Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Jan Black. And I'm Laura Owens. Our guest on this episode is Chris Voss, and we've wanted to have him on the show for a long time now.

Chris is a former international hostage negotiator for the FBI, whose career brought him face-to-face

with bank robbers and terrorists. He became the FBI's lead international kidnapping negotiator.

He's taught negotiation at leading universities, and he's now sharing with us the negotiation skills

that helped him save lives. Chris says life is a series of negotiations you should be prepared for,

and he explains all about that in his book, Never Split the Difference, Negotiating as if

your life depended on it. Chris is the founder and CEO of the Black Swan Group,

which trains businesses, individuals, law enforcement,

and government personnel in negotiations.

Chris, thank you so much for joining us.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Thanks for having me on.

This should be fun.

Yeah, we're looking forward to it.

How did you develop your negotiating skills?

It's not something you're born with,

is it? Well, we're all born with the ability. I mean, there's so much more these days

that teaches us that it's more nurture than anything else that brings out talent. I wanted to

become a hostage negotiator with the FBI, and I had, at the time, I was eminently unqualified. So the

woman that was in charge, I said, how do I get qualified? She said, go volunteer on a suicide hotline.

That is really where it all started. Just learning how to really listen to people.

Let's start from the beginning. Say there's someone that you want to negotiate with, but you think you're going to get a

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