Negotiating anything in life can make even the most socially robust entrepreneurs break out in cold sweats. Many of us are not born with negotiation skills but have to learn how to persuade our audience to be on our side. Learning excellent negotiation skills can take your career to the next level by negotiating a significant raise at your annual performance review. Negotiating a raise is so much easier than negotiating hostage situations like our next guest has while working with the FBI.

In this episode, we talk to Chris Voss, also known as “The Master Negotiator.” Chris retired as the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI, is the CEO of the Black Swan Group, and is the author of the national bestseller Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as If Your Life Depended on It, which was one of Darius’s favorite books.  

Drawing on his FBI experiences where the stakes are high, Chris Voss’s company, The Black Swan Group, specializes in solving business communication problems using hostage negotiation solutions. Their negotiation methodology focuses on discovering the “black swans,” small pieces of information that have a huge effect on an outcome. The biggest surprise is learning the tactics behind negotiating a business deal are very similar to negotiating with a barricaded gunman for the lives of hostages.  

Don’t miss this thrilling episode!

What Darius discusses with Chris Voss:


How to be an effective negotiator for anything

How information gathering can give you an edge in the negotiation game

What it takes to subtly convince someone to have it your way

What small things make the biggest impact in negotiations

How to diffuse a situation by calling out the negative

How emotions drive human behavior, not logic

The Black Swan Rule: Treat others not the way you want to be treated but the way they want to be treated

Common mistakes in negotiating

Why you are 31% smarter with a positive mindset

Why curiosity is a superpower. 

How to make the gunman feel empathy for you

Chris talks about his book Never Split the Difference


And other topics...


Connect with Chris:
Website: https://www.blackswanltd.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophervoss/ 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefbinegotiator/?hl=en 
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Never-Split-Difference-Negotiating-Depended/dp/0062407805 

Connect with Darius:
Website: https://therealdarius.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dariusmirshahzadeh/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whoompdarius/
YouTube: https://therealdarius.com/youtube
Book: The Core Value Equation https://www.amazon.com/Core-Value-Equation-Framework-Limitless/dp/1544506708
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