Transcript of Never Split the Difference: Life Lessons with Chris Voss

This is Mic Unplug. Let us uncover the because, that thing that drives you, that thing that fuels you. I'm ready if you are. Let's go. But I'd be humbled today, man. I told you when I finally got to meet you face to face, there's three people that really changed my life from a business standpoint. You, Damon John, Robert Irvine. You're my three keeks. Life would not be the same without you three, man. So I just wanted you to know that.

Thank you.

I always ask folks about your because. Simon Sinek did the start with whys. Great concept. But I believe that there's a different fuel that gets people to a Chris Voss level, and it's your because. Your why to me is somewhat superficial, but your because. That's that thing that's deeper than your why, your true purpose, your true passion, that thing that keeps you doing what you do. If I say Chris Voss, what's your because? Why do you keep doing the things that...

Well, yeah, we're ultimately said we suffer. You know what I mean? You make me feel really good to actually help people. You were talking a little good on the way over. I think everybody is capable of really incredible stuff. Not everybody. Every person on our in fact, I do think of myself as just this regular Other guy. Like I was a B+ student in high school, B- student in college. It's not like I'm on the honor roll, not a super high IQ, average-looking dude, not a great athlete, but everybody's capable of being extraordinary. If they just say, Okay, I could do this. It frustrates me the more people don't see that. I think that because I'm a regular dude. If I could do well, you could do well. There ain't that much to it. I like helping people have better lives. It's just enormously That's what you're trying to find to me.

You say you're a B plus student, right? B minus in college, is that what you said? Yeah. But you're a plus fucking human being, bro. I really mean that because, Again, the lives that you impact, and we'll talk about your history and all the things that you've done, but I get to see it in this view. I see the lives that you impact. We were talking about your extraordinary staff and team that you have, and then the circle of friends that you have. Sometimes, Chris, I don't think you realize how just impactful you are as a human. I really don't.

Thanks, man. I appreciate that. I try to be around good people. I try to be around really good, hardworking, regular people that are fun to be around. And everywhere I've gone, if we manage to coalesce a group of fun, hardworking, regular people, extraordinary things happened. When I was in New York, working on the Terrorist Task Force, the hardworking regular guys, we found each other in terrorism. And New York is a big enough place. It It was the same thing the Organized Crime Guys, White Color Crime Guys, whatever. The regular hardworking guys got together and made extraordinary cases. In terrorism, we made cases. They wrote books about it and they made movies about it. The Organized Crime Guys did the same thing. If you get those regular people together that just have a ball, they just laugh at stupid stuff. Don't take themselves too seriously. Work like crazy. Then you get a chance to do extraordinary stuff. That's fun. Yeah.

Let's talk about this journey you've had, though. Not everyone can say they were the number one rated FBI hostage negotiator. Of all times, we can. There's situations that you've seen that not even the elite have seen, but you always focus on the mission at hand. I remember talking to you and you were like, The mission is the mission until the mission changes. Right? Yeah. Talk to us about how you got into to hostage negotiation.

It was just one thing out of left field after another. I never even imagined being a hostage negotiator. It wasn't a goal. Being an FBI agent wasn't even a goal. I found myself there by the circumstances lined up. When I applied for federal law enforcement, I originally applied for a Secret Service because that's what I heard about. I was told Secret Service travel all over the world. I'm like, Wow, that's cool. While I grew up in Iowa, it was a big deal going to another state. I crossed the river into Illinois. That was a big deal. That was a big deal. So traveled. And Secret Service wasn't hiring me. I was putting in my application. I was slated to go to the SWAT team on a police department, just before I left. If the bureau would have delayed by three weeks, hiring me, I'd have stayed with the PD because I was two weeks away from going to SWAT there. Got on a SWAT team in Pittsburgh. I remember an exercise we did. It was this supposed bag-eye takeover of a nuclear facility. We got negotiators inside. I can remember being on the outside on a SWAT, knowing that we had somebody in there that we supposedly negotiated, and just like, Okay, somebody's talking to him on the phone.

That's a negotiator. You know what tells that guy, though? His job is to buy his time as we get ready to assault. Absolutely. Absolutely oblivious to what it was about. Then had multiple knee injuries and decided, Well, I'll go be a negotiator instead of continuing to tie my knee apart, Juan. I didn't think it'd be hard at all. I didn't imagine how rewarding it would be. I was lucky enough, I couldn't get on, so I volunteered on Suicide Hotline. Then on the hotline, I was astonished at the magic of emotional intelligence, the magic of empathy. Just astonishing. So that paved the way for me to become a negotiator. And then I was lucky enough, I was involved in a really rare event that turned out really well. Bank robbery was hostages, which almost never happens. The movies make it seem like it happens every day in New York or in LA. Bank robberies happen every day. They just don't have hostages. Bad guys know the police run away and they to get out of there. So catching somebody on the inside, it hadn't happened in New York City for 20 years. Oh, wow. When on the one that I was on.

That's how rare they are. Okay. It turned out really well. It was combined effort, FBI, NYPD, blended negotiation team. First bad guy to surrender, surrender to me, personally outside the bank. Fbi hostage negotiated It is part of our protocol of staying good is teaching. If you're not doing something, even if you're doing it on a regular basis, you want to really immerse yourself, try to teach it because you're going to get called I mean, you really got to stay the hell out of it, and you're going to get called out. I started teaching at Chase Bank all over the place, and it was a lot of fun because I like teaching and I like doing it. I can continue to pursue it. I was in the right place, right time. A lot of times, I worked my ass off. Working your ass off really determines whether or not you're in the right place, right time. There you go.

I totally agree with that. When we were in Chicago, my cousin Ramy asked you a question of, If you had to do it all over again, what would you tell the younger version of Chris Voss? And you said, I tell him be nicer. Tell us about what that means.

All right, so there's... How you approach conflict, there's basically three types. I believe my team believes that this is true, and we have the anecdotally, we've got enough data to back it up, even though we have a rigorous test to go. So your conflict approach is fight, flight, make friends. Assertive, analyst, a cometer. Cade man responds to threat. Fight it, make friends with it, run from it. The world really does pretty much split evenly into thirds. It doesn't matter gender, ethnicity, religion, nothing. It's a caveman environment. So as an assertive, natural born assertive, I'll tend to be too blunt, too direct. I wouldn't change, sticking to my values or what I stood up for, what I believed in. I'd just be nicer about the way that I express. I'd be kinder, if you will, nicer, friendlier, whatever word works. I always believed in, you need to know where I'm coming from, and a primary currency is respect. If you respect me, we could probably make a D. Even if If you don't give me the deal that I originally wanted, if you treat me with respect, I'm going to be enormously collaborative. One of the poster children for assertives these days, that everybody knows, of course, is Trump.

Jeff Bezos also is, in my view, an assertor. Look at how collaborative Donald Trump is when the world's leaders show up to the White House to treat him with respect. He's basically dismissive of almost every European leader in his first round. Unhappy with NATO for legitimate reasons. We're paying their bills and they're badmouth us. He goes and meets them in meetings, and he goes to Europe, and they're not happy with the way that they treat him. But watch what happens when somebody shows up to meet him in person and treats him with respect. How enormously collaborative he is. Yeah. It's taken a long time to come to accept that, but look what just happened in the White House. He goes in, he meets Putin in Russia. The media puts all this span, Donald Trump in the direction of Putin, he's going to give Ukraine away, Russia's influence. But Putin respected him enough to meet him in person. The other European leaders, some of them, who is it? The guy from Finland, and Finland has a Prime Minister, I think. Yeah. Who's got to be a wacky guy because one of the quotes I read where he said, I'm finished by birth, Southern by the grace of God, because he went to college, ran this stuff.

And he plays golf with Trump. But he plays golf with Trump, and Trump feels respected by him, so the guy's got influence. So the rest of the European leaders are like, Oh, if we show up to the White House and we were suits and we treat him with respect, he'll listen to us. Well, his service wanted to be treated with respect. When I left the bureau, the girl that I was dating at the time put together a going-away party for him, a surprise party because I was at odds with the guy that I was working for at the time, and I stormed out the door without saying goodbye.

Not you.

I was just like, I'm out of him. Gone. Adios. I didn't even say adios. I just packed my shit and I left. She was like, You need to go on a away party. When she put it together afterwards, she said, I try to contact everybody that you ever work with. What I noticed is every single person I spoke to told me how much they respected you. But what I also noticed is I don't remember any of them saying they liked you. That had never been pointed out to me because respect was always my currency. You might not like me, but you're going to respect me. Then I wouldn't change how I did anything for me as an assertive, but I'd go back and I'd be nicer about it. I'd be kinder. I've heard other assertives that have learned that lesson. Most of them, they'll use some term there, be kinder, be nicer. A friend of mine in New York, Conrad Gomez, great dude, he says, Kind is the default game theory long-term success option. Long-term success strategy is kindness. That's for me as an assertive. Now, the other two types, scandalous, super smart dudes, they tend to come off as cold and distant.

So since they're not assertive, they just need to open up and A friendlier way. Accommodators, relationship, hope-based people, they need to be more assertive.

Okay.

My girlfriend is an accommodator. When I'm coaching her, I'm coaching her to be more assertive. Each type has a lesson that will enhance, add to enhance, don't change, enhance to make you better, which is not changing who you are. My girlfriend's core values are solid. I don't want her to change her core values. I want her to be clearer with them, with the people that she deals with. The analyst. I don't want the analyst to change her core values. You think so hard about stuff. You're not cold, but you come off as cold, which interferes with people warming up. So That's a really long answer. For my improvement is to be nicer, kinder, feller. I'm not saying it should be nicer about high tips.

No, I love that. You talked about your girlfriend. I'm going to talk about my wife Sorry, babe.

My girlfriend is vision impaired, by the way.

Really?

No, I'd expect that shit. She's so much better looking than I.

It almost made sense.

You bit for a second. Okay, that explains.

There's a book that sits on our coffee table at home. One book. The book's title, Never Split the Different. I was getting out of here. You already know what I'm talking about.

I don't know if it's going to be a book by David John or something like that. I don't know.

It's on one of the side tables. It's on one of the side tape. But my wife reads this book so much because she says, I need to tap into your brain because I know there are moments, and your name is a verb in our household, where you're bossing me. I'm like, I'm bossing you. And then she'll slap me. You just did it again. It's about art, girl. But never split the difference. It's deep on so many levels, right? I get it for leaders. It's my number one book. My team has to read it. You have to read that book within your first 90 days. I told you this week. Your first 90 days of employment, you got to read the book. Because if you don't read the book, if you don't understand the book, you're not going to fit it to our culture. We have a Chris Voss culture at all of my companies. It's great for relationships. It helps you start to understand people, the decisions they made, the choices that they decide upon. I'm saying all this to say, when you were writing the book, did you know it was going to be that down tight neck?

No.

But you know it's that gift. It's been a gift. It's very gratifying. It's been a gift. I've been very happy with it. I'll tell you the thing that I'm happiest most about it. To me, it's a proof of concept of human nature because the book's about collaboration with people, trust, long-term relationships of trust where you collaborate, both people do well and are happy. It sells well globally, which to me says the vast majority, not everybody in the world, but the vast majority of the world wants to collaborate. We're not against each other. We're not at odds. The criticism of the legacy media is legit in that it's there to keep us divided. Many of the social algorithms are there to feed what makes us angry and continue to feed read our anger if we bite. And then even if we don't bite, it tries to get us to bite anyway. I read a lot of the report on President Trump, mostly because I'm trying to read between the lines to see what he actually said, as opposed to what they're saying he said. And so because I read a lot of these, I get a fair amount of stuff fed to me.

Can you believe President Trump said this? President Trump doubles down. The inflammatory stuff. Because they're guessing that I want to be angry. I'm just trying to see what the earlier actually said. The majority of us don't want that. The majority of us, more of us want to collaborate than not. It's a legacy media, and social media is designed to keep sangrian at each other's throats.

So true. So true. So powerful. We agree on so much. I'm all about emotional intelligence when I speak to leaders. That's who I'm there with. You've got your empathetic leadership amongst many things. Why do you think leaders today are missing the folk on you?

Because they don't see it around them. First First of all, it's not in the media. It's not getting fed to them. It's not in the entertainment. How are we picking up what social behaviors affect. Every movie and TV show, when somebody's down and upset, somebody looks at them and says, I know how you feel. How is the words at the same place? You ran. The other person goes, Oh, my God, thank you, and I feel so much better. In real life, when you say, As soon as the words I know how you feel start to come out of your mouth, the other person starts to withdraw. There are some people that teach communication called story stealing. They're like, Hey, no, you don't know how I feel. And the circumstance you're getting ready to tell me about, it's got nothing to do with my circumstance. You get ready to give me advice, and I don't want to hear. We see in the media, but in movies and TVs, it works. Then actually, when it does work, it's in visam. Nobody knows what happened. I know how you feel stuff is this Common Ground nonsense. My latest example of why Common Ground is just at a wedding, Wendy and I had a wedding in Ireland recently, and talking to the pride at the end of the the wedding late on.

What they've been through, they go all the way to Ireland to get married. A couple of days before they get married, the church tells them they can't get married in the church because she's Catholic. The annulment didn't come through in time. Catholic church is not going to let her walk in the door, get married. Just a couple of things before, they got to switch churches. Wow. As if everything else didn't happen. All the things like a wedding to a man is like, Look, I got to show up, I got to stand in front of some religious guy. We're going to say a couple of words, then we're going to go get drunk. They're going to make me wear a tuxedo, which is uncomfortable. I don't want to do any of that. Wedding to a woman, it's when consistently say, I've been dreaming, I've been imagining, Banging in the state for 15 years. They're the man on earth that ever says that. Banging in the state for 15 years. We met 15 years ago. I was just trying to get a second date, and you're imagining getting married to me? It's so vastly different. I'm talking to the bride, end of the day, what the bride and groom got to do at the end of the day.

They got to walk around and say hello to everybody. They're exhausted. They're unconscious on their feet, and they have an obligation. And this is my first conversation with her. She walks up to me the next night after she's got a good night's sleep. We're in a hotel restaurant. She says, I don't know what you said to me last night. I just remember how good it made me feel. She gives me this big hug. Now, what I said to her the night before was all empathy. I said, You've been through hell. You're here to celebrate a union of two families, and a man that you married is there to have a party. She's got no idea. I said, I laid out to her every single thing that she went through, which is empathy. Now, I couldn't say, I know what it's like to be a bride, or I can't say, I know how you feel Because I once got married, or like, There's no way I know how she feels. I've never been a bride. I've never been a bride's maid. I've never been a maid of honor. I never had her experience, but I laid it all out to her, and that's the magic of empathy because She didn't even know what I did.

She didn't remember a single word that I said. Twenty-four hours later, not knowing a word that I said, she walks up to me. She feels bonded to me. She walks up to me. She gives me this great big hug. And she says, I don't know. Whatever you said last night, it just made me feel so good. So your original question, why don't more leaders see that? Nobody sitting around us had any idea of the emotional reaction she was giving me. There was another young lady that was front of the by, probably sitting on this side of me. My girlfriend's on this side. There's a couple of other people sitting there. Absolutely nobody watching, has the slightest idea that I'm hitting her with this wave of empathy, how she's connected to it. They just seem like, Well, he seemed to appreciate Give quick conversation. That's why leaders often don't see it, because when somebody does it in front of you, you have no idea what just happened.

That's empathy, but that's also an example of the impact that I was talking about earlier that you have on people. You're literally being yourself. You're not trying to over empathize. You saw the moment, you saw the need, and you did what you were called to do in that moment without hesitation..

It's gratifying. I'm a big believer in karma, and I think the more it's selfish, the more deposits I make in a karma bank, the more fun my life is. Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. While I have you here, I can only ask you this question, and I'm asking selfishly for me. But a lot of leaders truly don't understand negotiation. If I talk to a leader about negotiation, Fortune 100 leader, their immediate thought goes to salary negotiation every time. I'm like, That's probably 10 on the list. What about time? What about effort? But people don't understand that those are things that you're also negotiating. For the leaders that are out there, I'd love for you to take a moment and talk about why negotiation is important for a leader and what you miss when you don't do about.

Because when you start talking about time and effort, where you're really negotiating with somebody is their future. Where is that time and effort going to take them? How painful is it going to be? All the emotional things, but you're really asking somebody to trust you with their future. This trust is this bond, this imaginary bond. To get somebody to trust you with their future, they have to feel that you understand what's important. Not that you agreed to it or that you're aware of what they're afraid of or that you even appreciate. One of the things that I've been, just over the last three years, I've been My appreciation dividend has grown very high because I'm trying to remember on a regular basis to appreciate people as much as possible. I would have Simply, from the way that I was raised, I was just expected to do a good job. My father didn't show me a lot of appreciation. It was tremendous amount of love in my fate under It was unquestioned that I was loved unconditionally by my parents. But the modeling that was done for me, there wasn't a lot of appreciation. I just took it for being like, Look, do your job.

Do what you're has to do, do your job, have integrity, do all that stuff, and just do it. I've been guilty of expecting people to just do a good job most of my life. And now, as I'm showing more appreciation for the little things, I'm getting people working harder and working longer hours and having more fun. Because even if their future is uncertain, if I'm appreciating them in a moment, they're there for it. And so all these little intangibles that were not modeled for me well The vast majority of my life. I always had a lot of support. I was always lucky enough to have a tremendous amount of support from people, 100 from people. The bureau, a vast majority of the people I worked for, gave me massive amounts of support. Not a lot of appreciation. The success was supposed to be its own reward, doing a good job, and in many cases was. But that was for me, personally. I'm very hard working. I believe in working really, really, really hard. I don't think... I think expectations. Leaders should think about, What do I expect? What behavior do I expect? And maybe, Am I coming off as cold or uncaring, unintentionally?

Because I'm not. I think that's what leaders miss out on, a fair amount of them. Totally agree.

I totally agree. I'm going to get you out of here on this, Chris. Again, all the things we have in common, leadership, we both love our significant others. We both love the New England Patriots, Underboats.

Hold on. Can I have a phone of friend?

I had to figure out how to weave that one anyway.

Let me get Eli on the phone. Who was that? Eli. Who? I don't want to- Eli's comment. What was it? A couple of Super Bowl?

English, Chris. English. Professor, sit. But we both love bourbon.

Yeah, amen.

Our good friend, nick Netton, told the story, Every time you guys got together, he's got a froufrou bottle of a glass of wine, you got a bourbon. So he said, Hey, we should start a bourbon together, right? How the hell does that happen, bro?

Yeah, that's nick is a classic guy who has a pretty good game plan to figure stuff out. He really understands implementation. He understands teamwork. He's a great marketing and sales guy. He's fun to be around, and he's always fun to be around. And that's really how it happens. When he threw out that idea, if I didn't know him already, and the event, Chicago, we were there for a strategic coach, nick and I both get coached at strategic coach, Dan Sullivan. One of Dan's rules is, if somebody comes up to him and says, I got a great idea, Dan turns on his heels in more joy. Because usually people have a great idea, have no idea how to implement. If they have a great idea, they're not saying, You know what? Damon and the Shark Tank crew have openly said on Shark Tank, a great idea might be worth $20. Because there's no implementation.

You would have already done it. You don't have to tell someone you got a great idea, Sheldon.

You just did. So nick is the opposite. He's already got a game implementation game plan when he tells you about what he wants to do. It didn't even occur to me, the necessary element that we would have to add to our team if we wanted to do a bourbon would be Roy Milner, who's a Louisville bourbon insider, a Sherpa, if you will. We need a Sherpa. As it turned out, I'm explaining Sherpas to Roy, and Roy goes, Yeah, that's the thing. She said, It's crazy. He hasn't named my company. So Nick's a marketing guy. Nick's a design guy. Nick's a team guy. They're bringing me in because she wants to design the branding around never But the difference. I would have thought that would have been enough. But nick is smart enough to bring in Roy, who's the Louisville insider. He's got credibility with these people. They know him, they trust He knows his way around the industry. He's got great taste. He finds these spectacular hidden gems of bourbon that was available and abandoned by a large corporation because there wasn't enough of it for a global retail run. But there was a small amount that was perfect for us.

As it turned out, it's this extraordinary blend has won all these awards. The San Dippity, with the right people coming together and working our tails off, and we launched this thing, and then we get to meet people like you, and we get to find out that all these values that we share of regular hardworking people that love having a good time and making really cool stuff happen. That's how bourbon comes to be.

I'm telling you, one, and I'm putting this on film, it's on audio, it's everywhere. I've said it before, the best bourbon I've ever had, hands down. By far, the best bourbon I've ever had, hands down. But the Shareholder Society, that tight-knit group of people, it's a family. I mean, in our messaging and email chains, everyone's helping each other out. Hey, I've got a question about this, or, Does anyone know someone over here? And within five minutes, you'll see 20 people coming to the rescue or Percy. And then when we're together, it's as if we're a long lost family, and we're just catching up with each other. To me, that's the attraction, this society. The Bourbon's great, but that tight-knit community, that tight-knit family, second to none.

Yeah, it's from people group. Be your man. Absolutely. I'm glad that you and nick are having to be sitting next to each other on an airplane or something like that, right?

We were flying from Vegas, supposed to be going to Dallas. You know, nick, immediately he's asleep on the bike, right? So he's sitting next to me. I'm like, who's this rude guy? It's just I'm ask on and everything. We get routed to Austin because there's tornadoes in Dallas. So we land. Nick wakes up, starts getting ready to get up. I'm like, Hey, dude, you probably just want to hang out for a minute. We're in Austin. He's like, What? I'm like, Yeah, we got routed. There's storms in Dallas. We don't know if we're going to get to leave. And a long story short, we shared the difference for four hours on the tarmac in Austin, Texas. I was hooked ever since then, and that's how I got to know about the society. I told him at that moment, I'm like, I'm in. He explained the bond, no conditendent. He explained Everything that the society was about, the mission that you all had. It's that moment I said, That's a no-brainer. This is who I am as a person. All the values that I have are right there in this eye. This is like, Yeah, that's cool.

I just a little cake. I have stuff. Brother, I love you genuinely. Thank you for all the things that you have done in my life, the conversations, the push. Just thank you for being who you are, Thank you.

That's mutual. I appreciate that.

Yes, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, the Vossmer. Thank you, bro.

Yeah.

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