This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host.

This is the James Altiger show.

Chris Voss, I am not going to negotiate with you because I read a series of negotiations

you did in your book, never split the difference negotiating as if your life depended on it.

You were the lead international crisis negotiator for the FBI for many years.

You worked for the FBI for 24 years.

You've been in 150 negotiations, often involving life or death.

Give me an example of one.

There are many examples in the book, of course, in the book's excellent.

But by the way, the whole book's about negotiating the relationship between your hostage

and negotiations and your more current business of helping people with business negotiations.

So it's maybe the best book on negotiating I've ever read.

Thank you.

What was an example of a hostage negotiation?

A lot of the stuff for mostly international kidnappings and kidnapping is a commodities game

for us to talk about.

Which, by the way, never would have thought of it that way.

Right, exactly.

But in any negotiation, you've got to know how the other guy looks at it and how they see themselves.

And kidnappers actually see themselves as just hard bargain in commodities, guys.

We're working in case Steve Santani, a Fox News reporter, gets grabbed in a guy's a strip.

And I plug into Fox News and they're very receptive to us being involved.

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