Never Split the Difference: Life Lessons with Chris Voss

Speaker 1 You know, as leaders, we talk about performance all the time. Business performance, mindset, focus.
But let's be real, performance shows up in every part of life.

Speaker 1 Half of young people today face psychosexual challenges at some point. Things like performance anxiety, low desire, or just feeling off.
It's normal. It's human.
We just don't talk about it enough.

Speaker 1 And that's where Mojo comes in. Mojo is the world's first AI sex and relationship therapist built from over 50 years of sexology research.

Speaker 1 It gives you short, guided sessions that help you reduce anxiety, rebuild confidence, and improve communication, all privately on your own time.

Speaker 1 I tried it myself, and what I love is how practical it is. It's judgment-free, it's easy to use, and it's actually doable.

Speaker 1 No pressure, no awkwardness, just real tools that help you understand yourself and your relationships better. This isn't about quick fixes.

Speaker 1 It's about learning to show up with confidence and calm in moments that matter the most. Head to mojo.so forward slash MCU

Speaker 1 for your seven-day free trial and start feeling the difference. That's mojo.so slash Mick Unplugged.
Because great leaders don't avoid tough conversations, they grow through them.

Speaker 1 Mojo offers educational psychological support and is not a substitute for medical care.

Speaker 2 When cool, creamy ranch meets tangy, bold buffalo, buffalo, the whole is greater than the sum of its sauce. Say howdy, partner, to new Buffalo Ranch sauce, only at McDonald's for a limited time.

Speaker 3 At Participating McDonald's.

Speaker 1 This is Mick Unplugged.

Speaker 2 Let us uncover the because.

Speaker 2 That thing that drives you, that thing that fuels you. I'm ready if you are.

Speaker 2 Let's go.

Speaker 2 But I'd be humble today, man. Like, I told you when I finally got to meet you face to face, there's three people that really changed my life from a business standpoint.

Speaker 2 You, Damon, John, Robert Irvine. Like, you're my three geeks.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 life

Speaker 2 would not be the same without you three, man. So I just wanted you to know that.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 Thank you. You know, I always ask

Speaker 2 folks about your because,

Speaker 2 you know, Simon Sinek did the start with wise. Right.
Great concept, but I believe that there's a different fuel that gets people to a Chris Voss level, and it's your because.

Speaker 2 Your why to me is somewhat superficial, but your because

Speaker 2 that's that thing that's deeper than your why, your true purpose, your true passion, that thing that keeps you doing what you do. So if I say, Chris Voss, what's your because?

Speaker 2 Why do you keep doing the things that you?

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, we're ultimately set and we're selfish. I mean, it makes me feel really good to actually help people.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 You were talking a little bit on the way over here. I think everybody is capable of really incredible stuff.

Speaker 2 Like, everybody, every person on earth. I do think of myself as just like this regular guy.
You know, like I was a B plus student in high school, B minus student in college.

Speaker 2 You know, it's not like I'm

Speaker 2 on the honor roll. You know, I'm not a super high IQ,

Speaker 2 average-looking dude, not

Speaker 2 a great athlete.

Speaker 2 But everybody's capable of being extraordinary if they just willing, if they just say, okay, I could do this.

Speaker 2 And it frustrates me the more people don't see that. And I think that because

Speaker 2 I'm a regular dude, like if I could do well,

Speaker 2 you could do well. Yeah.
You know, there ain't that much to it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I like helping people

Speaker 2 have better lives. It's just enormously gratifying to me.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 You say you're a B-plus student. Right.

Speaker 2 B minus in college. Is that what you said? Yeah.

Speaker 2 But you're an A plus fucking human being, bro.

Speaker 2 And I really mean that because, again, the lives that you impact, and we'll talk about your history and all the things that you've done.

Speaker 2 But I get to see it in this, this view, right? I see the lives that you impact. We were talking about...

Speaker 2 Your extraordinary staff and team that you have and then the circle of friends that you have.

Speaker 2 Sometimes, Chris, I don't think you realize how just impactful you are as a human. I really don't.

Speaker 2 Thanks, man. I appreciate that.

Speaker 2 I try to be around good people. I try to be around really good, hardworking, regular people that are fun to be around.

Speaker 2 And everywhere I've gone, if we've managed to coalesce a group of fun,

Speaker 2 hard-working, regular people,

Speaker 2 like extraordinary things happen.

Speaker 2 When I was in New York working on the terrorist task force, you know, the hardworking regular guys,

Speaker 2 we found each other. And terrorism, and New York's a big enough place, like it was the same thing, the organized crime guys, white-colored crime guys,

Speaker 2 you know, whatever. The regular hardworking guys got together, made extraordinary cases.

Speaker 2 You know, we made... In terrorism, we made cases, they wrote books about it, and they made movies about it.
The organized crime guys did the same thing.

Speaker 2 You get those regular people together, just have a ball, just laugh at stupid stuff.

Speaker 2 Don't take themselves too seriously, work like crazy. And then you get a chance to do extraordinary stuff.
That's fun. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Let's talk about this journey, you fat, though.

Speaker 2 Not everyone can say they were the number one rated FBI hostage negotiator of all times. We can.

Speaker 2 There's situations.

Speaker 2 that you've seen that not even the elite have seen, but you always always focus on the mission ahead.

Speaker 2 And I remember talking to you, and you were like, the mission is the mission until the mission changes. Right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Talk to us about how you got into hostage negotiation. Yeah, it was just one thing out of left field after another.
Like, I never even imagined being a hostage negotiator. It wasn't a goal.

Speaker 2 Being an FBI agent wasn't even a goal. Kind of found myself there

Speaker 2 by the circumstances lined up. When I applied for federal law enforcement, I originally applied for the Secret Service because that's what I heard about.

Speaker 2 And I was told Secret Service traveled all over the world. I'm like, wow, that's cool.
Well, I grew up in Iowa. It was a big deal going to another state.
Like crossing the river into Illinois.

Speaker 2 I was a big deal. I was a big deep.

Speaker 2 So traveled. And Secret Service wasn't hiring the HP.
I was, put on my application.

Speaker 2 I was slayed to go to the SWAT team in the police department just before I left.

Speaker 2 If the Bureau would have delayed, if the Bureau would have delayed by three weeks hiring me, I'd have stayed with BD because I was two weeks away from going to a SWAT there.

Speaker 2 Got on a SWAT team in Pittsburgh.

Speaker 2 And I remember an exercise we did, you know,

Speaker 2 it was this supposed bad guy takeover of a nuclear facility. We got negotiators inside.
And I remember being on the outside on a SWAT,

Speaker 2 knowing that we had somebody in there that was supposedly negotiating,

Speaker 2 and just like, okay, somebody's talking to him on the phone. That's a negotiator.
You know what tells that guy, though?

Speaker 2 His job is to buy his time as we get ready to assault.

Speaker 2 So absolutely oblivious to what it was about

Speaker 2 and then had multiple knee injuries and decided, well, I'll go be a negotiator instead of continuing to tear my knee apart, Swan.

Speaker 2 I didn't figure it'd be hard at all. And I didn't, you know, I didn't imagine how rewarding it would be.

Speaker 2 And I was lucky enough, I couldn't get on, so I volunteered on Suicide Hotline. Then on the hotline, I was astonished

Speaker 2 at the magic of emotional intelligence, the magic of empathy. Just astonishing.

Speaker 2 And so that paved the way for me to become a negotiator. And then I was lucky enough I was involved in a really rare event that turned out really well, bank robbery with hostages,

Speaker 2 which almost never happens.

Speaker 2 You know, the movies make it seem like it happens every day in New York or in L.A.

Speaker 2 Bank robberies happen every day. They just don't have hostages.

Speaker 2 Bad guys know the police run away and they get out of there. So catching somebody on the inside, like it hadn't happened in New York City for 20 years.
Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 When on the one that I was on.

Speaker 2 That's how rare they are. Okay.

Speaker 2 So, and it turned out really well. It's combined effort, FBI, NYPD, blended negotiation team,

Speaker 2 first bad guy to surrender, surrender to me personally outside the back.

Speaker 2 And so then I

Speaker 2 FBI hostage negotiated as part of our protocol of staying good is teaching.

Speaker 2 If you're not doing something, even if you're doing it on a regular basis, you want to really immerse yourself, try to teach it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because you're going to get called out. I mean, you really got to stay the hell out of it.
And you're going to to get called out. So

Speaker 2 I started teaching at Chase Bank all over the place, and it was a lot of fun. And

Speaker 2 because I like teaching and I like doing it,

Speaker 2 I can continue to pursue it.

Speaker 2 I was in the right place, right time. A lot of times I worked my ass off.

Speaker 2 And working your ass off really determines whether or not you're in the right place, right time. There you go.
I totally agree with that.

Speaker 2 You know, when we were in Chicago, my cousin Rami asked you a question of,

Speaker 2 if you had to do it all over again,

Speaker 2 what would you tell the younger version of Chris Voss? And you said, I tell him to be nicer, right?

Speaker 2 Tell us about what that means.

Speaker 2 All right. So there's

Speaker 2 how you approach conflict, there's basically three types. We believe, I believe, my team believes that this is true.

Speaker 2 And we have the anecdotally, we've got enough data to sort of back it up, even though we haven't rigorously tested all.

Speaker 2 So you approach the conflict approach is fight, flight, make friends.

Speaker 2 Assertive, analyst, a cometer. Caveman responds to threat.
Fight it, make friends with it, run for it.

Speaker 2 And the world really does pretty much split evenly into thirds. Doesn't matter gender, ethnicity,

Speaker 2 religion, nothing.

Speaker 2 It's kind of the caveman environment. So, as an assertive,

Speaker 2 natural-born assertive, I'll tend to be too blunt,

Speaker 2 too direct.

Speaker 2 And so, I wouldn't change sticking to my values or what I stood up for, what I believed in. I'd just be nicer about the way that I express.

Speaker 2 I'd be kinder, if you will,

Speaker 2 nicer, friendlier, you know, whatever word works.

Speaker 2 I always believed in

Speaker 2 you need to know where i'm coming from and assertive primary currency is respect if you respect me we could probably make a deal

Speaker 2 even if you don't give me the deal that i originally wanted if you treat me with respect i'm going to be enormously um collaborative

Speaker 2 and you the put one of the poster children for assertives these days that everybody knows, of course, is Trump. Jeff Bezos also is, in my view, is an absurd.

Speaker 2 Look at how collaborative Donald Trump is when the world's leaders show up to the White House to treat him with respect.

Speaker 2 You know, he's basically dismissive of almost every European leader in his first term.

Speaker 2 Unhappy with NATO for legitimate reasons. You know, we're paying their bills.
And they're bad mouth us.

Speaker 2 And so he goes and meets them in meetings and he goes to Europe and, you know, they're not happy with the way that they treat him.

Speaker 2 But watch what happens when somebody shows up to meet him in person and treats them with respect.

Speaker 1 You know, every morning before I walk into a meeting, before I hit record on the podcast, before I lead a team, I start with one scoop, AG1, because leadership starts with energy, clarity, and consistency.

Speaker 1 And that's exactly what AG1 gives me. a simple foundational habit that keeps me one scoop ahead of the chaos.
It's not another supplement sitting on the shelf.

Speaker 1 It's a micro habit that sets the tone for my day.

Speaker 1 Inside that one scoop, superfoods, B vitamins, antioxidants, probiotics, and functional mushrooms that support your energy, focus, and overall wellness.

Speaker 1 Especially in seasons like this, travel, long days, and short nights. AG1 keeps me grounded.
I don't chase health anymore. I lead it.

Speaker 1 If you've been looking for something to help you stay consistent, stay fueled, and stay ready, AG1 is that move. I use use it, you should too.

Speaker 1 Head to drinkag1.com forward slash MC to get a free welcome kit with an AG1 flavor sampler and a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 when you first subscribe.

Speaker 1 That's drinkag1.com forward slash MC because great leaders don't just prepare for the day, they prepare their body for it. Have you ever felt like the banking system is stacked against you?

Speaker 1 I remember overdraft fees hitting me at the worst time and feeling feeling like I was always playing catch-up with my money. That's why I love QIIME.
CHIIME understands that every dollar counts.

Speaker 1 When you set up direct deposit, you get access to features that actually help you get ahead. Getting paid up to two days early, fee-free overdraft coverage up to $200, and no monthly maintenance fees.

Speaker 1 CHIIME has already spotted its members over $30 billion.

Speaker 1 That is real progress. Plus, with over 47,000 fee-free ATMs nationwide, more than the top three national banks combined, you can access your money when you need it without worrying about fees.

Speaker 1 I use CHIME, and you should too. Work on your financial goals through QIIME today.
Open an account in two minutes at QIIME.com slash MIC. That's chime.com slash MC.

Speaker 1 CHIME feels like progress.

Speaker 4 Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank, banking services and debit card provided by the Bankor Bank NA or Stripe Bank NA.

Speaker 4 Members, FDIC, Spot Me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Timing depends on submission of payment file.

Speaker 4 Fees apply at out-of-network ATMs, bank ranking, and number of ATMs, according to U.S. News and World Report 2023.

Speaker 2 Chime checking account required.

Speaker 2 How enormously collaborative he is. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it's taken a long time to come to accept that, but look what just happened in the White House. Yep.
You know, he goes and he meets Putin in Russia.

Speaker 2 The media puts all this span, you know, Donald Trump's leading a direction of Putin, he's going to give Ukraine away. Yeah, Russia's influence.
But Putin respected him enough to meet him in person.

Speaker 2 And so the other European leaders, some of them, you know,

Speaker 2 who is it?

Speaker 2 The guy from Finland, and Finland has a prime minister, I think. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Who's got to be a wacky guy because

Speaker 2 one of the quotes I read where he said, I am.

Speaker 2 I finished by birth, southern by the grace of God, because he went to college in the South.

Speaker 2 And he plays golf with Trump.

Speaker 2 But he plays golf with Trump and Trump feels respected by him. So the guy's got influence.
So the rest of the European leaders are like, ow,

Speaker 2 if we show up at the White House

Speaker 2 and we wear suits and we treat him with respect,

Speaker 2 he'll listen to us.

Speaker 2 Well, he certainly wants to be treated with respect.

Speaker 2 When I left the bureau, the girl that I was dating at the time,

Speaker 2 put together a going away party for me, a surprise party, because

Speaker 2 I was at odds with the guy that I was working for at the time, and I kind of stormed out the door without saying goodbye.

Speaker 2 Not you.

Speaker 2 I just like, I'm out of here. I'm gone.
Adios. I didn't even say adios.
I just packed my shit and I left.

Speaker 2 And so she was like, you know, I got to eat,

Speaker 2 you need to go on away party.

Speaker 2 And when she put it together afterwards, she said, you know, everybody, I try to contact everybody that you ever work with.

Speaker 2 And what I noticed is every single person I spoke to told me how much they respected you.

Speaker 2 But what I also noticed is

Speaker 2 I don't remember any of them saying they liked you.

Speaker 2 And that had never been pointed out to me because respect was always my currency. You might not like me, but you're going to respect me.
Right.

Speaker 2 And so then I wouldn't change how I did anything for me as an assertive, but I'd go back and I'd be nicer about it or I'd be kinder. I've heard other other assertives that have learned that lesson.

Speaker 2 Most of them will

Speaker 2 use some term.

Speaker 2 Be kinder, be nicer.

Speaker 2 A friend of mine in New York, Conrad Gomez, great dude. He says kind is

Speaker 2 the default game theory long-term success option.

Speaker 2 Long-term success strategy

Speaker 2 is kindness.

Speaker 2 So that's for me as an assertive.

Speaker 2 Now, the other two types,

Speaker 2 gameless, super smart dudes,

Speaker 2 they tend to come off as cold and distant. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So they're since they're not assertive, they just need to open up in a friendlier way.

Speaker 2 Accommodators,

Speaker 2 relationship hope-based people,

Speaker 2 they need to be more assertive.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 My girlfriend is an accommodator. When I'm coaching her, I'm coaching her to be more assertive.

Speaker 2 So each type has a lesson that will enhance, add to, enhance, don't change, enhance to make you better, which is not changing who you are, right?

Speaker 2 My girlfriend's core values are solid. I don't want her to change her core values.
I want her to be clearer with them,

Speaker 2 with the people that she deals with. Okay.
The analysts, I don't want the analysts to change their core values. You think so hard about stuff.

Speaker 2 You're not cold,

Speaker 2 but you come off as cold, which interferes with people warming up.

Speaker 2 So that's a really long answer for my improvement is to be nicer, kinder, friendlier. I'd change, just be nicer about how I tip.
No, I love that. I love that.
So you talked about your girlfriend.

Speaker 2 I'm going to talk about my wife. Sorry, babe.

Speaker 2 My girlfriend is vision impaired, by the way. Really? No, I despite that shit.

Speaker 2 She's so better looking than I.

Speaker 2 It almost made sense, huh?

Speaker 2 You picked for a second. Oh, okay, that explains.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 there's a book that sits on our coffee table at home. One book.

Speaker 2 The book is titled, Never Split the Difference. I was gonna

Speaker 2 say, You already know what I thought. I thought it was gonna be a book by Damon John or something like that.
I don't know. It's on one of the side tapes.

Speaker 2 It's on one of the side tapes. But my wife

Speaker 2 reads this book so much

Speaker 2 because she says, I need to tap into your brain because I know there are moments in your name is a verb in our household where you're bossing me.

Speaker 2 I'm like,

Speaker 2 I'm bossing you.

Speaker 2 And then she'll slap me.

Speaker 2 You just did it again.

Speaker 2 But never split the difference.

Speaker 2 It's deep on so many levels, right? I get it for leaders. It's my number one book.
My team has to read it. You have to read that book within your first 90 days.
I told you this. We,

Speaker 2 your first 90 days of employment, you've got to read the book. Because if you don't read the book, if you don't understand the book, you're not going to fit into our culture.

Speaker 2 We have a Chris Voss culture at all of my companies.

Speaker 2 It's great for relationships. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It helps helps you start to understand

Speaker 2 people,

Speaker 2 the decisions they make, the choices that they decide upon.

Speaker 2 And I'm saying all this to say, when you were writing the book, did you know it was going to be that damn tight net?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 No. But you know, it's that gift.
Yeah, it's been a gift. It's very gratifying.
It's been a gift. I've been very happy with it.
And I'll tell you the thing that I'm happiest most about it.

Speaker 2 To me, it's a proof of concept of human human nature because the book's about collaboration

Speaker 2 with people,

Speaker 2 trust,

Speaker 2 long-term relationships of trust where you collaborate. Both people do well

Speaker 2 and are happy.

Speaker 2 And it sells well globally, which to me says

Speaker 2 everybody in the world, the vast majority, not everybody in the world, but the vast majority of the world wants collaborating. You know, we're not against each other.
We're not at odds. The

Speaker 2 criticism of the legacy media is legit

Speaker 2 in that it's there to keep us divided.

Speaker 2 And many of the social algorithms are there to feed what makes us angry and continue to feed our anger

Speaker 2 if we bite.

Speaker 2 And then even if we don't bite,

Speaker 2 it tries to get us to bite anyway.

Speaker 2 I read a lot of reporting on President Trump, mostly because I'm trying to read between the lines to see what he actually said

Speaker 2 as opposed to what they're saying he said.

Speaker 2 And so, because I read a lot of these,

Speaker 2 I get a fair amount of stuff fed to me. Can you believe President Trump said this? President Trump doubles down.

Speaker 2 You know, the inflammatory stuff.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 they're guessing that I want to be angry. I'm just trying to see what Deli actually said.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 the majority of us don't want that.

Speaker 2 You know, the majority of us,

Speaker 2 more of us, want to collaborate than not.

Speaker 2 And so legacy media and social media is designed to keep us angry and at each other's throats.

Speaker 2 So true. So true.
So powerful. And

Speaker 2 we agree on so much, right? Like I'm all about. emotional intelligence when I speak to leaders.
That's what I'm there with. You've got your empathetic leadership amongst many things.

Speaker 2 Why do you think leaders today are missing the boat onion?

Speaker 2 Because they don't see it around them.

Speaker 2 First of all, it's not in the media.

Speaker 2 It's not getting fed to

Speaker 2 in entertainment.

Speaker 2 It's not in entertainment.

Speaker 2 You know, how are we picking up what social behaviors affect?

Speaker 2 Every movie and TV show, when somebody's down and upset,

Speaker 2 somebody looks at him and says, I know how you feel.

Speaker 2 I was always at the same place. You were in.

Speaker 2 And the other person goes, oh, my God, thank you. And I feel so much better.

Speaker 2 And in real life, when you say, as soon as the words, I know how you feel, start to come out of your mouth,

Speaker 2 the other person starts to withdraw.

Speaker 2 There are some people that teach communication called story stealing.

Speaker 2 And they're like, hey, you look, you know, you don't know how I feel. And a circumstance you're getting ready to tell me about it's got nothing to do with my circumstance.

Speaker 2 And you get ready to give me advice, and I don't want to hear it.

Speaker 2 And so we see that in the media, but in

Speaker 2 movies and TVs, it works.

Speaker 2 So then, actually, when it does work,

Speaker 2 it's invisible.

Speaker 2 Like, nobody knows what happened.

Speaker 2 And it's, I know how you feel stuff is this common ground nonsense.

Speaker 2 And so my latest example of white common ground is just

Speaker 2 at a wedding, Wendy and I had a wedding in Ireland recently, and talking to the bride at the end of the day of the wedding later on.

Speaker 2 And they have been, what they've been through, you know, they go all the way to Ireland to get married.

Speaker 2 Like a couple of days before they get married, the church tells them they can't get married in the church because she's Catholic. The annulment didn't come through in time.

Speaker 2 Catholic church is not going to let her walk in the door, get married. And so just a a couple days before, they got to switch churches.
Wow. As if everything else

Speaker 2 didn't happen. And all the things like a wedding to a man is like, look, I got to show up.
I got to stand up in front of

Speaker 2 some religious guy. We're going to say a couple of words.
Then

Speaker 2 we're going to go get drunk. Right.
And they're going to make me wear a tuxedo, which is uncomfortable. I don't want to do any of that.

Speaker 2 Wedding to a woman, it's women consistently say, I've been dreaming, I've been imagining this day for 15 years.

Speaker 2 Like, there's no man on earth that ever says that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, major state for 15 years. We'll tell you something.
We met 15 years ago. I was just trying to get a second date.
And you're imagining getting married to me? Like, it's so vastly different.

Speaker 2 Right, right. So I'm talking to the bride at the end of the day.

Speaker 2 What are the Brian Groom going to do at the end of the day?

Speaker 2 They got to walk around and say hello to everybody. They're exhausted.
Like, they're unconscious on their feet. And they have an obligation.
And this is my first conversation with her.

Speaker 2 So she walks up to me the next night after she's got a good night's sleep. We're in a hotel restaurant and she says,

Speaker 2 I don't know what you said to me last night.

Speaker 3 Experience a membership that backs what you're building with American Express Business Platinum.

Speaker 3 Get two times membership rewards points per dollar on eligible purchases and key business categories, as well as on each eligible purchase of $5,000 or more.

Speaker 3 On up to $2 million in eligible purchases per calendar year. American Express Business Platinum.
There's nothing like it. Terms apply.
Learn more at AmericanExpress.com slash business dash platinum.

Speaker 3 Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line.

Speaker 2 But first...

Speaker 2 Can't you see it shining?

Speaker 3 There, the last one.

Speaker 3 Enjoy a Coca-Cola for a pause that refreshes.

Speaker 2 I just remember how good it made me feel.

Speaker 2 And she she gives me this big hug.

Speaker 2 Now, what I said to her the night before was all empathy.

Speaker 2 I said, yo, you've been through hell.

Speaker 2 You're here to celebrate a union of two families,

Speaker 2 and a man that you married is there to have a part that she's got no idea. I said, you know, and I laid out to her every single thing that she went through, which is empathy.

Speaker 2 Now, I couldn't say, I know what it's like to be a bride.

Speaker 2 Or I can't say, I know how you feel because I once got married.

Speaker 2 Or, like, there ain't no way I know how she feels. You know, I've never been a bride, I've never been a bridesmaid, never been a maid of honor.
I never had her experience.

Speaker 2 But I laid it all out to her, and that's the magic of empathy because she didn't even know what I did.

Speaker 2 She didn't remember a single word that I said.

Speaker 2 24 hours later, not remember, knowing a word that I said, she walks up to me. She feels bonded to me.

Speaker 2 She walks up to me, she gives gives me this great big hug,

Speaker 2 and she says,

Speaker 2 I don't know, whatever you said last night, it just made me feel so good.

Speaker 2 So, your original question, why don't more leaders see that?

Speaker 2 Nobody sitting around us had any idea

Speaker 2 of the emotional reaction she was giving me.

Speaker 2 There was another young lady that was friendly to pride sitting on this side of me. My girlfriend's on this side.
There's a couple of other people sitting there.

Speaker 2 absolutely nobody watching has the slightest idea that I'm hitting her with this wave of empathy, how she's connected to it.

Speaker 2 They just say like, well, you know,

Speaker 2 he seemed appreciative.

Speaker 2 Quick conversation. And so that's why leaders often don't see it because when somebody does it in front of you, you have no idea what just happened.

Speaker 2 That's empathy, but that's also an example of the impact that I was talking about earlier that you have on people.

Speaker 2 And you're literally being yourself, right? Like you're not trying to overempathize, right?

Speaker 2 You saw the moment, you saw the need, and you did what you were called to do in that moment without hesitation. That's best possible.

Speaker 2 That has been freaking boss. You know, well,

Speaker 2 it's it's gratifying.

Speaker 2 I'm a big believer in karma.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I think the more of it's selfish, the more deposits I make at a karma bank, the more fun my life is. Yes, sir.
Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 While I have you here, I can only ask you this question, and I'm kind of asking selfishly for me.

Speaker 2 But a lot of leaders truly don't understand negotiation. If I talk to a leader about negotiation, Fortune 100 lead up,

Speaker 2 their immediate thought goes to salary negotiation. Right.
Every time. And I'm like, that's probably 10 on the list.
What about time?

Speaker 2 What about effort?

Speaker 2 But people don't understand that those are things that you're also negotiating. So for the leaders that are out there, I'd love for you to take a moment and talk about

Speaker 2 why negotiation is important for a leader and what you miss when you don't do a buck.

Speaker 2 Because when you start talking about time and effort,

Speaker 2 where you're really negotiating with somebody is their future.

Speaker 2 Where's that time and effort going to take them?

Speaker 2 And how painful is it going to be?

Speaker 2 Like all the emotional things, but you're really asking somebody to trust you with their future.

Speaker 2 And this trust is this, you know, this bond, this sort of imaginary bond. To get somebody to trust you with their future,

Speaker 2 they have to feel

Speaker 2 that you understand what's important.

Speaker 2 Not that you agreed to it,

Speaker 2 or that you're aware

Speaker 2 of

Speaker 2 what they're afraid of,

Speaker 2 or that you even appreciate.

Speaker 2 And so, one of the things that I've been over just over the the last few years, I've been trying to

Speaker 2 my

Speaker 2 appreciation dividend has grown very high

Speaker 2 because I'm trying to remember on a regular basis to appreciate people as much as possible. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I would have

Speaker 2 simply, from the way that I was raised, I was just expected to do a good job.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 my father didn't show me a lot of appreciation. It was a tremendous amount of love in my fake.

Speaker 2 It was unquestioned that I was loved unconditionally by my parents. But the model, the modeling that was done for me, there wasn't a lot of appreciation.
And so I just took it for being like, look,

Speaker 2 do your job.

Speaker 2 Do what you're asked to do. Do your job.
Have integrity. Do all that stuff.
And

Speaker 2 just do it.

Speaker 2 And so I've been guilty of expecting people to just do a good job

Speaker 2 most of my life.

Speaker 2 And now, as I'm showing more appreciation for the little things, I'm getting people working harder

Speaker 2 and working longer hours

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 having more fun.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 even if the future is uncertain, if I'm appreciating them in a moment, they're there for us.

Speaker 2 And so, all these little intangibles that were not modeled for me well, the vast majority of my life, I always had a lot of support.

Speaker 2 I was always lucky enough to have a tremendous amount of support from people, from people

Speaker 2 and the Bureau.

Speaker 2 A vast majority of the people I worked for gave me massive amounts of support.

Speaker 2 Not a lot of appreciation. And so the success was supposed to be its own reward, doing a good job.
And in many cases, it was.

Speaker 2 But that was for me personally.

Speaker 2 I'm very hard working. I believe in working really, really, really hard.

Speaker 2 I don't think,

Speaker 2 I think expectations, leaders should think about what do I expect? What kind of behavior do I expect? And maybe am I coming off as cold or uncaring unintentionally? Because I'm not.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 I think that's what leaders miss out on, a fair amount of them do.

Speaker 2 Totally agree. I totally agree.

Speaker 2 I'm going to get you out of here on this, Chris. Again, all the things we have in common, right?

Speaker 2 Leadership.

Speaker 2 We both love our significant others, right?

Speaker 2 We both love the New England Patriots. Um, do both.

Speaker 2 Hold it, hold on.

Speaker 2 Tower, can I phone a friend? I had to figure out how to weave that.

Speaker 2 Let me get Eli on the phone. Who's that? Eli.

Speaker 2 I don't want to. Eli's comment.

Speaker 2 What was it? You know, a couple of Super Bowls? English.

Speaker 2 English. Professor Sick

Speaker 2 Bell.

Speaker 2 But we both love bourbon. Yeah, amen.

Speaker 2 Our good friend Nick Netton

Speaker 2 told the story. Every time you guys got together, he's got a fruit-free bottle, a glass of wine.

Speaker 2 You've got a bourbon.

Speaker 2 And so he said, hey, we should start a bourbon together, right?

Speaker 2 How the hell does that happen, bro?

Speaker 2 Yeah, you know, that's kind of

Speaker 2 Nick is a classic guy

Speaker 2 who has a pretty good game plan to figure stuff out. Yeah.

Speaker 2 He really understands

Speaker 2 implementation. He understands teamwork.
He's a great marketing and sales guy. He's fun to be around.
And he's always fun to be around.

Speaker 2 And that's really kind of how it happens.

Speaker 2 When he threw out that idea, if I didn't know him already,

Speaker 2 and we're

Speaker 2 in the event in Chicago, we were there for for strategic coach,

Speaker 2 and Nick and I both get coached. That's strategic coach, Dan Sullivan.

Speaker 2 And one of Dan's rules is if somebody comes up to him and says, I got a great idea, Dan turns on his heels and walks away. Because usually people with a great idea have no idea how to implement it.

Speaker 2 I think a great idea is enough, you know. Damon and the Shark Tank crew have openly said on Shark Tank, a great idea might be worth $20.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Because there's no implementation.
You would have already done it. You don't have to tell someone you've got a great idea, you sell it.

Speaker 2 You just did.

Speaker 2 So Nick is the opposite. He's already got a game implementation game plan when he tells you about what he wants to do.

Speaker 2 And so, and it didn't even occur to me the necessary element that we would have to add to our team if we want to do a bourbon would be Roy Milner, who's a Louisville bourbon insider,

Speaker 2 a Sherpa, if you will. Yeah.
We need a Sherpa. And as it turned out, I'm explaining Sherpas to Roy.

Speaker 2 And Roy goes, yeah, that's name.

Speaker 2 She says, that's crazy. That's the name of my company.

Speaker 2 So Nick's a marketing guy. Nick's a design guy.
Nick's a team guy.

Speaker 2 You know, they're bringing me in because she wants to design the branding around Never Split the Difference.

Speaker 2 And I would have thought that would have been enough, but Nick is smart enough to bring in Roy.

Speaker 2 who's the Louisville insider. He's got credibility with these people.
They know know him. They trust him.

Speaker 2 He knows his way around the industry. He's got great taste.
And he finds us

Speaker 2 these spectacular hidden gems of bourbon that was available and abandoned by a large corporation because there wasn't enough of it for a global retail run.

Speaker 2 But there was this small amount that was perfect for us.

Speaker 2 And as turned out, it's this extraordinary book, Blood that has won all these awards.

Speaker 2 So the sand dipity

Speaker 2 with the right people coming together and working our tails off,

Speaker 2 and we launched this thing and then we get to meet people like you. Right.

Speaker 2 And we get to find out that all these values that we share

Speaker 2 of regular hardworking people that love having a good time and making really cool stuff happen. And that's kind of how the bourbon comes to be.
I'm telling you, one,

Speaker 2 and I'm putting this on film, it's on audio, it's everywhere. I've said it before, the best bourbon I've ever had hands down.

Speaker 2 By far, the best bourbon I've ever had hands down.

Speaker 2 But the shareholder society, that tight-knit group of people,

Speaker 2 it's a family.

Speaker 2 I mean, in our messaging and email chains, everyone's helping each other out. Hey, I've got a question about this, or does anyone know someone over here?

Speaker 2 And within five minutes, you'll see 20 people coming to the rescue or Percy.

Speaker 2 And then when we're together, it's as if we're long lost family and we're just catching up with each other. To me, that's the attraction, the society.
The bourbon's great.

Speaker 2 But that tight-knit community, that tight-knit family. Second to nothing.
Yeah, it's from People's Group. Man, Absonou, Yay.

Speaker 2 I'm glad that you and Nick happen to be sitting next to each other on an airplane or something like that, right?

Speaker 2 And we were flying from Vegas, supposed to be going to Dallas. You know, Nick, immediately, he's asleep on the plane, right? So he's sitting next to me.
I'm like, who's this rude guy?

Speaker 2 That's just eye mask on and everything.

Speaker 2 We get routed to Austin because there's tornadoes in Dallas.

Speaker 2 So we land.

Speaker 2 Nick wakes up, starts getting ready to get up. I'm like, hey, dude, you probably just want to hang out for a minute.
We're in Austin. He's like, what? I'm like, yeah, we got routed.

Speaker 2 There's storms in Dallas. We don't know if we're going to get to leave.
And a long story short,

Speaker 2 we shared the difference for four hours on the tarmac in Austin, Texas.

Speaker 2 And I was hooked ever since then. And that's how I got to know about the society.
And I told Nick that moment, like, I'm in, like, you, he explained the bond, no call, Nintendo, right? He explained

Speaker 2 everything that the found that the society was about,

Speaker 2 the mission that you all had. And at that moment, I said, that's a no-brainer.
This is who I am as a person. All the values that I have are right there inside the society.
Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 2 I was a little pick.

Speaker 2 Brother, I love you genuinely. Thank you for all the things that you have done in my life.
The conversations, the push. Just thank you for being who you are, buddy.

Speaker 2 Thank you. That's mutual.
I appreciate that. Yes, sir.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Voss Mir.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You've been plugged into Mick Unplugged.

Speaker 1 Don't just listen, take action.

Speaker 2 Rate and subscribe. Follow me on social and get the full experience at mickuntofficial.com.
Keep building, keep leading, and most importantly, keep dominating.

Speaker 3 This holiday, discover meaningful gifts for everyone on your list at Kay. Not sure where to start? Our jewelry experts are here to help you find or create the perfect gift, in store or online.

Speaker 3 Book your appointment today and unwrap Love This Season. Only at Kay.

Speaker 5 Disney Plus wants to know, are you ready?

Speaker 2 Yes!

Speaker 5 For Marvel Studios, Thunderbolts, the New Avengers, now streaming on Disney Plus. Let's do this.
One of the best Marvel movies of all time is now streaming on Disney Plus.

Speaker 1 Hey, you weren't listening to me.

Speaker 5 I said Thunderbolts, the New Avengers, is now streaming on Disney Plus.

Speaker 2 Neat the New Avengers. That's cool, name.

Speaker 5 Marvel Studios, Thunderbolts, The New Avengers, rated PG-13, now streaming on, you guessed it, Disney Plus.