Quick Cut: S2E373 Never Split the Difference with Chris Voss
The Brian Buffini Show
Brian Buffini
4.8 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 12 February 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Negotiation is a crucial skill in both business and life, but unfortunately many people do it poorly. In this episode, Brian interviews former FBI lead international kidnapping negotiator Chris Voss about the negotiation tools he has used to save lives and learns how these tools can be used in business to save deals! Based on emotional intelligence and human nature, these specific skills transcend culture, build trust and uncover the other side’s value system. If you want to nail negotiation, this podcast is a must!
Inspirational quotes from today’s podcast:
“Learning is the only sustainable competitive advantage for anybody.” — Chris Voss
“The person who wants to meet you in the middle is usually a poor judge of distance.” — Anonymous
“You can never stop learning about understanding people.” — Chris Voss
“If you get out of argument-based negotiations, your success sneaks up on you.” — Chris Voss
“You don’t have to be combative to be a great negotiator.” — Chris Voss
“You’ve got to keep the other side’s guard down.” — Chris Voss
“You need the other side to hear themselves out loud.” — Chris Voss
“Curiosity is a positive frame of mind.” — Chris Voss
“There’s a difference between being likeable and needing to be liked.” — Chris Voss
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to It's a Good Life with Brian Bafini, founder of America's largest business coaching company. |
| 0:10.4 | Here's a short classic cut from one of our all-time favorite episodes. |
| 0:17.1 | Today, I have a real treat for you. |
| 0:19.3 | We have the pleasure of chatting with a master negotiator, Mr. Chris Voss. |
| 0:24.3 | Chris retired after 24 years with the FBI as the lead international kidnapping negotiator. |
| 0:31.7 | And so Chris has written a fantastic book called Never Split the Difference. Best Negotiating book I've read in the last 20 years. |
| 0:38.5 | He's with us here today to share us some knowledge on, I believe, the most referable skill in the service industry, and that's negotiation. Chris, the top of the morning to you, and thanks for joining us. Brian, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Which should be a lot of fun. I'm a big fan of negotiation, and I've often thought |
| 0:54.8 | myself as a good negotiator, but after reading your book, I thought, you know, I've never had to |
| 0:59.0 | negotiate with somebody's life on the line. You know, mine was real estate transactions where it was |
| 1:04.9 | whether we were going to get the price we wanted, the terms we wanted, or some of the personal |
| 1:09.0 | property involved. So how did you end up in the negotiation |
| 1:12.6 | side of things? Well, I had a recurring knee injury. I was on a SWAT team. I was on the FBI |
| 1:19.7 | SWAT team in Pittsburgh, and then I was in a process of trying out for the hostage rescue team, |
| 1:25.8 | which is the FBI's tier one counterterrorist guys, and I |
| 1:29.8 | injured my name. |
| 1:30.7 | So I had it reconstructed for the second time, and I thought, you know, there's so many |
| 1:34.7 | times they could put this thing back together. |
| 1:37.1 | So we had negotiators. |
| 1:38.3 | I figured out how could that be? |
| 1:40.0 | You know, I talk to people every day. |
| 1:42.8 | But they have exhaustive training, and you went through not only a whole bunch of training, |
| 1:47.8 | but you kind of real time got to experience, okay, that training doesn't work in the field this way, |
... |
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