INTERVIEW | Make Money with Better Beliefs, Stronger Communication, and Smarter Negotiation

Summary

Travis Makes Money Podcast: INTERVIEW | Make Money with Better Beliefs, Stronger Communication, and Smarter Negotiation

Host: Travis Chappell
Guests: Nir Eyal, Charles Duhigg, Chris Voss
Date: July 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

This special compilation episode of Travis Makes Money brings together highlights from three powerhouse guests in the realms of mindset, communication, and negotiation: Nir Eyal (on the psychology of belief), Charles Duhigg (on the science of communication), and Chris Voss (on tactical negotiation). The discussion centers on the bridges between knowing and doing, building effective personal and professional connections, and practical negotiation tools that work in real life and business. The conversations are practical, research-driven, and packed with actionable takeaways designed to help you make more money—through better beliefs, stronger connections, and smarter negotiation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Nir Eyal: The Power (and Pitfalls) of Belief

Segment starts: [03:02]

• Why Belief Matters
  Nir explains that despite having the information and even the desire to change, people often fail to act due to a missing link: belief.

  • “You need to know what to do. That’s the behavior. You need to know why you’re doing it. That’s the benefit. But holding it together is belief.” —Nir Eyal [05:23]

• Motivation is Not a Straight Line

  • Motivation requires knowledge, reason, and belief in both the outcome and your ability. Without that belief, motivation fizzles.
  • “If that were true, we’d all have six-pack abs and be multimillionaires. … It’s not that information is the problem.” —Nir Eyal [05:24]

• The Dark Side of Positive Thinking

  • Visualizing only positive outcomes can actually reduce effort and harm results. Research by Gabrielle Oettingen shows that relaxed, outcome-focused visualization can cause people to feel as if they’ve already succeeded—decreasing actual effort.
  • “Thinking positive is negative... the way most people are doing it is actually hurting them." —Nir Eyal [08:38]
  • “Athletes don’t visualize getting the gold medal… they visualize the obstacles in their way.” —Nir Eyal [10:02]

• Effective Visualization

  • Success lies in rehearsing responses to obstacles, preparing psychologically for discomfort, and equipping yourself with the right beliefs to persist through challenges.

Notable Quotes

• “All this mumbo jumbo about manifesting the way most people are doing it is actually hurting them.” —Nir Eyal [09:25]
• “You have to rehearse not just what you will do, but how you are going to feel.” —Nir Eyal [11:41]

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2. Charles Duhigg: The Science of Super Communication

Segment starts: [13:21]

• Why We Talk Past Each Other
  Charles describes how even professional communicators fall into conversational traps—assuming we know what a discussion is about, when really, conversations fall into practical, emotional, or social categories, often simultaneously.

  • “If two people are having different kinds of conversations at the same moment, they cannot hear each other, they cannot fully feel connected to each other.” —Charles Duhigg [15:02]

• The Matching Principle

  • Successful connections result when both parties are engaged in the same type of conversation (practical, emotional, or social).
  • “This in synch-ness is reflected in our bodies and our brains… our neural activity becomes more and more similar.” —Charles Duhigg [15:37]

• Motivational Interviewing

  • A transformative approach, now used widely in healthcare and leadership, that replaces arguing with guided questioning to help people discover their own reasons for change.
  • “Motivational interviewing is incredibly powerful because it helps us see different possibilities without forcing someone else’s views on us.” —Charles Duhigg [20:06]

Practice Example:

An effective doctor doesn’t just argue against a patient’s skepticism; instead, they gently guide them with questions and empathy, respecting their concerns.

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3. Chris Voss: Tactical Negotiation Skills

Segment starts: [20:28]

• Mirroring ([21:03])

  • A simple yet powerful negotiation tool: repeat 1-3 words from the other person’s last statement to draw out more information and demonstrate attention.
  • “Mirror is just a repetition of one to three words… and the other side goes on, they continue to talk.” —Chris Voss [21:03]
  • Tonality matters: mirrors should express curiosity (upward inflection) or comprehension (downward inflection).

• Body Language vs. Manipulation ([23:12])

  • Natural mirroring of body language builds rapport, but artificial attempts can be perceived as manipulative.
  • “If somebody starts mirroring my body language right away, then I know that’s a tell someone’s trying to manipulate.” —Chris Voss [23:12]

• Empathy vs. Sympathy ([25:30])

  • True empathy is comprehension—not agreement. Sympathy often misleads and poorly substitutes for real understanding.
  • “Empathy is really… to communicate and understand where the other side’s coming from, which is not agreeing with it.” —Chris Voss [25:42]

• Labeling ([29:48])

  • Use tentative statements (“It seems like…”, “It feels like…”) to observe and reflect emotions. This invites correction and collaboration, rather than confrontation.
  • “It’s a great invitation to collaborative communication. And it’s tentative, which means I’m open to correction.” —Chris Voss [29:48]

• The Empathy Continuum & Its Pitfalls ([31:03])

  • Adjust the intensity of empathy to the context (strangers vs. close relationships). Avoid neutral phrasing in charged emotional situations—instead acknowledge your own role if appropriate.
  • “You can never say to your significant other… ‘You sound angry’... it’s ‘I know you’re angry.’” —Chris Voss [31:03]

• Silence as a Tool ([33:50])

  • Letting silence hang after a key question or proposal often prompts the other party to fill the space—sometimes with acceptance or concessions.
  • “Silence is a great, underrated skill. It is so effective and so many people are so bad at it.” —Chris Voss [33:54]
  • Example: Travis shares a story of closing a sale at the highest tier after more than a minute of silence.
  • “We call that, ‘You need to get a PhD in shut the up.’” —Chris Voss [35:09]

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• On Visualization:
  “Athletes don’t visualize getting the gold medal… they visualize the obstacles in their way.” —Nir Eyal [10:02]

• On Communication Sync:
  “Our breathing patterns are starting to match each other; our neural activity becomes more and more similar. This is neural entrainment.” —Charles Duhigg [15:37]

• On Motivational Interviewing:
  “Much more effective is to do motivational interviewing… I’m not discounting what you’re saying, I’m just offering that there’s another way of thinking about this.” —Charles Duhigg [18:45]

• On Tactical Empathy:
  “True empathy is a precursor to compassion. It’s the articulation of comprehension.” —Chris Voss [26:38]

• On Silence:
  “You gave them the space for it… get a PhD in shut the up.” —Chris Voss [35:09]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:02] — Nir Eyal on “Beyond Belief” and why belief matters
• [08:38] — The negative effects of positive thinking and the research behind it
• [13:21] — Charles Duhigg explains the “three kinds of conversations”
• [17:40] — Motivational interviewing: how it works in practice
• [21:03] — Chris Voss: “Be a Mirror” and the mechanics of tactical mirroring
• [25:30] — Empathy vs. sympathy in real negotiation
• [29:48] — Using “it seems like…”: the power of labeling in conversation
• [33:50] — The effectiveness of silence and letting deals close themselves

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Episode Takeaways

• Better Beliefs:
  Develop the right beliefs—not just knowledge and willpower—to persist when behavior change gets tough.
• Stronger Communication:
  Match the type of conversation your counterpart is having. Use tools like motivational interviewing, mirroring, and labeling to build true connection and trust.
• Smarter Negotiation:
  Tactical empathy and silence are surprisingly potent. Listen more, speak less, and reflect feelings tentatively to open doors for real agreement.

For anyone looking to earn more, manage teams, or connect effectively, these are must-learn skills. This episode delivers practical frameworks, tested scripts, and mindset reframes from leading experts—no billionaire complex required.

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Quotes and highlights preserve the language and tone of the original speakers for a lively, authentic recap.

Transcript

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[Travis]

You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet. Just go to gohighlevel.com travis what's going on everybody? Welcome back to the episode of the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's our mission to help you make more money on this episode of the show. We're continuing with our compilation series to highlight some of the best guests of the show from the first half of 2026. Just in case you miss some people, we don't want to, we don't want you to miss the value though, you know what I mean? On this episode we're bringing together three amazing guests and the these guys all happen to be authors inside of the business space, or at least inside the education space, but a lot of it used for business in a lot of ways. So first off, we have Nir Eyal. Nir is a globally recognized authority on behavior, design, habits and human potential. Former lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, best selling author of Hooked and Indistractible, which sold more than a million copies worldwide. And he has a new book called Beyond Belief, exploring why belief is often the missing link between knowing knowing what to do and actually doing the thing that you know you should be doing. Nir is an amazing thinker. I love the conversations that I have with him. And a prolific author of course, as well. So he's number one. Number two, we have a guy by the name of Charles Duhigg. If you have ever heard about books on habits, it's usually these two. It's Atomic Habits by James Clear and it's the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. But I wanted to talk with him a little bit more about his other book, which is Super Communicators how to Unlock Language of Connection. He's a graduate of Yale and Harvard Business School. He writes for the New Yorker, spent his career decoding new or How Habits, Productivity and Communication Shape Success and Business in life. And yeah, Super Communicator is One of the best books I've read on how to communicate with people better, how to connect with people better, which is obviously a skill that's very helpful across your entire life and especially in business. So Charles Duhigg is the second one. And then we have Chris Voss. Chris Voss is the best selling author of Never Split the difference. He's a former FBI hostage negotiator who helped TR FBI hostage negotiators on how to negotiate. And he is probably the go to guy in the negotiation space at this point. This is the second conversation that I had with him and this one was live in person here in Vegas. So we got pretty deep into the weeds on a bunch of different really helpful topics, all from his book and his work. So I'm really excited to release this one. Some heavy hitters on this episode. Nir Eyel, Charles Duhig and Chris Voss. Enjoy this episode on the Travis Makes Money podcast. What have you been working on? What are you excited about now?

[Nir Eyal]

Yeah, so I've been working on this new book, Beyond Belief. It's very exciting. It has changed my life. I think it's gonna touch the lives of a lot of people. I'm very excited about it. It's been a long journey, but I learned so much. It has been a mind blowing adventure.

[Travis]

As an author, you can write on literally any topic you want to. Why this one?

[Nir Eyal]

Okay, so here's what happened. So a few years ago I published Indistractable, my second book, how to control your attention and choose your life. And it's such a common problem, right? Like, I feel like everybody's distracted these days. I have adhd. I've been diagnosed with it. And it seems like everybody's struggling with distraction even if you don't have an ADHD diagnosis. And I used to do these office hours where people can call me and ask me anything they want if they've, if they've read one of my books. I love hearing from, from readers. And so sometimes they would have to wait a few months and get a call with me and maybe like 1 in every 20 calls would sound like this. Someone would call and say, hey, Nir, I read Indistractable. I really liked it, but it didn't work. Say, oh, wow, you know, tell me more. I spent five years writing this thing. Thirty pages of peer review citations to peer reviewed studies. Like I, you know, changed my life. Tell me what happened. Let's start with step one. How did step one go for you? Ah, you know, I read it. I read step one. I Just didn't do step one. Okay, no problem. I understand. Maybe you skip that one. Let's skip to step two. How did step two go? Yeah, step two. Okay, so I read step two. I read it, I read it. I just didn't, I just didn't. I didn't do it. I didn't do it.

[Travis]

I'm sensing a pattern here.

[Nir Eyal]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I thought, wow, you know what, what did I do wrong with this book that people aren't putting it to use? And everybody says, oh, I'm so distracted. Well, here, I spent five years here on a silver platter. I'm telling you what to do. Go for it. This is going to solve your problem. And yet somehow they weren't doing it. Even though, you know, half a million people bought the book. Amazing. But a good chunk of them, I'm guessing, kind of read it and didn't do it, didn't implement. And so I want to know why. What was missing here? What didn't I get? And then if I, if I was honest, my, with myself. I have bookshelves full of books that I haven't put into practice. I've paid gurus and experts to give me advice. I haven't put to good use either. Why, why is it that despite knowing what to do, wanting the benefit of that behavior, why don't we just do it? Well, turns out that motivation is not a straight line that we think of motivation as well. If I want this benefit, I do this behavior. Easy peasy. But if that were true, we would all have six pack abs and be multimillionaires.

[Charles Duhigg]

Because that's right.

[Nir Eyal]

Who doesn't know what to do these days? If you want to know how to do something, there's no secrets anymore. You just go on ChatGPT, you Google it, you're going to learn how to do it. It's not that information is the problem. What's the problem? Is it, is it skill? Well, skill can be taught. Is it resources? Well, I know lots of people who have every resource. They have tons of resources and they accomplish very little. I know people who have very little, who go on to do amazing things. So it's not that easier. I think either. I think what, what's missing is that we don't understand that motivation is not a straight line. Motivation is a triangle that you need to know what to do. That's the behavior. You need to know why you're doing it. That's the benefit. But holding in those, those two elements and holding all together is belief that if you don't believe that you will get the benefit. Let's say, for example, you're working for a boss who you don't think has your best interest at heart. Maybe you don't believe they're going to give you that promotion or that raise. Well, are you going to sustain your motivation to work for them? No. And what about if you don't believe in your ability to do the behavior? Are you going to be able to sustain your motivation if you think, oh, I'm, I'm no good at this, this is hard, I don't like this. No, you're not going to sustain your motivation either. So it's not good enough to know what you need to do and why you want to do it. You also have that belief that keeps you going to persist long enough to actually achieve your goals. And so that's where I decided I really wanted to dive into the psych psychology and the, the, the truths as well as the myths. There's a lot of myths out there around what works. For example, positive thinking. Turns out positive thinking has some serious negative, negative effects that we really have to use this properly or it can actually hurt us.

[Travis]

Yeah, can we talk more about that? Because that's been. I don't know. I don't know what it is. Sometimes, you know, when, when you do a bunch of research and you read a lot and do a bunch of podcasting for a living, you. I feel like I've found myself to go down these certain, like, topic silos every once in a while, and it feels like this, this thing about optimism has been one of those for me recently because I, I felt when I was a younger, when I was a younger person, I, I was very optimistic. It was just like anything that I did, I had this belief that it was just possible that I could do it. I just had to figure it out. And then you start going throughout life and you take a bunch of at bats and then you have failures start inevitably kind of stacking up along the way. And then you're almost building some, you know, bank of evidence that suggests that not everything's going to work out. And then I sort of found myself in this almost not necessarily pessimistic phase, but skeptical, I would say, at least phase where it was just like, nah, I caught myself saying stuff like, you know, anything can happen, but we're going to do our best instead of saying, like, we're going to make this happen, you know. And then I hear people like Adam Sandler on a podcast talking about how he just had this, this weird delusional optimism, this belief that, that it was going to work, that he was going to be the next Steve Martin and ended up, you know, becoming true. But for every Adam Sandler that believed that, there's a person who's still, you know, busing tables in Hollywood waiting for their big break.

[Nir Eyal]

Right.

[Travis]

How do you, how do you balance these ideas together? It seems like there's a lot of reward for optimistic thinkers and there's less reward for pessimistic kind of intellectuals. But there's obviously danger, like you said, to becoming like wildly optimistic to some degree. So how do you think about these things? How do they, how do they play in your mind?

[Nir Eyal]

Yeah, so thinking positive is negative. And because the way we do it generally, the way it's preached to us is maybe it works for some people, but I think for the vast majority of us it actually backfires and there's, there's quite a bit of research on this. So Gabrielle Otigen did a beautiful study where she connected people to blood pressure monitors as they visualize success. Okay, so they did their manifesting exercise, they did their vision boarding, they did their, you know, thinking about the outcomes they wanted. Okay, I'm going to be a famous comedian, I'm going to be very wealthy, I'm going to find love, I'm going to have a beach body. And they, what she found was that when they were visualizing the outcomes, their blood pressure dropped, they became more relaxed. And in follow up interventions with these folks, she learned that the people who had done this became less likely to actually achieve their goals. So students who visualize getting a good grade on an exam became less likely to not only get that grade, they didn't study enough to actually warrant that good grade. So it actually negatively affected them, it actually hurt themselves. So all this mumbo jumbo about manifesting the way most people are doing it is actually hurting them.

[Travis]

Why is that, is that related to the idea that they, because they visualized it so much, they almost felt like they had already accomplished it without putting in the work. Like what, what exactly is the cause of that?

[Nir Eyal]

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. They became so relaxed that the body thought that, okay, we, we already got it. And, and that's one factor. The other big factor is that people don't understand what visualizing the right way means. Okay, visual. If you say, well, I look at athletes, don't athletes visualize? Like this whole technique comes from athletics. Right? Well, what do athletes visualize? Athletes don't visualize Getting the gold medal, getting the trophy, that's not what they visualize. An athlete visualizes the obstacles in their way. They mentally and physically prepare for the challenge. That's where positive thinking and manifesting and all that stuff goes off the rails. Because, you know, just manifesting the universe will give you good things. Or just be an optimist and all these good things are going to happen. What happens when it doesn't happen? What happens when bad things happen? Well, it's your fault. You. You didn't manifest hard enough. You didn't think positively enough. No, that's bullshit. And it's actually destructive because you think, well, then I must not be the right person. Now you have an identity. Well, I'm a loser. I can't do it. I'm not cut out for it. I'm no good. It's me. Not what I did, but it's who I am. And then you're sunk. Then you built a cage of your own creation. So that doesn't work. What works instead is preparing yourself psychologically for the difficulty that you are invariably going to face. So, for example, I used to be clinically obese, not just overweight. Actually obese. And the way I learned to lose weight was not, oh, I'm gonna sit here and manifest a beach body. That doesn't work. What worked is when I'm at that dinner party, right, when I'm out with my family and someone offers me a chocolate cake or an extra drink or something that has a lot of calories, what am I going to do in that uncomfortable moment? What am I going to do when it's painful to say no? Say no, thanks. That's what I have to visualize. I have to rehearse not just what I will do, but how I am going to feel. And that's where beliefs come in. You have to prepare yourself with the right beliefs so that when that moment comes, you have the right tools at your disposal.

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[Travis]

For someone like you, you, obviously, you're taking these really large concepts and then spending years researching them as much as you can and then formulating them into a manuscript script that actually has wisdom, but simplified so that the regular person can actually consume it. What makes you decide that? This is the topic that I'm going to spend the next three, four years diving into.

[Charles Duhigg]

Well, with super communicators, it was I. Most of my books start with me having a problem myself, right? And I'd fallen into this bad pattern with my wife where I'd come home from work. I was working in the New York Times at that point, and I would complain about my day and say, you know, my news. My coworkers don't appreciate me, and my boss doesn't realize what a genius I am. And my wife would inevitably give me some good advice. She'd say something like, why don't shake your boss up to lunch, and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better. But instead of being able to hear her advice, I would get even more upset, and I would say, why aren't you on my side? You're supposed to be outraged on my behalf, right? We've all experienced this, and. And if I'm a professional communicator and I'm falling into this trap again and again, I want to understand why. And so I went to researchers and I asked them, and they said, well, we're actually living through a golden age of understanding communication because of advances in neural imaging and data collection. For the first time, we actually understand what's happening inside people's brains as they're having a conversation. And one of the mistakes that you're making, that we all tend to make, is that you think you know what a discussion is about while you're having it. You think you're talking about your day, or you think you're talking about where I'm gonna go on vacation next week or. Or the budget for next year. But actually, they said, if we can look inside your brain, what we see is that people are having different kinds of conversations in one discussion simultaneously. And in general. Yeah, exactly. Simultaneously. And in general, these. These discussions, they fall. Tend to fall into one of three categories. There's these practical conversations where we're making plans or solving problems. But then there's also emotional conversations.

[Nir Eyal]

Right.

[Charles Duhigg]

Where I tell you what I'm feeling and I don't want you to solve my feelings, I want you to empathize. And then there's social conversations which, which is about how we relate to each other and to, to others. What they said is. Yeah, go ahead.

[Travis]

Sorry. No, yeah, please, please continue.

[Charles Duhigg]

And what they said is the research shows us that if two people are having different kinds of conversations at the same moment, they cannot hear each other, they cannot fully feel connected to each other.

[Chris Voss]

That.

[Charles Duhigg]

What the. There's this thing called the matching principle in psychology that says successful communication requires having the same kind of conversation at the same moment. And so once I heard that, I just thought that was kind of fascinating. And that's what got me, got me launched on this topic.

[Travis]

Yeah, it's that, it's that feeling of when, when you feel like you're genuinely in sync with the. Your counterpart.

[Charles Duhigg]

Absolutely.

[Travis]

You can't articulate why this, this is why.

[Charles Duhigg]

That's exactly. And, and in fact that in sync ness is reflected in our bodies and our brains. When you're in a conversation, the. Including this one, which is happening over the Internet, you. Our breathing patterns are starting to match each other, our heart rates are starting to match each other. And if we could look inside our brains, what we would see is that our neural activity, what our actual brain waves look like, are becoming more and more similar and more, more and more simultaneous. This is known within neuroscience as neural entrainment. And it's actually the goal of communication because it allows us to feel connected to each other. It allows us to trust each other more. It's at the core of how we as a pro social species have thrived.

[Travis]

Yeah, that's, that's the bottom line right there, is that no matter how hard you want to fight it or not believe it or wish it away, we are inherently social creatures because that is what we've evolved to be over tens of thousands of years of building society into what it's become today. So we can't, you know, why try to fight it when you can just figure out how it works and do that instead, you know, and this to me is like, this to me especially for like middle management people, anybody who has team that they're working with. That's why I recommend this book to all those people because it just, it's, it's the, it's the idea that your job is not just to tell people what to do your job is to unite everybody under a common mission. And each person has their own personality, their own context, their own perspective, their own biases that they're bringing to the table. And it's your job, if you're going to manage them effectively, to try to connect on a human level with each and every one of those people. And I love the way that you

[Charles Duhigg]

lay it out in your book.

[Travis]

I, I want to ask you a little bit about motivational interviewing. This is one of the more fascinating topics that I found and I've been doing a deep div about it ever since I read about it. Just because my background is in sales. I did five years of door to door sales, but I've also done 1500 podcast episodes now. We do a lot of interviews and talk to a lot of people. And so the idea of motivational interviewing almost like seemed to be the intertwining of both of these worlds. It's like asking questions, but also for the purpose of reaching an end goal that we have in mind. You know what I mean? So can you expound on that a little bit and tell us how?

[Charles Duhigg]

Yeah. So motivational interviewing is a technique that's actually used now in healthcare quite a bit. Right. So if someone comes in and the physician believes that they should get a vaccine and that person says, I don't want to get a vaccine, you know, I'm, I'm vaccine skeptical. What, what do you do? Because if you, if the physician just says like, look, let me show you all the evidence, let me show you all the research, it's not going to work. Right. People have probably done research on their own. They've done, they, they know the evidence that they think is important. What's much more effective is to do motivational interviewing. And what that means is it means that I, as a physician am going to ask you questions. And these questions are gonna kind of be designed on my part to get you to a place where I think you ought to go, but it won't guarantee that. So I might ask, for instance, okay, tell me a little bit about why you don't like vaccines. Well, it's because I was reading all these studies that they cause autism.

[Nir Eyal]

Okay.

[Charles Duhigg]

Okay. So you know, do you, do you know people who've gotten vaccines? Yeah, yeah, I know people who've gotten vaccines. And, and would, would you say they are autistic as a result? No, they're not autistic. Okay.

[Sponsor Voice 4]

Okay.

[Charles Duhigg]

So. So I, I'm not gonna, I'm not discounting what you're saying. I'M not saying that you're wrong. Instead, I'm just offering that there's. There's another way of thinking about this. Now, let me ask you a different question. You know, you seem like a really good parent, and you seem to care about your kids a lot, and so do I. And, and that's one of the reasons I got vaccines, is because I didn't want my kids to be exposed to any illnesses. Taking off your vaccine skeptical hat and putting on your parenting hat, how do you think about the risks and the, the benefits of vaccines when it comes to you getting sick and exposing your kids? Right. So what I'm doing at each time is I am not making an argument. I am not disagreeing with you or saying, no, no, no, no, you're wrong. I'm right.

[Chris Voss]

The.

[Charles Duhigg]

All that evidence about autism and vaccines has been completely debunked, which it has. But instead of saying, like, you're dumb, I'm going to say, look, let's, let's. Let me ask some more questions to introduce whether we should be skeptical about those studies that you're citing or are there other considerations that we should be thinking about? And that does not mean that it's going to work every single time. Right. It does not mean every single person you talk to is going to get a vaccine, but it does mean that more people are going to understand what you're trying to tell them. The argument you're trying to make. Because you're not actually making an argument, you're helping them get to that argument.

[Travis]

Yeah.

[Charles Duhigg]

Motivational interviewing is incredibly powerful because it helps us see different possibilities without forcing someone else's views on us.

[Travis]

Yeah, yeah. It's the, it's the, the intent is understanding and connection, not.

[Charles Duhigg]

Yeah.

[Travis]

Immediately persuading and trying to convince them that they're wrong.

[Charles Duhigg]

That's exactly right.

[Travis]

You mentioned a couple of things in there that I want to drill down on. First one's mirroring. I think that's the first chapter in your book, if I'm not mistaken.

[Chris Voss]

It's in there early. Yeah.

[Charles Duhigg]

Yeah.

[Travis]

What, what, what are. I feel like this is one of those ones.

[Chris Voss]

Yeah.

[Travis]

Be a Mirror, Chapter two, How to Quickly Establish Rapport. I feel like this is one of those topics that gets used frequently, and I'm not ever sure if the person that's talking about it actually knows exactly what it is. Can you define that and tell us, like, a good example of using it and a bad example of a bad example? Yeah. See what you did there?

[Chris Voss]

All right, so the Black Swan mirror Tactical empathy mirror, hostage negotiators. Mirror is just a repetition of one to three words. Maybe it could be one, it might be never more than five. And you learn the skill by repeating the last couple words that somebody just said. Now, as you get better at it, you can move it all around. Anything that the other side says where you would that catches your ear and you would want to say, can you tell me more about that? Or say more about that? Or anything you want more information on, you can mirror that 1 to 3 ish words. And the other side goes on. They continue to talk. It pulls information out of them. They feel both heard, listened to, attended to, and also more information tends to come out of them.

[Travis]

Is the tonality always a question?

[Chris Voss]

Tonality, should your tonality. I'm glad you asked that. The keys to tonality is your tonality should either say signal comprehension or curiosity. Yeah, yeah.

[Travis]

Say more, please.

[Chris Voss]

Yeah, yeah. So it's either the upward inflection of curiosity or the downward inflection of comprehension. If you're talking to anybody, you want them to either comprehend what you said or be curious and want to hear more. And so mirroring will work with a flat affect, but it'll get worn out quickly because a flat affect indicates neither comprehension nor curiosity. So if you're not comprehending what I'm saying or you're not curious about it, why should I waste my voice? And so those are the two main tonality inflections behind a mirror.

[Travis]

Is it, is there also body language as a piece of this? Obviously in these, in that context specifically, you're talking on the phone, there's no body language involved. But if you're in an in person situation, I hear people talk about mirroring in terms of like matching the other person's body language or demeanor, or, you know, doing something simple like reach for my bottle of water and see if they also reach for their bottle of water. Does any of that have any legs?

[Chris Voss]

The problem with that is that that's gotten weaponized against most people. So if we're really talking or really in sync, our body language is probably going to start to match up to some degree. Naturally. Now, the people that are trying to cheat us to weaponize some of these skills against us, they'll start doing it right away because they're not trying to match up, they're trying to manipulate. And so there are a number of good solid communication techniques that have been so overused as to be weaponized. And that's one of them. So I'm cautious about. I try not to do that. If we're in sync, I'll find myself doing it, sure. But also be conscious. If somebody starts mirroring my body language right away, then I know that's a tell that somebody's trying to manipulate.

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[Chris Voss]

You like me? Yeah. Yeah.

[Travis]

Now on the other, you mentioned tactical empathy as well. Can we talk about the difference between empathy and sympathy and which one is good, which one is not good?

[Chris Voss]

Yeah, Empathy is really the original definition is to communicate and understand where the other side's coming from, which is not agreeing with it in any way, shape or form. It's really comprehension that you comprehend it. I can completely comprehend where you're coming from without agreeing with any of it or liking it. And that is the real separation. Now it has become synonymous with sympathy. And that's just a Bad misinterpretation of the word. It's close to compassion. True empathy is a precursor to compassion. It triggers compassion. Empathy is a compassionate thing to do. You're going to feel compassion from me when I'm just trying to demonstrate comprehension. But it's the articulation of comprehension.

[Travis]

The articulation of comprehension.

[Chris Voss]

You have to comprehend and then you have to express what you believe you comprehend in order to get the proper reaction from the other side. And you can't say, I understand. I understand again, is weaponization. And it's most of the time somebody says, look, okay, I understand where you're coming from, but here's why you're wrong. Yeah.

[Travis]

Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's used because I've seen. I did probably five, six years of door to door before I jumped into online stuff and podcasting and stuff. And so I've been, I've learned a lot of sales techniques from a lot of different people. And that was one thing that I appreciated about what I was reading in. Never split the difference versus what I've seen from a lot of those. Like just kind of hardcore pushy persuasion techniques. Is that this actually try like you're actually attempting to truly understand where the other side's coming from.

[Chris Voss]

Yeah.

[Travis]

Versus just, again, using it as a manipulation tactic to say, I totally understand. But also you're wrong. And here's why you're wrong. It's not necessarily that. It's just saying. And so in a business context, let's say tactical empathy would look like in the discovery. During discovery, when you're just trying to figure out what the problem is, it's re. Articulating the problem as you understand it to the other person, even if you are getting it wrong sometimes. Right. But both of them can be powerful.

[Chris Voss]

Right? Yes, absolutely.

[Travis]

Yeah. It's not always about getting it right.

[Chris Voss]

No, no. And, and that's. I think the secondary problem most people have is they don't want to say anything and get it wrong. Yeah. But in point of fact, when you get it wrong, you get corrected really quickly with. And you're given accuracy really quickly. And so it's even an elevated skill to occasionally get it wrong on purpose because you're going to get the reaction from the other side is they're helping you by correcting you.

[Travis]

Yeah. Because your, your entire goal in discovery is just to try to understand the problem from their perspective. And I think it was a Dan, Dan Sullivan or Dan Kennedy. I never, never remember which, which Dan said this. But if you can, if you can articulate the prospect's problem better than they can, then they'll automatically assume that you have the solution. And so you can get to the point where you actually know what they're saying. And then if you articulate it back to them and it's incorrect and. But you've been having trouble up to that point getting any additional information out of them, then getting it incorrect can be the thing that actually allows you to get that additional information out.

[Chris Voss]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really well said. And that first they want to know if you understand a problem, which is exactly what you said. And then if you understand a problem, there's a pretty good chance you got an answer.

[Travis]

Yeah, right. So tactical empathy. Mirroring. There's one, one thing I want. Oh, I've probably, I don't know how many times I've used this since I've read your book, but there's two things that I've that I've probably just subconsciously started using over and over again from your book. One of them is to say things like it seems like. Or it feels like. Or something like that. So let's talk about labeling for a second. Tell me the importance of saying. Of saying something like it seems like this versus saying that what you're telling me is this.

[Chris Voss]

Well, it's a tentative. It's an observation and it's a great way. It's. The other side finds it very inviting to collaborate as opposed to a question is an intrusion. Yes. Oriented questions. If I ask you a question, I'm not really inviting you to collaborate or I'm not inviting you to correct me. And so the label is just an observation. It's usually you're observing an emotion or a dynamic. Seems like you're uncomfortable. If I say something and your eyes move around for a second, I'll say it seems like something just crossed your mind. And it's a great invitation to collaborative communication. And it's tentative which means I'm open to correction.

[Travis]

Yeah, I could be wrong. Yeah, right.

[Chris Voss]

Which then is. Then again, it's an invitation to collaboration.

[Travis]

Your goal essentially is to imagine that you are a third party observer in this conversation and that it's not between like I'm not looking at it from my point of view. I'm looking at it from this third party objective person's point of view. And if somebody ran some random person was planted here, it would seem to them that this is the case is sort of like the energy that you're bringing to it when you say it seems it's less yes. Accusatory, I suppose.

[Chris Voss]

Yes. Now, the. The nuance to that which we've really discovered by applying this empathy is based on the other side's perspective. So if you take a communication position of a neutral third party, they've got to kind of see as a neutral third party. Now, why many hostage negotiation teams get wrong is they say, empathy doesn't work at home. And my first thought on a suicide hotline was, why aren't the people close to me entitled to empathy? But then simultaneously, why does when we practice it as taught, it backfire? First time, I said to the woman who's now the ex, Mrs. Boss, you sound angry. Yeah, well, your significant other is not going to see you as being a neutral third party.

[Travis]

That's right.

[Chris Voss]

And so I struggled with this for a really long time until I found myself applying it properly based on, if the other side sees me as being involved in their anger, then it's not, you sound angry, it's clearly, I've made you angry. And being willing to take that next step then really gives you the competitive advantage, because the majority of people that you do business with, they either have preconceived notions about you or you have caused them to think things about you. And so there's really kind of three levels, and we actually call it the empathy continuum. It seems like it's probably. Or it is, and it is. Could be. I know. So you can never say to your significant other, male or female, while they're ranting at you, you sound angry. It's. I know you're angry. And it's why many customer service employees like, somebody's ranting and raving at the person behind the counter in a hotel. Now, they've all been taught to say, I'm sorry this happened to you. Which one in three people that makes happy two and three makes mad? You tell me you're sorry, like, I don't care, fix it, but they don't. You can't say to somebody ran or raving you. You sound angry. Well, of course I'm angry. You know, why the f. Do you think I'm screaming at you right now? So the person behind the counter at the hotel should say, it's clear we've made you angry. I can see that we've disappointed you with the service that you've gotten. That's empathy, and that's taking it up to the next level. How does the other side see you? Empathy is. How do they see the situation and your involvement in it? Demonstration of comprehension, not agreement. It's Clear. I've made you angry. It's just empathy.

[Travis]

Yeah. What about silence as a tool? How helpful or effective is silence?

[Chris Voss]

Silence is a great underrated skill. Yeah, it is. It is so effective and so many people are so bad at it.

[Charles Duhigg]

It's.

[Travis]

It's hard to their credit. It's very difficult in a sales conversation. I don't know. A couple years ago I was doing some sales and it felt like an eternity, man. And I watched it back because we record all of our calls. I think it was over a minute.

[Chris Voss]

Wow.

[Travis]

Where I just said nothing nice. And I was. I was just. The whole time just like. I just sat back and just looked, kind of looked around and like looked back at them and just kind of like smiled a little bit. I was fighting every instinct inside of me to say something, but I just found the silence is just so much more effective.

[Chris Voss]

That was incredible.

[Travis]

Yeah, that was.

[Chris Voss]

That might be the record. That's one of the longest ones I've ever heard.

[Travis]

That was a very difficult. Yeah.

[Chris Voss]

And then what happened?

[Travis]

They closed. Yeah, it closed at our highest level because my initial we had this sort of like, you know, higher ticket package than we had a downsell. And so my instinct was kicking in to be like, just take them to the downsell. Just like, go to the downsell. Give them the.

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[Chris Voss]

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[Travis]

Exactly. But yeah, I just. I shut up. And then eventually it was just like. I think his exact words were, fuck it, let's do it.

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[Chris Voss]

You gave me the space for it. Yeah, you had. We did some training for the carpenters union about a year ago. And I love blue collar guys who are really smart. And they said, we call that you need to get a PhD and shut the up. Exactly.

[Travis]

That was one of my first sales. Trainers told me just like, stop saying stuff. You're talking yourself out of a deal. Just shut the up. Let them make the decision. If they present something now, you may speak. You know what I mean?

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[Travis]

But until. Until that point, you're. You have no idea what's going on in there.

[Chris Voss]

Yeah.

[Travis]

You're probably going to talk yourself out of it.

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[Chris Voss]

Yeah. That's brilliant. And depend upon a person who works for vastly different reasons. Now you were letting that guy process. And if you'd have spoken up, you'd have totally disrupt his process. And so many people are afraid. They want to. Did I get it right or what did I leave out? It's desperation trying to save themselves.

[Travis]

That's right.

[Chris Voss]

But that. Well done.

[Travis]

It was difficult. I'm not going to lie.