've been studying this, you got smarter. If you haven't been studying this, in point of fact, you are smarter anyway. You've got more emotional intelligence than you did five years ago. You're going to hear stuff that we have never said before. Now, we're both using AI and why will our live training always be ahead of AI? Because we're always innovating. Like AI is a copy of the knowledge as it exists in a given moment time and that freezes it. It's a little bit the same reason why the the US beat the Russians to the moon when the Russians were the first ones in outer space. Once we got into the space race, the Russian strategy was to steal everything that we invented, which meant they were copying it, which meant it took a little while for them to steal it, to copy it, to think about it, to do it. And the amount of time it takes to copy existing information, the innovators continue to get better. We continue to get better. We're talking about stuff that we've never talked about before, talking about the different levels of labels. I did a special training for a high-end group in Arizona about a month ago. One of the blacks won skills is the i-message. I thought I'd laid it out to this group in detail. And the i-message is just complicated enough. It's a high-level advanced skill. So first, I got to make sure you got the basics and even the people who had the essentials we that we workshopped i-messages for each one of their individual scenarios. And then they got it. So we're going to workshop i-messages. If you're using them, it's going to sound harsh. You're probably missing the mark. There wasn't anybody in the room that they that got it either exactly right or knew the exact moment to use an i-message. What's an i-message for? An i-message is for somebody is killing you with scope creep. An i-message is somebody who's chipping away at you, asking for extra things after the deal has been signed, which is, by the way, a technique that's taught by the lesser negotiation methodologies. And it's like going to the tailor getting a tailored suit and after you've agreed on the suit and he's measuring you're looking at the tailor and saying, how many free ties do I get? Now, there are a bunch of people that are doing that. The problem with that is you got the free ties, but you don't realize at the tailor and never going to tailor another suit for you. Or when he does, he's not going to give you the same attention to detail. So businesses are getting caught up in this all the time. The remedy is the i-message and it's complicated surgical strike and we're going to go into it in great depth so people really understand how to make it work and not make an enemy and that could kill being nickeled and dined by the other side. A huge shout out to bank on yourself for supporting today's episode. Entrepreneurs hears the retirement secret that Wall Street doesn't want you to know while you are pouring everything into growing your business, they want you gambling your future in their 401k casino with no guarantees. As a business owner, you already take enough risks. Why gamble with your retirement, too? It is time to discover the financial strategies smart entrepreneurs are using to protect their wealth. Bank on yourself is the proven approach that gives business owners what they need most. Certainty, flexibility and control in their retirement. 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This brings me to an interesting thought and I guess there's a very simple question but obviously it's something that has to be answered. What part of negotiation do people have a hard time wrapping their minds around? Why do they still get it wrong even after spending time with you consuming your podcast? What's the thing? It doesn't click and why? They're mainly three things. Now this is going to be dependent upon you. Each individual that's listening to me now, you have a natural born conflict type, you either fight flight or make friends, analyst, assertive or a comedy. Now if you're an assertive, if you're the Donald Trump type and Donald Trump is a great poster child for the assertive negotiator, like you get what you want in the moment and it's celebratory and it's big wins and then people stop dealing with you, you can't get them to pick up the phone, you can't get them to come to a meeting, you can't get them to sign the deal, they get gunshot and Ivanka Trump once said of her father, look my dad's just direct and honest, but everybody else thinks he's blunt and harsh. Well, unless you can unleash MAGA on somebody, you can't get away with being blunt and harsh, you got to have an army behind you and most people don't have an army behind them. Maybe it's just you, maybe you're dependent upon the good will of the long term relationship. So as an assertive, what you don't get is what you think is your strength is going to work against you in the long run. You're too blunt, you're too harsh, I'm a natural born assertive. You know, I got to find out a way to use a downward inflecting voice or smile or use self-effacing humor or using empathy before I assert. So that's one problem, people not knowing how to use empathy instead of assertion, it's in front of assertion. Now the accommodator, the relationship oriented person, opposite approach. People love dealing with you, loving. But you make them wonder what you really want because you're afraid that you're being too assertive. You're scared of scaring them off and you're making them read your mind and making them guess what you want. So you need to be more clear and clarity is not violence. They need the people want to deal with you. They want to know what you want. They want to make a great deal with you long term. Don't make them guess. So keep your same mannerisms, very pleasant, always enjoyable to deal with. And come out and say what you want. That's the third thing that people don't get the analyst. You're making them guess too. You're keeping your cards very close to the vest and you're analyzing 5,000 moves ahead. And you're coming off as cold and distant. If people don't feel connected to you. But you can't imagine that's true because deep down inside, you get tons of people that love you and tons of people that you love. And you can't imagine if people see who's cold and distant or often when they do, you feel it to your advantage. But you drive a business away and you're making people guess and you're not sharing information because you're afraid of getting caught off guard. So it's kind of three three different things that are type dependent and the world is crazy as it sounds. And I know this sounds crazy. It breaks up evenly into the three types. Whether you're a New Yorker, you live in Beijing, you live in Beirut, you live in Bangkok. The world splits up evenly in the thirds. I would assume because you probably see this quite a bit with some of the people that work with you. I would assume when people try, because most people are not negotiating in a hostage situation. Most people, especially people who have listened to this show are negotiating in a business context. And I'm curious if you see people who follow the Trumps of the world. And they see how Trump negotiates at this stage in his life. And they're thinking, well, I'm just starting out, let me try and mirror him or let me try and copy him, even though he's at a much different stage in his life, then you are just starting your business as a new entrepreneur. And I'm assuming that backfires 11 out of 10 times. You know, backfires summon and be careful about assuming how he negotiates based on what you report in the media. I read the art of the deal way back when it's the 1980s book. I was in New York at the time. Donald Trump's the New York guy. You know, there's some my world that his world came very close, but never actually overlapped. We actually attended the same church. A minister that he was very close to was a good friend of mine. I threw Donald Trump was gracious enough to support a fundraiser for the suicide hotline I volunteered at and held it in his apartment from tile. So that's all to say, you know, I assessed Donald Trump based on what I read in the art of the deal versus what you're seeing in the media because the media is going to give you a snapshot distorted view. It's hard. It's like a picture, a photograph that's out of context. So Donald Trump and in the art of the deal is a thoughtful guy and liked people who knew how to handle it and based on respect. So what's the original question? If you're modeling Donald Trump, don't model what you see in the media. Read the art of the deal. He loves difference. He loves people who stand up for themselves in a very quiet way. Look at his relationship with his son in law, Jared. Jared is not a chair kicking kind of guy. And it appears that they get along very well. So, you know, just dig in a little bit deeper, whichever type you are looking at and be careful about taking a one-dimensional or two-dimensional snapshot based on media reports. Now, the flip side is of each of the types that I mentioned, your natural born strength, the thing that you like, your go-to is essential and inadequate. So the part of Donald Trump's negotiation style as perceived that's essential is you got to let the other side know what you want. And he is clear about what he wants. So, you can say it in a nice way. And my understanding is on a regular basis and one-on-one meetings, the meetings go great. And he can be charming and complete, could be a completely different conversation. So, yes, be clear about what you want. You could just say it in a nice way. One thing that I want to unpack to conflicting ideas from a layman, they're conflicting ideas. And hear me out. Of course. So, you don't like the idea win-win. That's one idea. I don't like what art. So, I don't like people who use it as a tactic to weft. I don't like people who weaponize it. Okay, I want to understand that. How do you weaponize win-win? Because the conflicting idea, so you just put out a book on empathy and understanding in business. And empathy and understanding, it seems like that would be like the outcome of be like a win-win if you actually understand the person. So, explain to me what the difference between being empathetic and having a mutually beneficial outcome from a deal versus weaponizing win-win. Okay, weaponizing win-win to start with. Let's start there. My experience on a regular basis, and you know, it's just the star and narrow one-to-one correlation. Like, if you start talking to me and you say, right away, you want to win-win deal. If I head in the first minute to five, what you want is for you to win period. You're trying to get me to do a lot for little or nothing. Now, when win-win, when it came out, there are a lot of people like, yeah, of course. Yeah, let's collaborate. And then they would give up the store, give away the store, expecting the same in return. And so the cut-throat negotiators, like, okay, if I say this right away, there's a pretty good chance, I'm gonna get everything I want really fast. So, it's become a tactic very much like the word fair that can be used to gain a psychological transactional short-term slaughter or the other side. Like, you put a, they used to call a create value versus claim value. You know, the win-win guys or the create value, let's create value together. And the claim value guys are the highly transactional, maximize the term short-term. Let me kill you. I'm gonna, I got you over barrel in the cut-throat. And you put a claim value guy up against a create value guy and a claim value guy just wipes the, yeah, the attacker wipes you the guy out. The claim value wipes the creator out. So you could be highly vulnerable. Now, separately, you sort of ask me about what essentially is the spirit of win-win. And the crazy thing is, people think it's the monetary terms. When it's really how involved with I was I in the transaction, how do I feel respected? Something other than a deal, it's not, but it's the emotional process. And so the deal might not be that great. The best deal might not be that great for your short term, but you felt a full participant in the process. It's one of the reasons why my Harvard brothers and sisters love this concept, the yesable proposition. You know, let me create a proposition that's so wonderful that all you got to do is say yes. So were I to lay that in front of you, you didn't feel involved at all. Like you didn't have a say in it. You know, you're, you're, you're a slave in a gilded cage. It's still a cage. It doesn't matter that it's gilded. And so it's inherently unsatisfying for you. Now, let's say we go back and we get into a process you're fully engaged every step of the way. And by deal terms, it's actually worse for you than than the first one, which was the yesable proposition, you're going to prefer the one you were fully engaged in because you were there. You got involved. You were respected. What you said mattered and you felt it was a joint outcome. So what am I driving at? When, when is more of emotional concept? Did you feel like you were treated with respect? Were you involved? Then you're going to feel like you won separate and apart from what the actual deal terms are. I just want to take a quick break and thank the HubSpot podcast network for supporting success story for the past two years. Now the HubSpot podcast network has other incredible podcasts like my first million now. If you are an entrepreneur or you are ready to turn your entrepreneurial dreams into millions, you have to listen to my first million. 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And for all you success story listeners out there, I've got something special. Get an exclusive 60% off for six months when you visit freshbooks.com slash pricing dash offer. Transform your business with fresh books today. That's freshbooks.com slash pricing dash offer for 60% off. So if somebody does want to look for a partner, a business partner, join venture that will actually include you in part of the process before you go too far down the rabbit hole in that deal. What are the signals that you should look for? Obviously it's not them saying I want this to be a win-win. So what are the signals that you should look for? That this is somebody that you would want to do business with and negotiate with? Well, you know, if you don't see eye to eye, how do they react? Are they rolling over you? Or do they want to actually hear what you have to say? Are they looking at you as a source of information? Because at some point in time, in any deal, you're not going to see eye to eye. So what you really are is you want to gauge what that moment's going to look like. Is it going to be collaborative? And you can start to gauge that from the very beginning. Are they treating you as if someone who's to be used and abused? And there's a lot of that going on in private equity right now. Private equity in any company they're going to buy. They're going to say all right. So is the CEO coachable? If he or she is, there's pretty good chance there's a long-term play here. If they're coachable, we can actually help them with processes. And there'll be worth more money. So do they ask good questions? Do they listen? Do they take initiative? Are they coachable? All right. So it's a highly valuable company. CEO is not coachable. Can we kick the management team out, take over and make the value ourselves? Or do we buy it in strictly assets? And these are the three things that every private equity is looking for. Have you got good core processes but bad management, right? Management's got to go. Good, good core processes, but maybe B level management that's coachable. All right. We'll bring you guys in because you're committed. You got a few components that are more viable than the company in its entirety. We're going to buy you and we're going to take you apart. So knowing that that's how the other side is looking at you in a deal, now you got to gauge what do you want to do? What do they look like? And are they looking at me like a lion looking at a stake? Or are they looking at me as a suitor and a business gathering? Who's looking for a long-term relationship? And you're going to get a feel for that very early on. If you open yourself up to it. Yeah, that's an interesting, that's a really interesting point. I mean, you just mentioned it in the context of private equity and a business owner selling their business. But I would say that the same, the same thought should be given to if you're raising money and you want to bring an angel on or a VC on or whether or not it's just a single person or a whole group. I mean, how are they going to operate after the deal is done? And you do want it to be quote unquote win-win. You want them to add value. You want them to understand when things don't go right into help you out. You don't want them to start firing off your employees or if they acquire you laying off the whole staff. These are stresses for entrepreneurs and founders. But I don't think they know how to navigate that situation. I think because there's a motion and there's money tied up into it. I think people make a lot of poor decisions because there's so many things that are clouding their judgment when they're trying to make that call. Yeah. And so separating out your amygdala, your fear centers or your hope centers from your gut instinct. And great entrepreneurs, great business people begin to learn to their gut instinct, which is overriding their hopes and fears early on. Because your gut instinct asks you got what you've got telling you. Not what are you afraid is going to happen? What do you hope is going to happen? Those are the two things of club your judgment. You know, if you hope something nice is going to happen, you got what we refer to as happy years. Got happy years. You know, hope is not a strategy. It's a drug that's hoping which interferes in your ability to hear what the other side is really saying. Or if you're fear-based, oh my god. You know, I get I get I get cheese like this one other time. Ain't I'm never going to let it happen again. Well, now that's clouding your judgment too. And so the challenge is, how do you listen to your gut? Look for yellow flags, not red flags. Look for a stop to make your go. Hmm. I don't know what that means. Well, that's a yellow flag. And you start to accumulate the yellow flags and you find they add up pretty quickly. You talk a lot and speak a lot about empathy in business. Define how you oh, this is going to I'm saying it the wrong way. I was going to say, define how you leverage empathy for business, but that's already insinuating that you're using it to a means to an end. What is the what is the proper way to use empathy in business so that you get what you want, but you also don't get taken advantage of? Yeah. Okay. So let's define empathy first. Let's define it as simply assessment. And the articulation of your assessment. Empathy is not sympathy. Empathy is not agreement. Empathy is not compassion. Friend of mine, Stephen Collar, Shronson, read a number of books that are worth reading. The rise of Superman and Staling Fire too great of my favorites that Stephen wrote. And in one of his books, he said empathy is about the transmission of information. Compassion is the reaction to that transmission. So empathy truly understand where the other sides coming from. Even if you don't like it and then being able to articulate it from their perspective. What does that look like? You think I'm being unfair. You think I'm greedy. You think that I don't care about you at all. Those are empathy statements. I never agreed nor disagreed. I just pointed out what my gut instinct is telling me that you're thinking. And we teach tactical empathy as the articulation, the expression of what your gut is telling you about their perspective. If you take away agreement or disagreement, then you can be empathic with anyone. A member of Hamas can be empathetic with someone from Israel and vice versa. Because it's not agreement or disagreement. So if somebody from Hamas can do it with somebody from Israel, that means you could do it too. If you define it that way. Now business, it's the way of analyzing. So let me analyze what you're probably thinking. Let me feed it back to you. You're going to feel very connected to me. It's actually going to open up the channels. One of the phrases which is the cliche about negotiation is the biggest myth about communication is the biggest myth about communication is that it's taken place. Now people hear that and they say, oh, I just have to express myself better. Now the opposite is true. Listening hasn't been taken place. Hearing took place. I heard what you said, but did I analyze it? Did I think about what it meant? You know, the whole grade school thing, probably in seventh grade, somebody you had a teacher that said, what's the difference between listening and hearing? I can still remember that. But the difference is, did you analyze what they said and discern its true meaning? Which means you're not agreeing with it. Which now puts it in the business context. And then certain predictable things based on fears. You're going to feel at some point in time I'm asking for too much. You're going to feel at some point in time I'm being disrespectful. You're going to feel at some point in time I got a hidden agenda because I won't give to the point. But you're saying that begins to clear the air and it puts me in a position to move forward with you. Two thoughts on that. First thought should you actually articulate that to the person that you're speaking to. And then second thought, how do you make sure that your own lens that you see the world through does not impact how you infer what they think because it's good to be empathetic. But you're going to have your own world view that's going to impact. So yes, so should you articulate that and why? And then how do you stop your own lens from fogging it all up? Yeah. First of all, you should. Like in any time we gots telling you, you should. And there's aspects to it that when we're coaching in negotiations, we're going to ask you to lead with like in a first meeting, you're going to you can say to him, look at some point in time, you're probably going to ask yourself, whether or not you're wasting your time with me. Because they're probably 60 seconds into the meeting. They're thinking that what this does is this deactivates and inoculates. Most people think of plants fears. It does. You can't plan a fear. You can just you can plan it if you deny it. If I could say to you like, look, I don't want you to think I'm being greedy. You're going to be like, oh, I got to cover my wallet. Here it comes. And I can say, look, it's probably going to seem greedy. And then when I lay out what I want, your reaction to that is going to be like, oh, well, actually, that was just honest. I appreciate you being honest with me. So those are examples of why you should go ahead and call it out in the moment or even in advance. Now does my lens interfere with me seeing it? Yes, that's why you want to lay out what you think the other side saying. Because for not just your lens, you know, your angles on it leading up to this moment. So I frequently say, and coach people say, look, before we go on, here's how I think you see things. Now I'm going to lay it out in wherever my vision has been clouded. If I approach you with genuine curiosity, not judgment, I can't say, here's how I think you see things. You know, my tone of voice is telling you negative things about my thought patterns towards you. But if instead I say, all right, so before we go on before, here's how I think you see things. You know, that's exploratory collaborative. Whatever I'm missing, whatever I'm wrong on, you're going to want to correct me because the urge to correct is actually very satisfying, and you're going to feel good about it. So that's how you keep your filter from getting in the way. Check it with the other side and invite correction. Thank you, NetSuite for supporting today's episode. Now what does the future hold for business? If you ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 answers, bull market, bear market, inflation up, inflation down. Honestly, I just need a crystal ball. But until we get one over 41,000 businesses have found the next best thing. They future proved their operations with NetSuite by Oracle, which is the number one cloud ERP. Imagine having your accounting, your financial management, your inventory, your HR, all flowing together in one fluid platform. Here's what makes NetSuite different. It gives you one source of truth for your business. You get the visibility and control to make quick, confident decisions while others are guessing you're working with real-time data, insights, forecasting. You're basically looking into the future of your business with actionable data. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and helps you grab your biggest opportunities. And speaking of opportunities, they put together the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at NetSuite.com slash Scott Clary. This is the playbook for understanding how to use AI for your business. The guide is free. Go to NetSuite.com slash Scott Clary. That is NetSuite.com slash Scott Clary. One last question. When people deploy this tactic and then I want to move on to something, a couple other ideas. But when people deploy this tactic, what would one thing be that they get wrong the majority of the time? What is one common misconception about deploying tactical empathy? First of all, your perspective is their perspective. Even if your perspective is accurate, they're going to have a different perspective. Common misconception is that you guys are on the same sheet of music. You see things the same way. Among other common misconceptions, they got to go first and you got to lay out your position first. That's the mark of an average negotiator. So I need the information in your head, which is why I'm going to invite you to go first. And then two out of three negotiators, it's impossible for them to shut up. Shut up more. You're going to find that in those golden moments of silence, they're either going to bond with you or they're going to give you information. All those things are good. You know, it's so funny. That's one thing that I remember one way, way, way back in a past life when I was in sales. And I can't remember who told me this, but the the sentence was whoever talks less wins. That was it. And so far, I mean, this is what I do for a living. I try and talk as little as possible and just let the guest. Now, it's not a negotiation. It's hopefully, hopefully, it's beneficial to both of us. But yes, when you shut up, good things happen. When you shut up, good things happen. Amen. Let's talk about people being deceitful, counterfeit, yeses. I thought it was so interesting because when I was first putting, you know, some of these talking points together, of course, I like to call them lies. I'm pretty sure that's what the rest of the world calls them. You don't like to call them lies. So this plays a big piece of negotiation. Obviously, you have to figure out what's the truth and what's not. First of all, why do you not like calling lies lies? Because of the emotional reaction to it, you know, lies slash deception, the vast majority of it is the set defensive in nature. People are deceiving people like as they scared because they're afraid to tell the truth. Now, that doesn't mean they're trying to victimize you. They're scared of the relationship. They're scared as you're going to say, no, they don't know how to tell you the truth. So the deception takes place on a massive level. But it's not predatory. It's some of it is predatory, a small percentage. What's the percentage? I mean, let me put it like this. There's a guess that the incidence of someone being a social path or a psychopath. I was trying to read the current differences in the definitions that social paths are somebody that intentionally pray upon you in the moment. A psychopath is somebody who plans on praying on you in a future moment. So it's a it's a planning issue. One in 35. So that means 34 out of 35, if that number holds. When they deceive you, they're not trying to victimize you. 34 out of 35 lies, let's say, is this defensive? They don't know how to tell you the truth there. They don't know how to fix it if they do. It's it's all fear based not necessarily the same as being a coward. Those are two different instances. But fear based because they're trying to preserve the relationship with it and how to get around it. So why am I going on this rant? Yes, it exists all the time. Stop yourself from being triggered on it. You're going to assume that they're lying to you because they're trying to victimize you. That's that's not the case. 34 out of 35 times. So you encourage people to become straight shooters and how do you do that? You deactivate their fears. How do you do that? You say it's probably stuff you're holding back. You're scared if you tell me it's going to blow off the deal. I know. You've got things that you're afraid to tell me because you think if I know I'll exploit you. Me even sharing that recognition is going to get you to start to loosen up. Now my walk has to match my talk. And I'm very careful about that. But I'm also very concerned about if I say something that doesn't add up to you, you're going to instinctively react that I'm trying to hurt you. So I got to be careful about making sure those two things add up. I got to be careful about being vague. I'm going to, in fact, under promise instead of over promise. And then I got to talk to with you about how we're going to fix things when we come to the inevitable glitches that life rings in no matter what happens. So that's one way to get the person you're speaking with to feel more comfortable. Now, is there ways to detect whether or not they're giving you counterfeit guesses or lies regardless? Is there a way to figure that out? Say you've done all of that. Right. You still want to make sure because sometimes somebody is not just going to open up. It's not 100% success rate that they're all of a sudden going to be like, yes, this is what's wrong. And you know what, we're being sued. And you know, our revenues aren't what I'm saying they are and all this stuff that you want them to say. Say they still have these counterfeit guesses. How do you catch? How do you catch those? Well, first of all, I'm learning the word yes at all because people are afraid to say yes. There's misgivings with the yes. Yes, it feels like a trap for the person who says yes. There's always this fear of what am I let myself in for that I don't know about. So in order to stay away from that, I stay away from the work. And so I'm going to start summarizing, I'm going to start inviting for your correction and inviting your clarity. And in those corrections, people correct with the truth. So you're much more likely to tell me the truth and the correction than as opposed to a straight question. Because we're asking you questions going to make you feel interrogated, which is also going to work against our relationship. So there are all these little points of friction in the communication process that we're actually taught we should do but instead increase the friction. And one of them is asking questions. So I don't ask questions. I say things that invite your responses. A question is designed to elicit a response to corner you to extract the information from you. Instead of extracting information, I'm inviting you to give it to me. It's going to change things completely. A big thank you to indeed for supporting success story because hiring people is one of the hardest things you're ever going to have to do as an entrepreneur as a founder as somebody who's trying to build a business. It's important to hire well and find the right person, but it takes so much time and it's so labor intensive because like most entrepreneurs, you have a thousand things going on and there's good chance that you just realized your business needed to hire somebody yesterday. So how can you find that great amazing right fit candidate fast? It's easy. Just use indeed because you don't have to waste time struggling to get your job post seen on all these other job sites. If you're using indeed, you can just use their sponsored jobs to help you stand out and hire fast. 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Speed up your hiring right now with indeed and listeners of success story will get a 75 dollar sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed dot com slash clary terms conditions do apply just go to indeed dot com slash clary a huge thank you to net suite for supporting today's episode now what does the future hold for business if you ask nine experts you're going to get 10 answers bull market bear market inflation up inflation down honestly at this point you just need a crystal ball but until we get one over 41,000 businesses have found the next best thing they future proof their businesses their operations with net suite by oracle which is the number one cloud ERP imagine having your accounting your financial management your inventory your HR all flowing together in one fluid platform and here's what makes net suite different it gives you one source of truth for your business you get the visibility and control to make quick confident decisions while others are guessing you're working with real time data insights forecasting you're basically looking in the future of your business with actionable data whether your company earns a couple million or even hundreds of millions net suite helps you respond to immediate challenges and helps you grab your biggest opportunities and speaking of opportunities they put together the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning and net suite dot com slash Scott clary this is the playbook for understanding how to use AI for your business the guide is free that is net suite dot com slash Scott clary a shadow to Nord VPN for supporting today's episode I have to tell you a story so I was actually in Toronto visiting family last month and I went to binge some of my favorite Netflix shows I forgot and I realized that half of my US shows weren't available in Canada super annoying flipped on Nord VPN within seconds I got access to everything now it's not just about watching shows what makes Nord VPN a game changer really 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out especially if you travel or stream content regularly that's nord VPN dot com slash success when you detect that somebody has again fabricated truth what would be your recommendation for somebody to preserve that relationship or should they not yeah you shouldn't in point of fact I mean you're going to gauge it to some degree because it's impossible to escape white lies now how broad a definition of white light is from the other side the problem with human behavior is how you do something is how you do everything so if they started to lie to you even if you can get them to be straight which you can tell you the truth uh the lion they're using that methodology to get by another parts of the world which is going to make it difficult for them to deliver so there's always going to be delivery and implementation problems with people that are getting by with lies and exaggerations it's gonna it's gonna hit the skids at some point in time no matter how good you can get information from them so that's an indicator of problems to come and those problems to come are very expensive so in in my in my early training of everybody comes onto my team they think that if you work for christmas the negotiation company the black swan group the greatest negotiators in a while then I'm going to expect you to make every deal and my answer is no somebody who takes a long time to get the deal somebody who takes a long time to get implementation somebody that we have to double check everything they say these are expensive people and we're gonna walk away from them so when we catch you dealing with us like that we're gonna we're gonna do if uh take a number of approaches with you where we're just like no no we're not doing it uh we can't do that I'm sorry but we're very clear in what we won't do and then actually you're more likely to walk away from us because we're immobile one thing that you spoken about a few times and I just want to touch on it because I think it's interesting for the audience I know that you think you did a whole podcast on it but you spoken about negotiating with narcissists and I think it's a really and that word gets thrown around a lot and it's a very like a topical on-vogue word so for somebody listening to this so they're like oh great he's gonna teach me how to you know deal with my husband or boy no I think people throw the word around narcissists too often so how do you know when you're negotiating with somebody you actually is has some sort of definable mental trait who's out to get you versus somebody who's just difficult and secondly if you do find yourself in a negotiation a relationship with a narcissist what are some tips to deal with that um yeah so the more confusing they are the more you feel guilty somebody's truly narcissistic their whole goal is to destabilize you and they're gonna flip back and forth from being a victim to being a persecutor how are you failing oh the answer was horrible uh life is really overwhelming for me or what you just said is not helping at all those I'm toggling back and forth from being a victim to being a persecutor and I'm enjoying moving around from those two positions is this old thing called the drama triangle which has held since I've been aware of it in the early 1990s and somebody's manipulating you is gonna move back and forth from being a victim a persecutor or a rescuer and they will never stay in one of those positions long because as soon as you try to hone in on that position they're gonna jump to another one I need your help all that was a stupid idea victim to persecutor I need your help no you're not doing it right here's how I'm gonna help you victim to rescuer so just ask yourself for the jumping back and forth between those three things if they aren't in their narcissist they're manipulating you the manipulation is the objective of the communication there is no other objective now somebody who's just as functional make their behavior the path to the goal make your goal the path to their goal and what's that look like in a kidnapping I'd say I'm not supposed to appear if I don't know you're gonna let the hostage go they want the money oh all right let him go gives me where I want to go cool I'm cool I'm good with that in a business deal how are we supposed to continue this relationship if every time I talked you you asked me for something different oh they're scatterbrained you just told them they need to be focused they need to remember what they did before if they're a narcissist then they're gonna blame you for not listening now they are persecuting you no I was gonna say I think it's important to identify the difference because first of all in a business context I hear the word narcissist run around a lot in a relationship context as well this is not a commentary on whether or not they are good to do business with if they are dysfunctional there is a very valid reason for you to exit that relationship regardless however I think that it is important to understand that if you can align objectives and the person is dysfunctional there could still be an outcome depending on the severity of the condition versus somebody who has no interest in mutually beneficial outcomes and their only purpose on this earth is to make your life a living hell is there a way to negotiate with that actual narcissist or is that a relationship you exit a hundred percent of the time my advice is to exit a hundred percent of the time like the it's not a sin to not get the deal it's a sin to take a long time to not get the deal it's also a sin to take a long time to get a bad deal so if you negotiating with a narcissist either you're not going to get the deal or you're going to get a bad deal either way you've committed a sin because you're most valuable commodity at the end of the days you're a time and the narcissist is standing in the way of the people that want to be great partners to you now this is very hard to feel because they can be so obscuring your view of reality and so obscuring your view of the coming opportunities that you don't see it but we're seeing it over and over again play out on a regular basis the narcissist are blocking the good people from getting to you and so the sooner you exit from a narcissist the sooner the other people who want to do business with you genuinely show up when you engage in a negotiation let's say not a narcissist but somebody who you do not have a past relationship with just some very high-level thoughts what are the boundaries that you want to set I mean you always you're very famous for saying always start with no you can mention that briefly if you want but other other sort of high-level ideas that you want people to start to think about when they go into a relationship go into a negotiation for the first time well I like to get a line on what somebody's core values are fairly quickly so let's say I'm hired a plumber I'm gonna say you know what do you love about what you do for living when you start asking somebody about what they love about something you start finding out who they are really quickly and it's and it's a great opportunity for the two of you to have a meaningful small talk if that's not a contradiction in terms but I'm going to start teasing out from you what you love about what you do for living because it's going to tell me about who you are and then I'm also going to say you know what makes you want to talk to me that's going to tell me a lot about how you view the possibilities for the future relationship you start combining these things you find in very short period of time brand new person if you're listening you don't have happy years but you're actually listening to what they said they're going to tell you who they are pretty quickly one thing that I think could be a negative of technology especially with AI is that we leverage AI to do research and we leverage AI to understand things and we leverage AI because it's comfortable and it's easy and then you I've noticed it even myself with the podcast I use AI to do research on the guest one before I would listen to their past podcasts and get like a really good idea of who they are and I think that leveraging that AI that makes us lazy and it makes us not connect with the human in the best way possible and I'm really just curious is there is there a place or a strategy for technology AI in the negotiation process that doesn't remove the human component that obviously you know you're alluding to the fact that it's so valuable to really get a baseline on somebody like where does technology fit into it properly so it doesn't hurt you it helps you would chat GPT and the AI stuff when it started really hitting the business community hard about a year and a half ago maybe and I was confused by it and I sat through a panel and one of the guys on the panel said look at this is being a great intern that'll give you a good first pass at the information so I'm like oh okay there's going to be a lot of it that's going to be good but it's going to lack some insight but it's going to be a pretty good first draft assessment first pass at the information then you can use it and realize then you got to go back and read it again but it's it's it's not going to be all the way there but it's going to get you more than half way there so if you look at it as a great assistant a great intern and then you got to go in with your insight and your wisdom and refine it and then look for more or see something that makes you curious and you you've got to dig a little bit deeper into it if you look at it in that capacity then it's very helpful if you think it's going to do the whole job for you now flip side you've got a draft that's anywhere from 15 to 25 percent flawed just wrong and those kind of errors will sink you if you don't find them so it's how you put it in perspective very very smart okay um I want I want you to tell people where they can go to connect with you obviously we have uh we have the event is coming up we'll put that in the show notes um so tell people where they can connect with you just the socials website um and also what also you're working on now that they should be interested about anything like that well blacks one ltd dot com is a website b l a c k s w a and ltd dot com now if you're serious about putting in the effort and the time to become a better nidoe share if you want if you want to weigh the magic wand you know if you if you want to sit in a jacuzzi and so if you want to sit in a gym and get into condition without actually getting up out of the armchair now the blacks one website is for if you want to get in a gym we're going to do you any good if you just want to sit in a gym you're going to have to get up on a treadmill in the meantime uh my instagram at the FBI negotiator we've been putting a lot of a lot of short videos up there recently it really in the last seven or eight months is the first time I've been getting feedback from top tier negotiators saying like hey I love what's on your Instagram these days I'm checking that every day the videos are helping me a lot so that's those two references with context if you're there ain't no magic one just like there are top tier clients don't miss a day with this not a day and what they told me is like once you get in the gym you start missing days in a gym you're not as good a shake you gotta get in the gym you gotta do it you gotta put your days in and then your results are phenomenal that's when you get to the point where you're doing stuff that nobody else can do which is a really cool place to be the last thing I mean we went into a lot so anything else that I should have asked you that I didn't feel for you the floor is yours then I have one last question after that no I you know I like it a lot what wherever you are in negotiations if you actually want to get better if you're flipping burgers and McDonald's we have products for you we get tools we get low cost and no cost stuff to get you started and get you going if you're private equity investor investor and it's something that says all right so I'm as good as anybody of my class but I think I could be better then we got stuff for you too and by the way I think this is it's not a skill that only works in one industry it's not a skill that only works in one part of life is it's universal universally applicable it's any situation you go into ever it's a positive and benefit to you to understand how to negotiate how to understand people how to communicate that's just I mean there's really nothing you do in life that doesn't benefit from learning how to do this that's right last question I like to ask so you've had an incredible career you've gone through multiple seasons of your career and out of all the wisdom negotiation business otherwise you want to leave one lesson with your kids what would that lesson be what was the most important lesson that you want to pass down be collaborative which is not the same as cooperative collaborative is where you're talking about working with someone to get what you both need instead of giving in and then realize that nothing works all the time there's gonna be there's gonna be blobs there's gonna be mistakes things are gonna go sideways pick something that works more than anything else does and being genuinely collaborative will not make you invincible from all harm it's just gonna make your wins so much more in terms of percentages that the harm are is simply gonna be lessons that make you smarter versus things that destroy you