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

This episode was taped in the Money News Network studio, brought to you by US Bank. What's the secret to getting more money? It's how you ask for it. Today on Money Rehab, Chris Voss teaches us exactly how to ask for and get what we want. Chris has spent 2 decades with the FBI where he became the lead international kidnapping negotiator. He's taught business negotiation at Harvard and at Georgetown. He's written bestselling books on negotiation, including Never Split the Difference, which is one of my absolute favorites, and my husband is obsessed too. He He tells us exactly what to say to get a raise at work, how to negotiate a better job offer, what mistakes kill a negotiation before they even start, and the negotiation myths that are actually setting you up to fail. I'm Nicole Latfin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Chris Voss, I am so excited to welcome you to Money Rehab.

I'm happy to be here. It's cool.

I got to tell you that my husband and I talk about you sometimes in bed.

Like, there's so— that's a— you just threw me a softball and I'm trying to decide whether or not, you know, that straight line, whether or not I should hit it, but I'm going to take a pass.

We love, love, love and are obsessed. This is what happens when two entrepreneurs live together.

Oh yeah.

We are obsessed with your book.

Never split the difference.

So explain to people who haven't read it yet what that means, because when you think about negotiations, the most common thing is one person wants a thing for $10, one person wants a thing for $20. Let's meet in the middle and decide on $15.

Right? Right. So theoretically, that's a good idea. The problem is a loss stings twice as much as an equivalent gain. That's one of the—

Say that one more time.

A loss stings twice as much as an equivalent gain. Ignore human nature at your peril. You can't get around that. Danny Kahneman, Daniel Kahneman, Professor Kahneman, Nobel Peace— Nobel Prize in Behavioral Economics, 2002, Prospect Theory. The sum summary of it is a loss stings twice as much as an equivalent gain. So it's, it's, it's a rule of human nature. So what does that have to do with meeting in the middle? If I give in by 5, I'm going to feel I gave in by 10.

Hmm.

And I'm going to resent you. I'm not going to care that you gave in the same amount. I'm going to resent it because it felt like 10. So because I resent you, it's going to interfere in our implementation. Resentment is a toxin for relationships. And so it's a poison that's going to continue to eat until I get you back. Until I feel we're even. So I turn around and I do something in implementation and I sting you for 10. Now you got reason to resent me. And so splitting the difference is a recipe for a downward spiral in a relationship. There's no way around it.

Because what you're saying is that human nature and the way that we're wired makes us believe that we lost out on something, even though we gained half and the other person gained half.

You don't feel that. Um, there was a long time ago when I was teaching at Georgetown, I stumbled over this video where they were stopping people in the street and getting them to bet on money. And the guy would say, okay, so I'm— first of all, I'm going to give you this $10. The $10 is yours. 'Now let's gamble it.' Now the person is playing with house money. They just got $10, and every time they lost it, they were suckered in to gamble more and more and more and more because they, they felt like they had a loss. It's just feeling like you had a loss. And really, the real, the real key to empathy is in any given moment, my experience is probably vastly different than yours. Empathy is comprehending what the other person is going through at the same time. And my experience could be so strongly positive or so strongly negative that I don't see what's going on with you. It's one of the reasons why that we, um, I teach people to stop using common ground to connect. And the problem is when you share your common ground, something happened to you as a kid, something that happened to you in your business, You feel so strongly, it feels great to share common ground.

I feel like you just hijacked my story. Hmm. I started to tell you, you know, when I was a kid and, you know, I lost this game and you go like, yeah, the same thing happened to me. And you go off on something that's not the same, even if it is exactly the same. I'm sitting there going like, I had to one-up me. You had to come up with a better story. And so in the exact same moment, one person feels phenomenal and the other person feels squashed. So empathy is understanding what the other person's going through at the moment. And when you split the difference, the other person's going through a negative experience.

But wouldn't that be vulnerability? Wouldn't that be an opportunity to connect as humans, to feel the same human experience?

But you have to understand what's going on with the other side. If I share my story, I'm connecting with you, you feel squashed. So I'm, I'm actually gonna— I'm all about you sharing your story. I'm not going to jump in with my story. There's certain key moments in everybody's life that I want to dig into, and by not sharing my story I never interfere with you sharing yours with me.

So just bite your tongue.

Oh, just be fascinated, be curious. Like, yeah, wow. And actually listen. The fun part about that is, is this going to sound crazy? I get people bonding to me all the time, much more than I realize. 'Cause I actually listened. Nobody listened to him. I'm talking to a friend of mine, Charlie, a few months back, and we get into a conversation just 'cause I'm curious. And I dig into him about his mom. And I don't share a word about my mother. And to me, it's a routine conversation 'cause I am genuinely curious about people. Next morning, he walks up to me and he goes like, "Yeah, man, you know, I really, really, really enjoyed the conversation last night. I mean, I feel so connected to you. And I'm like, oh wow, okay. Oh yeah, that's why, that's why. Because the human connection takes place one way at a time. When I was a hostage negotiator, there was always this ongoing conversation. If we're going to assault the stronghold, uh, SWAT team, are we going to tell the negotiators? Because clearly the negotiators have bonded with this guy. Listen to the way he's talking to them.

This bad guy is clearly bonded to our hostage negotiators. And hostage negotiators would always be like, what are you talking about? Like, if we got to take this guy out before he kills a hostage, I'm down, you know, to save a life, 1000%. I'll walk him to the door, tell him, I tell him we're going to fit him for a suit. Whatever kind of excuse. It was always ongoing because when you're standing outside of it and you see and hear one person bonding heavily, you don't realize it's not a two-way street at that moment. It's a sequential thing.

I want to get into specific situations because this is gold, Chris. Like, I want to understand this for how we can put this into our everyday lives, in our work, in our relationships. And I know you really love teaching people about the best ways to go about negotiating a raise. So before going into a conversation like that, what should you think? What should you do?

Your mindset is not just the raise. Your mindset is to negotiate a deal where you flourish and you prosper. And then also you should— it's a relationship. It's a long-term relationship. It's— you're going to spend a lot of time. Almost an intimate relationship. You know, people talk about all the time, spend more time at work than you do with your spouse.

Yeah, your work wife, your work husband, or just in the environment.

You're in there 8 hours a day at least. The advice to that is not every job is for you. Um, I, I loved when I was teaching at Georgetown, at USC, giving women advice in the classes on They'd ask, you know, I'm getting ready to— I'm interviewing with a company that's famous for not paying women as much as they pay men. How should I handle it? And my answer is, don't interview with them, because I'm going to answer you like a dad. And you say, Dad, this guy's abusive to me. How do I get him to be better? You don't. You leave him. So if it's an abusive environment, or even if the core values don't line up with you, don't take that job. It's like having a relationship with a person whose core values don't line up with yours. It's going to be painful. You're not going to change them. So you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you. Do you like their core values? Do you like what they stand for? Because you can't flourish if you don't. So those are the starting points.

So if you're going in for that conversation, should you try to time it around a time you've had a big win? Within the company, or you're on a high for a raise?

Yeah, it shouldn't just be confined to that because one big win, maybe you had some bad losses previously and you, you know, so, so what's your average performance over 6 months to a year? How valuable are you overall? You want to be able, and you need to remind a boss if it's an existing job It's easy for the boss to lose sight of your value. So being conscious of that is really important because you're doing your boss a favor when the boss got a lot of moving parts. For you to remind them how much you're worth on a— when you have these conversations, it makes it easier for, for a boss whose heart is in the right place to pay you more. And if they don't pay you more then that is— hurts in the wrong place, then that's an indicator that you're in the wrong place because you can't flourish as a human being with a boss who's not going to take care of you.

So you shouldn't wait for a time when you closed a big deal or you had a huge win happen that week?

Depends upon the context. Is that the only big deal you closed that year? Because you come rolling in— I teach a salary negotiation course, um, just started, went back to doing it, taught it last year. We got another one coming up pretty soon. And what I really retooled in it from last time around, because I can help you get a better salary, it ain't that hard. Keeping the salary is the issue. Flourishing and getting promoted so that it's the beginning of your prosperity. So, so you don't get fired in a year because you didn't live up to expectations. So you got a big win, but that's your only win for the year. The boss knows that. Like, I've been waiting for you to come through. I've been sitting here paying you for the last 6 months and I haven't got a return on my investment. So what you just did now was really good, but you're still in that loss and you're going to come to me oblivious to that. So I want to teach— when I teach a salary negotiation course, I ask myself, what are the behaviors I want to see in you that's going to make me want to pay you more?

What are they?

First one is, what's your appetite? Do you want to play in a big game? How do you express that, and what does that look like? A friend of mine from high school gave me this question. Tom McCabe. And Tom, in every job interview he ever had and in every one of his performance ratings, would always say, how can I be guaranteed to be involved in projects that are critical to the strategic future of this company? Now, how does that land? Your boss says, team player, holy cow, team players automatically more valuable. Important stuff, ambitious. You want to play in a big game. You don't want to count paper clips and get paid like you're bringing in diamonds. You want to actually be worth the money. And so I instantly— I'm going to rethink what I think about you. I'm doing, um, I get brought in to do a Zoom call with all the salespeople of this company during the pandemic, and the entire sales team is on, 100 or so people, and the CEO. While they're all on in the Q&A, one of the salespeople says, how do I get this guy to pay me more?

There's like dead silence on the other end because everybody's waiting to see what I'm going to say. And I say, go to this guy, and then you have to mean this, and say, how do I become involved in products to the— that are critical to the strategic future of this company? And before 2 seconds passed, the CEO jumps in and says, I wish everybody would ask me that. So how do you change how the boss sees you? You're asking to do stuff that's healthy for everybody. You're not selfish. Just asking for— you ask for a raise, you're selfish. You ask how you can make the team better, I want to invest in you.

You've said that salary is just what you agreed to do in the past.

You're kind of dead even at your salary.

I love that. So, so explain, because there's an order of operations. First, you have to do more or agree to more before you can get more.

Well, it's not necessarily more, it's more valuable. And that's why you need to understand the value that you're bringing to the table now. Now that's hard. Um, but if it's a constant focus to begin with, you're more valuable to me because you're trying to pay attention to how you're moving the needle. There's a system, I think it was invented by Verne Harnish, it's called Scaling Up. And you're supposed to have daily huddles that last about 3 minutes max. And each person is supposed to say, what's my priority? What am I stuck on? How's what I'm doing moving the needle? Those are awesome conversations to have. Anybody that talks to me, this is what I'm working on, this is how it's moving the needle, I'm like, all right, good, good. 'Cause I gotta pay everybody. So we got to move the needle here. We, you know, ultimately it's got to be revenue. But are you doing something that impacts revenue? So if you're even aware of that, you matter more to me than a person who's just counting paperclips.

Well, what about bringing up personal things like, I just bought a house, or I have a sick kid, or I have some other hardships? Like in the movies, the hostage negotiations always talk about the kids to try and gain sympathy. I don't know if that's how it really works. But does that—

no—

help?

Well, I mean, so what am I— as a boss, what am I responsible for? You just bought a house. How was I involved in that decision? I mean, I want to put you in a bigger house. Actually, you just bought a house. Here's some stuff that I— more valuable stuff— or here's how you could be more valuable so that not only you could pay that mortgage But I want to put you in a bigger house. I mean, I genuinely want to put everybody that works for me in a bigger house. I genuinely want them to live longer. I want them to be healthier. I want their kids to go to better schools. So let's talk about how I can pay you. But if you made that decision and now you're bringing it to me as if it was my fault— first of all, it wasn't my fault. Secondly, okay, if that's the— if those are the ground rules Let's talk about how you can be more valuable, how I can pay you more. And again, it's not necessarily more, it's more valuable.

So it doesn't garner sympathy? Like in a hostage negotiation, all I've seen is in the movies when the hostages say like, but I have a kid, but I just had a baby. Does that work?

Only indirectly. Like, if you're laying it on them, they know what you're doing. And it doesn't matter to them. In reality, it doesn't matter. Indirectly, it can make a difference. You want to increase your survivability in the same way as— increase your survivability of the hostage same way that you meet people in a business setting. How do you meet people in a business? You walk up, you offer your hand, and you tell them your first name, and instantly you're a human being. That is the same way. As soon as I become a human on my own, it may be at some point in time If you resonate with children, then maybe I can share that. If I found out that your kids mean something to you, then at some point in time I might have the opportunity on down the line to share that. But if I want to weaponize that early on, then you're going to smell that.

I just don't even know if the bad guys care if you have a kid or not. If they have a gun? Like, this is probably an unrealistic scenario. If I'm ever hostage, Chris Voss, what do I say?

Just make sure they know your name. Yeah, that's, that's it. Make sure they know what your first name is and then say, you're responsible for me.

I'm sweating already thinking about it. All right, back to getting a raise. If you've gotten job offers elsewhere, should you bring that up, or does that erode trust because you're looking elsewhere?

Depends upon how you— it depends upon how you say it. Now, if I had a job offer elsewhere and I wanted to bring it up here, first of all, understand it's very possible that it's not gonna— it's gonna land poorly. They're gonna feel like you're extorting them. They're gonna feel like you're trying to take them hostage. They're gonna feel like that you're playing them off against somebody else. Those are all quite predictable reactions from the other side. This then gets into our accusations audit strategy, which then is you say like, look, I'm gonna, I'm gonna sound like I'm trying to play off against somebody else. I'm gonna sound greedy. I'm gonna sound like I don't care about you. I'm gonna sound like I'm a complete mercenary, that I'm only auctioning myself off to the highest bidder, which means I have no loyalty to you at all. That's what this is going to sound like. And then you let that sink in because you've warned them. You haven't tried to hide it, you haven't tried to deny it, you've tried to warn them. And then the last thing is, if you say— if you bring this up and you try to act like it's their problem, their instant reaction is going to be, that ain't my problem, it's your problem.

So then you say, this is my problem. This is not your problem. This is my problem. My problem is I'm gonna look like a jerk. You're gonna hate me for this. I got an offer from another company.

Some self-effacing—

self-effacing. A close friend of mine in New York got a job offer from another company, and he needed to maintain a relationship with the company that he's leaving. And he says to them, I got something I have to share with you, and I'm really afraid you're gonna hate me as soon as I tell you. No, no, no, no, no, what is it? In negotiating his exit, they asked to retain him as an advisor.

So that's the right way to bring it up.

Yeah. Understand what the other side's going through and recognize it. Not what you hope they're going through. I would hope that you would want a better future for me. I would hope that you can't blame me for wanting to get paid more. Hope is not a strategy.

So never use the word hope.

You got to know, I, you know, I don't like the word hope at all. It's another thing that people are blind themselves. My friend Joe Polish calls hope as an approach. He calls it hopium.

It's a drug.

You can be, you can. Yeah, you can get, you get all fired up about hope.

What about body language? I know people get hung up on that. What should you think about your— how's my body language right now?

You're, you're scaring me. I'm scared to death. Can you see it in my face?

I'm the most scary. I'm the baddest of bad guys you've ever seen.

Yeah, you're like, I don't know, we need a SWAT team in here or something. You get an extraction, you throw that at the car, you know, watch your flashbangs. Uh, body language is widely misinterpreted. And so, you know, there are a few— there are a few universal signals that other people find very encouraging. When you're listening, simply nodding your head universally is very encouraging. The look of actual curiosity and intrigue is a universal look, and it's what I just did. You know, you turn your head to the side, you kind of— and you kind of like, oh wow, yeah, that's interesting. Universally, that lands well. Now, interpreting somebody else's body language, you don't know if somebody's furious, if they're thinking. I have been accused of having a resting serial killer face.

So that's the male equivalent of a resting bitch face.

Maybe. Yeah. So, but I'm just listening intently. I've literally had people say to me, I thought you were thinking about killing me. It's like, no, I was— I thought I loved what you said. I was listening. Like, well, you scared the hell out of me. No, I was just letting you know. I go through, uh, I had the privilege to go through Harvard Law School's negotiation course while I was still with the Bureau, and we're doing these team negotiations and valuing listening in the exercises. Afterwards, the other side says, okay, so you guys weren't playing good cop, bad cop, you're playing bad cop, worse cop, and Boss was the worst cop. I'm like, dude, I was just listening. Well, that isn't the look that you had on your face. So what's my point originally? You got to be careful about the interpretation of body language. You're accurate about a third of the time, which means two-thirds of the time there's a pretty good chance you're wrong. What does that mean? You just got to find out what's going through their mind. And the angry face, they're either listening or they're angry or they're thinking about something else that's bothering them.

But isn't that more about the other person interpreting what they think you're thinking? We don't know what someone else is thinking.

I can say to you, seems like something's on your mind. And the chances of you telling me are really high. I can also say, I can't tell if you're listening or if you're mad. And my son goes dead silent a lot. So then you don't even have the visual feedback. We'll be talking on the phone, he'll go dead silent. I'll literally say to him, I can't tell if you're thinking or if you're mad. And he'll tell me which one it is.

Which one is it more often?

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

He's like Jolly Jack.

Jolly Jack, you know, when he was alive.

He's right. Yes.

He, um, this is an intense look, and, and he didn't say anything for the longest time. And he looked back at me and we made the deal. So he was thinking, he wasn't furious. And thank God I sat there and I just waited and waited and waited and waited. And finally he, he actually— his, his furious look was him thinking through the implementation details of me him coming to speak at my class. And who— he says, look, all right, so this is after he had this furious look on his face. He said, this is my personal assistant's name. This is a special Twitter account we have set up to communicate with her. I will call her and tell her who you are and what you want. I think we're going to be in Los Angeles in the fall. If we are, we're coming to speak to your class. So as an experienced businessman, he understood if you made a deal, you have to have steps. Who do I got to talk to? How do they know to expect to hear from me? What's the timing look like? He thought through every single step, so he was focused on the steps while he looked angry.

Chris, I'm so surprised that you say this because you've negotiated in the craziest, gnarliest negotiations over decades. Are you still, when you're in the middle of a negotiation, freaking out, shitting your pants? Like, When somebody's silent, does that still happen? What's going on?

If I haven't dialed in enough, if I don't have enough data at the moment, like, I got an amygdala too. I'm tired sometimes too. You know, our issue, the biggest challenge we have as human beings is decision fatigue. Like, the best time to make a deal is roughly about 10 o'clock in the morning your time. You got plenty of mental gas in the tank. You're resilient. You're probably still in a good mood. You're not dealing from food coma from lunch. You're not hungry. Your nutrition is dialed in. You're at your peak. Those are the times to cut great deals. And so what we deal with the rest of the time is what if I'm tired? What if 4 or 5 things happen to me that made me mad, disappointed me? And so by the end of the day, my game has dropped by the end of the day. I'm more likely to snap at somebody, or, you know, I'm working really hard to, to try to get back in a good mood because it's been a long day and this didn't work out, that didn't work out, this didn't work out. And yeah, I'm, you know, I'm human.

I got all the same human responses.

Okay, Chris, can we do some role-playing?

Of course.

So let's say it's 10 o'clock in the morning, right? You work for me. You put some time on my calendar to come and ask me for a raise, right? Action. Hey, Chris.

Hey, what's up? You know what, everybody that walks into your office at 10 o'clock in the morning comes in here with their hand out begging for more. You are used to people that— and nobody comes walking into the boss office to say, hey boss, how can I help you?

Yeah, no one's offering me money at 10 AM. I would love that, right?

And so you're bracing yourself trying to find out what the bad news is. And you know what, what is it? You're gonna hate me.

No, I could never.

How can I be more valuable to the company?

I don't think I could love you more now that you say that. I wish everybody would walk into my office asking for that.

All right, so, you know, let's lay it out. I want to, I want to bring more to the table. I want to do more. I want to, I want to work on our future. Secondarily, I want to get paid more. But primarily, I want to build my career and I want to actually be more valuable. Which leaves you in a position where it's easy for you to pay me more.

How much more are we talking about? Triple. Get out of here. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Yeah, well, I wouldn't go for a number right away. Tough thing about salary is really both sides got to be comfortable, which means there's a real danger in overpaying people without the performance. Because if a boss is overpaying you, then the boss is going to be really demanding, which is going to create a negative vibe. Nobody needs that. I don't need to have unrealistic— as a boss, I do not need to have unrealistic expectations for you. I have overpaid people in the past on the hope that they would rise to the occasion.

So don't throw out a number. We've heard on the show other experts say if you don't throw out a really high number, you'll never get anywhere in that vicinity.

And you'll also often get shown the door. The problem with high anchoring is it drives deals from the table. And you high anchor with me, I'm most likely to plan on showing you the door. Because the high anchor in a salary is to really not take into account the impact on everybody in the organization. So you have just defined yourself as not being a team player.

So back to our role-playing where you were joking and jovial and saying triple, you know, you were intending, it sounded like, to pivot toward the value of what you could bring to the table, not actually the value of what you would want.

Well, I'm gonna— eventually, yeah, I'm gonna want to find out what you think is valuable, how I can move the needle.

So ask more questions.

Yeah, or ask some questions. Or here's a really counterintuitive thing about the Black Swan Method, which is what makes it better than anything else. I'm going to get information out of you without asking you any questions. Oh, how so? They're called labels. And if I say to you, all right, so what's really valuable? That's an exhausting question for you to answer, which means if I haven't caught you at 10 in the morning, you're not going to be able to answer it. Also, if I say what's really valuable to you, I'm sending you the message that I don't know, which makes me less valuable. I don't want to seem clueless. If I say to you, how can I help? When you expect me to know how you can help to start with?

Yeah, because you're giving the other person a cognitive load.

And I sound stupid. Like, if I'm— I've been here for a year and I got no idea how I can help. So what I'm going to say to you, I'm going to say, it seems like there's some things that you think would be really valuable.

Yeah, tell me more, Chris.

Yeah, I have my perspective, but it seems like you have some things.

Yeah, I just want to make more money in this company so we can grow and scale.

Sounds like you don't know how you want to make more money.

Well, how do you think we should make more money?

See, now we're getting— we're getting into a back and forth, and if you're throwing it back on me that quickly, then you don't trust me. And my chances of us— we're not, we're not in a collaborative thing. Your defenses, if you're throwing it right back on me, your defenses are too high.

All right, I'm going to lower my defenses. Yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of value that I, I think you can bring. I think we could continue to increase our sales effort. We could reach out to new partners to make more inroads in other Verticals. I'm using so much corporate speak now.

Yeah, well, okay, so, but that kind of an answer is, is vague. Well, if you, if you're really telling me the truth, and you're a little vague on it yourself, but your gut instinct is we need more proactive outreach to new corporate partners.

That's right.

And so then if— so I'm listening between the lines, right? So, so it sounds like If I could find a way to do more outreach to corporate partners, that would help move the business forward. It sounds like you think a binding constraint is we're only focused on inbound, we're not doing any outbound.

100%, you nailed it.

Okay, so sounds like if I come up with a plan, how do you— that you want to review it and see how comfortable you are with it. Now another thing You know, and I'll— and I'll— this is a hard thing for an employee to do, and I'll lean back on my friend Tom telling me this. Tom loved to promote people that he could shoot down their ideas and they would learn and come back with a better idea. So the real tough thing is going into a boss— there's a pretty good chance the boss isn't going to know exactly what they want to do, but they're going to have a good idea of what they don't want to do.

It's like read more plans and—

right. Or, you know, all right, so if I come back to you with a plan and you go like, no, that won't work for the following reasons. Now that's very disheartening to hear that, but the boss is looking for somebody that took that into account and went like, okay, and then they come back smarter. So getting shot down by the boss— and this happens to me all the time, like I'm not sure what to do. But I'm pretty sure what not to do. And if somebody comes to me with an idea, I'm like, no, no, no, that won't work. It's probably going to trigger a better idea for me. But as a receiver of getting shot down, that's hard. So what you're looking for from people is the ability to get shot down and learn and come back. And then even if this person didn't have good ideas, if you came back to me with a better plan or an adjusted plan, The message I'm getting is, oh, you listened and you've processed it and you showed that you learned from the experience. So there's a way to begin to develop yourself as an employee, which comes with, are you a team player?

And did you actually listen to what the boss had to say?

So you have two ears and one mouth. Listen more than you talk.

Five times. Because you got two eyes. And you should be gathering data with your eyes. Troy Smith on my team calls it listening with your eyes. And then your gut instinct, I refer to it, you know, your sense of what do I smell is going on here? You know, that sort of, you know, what's my gut telling me? The accumulation of everything, a sense of smell. So you should really, if you're pulling in all the data, you're really absorbing 5 times as much as you're talking.

And what if you're in a new job situation where the salary you're being offered is less than what you thought? This one is tough because you don't have history, right, with the other person or camaraderie. It's a new situation that you're walking into.

You can gather a lot of information in the interview if it's a two-way interview. If the most valuable person when you're being interviewed, either by individuals or panel, person that isn't saying much, 'Cause they got a ton of data. And they've been taught that they're not opening your mouth unless you're listening. One of the job negotiations from one of my students at Georgetown, I taught him to say, "What does it take to be successful here?" Which is not, "What are you looking for in a candidate?" Everybody out there, every, you know, person that works in MBA programs and they're the student counselors trying to help them get jobs, say, find out what they're looking for in a candidate. What are you looking for in a candidate? That is not the same as what does it take to be successful here. And I, and as I recall, it was a female, uh, that asked a question. 4 people on the other side, one guy leans forward and says, no one ever asked us that. Here's what it takes. Now she gets the job. She's talking to the people afterwards and they say, that guy never says anything in an interview panel.

That's the first time he ever spoke up. We're shocked that you got this guy to talk. Like, the level of good things that happen there. First of all, You want to know how you could be successful there. You're actually asking, as opposed to, well, I've done this and I've done that. Here's what you're looking for in a candidate, this whole nonsensical sales job. Somebody that interviews you in the process is really gonna know. They are not telling you until you've shown that you're actually going to listen. And if you're in there with your value proposition and how your resume fits and how you— all the selling points, you are not listening at all. First interview. So you need to— there are other people that are looking to see if you're going to listen from the very beginning. So you don't have to have a history with people. You just got to show right off the bat you listen.

So fine, you get the job and the offer is $100 grand, but right, you're looking for $150.

Right.

And so you want to advocate for yourself, but you also want to have a good impression with your new employer, and there's a power imbalance. So how do you navigate that?

Yeah, I'd, I'd lay that out from the very beginning, and I'd say, all right, so because if they offered $100,000, there's, there's a difference between what's the job market say you're worth and what can they afford to pay. Then secondarily, What's the future hold? These are not connected to at all to what the job market is offering. Like, I would go work as Warren Buffett's assistant for $15 an hour. I make a lot more than that right now, but that job would be worth it. So what's in the job? And ultimately, is, is there prospects for growth here? Do I want to learn these skills? So I, I would, I would lay out from the very beginning, okay, so you got to feel for whether or not they're legitimately offering you $100,000. They're not lowballing you. Now, in point of fact, they have a range. In point of fact, they're going to come in at the lower end of the range, but there is a limit to how high they could go. So you need to find out what their range is. If you got a number that you want to get to, ask them how you can get there.

But be realistic.

Be real. Yeah, be realistic. And, you know, what are the attributes of the job? Because so much affects it. And the biggest thing is like, let's say that— let's say you want $150,000, they got $150,000, and you don't like their culture. That is blood money. You're going to be so unhappy. They're going to age you. You're going to be a miserable human being. You're not going to learn. Like, there's so much that goes into real job satisfaction. Where's it taking you in your life? And are you going to enjoy the journey? Which puts a lot of latitude on the kind of monetary compensation, which is necessary. There's no question that you got bills to pay, but if it's blood money and it ages you, you don't want to be there.

Yeah, because, you know, if I said I'd give you $10 million but you would die tomorrow, would you take the money?

Or if it was— if I was miserable, if it just— if it was rely completely on lying to people and bamboozling them and selling products they didn't need and or exposing them to health risks that was going to shorten their lifespan, but you could make a lot of money doing it. And nobody's ever happy that way.

Well, you emphasized monetary compensation. What about non-monetary compensation? How should you go about asking for more time off, uh, an expense budget, or whatever else? Is valuable to them.

If it's in the context of you being a better employee, uh, are you going to get your work done, you know? Are you a championship player? Context and some of the simple things that make— people call it just simple, but they're actually what makes you a championship player.

Context in terms of the job, not context in terms of your life. So If you wanted to, let's say, work from home for one day, it would be less focused around your kid and more focused on how you could contribute more by doing that.

Well, if I'm delivering when I work from home— now, it's really hard to work from home and deliver, and that's why people more and more in today's competitive environment, you want to work remote, you want to work from home, look at, look at your employer's position. Okay, you want to make $60,000— you want to make $175,000 a year working from home. I get somebody in the Philippines who works for $25,000 a year, does the same job of you. Why do I want to pay you $175,000 when the job is the same? You know, you got to look at it from, from the boss's point of view. We made significant adjustments in my company, and I got more of my assistants now. All of my assistants work out of my house. When they used to work remotely, because we have— we work hard. And if you're working remotely, then the only interaction you have with people is when you're working hard. There's no enjoyable times. Like, I, I come walking into the, the team's office in my house every day. I like to walk in about 2:45, 2:30. Because we work hard from 9 to 3.

We don't have a lunch break, but I want you to get up and take a walk and clear your head. I want you to go get something to eat. People that work for me walk out back and forth in front of the house all the time, clear their head. If I know everybody's out the door about 3, I come walking in about 2:45 because, you know, I want to tell them a stupid story about something stupid that I did, or I want to chat. You know, these moments when we get a chat with each other. Or something occurs to me off the top of my head: if we're working remote, these golden moments that actually make us care about each other as human beings just don't occur. And if you're on a championship team, if you want A players, it's really hard to be remote and be an A player because you don't get to know people, you don't get to laugh, you don't, you know, you don't— the stupid stuff that makes us all human beings. It just doesn't come through working remote. Now, if you want to work occasionally remote, people on my team do it all the time.

Like, I'm not coming in today, I gotta, you know, I want to work remote. Nate, my head of marketing, he stays in his apartment sometimes because he really wants to focus, and having the people around and these interactions, which are highly enjoyable to him, are also a distraction. I got another guy who knocks himself out for me on a regular basis. I gotta work from home today. Cool, you got it. You get, you get your stuff done. I don't got to worry about you. And you're always doing extra for me. I don't have to worry about you. I don't, I don't, I don't care if you're working from home because you bring your A-game all the time. So what's the context? Are you doing a better job? Have you, have you, have I got so much trust in you that I don't care where you are?

You don't think you can have a winning career by working from No, you got to get together in person some.

Now, how often do you get in person? My director of operations, now current Chelsea, she lives in Virginia. We don't get to see each other on a regular basis, but any excuse that we have, we have quarterly. We run EOS, Entrepreneurial Operating System. So we get together quarterly for that. We run our conferences, you know, we get together for that. It's harder. I'll call her just to shoot the breeze, and I try— if I, if I got work-related stuff, I try, I try to make the personal stuff always be the last end of the conversation. You know, I joke around with her a lot. It's much harder. She's one of the few people that's capable of working mostly remote, but we talk a lot and we have, um, a lot of personal interactions just to check in on each other. And I also tease her a lot, and she almost always— she almost always— she bites hard on the jokes, and she's like, 'Ah, you give me a heart attack.' So, you know, we joke around a lot too, but it's much harder when you're remote.

If you can, as an employee, try to get in in person as much as you can, or have personal interaction.

If your excuse to work remote is so that you can focus on your personal life. How does that play out on the other side? It makes you a C-player.

So how do we use empathy and vulnerability and connection for the most successful negotiation?

Empathy seems like compassion. It's a precursor to it. It's not compassion. It's, it's very hard to be compassionate without being empathic first. Empathy sounds like vulnerability and a lot of, a lot of the application of emotional intelligence. Everybody's familiar with self-effacing humor. It's a combination of two of our skills put together simultaneously. One of them is playfulness. Playfulness, you're 31% smarter in a positive frame of mind. So if you're playful, you're smarter. Emotions have a contagion for neuroscience reasons. So if I'm in a highly positive, playful state of mind, the chances that you're going to catch it is extremely high. So self-effacing humor, we got playfulness going on there, right? Self-effacing is you making fun of yourself, like, you know, I probably seem like the biggest idiot you ever met. Said like that, well, the accusations audit wouldn't have worked. Superpower skills is saying the negative things on your mind about me. So self-effacing humor is me playfully, you know, if I think, if I'm, if I can sense you think I'm an idiot because I'm not catching on, I won't say I don't want you to think I'm an idiot. I'll say I probably seem like an idiot.

And I throw in this playfulness. So That's the application of emotional intelligence. Now, is that vulnerability for me to say, and I probably look like a great big giant dope? Um, vulnerability is the eye of the beholder.

So interesting because I lean on self-deprecating humor all the time, and I've been criticized for that, saying that—

by whom?

Somebody who's giving me a compliment, and then I put myself down, or I dismiss it doesn't lend for more connection.

Context.

Context.

Yeah. If somebody was complimenting me, I'm not sure that I would throw it in that sequence. Now you're using self-effacing humor a lot because you're finding it to be an extremely high-value strategy in a lot of circumstances. Not all circumstances. And in point of fact, you're running your own human performance laboratory. Which means self-effacing humor worked here. Let me experiment to see if I can develop a gut instinct to where it does work better or it doesn't work at all. Nothing works all the time. You just want the stuff that works more than anything else.

What can kill a negotiation before it starts?

There are 3 conflict types. And what kills a negotiation before it starts depends upon each one of the types. The types are fight, flight, make friends, which is assertive, analyst, accommodator. They're the cavemen that survived. When the caveman— and we have caveman wiring, we've all inherited it. Human nature has not changed since we've been aware of human nature. Now it gets affected and influenced by the social media of the day, but the basics of human nature has been the same for 10,000 years. So what we inherited from the caveman we all had, it's gender agnostic. The world splits evenly into thirds. We, the Black Swan Group, has more than enough data to back that up. Fight, flight, make friends. So what kills the negotiation before it starts? The highly analytical person sees conflict as extremely expensive, extremely counterproductive. The loud negotiator, the analyst will never come to the table with them. See elephant crashing through the jungle. I heard you coming a long way away. We're not even going to talk. The assertive is a loud negotiator. Everybody thinks that the best negotiator or the best salesperson— a cliché— is the loudest person in a room.

The analysts never get to the table with them. They were driven from the table before anybody ever approached it, because they know the assertive is not going to listen and is going to steamroll over them and is not going to be thoughtful. So that kills the deal before it ever gets started. That's the biggest thing. Um, getting an analyst to the table with an assertive is very, very hard because they saw the assertive coming from 1,000 miles away. Now, assertive will talk to anybody. Assertive's emotions heal up the way Wolverine heals up from being scarred, or Deadpool. Like, you could stab an assertive in the heart, and an hour later, he or she's ready to talk to you again. They get over it fast. The analyst, you know, they're like, all right, you stabbed me in the heart, you're going to do it again, I'm not sitting down with you. And then finally, the accommodator, uh, the make friends person, very hope-oriented. The only thing that really drives them from the table, or it's hard to get them back if they've been hurt and you don't apologize. Now, the, the analyst and assertive could care less about apologies because they don't see it as being solution-oriented.

An analyst would be like, okay, you apologize. Number one, were you the one that committed the sin? If you weren't, then your apology means nothing. If you were the one that committed the sin, was your apology, "I'm sorry you feel that way"? That tells me you ain't going to change. So analysts and assertives tend to never apologize. Accommodators have to know, have to hear the apology. And they're a third of the planet. So, and that causes a disconnect an awful lot also. Because the assertive is going to hurt the accommodator and then not apologize because they see the apology as being useless and they feel it's insulting to apologize. And the accommodator can't hear anything until the assertive apologizes. Like, it's when you start— when you see the three types, your question started off with how do negotiations get killed before they started. It's going to be because of type mismatch. The same sort of question is most impasses in negotiation are a result of type mismatch, and not necessarily that they actually saw things differently, but they offended the other side without realizing it, and it's a type mismatch. Here's how it manifests itself.

An analyst is a thinker and loves silence. Um, two classic examples. Elon Musk is being interviewed on Lex Fridman's podcast, and they're both analysts. Uh, so Lex asks Elon a question, and Elon sits there in silence for 22 seconds before he answers. Now, most people can't get past 3 seconds.

The other person?

Either person, because it's weird if you're not comfortable with silence. Elon's sitting there for 22 seconds. In a later podcast, I'm listening to Lex and he's talking about how when he sits in silence with someone, he shares the silence and he feels more and more connected with you by sharing the silence. That's how an analyst feels about silence. The accommodator, the relationship hope-oriented person When they're furious, they give you the silent treatment. They signal fury—

stonewalling—

by silence. So in a moment of silence, if you got an accommodator, a third of the world, talking with an analyst, a third of the world, the accommodator is going like, oh my God, oh my God, he's furious, I gotta say something, he hates me right now, he's angry. And the analyst is thinking like, thank God they shut up, thank you, you know, give me— I need this silence to think. You see this massive type mismatch over silence, where they're not in disagreement, they're just misinterpreting the moment. And then the assertive, if I'm an assertive and you're an analyst, and you go silent, you go silent because you want to think. As an assertive, I think you've gone silent because you want to hear more. So I'm going to talk even more and even louder. And you're going like, oh God, I wish this guy would shut up so I could think about the last thing he said. So that's why type mismatch— it's not a disagreement, it's a misinterpretation of the moment.

So which type makes for the best negotiator, or are the best negotiators a combination of all the types?

The combination of all the types. Each type has their natural attribute is both essential and inadequate. Analyst is a thinker, plans. That's essential. Planning with no action is inadequate. Accommodator, very hope-oriented, very optimistic, relationship-focused. These things are essential and inadequate by themselves. And I think the phrase hope is not a strategy comes from the number of accommodators that are just hoping it works out without detail. So, but that's essential. I mean, I gotta be optimistic. I have to be hopeful. I have to want to have a great relationship with you. And the accommodators are very strong on all those things. The assertive, I got to tell you what I want. If I'm not— there's a difference between being assertive and aggressive. But if I don't tell, if I'm not assertive with what I want, I'm making you guess. And the chances of me getting it are, are much lower. I've done a number of deals where I've said, here's what it looks like for us to have a great relationship that will last for 20 years where we both prosper. That's when you've given me an inadequate offer. I won't reject that offer I'm going to tell you what a great deal looks like for me.

I got to be willing to be assertive and say that. Now, I don't say it aggressively. I'm putting it in light of, here's how we prosper. I gotta have this in order for us to prosper. Because if I don't tell you, I'm making you guess. Chances of you getting it right are less than if I've actually told you. So it's a combination, all three. And people who are coachable, people who learn, they start seeing where their deals have fallen short and they start seeing what the other people are doing that might have fixed it. Then they start to pick up the traits of the other side.

I love this. It's very esoteric. And I'm trying to imagine these different types. Can you give us an example of a crazy negotiation where these types came into play?

I'm going to use real visible types because everybody knows them. Donald Trump's an assertive. He gets into a big argument with the president of Ukraine, what, a year and a half ago, 2 years ago, guy's first visit to the White House. I mean, it's name-calling, you know, everybody's back and forth. It's like 2 kids in a schoolyard and the people standing around him going, do you believe he said that to you? You know, the press and everybody else loves to egg on a fight. But one-on-one, he's at the Pope's funeral with the president of Ukraine, and they cut a rare minerals deal. So what he is like publicly, I think he's learned that one-on-one, if he's charming and he listens and all the feedback— if you want to objectively look at all the feedback about him, Never mind whether or not you love him or hate him. Everybody that meets him one-on-one says he listens intently and that he's charming. Bill Maher goes and meets him in the White House, and Bill Maher's been the biggest critic of Trump forever. And he says, look, I'm sorry, the guy was charming, he was engaging, he was dialed in, he was focused, he listened to what I had to say.

So as an assertive, Trump has learned that one-on-one, you need to be engaging, you need to listen to all the other attributes of the other negotiators. So that's an example of someone who started out as one type, and I think over the years has come to learn that one-on-one, he's got to dial into people and to be charming and to listen.

I want to stay on Trump for a second, because I know you talk a lot about his negotiating style. Uh, more recently throughout the Iran war negotiations, some political scientists say that Trump is using this madman theory of diplomacy, acting erratic, unpredictable, to try and get leverage. Do you think that's what he's doing here?

No, I think what he's— I think what really catches everybody off guard is like, he, he's an economics-focused American president. He doesn't really care what regime is in charge on the other side. Hence Venezuela. He takes out the president of Venezuela, locks him up, you know, kidnaps him. You know, a rendition is a kidnapping that some government said was okay, but leaves the government in place. He doesn't care who's in charge. Now, most American presidents in the past have wanted regime change. If we're going to go, if we're going to have a conflict with a country, we want to put boots on the ground, we want to beat them on the battlefield, and then we want to change their form of government. Which makes most countries very leery of cooperating with us if they don't have democracies. And so Trump is a different breed of cat, and he's eminently predictable. Like, nobody's really surprised by anything he's done or said. Like, were you surprised when he started talking about moving military assets in the direction of Iran that he was actually going to use them? Every time he moves military assets, he uses them. They're not a bluff.

So he's very different. He's economics-focused. He thought that Iran was going to fold up when he took out the main leadership and the rest of them were going to say, all right, so he's going to leave us intact as long as we cooperate and play ball. I think he's been a little surprised at the fact that they haven't caught on that he actually wants to collaborate with them. He said a long time ago In his first term, he was talking about the problems with Iran. He actually said, "Make Iran great again." Like, if you want to collaborate with us economically, if all our deals are two-way streets, if you're not slaughtering 30,000 of your citizens, you know, who knows what the numbers of Iranians that were killed by the regime before Trump stepped in. There's tens of thousands of people that that regime murdered in the streets. If you're not doing that, I don't care if you have a dictatorship. I don't— Trump is like, just play ball economically. Let's make fair deals. Let's prosper. Let's put up some hotels. Let's increase your tourism. That's unlike any other American president we've ever had. Every other American president demanded that we put a democracy in your country, which is made every country in the Middle East leery of us because they don't have democracies.

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, we want cooperation from these people. But if we keep preaching democracy, what they hear is, you want us all to lose our jobs. You put us up for open election, we're going to start going through the same stuff you go through every 4 years, or that England goes through at the drop of a hat. You know, half the European governments, they get a vote of no confidence, the government falls, and everything in the country's got to stop. And the UK's economy is not thriving because of this volatility.

So do you think generally unpredictability is a good negotiating strategy? I mean, we've seen it in business too. Adam Neumann from WeWork, It was this idea that he's a madman. We never know what he's going to do.

I don't know. It's— and first of all, is it unpredictability or you just not like what the other person's doing? Just most of the time when someone is— you say they're unpredictable. Well, they're not behaving with the patterns that you like. And so since you're not conforming to my rules, you're the crazy one. I have the rules. So that's most of the time unpredictability. You just don't like where the other side's coming from. Like, the Republicans can say the Democrats are unpredictable. They're not unpredictable. They're very clear about what they want. The Democrats could say the Republicans are unpredictable. They're not. They're clear about what they want. You know, there's Democratic approach to government It's pretty clear the Republicans don't like it, so, you know, they want to call them unpredictable when they simply disagree. Now, the WeWork guy, you know, again, did what he did make sense? I think his pattern, from what I know of the documentary, was he was pretty much the same guy the whole time. Like spending a lot of money, you know, like partying, wanted to be in control, didn't want his board to overrule him and kick him out.

Wrote a set of rules where the board couldn't overrule him, which they all signed off on to begin with. And they all thought, well, we're more experienced business people, he's going to listen to us. He said he, he wrote a set of rules where I can ignore you if I feel like it and you can't kick me out. Um, I remember watching a documentary on Uber, you know, the old— and I can't remember the founder CEO's name, Travis Kalanick, but he was predictable every, every, you know, the, the, the docu-series that I watched on one of his early investors said, you know, the guy run through brick walls for you. Problem is everything's a brick wall to him. That was early on, so he was predictable the whole time. To say that somebody's unpredictable is usually you just don't like what they're doing. You knew they were going to do it.

Have you read The Art of the Deal?

I have. I read it a long time ago.

What'd you think? And what do you think of his negotiating style?

I thought The Art of the Deal was very insightful. I— my— the biggest chunk of time of my FBI career was in New York, and it was at the time when, when Trump was really, uh, coming to the forefront. And I got to New York when it was an extremely dysfunctional city. Now, there's always been time, periods of time, New York's had its dysfunctionality. But Trump rebuilt Grand Central Station, the Grand Hyatt next to Grand Central Station. He started out because the city had dumped in thousands, if not millions of dollars into the Wollman Skating Rink and it never got fixed. And Trump would walk by it every day and see broken concrete and construction workers sitting around leaning on shovels, and year after year after year. And he finally got fed up and said, I'm going to fix the Wollman Skating Rink. I can't stand it anymore. And he fixed it. And everybody said, well, how could that be? So I read The Art of the Deal early on. I was always interested in negotiation books. And I think it's a good read. Love him or hate him, If you love him or you hate him, you're not going to look at him objectively.

Like, one of the things that I enjoyed reading in that book was he takes over the Plaza Hotel and he's micromanaging a little. And so the guy running the Plaza is like, okay, you want to micromanage me? I'm going to make you make every decision. So he started calling Trump for, I don't know, 'What kind of paper clips should we buy?' He's trying to teach him a lesson. And Trump was like, 'Oh, okay, I'm gonna leave you alone. You're a capable, competent guy. I'm gonna stop micromanaging you.' So I, you know, I enjoyed reading it at the time. I— there isn't anybody you can't learn from. If you love them or if you hate them, it's going to interfere with your ability to learn from them.

Okay, so I'm going to give you some negotiating strategies and tell me yes if people should use them or no if they shouldn't.

All right.

Silence.

Silence is a great thing. Learn to shut the front door and, uh, and gather data with your eyes is, is a great strength.

Saying you're willing to walk away.

Only if you are, because if you're not, you're a liar. And lying is not a good long-term strategy.

Throwing out the first number.

No, I don't like throwing the first number. I want to gather data first before I throw it out. There's this whole anchoring thing. There's a lot of discussion about anchoring. And what you see mostly, but not exclusively, mostly is the really experienced negotiators want to know what's on your mind before they throw a number. Because if you throw the first number, there's a significant portion of the time where they're either going to be too low, or you're gonna— which means you didn't get as much as you could have. Or if you're too high, you drive a deal from the table and you should have made that deal. And I don't like either of those circumstances, so I'm going to want to get a feel from you what your range is. And I can't do that by throwing a first number.

Should you ask for a higher number than you actually want?

No, because again, that makes you a liar.

Self-deprecation.

I'd say it's a ridiculously strong emotional intelligence skill. I love it.

Introducing bargaining chips that you're willing to compromise on.

No, um, again, you're a liar. You're deceiving the other side. You throw something out, you intend to throw it away. I mean, that's deception, and deception is not a great foundation for long-term relationship of trust and prosperity.

I've heard you talk about in a hostage situation where you wouldn't compromise of saying like the bad guy wants a jet and $10 million and be like, you get an Uber and, you know, $100 grand.

Yeah, right.

Subliminal messaging. So like there's a scene in The Office where Mindy Kaling's character has a crush on Idris Elba's character and kind of incept the idea when he walks into her office and says, "You wanted me?" And so she's basically saying she was incepting him with her language. Does that work?

Yeah, there's very little in the movies or TV that actually work in real life. Yeah. So I mean, with— I mean, there are— there's a difference between planting a seed in somebody's mind and nurturing that seed. Trying to plant a seed in somebody's mind is usually some act of deception, which is— deception is never a great recipe. And there's a lot of deception by omission, which is widely accepted in the private sector and in a business world, and it always, always ends up badly. Yeah, I didn't, you know, I didn't lie to you, I just didn't tell you.

Yeah, but you don't want to say everything. You don't want to be TMI.

A lot of stuff that you're holding back could actually be reasons for a better deal if you didn't take yourself hostage. And what do I mean by that? Let's say you got a timeline. Let's say you got a bill you got to pay on Friday. I can be scared to tell you that, or I can say, look, if we don't work this out, I got to move on because I got a bill I got to pay on Friday. You know, it's, it's the holidays, you're looking for a job. Everybody in a business is, uh, is busy with the holiday party. You got a divorce settlement in January. You could say, look guys, if I can't get a serious offer from you now, I gotta move on. So why are you holding something back?

Because it's honest, right? Because you honestly have that situation. You don't want to say that if you didn't have a hard deadline.

Or could be a reason to spur action right now. Then, then you're being candid. People hold stuff back far more for reasons like, it's a non-starter, they'll never give it to me. Well, you should bring it up. Maybe they can. You don't know for sure. I, I can't. I'll be vulnerable if I tell them this. Well, maybe it's a reason for them to actually take action. It's all in what you're doing to yourself and your brain.

Should you play hardball?

If you know what you really need, you could be nice about it. I think people should stick to their guns. I think you— if, if you're— do you want it because you're trying to satisfy your ego? Because you got a cousin that did it? Somebody that you want to beat got it? Like, which— but stuff that you really need You should stick to what you really need. You just don't have to be mean about it. I get, as an assertive, I get asked all the time what I do differently. The only thing I would have done differently was I would have been nicer about a lot of stuff. I played hardball plenty of times. I probably would have been nicer about the way I did it.

So the last one is kindness, because some people say it signals weakness.

No, it does not. Um, my friend Conrad Gomez says that kindness is one of the— what is it— long-term success strategies. Kindness is not weakness. Kindness contributes to the karma bank. I believe very strongly in positive karma. And, you know, kindness doesn't mean you're going to get rolled over. Every now and then, because you're kind, somebody might try, but that doesn't mean you got to give in. You know, I'm sure, I'm sure people try to roll over Conrad on a regular basis. He doesn't give in. My friend Nick Nanton, he strikes you as a guy you could roll over easily. You know, you try to roll over Nick in a very polite way, that's your last conversation with him.

Well, I think there's a difference between kindness and niceness.

Some of it could often be in how you apply it, how you, how you define it. But so yeah, they could— they're often synonyms.

Yeah, you can be kind and give bad news, or— right, yep, in a kind way. Yeah, but a nice person is giving somebody something they want because they're scared of coming across, right? Yeah, as mean, or they're doing something that's not aligned so that other people will like them. Those are the people that will steamroll you.

You're a natural-born assertive, aren't you?

What do you think?

Yeah, 1,000%.

I think I might be a combination.

Well, that doesn't mean that you haven't learned a lot of other skills, the complementary skills that enhance— what was the name of your book again? You Know. Say it out loud.

You Know. You want me to say it?

Yes.

Rich bitch.

Yeah. And the one after that was boss bitch. That's a natural. I like— I bring it. That's a natural born assertive. And you're very— you're kind about it. Thank you. The reason why— see, as an assertive, I always hated the word nice. And so assertives tend to react, I'm not nice, how dare you, take that back.

Guilty, you clocked me.

So, and we share that attribute.

I want to get your thoughts on a couple of dealmaking clichés. If you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice, ask for money.

There's certain things that are a little bit of a sucker move, and people catch on to that really quickly. When somebody says, hey, I want your help, I need your advice on this, like, I'm going to figure out really quickly whether or not you're trying to create an emotional debt or whether or not you actually want to listen. And I figure out— I can figure out really fast if you're weaponizing this advice thing against me. Oh, because your reaction to whatever it is that I say— are you actually going to listen to what I said? You asked me for advice, and I, I know right away whether or not you're listening. If you're just trying to get me to feel like I helped you, and therefore now you're going to help me get money, then I'm gonna, I'm gonna smell that real fast.

When people go in really wanting money but framing it as advice because people are more likely to do it if they came up with the idea?

There's a whole separate issue. Yeah. I mean, the other side has to have ownership in the outcome, in a solution. That's one of the reasons why my Harvard brothers and sisters, who I have tremendous amount of respect for, they're dead wrong on the yes-able proposition.

Explain what that is.

And they say, you know, just come up with a proposition that fits the other side's wants and needs so perfectly that all they got to is say yes. Well, they're not vested. They didn't care about it. It was all your idea. They had no interaction, they had no collaboration, and they had no contribution. And nobody wants to implement a deal that was not their idea at all.

So how do you get somebody to think it's their idea?

The what and how questions are designed to trigger somebody's thoughts. Not get an answer. So how can I be involved in projects that are critical to the strategic future of the company? That then begins to invest your boss in your success, which I think is what you were driving at a moment ago.

Even in the blocking and tackling way where you're repeating the last few words that you hear. How do you do that?

How do I do that?

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Can I drop this mic? Can you drop the mic? That was perfect. Is that something that people should think about if they're not as skilled as you are?

It's all practice. It's all— it's language, it's practice. It's equivalent to a sporting event. What does that mean?

It—

first of all, if you haven't done it at all, you can make big leaps right off the bat really quickly by just trying it at all. And so that's kind of fun. And then when you start getting some satisfaction back and getting people talking, then it just becomes that much more enjoyable and you start getting better slowly.

So the advice is to try and repeat the last 2 or 3 words that the other person said back to them.

The mirroring, that's called a mirror. And that's a great skill. The 2 fundamental skills of the Black Swan Method principally are labels or mirrors. Mirrors are repeating a couple of the words. Labels, it sounds like that's important to you. That's a label. Sounds like, looks like, seems like. What we're seeing on a regular basis is people either right-handed or left-handed. People either prefer labels or they prefer mirrors. I don't know which one is going to feel more natural to you. More people are right-handed than left-handed. More people refer labels than prefer mirrors. The— one of the founders of a company we're advising, Even Up Law, um, Ray is a mirror guy. Like, he will mirror like crazy, and that's almost all he does, and he's phenomenal at it. Because that fits the way that he thinks. And the mirror is the least amount of brainpower required on your side for the maximum amount of talk from the other side. And I think that's one of the reasons that Ray likes it, because he just says 2 or 3 words and the other side talks for 10 minutes.

And the why beneath that is that people want to feel heard.

They feel like you're listening. It also helps them expand on their thoughts. It connects a lot of thoughts in their brain, and it helps them focus on all the connecting thoughts. And a mirror really brings out a lot more from the other side.

Okay, a couple more clichés. You can't have a good deal with bad people.

Yeah, I agree.

You can't have a bad deal with good people.

You could, you could You could— the accommodators will not focus on implementation, which will make a deal really bad. They're going to hope that everything works out. So an accommodator can be a very good people person and have left too much to chance, too much to hope. And you really got to focus on implementation details with someone who's really hope-focused. And so that would make, with a good person, a very difficult deal because nobody talked about how we're going to make it happen. Some people are— Negotiating is my favorite sport. Well, and a lot of people hate it. Assertives tend to love negotiating. See, I was right before about you being an assertive. Yeah, assertives tend to love it. But some people just hate it because they see it as conflict or they see it as disagreement. Analysts tend to really be negotiation adverse. They want implementation and they want And they want plans. And negotiation has this aura of being combat. And some people, that's the worst thing possible. And other people are like, yeah, let's go, because they love the combat. So it doesn't have to be either. It can be just great collaboration.

What about how you were raised? Because for me, I feel like it's in my blood. Both my parents were immigrants. And so the idea of negotiating was more natural, like asking for a discount where there wasn't a discount, right, was something I just grew up seeing all the time.

That has an awful lot to do with it. I mean, I have, I have a basic theory that everybody's got to, for lack of a better term, two lines of code in your head. There are certain things that were just planted in your head. They were probably, and you don't know that they're there, but they drive you. And they were probably planted in the first 5 years of your life because most of your memories has been wiped away. I don't know why, but you know, nobody remembers anything from age 3, or rarely. And then it was probably put in your head by your primary female caregiver, because in the first 5 years of the life, that's who you're around the most. Probably it was probably your mother. My girlfriend Wendy, the woman she spent the most time around was the nanny that her her family hired. Head of my coaching, Derek, the woman he spent the most time around was his grandmother. But these are the people that are going to say stuff to you over and over again. And your parents probably said to you, like, this is— it's— you could do anything you want.

And your mom probably said that to you over and over and over again.

Well, my mom didn't, but, but I'm gonna definitely do that for my daughter.

So maybe whatever you say over and over, the voice in your head, they, they said stuff, they demonstrated stuff to you that was not really— it was expectation versus, um, encouragement. Or the encouragement was minimal, but it was expected that you could do this stuff. Not that it was that hard, but that, yeah, you can, of course you could do this. Of course you can. And that has a lot to do with how you start. Now, you could get in there and change that if you want. It's hard, but it can be done.

But EQ is easier to change than IQ.

Yeah, well, EQ is a big superpower too. But you— but whatever those two lines are, if you find self-defeating behavior, um, if you can— Andre, Andre Norman, good friend of mine, former prison gang leader, He had a lot of nasty stuff, bad stuff playing in his head as a little kid. He is now a phenomenal human being and is making the world a better place. So he went back in there and he changed that code. However, however he got it, could be done.

You can't— you can make new neural pathways.

Absolutely.

It's hard work, but it can be done. And now I'm just going to have your TED Talk playing in the background of my daughter's nursery. On repeat. She's going to be a phenomenal negotiator.

Well, my mom— I talk about my mom in my TED Talk. My mom was a tough cookie, and I attribute a lot of in my life to her. So she's got a great— she got a great mom.

Thank you. We end all of our episodes by asking all of our guests for a tip that listeners can take straight to the bank. We didn't get into personal finances, uh, the show is Money Rehab, of course, So curious if you— you look like you have your shit together, but ever needed money rehab?

Most, most of the cliché stuff is the best long-term strategy. You know, the high-risk, high-gain stuff is a lot of fun. And in point of fact, you lose a lot of money. I did, you know, I did silver options when I was in my— I think I was in my 20s when I lost money doing that. And, you know, you always It's the casino. You know, somebody in every casino, they talk about the guy won $2 million on a slot machine, or, you know, this businessman walked away from the roulette table with $3 million. That was 1 in 1,000. So the cliché stuff is often the best long-term strategy.

Back to basics.