FBI's Top Negotiator ON Empathy, Systems Thinking & AI's Role | Chris Voss

What is up, guys? Welcome back to the Alchemist Library. That was a little more of an aggressive welcome to the show than I usually do, because I've been told I have no personality in these intros. So we're working on that. We're trying to fix that. But in more important news, we have a very special episode for you guys today. This is one I've been looking forward to doing for a very long time and it definitely delivered. My guest today is Chris Voss. Chris is the former FBI hostage negotiator. He is the author of one of the bestselling nonfiction books of all time, with Never Split the Difference, and this episode was a blast to record. I'm going to leave it at that, because I want you guys to get into this one here. Catch you guys inside Peace. Are you doing this work to?

facilitate growth or to become famous. Which is more important Getting or letting go?

Mr Chris Voss, thank you so much for being here today.

Hey, I'm happy to be with you. Thank you for having me on.

Awesome. So if there's one concept, one idea, something you hope people get out of your work, what's that one thing?

One Negotiation should be collaboration for long term relationships. It could be the shortest thing. There's a couple of other things on the heels of that, but that's the start one.

Explain that. Why do you say that?

Well, a lot of the aura, the mystique, the negative perception about negotiation is about who's the biggest jerk in a room, who's the most demanding, who makes the most threats, who pounds the table the most, who kicks chairs across a room, and there are a lot of behaviors like that histrionics, drama that can be very effective short term, very short term, and extremely toxic, consequently kind of productive, self defeating long term. But in the moment you know this, the satisfaction could be there. You know great negotiation there aren't. The brass bands aren't playing. You know the fireworks aren't going off in a great negotiation. It's not exciting, it is astonishing. Suddenly you're astonished that you're in this great collaboration and things are going really well and you kind of don't know how you got there. But great negotiation is not real. Housewives or bar rescue or you know any of those TV shows where people are shouting and screaming at each other and getting their way. That's not great negotiation.

It's fascinating that you say that because, yeah, like, like you said, there is that perception of negotiation being like trying to kind of talk over a person or really just push your will onto them, where, if you like, read your book and look at your work, so much of it focuses on empathy and like relating to that person and really just listening.

And empathy is really understanding. I mean, that word has been so twisted, misconstrued, adapted, like I've got, you know, in my bookcase back here. I've got a dictionary from my father, you know. So 50 years ago the definition of empathy is different than it is today, because dictionaries, all dictionaries, continue to adapt to how it's being used, as to how it was really defined in the beginning. Empathy in the beginning was a translation of a German word that was designed to understand how an artist was trying to portray in emotion. It didn't mean that you adopted, accepted or rejected, it just meant that you understood what they were trying to portray. And that's real. And empathy has become conflated with sympathy, and it's not. It's even very close to compassion, my friend Steven Kotler in one of his books he wrote, empathy is about the transmission of information.

Compassion is the reaction to that transmission. Empathy can be very compassionate. I think to do it can be a precursor to compassion, but it's not compassion, it's just, you know, identifying where the other side's coming from.

So really accepting or rejecting it?

Understanding, which a lot of people will want to even equate understanding to acceptance. You know like somebody will say okay, so you understand what I'm coming from, and I'll say I may understand it, I don't agree with it, I'm happy to understand it, I'm happy to respect it. So even understanding sometimes is someone's trying to manipulate you into a false agreement might say okay, so you understand. Yeah, I understand or accept, but I understand.

It's funny reading your work because, outside of just negotiation, like those skills that you present in the book, like the techniques of mirroring, saying no, listening, gaining that influence and trust, like all these things, they apply to so much more than just negotiation. Like I was running it through the filter of the podcast when I was reading the book and like all these things are so perfectly applicable to so many different domains, not just negotiation.

Yeah, agreed. Or then maybe even how do you define negotiation?

If you define negotiation is great collaboration. Then there's a lot of negotiation, even in ways that people are shocked by A couple of years ago I'm going to try to get all the positions and the players right and talking to a young lady in Los Angeles, she said you know, I work for Sony and I'm involved. We just buy the rights to songs, for movies, and there's no negotiation there. You know they got a price. You either give it to them or you don't. You contact them, tell them what song you're looking for, you fill out the paperwork and execute the deal. That's not a negotiation.

I'm like are you kidding me? Like? So, first of all, the person you talk to on the phone and they fill out the form. What do they do with that form? Do they take your form and you put it on the bottom of the pile? Based on how you talk to them, do they put it on the top of the pile Somehow? Does they let the form fall off their desk into the trash? Can? Do they take the form and walk it down the hall to the next office, thereby saving you a month? Like? There's so much involved. There's so much negotiation going on there that you don't even realize. If it's about great collaboration and it's very little in your life If you're asking directions, you're negotiating over information, person taking the time to talk with you and give you information Like if you start looking at it as just a greater collaboration. There are very few human interactions that wouldn't fall into that category.

That's fascinating. So then, with that said, having such a deep understanding of negotiation, I'm sure that's influenced and impacted your life in like a lot of different ways and just your ability to move through the world. Like, how has that deep understanding of those things translated to everything else?

That's a great point. There's a lot less friction in my life. This is going to sound arrogant. There's less friction in my life than there is in yours or almost everybody in this lesson, because the friction points throughout an entire life. That slows us down. Even if we get our way, it takes a little longer and the interaction was negative. So then maybe we got our way and we burned up negative energy and then we left negative energy behind us, which then made the world the worst place. You know the karma bank. Like I'm putting deposits in a karma bank constantly and I'll give you another example.

I'm getting ready to jump on a plane in airport. A couple of weeks ago I got my director of operations, chelsea, with me. We're leaving from the same airport. We're going different places. We're both flying same airline. Since I fly all the time like I'm in business class because of my status, because how much money gets dumped into flying me around the country? She doesn't fly all the time. We're getting on the same airline. So I get into the preferred line, which is very short. She's supposed to be flying economy very long, so I waver into the line with me. So already we're breaking our rules.

I want to check her in on a different flight and I want it to go quick and smooth with the lady behind the counter, even if we get our way, like I'm executive, platinum, superstar class, you know sci-fi or whatever the hell they are. You know I could have pounded the table and been so annoying that I'd have got us both checked in, but then what little things would have happened. So I walk up to the lady behind the counter, I go I'm getting ready to be horrible and she looks at me like what. And I go well, she's not flying business, she's with me, my director of operations, and she's not on the same flight and I want to check her in here. And the lady says that's not being horrible, that's being a gentleman. Come on up and she checks. Not only does she check her in, but she puts a priority tag on her luggage, which is not supposed to be there because she's not flying priority, but it does ensure extra care for her suitcase and it gets taken care of and it comes off the plane first.

All the little things. Like she didn't have to do that. It wasn't even with me getting us both checked in, so we got all the little things. The one behind the counter had a delight. It went very quickly and smoothly. I walk away feeling better. You know the drag of an argument. I'm superstar class. You got to give this to me. I'm entitled. That would have worn me out. Instead, I walk away having a great time. My Chelsea director of operations gets some preferential treatment that she never would have got before and the lady behind the counter is happier than she was when we walked up. So the next person doesn't get it taken out on them in a negative way. So the little friction points like that throughout my entire life that people just assume are part of living 90% of them I eliminate on a regular basis.

It's so interesting. I think about how you know you, that story that you mentioned of just being a good person, essentially right, but I also I'm also curious about like the flip side of that. So like outside of the tactical empathy, I'm sure there's times where it's tactically smart to be a bit of an asshole and, like the example that's coming to mind for me is well the reason why I give me the example and I'll talk about it, but I'm letting you know it's coming.

Yep, so I have a friend who works in real estate and they deal with contractors all the time and they were real fed up one day and the contractor was taking forever doing all this stuff and they kind of just snapped and after the contractor so it was like, oh shit, I didn't realize how big of a priority this was for you. We'll speed up the process, and then they set up the process, whatever. And then the takeaway that he told me was I didn't know how to speak contract, ease or contract or ease, because so much of that business is, I guess, spoken in that way. So if you're almost too nice and too friendly, they put you lower on the total totem pole in terms of priority.

Yeah, all right. So this to me it's like how did you get into this in the first place? Like there's a fair amount going into this, how you manage in the relationship, how you manage in a situation. Anticipation of problems Now there is. It's not that you want to be too nice, I mean little things along the way. You could be simultaneously nice and just set up really hard banners without being a jerk and you can kind of anticipate stuff in advance and it's.

I get some work done with the contractor of my house recently and the little things like I s is due to front, like what kind of scotch is he like? Now I could offer him a tip the equivalent of the cost of the scotch, or I can find out and go get it and have it waiting for him before he gets ready to start, because the time that I've taken to find out what his favorite kind of scotch is, the time that I've taken to go and get it Now I got a whole bunch of stuff. This does not cement the relationship for the entirety of the operation, but it's not enough. I mean, you got to constantly be attending to this because I know there's going to be problems, there's going to be priorities contracting business, very difficult business, project management, managing your cash flow there's a lot going on there and contractors like doctors they could be great at building but not be great at running a business and a contractor business is tough. So let's begin to anticipate some of the problems. And how do I nurture the relationship? How do I anticipate what they're looking for in advance? I got to stay on top of the relationship.

If you're not staying on top of the relationship, then there's pretty good chance you're going to get to a point time where they made a bunch of promises to you that they didn't keep. Because they're making promises to everybody, you find yourself in a bad spot and occasionally nobody's perfect. You're going to find yourself in a bad spot. Maybe you don't have time to attend to every relationship. And are you snapping in the moment as a tactic or is it a legit snap? Now? If I snap in a moment, I'm going to end up apologizing because the toxic residue there is always going to cost me more. And I snap at people occasionally. I'm guilty of that. I'm a natural born assertive. I mean sometimes what I'm talking in a normal tone of voice it might feel like I'm yelling at you. It was that, the commercial gym. I think Jim Harbaugh did a long time ago and he was coaching the 49ers, you know.

I'm not yelling.

I'm not angry. You know his natural tone of voice makes you feel beat up, but when you're interacting with someone, you want a long term relationship with a contract, and the same guy that you know I got the bottle of scotch for you said no, no, no, you don't need that. You know you're. And he I think he expected it when he was done. I had. I had a wait for him in my backyard when he showed up to get the job done. Now I got follow up work with this dude and he comes by and troubleshoots the problem and as he's getting ready to go, there's been no mention of cost, price or anything. I just go and say to him how do I pay you? Like no, no, no, I didn't fix it yet. Like I'm willing to pay you for your time. So there's a certain amount of anticipation of problems, especially with contractors. Tough business. How do I put myself on the?

you know, like the music, purchases of music that I was talking about before. How do I put myself on the top of the pile? So the bottom of the pile, what are the little things I can do along the way? That still doesn't mean I'm going to be a pushover. I can be very nice and not be a pushover. At the same time, what I want to do is position myself for as a human being. They're going to make mistakes. I'm like come on, you know, come on. And maybe it was something that happened in their life that they had no control.

You know, there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes on the other side, I start to say that there isn't gonna come a point in time when you're gonna have to snap at somebody Because the world being what it is, time constraints me and what they are, it's gonna happen. My personal experience is every time I've snapped at someone, no matter how righteous it was, it'll all run and it ended up costing me more.

I mean it makes perfect sense. To me, it's like really just doing the little things on the back end to ensure that that moment doesn't need to come up. You don't need to have to do that thing when you are making sure that you are the guy at the top of the pile because you're doing the courteous and respectable thing of paying early, paying fast, making sure that you're just building up that trust, like you, like one of your key techniques and you know, I mean just all that stuff reminds me of, like you mentioned, jim Harbaugh and just leadership in general, and think about, like a football coach or CEO, like all of those things. It's just, it's such a fascinating way to be absurdive, firm but still likable, like it's a good balance between those three, that's a blend.

yeah, yeah, and the more likable you are, more assertive you could be.

Interesting, interesting. So the balance there is just making sure, on the back end, that you're building up trust and that they know that you're a good person. Essentially, what is it on the back end that we should be doing as a leader to ensure that we can still be firm in our boundaries without offending other people?

Yeah, well, first of all, substitute the word predictability and for trust. The more predictable you make dynamics, the more people are gonna trust you, you know, and the less you let people get caught off guard If you're work on problems you are encountering versus problems you might encounter, so problems with the people that you work with in a way that cause if a problem has come up, it's gonna come up again. You know there's system thinking is the system you're employing is perfectly designed to give you the outcome that you've obtained. What does that mean? If you ran into a problem that, whatever approach took that you got, that you got into that problem makes it very likely it's gonna happen again unless you make an adjustment and your approach, your collaboration, you know your weaknesses, your shortcomings. What are you likely to do? What kind of mistakes are you likely to make? And with the people that work with you and for you, you know and anticipate the kind of mistakes that you're likely to make. If you're working for me and you're contact with me as sporadic, then it's gonna be overly harsh, because then, if it's sporadic, I'm only reaching out for you when there's a problem. So you know, I gotta anticipate that and then encourage feedback and you know, in the past I've had a tendency when I got a problem.

I'm blasting out text messages after hours on the weekends to people. I find out the hard way that I'm conditioning somebody who's working for me, like whenever he sees a text alert from me, he goes into panic because he feels it's bad news. So my first move is to stop sending out you know, stop barking out orders after hours and on the weekends, and then, secondly, do as much as I can to stop doing it via text. You know, because human beings are payable of dog. Every time the bell rings, the dog begins to silo me. Every time the phone buzzes and it's a text from me, you know, massive anxiety is in place.

So I gotta make adjustments. I gotta send out on weekends appreciation texts, and ideally not at night, and you know what even an appreciation text on a weekend can be tough. So you know I gotta look at my behavior, look at the kind of outcome that's correlating very strongly with it. As a leader, I don't like the outcome. I don't want somebody having a panic attack every time they get a text alert from me. If they're getting a panic attack based on my text, it's a system that I've created, so let me make an adjustment so that it's different.

I love using systems and implying systems in your life, how you think, like all these applying systems if I think back on the past year for me has been probably the biggest has had the biggest positive impact on me, because going from being disorganized to being organized in how you approach things has such a beneficial result on your life. And how have you implied that systems thinking into both your work and life in general?

Well, and here's what I'd ask you to expand your thinking a little bit, because everybody has a system. A system is just a collection of your behaviors and habits and your system previously was to be disorganized. That was your system. And then, at some point in time you realize if I make an adjustment in the system, I can ship my outcomes and suddenly be unorganized and lo and behold, my life's accelerating. Look at that. And are you wired that way, to learn to be that way?

Like a long time ago, I remember reading everything has its place and I thought everything has its place. What the hell are you talking about? Are you talking about like my pencil has a personality and it lives someplace? That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. I remember thinking how stupid that was, and I still misplace things. But I miss placing things constantly and I'm wondering why can't I find anything? Well, I never know where the hell I put it down, because it hasn't got its place. It's a lack of organization. That was my system and I had a system that was great for me losing things. It was perfectly designed to give me the outcome that I've obtained.

So systems thinking is first of all, I think, is, you know, to wreck, and it's not that you're implementing, it's to recognize you've got it. And then now, okay, can I do the tweaks here and there, like I've always been a great lover of spontane, like the thought that I get up and I don't know where today is going, and it's gonna be a great adventure, I'm gonna discover the day. Consequently, when I first started my business, I didn't want to put anything on my calendar Because I'm like, ah, you're confining me, you know you're making day's not going to be this adventure, this discovery. And then I found we're not getting stuff done. Well, you're not putting it on your calendar. And I've gone from hating to have anything on my calendar to wanting to live by my calendar Because I'm you know, I'm interested in the outcomes. So I'm glad you recognized system thinking and you discovered you thought you were putting in a system when in point of fact, you just changed it. You switched from one to another and you changed your outcomes.

It's having the awareness of the system that you already have in place and having the awareness of knowing what a better system would be. Another awareness, you know, it seems like that applies to all of negotiation as well, like that is such a key element at the core of having a good negotiation is broadening your field of awareness.

Yeah, yeah, broadening your field of what a negotiation is, and you throw in a system and then you realize you know a system takes care of most of it, not all of it. And then the spontaneity, the magic, the discovery still happens and you've saved that energy, that creativity, that curiosity for when it was needed.

So what are you up to nowadays? I know you said you were flying around all the time. You're doing speaking engagement. Are you doing consulting as well?

The whole night. The company. We coach negotiations. You know what some people would call consulting. We coach and train individuals and companies, mostly entrepreneurs or people with the entrepreneurial mindset or learning mindset. But we do. You know I do keynotes where I do talks. You know keynotes. Ideally it's an inspirational talk that'll fire you up, and then my keynotes are littered with usable, actionable negotiation advice and some stuff around it that sort of fires you up About the possibilities. But you know, we coach, we train, we teach online in person Me and my company, black Swan Group. We're about having people actually have better lives and teaching them the communication, behaviors and patterns that will make a difference in somebody's life. And the cool thing is it does I get people coming up to me all the time talking about how they're having a better life in general, instead of having one negotiation success every two or three years. They haven't spectacular negotiation successes monthly, almost to the point where they're taking it for granted Because they're making such a difference in their lives. And that's cool. I dig that.

What are a lot of those commonalities that you hear from people? Now, since you're really kind of in the thick of hearing from people who have read the book, curious about your work, like when you're getting feedback from an audience or questions from an audience like what are those biggest commonalities that people ask you about?

That they ask me about or that they told me about after they've read the book.

More like what questions do they have for you? What are some common things that you get from people in terms of just questions?

Well, if they've read the book and taken a master class usually it's a combination of the two If you've read the book and taken the master class, you're starting to make a really big difference in your life. And then the question is what are you guys talking about that is not in the book or the master class? What have you learned? Can you coach me? Is your doctrine set in stone? Is it evolved? Is it different? It's evolved in a lot of ways. It's not really different. It's still within the confines of what we would define tactical empathy about, which is really demonstrating understanding and the breakthroughs that it makes in your interactions. Generally speaking, if somebody's got a question they want to know, is there more there for me to learn other than what's in the book and the master class? And the answer to that is yes, because we keep evolving the thinking that also negotiations are perishable skill.

It's not riding a bike and you need practice, you need to try, you need like-minded people around you. You know there's a saying your income is the average of the five people around you, basically five professionals around you. That's very true, and you don't want to be in your group if you're making the most money, then they ain't helping you as much as you're helping them. It should be a two-way street. But to continue to level up your life, you need to continue to get around smarter and smarter people, and so if you're going to learn negotiation, you got to get people around you that speak the same negotiation language as you. And a lot of that is how do I get somebody on my team to adapt? You know they think I'm crazy. They don't care that it's working. You know how do we integrate it into the team, stuff like that.

Why do people think it's crazy? Like, what about it? Because to me it seems all very logical like applying this approach to negotiation your business leadership in general. Like it seems so logical, I'm perplexed why someone would think it's crazy seeing someone else imply the lessons.

Well, until you've seen it work. There's a lot of really counterintuitive stuff, like one of our most counterintuitive stuff that scares people to death is what we refer to as the accusations audit, which is taking an audit of all the possible accusations the other side could have against you and then reel them off verbally at the beginning. And that scares people to death and they feel like they're going to speak the devil into existence and because they've never seen it work and it's so counterintuitive Like I don't want to bring out the negative. And there are people like I can remember a number of years ago I'm talking to a political consultant in Washington DC, before the book came out, and I'm telling them about this whole approach to diffusing negatives by calling them out. He says yeah, never, never, never, never, never plant the negative. He can't plant the negative, don't ever do that. And he said here's an example of why that doesn't work.

Richard Nixon 1970s stands up just before resigns from the presidency in the United States and says in a press conference I'm not a crook. And this guy says that's mentioning a negative and a planted it and the whole country thought it was a crook because of it. So don't do that. And I said that's not what I'm advocating, that's denial of a negative. The complete opposite is to get out in front of it. And how would you get out in front of it? You guys are probably going to see these behaviors. You're probably going to call me a crook.

I'm listening to a sports talk show a number of years ago and their commentators talking about another player. And he says this is probably going to sound disrespectful, but and he lays it out there and afterwards the other commentator say you know, as soon as somebody says no, he says I don't want to sound disrespectful tonight I don't want to sound disrespectful but. And he said you know, as soon as somebody said I don't want to sound disrespectful, the very next thing are going to be disrespectful. And if instead, he would have said I'm probably going to sound disrespectful and then made a statement, they would have said well, that guy's a straight shooter. So most of the backfiring of the man sitting of negatives has been the denial of the negative. But that's all people see. And they don't see the two millimeter shift from going from denying to simply observe. And then it scares them to do that because they've seen the backlash over the denies.

It reminds me of in Robert Green's book I think it's in 48 Laws of Power. There's one that's like I don't know the exact thing, but essentially it's like tactical honesty, like reveal your weaknesses in an honest way, because it disarms people, and like puts them at ease and makes you seem much more authentic in how you present yourself.

It seems like it's exactly. Yeah, very, very, very similar to thinking.

Have you read any of his work? Because there's such an underlying sense of psychology behind your book and the things that you talk about. It seems like they're interconnected in a few ways.

I think you know I have read a lot of his stuff. I haven't read the stuff covered a cover. I've got the 48 Laws of Power, I've got the Laws of Seduction. You know I find him, as a writer, doing a great job of cataloging examples and writing stuff that gives you real food for thought. So I highly recommend Robert Green's stuff. I highly recommend Robert Chaldeany's stuff.

There are a lot of guys out there that I read and I learned from and I find a tremendous overlap in the thinking and really what you're going to find in great communication, great human interaction. You're going to find overlap a lot of places when you're talking with practitioners. We're just looking for stuff that works, as opposed to coming up with a theory and then trying to force reality into into your, into your data set that you've chosen based on your cherry pick. And there there are a lot of good thinkers out there. Like you could disagree, which I'll do you could disagree with Robert Green on on anything, but read their stuff, because they're gonna give you tremendous food for thought and Robert Green is one of those guys. I love this stuff.

It's so fascinating because that underlying psychology, that is, that through line, through all your guys's work, it's so human and there's such a If you, all of these, this world of negotiation, it's. It's such a human to human.

Interaction and we're getting so much further. We're getting so far away from that human to human like with AI and Texting and all these things. There's so many Things that kind of throw the negotiation for a loop or throw our human interactions off. Have you thought about now, with the Advancements in like chat, gbt and AI in general, how that that new world of negotiation is changing? Obviously, the underlying principles hold very true, but I'm curious, on on the advent of AI, how you think that that changes things. I.

I think it's a great enhancement. I Mean, to some degree, ai is always been, has been it for a really long time. With the bots I mean we've been having bots, chat bots in customer service. You know they've been around for at least 10 years. You know you go on a website, you got a problem. You know chat with us now and a bot shows up. You know you, it's so.

That's that was, that was AI and I was. I was a couple of maybe your so goes a little bit leery of AI Until I started getting introduced to it and chat GBT and being exposed to it. And then finally, I was at a conference Strategic coach, I get coaching, I get. I get executive coaching. I get executive coaching from an outfit called strategic coach Dance. All of them brilliant dude, lot of brilliant people in a program and A number of the panelists. Other other members are talking about chat GPT and they say it's it's like having a great assistant, a great intern That'll do a bunch of work for you, get it 85% right and then it needs your touch on top of it To get it the rest of the way there.

And I'm at the point now like I've hired people to work on my behalf to help me write stuff and I got human beings. They can't get it. You are being taken at 20%, right, and I'm like hell, I take. I take 70%, right 85%. I'll take that all day long, so I see it as a great enhancement. If any human being is threatened by it, then Just gonna sound harsh. You're either closed-minded or you're lazy.

Yeah, I learned some skills and Either of those can be remedy On your own, on on your behalf, should you make that choice, yeah that is for sure.

And I'm curious about the coaching stuff because I Don't know. I mean, I played sports my whole life and I'm so keenly aware of the value in coaching and Applying that principle outside of just sport is is so interesting. How has having a coach and being involved in that world Just helped you?

Well, one thing I couldn't help but run into over and over and over again when I left the government down into the private sector Is there's a common thread of the top-performing executives Whether they be coaches or entrepreneurs with coach, with coaches, top-performing executives with executive coaching across a board, like I keep running into, like Phenomenal performance and find out that they're getting coached in some way. Now finding a great coach is a challenge Under any circumstances. Find a great coach in sports, like my, my high school basketball coach understood X's and O's and.

Didn't understand a drop of human interaction, like I don't remember him giving me or anybody else on a team, any individualized coaching that helped us at all. I really understood the dynamics of the game. It could could draw up great offenses, but did he make any of us better? Not a one. So do you understand the dynamics of the game and do you know how to talk to people, though it says you got to find those guys.

For me personally, what going to strategic coach? And I got two kinds of coaches. We have, you know, sort of an executive thinking coach, which is strategic coach. My business also gets coached in EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system, got a guy named Jonathan Smith that coaches us on that and you know that's operating. And the strategic coach, the executive coaching, is very complementary and very different.

The other advantage I find at strategic coach and I know I sound like a commercial form, but they put you in a cadre of people that are like you both income and experience and scope and challenges, and I go as much for the people I talk to, people I'm sitting next to, is the learning, which is phenomenal, that I'm exposed to in a room. So it's also to me to break. You know I'll go spend. I'll go spend a day of strategic coach and it tends to be refreshing, recharging. It's a. You know I need to break away from the day to day of the business to reboot the brain and you need that a lot. And so I started into it because I'm looking around and I'm seeing the people whose outcomes I want to emulate getting coached and I'm like all right, so there's a commonality here and you know, take it, take advice for people, that whose success you want to reproduce, and when do you imply the?

coaching once you start doing it. Originally. You know we were out.

I was around, Jonathan Smith for several years before I finally said you know, let's give this guy a roll of the dice. And I knew him sort of as a professional association and he's a generous dude and for several years have been doing me favors and helping me out, always encouraging. It was just me and my son in the business at the time and and then his fiance and finally I was just like you know, this dude, jonathan, is a good enough guy. You know. We trust him. Clearly our core values lineup. You know, let's, let's give this us thing a role, that a role of the dice.

And a funny thing I've seen about us consistently, you know you try to pitch another CEO, head of a small company on us, like I don't know, you know, I don't know which is my attitude, like I don't know. And you start into it and first multitude, you're like I don't know. And then suddenly four months in, like this is awesome, oh my god, things are running so much better. And there's a friend of mine in LA that you know. Try to talk him into EOS, probably about three, four years ago. And I don't know, you know we're doing pretty well. I know it's a lot of work to make the adjustment. And about two months ago we started into it and I was like this is awesome. So there's like invisible changes, when suddenly, as a little by little, you're eliminating friction from your life and then suddenly, a month or two later, like you're rolling along and you're loving it, and it's very much like great negotiation, because there aren't great big moments, but then all of a sudden you find yourself in a great place.

I mean it makes me want to get a coach, because there's so much that like you don't know what you don't know Right, and having a other set of eyes that also has great knowledge, even if they're at like, even if they're not that much ahead of you. Just we lack so much self-awareness in so many instances. So I mean just having that other person that you trust is seems like it's everything.

Well, and one of the issues even now that you're bringing up you got to be coachable. You got to be coachable Like you can get a great coach. If you're not coachable, I ain't going to do any good. You've got to be coachable. Some people succeed based on sheer determination and hard work, and you need sheer determination and hard work, and some people you know accelerate by being coachable, Like. I like to think that I'm both. I don't think of myself, I'm not a high IQ guy at all, but I am very coachable and I do work really hard. So if you want to coach, you got to be coachable.

It's fascinating that you said you're not very high IQ guy because I am not. You've written a book that's that's one of the most popular that's ever been written in nonfiction, and you've had so much of this tangible success. It's like, would you boil it down to just those two things of being coachable and working hard. Do you think that's really at the core of what's allowed you to get to this with?

Yeah, I really do. I mean in assembling a great team. First of all, yes, the book is one of the most successful nonfiction books ever written and it's principally due to the guy that we hired to write it, tall Ross, and tall is a is a genius business book writer In my opinion, the best business book writer ever. Now, books in many cases are like Gas powered automobiles, like an SUV and a minivan, and that's the same thing. You know an F one race car and a minivan, and not the same thing. Yeah, they're both gas powered automobiles, but writers and books are as different as automobiles are, and it ended up being a cliche.

I remember here a long time ago go to the bookstore, pick out the book you want to write and hire that guy. And I'd come across a number of years ago never eat, alone Keith Frost. He's bought that tall Help Keith put together and I loved it. It's one of the best networking and core values books out there and it was readable and it was interesting, you know, and it wasn't reading the encyclopedia, it didn't suck the life out of you.

You know some some books. You read them at night if you got in some, and I really enjoyed reading it and finally then I was lucky enough, circumstances lined up and I could hire tall to To structure the book and put it together and there was a lot more magic that he brought to the table. Tall worked with me and my son, brandon Brandon's, you know essentially an uncredited co-author, but tall then he was also a great researcher, which I didn't appreciate. He really wanted a writer besides being a great writer and a structure of the book. But it's a readable, interesting book because of the way the tall structured, genius writer.

Kind of great team, not the easiest thing to do.

Great thing right. Take the time to put together a great team.

That is for sure, Chris. Is there anything? What do you think something is in the book and in your work in general that's fundamental that we haven't really spoke about today because there's so many different avenues we could have gone down. What do you think something that we'd be remiss if we didn't mention?

Listening is an advanced skill. Again. Any business, any negotiation book that you read, any one, they refer to listening as an advanced skill and so few people realize the advanced nature of it, how fun it is. You know, there's a reasoning aspect to it, there's an analytical aspect to it, there's a thinking aspect to it. Listening is not just keeping your mouth shut. Listening is not just waiting for your turn to speak. Listening is not listening for the ah gotcha moments, which is actually a level up from just waiting for your turn to speak. If you're waiting for the ah gotcha moments, you're actually a better listener than you were before, but there's much higher levels there and then, consequently, taking the time to listen actually accelerates everything and it seems very indirect when in point of fact, it's a great accelerant of every, every, all the best possible outcomes. It's a, it's a maximization technique. Optimize your communication by being a great listener, and a lot of people don't appreciate the value and complexity to actually listening.

And I don't think people realize that they're not actually listening, like I think that was that was something I learned from doing the podcast is like it's such an art, it's like a meditation in some ways. It's not the easiest thing to accomplish, to get to that point of just like no mind and just really just trying to hear and listen, and it's um, I didn't realize that I never really listened that intently in real life until I started doing this thing, and it's like it really does just change your life in so many ways and your ability to connect with people is just it's multiplied to a degree that I can't stress enough. It's incredible skill.

Very well said. Very well said. Yeah, I agree completely.

So, Chris, thank you so much for doing this. I mean, this was an absolute joy for me and I so appreciate you taking the time to do this today. Where would you like to send people if people want to learn more about you and what you do?

Well, um, uh, we'll send you a link if, if we can.

And even we got a QR code. I don't know if you have the ability to drop it into the video, but what is it a link in a QR code to? We've got a top 10, no oriented questions, like we're out in Black Swan group. If you're trained by me, you're out of the yes business and you're using no to accelerate things and you're doing little things like saying instead of have you got a few minutes to talk is now a bad time to talk, and it's one of those tiny little things that has a tendency to accelerate things. And we'll tell you what the top 10, no oriented questions are in in substitution to get you out of going for yes. So you get that accelerator that it's an enhanced decision making tool for the other side.

And then if you subscribe to our newsletter which is complimentary, and the newsletter the edge is a gateway to everything that we do. Our website is black swan ltdcom, but if you're subscribed subscribed to the newsletter this is what the letter is a gateway to the gold mine Every Tuesday morning there's an actionable, concise article usable, actionable That'll get emailed to your inbox. Tuesday is a critical day for to get to work, because Monday's kind of the Buffett day, where you're settling in for the week, organizing a week Then the business on Tuesday start with a negotiation article. If you use the link that we provide you with a QR code, when you sign up you get the top 10 no answer questions to help get you rolling and get you underway.

Amazing and I've been subscribed to newsletter for probably like a year at this point. It's definitely been a great read and something that's added value to my life and highly recommend everyone goes and picks up a copy of never split the difference. Thanks, chris Voss. Thank you so much for this today.

Yeah, pleasure as mine, thank you.