← Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Iowa Roots to International Negotiator: Chris Voss on Success, Perseverance, and Building Trust
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- [00:01]
A
So the thought of traveling all over the world as a job in law enforcement appealed to me. At the time, the Secret Service was not hiring. The FBI was. I had no idea the difference between the FBI or the CIA or the Secret Service or the fda.
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B
And now, escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, Escape the Drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again. Back again for another episode of the show. Like it says in the opening, man, gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And today in the studio, man, I'm so excited. We have waited three months for today. We scheduled this a long, long time ago. And in studio today, I'm talking about kids. I got a legend, a legend in the studio today. This dude was the head of the FBI's lead international kidnapping. He was the negotiator for that division. He is an adjunct professor at the Harvard Law School and Georgetown University. He has written one of probably the bible type books for negotiating. It's the bible for negotiation called never split the difference. Negotiating as if your life depends on it. He is the CEO of the Black Swan Group and now he's an AI, which is cool. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the studio. This is Chris Voss.
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A
Chris, thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate it.
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B
How we doing, man? Good to see you.
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A
Good. Yeah.
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B
Good to see you. Another fellow Las Vegian or Las Vegas.
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A
I am residing here these days, which we like.
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B
Yeah, we always like having our neighbors come on. I'm. I'm sorry that it was such a long drive from your side of town to my side of town. It's getting longer every day.
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A
It seems like opportunity to chill on the way.
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B
Yeah, well, that's a good thing, man. That's a good thing. So I want to get started, obviously, because you reach. You are the apex of your. Of your career. You. You are the top dog in your field, I feel.
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A
Thank you.
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B
And you don't reach that kind of excellence without having some time, some type of internal drive that was embedded in you through youth, through your childhood, my.
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A
Ute, as they would say.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So.
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B
So what is it about growing up Chris Voss that made you Chris Voss?
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A
I think my father taught me how to figure things out. Hard work, integrity. Figure it out. My father was small town Iowa, blue collar entrepreneur, owned his own business but it was a very blue collar business. Fuel oil services. You work for my dad, you had to be prepared to get dirty and fix things. And good news, bad news. You like working for a guy that would never ask you to do anything he wouldn't do himself. And there was nothing that was beneath him. So if it needed to get done, you know, if he's delivering, if he owns a gas station and a toilet's backed up in a gas station, he'd get in there and clean it himself. So he figured that you should have no misgivings about doing anything. So. And also he'd give you a list of things to do, not necessarily tell you how to get them done. So you had to figure a lot of stuff out. So learned how to work hard, how to figure stuff out at an early age. And the basics of negotiation is figuring it out and attention and learning. So I think that's, that's. I applied these ideas to this particular area, but I think it would be applicable to any area.
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B
How'd you get started with the FBI?
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A
Via my father's disappointment. Okay, so at about age 16, I saw this movie, the Super Cops, about two New York City cops that were wildly creative, wildly inventive. I didn't realize how they, how much they were mavericks at the time. I was just struck by their creativity. They did a lot of good. They locked up a lot of bad guys in bad areas of New York City and the community loved them. Like these were white cops in a black neighborhood and black black people in the neighborhood loved them because they cared about having a great neighborhood. So these guys served the community and color disappears when you do that. But I was always struck at how creative these guys were. So I wanted to be a cop. I wanted to be a cop in a big city. Growing up, small town in Iowa, you know what I imagine it would be like? Deal my father had with all his kids was, I'll pay for four years of education post high school. If you can get into a college, you know, and it's probably got to be in state, state school, affordable. He's not going to send you to any private school out of state or even in state. But I'll pay for four years. If you don't graduate, that's on you. So I graduate four years. I go down, apply to Kansas City, Missouri police department. So my father pays for a four year degree and I go down and get a job that only requires a high school diploma. But he realized that I was committed to it and so he thought, well, if A kid's going to stay in law enforcement, he should be the best he could be. And so he started to encourage me to federal law enforcement. So, you know, as the outside perception, a great investigators are great cops at all levels. At all levels. He introduces me to a friend of his that was with the Secret Service. And the guy says, yeah, I traveled all over the world with a Secret Service. And I was like, wow. Like where I grew up, crossing the state line into Illinois was a big deal.
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B
Yeah, just cornfields and cows, I'm guessing.
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A
Cornfields and cows and small towns. So the thought of traveling all over the world as a job in law enforcement appealed to me. At the time, the Secret Service was not hiring. The FBI was. I had no idea the difference between the FBI or the CIA or the Secret Service or the fda, you know, federal Alphabet. So I applied for the Secret Service. Not hiring a bureau is. I apply and happen to have a hiring push on and I get in and it was amazing.
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B
So now. But now the degree mattered.
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A
Now the degree is what got me in. What was your degree in Iowa State University at the time they called it Industrial Administration. It is now the business school. It was a business degree. And I get in the minimums to get into the Bureau. 4 year college degree, 3 years of life experience. Bare minimums, an advanced degree, you can get in with two years. Some degrees, they'll take you right away. But it's a bad idea. You need the seasoning of the real world to get into the Bureau. And three years is actually a short period of time.
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B
Come on, Chris. You're saying college isn't the real world. You're saying you don't learn everything you need to know being in college.
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A
That would be the case. Right. So you know, but I, I get in. I was a. I was second youngest person in my class to graduate. The youngest guy, the only guy younger than me, ended up being my partner in New York City. And we had a long run together that worked really well. But. So I get into the Bureau. Originally wanted to be on a SWAT team. When I left the police department, I was two weeks away from being transferred to the SWAT team and so got on the SWAT team. FBI Pittsburgh, first office, went on a couple of SWAT operations, got transferred to New York City, decided to try out for the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, which is the FBI's version of the Navy SEALs. And there are a lot of former SEALs and former Delta guys on that team. Same cat, only older and re injured my knee trying out for hrt. And When I went back to train for it, I had second reconstructive surgery. Had my knee put back together for the second time, which is definitely not fun. It's enough.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You know, at some point in time you start to catch on that the knife is not the answer to everything.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so we had hostage negotiators. I had no idea what they did. Like I was clueless, but it looked easy.
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B
Didn't involve your knee bending too much.
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A
Yeah. You know, they talk to bad guys. I talk all the time. I should be able to do that. Originally applied for the negotiation team in New York. Got rejected. And the key to me both getting in the bureau and on the negotiation team was asking the right person and then doing what they said. So I asked the woman who was in charge of the negotiation team in New York after she flat out made it clear to me I was eminently unqualified. I didn't have, other than wanting to do it, nothing. And I said, well, what is it that I could do? She said, volunteer on a suicide hotline. Which I did. Which shocked her, which shocked me. She said, you know, I tell everybody to do that. Nobody does. And so kind of the issue is do you take initiative and do you take instruction? Yeah, that is kind of. It sounds really simple. But most people won't take initiative because they're like, ah, you know, what good is this going to do me? I'm not going to do any extra.
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B
Yeah. The phrase you're looking for is ask hole. They ask and then they don't do what you tell them to do.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Well, so don't ask me any. All.
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A
Yeah. And then, and then who did you ask? Also.
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B
Yeah.
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Because I've gotten, I've taken advice from the wrong people in the past. You know, there's a phrase, never take advice from somebody you wouldn't trade places with or hasn't been where you're going.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Now if you really think about that, who does that quickly disqualify? Probably people that you trust and people that you love.
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B
Yeah.
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Because your mom loves you, you trust your mom. But if she hasn't done what you're asking about, she's not going to be able to give you good advice. Your brother in law, your father, you know, whatever your profession is. If they haven't done what you're asking about, the fact that you love them and trust them is inadequate. And that's the hard thing about advice. Sorting out who you should really listen to. And I'm in a Lyft couple years ago. This guy was this great booming voice, is my Lyft driver. And he says, yeah. My mom says I should get a job as doing voiceover as a voice actor. Now, having learned, like, negotiation is a perishable skill. It's a human performance event. Being a good at it is as difficult as being good at any professional sport. If you don't dedicate it to it, if you don't dig into it, you're not going to be any good.
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B
You need reps, too.
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A
You need reps. But it looks easy. It's like being a radio DJ looks easy. People think they could do that, and you can't unless you study it. So this guy says, yeah, my mom should do voiceover. Says I should do voiceover. And I go, has your mother ever been in the industry? And he says, no. And I said, all right. So it's going to sound harsh. Your mother loves you. She doesn't know what she's talking about. If you want to do it, go find somebody who's doing it successfully and.
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B
Ask them what it takes.
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A
Ask them what to do. Now, that doesn't mean your mother doesn't love you. But who do you listen to is one of the harder things. Until you think about, would you trade places with them? Have they been where you're going? Don't take directions from somebody who hasn't been where you're going. Amy, who told me about volunteering on a suicide hotline. I would trade blazers with her. I ultimately became the head of the team. So she. She was where I wanted to be. And as it turned out, she had volunteered on a suicide highlight and we ended up at the same one. She was so impressed. She. She told me a couple years later that she told a thousand people to do that.
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B
You were the only one.
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A
Two. There were two of us. So if you. And also if you think about. Think about your competitive vetch. If you listen to the right person and you just do what they say, you're not going to realize what an edge that's going to give you. Nobody realizes that. You realize you're two in a thousand. That's an edge if you know who to listen to. Everybody else is lazy. Nobody else works hard. They're looking for advice that conforms to what they're already doing, or if they don't feel like doing it, then bang. Look. Look at how easy that is.
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B
Well, they're not really looking for advice. They're looking for validation to whatever they're doing.
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A
They're looking for validation, and they're kind of Looking for. It's not my fault that I didn't succeed.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So if I'm doing what I'm supposed to do and I'm not succeeding, then I'm a victim.
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B
Do you think there's an epidemic of that in this country right now, or do you think the pendulum's swinging back now?
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A
I think. Well, I don't know that the percentages have changed now. I know that our attention to it is being very much more focused in a very different way. So human nature, there's. Most people say human nature hasn't changed in 10,000 years. So what does that mean? That means that I don't know that there's an epidemic of it, but our attention is brought to it more than any at any other time.
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B
Well, I think it's almost become. It's almost become an honor badge to be able victim. It's like it's a contest. Yeah. It's like, oh, I'm victimized because of this. Who can be the most victimized? And I think that's bred this.
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A
Yes.
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This terrible apathy through everything. That's just like, let me. Instead of being introspective about my problems, let me look outward for all of my issues, why the world is happening to me.
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A
Yeah. Definitely. It's a contest. Who can be the greatest victim Days.
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B
Yeah.
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And then what. What everybody misses is there's no path to success designed around being a victim. None.
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B
Well, the thing I love about it is, and I tell my kids all the time, I'm like, look, if you can just maintain a massive sense of self responsibility for everything that happens to you, everything you do, you're going to eat these other kids for lunch.
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A
Extreme ownership. You're going to be say.
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B
Right. Yeah. You're going to be a savage by the time you're moving.
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A
Yeah. Amen. Agree completely. No excuses.
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B
No, just. I mean, in my house, fair is a bad word. I say fair is where you get cotton candy and popcorn. I don't know what you're talking about. There's no such thing as fair. Doesn't exist.
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A
Yeah. Agree.
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B
Yeah. All right, well, let's talk a little bit about. I'm really interested, man. I think everybody's kind of, you know, you're such an icon at this point, dude. You went from. And seemingly you came out of nowhere. And I know that every overnight success story, everybody did. Yeah, every. Every overnight success story has 15 years of grind behind it.
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A
Right.
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B
So I'm really interested, you know, obviously did the FBI negotiating thing. I'm interested in the Time period, really, between nobody knows who Chris Foss is and you are on everybody's reading list. Like, I mean, it was. It seemed like it happened overnight that everybody I knew had this book, including me. So what was that like? What is that Journey?
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A
It's weird. When the book first came out, co writer of the book, Tall Ras, did you.
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B
Was it your idea to write the book, or did somebody come to you and say, we should write about.
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No, it was. It was. It was my idea. We actually held off on it for a number of years. Wanted to make sure I had enough material. My son Brandon was very involved. And then there's cliche advice, but it's a thousand percent true. If you want your book to succeed, go to the bookstore, find a book that you want to write. Hire that guy. So the only business book that I ever read that I was really entertained by and was a. Was an easy read. Not light, but easy.
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B
Yeah.
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Never Eat Alone, Keith Farazzi's book on networking and so Tall Roz was his co writer. And I actually fired four writers before I got to tall. And Tall made all the difference in the world, and in so many ways that I didn't realize at the time. Tal is a brilliant researcher. I didn't think the writer should do research. You know, my thought was, I'm subject matter, your style.
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B
Just interview me and let's go.
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A
Interview me and let's go. And unbeknownst to me at the time, like, Tall inhaled every book on negotiation he could find. So then, as we're going through it, first of all, I began to see echoes of other books in his questions. So he'd ask me a question. I'm like, ah, you gathered that insight for that question from reading Jim Camp's book. Start with no. And so then as we're going through the material, Tall, having done his research, he didn't take anything that I said at face value. My son Brandon had a lot of input at the time also, but, you know, he would challenge us and he.
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B
Which makes it better.
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A
Makes it better, because what an expert forgets is what it's like not to know. And he said something to the effect of, you know, what about this concept of strategic umbrage where you act angry to get your way, use anger as a tool. And my answer to that was like, it's a stupid idea. And his response was, all right, we're going to need a little more than that because it's so obvious to you, you forgot what it's like not to know. So you have to explain it in much more depth than that. And there were a number of things that he was great at. So why did I bring Tall up? When a book comes first comes out.
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B
Did you have a deal before you started or did you just start with tolling a manuscript and then submitted it to the big five and went down that route?
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A
Combination. It was a two step process. There was another writer that did the book proposal.
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B
Okay. Yep.
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A
And my agent, Steve Ross, he was caught off guard. He didn't think that. Talked to a lot of agents. They said the world doesn't need another negotiation book. Steve didn't say that. But Steve did say, I'm not sure how this is going to do domestically, but I know I can sell the heck out of this internationally. And now because of Steve Ross, it's in over 40 countries, 36 languages. So he distributes it to the publishers and the publishers go nuts. And we got to hold an auction. There was a frenzy and we held it over as coming up on Halloween. Publishers are all in New York. The Halloween parties on Friday. Like it was funny. They're bidding on the book while they're hanging out their Halloween parties. Which in the United States is. More people get locked up for drunk driving on Halloween than any other holiday.
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B
I would guesstimate that's probably right.
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A
So people are partying on Halloween and we get this auction going. And in the middle of the auction, publishers, while they like the proposal, they're balking at the guy that wrote the proposal because he doesn't have a track record of this type of book. And the deal then ends up being contingent on that issue. I had spoken to Tall previously and been unable to make the deal for.
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B
Why did Tal not write the proposal? For those of you that don't know, when you submit a book, when you write a book, you have to write essentially a little. It's kind of a bio about you, your following, how you plan to help market the book. And then they submit a sample chapter with it. Essentially what they're proposing.
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A
Yeah. And it's kind of like the publisher is the venture capitalist and you're telling them why it's a good investment.
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B
Yes.
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A
And so Tall's great expertise is the.
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B
Book, not the market.
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A
He could write a great proposal. He's not particularly interested in doing that, which I've come to learn since. But at the time I got no money. Everybody's telling me that the publishers are. Some people are saying nobody's going to want this. Other people are saying, I don't know if the World needs another negotiation book. And I sit down with Tall, and he outlines what he needs to make it work, which is how you should do a deal. You should never leave a doubt in the other person's mind what it's going to take to make the deal. And Tall, a very genuine dude, and he laid it out to me and he said, I think the idea is great. I don't know how it's going to do. And if I was just starting out and it was just me, you know, I do it strictly on a percentage basis.
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B
Did you have a manuscript at this point or just a proposal?
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A
The proposal. And the idea didn't have.
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B
Okay, no idea. No manuscript. Okay. No manuscript yet.
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A
And so he said, look, I got a family, and if I don't work for. If I. If I'm not working on your book, I'm going to be working on somebody else's book. And this is how much money I'm going to get.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so for me to take a step back and go for a year without pay on a Hope, I can't do that to my family. You know, we. We got a. We got a house. I got kids, I got a mortgage.
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B
Yeah.
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I can't go without work on a hope for 18 months. So here's what it would take to make it work. And at the time, I didn't have it. And. And I had no idea. In hindsight, of course hindsight, he was worth more than that and has been. So we go through the proposal process and we got to fire the writer. And I go like, we're at a point now. We can make it work with Tall.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so we got a proposal. We got back to him. He always liked the idea. He was always open to it. He had to look out for his family.
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B
Sure, of course.
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A
And so we make the deal. And he's an artist. He's an artist. He's Leonardo da Vinci of business books. And he writes in these crazy ways. Like, I get the middle. We got. He did the middle part of the book first. Like, that makes no sense.
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B
Yeah. But it's just where he.
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A
He just.
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B
Where his brain went, you know, that's.
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A
You know, he takes a deep dive. He, like, disappears into another dimension. He just goes away. He loves to have a mountain of information dropped on his head. And he wants to immerse himself and then come out the other side, which he does. And so we get the book done in less time than he wanted. God bless him. He was willing to do it faster than what he would normally do. And then what? I'm getting to, long story, point of the story, when the book came out, he says to me, don't rely on a publisher to hustle this. You're going to have to work your ass off for at least a year, if not two. Now, if there's one thing my father taught me was hard work, and I'm like, dude, you, you know what? I'm going to put the hammer down. I'm never going to let up. You think you've seen people work hard before. You know, if you're, you're in a Voss family line, you understand how to work hard. And that is really what made all the difference in the world. Have been relentlessly getting at, you know, spreading the gospel. Just have not let up since the book came out. And that's why it's out there.
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B
It did that. Were you speaking a lot before the book or did the book come. No, book came out and then hit stages.
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A
And then a little bit, you know, a little bit you get traction here and there and then you break through different levels and there's certain levels of recognition. The masterclass.
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B
How did that come out?
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A
Made a huge difference after the book came out. Yeah. Serendipity. What was the serendipity? I get invited to speak at a conference in Chicago. Chicago Ideas, I think it was. At one point in time, I've been affiliated with Oprah Winfrey and there were people on a Chicago Ideas staff that had worked for Oprah at some point in time because, you know, Chicago, it's her town and she's doing as much as she could to support it. So I get, I'm on a three person panel with one young lady who was Oprah's booker, talented woman. And the other. And the first young lady's name will come back to me in a minute. But the other young lady is Constance Schwartz Marini Michael Strahan's business partner.
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B
Oh, that's good.
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A
And she negotiated Deion Sanders deal with Colorado. Now what she is is this phenomenally hardworking female who spots talent, used to work for the NFL. And when she was doing PR for the NFL, a young Michael Strahan who's willing to do PR with the NFL, she spotted a guy with all this emotional intelligence. She saw the diamond in the rough, and they, they hit it off then and have remained business partners. And so there's been this interesting collection of people that have stuck with her in her business.
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B
So her superpower. Her superpower is finding something and then finding an avenue for it.
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A
Yeah. Well, spotting, Spotting talent.
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B
Yeah.
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Emotional intelligence. And she's in a PR and she's in a Hollywood business. So she has worked with Dion, Very supportive of him. Deion Sanders, Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa, Ann Andrews. Like a really interesting, diverse collection of really smart, emotionally intelligent, decent people.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And they're. So I end up on this panel with her. And so we're talking back and forth, but related to the panel. Then a woman on Chicago Ideas then goes to work for Masterclass. And at Masterclass, she brings. She says, hey, David Roget, the founder, she says, ran across this guy, Chris Voss, and he's got this book. Never split the difference out. So between the connection from Chicago Ideas and the book, they decided to take a roll of dice on me.
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B
Just. And that was that.
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A
They did a phenomenal job. Fantastic production. They made it easy to perform. The Masterclass shoot was like a movie studio shoot.
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B
Yeah. It's beautifully done.
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A
Thousand percent professional. But what they do too, is they do everything they can because they're going to bring you in. If you're the million dollar racehorse for two days, they're gonna make you run your ass off.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Let's go get it there early one day. Work me as hard as they can possibly. Work me for two straight days, and then design it and like the little things. I got such a kick out of it.
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B
And that's the first time you'd ever done anything like that.
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A
Right. I had no idea what it was going to be like. So decision fatigue is an issue. They don't need me burning up brain cells on deciding where to park.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So I pull up to the studio. They got orange cones from. They got one parking space on the studio a lot. It's for me.
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B
Yeah.
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A
It's got my name on it, but it stops me from driving around a block trying to figure out where to park.
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B
Sure.
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A
Maintaining my brain power. Yeah. Plus you get treated like a king.
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B
The little things.
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A
The little things. And then, then they get in there and they got a personal assistant attached to me at the hip, watching me. Do you need to go to the bathroom? You need a glass of water? You need a cup of coffee? Because they don't need me burning any brain cells on nonsense, anything. And so then what they do is they expect you to get in a harness and give you 1,000% for eight to 10 hours, which you can do if you're not burning up brain cells on anything else. So that's why I've always been super impressed with how smart they are in their production.
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B
Did you See this stuff coming. Was this a vision that you had? I mean, is this where you thought you would be when you started this journey?
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A
No.
- [29:12]
B
Like, like you're not Jim Carrey. You were walking around with an 8 million dollar check in your wallet from book sales or anything. Okay. Yeah. So it's just kind of, I, I mean, has it just kind of been like, well, hey, here's a cool opportunity, I'm going to seize that. Here's a cool one. I'm going to seize that. I'm going to seize that. And just one thing has led to the next.
- [29:28]
A
Pretty much it's, you know, I've always looked at life as like an adventure and a bit of a battle that I'm up for.
- [29:33]
B
Yeah.
- [29:34]
A
And engage in battles that are privilege. And if you think it's a privilege as opposed to a burden, like when it's a privilege, you don't run out of gas, you're eager to get up in the morning.
- [29:47]
B
Yeah.
- [29:48]
A
If it's a burden, then it sucks the life out of you. And I've stuck to the stuff that I felt was a privilege.
- [29:54]
B
Are there any opportunities that you really wanted that didn't work out? Like, what's something you're like, man, I really want to do that. And then it just didn't happen because it seems like you got so much. I mean, it's been such a great run, bro.
- [30:08]
A
Well, yeah, we've kicked around sort of, you know, the reality TV show, non scripted TV show. I'm very much a believer in serendipity these days. So we've come close a couple times. And I tend, I believe in zero expectations. Businessman in D.C. once told me that zero expectations mean you're never disappointed.
- [30:30]
B
Yeah.
- [30:31]
A
And you're frequently delighted, but you're never disappointed. So, you know, I think script a non scripted show where we're doing negotiations on both sides is a great idea. And it's one fell through completely with a network that was, you know, they were making promises with one person and taken them away with another person.
- [30:53]
B
I've been down that road.
- [30:54]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Not surprising. And then took a run at it again recently with Mark Wahlberg's production company, Unrealistic Ideas. And they worked really hard on it and just nobody. Nobody in LA bit.
- [31:09]
B
Yeah.
- [31:10]
A
And so from my view is number one. I'm grateful for the people I met at Unrealistic Ideas. Bunch of interesting cats.
- [31:15]
B
Did you guys shoot a sizzle reel?
- [31:17]
A
Did all that stuff they put together? Yeah. We didn't get out and do any negotiations per Se. But they, you know, they talked to me, they talked to members of my team, and so we got some really interesting stuff on that. But to me, I met in. In a process, the dude that runs Unrealistic ideas, Archie. He's an interesting cat.
- [31:38]
B
Yeah.
- [31:39]
A
Like, his backstory is fascinating. And I'm, I'm just glad I got to meet him at all.
- [31:43]
B
Yeah.
- [31:43]
A
And all the people that I met along the way. So that's still a win.
- [31:47]
B
That's still a win.
- [31:48]
A
It's a win.
- [31:48]
B
It's totally win.
- [31:49]
A
I get, I get interesting stories from these people about their backgrounds that I'm like, wow, I'm glad I met these guys.
- [31:55]
B
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, let's talk a little bit about the real estate book. The one that you co wrote.
- [32:02]
A
Yeah. Well, you know, real estate, there's not that much going on these days.
- [32:06]
B
It's a little bit. Well, you know, you know, considering you are sitting. And I'll give myself a shameless plug, you're sitting in the highest grossing office in this city. Nice.
- [32:16]
A
It's a competitive market. Yeah.
- [32:18]
B
We sell more real estate out of the, out of the box you're sitting in right now than any other company, any other brand. So I'm very proud of that. You should be. Yeah. Very proud of that. So when you wrote the full fee agent, obviously we do have a lot of realtors. Listen to this. And even if you're not a realtor, don't tune us out right now. We're going to talk about this for a couple minutes. We'll come back to some other stuff. But I did want to talk about it because I thought it was. It was worth a shot. So what was the purpose behind that? Talk about how you got started with.
- [32:42]
A
That Steve Schull, Great guy. Another dude with very interesting background. Like, for example, I knew Steve for a year and a half maybe before I knew he was a Super bowl captain. Like, I, I knew he played in the NFL. But consider the flip side. Normally if you talked to a former guy from the NFL, it's the first thing he says. Yeah. Five seconds in. You know, he played in the Super Bowl. And Steve didn't just play, he was a captain. But that's. That's in his rear view mirror. So Steve was a big believer in hard. Always still a big believer in hard work, but what he used to call fact, life fact, logic and reason approach to real estate. And because he worked so hard, he made a lot of money. And having been a very coachable player, he decides, I will Coach people to make the same money that I made. So he's doing this old, what he refers to as fact, logic and reason. And he says he stumbles over, never split the difference because he's a great consumer of information and realizes he's got to do a 180 in approach. And he talks about the epiphany moment. And so then he reached out and he said, look, this is, I'm rethinking everything and I'm coaching. So here's my proposal. I do a monthly coaching call. You come on, I'll lead the way, you answer questions. And I'm like, oh, awesome, all I gotta do is show up. I could do that. And so we started going back and forth and we started changing the entire conversation. Like back then, every, everybody he coached, he coached them on how to do a great listing, great listing presentation, don't do them at all.
- [34:36]
B
Now a pre list, pre list presentation.
- [34:38]
A
Or no presentation whatsoever until you have a signed agreement. And we were talking about today because we did, we did a monthly call. He says, nine years ago, people would freak out over that concept. Just now, everybody, Nobody that I'm coaching does pre listing presentations. Nobody. And why and how it works. And you get into it a little bit at a time. But the real concept is what we refer to as a favor and the fool. In every game there's a favor and a fool. And if you don't know who the fool in the game is, it's you, it's you. So you can. There are patterns. Now people don't mean to play you for the fool in the game. In the ordinary course of business, it's accepted. Which is why detecting deception or inauthenticity from the other side, if the other side doesn't feel they're being inauthentic, there's nothing to detect. Yeah, but there are patterns. The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. How did you make a critical decision in the past? Past? How you made it is you gathered information, you talked to a bunch of people, you made yourself smart. After making yourself smart, you went to your trusted advisor and you took your trusted advisor's advice, which means the chances of you getting the listing if you're not recommended by the trusted advisor are very low. So how is, does that pattern show up early on? Are they coming to you to kick the tires? Are they coming to you for due diligence? And you, for example, in your business, if you're number one, you're by definition due diligence. Because if I'm Going to do due diligence. I'm going to go pick the brain of the guy who's winning the market. Now, he might convert me, but only if I've been converted cold in the past. Only if I'm smart enough to really be able to think for myself. Eight out of 10 people are going to do what their trusted advisor tells them to do. So how can you manifest that early on? How can I get you to tell me that? I can get you to tell me that if I know what I'm looking for. There's some emotional intelligence approaches. Vision drives decision. What does that mean? In our early conversation? I need to know what your vision moving forward is. I need to be able to actually listen to it and figure out whether I'm part of that vision. Example, people used to approach me in Hollywood all the time to give them ideas for movies. And a lawyer did this to me in a lawsuit one time. Well, you know, if we know what you're going to say, then we'll hire you to say it. Cool. Because I'm the only one that can say this. So I might as well tell you because you can't get anybody else to say it. This is a lawsuit that I was being brought in as a expert. Lay out to us what you're going to say, what you're going to testify to on stand. Be the only one that can say is tell us what it is. I laid it out. I never heard from them again what they do. They went to somebody that cost less than me and gave them the script. Hollywood, let me know what kind of stories you're going to tell us. I get. I get approached about five years ago on behalf of one of the highest profile movie stars who I genuinely have a tremendous amount of regard for, which is saying a lot for a movie star because they're not original. They say what people told them to say. And so I said, give us some. Give us some ideas. Now, I suspect that this dude's playing me picking my brain. And so I say to him, all right, you know, I'm going to play along a little. I give him a little bit of a story. And so I go, so how would this proceed? How are you going to move forward? And he starts laying out the process to me. And he realizes halfway through he's telling a story that I'm not part of. That's what I'm listening for. And about three minutes in, he suddenly changes the pronouns that he's using from our consultant to me because he catches himself. Dude's Playing me. He's pumping me for information. He's going to take me to the consultant that he always uses who's a lot less expensive than I am. He's going to hand him the script and say, develop this. Yeah, do this. So unfortunately, this is human nature because this, this goes on most of the time. I once did this by accident. We're searching for an HR consultant in my company. We got an accountant who's our trusted advisor. We tell the accountant we're looking for an HR consultant and he says, here's who I recommend. However, talk to this company over here just to see what they say. Which means whatever they say, that's different. Then just go back to the one I recommend and tell them they got to do that too. And so we get this company on the phone and I remember being on this very long conversation where we are picking this guy's brain and I realized to myself, am I playing this guy for the fool? And I think to myself, I wouldn't do that. I'm a good person. I would never play anybody for a fool. And then I asked myself the follow on question, am I ever going to hire this guy? No, my trusted advisor didn't recommend him. So what I'm trying to say is every industry does this. Nobody does it and realizes what they're really doing because they're taught that it's common, accepted practice. So what does that mean in your business or anybody's business? Find out whether or not their vision of the future includes you. Find out what caused them to talk to you in the first place. Find out how they made decisions in the past. Now if you're number one in this, in this market, and you are your, if you guys went and looked at your numbers, it would be because you become the trusted advisor to so many people and your referrals are ridiculously strong because you came through, you navigated, and the people that work for you navigated people through one of the five most difficult times of their lives and you preserve them. You didn't lie to them, you didn't tell them what they wanted to hear. You delivered on your promises. And when they wanted to list a house for more than the market would bear, you found a way to let them know without hurting their feelings that.
- [42:05]
B
It wasn't going to work.
- [42:06]
A
That it wasn't going to work. And so then you guys don't get fired because you lied to them about what it was going to sell for. And then through the course of the transaction, because what I'm hearing is not Only is this. Of all the things that make this about the most difficult real estate market in about 40 years, one of the things is the percentage of contracts that have fallen out before they close.
- [42:34]
B
A lot.
- [42:35]
A
And not just a lot. But I'm sure you probably figure it's like the worst you've ever seen.
- [42:40]
B
Yeah, it's calmed down a lot. Going through probably August and September, it was a lot higher. It was a lot of fallouts. When the rates were spiking and jumping around pretty aggressively, we saw a lot of stuff fall out.
- [42:58]
A
Yeah. So you guys are navigating your clients honestly then?
- [43:01]
B
Well, you know, for me and what we teach our agents here, when you price a house, right. And when you're talking about what the house is worth, you always have to frame it in a way that makes sense to the client. Like, the client would never hire us unless they feel that we're really good at marketing and negotiating products.
- [43:18]
A
And I'm going to interrupt you for two seconds because the insight to that, that your emotional intelligence has gotten you to, you said, makes sense to the client, not make sense to you.
- [43:28]
B
Yeah, it doesn't need to make sense to me.
- [43:30]
A
So then that's the whole premise of empathy. What makes sense to your counterpart, not what makes sense to you. And you've stumbled over that probably somewhere in your background. I promise you, the seeds of it were planted from your parents and your upbringing. That awareness was planted in your head and has guided you through every now, you didn't stick to it at all times. You made your own mistakes. Yeah. But at some point in time, you came back to it, and it was either the two lines of code somewhere in your brain. It's just got to make sense to the other side.
- [44:04]
B
Well, you help enough people get what they want, you'll always get what you want.
- [44:07]
A
Amen.
- [44:08]
B
And that's it. But when it comes to that pricing deal, like, we always just present prices.
- [44:12]
A
This.
- [44:13]
B
It's like you're hiring us based on your belief that we are the best marketers in the business. And your property is going to be global with the best possible exposure, and the market is going to either accept or reject our pricing. It's going to. The market is going to tell us, and it's like, if nobody comes, we're 10% off.
- [44:31]
A
Right.
- [44:32]
B
If people come and there's a bunch of people come through the door, but we don't get any offers, they're using your house to sell another one. You can get this for 400,000. But look over here, which can give 400,000. So that's 5 to 7% off. Where we want to be is in that 3 to 5% off, because that's where we're going to give offers and have room to negotiate for. You'll still be happy. And as long as you frame it in a way that this is. The market is going to dictate. It's when agents walk into people's houses and say, oh, no, I'm going to get $1.8 million for your house. Well, that's when you just painted yourself into a corner. That.
- [45:06]
A
Right.
- [45:07]
B
You're hanging your hat on that easy.
- [45:09]
A
Thing I like about that approach.
- [45:10]
B
Yeah.
- [45:12]
A
I read decision surveys constantly, and one of the critical issues in selecting a vendor is their knowledge of the landscape. Now, what you just laid out was a very nuanced knowledge of the market because you're talking about percentages, you're talking about feedback from the market, you're talking about target sweet spots in the market. And this is a knowledge of the landscape that nobody's going to get by going on one of these sites that says, sell your house without an agent.
- [45:44]
B
Yeah, yeah, they're not. And from the. And from the selling side, you know, also what's very important is you always hear sellers want to go back and say, well, I need to net X to sell my house. You know, I need X.
- [45:58]
A
Right. Yeah, yeah.
- [45:59]
B
At which point, you know, you got to frame it in a way where it's like, look, and when I, I love when agents get mad at lowball offers. It makes no sense to me when listing agents like, I'm insulted by your offer. Just. It just makes no sense. Because any offer is a good offer because A, is going to give you something to work, or B, it's going to help reframe your client's mentality of what the property is actually worth.
- [46:19]
A
Right.
- [46:19]
B
Maybe not that low, but it's data, it's. It's feedback from the market.
- [46:23]
A
Yeah.
- [46:24]
B
And I always explain it to both buyers and sellers the same way, which is, you know, when I get a lowball offer, I'm always like, great, can you help me with your offer? Can you tell me the standard of value your client utilized to come to this number? And because deals happen when parties can agree, it's not the number they agree on. It's the standard of value that was used to get there.
- [46:45]
A
Yeah.
- [46:45]
B
And if everybody can utilize the same standard of value, well, now we can negotiate.
- [46:49]
A
Now you can make the deal.
- [46:50]
B
Now we can make a deal work. But it just because you Want to make X and you wanted to offer X. Neither one of those variables mean anything to the other side.
- [46:58]
A
Right.
- [46:58]
B
You got to bring it to a better place. This is what we try to teach here.
- [47:01]
A
Yeah. No, and it's dead on. Plus, it's not if you hear something from the other side. That's insane.
- [47:07]
B
I may have gotten that from you, by the way. Now that I'm sitting here in front of you talking about this, I'm like, did I get that from him? I think I may have.
- [47:15]
A
Well, all right, so if that's true, here's what would flatter me about that.
- [47:19]
B
Okay.
- [47:21]
A
The people that really study our stuff at some point in time, they start within the confines of what we refer to as a discipline. Think of it as a martial art. They start coming up with new stuff on their own. And I'll ask him, like, where did you hear that? And I probably got it from you. And I'll think, well, that's nuanced enough that I remembered thinking that up. Which means you thought it up, but you've studied it so much that you've just got to this higher level. In martial arts, they say you study the master until you're making up your own rules. And it still fits.
- [48:04]
B
Yeah. And that's where it goes.
- [48:05]
A
Yeah. That's a cool thing. That's a very cool thing. I love that.
- [48:08]
B
Let me ask you because I'm dying to know this man, because, like, years ago, it's been a million years, but I was in a restaurant and bar business for a long time. A long time before.
- [48:16]
A
I did.
- [48:16]
B
This is what I did all through my.
- [48:18]
A
Understand people, right?
- [48:19]
B
What I did all through my early 20s. And to this day, I'm 52 years old. I have not been in a. I've not worked in a restaurant now since I was 28 years old. So now it's been a long time. But I still. When I walk in a restaurant, I am looking at my watch for how long it took to get greeted, for how long the ticket time is for. At least I'm looking at old table tents. I am just. I'm pulling the place apart because it was such ingrained to me. So my question for you is, can you turn it off? Are you always reading people?
- [48:48]
A
I don't try to turn it off. But then the issue is, what's the intent?
- [48:54]
B
Yeah.
- [48:56]
A
So if your intent is to manipulate, your heart's in the wrong place. Your intent is to connect on whatever you do for a living. Like, my intent is to connect. My intent is you And I, whoever you and I are, that we have this phenomenal relationship of trust and prosperity that spans at least 20 years. Now, your description of what you were just talking about was because your intent was to deliver, to deliver a great customer experience and have people want to come back and be patrons of the restaurant and recommend a restaurant as opposed to you're trying to max the profits. Now you do want to max the profits, but if it's your, if it's your primary intent, you become a mercenary, you become transactional. And people don't want to come back because they smell it.
- [49:41]
B
Yeah.
- [49:42]
A
But if your intent is to deliver a great experience that people want to tell their friends about because they will be. They're proud to be your ambassador.
- [49:52]
B
Yeah.
- [49:52]
A
Because you're not going to let them down.
- [49:54]
B
Elite customer experience is one of our core values in every one of our brands, in every one of the companies we own create an elite customer experience.
- [50:01]
A
And so you shouldn't turn it off because you love delivering a service that also contributes to your own prosperity.
- [50:08]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think if you take care of that first, I mean, the numbers tend to take care of themselves.
- [50:13]
A
Yeah, exactly. I completely agree.
- [50:15]
B
So I think you just kind, you just kind of answered this. But I wanted to ask this too, which was in the book Beyond Entrepreneurship. There's a concept where the author talks about, at some point you've got to go through life either assuming people are trustworthy or assuming they're not trustworthy. So the people are either earning your trust or, or waiting till they. They disserve. So you, with all of your experience with some pretty terrible folks over the course of life, where, where do you sit with that? Do you assume the best in people or do they have to earn that spot with you?
- [50:41]
A
No, no, no. I play the numbers first and then I get smarter based on the data they get in the interaction. And my belief is that you probably, you could blindly trust 70% of the people you come across. And there's some other numbers that probably increase the numbers even higher. There's other data, but. So at a low point, 70%. And so then the ones you can't trust, whatever their percentage is, they're going to have a pattern. So I lean in the direction of trusting people, but I also know what I'm looking for that are quick red lights.
- [51:22]
B
What are some of those quick red lights?
- [51:24]
A
So somebody says, I got a great opportunity for you. They either sucker on you intentionally or they're just naive and a shark tank entrepreneurs stands up in front of them. Starts talking about the size of the addressable market. Sharks are out.
- [51:48]
B
Yeah. The potential of the.
- [51:50]
A
There's a lot of potential. It is a great opportunity. And you could be either on purpose or naively overwhelmed by the size of the opportunity. And then I think about a path. You know, Dan Sullivan, strategic coach. I get com. Coached by Dan Sullivan and strategic coach. And he says, anybody walks up to him, says, I got a great opportunity for you, he turns around and walks away.
- [52:13]
B
Immediately, I'm out.
- [52:14]
A
I'm out. So then there's certain other nuances. I'm caught. Everybody that's tried to get me to do a lot for nothing, every one of them has said, and I got, let's do a win, win deal. Now, that doesn't mean that everybody says win win, is trying to get me to do it for nothing.
- [52:37]
B
Yeah.
- [52:38]
A
But every one of them that was trying to get me to do it for nothing also said that.
- [52:42]
B
Yeah.
- [52:43]
A
So it's a high percentage correlation with somebody who's not. Who's hustling me, but it's not one for one. Probably eight out of ten. So I'll start to collect the yellow flags, and then you start getting accumulation of yellow flags. Now you got a problem.
- [53:07]
B
Yeah.
- [53:08]
A
So if you start up. If you say, look, got a win win deal. You know, as great opportunity. Those are two really big yellow flags right off the top.
- [53:14]
B
That's it. What is it? I saw a thing the other day. I'm gonna have to look it up now real quick. Cause I saw this and I thought, man, that's so good. It was Neil Strauss who wrote Neil. Yeah. Who's a great author. Posted something the other day that I just loved. And I gotta find it real quick because I actually took a picture of it. That's how much I loved it. But it's what we're kind of talking about right now. If I can tell you find it or not. I can't find it. It was something about, you know, never trust anybody so much, especially if they. If they tell you who they. You know, if somebody shows who they. Who they are, believe them.
- [53:49]
A
Yeah.
- [53:50]
B
If they tell you who they are, don't. And then it says, especially if they tell you who they are without asking them. And I thought that was very applicable. I was like, man, that's. Yeah, that's. That's spot on from Neil. Which is good. Well, let's talk a little bit about the new project, man. The new thing you got going on. Cause it's kind of cool. Cause I mean, what. Dude, if you're sitting around and you're like, man, it's like that, what would Jesus do Bracelets. This is the what would Chris Voss do bracelet. I guess.
- [54:18]
A
Yeah. Well, masterclass brought us a concept of doing Chris Voss AI. And Masterclass has been a great partner. They know what they're doing. Their marketing is great. They're very smart people. Every. I've made multiple deals with them on multiple things, and they've always been great partners. Always wanted to make the best deal that we could make possibly, and they implement like crazy. Now everybody's wanting to do AI. There's, you know, like, homeless dude on a street corner is probably pitching me on AI. You know, it's out there, everywhere. So it's inescapable. And I thought, okay, if we're going to jump in, who's a better partner of the masterclass? And I don't know that we have better partner in the masterclass. So that to start with and then to make it better, it's a, you know, it's a. It's a bot. It's a database. Yeah. And it's going to be fed on the quality of the data we can put into it. And so they said, well, our competitive edge is you got to feed us stuff that nobody else can get at. Because the other pretend Chris Voss AI bots that are out there, you know, they're going from the book, read the book, they could. They could get all my YouTube masterclasses give us stuff nobody else has got.
- [55:33]
B
So you're feeding case studies to this thing.
- [55:35]
A
Case studies, emails, you know, internal emails that has. How I talk to people that I work with, how we work stuff out, stuff that is not publicly available. So the quality of their data is better than the quality of anybody else's data. So then, then they start today. They rolled it out. We've been waiting for it to roll out for a while. And a guy works for me says, hey, you know, I loaded on my phone, you want to hear what it sounds like? And I go, yeah, sure, why not? So he turns it on and it says, welcome to the Chris Voss AI on negotiation. How can I help you? And is it your voice? Yeah, it's my voice. You know, we're hearing me. Then I'll tell you what the wacky side fear is going to be after I tell the story. So I'm a smart alec, right? I'm a smart alec. I make smart alec remarks. And so he's got the phone right there, and I go, my boss is picking on me. And it Says, sounds like you feel targeted. What's going on? And I'm like, whoa.
- [56:46]
B
Like that.
- [56:46]
A
Nailed it. Like that was, that was, that was a perfect response.
- [56:50]
B
Yeah.
- [56:51]
A
And then he told me that he did a pretend thing where he's gonna use it to negotiate the purchase of a car because what, what are you going to use this for? You need a sounding board that's going to give you good, you know, 85% right. It's 85% right. Which beats 20%. Right. Which beats 30%, right.
- [57:11]
B
Sure.
- [57:12]
A
This is a good number.
- [57:13]
B
85 is great.
- [57:14]
A
85 is a good number. So he says, yeah, I'm a little nervous about this car negotiation. And Chris Foss AI says, nervous, which is a great mirror. You know, it helps settle you down. So from what I've seen of it today, I'm very impressed with it. We're going to recommend it to all our clients because if they get the negotiation 85% right, they're probably going to come up with a better outcome than they would have otherwise. And then if they come to us for coaching, if they're 85% of the way there, but they need the nuance that I can only think up in the moment, then I got less distance to take them to get them across the finish line.
- [57:56]
B
Yeah.
- [57:56]
A
So here's my fear. You know that movie, a long time ago, her.
- [58:04]
B
Yeah.
- [58:04]
A
Joaquin Phoenix fell in love with the voice of Scarlett Johansson. I'm like, oh man, how many people am I going to become Scarlett Johansson to?
- [58:14]
B
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
- [58:16]
A
They could have fallen over there. Chris Voss AI.
- [58:19]
B
I do prefer to think of it as like, you're gonna, you're the father they never had. I'm gonna try to keep it your PG as we can. So they're not.
- [58:26]
A
Let me be that dad. I can live with that.
- [58:28]
B
Yeah. Next thing you know, they'll be licensing like Chris Voss rubber sex dolls to go with it. No, no, we're not doing that.
- [58:34]
A
We're just kidding, dude.
- [58:35]
B
That's awesome. This was, this was such a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming through, man. Anytime you want to come back. I love Avenue.
- [58:42]
A
It's a fun conversation. If you want to try the Chris Voss AI. Yeah, just get the masterclass subscription. Stupid cheap to begin with.
- [58:50]
B
Yeah, it's really cheap.
- [58:51]
A
And then there's this, there's a, there's an add on fee, of course.
- [58:55]
B
Yeah, sure.
- [58:56]
A
But it's just cool. I mean, I'm getting, I'm getting great feedback and then, and then. What will it do for you? Yeah, it'll cover a lot of ground, you know. And I got to tell you, you want me to consult. Number one, it's expensive.
- [59:12]
B
Yeah, you better write a big check.
- [59:14]
A
Number two, it's got to fill it on a calendar. Number three, the best time is about 10:00 in the morning. This is a big advantage of the AI. It's never tired, it's never in a bad mood.
- [59:25]
B
It's always there.
- [59:26]
A
You, you need consulting at 1:00 in the morning because 4:00 in the morning because you're doing business with somebody on the other side of the world. It's 4:00 in the afternoon and they're dictating the time of the meeting. You're not gonna get me on the phone at 4:00 in the morning, but you know, the AI will tide you over till you can't get me on the phone.
- [59:44]
B
I love it, man. I love it. Well, dude, if you haven't, I mean, you follow Chris obviously online. If you, if you haven't read his book, I mean again, never split. The difference is recommended reading to everybody that comes to work. For me, it just in that, in that box and now the full fee agent obviously is going to go in that stack as well. So read that stuff, follow Chris, check out the AI, do all that stuff. And remember man, you, this is one of those skills like if you are not where you want to be in life, if you are, are not getting to the place where you want to go, negotiation is probably the most expensive. It's the best skill you can develop to get you out from where you are. We'll see you next time. What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com you can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five star review, give us a share. Do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.