Hello, my friend, and welcome to another episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for spending time with us today.

It's listeners like you in 181 different countries that have made Negotiate Anything the most popular negotiation and conflict resolution podcast in the world.

I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, professor, and the

director of the American Negotiation Institute. Before we get started, I have two quick questions

for you. Is negotiation a critical part of what you do? Do you need to resolve conflict and persuade at work?

If you answered yes to both of those questions, visit our website to learn more about our negotiation

workshops. We've traveled

the country working with professionals just like you, and we'd love to have the opportunity

to work with you too. Check out the link in the description to learn more. Our guest today is Derek

Gant. Derek's expertise in negotiation comes from his 29 years in law enforcement as a detective

and hostage negotiator. Now he works alongside Chris

Voss with the Black Swan Group. He's also the author of Ego Authority Failure, a phenomenal

book that we're going to talk about today. I know you're going to get a lot out of this one.

So without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Derek, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be invited. Thank you. Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you. Derek, thanks for joining us today. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be invited. Thank you.

Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you. So how would you get us started by telling us a little bit about

yourself and what you do? I am a negotiations trainer and consultant for the Black Swan Group,

which is a strategic business advisory firm whose focus is teaching hostage negotiations, practices,

and principles to people in the corporate world. I've been with them, started with them

part-time in 2010, and upon my retirement from law enforcement in 2017, I started working

full-time training, going around the country training and doing coaching calls

or clients are calling in because they either, A, want strategy development or B, they want skill

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