How to Master Negotiation Like an FBI Pro | Joe Polish & Chris Voss DSH #1412

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You know, there's going to be someone that's going to come into that room and have to clean it up.

It's not going to make the bed and everything, but I just don't weave shit everywhere.

And so I think every day we experience all kinds of different humans.

There's no shortage of indicators that, you know, the kind of energy you put out is going to tend to attract it to you.

Do you guys find, because you both know a lot of successful people, the narcissism levels are higher with those that are financially successful compared to average people?

So from any, other than just my opinion or perspective, not any scientific researcher, I don't really know.

I'm curious to say what Chris says to this.

What I will say is, so Dr.

Romani Derbasla, I've got a couple of interviews with her that I've done, and she's a friend.

And she's one of the top, if not the top narcissist expert in the world right now.

In terms of, you know, people that follow her, she's not a marketer.

She's not tried to

get famous.

She just says really profound stuff and she has a massive following.

And so.

I've had lots of conversations with her about narcissism and about sociopaths and psychopaths.

And there's a

there's a large percentage of that in CEO levels, the business world,

politics, any areas where

people are in

positions of controlling or leading other people.

And it tends to

the world of fame, it tends to attract narcissists because they want people to adore them.

So I have a friend who's a great coffee writer, John Carlton.

He's now in his 70s.

I was talking to him a few months ago, and we're talking about marketers and about people that are scam artists and con artists.

And one of the things he said, and he said, I think 25% of them are narcissists, 25% are sociopaths, 25% are psychopaths.

The other 25% are disinformable cult people.

And I was like, you know, that sounds about right in the world of marketers.

I go, right.

And I've been in the marketing world for a long time, having to navigate a lot of people that are really capable, but their characters are not really good.

So to me, it's, you know, more about character than it is about capability.

Who are you off stage versus who are you on stage?

I mean, there's a lot to be said about those that can't teach, you know, that line.

It's actually, I've met so many people that are great on video, great on stage, write amazing books.

As humans, they do not live their message at all.

and i think a lot of those people are narcissists and so but i've also learned if you ever invalidate the message because of the messenger you'll never read another book attend another seminar listen to another podcast because no one's perfect you know we're all flawed human beings i've got plenty of those uh but you know i bought i let phrase flow june bait yeah

yeah

was that you were meeting yeah i i came home with and then you got me the shirt that said yeah and then you wore that on of human when you argue yeah we should we're the we're all flawed in some way though right yeah amen.

Yeah, which is,

yeah, I mean, that's the journey of light, you know?

I mean,

I think in a lot of ways, anyone that puts themselves out there teaching whatever,

they want to learn what it is they teach.

If you want to know what someone's interested in, what are they talking about?

You know, if they're doing a podcast, what's the theme of their podcast?

Now, it could be all over the place, right?

It could be a variety showed a bazillion different topics.

But, you know, people that write books on time management usually suck at time management.

Really?

That's a funny though, right?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, they're tr they're they're getting better at it.

They're good at right.

They're good at writing.

They find other stuff and they're good at writing.

So then they write the stuff up without having actually tested the ideas in many ways themselves.

And then people looking for books and then, you know, talk.

And then to just point, it's sort of hard to sort out.

you know, whose good book is based on their experience.

And usually people that are really good at what they do aren't great at explaining it.

It's one of the and I'm listening to Jeff Van Gundy talk about coaches in the NBA a couple of years ago.

He said, you'll find the great players are not great coaches.

And most of the great coaches, you know, they're probably didn't start on the team like Phil Jackson.

A couple guys, you could argue who's the best coach ever in the NBA, Phil Jackson would be in that conversation.

He didn't even start for the Knicks.

Now, he played on a championship team, so it was a pretty good chance he would start at other places.

But he didn't even start for the Knicks.

So, yeah, the ability to do something really well and then be good at explaining it are usually two different things.

Now, kind of from, and Joe is good at explaining it, but he's far smarter than he realizes.

Like his, his ability to market a.

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You know, the conference we just got done with.

You know, I got a youngster with me that's learning lucky.

He kind of embarrassed me yesterday.

Because because at first listening to Joe, he's just blown away.

He's trying to learn marketing and Joe's just a steady stream of stuff that Nate's going like, I wish I had known that.

And he tells me before yesterday, he says, you know, Joe's, I don't know who's smarter, Joe or Jordan Peterson, because I'm sitting here listening to Joe and I'm just absorbing it.

So we do this exercise yesterday at the end of the conference.

You know, Joe wants people to say what they got out of the conference and who are they most grateful for?

He's not really fishing for compliments, but he's just trying to spread the gratitude.

And most of the people, there are three of us, Joe, Nick, and I are pretty much him saying this thing and adding our thoughts.

And, you know, they're going to pick one of us or all three of us or somebody in a room.

And Nate starts talking.

And he's like, he gets embarrassed.

He says, but I'm most grateful for Joe.

I'm like, how you worked for me.

How the hell?

How are you?

I brought you here.

You ungrateful bastard.

You're most grateful for Joe.

so i love it oh that was funny he's giving him grief and everything too and he's doing something it was it was it was funny that's the good point though it's hard to be a teacher too because a lot of these professors even they don't have the background but they're teaching it exactly like when they haven't tested the ideas right i am so it's very hard for them to really understand how the idea interacts with the battlefield if they ever tested it themselves yeah

I remember when I was at Rutgers, I was really excited for a marketing class.

It was the first class I was ever excited for because I hated all the topics growing growing up.

And I meet the professor.

He's had four failed businesses, never had a successful one.

I'm like, why am I learning from this guy?

You know, exactly.

And that's a lot of professors, unfortunately.

Here's the thing in this, you're absolutely right.

I got a C minus in principals.

Oh, no.

I got a C minus.

Yeah, I got a C.

I went to Chandler Gilbert Community College because people are like, what is your education?

So I would always tell people like, A Blinken, I'm self-taught.

So

I went to the highly highly esteemed Chandler Gilbert Community College years ago when I was in my early 20s.

And I got a cyber leak school.

Exactly.

And I got a C Midas in principles of marketing, and I failed owning and operating the small business.

And I have a copy of my report card in that book, The Average Joe's Marketing Book, which is funny to know.

That book's not publicly available yet, but it's coming out.

It's a pre-released version.

And I have a copy of

the report card because

it doesn't matter, right?

You can have credentials, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're skilled.

And there are people that are teachers and gurus and speakers and authors that are reporters of success.

And then there are people that are successful.

And what makes a really great teacher, you can write a best-selling book.

It could be fascinating.

It doesn't mean people are having success with it.

What the real barometer is, can you transfer those skills that you know to other people?

And to your point, like for instance, I said this at the event yesterday.

So I became Richard Branson's largest fundraiser.

And for years, I would do week-long trips to Necker Island and I would bundle it in to have lunch and dinner for everyone with Richard Branson.

So I've sat through so many.

I've probably interviewed that guy more than anyone.

And most of that footage, well,

99.99% of all that, those hours and hours of conversation are not.

We've never never put them out online.

You know, I've only put a couple of interviews.

It's been a long time.

And Richard clearly is a successful entrepreneur.

He's very well known.

He's a good marketer, you know, books, all that sort of stuff.

But talking to him, if you ever watch him speak, and I've introduced him to people that have had him at their vets and interview him, he doesn't say a lot of profound stuff.

People, like he's a, but I'll tell you, he's an intuitive entrepreneur, but he doesn't know how to really explain well what he does when he verbally talks.

He stutters.

Same with Elon Musk.

You know, Elon Musk has gotten way better though.

So I've had two meetings with Elon in small groups since the ASAC years ago, but he's gotten way better.

I mean, especially since he was campaigning for Trump and everything and doing speeches, because, you know, he's kind of an awkward guy.

He has Asperger's, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And but I'll throw in a shameless promotion.

from what you said about Richard because I'm on masterclass.

Branson's master class

is is

a great masterclass.

And so they produce that well.

And, you know, obviously, you know, for what you're saying, impromptu conversations in the kitchen where you guys are getting coffee is one thing.

Right.

And then, but Branson's masterclass is worth watching.

Got it.

So he just needs more structure of his.

So then, in many cases, that that's going to be what it is.

And they prep him in the masterclass.

People put in so much homework before they do the episode that they make it easy for a guy like Richard to do a great job explaining what his mojo is as well as anybody's ever going to explain it.

Got it.

Yeah.

And so to that point, if you have someone that helps you take your knowledge and your wisdom and package it, that, you know, so it's the, it's the, it's the packaging of the wisdom, it's the extraction of the wisdom, and then it's the selling and the marketing of it.

So oftentimes, like my

partner is a brilliant, amazing, sweet, caring, the most non-egotistical, could give a shit about fame, a a doctor.

She's a vaginal plastic surgeon, one of the top in the world, and she's an integrative doc.

And she has a handful of billionaires that pay her 50 grand a year to be the concierge doctor.

She doesn't try to go online.

She's not on social media.

She doesn't know how to do it.

And she's a great doctor.

But I help about 20% of my genius outward numbers that are the health bill.

So I know a lot of psychologists, psychiatrists, integrated docs, functional medicine docs, naturopaths, you name it.

And when someone focuses on becoming a celebrity doctor, as an example, it could be any category.

So I'm not picking on doctors.

They usually become not as good at doctors because they're putting all that attention on how to get known versus treating patients.

So it's an interesting mix where you don't want to lose.

See, what I've always admired about Chris, I mean, he's the same dude that he was before he sold over 4 million copies, which never split the difference.

He's the best in the world now at, you know, he's the top living

negotiating expert, but he's really good at teaching people.

And I don't say this sort sort of depending on to the black swan trainings that they do.

I mean, every time we do an event, there's people that come up to him.

You've changed my life.

I'm saying this.

I'm saying that.

I mean,

he's just the same guy, but he doesn't, you know,

he knows how to engage with

the ego and the stuff that comes along with the woozy.

I guess we're talking about that particular area.

So part of it is.

What I want to share with young people is don't believe your own PR.

Be nice to the people you meet on the way up.

They're the same people you're going to meet on the way down.

Don't leave scorched earth

as you go on.

The way to gauge people is how are people that are more powerful, how do they treat people that are less powerful?

So when I meet a lot of well-known people, I really observe how do they treat their teams?

How do they treat their staff?

How do they treat their partners?

If you go, best thing, just go to friggin' dinner with someone.

How are they with servers?

And anyone that is like oh pay attention to me or don't you know who i am which is actually the title of ramen eat your boss was whatever her previous book but it's i look for that sword yeah i try not to use that line yeah i've been tempted though which one don't you know who i am yeah i hope you guys are enjoying the show please don't forget to like and subscribe it helps the show a lot with the algorithm thank you

i'll say it a funny thing with friends and stuff but i would never use that to exploit or to manipulate someone because it's just it's just egotistical it's black.

And again, ego is an important thing.

I'm not a guy that poo-poos ego.

When you, you,

there's like, I mean, Richard Schwartz's book, No Bad Parts.

You know, there's ways to embrace every good and bad quality of yourself as a human and engage with it.

I mean, you know, Chris has to have an ego to, you know, as a former top international FBI hostage negotiator, you know, the ego comes in handy.

There's times where you, you know, you want to utilize your ego.

You don't want it to use you, though.

You don't want it to be your, your master.

You want it to be a servant.

Yeah, because it can provide that calmness, right?

You've been there before, so you kind of have an ego from the past.

Yeah, yeah.

And I suppose in my bureau career,

to sum degree, first of all,

I'm loving this conversation so much, so much I like to touch up.

So to take a step back, you were talking about your grade in marketing.

Like, all right, so FBI's top hostage, international hostage negotiator, won the Attorney General's Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement, FBI's

Agents Association Award for Distinguished and Exemplary Service.

Criminology class I took in college.

I got a D.

Wow.

Even Chris.

Yeah, so, but then, you know, like,

if you want to stay grounded, like, specialize in making regular people feel good.

Like, what I get a kick out of when we go to dinner.

is like if I can make the waiter smile in a way that they didn't smile for anybody else or you know interact with them in a way where they're getting a kick out of waiting on us when everybody else is treating them regularly.

You know, to me, that's fun.

Specializing in making irregular people feel good.

And then you also asked, you know, I think it was this wealth make people narcissists or fame, you know, more famous, more wealthy that they get.

To me, it's how they come to it.

And so then we're, you know, last night we're having dinner and Joe knows Damon Jarvin pretty well.

And Joe's introduced me, but, you know, damon's friends with joe uh and we're having dinner and like he's a regular dude so how did he come to be famous you know and he's sitting he's he kind of sits back in a corner he kind of he makes it a point to sort of not be observed

and you know he's he's into fermented foods now so he's you know making sure everybody can have you know try this it'll make you healthy just very regular dude very easy to be around

Somebody told me recently,

guys producing stuff

for a famous Hollywood guy, but he's a very down-to-earth dude.

He said, people that are drawn to L.A.

are people that want to be famous.

If you're drawn to New York, contrasting,

you want to be the best.

And that's a different breed of cat.

And so it's just an example of two different paths.

Now, not everybody in L.A.

went there to be famous.

You know, my significant other now,

she ended up in L.A., she's a New Yorker.

uh she ended up in la uh because of a relationship you know she didn't go there to be famous right and she and she was in the music business was doing very well singer songwriter successful model

you know she gorgeous girl i tell everybody she's vision impaired that's why she's with me

but she wasn't drawn to l a but she's in la

So you know, what was Wendy Starlin, by the way, Wendy, you know, ATTL is the one I mentioned in there.

But how did they get there?

You know, what was their path to that?

That's going to give you a real indicator of what they're like when they're there.

And again, Damon's a regular dude.

Like, he worked his ass off.

He talks about selling stuff out of the trunk of his car, going to flea markets.

Like, how did he get there?

And then where is he now?

And I think he's retained very much what he always was.

Well, you see it, you see it the same way?

Oh, completely.

Completely.

Yeah.

And, you know,

there's a persona that some people put up

because they're maybe on TV and they're doing performances or whatever.

But like, is the thing about the human, is it the real human or is it the performance?

You know, that old thing that Chris Rock used to say when you're going out on your first date,

is it really them or is it the representative?

Yeah, that's a little thing.

These days, authenticity is huge.

I think that's why Trump won, honestly.

Well, yeah, whenever Kamala went on a podcast, it wasn't even herself, but just scripted answers.

It's like, I want to see the real side of this person where Trump would go on The O'Bon or Rogan and he'd really authentically.

There's no doubt in your mind where Trump is coming from ever on anything.

And people challenge him and

he says, yeah, I said that.

And you know, I learned, we talked about this the other day.

You want people to trust you.

Take the word trust out and put in the word predictability.

Like, I want to know where this dude's come from.

And I don't want him to change his mind.

I don't, you know, I don't want to meet him in one place and never be really nice to me and go out public and say stuff that's really not in my interest.

And so people trust those that they can predict where they're coming from.

And to me,

one of the number of attractions to Trump is, like, there's no doubt in your mind where this dude's coming from.

He's not going to change his mind.

He's not going to back off if he did something stupid that we think is stupid and we're critical of.

He's going to be like, yeah, I did it.

All right, they had a pretty good chance.

Yeah.

And to make no one

to,

to be sure, I'd say it again.

I'd do it again.

You know, in his first term,

the legacy media is used to challenging somebody

and then having them back off the next day.

And the cycle with the legacy media and Trump was so predictable.

Like, can you believe what Trump said today?

And the very next day, can you believe he's not backing down?

And it would be over and over and over.

And I'm like, when are you guys?

going to stop being shocked that he's not backing off of what he said.

But that's where people, he wants somebody, they know where they're coming from on a regular basis.

And the vast majority of politicians are going to change their mind based on their pulse.

Exactly.

You know, Ben Carson, when Ben Carson was running for president, I've never seen a,

someone could watch this on YouTube if they want to fold it up.

It's him on the view and all the crazy view women are basically saying,

you know, why, you know, why is he so, why is he such an asshole?

That's not the exact words, but they're basically that what he says.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm just saying I'm paraphrasing my interpretation.

So they all can't stand Trump.

And they're like, why can't he be nice like you?

And he goes, well, you see how well that works for me.

You know, and I thought that was a very interesting thing because he's up there supporting Trump, you know, positively.

This is before the election and saying great things about him.

And they're just like, but he insulted you and he said this and he said that.

He's like, but you know, he knows how to get the message out.

And he talked, what was 12 seasons of The Apprentice?

And he, you know, I mean, he had just 10 over a decade of experience on American media.

I mean, he, people completely underestimate how smart that guy actually is.

Plus, he's not a politician, too.

So, you know, his base loves him and the people they can't stand him.

You know, it's literally there is Trump derangement syndrome.

But like when I was interviewing, you know, my event over the weekend, I interviewed Bobby Kennedy Jr., who's a good friend, Tucker Carlson and Jordan Peterson.

And I said, you know, there's Jordan Peterson derangement syndrome.

There's Tucker Carlson derangement syndrome.

It doesn't matter what side political.

I don't think there's any Joe Polish derangement syndrome.

No, I hope that, yeah, I hope I don't walk through the world pussy at people off that bad.

Well, that goes back to where we started, how you don't want the fame.

Here's the thing.

There's a part of me that likes it.

I'm an insecure person.

I had low self-worth,

low self-esteem most of my life.

I was a drug addict.

I've been in recovery for over 20 years.

There's a part of me that I want people to like me.

I want people to validate me externally.

And that's very seductive.

Fame is very seductive.

So I like the advantages that one gets if people know you and they hold you in a high position.

What I don't want is the part of it that requires me to want it.

So when you are looking at a phone and you're, we were talking about my friend, Dr.

Anna Lemke, I think, before we started recording, where she wrote the book Dofo Guinea Nation.

And you, you're literally looking at a phone because you spent hours a day, I eat hours a day ass phones.

Yeah, I mean, you're constantly depleting the dopamine, and it gives you a hit.

It gives you a hit.

So, when they're doing studies on rats, as an example,

chocolate gives you a 55%, I think, increase for rats.

Dopamine, sex is 150%.

Cold plunges, which I did right before the City Bureau went and did a cold plunge at a place down the street that my friends own, gives you a 200% increase.

Cocaine is a 225% increase in dopamine.

Methamphetamines is a thousand percent well treasure.

So you're talking, that's why people do drugs.

That's why people gamble poured.

I mean, there's always an that destroys people to total.

Yeah, and it renews empathy too.

I mean, that's all I really got for empathy.

Yeah, like it,

I mean, without going long into it for timing purposes, that the entire German army was being given methamphetamines during the war because they would fight more aggressively, they would sleep less, and they would eat less, trying to feed soldiers.

So if you're looking at all these wars in the world right now, I can guarantee you that amphetamines are a big part of it.

Wow.

Were you going to say something?

Well, I'm digging what you're saying.

So we please.

Yeah, yeah.

I didn't know if you were like, I got a point.

Celery.

Oh, thank you, though.

I appreciate that.

You got it.

You got it.

So years ago, I was sitting with

my friend, Dr.

Pat Carts.

He's the top sex addiction doctor in the world.

And I'd done an interview with him years ago.

And

we're talking about addiction.

And

he had got

a Fulbright scholarship to do a study on linking genetics to addiction and how someone would act out their addiction because there's no such thing as just a pure alcoholic.

You know, it's like some drink wine, some drink into blackouts.

Other people, you know, might be a woman who drinks two glasses of wine every night and doesn't show any signs of intoxication, but cannot function without doing that every day.

We were talking about that sort of stuff.

And we got on talking about the methapphetamines.

And he was telling me, you know, the latest studies that we've been researching is long-term usage of crystal meth renews empathy, which made sense why the German army could do things like concentration camps because they had been zapping their epithelium system.

So a book called Blitzed.

Drugs in the Third Reich explained all of that.

So I won't go into detail, but I'll tell you, you don't hear that story a lot that World War II was uh in many ways caused by addiction not at all i've never heard that say about world war ii yeah yeah so this certainly fueled by addiction fuels yeah yeah so say cause and people can argue that but but to go back to fate

uh we we both have a dear friend dan soldman i've known him for years who founded a company called strategic coach uh and so uh dan talks about uh i do a podcast with dan and uh growth uh versus uh status.

If you're pursuing status versus pursuing growth, you will show up in a different place in your life.

So some people would rather be well-known than well-paid.

I'd rather be well-paid than well-known.

I have a billionaire friend in Canada.

You know, but also if I could point out, too, it's a consequence of growth, because I don't think it's fair for you to say that you'd rather be well-paid.

You're into growing.

You're into evolving as a human being.

Now, it's a nice consequence, a secondary benefit.

And you got no problem with making money.

There is no problem with making money and making a lot of it.

But for yours, it's a secondary consequence because you will consistently focus on growing as a human being.

And even though you're deeply flawed,

you ain't denying that you're still occasionally capable of doing something that's very flawed.

Your focus is on becoming a better human being, which is why somebody, so many people come to the event, like that event that you just ran.

Like, and you know, I'm jealous.

You know, like he's packing his room and these are not $99 tickets.

You know, some speakers out there, you know,

they could fill a room, but the tickets are cheap as hell.

Right.

But Joe's focuses on growth, on being a better human being,

and being very supportive in an entrepreneurial environment.

And

he's put people in the room because they want to be part of it.

Right.

Yeah.

No, no, it is like all money or definitely is a byproduct of value creation.

So I've never been in any sort of business or industry that requires someone to,

like I win, but they lose or but they.

And so I, yeah, I mean,

going back to be nice to the people you meet on the way up, they're the same people you're going to meet on the way down.

If you ever take advantage, I believe it as a karmic level.

I'm not trying to give a morality speech or I just think that there's something that happens in the world where if you give

more than you take,

life gives to the giver and takes from the taker.

And so always be more of a giver than you are a taker.

And that also means if you're a really generous, caring, helpful person,

let people give to you too.

So giving to others also means you're able to receive.

And that's often hard for people that are big givers.

They'll deplete themselves.

And I've depleted myself tremendously in good ways and bad ways.

And the bad ways is trying to

have people that don't pay attention to me, don't really care,

acknowledge.

And that comes from childhood trauma, that sort of stuff.

And if anyone's ever been, you know, abused,

oftentimes,

you know, so I was molested as a kid.

I was paid money not to say anything.

That manifested into

difficulty with intimacy.

My favorite definition of intimacy was given to me by a guy who basically sponsors february sexual addictions.

And he said, intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place.

Abuse is anything that takes away the safe place.

And addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good where we don't have a safe place.

So if you don't feel safe in the world, you're going to look for ways to try to feel okay.

And oftentimes people will use, look how good I am, and they'll lie and they'll put on, they'll try to present this life.

That's what's one of the problems, major problems with social media is it breeds a certain level of narcissistic, give me attention because it's going to make me feel good.

But it's kind of like cotton candy.

It tastes good, but you're going to feel like shit if you eat a bunch of stuff.

You're just consuming junk food, it's going to, you know, that that's, it's, that's what you're putting into your body, but your mind is the same way.

So in terms to your point, constantly growing, learning how to become a better human being and doing that, I have a, like the rental car philosophy of life, it was probably, you could probably help me come up with a better way to title it, but like if you rent a car, don't drive it over speed bumps, don't spill shit on it, don't, Don't, you know, put cigarettes out.

Not that they want to smoke in a car anymore.

So if you rent someone's house, don't put holes in the drywall.

Don't beat it up because it's not your own.

And like, you know, I started out as a Deborah carpet cleaner living off credit cards.

I never learned marketing or any of this stuff thinking I would teach it to someone else.

I just needed to pay my bills.

I needed to survive.

And so, you know, I got very

in-depth into clean, making sure sure things are clean.

And if I stay at a hotel, I don't trash the hotel room.

I know that, you know, there's going to be someone that's going to come into that room and have to clean it up.

It's not going to make the bed and everything, but I just don't leave shit everywhere.

And so I think every day we experience all kinds of different humans, or they're going to experience our space, like leave it better off than it was before you showed up.

Exactly.

And couldn't that be...

Or the Boy Scout model.

You know, there's certain things out there.

Do we can leave people better than he found them?

And you're not always going to do it.

You're going to make mistakes.

But I think the overall approach is to do that.

And then to Joe's point earlier, karma.

We don't have the science to define it yet.

But there's a lot of people that are really paying close attention to human nature that are 1,000% convinced that it actually exists.

And you see it pop up.

I bought the secret a long time ago.

There's no shortage

of indicators that, you know, the kind of energy you put out is going to tend to attract it to you over the long term.

And, you know, one of my favorite conversations,

a huge fan of Andrew.

You know, I know Andrew personally,

good guy,

good dude.

So the first time that I get a chance to get into a conversation with him, and Andrew won't put anything out on his podcast that's not scientifically validating.

Right.

You know, it ain't, it's not his opinion, opinion.

And which is different from a lot of PhDs because a lot of PhDs think that becoming a PhD made of Jesus.

And so we go,

if you're Jesus, what you said is true because you're Jesus.

And PhDs are like, well, you know, I said this because I'm a PhD.

It must be true.

Andrew doesn't do that.

However, in a private conversation, we're talking and

And my girlfriend Wendy says, you know, you think there's such a thing as karma?

And it kind of looks around as if somebody's listening.

And there he goes.

Yeah.

And so I'm like, all right, so you're smart enough, dude,

and a great observer of human nature.

You've actually seen some of the science that indicates this is a possibility.

Because he's not that it's not about science.

But the

rigorously vetted experiments are not there yet.

So he's not going to put it out because his credibility on his podcast is uppermost in his mind.

But I remember, you know, seeing the way he reacted like it at it, and because he's a scientist, I'm thinking like, you've seen the sun

that indicates it's probably there.

We just don't have enough of it yet to validate it.

But then, you know, you look it around.

And if you look around, you see the evidence on a regular basis

on a daily basis.

And, you know, there's all this science that many people would call religion or magic that

we just haven't validated yet.

And so there's, there's something to karma.

And

you're better off.

You're not immune from disaster and trauma and negative things.

It doesn't put an invisible force field around you.

But what it does is increase your percentages.

of success and happiness much higher.

And on a regular basis, if you practice it,

long long term, it's going to work out.

I definitely believe in it.

It'd be hard to prove scientifically like spirituality and karma, but I believe in it.

Well, I would say this

is, I look at everything through the lens of the connection.

So my life is really about

increasing my level of consciousness,

always knowing that

everyone, myself included, most of the time thinks they're right.

And we could be utterly wrong.

I could be utterly wrong and in my mind, be convinced that I'm right.

And unlearning is more important to me than learning.

I'm constantly trying to learn stuff, but I'm also trying to unlearn the shit that I think is true that just ain't serving me or others well, right?

And I've learned a lot of that through recovery.

And connection is the thing, you know, the officer of addiction is connection.

And when you're a connected person, we both have a friend, Stephen Coller, who's like, you know, the top flow expert in the world.

And he's done tremendous amounts of research on it and learned how to get into flow.

You know, if you take total human despair, just pain, addiction, hopelessness, suicidal, or bliss, you know, flow.

Now, everything in between is life, you know,

facilitated between depression and anxiety and loneliness, because sometimes where we're at in our life, if you're sleep deprived, if things aren't working out, if so, if you have the death in the family, a disease, you know, you're just not physically or mentally doing well,

you know, that you're going to be in a different state than if everything's working.

And

so

the thing that I always try to look for is what connects me.

And if from a karma standpoint,

you know how you feel when you are doing well, when you're not taking advantage.

It's like a deposit or a withdrawal for the bank.

If you're doing more withdrawals for people and from life, you're depleted.

If you're putting more deposits in, and it's, you know, it's, it's a little bit of art and science, but the fact is, you know, I used to ignore red flags.

I would keep, I really, like that person, I really want to believe in that deal.

I really want to believe that this relationship is going to go in a particular way.

And I would ignore red flags.

And of course, you pay the price, but I didn't even notice the yellow flags.

And so I, now we, what we should talk about, because Chris has done a great job with it, is I came up with a thing called ELF versus HAP.

You can have an easy, lucrative, and and fun business, or you can have a half business, which is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating, or it could be hard, annoying, lucrative,

because not all money is created equal.

And whatever we put our, what I call Tim, your time, attention, money, effort, and energy into,

it's

who do you choose, who to give your time to, who to give your attention, what to give your money to, your effort, your energy.

And there are people in life that are half.

They're hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating.

And there's other people that are elf.

So Chris, being as smart as he is with how to read people, listen to what they say, and teaching people how to phrase things, you know, going for no questions versus yes, he came up with high indicators of half, where in advance, you can know if somebody is going to be hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating versus if they're going to be easy, loop, or moon, fun.

So at first, I used to think of ELF just through the lens of marketing, ELF strategies like consumer awareness guides and free recorded messages and all these robotic methods of messaging and putting information out about yourself.

But then I started to look at it, that pretty much applies to everything.

Is this person elf or is this person HAP?

And do I feel connected to this thing or

do I not feel connected to something?

Because

there's a lot of things that, for instance, I love pizza and fast food and all that, even though I hardly ever eat any of that.

I mean, I don't eat fast food

except I ate an In-N-Out burger.

Always the way.

in and out now what's funny about in and out by and this is the like the logic that i have for this source i'll just say this real quickly years ago there was a book called fast food nation just about how porable fast food is this true you're talking low quality you know just crappy toxic shit and uh this was i watched this movie when they used to be on uh dvds and they had bonus sections and you could see the outtakes and stuff and there was an interview with the author and the guy to put the movie together okay you don't eat fast food but if you ever did, what's the best?

Super place.

He goes, well,

none of it's that good for you, but if you were going to eat fast food, the best is for burgers is in and out.

They have the highest quality, at the time, I'll know what it is, the highest quality meat.

They make their own bread.

They cut their potatoes fresh,

that sort of swile.

I thought that was cool.

But the thing is, we're all putting a go back to the off-half day.

Yeah.

Well, you speak to it because, yeah, because, well, you know,

that's one of the reasons why I love collaborating with them.

And I tend to be a little bit of a practical

implementable guy.

And, you know, I probably got the idea because when I was in the FBI, you know, we got about a 93% success rate in the hostage negotiation.

So that means 7% is going to go bad.

So the question is, is this predictable?

My four-wall scary Nestna came up with this high-risk game indicators.

If you've got a 7%er on your hands, you got to recognize reality for what it is and adjust.

You can't be hopeful.

Another phrase they threw out the other day is hope is a drug, not a strategy.

Hope will blind you.

Don't sell hope here to people.

Yeah, hopium, yeah.

So just you got to get a handle on what you have in front of you.

Because if you're a professional negotiator, business or...

hostage negotiation,

the people you work for are not going to want you to get caught off guard.

You know, they're not going to want you to act like you're going to be able to make the deal and then suddenly have, you know, everything go bad.

But in hostage negotiations, people are dying, people get killed.

Or if you suddenly come up to a commander and say, we've got to kill this guy right now, which part of a hostage negotiator's job to save other lives, commander's got reason for saying, like, where the hell have you been for the last two hours?

Were you talking to this guy?

How is this suddenly a surprise to you?

And that's why Gary came up with this.

We got to see this stuff coming.

So, you know, in business of personal life, L versus half, who's going to be hard, annoying, layman, frustrating?

It's not a sin to not get the deal.

It's a sin to take a long time to not get the deal.

It's also a sin to take a long time to get a bad deal.

So I'm inspired by, you know, Joe's take on this.

I 1,000% believe in this philosophy.

And I go back to my team.

This has got to be predictable.

And hard, annoying, layman, frustrating are each different kinds of emotions.

So the type of negative emotion begins to give you an insight as to what's going on with the problems.

Like if you're angry, it's about something that happened in the past.

If you're frustrated, you're being denied for something in the future.

So

the type of negative emotion begins to help you isolate on the timeline what's going on and how to react.

Then where are the yellow flags?

Joe's got me and my team thinking, all right, so we know the red flags, now we've got to look at the yellow flags.

And so there's yellow flags of the hard, annoying, labor, frustrating.

What is their behavior?

How are they going to manifest?

There's going to be a profile.

People are eminently predictable.

You may not like the pattern,

but there ain't a human being out there other than, and I mean this, and it's going to sound disparaging, but it's just reality.

Paranoid schizophrenics are unpredictable because nobody knows what the voice in their head is telling them.

They are the only kind that are unpredictable.

So if your wiring is raw for a very unscientific description,

but if it's a chemical that balance,

then they're eminently predictable.

And the behavior is going to manifest itself over and over again.

So if you know what the earmark, the markers are, what the yellow flags are,

then in the first 15 to 30 minutes, you're going to know what you have on your hand.

Am I never going to make this deal?

Am I being exported?

Or is it just going to take a really long time to make the deal?

What's probably taking a long time to make the deal.

My team starts pulling a dap.

We come up with the profiles, what they say.

And initially, if you work for me, you're going to think, I work for Chris Boss.

We got to make every deal.

No, we don't because

time is money.

Relationships are money.

Right.

And time is money.

So my team says, all right, so this is what a half looks like.

This is their behaviors.

Let's measure how long it takes us to make a deal if we make the deep.

And they find out from start to finish it takes two to five times as long to make a deal with a half so what does that mean

you're at least taking a 50 cut of pay

now the only time that that 50 cut of pay is worth it is if there's a long tail of business it's a long relationship

reality of life

if they're half for us

We're probably half for them,

which means halves don't repeat.

So there is no long tail.

There is no steady ongoing revenue.

So you're taking a 50% cut of pay for somebody who's not going to repeat with you.

That makes no sense.

Wow.

And so then if you could lay it out and predict it, then

you do what we refer to as the OPA rule.

You politely walk away.

The last oppression is the lasting oppression.

If you sniff out there a half or they're using you for free consulting, they're playing you for the fool in the game.

If you don't know who the fool in the game is, it's probably you.

When we discover that we're being played, and they may not mean to play us, a lot of people think free consulting is okay,

politely walk away.

You want to always leave the door open that if they change how they're doing business, they want to come back because they remember that you always treated them with respect.

You know, and say something to the effect of,

when you're ready to make your mutual commitment, we'd be happy to be the long the long-term supplier that made you wealthy over 20 years paint a picture of the future

and some people will come back because maybe they don't know that they're half you know there are a lot of common practices out there

that people are toler good

and it and they work short term for example asking for extra stuff after you've made the deal it sources way back to some negotiation training from the 1980s and the guy that was talking about it said, yeah, here's an example.

If you're getting suit tailored,

when the tailor's measuring you up after you already had the agreement that you're going to buy the suit, look at them and say, how many free times do I get with that?

And that's, I see that's been, it's popping up today.

You know, it's popping up in all the social media.

After you make the deal, ask for free stuff and you'll get it.

And so they get a reinforcement without knowing it that, wow, this works.

I made some more money and other people around me are doing it so it appears to be an acceptable practice people on the other end don't communicate to you what kind of a problem that is

we communicate that in a very polite way there's no doubt in your mind that this is a problem

and that we can't continue we won't say it in a mean way we won't call your names we won't insult you And so if you've learned that practice and you don't know any better,

somebody inspired you about negotiations and you did it a few times.

You're like, wow, I'm getting free stuff.

I'm increasing my bottom line.

But you don't mean it maliciously.

Yeah, and a lot of people don't mean these things maliciously.

But my job is to let you know it's a problem without you feeling insulted and hurt, without attacking you personally.

And then if you're good people, a good person, which 70, 80% of the people out there, good people, well-attention,

then you'll go like, oh,

oh, all right, all right.

If that's going to interfere in our relationship and also interfere in my long-term profitability, I'll stop.

And we also found with the has, we got a way of approaching them, letting them know.

And we've literally

had people say, oh,

oh, okay, you know, I'm sorry, I won't do it anymore.

So, you know, give somebody a shot.

You know,

I'd say, can you turn a zombie back into who he would be?

Well, here's how you take that shot.

And then no matter what,

you can say no and still be polite.

You could say, this isn't going to work

and be respectful and walk away.

And I think that's also one of our advantages.

And if I'll throw one more thing out while I'm kind of on a roll,

nobody that ever deals with us ever wonders what a great deal would look like.

Like, we rarely walk away from people.

If we've got no deal, then then I will say, all right, so here's a deal that I would love to make with you that would make us long-term partners for 20 years.

Here's what this looks like.

If you can't do that, cool.

No hard feelings.

We won't waste each other's time.

But I never want there to be any doubt in your mind what a great deal with me would look like.

Because I never want you to wonder if you just told me I would have made that deal.

And so then you have the opportunity to knowingly walk away, knowing the door is always open to come back through it.

And I never want there to be any doubt in my

other side's mind what a great deal would have looked like.

And then you walk away from us if it doesn't work for you.

And I say, that's cool.

If it doesn't work for you, you got your own constraints.

Your boss is telling you to do something.

There's stuff in your world that I don't know about.

I never want there to be any doubt in your mind what a great relationship with me would look like for 20 years.

Oh, well, the make and feel like they made that decision.

Absolutely.

Jeff Kay.

Wow.

That's powerful stuff right there.

Yeah.

It's collaborative.

You know, it's,

you know, we're always selling.

What I mean by selling, though, there's many different ways that people will interpret selling.

Think of selling as influence.

Think of marketing as storytelling.

And a lot of the conversations we have with people are designed to attract.

The other others are designed to repel.

And And the way they do what, you know, if you, if you learn from the best, you know, people that have truly,

they've proven that they have something that works and that they share, and you get skilled at that, it saves you a tremendous amount of time and angst.

And to be able to identify,

you know, I think there's too much emphasis on persistence.

Never give up, never give up, never give up.

You should give up on shit that doesn't work.

You should give up on people that are too much of a pain in the ass.

The best way to get out of a, out of a hole is quit there.

So, you know, there are certain things you just quit going down that path.

And so a lot of times people are trained to sell and negotiate.

They're trying to do it to everybody.

It's like, no, selection, higher quality elf people.

It looks because of timing purposes here.

I know we could talk about this all day.

The next five to 10.

text messages,

whatever DMs that you get, phone calls, however someone's reaching you, just check your gut feeling.

Do you feel

or do you feel ah, you know, and that's karma.

That is the ability to, do I feel connected to this person?

Because I'll tell you, you look at the next 20 communications you have and you will know if you just give yourself a pause, is this person elf or is this person half?

Are they showing up with a give or they showed up with a take?

Now, I always caution people, if you owe somebody money, and they're calling me, it doesn't mean they're the asshole.

It means you're at being the asshole.

You need to either freaking pay them or if you can't pay them, you need to basically talk to them communicate so uh yeah becoming a master of communication uh doesn't mean you have to be a great orator uh it just means that you in your own mind uh develop the ability to think evaluate discern protect yourself and you need to be protected and be incredibly valuable you know creating value for people

i'm going to interrupt because there's one more thing about alpha the half that i think it's really important that people know which is why i'm so glad that i learned this from joe and adopted it and it's completely counterintuitive.

When you start eliminating the halves,

the else show up.

The half has been alive blocking the else.

And it's very counterintuitive for people who are scratching.

I got to make this month swim.

You know, I got payroll I got to make.

And you're, by circumstances, you're forced into short-term thinking.

You've been taken hostage.

And they say, walk away from these guys and the elves will appear.

And people will go like, no, that ain't my world.

That's not what happened.

And the more we adopted that philosophy, thanks to Joe,

the halves are showing up.

And it's my view that the elves, it's like a line.

Yeah.

And the halves are taking up so much time and they're blocking our view.

That there's a whole bunch of elves standing in a line behind them, waiting to get in if we could just get this half out of the way.

And that's, that's another really important thing about this concept.

No, thank you.

Yeah.

And

it's like our friend Dan Sol says, getting results doesn't take time.

It's the not getting results.

It takes up all your time.

Getting results in life, you can happen very quickly if you know what you do, but it's all the bullshit.

You know, like the sun, the connection, the love, it's always there, but there's clouds in the way.

So the more that you can.

know that sometimes it's going to be stormy.

Sometimes you have to be patient, but other times you just need another vantage point.

You just need

another approach.

So

let me say this with, you know, for all the listeners and stuff.

I imagine what's the makeup of your audience supposedly on the younger side, yeah, 25 or 34, their Vegas age range.

Yeah.

You know, what I hope, like the question to ask is what's in it for them when you approach somebody.

No one really cares about me.

Some people do, but you have to give them a reason to care.

And part of that is caring about them,

you know, having standards, operating in a a certain way that

people will be attracted to you, learning skills.

Like, you know, I've done an interview with Cal Newport, a combination of this first book, which is so good they can't ignore you, and deep work.

And we live in a world of shallow.

So don't be in the transaction business, be in the relationship business.

If you're working for somebody and at a gut feeling, they're not good people or they're not really helping other people find something else.

There's a million ways to make money in the world.

It doesn't come easily

at first.

So the challenge with an ELF business versus a half business is oftentimes you have to actually work pretty hard in order to make things become elf, but the effort is worth it.

And there's, you know, take care of your health, take care of your relationships, you know, one of my favorite.

The proverb is, you know, he or she who has their health has a thousand dreams.

He or she who does not has only one.

So when you're young, you feel invincible.

I mean, you know, when I was 18 years old in my worst state of cocaine addiction, I waited one week.

I had been free basing cocaine every single day for three months straight.

And there was one week where I got down to 105 pounds.

I burned a hole in one of my molars from smoking cocaine.

And I was suicidal.

I've had guns in my mouth.

I mean, I felt totally depressed.

And it It was because I was living in a certain way.

I was wrapped up in addiction.

And so I got sober from drugs, but I never dealt with the trauma that came from my childhood stuff.

So I still became a millionaire before the age of 30.

And that was a problem, though, because when you have money and you're an addict, you can buy almost anything that your crazy brain could come up with.

Right.

And so, and I was living in shame.

I was paying for sex.

I mean, there was all kinds of stuff because my, my, my emotional state was trauma and I didn't know who to trust because intimacy was dangerous.

I had caretakers in church that actually abused me and I didn't know who to trust.

So I kind of danced around help, did a little bit of therapy, went to some 12-step programs, but I never did the steps.

And then I realized it's not a, you know, it's not an attendance program.

It's a step program.

So what I'm trying to say is pain is a messenger.

Elf people don't have as much pain attached to them as half.

Half people are painful.

When you have pain in your life,

don't try to nub it with a drug or drake and or escapism.

Look at it.

What is it trying to, what is it trying to tell me?

If you're if you're back hurts, if your neck hurts, there's a lot of pain in the world.

And if you can be a pain detective and find the pain of other people and help soothe it, eliminate it,

assist them with getting out of pain, not only will you develop a lot of great relationships with people if you're very helpful, but you start noticing the pain in yourself.

You know, so wherever there's anxiety, there's opportunity.

If people didn't suck at negotiation, Chris Moss would have the reason to try to help people.

Same with marketing, same with addiction recovery.

So I avoided

for a long time doing some of the deep work on myself, but I feel more free, more connected than ever.

It doesn't require me now to, you know, like he said, I don't ever poo-poo money.

You know, people say money is important, try living without it.

People that say money can't buy happiness, that's stupid.

I buy happiness all the time.

Even if you have a lot of money and you're miserable, you can help other people because of making money.

So that's fine.

You know, if your goals are to make money, the thing, though, is you have to look at yourself as a vessel.

So look at yourself as a million dollar racehorse.

If you had a million dollar, if you had a racehorse and every time that horse ran a race and it won, you made a million dollars.

How would you treat that horse?

You'd have the best trainers, the best food, the best nutrition.

You would sleep exhaust the horse.

You would have the horse up till 3 a.m.

You know, a botch of core.

The horse would have been the race.

You wouldn't have the the horse hanging out with unethical loser horses.

You wouldn't be cheating in the races.

You would be, you know, and if you treat the horse well, that horse makes you rich.

And the punchline is you're the million-dollar racehorse.

Treat other people

well, treat yourself well, and continue to learn.

What events you guys got coming up and where if people keep up with you?

Well, you go first, Chris.

In

March on St.

Patrick's Day,

we're going to take a shot.

We've been doing a lot of smaller training events.

We're taking a shot at our first big negotiation mastery summit.

We're going to be in Louisville.

Interesting city choice.

Yeah, well, you know,

at about the same time,

I'm co-founder of a bourbon

business bourbon.

You'll see that.

We're going to start shipping it.

And so being in and out of Louisville over the last year, get tasting the bourbons it was a very difficult task is you know it's very very hard work tasting bourbon must be difficult it's you know it's very

uh

we thought Louisville is kind of a cool place

you know it's a different place on the planet like how does Kentucky become a place where whiskey's made and so

we're trying to decide where to have the Our negotiation mastery summit like, you know, Dallas is cool.

Everybody goes to Dallas.

You know, there's a number of places that people are always going to because they're great places to host conferences.

And we're like, you know, let's go.

Let's hold our conference a little.

People might get a kick out of being here.

You know, there's a practical reason for everything.

And there's a practical, very unusual reason why Kentucky is one of the places where the greatest whiskey in the world is made.

There's water available there.

It's only available in two or three places on earth.

Rarely.

Yeah.

And so

we're going to have a big, big conference

that teaches as many people as we can, you know, how to make a big jump.

You come to a two-day training anywhere.

If you pay attention, you'll make a quantum leap in your ability.

Now, you need,

you could probably make as much progress in two days in a great conference as you would make in eight months or a year otherwise.

That's on you to keep going.

Our summit in the

in March, or we'll link it in the idea.

People make quantum leaps.

So

the website is blackswanltd.com, E-L-A-C-K-S-W-A-N-L-T-D.com.

Come to the website.

We got a lot of stuff

for free

so that you can start making a difference in

your

negotiating abilities now.

And

one of the things I heard Jordan say, I thought in a recent interview was incremental change has exponential results.

So start getting better at negotiation a little bit at a time.

Get ready for the

negotiation mastery summit and

then you'll come there and you'll make a quantum leap.

Oh.

Still it.

What about you, ma?

You know,

the only events that I do that are open to the public are

once a year.

And so that's the Genius Network annual event.

And those are for people that have to make at least no EFOX a year to even attend.

So for the vast majority of listeners, I have no idea where they're at.

Uh, what I would say, uh, someone struggling with addiction, I have a 501c3, geniusrecovery.org.

It's uh, just resources for people that are struggling.

I have a recovery uh clone, a companion.

I also have uh askjopolish.com, which is my uh my AI clone.

They can ask any questions about business, about anything, and if you can write up a marketing plan, it's free.

So, uh, and then joe's freebook.com is my book, Life Gives to the Giver.

And it's just a really damn good book.

And I don't put people into an upsell funnel that just chooses to sell them good stuff by giving them a crappy book.

I give people a really great book for free.

And then if they like it, they can look in there.

There's stuff that I do.

Yeah, my events are usually around November, the big events.

But yeah, miles respect.

They just come out, John Man.

That was fun.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Good luck to all your listeners and great being here.

Yeah, so I was having some stars.

That's a prop.

Boom.