Kind: captions
Language: en
we used to talk about this all the time
like what's your opening line
and we would go back and forth on a lot
of stuff um
for the longest time my favorite was
i'm here to talk to you about coming out
knowing that they're going to respond
i ain't coming out
now my next line which and and that's
all i'm scripted is i know you're not
coming out now
i just want you to know that when you do
we're gonna make sure that you feel
treated with dignity and respect and i
gotta make sure you don't get hurt
chris voss welcome to the show tom thank
you pleasure to be here dude i'm really
excited to have you on i
i'm actually a little shocked at myself
that we haven't had you on sooner i find
your book
never split the difference
absolutely incredible
and where i want to start so i think i'm
a terrible negotiator so let's start
with that we will definitely today cover
some of the principles of that but
what i really want to talk about is
in the book when you're talking about
some of the scenarios that you were in
where people it's a life-and-death
situation right and
you're the line of defense how do you
deal with that emotionally like that's
my job feels high stress
but that's no one's life is on the line
how do you deal with that yeah well
there's a couple things i mean first of
all you just don't know any better
[Laughter]
maybe when you first started but
not long term uh you know training in
the fbi they started out really good um
i mean they hit you
you know with the tyson uh line
everybody is playing till they get
punched
like the second day of the negotiation
training the fbi they hit you square
between your eyes with something really
hard like a real story or yeah yeah yeah
you know they spit they spend the first
day laying out a philosophy which if you
understand the nuances of the words
i still completely agree with
a hostage has never been killed on
deadline in the united states ever
and so like you get kind of comfortable
and you got a sense that negotiation's
pretty successful overall i mean in
reality it's about a 93 success rate
whoa
and then and then the very next day they
present a scenario where it looks like a
hostage got
murdered right on deadline right in
front of everybody
and you just like
i mean you were hit in the head can i
use the words you use in the book
because this was when i realized i don't
want your job or the one that you had
back then you said she was shot twice in
the back with a shotgun but almost cut
her in half
as she flew through the glass window
yeah and i thought god damn
like i i don't know
i'd find a way but chris i don't know
how i'd come back from that like that
would
that would damage me in ways that i
can't imagine
well that that ends up kind of getting
into a secondary characteristic because
then when i was running a program
i went out of my way to look for
negotiators that had been involved in a
siege where somebody got killed and they
bounce back
you know typically with a success rate
that that's that high
if any time you're under less than
double digits of a job sieges whatever
you want to call them
probably everything you touch is going
to turn out good and you're going to get
a little overconfident
you know once you start climbing past
double digits i mean
odds are starting to run against you
and what happens with pretty much every
time is the negotiator would be like you
know i didn't get into this to watch
people die i'm gonna find another thing
to do
or they're gonna say
i'm never gonna let this happen again
and those people will double down
and they'll be more courageous and
speaking truth to command
whether it be an ambassador or an onsen
commander and basically saying like no
we can't do it like this
we're involved in an operation where
somebody got killed yeah
so how did you how did you did you need
to put yourself back together or do you
not react like that let's start with
that question
um i've been
uh repeating one phrase in my head for a
long time leading up to that that i
didn't really realize what it meant my
old boss gary nessner used to always
teach us
best chance of success
what we're doing is the best chance of
success
and so then when uh the burnham subaru
case in the philippines a lot of people
got killed
and finally a quick
breakdown what happened um
uh gracia and martin burnham
and another american citizen named
guillermo cebaro got scooped up in a
dive resort in the philippines and a
region of the philippines every thought
was completely safe
now the bad guys the abu sayyaf were
looking for westerners
they'd been a siege earlier in the same
year in another part of the philippines
where they looking for americans and
westerners
they got nothing but western europeans
and he ultimately that case was a train
wreck which i was not involved in
because there were no americans there
and the bad guys ended up scoring about
20 million dollars as a result oh
which made a rival gang jealous of the
score
so they go out and they do an even more
daring raid they cross like 400 miles of
open ocean on these lousy little boats
scooped everybody up in a dive resort
and ended up getting three americans and
a bunch of filipinos
sebero ends up getting murdered by the
the terrorists about uh
three-ish weeks in 21-ish days how does
the siege go on for that long oh this
thing lasted 13 months
so yeah that was just that was just a
beginning that wasn't even the opening
act
so did they kill them to make a point to
just prove like we're serious well you
know they were
western american arrogance if you will
when several finally got killed or got
killed early on you know there had been
filipinos the bad guys were killing
filipinos regularly like it was no big
deal
and i can remember at that point in time
when we tried to stir up a little
outrage over it
i thought you know we have sat here
and not really said much at all
well these filipinos are getting
beheaded
now the sudden we want everybody to be
bent out of shape
and i remember thinking like if i if i
was a host country my reaction would be
like oh now it's important to you
so um but that the group that was doing
it at the time i mean there were
they did all the bad things that that
terrorist murderers do i mean all of
them how do you so
one was that the first time that you
were on a call where somebody got killed
as a first kidnapping that i was
directly involved in
where somebody or people were getting
killed yes all right so when the first
body shows up what are you the one
talking to them
now we coached okay
uh one of the reasons why you know what
i'm doing now is applicable
the
black swan method is based on hostage
negotiation which is universal
human nature everybody's human
so
i could show up in any country i mean
literally any country any culture
philippines
nigeria
cape town
baghdad
all i need to do is find somebody that's
coachable
and that person probably knows the
market if you will
and i understand the human wiring
so we put together their their their
knowledge of the market
in very general terms
and my knowledge of how to get people
to engage
and then
we can negotiate anywhere
hope you enjoyed this episode brought to
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first month enjoy the episode
okay so
when the first body comes out
what happens to you
it's the first time that this has gone
awry we're in the seven percent now yeah
that don't go well
it
for me when i think about the way that
that would
like impact my mind and force me to like
regroup did it knock you off or are you
just laser focused
well you got to keep rolling because
case was still ongoing
and so no time for emotions right now is
that what you're telling yourself
uh yeah kind of probably you know it's
just i mean you got no choice a case is
still going on you gotta you got a team
you want to go fast go alone you want to
go far go as a team you can always run
screaming from the building
but really and this this is where life
gets interesting for me is that
by nature i would say i'm a run
screaming from the building person but i
had to flip it all because i don't
respect that
and
right in discovering that you don't
respect your initial impulse
becomes a fascinating journey if you're
willing to
walk it so i'm always curious if if
other people are having to do what i
have to do to keep myself centered in
there
or if it's just like nah it didn't occur
to me to run screaming from the building
well when you're when you're in the
midst of
when you're in the battle
i mean you can't you can't you can't
bail i mean people are looking at you to
lead there are other people's lives that
are still online so that's your identity
you wouldn't allow yourself to do that
probably yeah okay
good did you because i know you at least
have one son did you teach him that like
hey in this family we don't tuck tail we
don't run because what fight flea make
friends yeah yeah yeah so
i mean do you have those kind of
conversations then because this like i
don't know how much of this is your
character from birth and how much of
this is you've built this incredible
um value system that allows you to be in
the most insanely difficult situations
on planet earth you go into great detail
about this in the book and it's so true
most people are so uncomfortable with
conflict that even when it's asking for
a raise or negotiating for a car they
can't do it they can't sit in that
discomfort right right right that's
nothing compared to they just dumped a
beheaded body
at our feet to say
you're not convincing basically right
like you're not getting anywhere that's
a real life man like i can
i can understand why most people would
not want to do that so i'm curious
and it i find that asking people how to
raise their kids often gets to what they
do internally so
what did you teach your son or sons
uh about
who we are as a family
yeah i think it was me and my father
simultaneously and you know and
everybody else is what my mother as well
because um uh you know my son brandon
who runs my company
is the best negotiator or something he's
he's a star he's really good
um
he's basically a jersey guy
you know he's mixed race
but he's this bizarre combination of
jersey and iowa because we started
sending them back to iowa my father's
very blue blue collar hard worker
expects you to figure stuff out get
stuff done we start sending my son back
to iowa in the summertime when he's
about six
so he's so comfortable in both worlds
that actually back in iowa i like to
call him metro jethro
because he loves it there he fits in
completely
and you know he's growing up he's eight
years old
uh grandpa's got him working in the
business first half of the day because
the town pool doesn't open till noon
so he he'd have to get out of bed in the
morning and have breakfast was with his
grandpa's grandparents
and then he'd have to get on his bike
and ride
to the same location his grandfather was
driving to
his grandfather wouldn't give him a riot
he's like look you get on your bike you
get out there you're supposed to be
there at 8 30. get yourself out of bed
get yourself fed i'll see you at the
office
and they would leave it approximately
the same time
and you know he'd be like why am i not
getting a ride
but that was just sort of the way that
he grew up
with you know my my parents help and
then then at home it was always
yeah he got knocked down pick stuff up
he's got a memory from when he was
playing football
in uh
he went to fifth year of high school
because he was really young
so there was a special program to get
him ready for college ball
and he was i mean he made a great play
he's playing middle linebacker he
hustled all the way across the field
missed the tackle just barely missed a
guy i mean phenomenal hustle ended up
diving through the air landing on the
ground out of bounds
and put just such effort into it and he
was laying on the ground and he
remembers hearing my voice in the
distance go great hustle
now get up
and it was like
all right well this is the environment i
grew up in
but i think it's yeah it's sort of a
family thing that we inherited from
my dad and
you know
my dad picked out a woman
that believed in those values and his
mom believed brandon's mom believed in
hard work so that's just kind of how he
came up
yeah i love that value system i'm a fan
for sure
uh okay so
at what point do you start articulating
those values out loud
and are you talking about toughness
resilience um like
what what is it like
i read your book before i saw interviews
with you and so i wasn't expecting the
sort of east coast uh attitude
and it was um
then suddenly
it asked an interesting question for me
because
what i'm trying to tease out is okay how
much of like the your ability to
negotiate is just this like
aggressive tough nut
you know it's all about being hardcore
and how much of it is
learned resilience and strategy
i'm a little bit of a believer in uh
that pretty much everything is learned
um
the talent code daniel coyle i think
that's that point that he tries to make
that you know the human beings that we
think are prodigies
they just got interested before anybody
noticed
and then
bang suddenly they were good at it but
they'd been interested in practicing for
a while i think that's pretty close to
being true
um i wish i could think of his name
documentary i saw recently on a
phenomenally successful uh
music producer
picked out uh the correct key when he
was three years old when somebody was
cleaning a piano and hit one hit one of
the
the keys so he probably was born with
some extra
but um i pretty much think everything is
learned now how did my son learn it
what um right after i left the fbi i
attended a training session
and it was the first time
it occurred to me i remember saying to
myself leading by example is not enough
i don't think i ever told them anything
explicitly i think i both hate myself
you know his grandfather
we saw it lead by example you know you
want somebody
to learn how to do something or to learn
how to live i mean then set a great
example and expect them to pick it up so
but if it's not enough what is the magic
formula yeah great question um
depending upon the age of the human
being you know probably they gotta you
gotta you gotta find somebody else
hopefully to mentor them or you gotta
let them find their own way and it's
going to be messy and ideally
you've led by example enough until
you know some that stuff is you were
talking about the age of imprinting
right
so by the time they're starting to get
into trouble in their mid teens or later
i mean they're kind of imprinted
you you got to go with whatever you you
put in them and then
ideally they're mistakes
um that they're gonna have to make
uh ideally they're not costly enough for
their cripples for life over it
but give them some space make them ride
their bike to the pool
pick yourself back up yeah be tough
be resilient face it
yeah i think all that stuff's amazing
okay so and now you know and even to
take a little bit further because
you know and um
taleb's book anti-fragile
great book
post-traumatic stress growth
right and then i'm reading an art piece
about cooper cup today
who uh
uh receiver for the rams cobra cup
cooper cup cooper cup the guy who
settled he wanted a triple crown this
year
everybody forgotten that the guy
recovered from an acl tarik several
years ago normally the end of a football
player's effectiveness
if not their career
like normally they're never the same
after this traumatic injury torn acion
almost none of these guys are ever the
same
cup says to himself
this is my opportunity to rebuild myself
get rid of my bad habits
you know i'm all right fix what i was
ever doing wrong
and rams are in the super bowl and
he won the triple crown for receivers i
mean he's got he's number one in all
these
categories and you and i'm like wait a
minute i
he tore his acl nobody comes back from
an acl tear
and i'm reading that and i'm thinking
post-traumatic stress growth he made the
decision not just to recover
but to be better
as a result of this massively traumatic
injury
that's you know that's that's beyond
resilience that's what tyler would talk
about being anti-fragile yeah no i love
that such a powerful idea that getting
hurt can actually make you stronger
but in the human anyway it comes down to
your mindset how you respond to it so
now let's we're back in the philippines
the first body just gets dropped off you
obviously decide that you're going to
get stronger you don't want it to happen
again
how do you like are you just
really good at re-centering yourself
emotionally
or
have you are is it a meditative practice
like when the body hits i i know what
that would be like for me that rush of
blood to my head where my ears almost
feel like they're closing in you can
hear your heartbeat beating in your ears
um
how did you did that happen and you had
to calm yourself down or does that just
not happen and you're just so laser
focused
well it was principally because we were
still in the midst of the siege there
were still two
still two americans whose lives were at
stake
and up to that point in time
the intergovernment the
intergovernmental
organization
was probably at its worst
like we had previously gotten through a
case and everybody had gotten away with
kind of half cooperating and
the bodies hadn't been the case we just
finished uh just a couple of months
earlier like nobody got killed
and it's a little bit like like success
you went you know a football analogy
again it's tough for a football team to
repeat after they won the super bowl
because people a little more focused on
our own success versus team success once
they reach the pinnacle
so the cooperation in the early part of
the second case was horrible i mean
horrible because they'd gotten away with
it previously
and there was no body count but now
there was there was people were dying
so we really had to we got arms more
around the case
we pushed a little harder on cooperation
people got a little more
serious about not cooperating
which in the long run
12 months later
was when the final round uh
two out of three remaining americans got
killed in a botched rescue attempt
and the case had gotten really ugly
again at that point now that one hit me
harder
than the first one because in the first
one
nobody had been cooperating with us
so i felt less responsible for the
outcome because government of the
philippines
was playing games with us you know they
they
they felt out of control on the last
case
so they gave us a guy who was supposed
to handle the negotiations that was just
completely going missing in action on a
regular basis
when he was supposed to be with us i
mean he went and they pulled him
right after the first series of deaths
they were like all right this ain't
working out so good
so i felt
you know we still had the case going
and
i hadn't gotten my arms wrapped around
it that well
now 12 months later
i had had my arms wrapped around it and
then when martin burnham when the ward
came in then he got killed that
that hit me that was that was a real
i'll never forget that moment i was i
was at home in the u.s when i when i got
the call that he'd been killed
back for me at the time
was difficult
uh worst moment of my professional
career
one of my worst personal moments until
i'm listening to a case a couple years
later
listening to a negotiator talk about how
hard it was on him
when a baby got killed in siege oh god
and i remember thinking at the time and
it was a guy i had a tremendous amount
of respect for
i thought hard on you
that wasn't your relative
and then when i thought about that i
thought and
how am i
you know
feeling sorry for myself over martin
burnham's death because he wasn't my
father
he wasn't you know my spouse he was my
brother
you know i i got no right feeling bad
about this
or at least to the extent that his
family members do
so that you know that was a bit of you
know the overall journey there putting
things in perspective like you asked to
be in the middle of this stuff
it's a volunteer job
you're going to feel sorry for yourself
when you volunteered
that's probably out of perspective
why did you volunteer
you know i i found myself i was in
crisis response i was a member of the
fbi swat team
and i had reinjured my knee and i wanted
to stay in christ's response i liked
crisis response people got to make up
their mind
you know you can't go well let's sleep
on this you know let's give this 24
hours to think about it you know you
can't do that you get you know you got
to make a decision
and i've always been in favor of
decision making
so i'd been a swat guy and we had
hostage negotiators and it was a little
bit like what we were talking about
earlier you know some stuff is a lot
harder than it looks from the outside oh
yeah
and i literally remember thinking to
myself i talk to people every day i can
talk to terrorists how hard could it be
you know my son and i joke that the voss
family motto is how hard could it be
which is a little bit like you know it's
a little bit like the rednecks famous
last words hey watch this yeah hold my
beer on my beer
so uh but then i got into it and
i've been volunteered when i finally got
trained i got volunteered on a suicide
hotline and then
when i'm in it i'm like i'm
around these extraordinary people that
are doing phenomenal things with words
i mean with words
not actual actions just words
making a huge difference and being in
the middle of these sieges
and making a difference simply by what
they said
and i thought now you know i could get
into this this this this could be good
it was
and so how does that journey begin of
learning what to say
like what are they what are the sort of
magic words like take us back to the
philippines the
bodies start coming out
how do you talk somebody down like that
like it it just seems like all hope is
lost once they kill the first person
there's no backing out
yeah man they still get more people that
are at stake
and so
you you can't not communicate
and
you know it's kind of like any other
negotiation where the other side is
doing stuff that is just not in their
interest but they're absolutely
convinced that they're right
i mean these guys want to get paid
and
negotiation is not what it is to you
it's what it is to the other side you
get all bent out of shape that it's a
horrific
horrible thing that was something i
heard you say i think in in an interview
yeah so there is no such thing as
logical there's only what matters to you
yeah i was like oh my god that is so
true you literally just cut through
decades worth of economics textbooks
that try to make people seem rational
with that one that that the second i
heard you said i was like oh my god that
is absolutely true
there is no such thing as logical
there's only what matters to you yeah
okay so is that like when you come into
a situation like that are you just
asking yourself what matters to this
person yeah
is that is that the most fundamental
question what matters
well then what matters and and then
ultimately people make up their mind
principally on what they perceive
the loss to be
um and that's that's human nature
doesn't matter the scenario when you say
the loss the loss that led them to do
this or
what losing in that scenario would look
like gotta look at both
lost the drove them to the table in the
first place to take the action
and then
what loss are they avoiding by the
action
and you want to get in their head and
find out what it is
and
since what loss are they avoiding is all
perception you know vision of the future
then depending upon how you got in their
head if you're in there by invitation
which is the whole point of empathy or
the tactical application of empathy
to get in by invitation
since you're in there by the invitation
then the idea is to get them to look at
another loss
so if it's a kidnapping
it's a question that's as is seems as um
merciless
as
how are you gonna get paid if you kill
people
how how are we gonna how are we gonna
collaborate
you know how much are you losing
by getting rid of hostages
when you could have gotten paid for them
because somebody's going to scare up the
money for the hostage right somebody's
going to
a hostage negotiators real job
internationally
is to make sure that if somebody scares
up that money
that there's enough of a trail left
that you can hunt them down
afterwards it's exactly why you give a
bank teller bait money
you don't want the bank teller to get
shot
over money
now you also don't want the bank robber
to leave the bank with the entire
contents of the vault
you give them enough money so bank tell
it doesn't get shot
the bad guy leaves
and you chase them down afterwards
that's the way
to save lives and put the bad guys out
of business
you want to get them focused back on the
money again
and then if they kill more hostages it's
their loss
and that's when they start to think like
all right well maybe we made our point
you know let them let them feel that way
who cares how they feel as long as you
get what you want
and that's the idea to try to
re-engineer the outcome that's really
interesting that um
is that an easy position to take because
it definitely makes them feel like
we're a game this is a game or they're a
chip versus like
you almost have to divorce yourself from
their humanity and meaning the hostages
right i can't even think about them as
people right now because that may stop
me from actually getting them back
is that do you approach it that way or
are you trying to hold front and center
this is somebody's mom daughter or
whatever and keep that front of mind
like how do you what's the best tactic
well yeah
you know you actually you learn the
success
tactic again and i learned it from gary
the process is you you lower the value
as a bargaining chip you increase your
value as a human being to the bad guys
so that decreases the chances not only
the bad guys will kill them
but also you impact how they're treated
in the meantime
that's incredibly shrewd so how do we
lower their value as a bargaining chip
and then how do we increase our value as
a human without the person feeling like
they're being manipulated that's always
the fine line right right
well
it's one of the reasons for potentially
for a proof-of-life question
not necessarily that you're getting
proof of life but you're making them
thinking about it as a human being like
all right at this point in time we got
no hostage still alive
what's
uh you know martin burnham's favorite
thing to do with his kids first thing in
the morning
and by asking that question
you force a thought pattern into the bad
guys
because they were kids at one point in
time
you know um terrorists
really bad guys
it's not that they're completely lacking
in emotion they're completely lacking in
certain emotions which means they've had
some emotional experiences
you want to see which ones are there
that they resonate positively with
you know one of the crazy things
that i learned a long time after the
fact is tara's got moms
i mean you'd be shocked
at the emotional vulnerability across
the board
to the power of a well-crafted message
from a mom really i mean and if like the
first we found this out
and again my boss gary nestor he had a
great feel for this
one admits to the first case um the um
uh jeff schilling case
which in baghdad nobody died hostage
walks away because the bad guys get so
um
uh disorganized and disheartened
and two months after the case the the
serial killer terrorist on the other
side
calls the negotiator that i coached
to congratulate him on how effective he
was
not in a rage
but to
literally say
you know you're really good at what you
do wow they should promote you
so in the midst of that one
bad guys are threatening that they're
torturing the american not they're going
to kill them but they're torturing them
and the state department is like you
know we got to get this torture threat
off the table
and i remember thinking like you're not
really bent out of shape unless you're
being made to look bad here because
having american tortured overseas makes
you look bad and that's what you're
concerned about
i'm like all right so we'll see what we
can do and i talked i talked to my boss
gary and i'm like
all right so how do we
go from release him
release him to be nice to him
[Laughter]
this is absurd
and uh
you know gay says to me says um
tell him that his mom is worried about
him
i can remember literally in that moment
like i held the phone away from my head
and i remember looking at the phone
and i thought to myself
that is the dumbest effing thing i have
ever heard in my life
and i kind of roll my eyes
and and i used to ignore so much what
gary told me anyway you know he was good
he gave me a lot of rope
and so i go okay
we'll see if we can work that into the
conversation because i want to make him
feel like i was paying attention to him
so we coach up the negotiator the next
day and you know we got the negotiation
operations center set up and we got
sheets of paper with dialogue and we're
going to be there with him the whole
time you can hear tone of voice when you
get the cadence you get a pretty good
idea what's being said just based on
tone
and we tell him he says you know you got
to work this mom thing into the
conversation and he looks at us like
you're kidding right
you know it's just find a way to work it
in
so he's on the phone with a bad guy
and we're we're all but getting them to
come right out that they're not
torturing them because they're not i
mean there's no need to but it makes
them look good
to claim they are
and and benji says to the bad guy
says you know his mom's worried about
him
and the sociopathic
terrorist on the other end of the phone
literally says
his mom knows about this
you tell her he's okay whoa and we're
like
this is the dumbest thing i've ever
heard
and you know we're on the other side of
the clock in manila you know we're 12
hours on the other side of the clock so
it's the middle of the afternoon for me
it's a middle it's 1 30 in the morning
for gary
and i'm like i got to get this out of
the way i mean i i i have to get this
out of the way so i immediately call
gary and i wake him up in the middle of
the night
you know he always took the calls 1 30
in the morning phone rings and i hear
you oh
and i go
you always f and have to be right
and he's like
what do you mean
[Laughter]
let go i don't know how you knew that
this guy was going to resonate with the
mob stuff but it worked perfectly how
did he know did he say you know a great
gut instinct but once we started looking
for it then it would show up in case
after case
and which is really hard
you know once i was looking for that
dynamic every terrorist got a mom
and if you had to bet
it's a good bet that they're bonded to
their mom
like
physically they were born they had to
have a mom
mom was probably nurturing all the
different stuff to bend them out of
shape and turn them into the twisted
human being that they became
i didn't have any anything to do with
mom
so they still got
deep inside in a first year of their
life they were nurtured by mom mom
did everything she could she possibly
could even terrorists got moms and i saw
this show up a couple times later on
and i started realizing it was probably
if i you took me to vegas which i lived
there now
and you said place a bet
is this guy gonna resonate emotionally
with the mom
and i'd say based on our data
we got an 85 to 90 chance
that the mom is a button we can punch
and so then in subsequent cases knowing
this
i'd bring it up with ambassadors or
you know fbi headquarters or the white
house
and they'd all react the exact same way
that i did that's the dumbest thing i
ever heard that ain't you know they're
inhuman
that ain't ever gonna work and we saw i
saw evidence of it in 2012
when um
son of al qaeda uh the group in in iraq
that was chopping people's heads in 2012
2014 2014 time frame
um
their name will come to me after the
fact but there was uh there was one case
there
where the mom car got played really
strongly
and the head of head of the group
responded
and i remember thinking like i've been
telling you know i know this sounds
crazy but we see it
over and over and over again
so there's a common humanity thread to
every human being regardless of
circumstances
that's really interesting so we've got
the mom thread we've got what are some
of the other threads a desire to be
heard want to be in control like what
are what are some known knowns when you
roll up on average the sort of 80 85
percent range when you roll up you know
okay mom probably going to be a button
they want to be in control they want to
be heard
um
are there any others sense of loss
and you know an idea of some sort of a
loss loss is the strongest be true uh
behavior trigger of human nature
period
how do you track that down um well first
of all
it's it's like you know what you're
looking for to begin with but it's not
really active listening it's proactive
listening and there's certain things or
the tactical application of empathy what
do we know to be true what do we got to
bet on
loss is the primary
the biggest impact on decision making of
human beings across the board
danny kahneman 2002 nobel prize winner
behavioral economics lost things twice
as much as an equivalent gain
for people
period if you're human
you're wired that way
which makes it the biggest trigger in
thinking
so if they're engaged in a behavior that
we don't understand they perceive the
loss and we got to start you know
sniffing around for it looking for the
hints
knowing it's there and then consequently
you're going to get them change their
mind about something you reformulate the
loss
if i say to you
if you do this there's a 90 chance you
fail like i'm not doing that
but if i say do this says you know you
got a 10 chance of success
ooh that sounds and lands completely
different
10 percent i could succeed 10
i'm a winner i'm in the 10 percent
you know it it lands differently but if
you want to make sure they don't do it
90 chance you'll fail here i'm not doing
that i'm not taking that risk that's too
far against me i mean that will shut
somebody down for sure
10 success might move them forward
but i guarantee you i shut you down with
a 90 failure rate
there is no difference in those numbers
exact same numbers
and so you start to see it across the
board and like all right so we're going
to get them to change their mind
we just
change the frame of the loss you're
going to merge in an acquisition
negotiation
entrepreneur sole proprietors trying to
sell this company
wants to get you know whatever um
10x ebitda
because a buddy of his get 10x
now
the person buying his company wants to
take him wants him to take a lower
multiple
so that in two years he retains a piece
and he makes
30 40 50 100 million dollars more
by taking less now
guys thinking is lost i you know i can't
i can't take a million dollars less for
this i can't take nine when i should
take ten i lose a million dollars
take nine take a piece
you're willing to risk a hundred million
dollars seven years from now you wanna
lose a hundred million dollars
over a million dollars now
and be like no that's crazy that's the
dumbest thing i ever heard
you just
re-framed what the law says
and that's where you get people to
change their mind because whether it's a
terrorist thinking
we have law you know we've been harmed
in the past we've lost our homeland
you know we've lost our identity
terrorism is about
choosing violence as a way to make up
for laws
interesting i have never heard that
before
uh
is that universal
um it's the universal driver of human
decision making
now how they're looking at the loss you
know
you know there's kind of three groups
that are out there
that you see over and over again
in a lethal triad they called it the
charismatic leader the
sociopathic um
middlemen you know the number twos
captains lieutenants and then the
inadequate followers
it was a terrorism book from way back
when called crusaders criminals and
crazies
a friend of mine tom strench wrote a
book called the bad the man the sad
so it kind of breaks down into you know
the complete charismatic leader
maybe he believes in a cause maybe just
believes in himself
the criminals are involved they're just
doing it because it's a way to combat
the status quo and continue to commit
crime
the people that are looking for identity
you know it's hard to describe as being
inadequate followers
but the sad
you know they're looking for an identity
and
the leadership has convinced them that
they've been harmed by this perceived
loss and they have to make up for it
so it's kind of packaged along those
lines and is that who's going to be
there actually doing the hostage part so
you're not dealing with the charismatic
leader you're dealing with the sad
underlings
principally the sad underlings of their
implementers
because they're the cannon fodder
for the leader you know the leadership
whether it's a charismatic leader of a
sociopathic
enabler
who are they going to put at risk who
are you going to send out to conduct the
kidnapping
who's going to who's going to hold the
hostage who's going to be the hostages
jailer
that's the worst job
on their side you know to have to sit
around with a hostage day after day
it's a it's a it's you know you're not
you're not giving that to your talented
people how did these guys 13 months yeah
how did they not just get bored and want
it to end
um they're prepared for a little longer
siege
they've got a vision of a big payoff in
the end that 20 million dollar payout
the year previous
painted visions of wealth
which means if they don't get their 20
million they're losing
so you'll stay in the game longer
because of this perceived loss and these
guys letting food get in or have they
stocked up enough food to get through
all this well we're trying we're trying
to get stuff in
um
uh
you know didn't know this was going on
at the time but um dan bowden the author
of black hawk down
[Music]
wrote an article in vanity fair
probably about a year after this case
went down
[Music]
revealing a whole bunch of information
that i was not privy to in the case
so according to dan bowden
who evidently has great resources in the
us government not in the fbi
there were unnamed government agencies
they were setting in sending in food
deliveries with informants that had
tracking devices in them oh
that again according to dan bowden in
his article in vanity fair
you know i am quoting a publicly source
i am not quoting pri you know secret
government information
that uh there were food deliveries that
were being made with tractors on them
okay so that starts getting complicated
with all kinds of different agencies
pulling in different directions right um
what is all this like seeing people
beheaded uh recognizing the
sad the
man
yeah that's rhyme there huh thank you
tom strand i'll try to remember it
better but um what is all of this
revealing to you like about humanity do
you
do you have a
look at humanity like this is
crazy that this is ugly are you
optimistic like i mean that you've seen
some gnarly [ __ ] like what does this
give you a takeaway because you said i
could drop you anywhere and you know
enough about human wiring right to to go
into this yeah and it does not paint a
pretty picture with the ways in which we
are manipulatable between this is all
about loss
and just reframing the loss completely
reframed like the fact that we would do
this kind of crazy [ __ ] over loss
that
my mother
is gonna like trigger some
very strange reaction given the
circumstances like how do you
conceptualize of human nature at this
point
well yeah first of all i'm very
optimistic
um
you know it to me it's relief
that we're kind of relieved that we're
all kind of rewired the same interesting
you know even though it means that we
are all then in
oh god who was it soldier nitsan i think
that said
either soulja nitsan or frankel that
evil runs through the center of every
human heart
i wouldn't go that far
i think um
the
the capability of doing something that
appears to be very evil and heartless
when people get really scared
and afraid for their own survival
i am i am somewhat like when people
start getting really afraid for their
own survival
people's ability to uh discard the
humanity of people around them as a
defense mechanism
you know that saddens me to some degree
but it it is
so
you know don't curse the darkness get a
flashlight figure it out get night
vision goggles you know just there are
certain things that simply are
um but they're they're consistent
so if i understand what is and it's
consistent and you don't it doesn't do
you any good
to get angry at people for having a
propensity to to do really bad things
inadvertently or just out of self self
protection and but maybe it makes it
more forgivable to know that
when backed into a corner people are
more scared rabbits
than they are predatory wolves
so most people are not predatory wolves
they're they're they're out there
but the vast majority of people are not
have you come across predatory wolves
well you know i think you know the guy
in the uh um
uh the the schilling case
who was only on the other end of the
phone yeah he was
he was a predatory wolf i mean he was a
bad guy he was the one that was batting
people yeah
and then then the crazy thing was i mean
it's really interesting the way that
plays out because in the second case
instead of being in charge of the
negotiations
second case he's in a chart in charge of
the hostages
same guy same guy he gets a terrible he
got demoted
from negotiator to jailer okay
but the hostages loved him because he he
understood
that a hostage
who was so spiritually broken
that they couldn't get up off the ground
[Music]
was a logistical problem
because they were on the run for most of
the 13 months they were moving from
place to place they were staying ahead
of drones they're staying ahead of
patrol like sitting in in one house and
you guys are surrounding it no no
kidnapping is a mobile operation
wow i've had the wrong impression this
whole time well there's two kinds of
cases i could be working i could work on
a contained case like what you're
talking about where they're not getting
away
or i could i could be working the
uncontained you know to use real simple
terminology
so you know talking with gracia burnham
uh the the american lived she got shot
by friendly fire in the leg and she
survived phenomenal human being and her
kids whom i'm acquainted with
um are
wonderful people
every every member of their family
wonderful human being and that's the
father that got killed yeah
now she's telling us about this after
the fact because we're always debriefing
hostages who survive because we want to
understand the dynamics behind the
scenes number one number two
our survival debriefings happen to be
great
stress debriefings for them
two kinds of interviews information
gathering and stress debriefing why is
it a step stress debriefing what do they
get out of it uh you know the
opportunity
to talk somebody through a horrific
situation from beginning to end
and for the listener to be genuinely
curious
as opposed to trying to extract
information
like an interview of a released hostage
by an investigator is exhausting i mean
exhausting
and they don't like it and it sucks the
life out of them
if they said we sit around we asked them
questions about what was the experience
like
what were the bad guys what were they
like
how did you survive
you know what emotional triggers did you
go through
it's very cathartic for the hostage
so
we're talking to gracia burnham and like
you know of your captors what was your
reaction
to this guy this guy this guy
and we bring up the sociopathic murderer
and she said yeah we kind of liked him i
mean he could tell when we were really
down
and if he sensed that i was really down
he would say you know take her down the
river you know give her some time alone
let her clean herself up you know just
just give her a break take it a little
bit easier on her this is the guy that
was beheading people yeah
because so weird to me he's responsible
for moving these people
if they need to move in a hurry see this
this is something that
from uh what what are humans like chris
voss let us answer the question what are
humans like
so
it is
really strange to me that a human can
in one scenario be beheading people and
then get a slightly different job
description and be like all right take
them down to the water and let them wash
um that does say to me that the line of
evil runs through every human heart how
does that not say it to you do you think
that
is that not the predictable part like
you just
of course like that makes sense he's
going to have bonded with them because
that's his job
with him he's tr he's he's
to him their commodity
that he has to be able to move in a
hurry and so he's just letting him go
down to the river so they they will move
quickly when he needs them to exactly
yeah he knows he's got to he you know he
doesn't want him like happy to be there
but if they're completely
disabled emotionally they're going to be
disabled physically
and if a military patrol comes too close
they're not going to be able to bug out
of there in a hurry
and this is a valuable commodity he's
got to take care of
and so he's agnostic
now some of the other captors
are messing with them
because they're bored and they're
inadequate followers and they're
inadequate human beings
and that's a completely different
approach which is what most hostages go
through on a regular basis you know the
people out there they just start [ __ ]
with them yeah and what does that take
the look of throwing rocks at them
you know i've heard plenty of stories in
uh
you know in in some of the rougher
kidnappings in south america
where just for entertainment they'll put
a rifle to somebody's head and pull the
trigger on an empty chamber just to
watch them fly just
and you know
because they got nothing better to do
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what do you take away from that
like that's so sadistic
yeah
so have you read um soulja nitsan's book
uh the gulag archipelago i have not oh
my god read it chris i'm so curious to
know what you think about this
so it's interesting i i am not yet sure
i understand what you have taken away
from all of these people i have
thankfully not encountered anything like
this there was one guy in high school
that people said he beat kittens to
death and i remember thinking oh my god
that's so dark i almost couldn't allow
myself to believe that it was true so i
was like ah maybe it's exaggerating
whatever
so anyway that always stuck in the back
of my head did that guy really beat
kittens to death so that just freaks me
out but when i read the gulag
archipelago and
it's basically soulja nitsan screaming
for like
a thousand pages it's unreal cataloging
the cruelty that befell him
the way that people turn on each other
the way that you could get a prisoner to
turn into a guard and that they would
then be cruel to other prisoners just as
a way to like get themselves out of it
and
that so easily
we could
turn on each other and
pluck you know fingernails and
just torture people cruelly kill them uh
send them away to you know these prison
camps that were almost certainly death
sentences
and
it was like
jordan peterson introduced this idea to
me which has been useful he said don't
think of yourself as the one that hides
jews in the attic think of yourself as a
nazi guard
and i was like whoa because you want to
talk about something i just always no
way like i could never ever ever
and then when you
allow yourself to
go do i have weakness inside of me i do
and is there a threshold at which just
to save my own family that i would do
something horrendous i worry that i
would
and so hearing soulja nitsan basically
say you're all capable of it we're all
capable of it
and
it's like oh man so
when you talk about somebody
going from because i don't know i don't
read that guy like you obviously were in
the mix and so i could just be totally
misreading this but when i hear the guy
in one kidnapping time is beheading
people hey no problem and the next is
like letting them go down to the river
that to me is more of a mother moment
than it is
a this guy's a logistical genius and he
knows i have to like keep them to a
certain level of prime maybe he is maybe
he is you heard first-hand experience
but to me i just hear
when you're in a different role and i
don't know how real the stanford prison
experiment is and if it's ever been
replicated but i'm sure you've heard
that classic thing where they had some
students they said you guys are the
guards you guys are the prisoners but
they were classmates and within three
days they had to shut the experiment
down because the prison guards started
acting so abusively towards the
prisoners even though they were randomly
assigned that they ethically they just
couldn't continue
and so that's
what i hear in this story
and i'm not sure if that means that you
have a way more optimistic
view
because you're just a better person than
i am or i don't know that's really a
deeply flawed person
yeah
it's very intriguing what do you believe
to be true about the individual are we
capable are all of us capable of
great kindness and great evil or
it's a spectrum and some of us are
tighter on the scale
what what is true of humans yeah you
know um
i think it's a spectrum um
you know just because you get some
people to do horrific things doesn't
mean you get everybody to do horrific
things it you know it's kind of in the
in the environment and then
things go a little at a time you know
the the
the boiling frog analogy
can't drop a frog in a boiling water
but you can start them out in
warm water and raise the temperature and
they'll stay
you know the the degree of changes
and then as we as we grow
um and go through life then then what
what have we experienced
that we failed everybody fails it goes
down to twos everybody's got something
there's got a moment where they were
fragile or they did something that they
that they
uh probably deeply regret
now
again are you do you become a better
person as a result
and forgive yourself
uh for failing to step up
you know what do you do as a result you
know everybody's gonna do stuff where
they failed themselves well they were
fragile they made a bad decision
they were heartless either intentionally
or accidentally
like how do you how do you how do you
pick it up after that
is what the real issue is
and how do you pick yourself up like for
me it would be
i would assess what i believe to be
[Music]
right true aren't quite there but i
would figure out what what do i want my
values to be what do i aspire to be and
i would have to reorient myself towards
aspiration so i failed and i would be
very careful
not to allow the failure to become what
i perceive of myself your thank you for
letting me talk through something i've
never had to articulate but here is a
really interesting idea that i've had on
my mind lately
that
you can
who you believe yourself to be
is a frame of reference unto itself yeah
and you see things and experience things
through that frame of reference what you
believe to be true about yourself if you
believe yourself to be capable if you
believe yourself to be a good person
you will
act accordingly and view your actions
accordingly and
view as you imagine the future you will
imagine i'm going to be successful
you'll have optimism i'm going to handle
this well because that's your frame of
reference but if something happens that
knocks your frame of reference a failure
or whatever then suddenly your frame of
reference shifts in an instant i'm a
failure i'm a loser i'm not good at this
and as you imagine the future the future
is bleak and all of it is suddenly
neurochemically real and you are there
and what i have found interesting is if
i ever find myself going to a dark place
and it feels heavy and it feels like i'm
pessimistic about the future
i say there is a single phrase that i
will say to myself and it changes my
neurochemistry in like four seconds and
that's remember who you are
now what's interesting is i know that's
a game i know it's a gimmick because i'm
i'm not anybody right i am i am the
person who can be confident and i am the
person who can be scared i am both of
those things but somehow along the way
that phrase triggers a neurochemical
state for me and i can shift myself out
of a negative viewpoint and get there
and so as i think about like
okay you fail and this big traumatic
thing happens to you
how do you grab
the right and maybe we need to debate
this idea of frame of reference but how
do you grab a hold of the right frame of
reference which is going to completely
distort
good or bad
what you see think and feel
yeah i think it very definitely gets
back to
because when you're saying remember who
you are
it's like remember what your core values
are you know get back on track
sometimes i refer to that as two lines
of code
you know computer code everybody got two
lines of code somewhere very deep in
their brain which kind of drives who
they are
god knows what it is
in some cases or how i got that like how
do those two lines occur how do the two
lines of code that i believe probably
drive me
how'd they get in my head i i don't know
do we all literally have two lines of
code i said i think there's a duality i
think there's something
you know i just say two lines of code
because i think it's probably pretty
simple okay
for whatever it is it might either be
like life you know it doesn't matter for
some people and you know then then when
you do something wrong it doesn't matter
let it go or
look um
you're good guy
like that doesn't mean you're perfect
or be a good
person or you can succeed you know i
don't know my mom whispered that in my
ear at some point in time when i was
three i don't know i don't know how i
got in there i know exactly what it is
but i you know i think it would it what
gives me the ability at some point in
time pick yourself up and get and learn
from this
you know you you're not here to be uh to
take a bite to use oxygen
you got a purpose whatever it is you
know your spiritual outlook on life
um
the bigger picture you know we talked
about
uh it never split the difference
you know
finding out somebody's religion what is
it that they believe in that's bigger
than them that they would
you know they would work forever and be
happy and when another person would
consider it to be
um
disparaging
uh
and ruining their life like how how do
people take the exact same circumstances
seem completely differently
maybe it's a two line of code or if they
get defeated and then and they never got
up
so yeah i guess you know mine's got to
be largely optimistic whatever it is
um and that's
so then when you know i find myself
curled up in a feudal position uh unable
to get off the floor eventually
i'm gonna say look it's time to get up
and get smarter
time to get up and get smarter smarter
okay so let's talk about
what makes somebody a good negotiator
what does the smarter look like so if
all of this is about
two lines of code like so much of your
book revolves around once you understand
how people are wired once you understand
what their religion is once you
understand their two lines of code
we become
controllable isn't the right word but we
become movable influenceable if that's a
word
so
how do we begin to suss that out so when
you're
sitting across the table and i like i
know that a lot of this deploys against
business negotiations but i want to keep
it when lives are on the line so
ultra high stakes literal life and death
what are you
asking what are you looking for how much
of like the fact that you guys have
these teams and everybody's broken up
okay you're looking for positive
statements you're looking for negative
walk us through that
what what's the setup and then how are
we going to tease out this information
well yeah the setup is yeah you know
we're going to pull together a team
because there's so much in what's said
and the way it's said
even more in the way it's said
that there's just there's more
information coming off a person if even
if you can't see them
there's more information that you can
keep up with
if you're not trying to respond
and then
you know
you formulate a statement in your mind
in the amount of time that you're
formulating a statement you're not
listening
there's just more data there than one
person
can handle
so we built a team concept
and we had different people listen for
different things
and the more we thought about it like
how long did the conversation go
how much
profanity which is you know emotional
adjectives
how many emotional adjectives were in
there negative emotional adjectives
as as few as the conversations get
longer and there's fewer negative
emotional adjectives you're making
progress
it's never a straight line so it's going
to go and come so you know what's our
pulse what's our frequency
and then would people really start
listening for the nuances
and you get five people together i mean
if you want to listen for everything you
probably need at least five people
keeping track of everything
and it then then then the patterns start
to emerge really fast
or
like in a in a tractor man siege in dc
and
tractor man yeah dwight watson drove a
tractor to the middle of washington dc
in 2003
just before the beginning of the first
iraq
war and his family had been crushed by
the tobacco industry settlement
they were no longer able to
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farm and sell enough tobacco you know i
don't know but this the tobacco industry
settlement ended up crushing his family
business
he tried to protest in dc a couple times
got legal permits to protest nobody
cared
you know save the tobacco farmer that
ain't exactly a hashtag that's real
popular
yeah and it's not their fault that
that's how they grew up making a living
which was completely legal acceptable
and nothing wrong and then the world
suddenly decides it's a bad thing
so we protest couple years in a row
nobody cares so he rolls back into dc
now with his tractor and his and his
trailer and his
his uh 4x4
and claims he's got bombs
which gets everybody's attention has a
way of doing it yeah yeah you'll get
somebody's attention
for working a case
park police negotiators we're backing
them up we're coaching them we're doing
all the analysis for them
you know we're the team that we put up
around them because we work a good team
and we get to the point where
he's found a face-saving way to
surrender you know he said i was in the
82nd airborne
the 82nd airborne
parachutes behind enemy lines and you're
there for for 72 hours
with no backup you can withdraw
so basically he's agreed to come out
after 72 hours now the problem is
he's a volatile dude
and since we don't know for sure whether
or not he's got explosives
in a fit of rage if he goes the wrong
direction
the sniper's got a green light on him
and we're thinking like all right
we got to keep this guy from getting
himself killed
because when you're in a rage you're
going to do something stupid and there's
a very specific protocol where we
suspect the explosives might be and if
he makes a move for the explosives we
cannot wait and find out if they're
there
and so we're thinking like we got to get
this guy out of here in less than 72
hours because that's just too much
for for stable behavior we cannot expect
them to stay cool for 72 hours
so
there's a disagreement within in the
negotiation cell as to when he said he's
going to come out
and i look at the negotiators and i go
when's dwight coming out and they go
like he's coming out tomorrow
and i said um i don't think he is
i think we're still 36 hours away you
know we're not we're not eight hours
away
well we'll call him and ask him and i'm
like hold hold hold before we call
in the event
he's not coming out tomorrow morning
what are you going to say to get him to
change his mind
now we've heard all this military stuff
all this hyper masculine stuff
and buried in
the military jargon and the hyper
masculine stuff their hints
of his religion
was christianity
just hints of it just hints
and winnie miller a female negotiator on
my team
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sitting in the back of the room and what
do we say what do we say what do we say
and when he goes
tell them to mars or dawn on the third
day
because you know the christian religion
jesus crucified on friday he gets up on
sunday that's 48 hours that ain't three
days that's not 72.
it's one day to saturday it's two days
to sunday
so we're thinking about this and we're
like yeah okay
going to the third day
so we call them back on the phone they
go dwight when are you coming out you're
coming out tomorrow right he goes no i'm
not coming out tomorrow
and then a negotiator brilliantly
because delivery is as important as
awards
she brilliantly says
the white
tomorrow's the dawn of the third day
this is long silence on the other end of
the line
yes i'll come out tomorrow
now she saved his life because i promise
you that 24 more hours he'd have cracked
and he'd have made some move where the
sniper would have taken him out
and we did not want that to happen
by this point in time we're talking to
this and this this poor schmuck has just
been crushed he's tried to get the
world's attention
we don't think he's got bombs but we
don't know he doesn't have bombs and we
can't take that chance
we got to get him out of there before he
gets himself killed and so that was kind
of
you know here's a guy doing something
that looked really bad
but they were still
possibly to your point what's inside
somebody
you know one of those
kernels
those grains that are still in there
that maybe we can uncover that maybe we
can reach in and reach
and and and we got him out he came out
and nobody nobody got hurt okay so that
was a case of literally knowing their
religion and also there's something in
there about
knowing that he needs to save face and
the military thing about 72 hours and
having an honorable exit and all of that
um
how do you
tease out this stuff so somebody that
wants to use this in their real life
yeah the most interesting thing that you
cover in the book in great detail is how
you begin to like pull this information
out you mentioned earlier but it's worth
noting that the name of your company is
black swan right and the whole idea of
it's the unknown unknowns the tiny
little things that make all the
difference yeah and so how do you get to
that well yeah um
again what are you listening for
you're
not not i know what to tell you to look
for you know look for the hints of loss
you know what impacted their identity
look for the narratives
that they're telling themselves that
they're telling themselves
you know how does this make sense that
them
you know what's the trigger here what's
the opening question do you have a
standard opening question that you asked
them to get them to start talking
yeah you know
you know one one of a couple things um
which is like how every negotiation
should go
script out your first two or three lines
and then you're into an ad-lib from that
point on you gotta prepared
it's a dance let the other person lead
and they'll take you where you wanna go
give them a chance
and the opening is going to be some
catch em off guard an expression of
concern for them
and we used to talk about this all the
time like what's your opening line
and we would go back and forth on a lot
of stuff um
for the longest time my favorite was
i'm here to talk to you about coming out
knowing that they're going to respond i
ain't coming out
now my next line which and and that's
all i'm scripted is i know you're not
coming out now
i just want you to know that when you do
we're gonna make sure that you feel
treated with dignity and respect
and i gotta make sure you don't get hurt
and now we're off to racist wherever he
wants to go but i put a vision in his
head
with that statement it doesn't matter
what he says
it's that i got a chance to draw that
picture
and then a buddy of mine
super talented guy vince delfonzo
he says i want to call in and say
are you okay
because they're expecting us to call in
and ask about the hostages
but are you okay
now i'm in a confrontation in a parking
lot here in l.a
about two months ago
really yeah
just on a personal level yeah okay and
um
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this guy honks at me
you know he's clearly bent out of shape
and you know i'm not being aggressive
and i'm in a parking lot and and i
happen to be standing i think i'm out of
his way but he wants to park where i am
he honks at me and he drives by me
happens to be a black dude doesn't
really matter and he's running his mouth
as he goes by
and it clearly something has got him
wound up before he ever saw me
and for whatever reason i'm there at the
wrong time
now
i ain't letting this pass
and i'm also not getting into a fight
with this guy
you're not letting opacity honk to you
and was aggressive yeah and he's running
his mouth as he goes by you know he's
about five six feet of way as it turns
out we're both headed to the same
restaurant anyway
but i'm like i'm just in the mood like i
you know i'm i'm not the type to let
this pass for a whole variety of reasons
so of course i walk right over to his
car
and as he's getting out and he's glaring
at me i'm like are you okay
he goes yeah of course i'm okay you're
in my way i said yeah no no no seriously
seriously
are you okay are you okay
and he was so caught off guard by that
that it initially deactivated him he
said yeah well you know i'm trying to
i'm trying to park you know you're in
the way
i'm like yeah yeah man oh man i'm you
know i'm so sorry i that was stupid of
me i i didn't i was trying to look at
the at the front of the um
the store to make sure i was at the
right place
and now he he's come down about halfway
you know he's clearly he's coming down
and like again this dude has been
triggered by something that he's
carrying inside him before i'm even on
the scene and i'm not going to aggravate
this
so we both of course we both head to the
same restaurant door at the same time
so i go to hold the door for him and
he's he picks up his phone and acts like
he's not going in he is not going to
accept a gesture of kindness for me
and then i go inside and you know my
girlfriend is there and she's like is is
everything okay you know what we do
wrong
and he's like oh you got you guys didn't
do anything wrong
and so he lurks outside the restaurant
until i'm getting ready to leave but
decides
to come in at the same time
that i'm leaving because it's a takeout
and i go to hold the door from the
second time
and he walks through
so he goes from being combative and
calling me names and refusing to walk
through the door
when i'm being polite and not accepting
a gesture of kindness for me
to now i you know i haven't been
confronted
combative but i kind of have been
confronted but confronted him about is
he okay are you okay are you okay
and saying in a way where i gently
genuinely meant it
when i get ready to leave the second
time he's good with accepting a gesture
of goodwill for me i hold the door and
he comes through
all right so from a technique standpoint
you knock him off guard by asking him if
he's okay and be genuinely concerned and
let it come across in my voice because i
didn't plant that anger in him i made
you know i inadvertently added to it
but he rolled into this
you know i there's a phrase that i've
seen which is like if you understood
half the stuff that people are
struggling with you take it a lot easier
on them like this dude is struggling
with something before he shows up
it's a nice car
you know i'm i'm judging from his
demeanor even though he's a black guy
he's a white call of duty he's got he's
in a nice car as i recall it was a nice
jeep
you know everything about him is just
like another regular guy
making probably a pretty good living and
something is eating him up before he
even shows up there and i happen to be
there at the moment when
inadvertently you know i add to it by
standing his way
so for you the idea of not letting it go
you weren't
you confronted him like you said but it
wasn't
i don't know is there emotional
gratification to you just to
engage like or
you said i i'm not going to let it go
for a whole host of reasons so now i
need to understand what reasons are
those is it did that feel like an
affront to you in some way and now you
just need to engage you need to
like lower his
anger and that gives you the
the sense of
justice like i'm not sure
because i if you've gone up to him and
been like listen [ __ ] that i would
understand dumb but i wouldn't
understand
but what's your problem yeah but if is
it emotionally
are you looking for emotional catharsis
in the confrontation and is it
catharsis that you get by helping him
come down
well i can promise you that this is
mostly selfish okay you know there's
almost a joke out there the myth of
altruism you're not helping people
because you care about people you help
them because it makes you feel good
therefore it's very selfish to be
altruistic
so
you get into a whole circular argument
over all this and knock yourself out
unnecessarily
so it does make me feel good to
to help somebody out um
so yeah i get it i get i feel genuinely
better about it
part of my philosophy is life you know i
i didn't invent this phrase leave people
better than you found them
you ain't making the world a better
place i'm also a very strong believer in
karma the more positive stuff i do the
more positive stuff comes back to me i
think there's actually there's more and
more reason to believe that there's
something to this energy feeling karma
there's probably science behind karma
and it probably in fact impacts how
people react to us and what comes our
direction and what we repel we you know
we tracked
you put out positivity you're gonna
track positivity
i'm also
naturally born assertive type
somebody runs their mouth at me
i'm not good at letting that go
i'm also not interested in making it
worse
you know um
what's that you make a speech when
you're angry it's the greatest speech
you'll ever regret
i'm not looking i'm not looking to make
it worse
and i know that you know if i got my
negotiator hat on
you know i can leave this guy better off
and
probably in that particular moment i've
talked my way out of confrontations that
i did not start
other times i've talked my talk people
out of confrontations that i've seen in
public that i had nothing to do with
because i just didn't want to see him go
down
when somebody's hyped up they feel an
injustice has been done what's the path
to
helping them out of that i'm a train i'm
on a train in jersey on a saturday
morning a couple years ago
and a bunch of regular folks on a path
train headed into manhattan
and i see this again and skin colors got
nothing to do with it could be irish
could be jewish you know they're just
they're just human beings
see what looks to be like a basically
hard-working blue-collar black guy
sitting on a
on a train
another hard-working uh
decent human being black female sits
down next to him i mean just slams in
onto the there's like about six inches
she plants herself shoves them
forcefully to the side and says i said
excuse me move over
and i s and
you know i see this poor guy he's just
sitting there minding his own business
probably struggling with whatever he's
doing
and i can see her pushing him and she's
got something she's struggling with on a
completely separate
and i can see this getting ready to go
bad
because at some point i'm on the other
side of the car at some point in time
he's going to get pushed to his limit
because he was setting her mind in his
own business and no matter how he reacts
unless he gets up and walks away
he's going down over it
there ain't no excuse
for pushing back physically with a
female under any circumstances
legally morally however you look at it
and i'm looking at this poor bastard and
i'm thinking like
i don't want to see this guy go down
so i walk across
the train
and i lead with i'm sorry and when i'm
sorry is the first thing out of your
mouth it startles people in a really
good way
like what are you sorry for
and i and and i'm gonna personalize
myself
i go i'm sorry i'm
chris and i hold out my hand which he
refuses to take
and he snaps back chris i'm not looking
to meet you chris
now in point the fact he has met me
he's using my first name i went from
being this bozo on the other side of the
train to chris
and i said look man i just don't want to
see anything bad happen to you that's
all and i go back to the other side of
the train
and i can see the wheels in his head
turning a completely different way
and i can see from the look on his face
he's thinking like
this is stupid
this is just dumb
and he sits there for a few more seconds
and he gets up he doesn't stay in the
ward and he gets crosses her car to get
away from this girl
and that was it
you know two people living their lives
being triggered by something got nothing
to do with one another
a potential conversation between just
two regular people getting ready to go
bad he just needed an intervention to
rethink what was going on
so did that work because of the idea of
trying to so you talk about daniel
kahneman and thinking fast and thinking
slow and you're trying to shock him out
of right the sort of emotional moment
and get him to think more deeply about
the situation i'm look well i'm looking
i'm definitely looking for a thought
pattern interrupt that's not where i'm
not threatening
and and i'm trying to trigger an
emotional moment which very much as you
talked about earlier triggering the
brain chemistry the neural chemicals we
got to get some different neurochemicals
course into the brain
get somebody thinking again because like
if if you were to think about that
dispassionately
if somebody's a jerk to me in public
which i didn't do anything to cause it
like this person walked into this
situation by being eaten up by their own
amygdala before i even got got here
something else been triggering they're
struggling with something if i were to
completely understand i'd walk away
and you need to get somebody in that
mindset like like i didn't do anything
wrong
this person's been out of shape you know
they're struggling with something if
they had time to tell me
i'd i'd i might give money
but instead it's turned into a
confrontational thing in a moment people
are the negative neurochemicals are
triggering them and again if you make a
speech when you're angry it's the
greatest speech you'll ever regret you
don't do smart stuff when you're mad
very true but you have said that you if
you can control the anger that it can
actually be useful in a negotiation
and
if you can trigger it to a higher level
what does that mean well anger and this
is what a lot of people miss about anger
um like if you're if you're if you're if
you've been shattered if you're frat
fragile
if you're laying on the floor and you
can't get up
if you're in the depths of sadness
anger will get you out of it in a
heartbeat
and i've actually used it some in the
past
um if i if if
something has made me incredibly
deeply sad loss of a loved one
i pulled myself out of it and i can feel
the neurochemical change by thinking of
somebody i'm really mad at
or someone or something that has made me
intensely angry
and i'm instantly lifted out of sadness
grief despair
the problem that most people don't see
is
that doesn't lift you to your highest
level of performance
like in in on a
grading scale of a to f
like if you're in the in the f
emotionally
anger will en will instantly bring you
up to c level performance maybe even b
minus
now you won't know how much
more room there is at the top
all you know is in comparison
danger pulled you out of your depths
so you're capable of much more but if
you've got no way of knowing that
you don't know that that the really the
next level up is the state of flow is
human being's highest performance level
stephen collier's got a lot of research
on it
people are doing stuff that they should
not be able to do
just because they've gotten into flow
that's highly positive that ain't there
ain't no anger and flow
flow is highly positive
it's borderline euphoria
you know
evil knievel crashed his motorcycle
trying to jump the pa the fountain at
caesar's palace in 1970 something
mike
can't think of mike's last name
before they tore the fountain down an x
games athlete does a backflip on his
motorcycle over caesar's palace fountain
flow
what are you capable of in flow
the first kid and i again it's in
kotler's book the rise of superman
who jumped the great wall of china on a
skateboard anyway
did it with a broken ankle
crazy
because he was in flow not only did he
do it with broke he did it several times
that day
he was in flow nobody had ever done that
before and he did it with injuries that
should have put anybody else
you know in in a hospital bed
but he's in flow it's highly positive
so we don't know that if the anger has
lifted us out of our depths you can lift
yourself out of the depths with anger
you probably can't lift yourself out of
the depths as quickly
with a positive emotion
so that you know there's a sequencing
there's a staging there
but you cannot get to your peak
performance
in a negative state of mind and anger's
a negative state of mind
so
as somebody who knows the power of
emotional control how do you get to
your ideal state of mind i've read
waiting um
not waiting for superman because the
rise of super the rise thank you stephen
cutler's book i've read that very
familiar with the ideas that he puts out
around flow
but
let's say that we're in a negotiating
situation our anxiety spikes massively
or we're in a big confrontation in a
parking lot anxiety is up how do you
bring that down re-center and
get to your best self you know some of
some of the the mantras that you were
talking about you know who am i remember
who you are
that's a great mantra you ha you have to
have there has to be some preparation in
advance
you know and then you have to have found
some success with it
you're not going to try anything if you
haven't applied it successfully you're
not going to try it when it's really
important if you haven't applied it when
the stakes are low
it's like so what are you doing first
thing in the morning
you know am i lucky to be up or oh god
is it another day is a day gift
what's the difference between adventure
and ordeal only your the way that you
perceive it i threw that out on my
instagram a couple of months back
you know what's the difference between
an uh veteran or a dealer stress and
stimulation
you know and i got a bunch of neuro can
oh stress is cortisol you know people
want to give me i know the neuroscience
the answer is how you filter it
completely
you know how do you look at it is it
happening for you or to you
are you lucky to be here or uh or you're
unlucky i'm in a negotiation a couple
years ago with somebody
whose values i detested
and thinking about this person made me
angry every time that's hostage or
business business negotiation but
personally a person was a liar
person person lied
had no problem lying
and uh that you know
i got an ex-girlfriend once said to me
you'd sooner get your arm torn off than
tell me a lie
and i remember thinking at the time
well the words i find highly
complimentary but the way that you said
it makes it sound like an insult
like that's you know yeah but wait a
minute you said that like it's a bad
thing
so integrity is really important to me
so when i deal with somebody who lacks
it they're going to trigger me
and if they're triggering me negatively
i'm having trouble prepping for the
conversation because i'm dumber when i'm
angry
and then i remember the only pers reason
this person is persistent in these
negotiations
is because my company is a success
and in point of fact i'm lucky to be in
this conversation
and as soon as i did that i reframed it
i was like i instantly
i found myself in a different frame of
mind
so you know you got to find the phrase
tony robbins says i think he's the guy
that said you know does life happen for
you or to you
life is happening for you for you like
wow
i don't have to do this i get to do this
you know however do you reframe that
which takes some practice pick out your
phrase
practice it up a little bit
because your your negative circuitry is
going to kick in the the default
circuitry for human beings is negative
interesting
we inherited from the caveman and the
optimistic caveman got eaten by the
saber tooth and the negative pessimistic
caveman made a run for it or killed it
but the optimistic guy was like you know
yeah you know i i got i know i know i
you know this this thing it it look it's
not you know it's just how hard could it
be how hard could it be just needs a hug
yeah so uh uh the negative cavemen that
we we were gifted with the wiring of our
ancestors and the negative guys survived
it's interesting how much you've
leveraged an understanding of human
nature to get people where you want to
go
i want to talk about some of your
open-ended questions i think these are
really powerful so the
the way that why questions are
accusatory
but how questions invite people to do
the thinking for you
and
explain that like the
explain the power of how
yeah it will it uh to use common
condiments phraseology triggers slow
thinking or in-depth thinking
you know because it's logistical
uh yeah you know how how largely is
implementation or logistical is another
how's this going to get done
um it feels deferential so i'm going to
kill these [ __ ] if you don't
give me 20 million dollars right now and
you say
how am i supposed to do that
go to the bank
call the president do whatever you need
to do this is somebody's life give me
the 20 million
right now
how am i supposed to do that right now
you want me to call the president
you want me to go to the bank
do they not just keep screaming yes
that's exactly what i want you to do
all they got to do is come down a little
at a time
now i'm not resisting
i'm an implementation
and it triggers in-depth thinking
any point of fact
those are legitimate questions
you know the the ask a question
that the whether the other side likes it
or not
is actually a legitimate question
it's not resisting
i'm asking in a way where i'm
deferential
i'm not saying i ain't doing it i'm
asking for your help
now how you respond to that is going to
tell me where this is really going
you know there's a 93 success rate means
seven percent of the time it ain't gonna
go anywhere this is nothing but bad
i gotta know which one i'm dealing with
and so you know my how and what
questions early on
[Music]
and occasional the the strategical use
of why surgical use of why
i gotta diagnose what i'm really dealing
with
and i got to do it in a way where you're
not feeling like you're being
diagnosed
but you know because i got to do
everything i can do to avoid triggering
you but i got i got i got to get a
diagnostic on what i'm actually dealing
with to begin with
and how do you handle telling people no
in a way that
doesn't shut them down
yeah you know uh
a friend of mine here in town ned
coletti used to be the gm for the
dodgers
brilliant negotiator good guy like him a
lot ned is still around
i'm still affiliated with the dodgers
first year he was gm they went from
worst to first
that's a sign of a capable gm okay
you know and and we were talking about
this one time and ed said that someone
had taught him to let out know a little
at a time
i'm like that's exactly what we're doing
like you
have to be able to say no to people
what your job is to not let them get
blindsided by it where they feel like
they were clotheslined and caught off
guard
so you let it out a little at a time and
how am i supposed to do that
is really a way to get the other side
thinking
about the difficulty of the situation
about the difficulty of the ask
and it's the first way to start letting
you just say that's really going to be
hard
further down the line we're going to get
there
but first i really kind of need the how
question is designed to get stop you in
your chat your tracks and get you
thinking
it's calibrated which is why we call
them calibrated questions
to start to trigger a state change in
the other side
now we gotta let out a little more know
in a little firmer way as we go along
then we got we got a whole succession of
ways to eventually
ultimately if forced into it to say no
which then also is not now
it's no
but we don't need to go like if if you
here know from me or my side
we've been hitting at it for a while
so you're not going to be
cl feel blindsided by it
you're going to and
we're going to continue to demonstrate
collaboration
because i you know i don't want to go
all the way to now if we're talking
there's a reason for us to talk the
adversary is the situation
so if there's a reason for us to
collaborate and talk we can both be
better off i also don't want to let out
no too quickly because there might be a
better way and i want to discover that
so let's let me let me let me start
telegraphing that there are problems
here inviting collaboration see if we
can tease out a solution before this
thing goes down in tubes have you ever
had a negotiator or a
hostage taker give you an answer to
something that you were like i actually
don't have a rebuttal to that we should
try that
not yet yeah i was i i'm running these
scenarios through my head and i'm like
what would i do if they like offered a
suggestion like yeah like actually
sounds
maybe we should try that
like how do you because there are
scenarios where you end up paying
apparently 20 million dollars well we
first of all it was in the u.s to pay
that or anybody on the u.s side the u.s
would never do that
uh correct
the u.s does not pay ransom now that
doesn't mean
that there can't be bait money
go
downrange because give them money that
you know you're going to take back or
you're going to trace
like like money is ridiculously easy to
trace like ridiculously easy
and it could be a very smart move it's
like eject injecting dye into their
financial circulatory system
where are they buying weapons
who are they paying safe houses for they
got a larger criminal network terrorists
are not supported by the red cross
they're supported by a larger criminal
network of illegal arms dealers and
illegal this and illegal that and you
want to know who they're buying their
guns from
and the best way
to find out who they're buying their
guns from
is to give them some money that you
could trace and find out where it goes
follow the money as they said a long
time ago in the watergate scandal
that's a tremendous investigative tool
and if you there was a uh
in 2000
that was exactly what happened because
there was a criminal gang out of ecuador
that had been taken hostages on oil
platforms
every year about october
and they were a combination of former
terrorists and criminals
and so the third time it went down
a payment was made
because they if they'd assaulted the the
oil platform they'd only got the
kidnappers who were the lower end of the
food chain but they made a payment and
they ended up dismantling the gang in
its entirety and they never hit again
over 50 people were rounded up because
they were tracking the money back in the
money the whole organization was
dismantled as a result of the ransom
payment so it became a great way to take
out a criminal organization
that had been operating completely
freely prior to that
and a rescue would have only taken out
the bad guys on a platform it would not
have taken out the whole organization
they took the whole thing down and these
guys never reserved resurfaced as an
organization again
so going back to the magic words that
you use as a negotiator why is getting
them to say no
more
important or better much better if i
remember your words correctly yeah then
yes
yeah it's it's shocking
um and a friend of mine that i'm
flattered that we're acquainted
andrew huberman hubermann labs podcast
amazing guy brilliant neuroscience stuff
uh
met him for the first time recently was
sitting down at lunch and i'm like
all right so i don't know what the
neuroscience behind this is
but people feel safe and protected when
they say no
they feel better
they're more likely to collaborate and
then plus we know so weird the other
thing that's crazy that we know for sure
is
like when you're exhausted mentally you
could still say no
but yes it's hard yes it's hard or even
as answering how
like
if if you
uh if you're tired
and one of my colleagues did this to me
recently and i could instantly tell the
difference
they wanted to follow up with me when i
was exhausted and
i knew that if they'd asked me what are
you thinking what
great question
triggered deep thinking i didn't have
the mental gas in the tank to answer
that question
but they answered me a question that was
built around no and i went boom boom
boom boom boom i laid it all out i was
like wow
i don't know how that happens
i just know it does
and we've seen time after time
if i need to close a deal
at all
especially if i know that you're tired
instead of saying do you agree do you
want to do this or you favor this
i say do you disagree is this a bad idea
are you against this is this ridiculous
and you'll either go no let's do it or
you go no but here are the problems and
you'll lay them all out for me
and feel no obligation
which means you're going to lay them out
to me honestly like if i say do you
agree with this
you're going to afraid to say yes but
here are the problems because you feel
that yes is an obligation
and you're going to be worried about
digging yourself deeper in by saying
anything after that
but having said no
you feel you have no obligation i think
it might be that simple so you will you
will lay the rest of the stuff out
not being worried about digging yourself
into a hole
it's really interesting that some part
of our brain is tracking
the even though it's not like obviously
a contract but that some part of our
brain is like
yeah we've just agreed to that and now i
have a sense of obligation and they have
the right to like take me to task on it
very interesting yeah yeah and we
stumbled over that one by by accident
and it is just
the the good and the bad about getting
people to say no is it makes such a huge
difference in all interactions
that sometimes that's the only thing
somebody learns
and
we're like look there is so much more
here like i know you're making a lot
more money now
and you're doing better than anybody
that you see around you
but you're not doing as good as you
could be doing and you cannot stop there
a lot of people i see it all the time
they just learn how to trigger no
instead of yes and they're instantly
significantly more successful
and they quit there they don't keep
going
all right what then if you were going to
bring this all together
if no is that first bit that shows
people like whoa you can frame this in a
new way
what are the the few key tenets of like
all right if you had to bestow quickly
upon somebody what the core tenants of
the black swan way are yeah you know let
the other side go first
um
and then
you're the cliche the other side's gotta
talk five times as much as you
not twice as much five times as much it
doesn't mean that you go
uh
that you go mute
you drop in occasionally
you let the other person know that
whatever they're thinking is it's okay
to share it
like
one of our favorite things
you got to have some go-to labels
go to labels yeah label is one of our
negotiation techniques seems like sounds
like looks like feels like
no matter what anybody says you can say
seems like he had a reason for saying
that
like no matter what they say
i hate you and everything you stand for
seems like you got a reason for saying
that
it's disarming
they'll talk with you about
it i want to do business with you and i
want to deal with you right now
seems like i had a reason for saying
that
well yeah here's why i want to do
business with you
um
one one of my son came up with again
like brilliant guy we you know we would
not be our team without him
clients call on the phone
say how are you today
how are you today is a diagnostic they
want to know if they could talk if
you're in a mood to talk about what they
want to talk about
brandon's responses
seems like you got something on your
mind
yeah as a matter of fact you know
because they've been they've been
planning this call
how are you today is not like genuinely
how some people
really want to know but most people want
to know are you prepared to listen to
what i have on my mind
how are you the temperature check are
you in a bad mood because i'm wasting my
time you're in a good mood we could talk
and you the only pushback he ever got on
that was he had a guy say yeah you know
there's stuff i want to talk about
really i want to know how we are today
and some brands say yeah i'm good you
know we talked about it and then they
got down to business
so
you know
the more you encourage the other side to
talk
the more likely it is that you're going
to get to this moment of collaboration
quicker
never be so sure of what you want that
you wouldn't take something better how
do you get something better you get the
other side to talk
you spend a lot less time talking
and appreciate that they're bringing
something to the table that you could
use the black swan the tiny little thing
is going to change everything
you trigger that
you're going to make great deals
that's it we've got our our basic
principles
chris i found your book just
so interesting and it makes me want to
really go back through this stuff over
and over and over
picking up the different using hows
watching out for your whys getting
people to know getting them to talk more
um
it's
really incredible that this stuff works
in the most tense situations possible
that you can use it in the boardroom i
am definitely going to be using it with
my team with my wife
uh it's
it's about human wiring yeah that's
that's what i find so interesting yeah
thank you pleasure man and i'd like to
offer a way for people want more from
the black swan group how do they get it
you tell me
you know we get everybody's got a
newsletter
um everybody's got a free newsletter
that's not what makes ours valuable ours
is concise
like most newsletters you got 10 choices
ours is complementary but the value is
the fact that it's concise
you're going to get one scenario
specific application and plus we've got
a whole library we've got job
negotiations in the past we got
leadership application whatever you need
so the black swan website is
blackswanltd.com
upper right hand corner of the home
screen is a tab for the blog the blog is
the edge sign up for the edge you get it
emailed to you on a tuesday morning
after you've got monday behind you but
it's concise
and it's free and a lot of people get a
long way it's a great compliment to the
book
we got a bunch of other stuff that's
free too
you you take the free stuff
you know buy the book take the free
stuff see where that gets you
if it's for you then you can dig in
and learn more would it be crazy to get
people to sign up for something free
now now we've got wow we've got them
somehow i'm compelled to say no right
and i feel so much better i feel safe i
feel secure i feel safe i have this
feeling of safety now
like drinking a starbucks laptop there's
a funny comedic video along those lines
recently i saw you you know you're safe
if you're drinking a lot the police
aren't gonna beat you up if you're if
you're drinking a starbucks that's the
key that's hilarious
all right anything else you want to
leave people with they're going to the
newsletter they're going to sign up for
the edge they're ready to rock and roll
anything else
go through your catalog or podcast and
go back and listen to the stuff you
haven't listened to very kind i will say
read your book never split the
difference it is phenomenal
speaking of which guys the book really
is amazing
the tactics i haven't started deploying
them yet so i can't swear they work but
when you hear the stories it is very
compelling and as i ran through them in
my own mind it actually did make me feel
differently
so i invite you guys to try this stuff
out and like you said don't just stop at
getting people to say no dive into this
stuff because the ability to
um
help people get to and he he's very
careful to talk about this in the book
that you're not trying to get people
into where they're losing but you are
and you're not trying to get win-win
either he's careful to talk about that
as well uh but you're getting them to a
place where they feel good at the end of
the exchange
um
it's really some pretty powerful
insights into human nature for that
chris foss i thank you very much for
coming on the show thanks brother and uh
for being a part of this and to all of
you at home i hope that you enjoyed this
and you got as much out of it as i have
and until next time my friends be
legendary take care peace