Communication Archives - Page 18 of 26 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Chris, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Chris Voss
Pete, my pleasure. Let’s be awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, let us. Well, speaking of awesome, I’m sure you have many awesome stories and just to set the scene, could you kick us off by sharing a dramatic FBI negotiation story?

Chris Voss
Dramatic FBI negotiation story?

Pete Mockaitis
I’d like actual music to be playing in the background maybe if we can splice that in.

Chris Voss
Car chases and shootouts, right? Put a little bit of James Bond music in it for me in the background.

Alright, so a 12-year-old boy gets kidnapped in Haiti in a carjacking. It’s a standard business kidnapping. In Haiti their particular business model is carjack a car with more than one person in it, let one of those people go. You’ve got a car and a hostage. The other person you just let go to notify the family. Even better if one of those people is a kid because more likely they’re going to pay, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Chris Voss
As it turns out – which happened a lot in Haiti at the time. It was before the earthquake. The kid’s a dual national. He’s an American citizen. He’s a Haitian citizen. Bad guys don’t know they’ve got an American. They think they just grabbed a Haitian. It happens a lot. There’s a lot of dual nationals in Haiti. It was pretty much exclusively the business model at the time. This was of course their business model.

But the carjacking, because it’s really smart. It’s prequalification, if you will, if they have a car, they’ve probably got money for ransom.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Chris Voss
Dad’s not an American citizen. He knows his son is. Goes to the U.S. embassy for help. U.S. embassy says, “Yup, the FBI is going to help you.” Now I don’t know what went through his mind when he was told that. I can imagine maybe he was thinking helicopters were going to show up. Ninjas are going to-

Pete Mockaitis
Snipers.

Chris Voss
Snipers, the cavalry whatever inside of 15 minutes, but instead inside of 15 minutes he gets a call from some guy in Washington, D.C. named Chris Voss, who says he’s going to help him. He literally says to me on the phone, “You’re in Washington, D.C. How are you going to help me?”

Now, Pete I would ask you, how long have I got before this guy hangs up the phone?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m guessing three sentences.

Chris Voss
That’s at the outside. Probably, yeah, which interestingly enough is exactly the same amount of time you’ve got to make a first impression too or to make any impression at the beginning of a conversation because everybody you interact with at all times as soon as you get started with them, the human nature response is how are you going to help me.

[3:00]

I will tell you by the time I got exactly where I wanted to go probably in about 15 seconds with this guy, principally because I’d done this one before. Because I’d ask you, if you were me, what do you say? What would you imagine you need to say at this point?

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve done this dozens of time in Washington, D.C. You are in the best hands in the world.

Chris Voss
Right. Convincing. Trying to establish credibility and confidence, which sounds like a sale job.

The good thing about that – actually your gut instinct is your instinct is that the absolute most important two things to establish right off the bat are trust and confidence. Not liking, but trust and confidence. That’s what you went for in what you were saying.

But the very next thing as soon as you start talking, people ask themselves, they say, “Do I have to explain this to this guy? Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

Here’s what I said to the guy. I didn’t give him any of my resume. Nothing.

I said, “Alright so Haitian kidnappers, they’re not killing kidnap victims these days. That’s really stupid because they kill each other at the drop of a hat, but they’re not killing kidnap victims. Today is Thursday and Haitian kidnappers love to party on Saturday night. If you say the things I want you to say when I want you to say them, we will have your son out by Friday afternoon, Saturday or Saturday morning early.”

He said to me, “Tell me what you want me to do.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well done.

Chris Voss
We had his son out Saturday morning.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so good. Are there a few key sentences that he should share?

Chris Voss
Well, so first thing is my job now is helping people understand how to communicate effectively in all aspects of their lives. I told him what he was facing.

Instead of telling him I understood or tell him – instead of saying, “Look, I know what you’re dealing with. I’ve done it before,” I just laid it out for him. Here’s your environment. Here’s what you’re looking at. Because it immediately relieves the other person of the burden of having to figure out whether or not you know what’s going on. You just show them you know what’s going on.

Plus, I didn’t give them a strategy either, but what I did was offer them the slightest bit of insight into that dynamic, which I probably didn’t even need to do, the bit about Haitian kidnappers wanting to party on Saturday night, which is 1,000% true.

In anybody, try, try to get a deal done on Wall Street in New York in August. It ain’t going to happen because they’re all partying in the Hamptons. One of the reasons I love about that example because it’s kind of fun to compare Wall Streeters to Haitian kidnappers.

But as soon as you understand the social dynamics and the social dynamics are pretty common across the world. A friend of mine once recently said, “Every situation is different, but every situation has the same basic common threads.” When you understand human nature, you begin to understand the common threads.

Common thread this guy is wondering about is do I know what’s going on. I told him one of two things happen. Either he says, “Tell me what you want to do,” or he corrects me. If he corrects me, that means we’ve got dialogue. I’ve just instantly – him correcting me is an instantaneous establishment of a collaborative relationship, which is where I want to go anyway.

There’s no downside to laying out to somebody what they’re looking at no matter what the circumstances are. It’s instant rapport. It’s just add water. It’s faster – it’s actually faster.

One of the reasons I knew how to do this because I’ve done it wrong in different situations where they basically challenged my expertise and I said, “Look, I’ve been an FBI agent for 24 years, trained FBI hostage negotiator, went to Scotland Yard, went to Harvard Law School’s negotiation course. Not only have I trained where the FBI wrote the book, but I’m not writing a book.”

I didn’t give you but 25% of my resume just now and it took longer than it took for me to lay out to the guy what he was facing with. That’s the crazy thing about this. This is faster. It the indirect route and it actually takes less time to say it to the other side.

Because otherwise they want to argue, “Do you know what’s going on? Have you ever done this before?” Even if you’ve done it before, how do I know you know what’s going on. How do I know that you haven’t done this a million times and you’re not smart enough to figure it out? That’s why you’ve had to do it so many times.

There’s an old saying, “Some people have ten years of experience and some people have one year of experience ten times.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well said.

Chris Voss
You remove all those questions by just immediately laying stuff out for people.

Pete Mockaitis
I like it. I like it a lot. You’re sharing these principles with – as you’re doing your work with the Black Swan Group and your book, Never Split the Difference. I understand that you point to nine principles to be more persuasive. Could you give us a quick lay of the land there?

Chris Voss
Well, what they really are of those nine, the negotiation nine that you are referring to, is there’s nine specific techniques, tactics that we brought from hostage negotiation.

Now hostage negotiators have eight basic skills, which I would refer to as the FBI eight. The crazy thing about that, every single hostage negotiation team in the world, whether they’re in Baghdad, Iraq, Cape Town, South Africa, Tel Aviv, Israel, Tokyo, Japan, Chicago, Illinois, they all use the exact same eight skills in one format or another.

It doesn’t matter where because these work on the common threads, human nature. These work on human nature. You get this set of skills that are – it’s not cross culture. It transcends culture. It works on people because they’re people, because they’re human beings.

Then of those nine, these skills that are applicable to everyone regardless of gender or ethnicity, doesn’t matter if you’re Asian, African, Latino.

They’re kind of broken out into two groups. Groups to provoke thinking or groups to repute what someone said or groups to sort of dig into how they’re really being driven.

They focus on – you ask a question – you never ask somebody – you never try to get somebody to say yes. You never ask a closed-ended question where the answer is yes. But you ask a calibrated question, calibrated for effect or you make a statement that’s calibrated for effect.

It’s a combination of effect of questions and statements and repetitions. Bundled together they just – they open people up. It’s truth serum. It’s getting people to tell the truth without knowing they’re telling the truth.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fantastic. Tell us how it’s done.

Chris Voss
It’s being a little bit deliberate. It’s not talking first. It’s not making an argument. It’s amplifying what people say. It’s being patient. It’s shutting up sometimes.

What it really is – Stephen Covey gave us great advice a long time ago, “Seek first to understand than be understood.” We take Covey’s advice because what I’m trying to do is be understood, the second half of what Covey said, “Then be understood.”

Covey basically wanted the other person to talk first. We say, “Seek first to show understanding and then you can be understood,” so it’s showing understanding. It’s really kind of intuitive.

A guy gave me a great story the other day about how he bought a car. You know the best way to get somebody’s price on a car down?

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s hear it.

Chris Voss
Tell them it’s worth every penny they’re asking.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Chris Voss
Because what that does is it takes away their argument. You want to say, “Ah, car’s not any good. There’s a million cars around here.” It provokes an argument. It gives them an argument. They say, “No, this is worth-“ they’re going to give you all the reasons why it’s worth every penny they’re asking.

If you say, “Look man, that’s a great car. That car’s beautiful. It’s probably worth more than what you’re asking. It’s worth every penny.” Suddenly they’re shocked. They don’t know it, but you’ve taken their argument away from them. They’re listening to you really carefully. They no longer have an argument to make.

Then after you say, “Look man, it’s a beautiful car. It’s worth every dime. I just can’t pay you that.” They don’t know what to do. They’re shocked.

It’s one of those stories – I still have – I get the sexiest color SUV you ever saw in your life. I fell in love with this Toyota Forerunner when I saw it, salsa red color. I mean that even sounds sexy. Does it not?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah, it does. I want to see it.

Chris Voss
Salsa red color. Yeah, baby. It’s this great, deep sort of salsa red burgundy color. I still got it.

When I went and bought that truck I said, “I love this truck. It’s beautiful. It’s worth more than what you’re asking for it. It’s worth every dime. I just can’t pay that. How am I supposed to pay that?” The sales guy looked at me and he like blinked because – blinked about four times because his brain was just resetting. He got up and he went in the back and he came out with a lower price.

The guy – this friend of mine, his name is Joe. He did the same thing. He was laughing about it when he was telling me because he said, “It’s a great car. It’s a great price and you’re giving a discount.” He said, “You’re being generous.” Then he said, “It’s a great price. I just can’t pay it.” He said the guy just – the guy was flummoxed. When he was telling me this story, eh started laughing. He goes, “I didn’t imagine in a million years this would work.” The guy did the same thing. He went in the back and came back out with a better price.

Then I said it to him again, “Oh my God, you’re so generous. You’re so wonderful. That’s so nice of you. That car – I just can’t pay it.” He said the guy went in the back again, came back out with another price.

When you start making the other side – when you start articulating their position, what Covey said but instead of “Seek first to understand,” show understanding. When you lay out their position for them, they’re left with nothing to say. They’re never more agreeable than they are at that moment.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s brilliant. What I love it is it also kind of gets them on your side. It’s like, “Oh, well I’ve got to figure this out for you. That’s my new job now is to help make this work for you.”

Chris Voss
You’re exactly right. That was one of the things that Joe told me. He said, “Suddenly I felt like we were collaborating and not only that. We were collaborating, but he was trying to solve it for me.” That’s exactly what you just said. Something sort of crazy happens.

There’s a neuroscience behind it that backs it up. Then they suddenly become collaborators. They’re on your side. They want to help you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so that’s a fantastic way to start. Then where do we take it from there?

Chris Voss
We could talk about my favorite color. Salsa red.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. It sounds critical. Some insights will bubble up from this.

Chris Voss
Well, sort of where we take it from here. This is counterintuitive stuff. This is – one of the questions that you were kind enough to send me in advance is what’s the big idea of your book. We were trying to understand whether it’s ‘everything you know about negotiation is wrong’ or ‘yes is the last thing you want to hear.’ Which one of those two sounds more interesting to you?

Pete Mockaitis
[long pause] The last one sounds more interesting to me because the first one, it just sounds like, “Oh, okay, marketer, you’re trying to grab my attention,” as opposed to the second one makes me go, “Huh, yeah? Really? What do you mean?”

Chris Voss
Perfect. Excellent. Alright, somebody calls you on the phone. They say, “Have you got a few minutes to talk?” What’s your instant reaction?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I probably don’t.

Chris Voss
Skepticism. Right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Chris Voss
We put up our guard. The crazy thing is that when we say yes, we’ve committed to something. Commitment creates anxiety and there’s always a hook. There’s always a trap.

Somewhere along the line in the last 50 years, somebody came up with the idea, this momentum selling or this yes momentum or create a yes proposition. Somebody went out there and sold a book said getting to yes. We’re like, “Okay, that’s what we want to do. We want to get to yes.” Somebody said, “Hey, you know what? Get somebody to say yes to three little things.”

If you look at how they instruct us, they actually call this stuff tie downs. You tie it down with each yes. You tie them down. Then your last question you’ve got them cornered and they have to say yes. Then you’ve got them.

Now maybe somewhere on some distant galaxy far, far away, maybe I’ll concede that there may have been a day that that was effective. But it’s been done to so many of us so many times that now the minute somebody starts trying to get you to say yes, your guard goes up instantly.

This is almost like a game that we play. Finally everybody in my company has finally got to the point where they see it. You can’t try to get – intentionally ask a closed-end question, “Do you want this? Would you like this? Does this work for you? Would you like? Would you like to make more money?” People’s guard goes up instantly because where’s this going.

If I say yes to some – my girlfriend once said to me when I accidently asked her a yes question – here’s how bad it is because I got on a shirt that I don’t like that I’m getting ready to throw away. It was an expensive shirt and I wore it that day. She was like, “Oh, I like that shirt.” I’m like, “Hm, all right, maybe I don’t throw this away.”

Then at the end of the day I go, “So you like this shirt, right?” And she says to me, “If I say yes, what am I letting myself in for?” I’m like, “Wait a minute, you even said earlier today you liked this shirt. I’m just going back for legitimate conformation. I’m not trying for commitment.”

There’s three kinds of yes’s: commitment, conformation, and counterfeit. But we get trapped so much by these conformation yes’s, these tie-down yes’s that lead us down this little path to where the bear trap is that the minute somebody starts in on us on any yes , we immediately back up.

If we’re not explicitly articulating what my girlfriend said, which is, “If I say yes, what am I letting myself in for,” everybody thinks that. It is so overdone planet-wide that it’s equivalent of trying to give a hug to a battered child.

We’ve all been battered by this yes nonsense, this yes trap, attorneys call it cornering, that the minute anybody tries to get us to say yes to anything, we can’t help but react like battered children. We start to back away. We start to get anxious. We start to worry about it.

I’m having a conversation with this about – my son is my director of operations now, chief negotiator for my company. He’s turned into a brilliant negotiator. About two years ago we’re walking out of this building, security building where we’re doing our training. He says, “I’m not completely sure that everybody is reluctant to say yes under all circumstances.”

Now at this moment we’re standing in front of the security guard. He’s checked us in, who works for Allied Security. He’s at work for Allied Security. He’s seen us before. He’s got on a uniform that says Allied Security.

I look at the security guard and I go, “Do you work for Allied Security?” He looked up at me and he kind of looked startled. He looked around. Then he goes, “Maybe.” I looked at my son, I just shrugged my shoulders. I go, “What do you want from me?”

The guy’s standing there at work, on duty, in uniform because he’s so used to yes is a trap and if I say yes, what am I letting myself in for. Happens all the time. We’re all battered with this.

I didn’t realize it as a hostage negotiator until I was really – when I was working on my book about three years ago we were working on the book, second writer I was working with. He believes that yes – getting to yes.

He said, “As a hostage negotiator how did you guys get people to say yes?” I remember being thoroughly stumped because it hadn’t really occurred to me at that point in time. I said, “We never did. It’s a useless, worthless word.” It’s so useless. We didn’t even bother with it. And we don’t. And we don’t in my company now either. We don’t try to get people to say yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so you got me hooked, engaged and curious. Then in these scenarios, like let’s say you do get someone on the phone, the question is not, “Do you have a few minutes to chat?” What is the question?

Chris Voss
“Is now a bad time to talk?”

Pete Mockaitis
Is now – that is the right question, “Is now a bad time to talk?”

Chris Voss
“Is now a bad time to talk?” That’s our number one and a close number two is “Have I caught you in the middle of something?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Then play it forward. Where does that take us?

Chris Voss
All right, so I’m going to say – I’m going to call you on the phone, I’m going to say, “Hi, it’s Chris. Is now a bad time to talk?”

Because first problem is you don’t know who I am when I call. Most salespeople – most people call, “Hey, have you got a few minutes to talk?” without identifying themselves. But either they know your voice or you’re trying to get them to say yes. You want to get them trapped into the conversation before they even know who they’re talking to.

Or a lot of people call my phone and say, “Can I talk to Chris please?” or “Can I speak to Chris Voss?” Now, none of my friends ever call my phone and say, “Can I speak to Chris Voss?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true.

Chris Voss
They say, “Hey Chris, it’s Erik,” “Hey Chris, it’s Pete,” “Hey Chris, it’s Mike.” By identifying yourself first name only, immediately you’ve – even if you don’t know me, you know I’m Chris and your tension, your anxieties come down.

Now the next thing is I want you to say no because no makes people feel safe and protected. Every time you say no, you’ve protected yourself. Having just protected yourself, the anxiety has gone away. Your mind is calm. You’re more in – you feel in control.

Consequently, while I’m talking you’re not sitting there going, “Where’s this going? What’s this going on? What’s the trap? What am I letting myself in for?” Because you already said no and you feel protected. It actually causes you to pay more attention in the moment because you feel in control. You don’t feel trapped.

Those are the first and most important things because if you don’t feel trapped, then your willingness to trust has just gone up. As I said before, we’re looking for trust and confidence. I’m not trying to trap you and you know my first name is Chris.

I’ve just built a lot of trust instantly that is now mine to lose, which I still might lose, but I’ve got it instead of causing you anxiety immediately by trying to get you to say yes, which erodes your trust factor.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Okay, so I say, “Hey Chris, it’s Pete. Is now a bad time?”

Chris Voss
Exactly. Now I’m going to answer one of two ways. I’m going to say – I’m going to go like this, I’m going to go like, “No, Pete. No, man. Go ahead. It’s never a bad time to talk. What do you got?” Now those words have just told me you have all of my attention at least for seven more seconds, but you’ve got it all in that moment.

As opposed to when I say, “Have you got a few minutes to talk?” while you’re going, “Where’s this going? What does this mean? What have I let myself in for?” I don’t have any of your attention because all of those questions are going through the back of your mind.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right.

Chris Voss
So I’ve gone into – first of all, now I’ve got 1,000% of your attention.

Now the next smart move at this point in time – you know what you want to say and you know how long it’s going to take.

Let’s say I need four minutes to lay out what I want from you. I’m going to say, “Pete, I need seven minutes,” because I want to condition you to get used to however much time you grant me, I’m going to take less so that whenever I ask you for time – Because this, “Have you got a few minutes to talk,” thing, a few minutes is anywhere from 3 to 93.

Part of what the distraction is “How long is this going to take?” You’re looking at your watch. You’ve got appointments. You’re expecting calls. You’re trying to get back to your emails. You don’t know how long it’s going to be. Interestingly enough, this not knowing how long it’s going to last is the principle psychological stressor.

Pete Mockaitis
Even like of our lives.

Chris Voss
Exactly. Of our lives, of our lives. Way back when I tried out for the FBI’s hostage rescue team, which is the FBIs equivalent of the Navy Seals. Now they wanted to put us to the maximum psychological stress. One of the ways they did that, they’d say, “We’re going for a run.” We’d say, “All right, how far are we going?” “We’re not telling you.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Chris Voss
Now each and every time we went out with these guys, they never ran us for more than 45 minutes at a time, but if you’re taking me for a run and you go, “All right, we’re going eight miles,” I’ve run enough to know how fast I’ve got to go to cover six minute miles, seven minute miles, eight minute miles. I’m going to run at my speed to cover the distance.

You don’t tell me how long we’re going, now I’m wacking out. Do I got to run six minute miles? Do I got to run seven? How far are we going?

That was – the unknown – how long is this going “to last is the psychological stressor of the history of mankind. That’s what you put people through when you say, “Have you got a few minutes to talk?” because they don’t know how long it’s going to last.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. I’m right with you there. Let’s keep this demonstration going here. I go, “Hi Chris, it’s Pete. Is now a bad time?” You say, “No, no, Pete. This is great.” It’s like, “I’m going to need seven minutes.” Then what happens.

Chris Voss
Then I say, “Alright, here’s the deal. Here’s what you’re faced with,” because first of all I need you eager to let me know I’m on the right track or to dial me in. Then I’ll say – once I’ve laid that out, then I’m going to go for no again. I’m going to say, instead of, “Would you like to do this?” I’m going to say, “Is it a ridiculous idea that you do this? Are you against doing this? Is this a bad idea?”

Again, I’m trying to trigger no. In reality I have a firm belief that – we call this a calibrated no. A calibrated no is worth at least five yes’s because once you said no to something you’re either going to take action or you’re going to tell me what you need to take action.

Case in point, my company, we just did a training in New York City about a week and a half ago, Advanced Tactical Empathy. It was a master class on persuasion. I had recently met Robert Herjavec of Shark Tank and offered a ticket to anybody from his company. He is a warm, engaging, interesting guy.

Pete Mockaitis
He sure seems like it on the show.

Chris Voss
He is. He sat down and gave me 90 minutes for lunch having never met me, only on the basis of a recommendation from a mutual acquaintance. I was blown away. There’s so many cool things about this guy.

I thought I dig this guy. I’m going to give him a ticket. Let his people taste the wares a little bit. Maybe we get some follow on business.

He’s sweet enough when I sent him the email, he says, “You know what?” He says, “How many can I buy?” I’m like, alright, so in addition to the complementary ticket, because even though he’s offered to pay, I don’t want there to be any doubt in his mind that he still gets a complementary ticket, I say, “We’ve got seven seats left. How many do you want?”

24 hours go by before I get an answer. We’re now down to four seats. This is shrinking fast. I’m having trouble getting a commitment out of him. If I get – I’m having trouble them giving me a number.

If I don’t get a number immediately, it’s going to close and I can’t let him in at all because we cap the number of people we’re willing to have in a room because we want a really individualized instruction. We charge them a lot of money to be there and we’re going to give value.

Finally, he said, “Look, I think I can spring three people.” This procrastination has gone on long enough, I’m still not paid. I got – he’s got to pay me in the next 12 hours or it’s going to close.

I sent him an email back and I say, “Are you against making a commitment for three people now?” and “Are you against paying for these before the start of business tomorrow morning?” because his company and my company are in Los Angeles. It’s about 5 o’clock in the afternoon. Clock’s working against us.

We’re three hours behind New York, the other half of my company, which means New York starts the next day before we do, which means if he doesn’t pay now overnight, he’s not going to get his spot. I’m going to feel bad because he got shut out.

I get an instantaneous email back says, “No, we’re not against making the commitment now. No, we don’t have a problem paying with you before the start of the business day tomorrow.” I get a follow on email from his assistant. They go online. They pay overnight after business hours because my no’s triggered instantaneous focus and concentration and willingness to take the next steps.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so good, so good. I’m curious about this now as well in a written format because that progressive yes stuff that you were talking about also seems to be a guideline in copywriting, which I’ve been learning about.

I’m thinking, “Oh, maybe I’ve done it all wrong.” I’ve got an invitation to enroll in a course page. The first question is something I want people to say yes to, like, “Is your job disappointing you?” From a writing perspective, would you also kind of flip it in terms of, “Is your job perfect in every way?”

Chris Voss
That’s a great one. That’s more thought provoking. That’s more attention giving. Somebody can say no to that and they’re not going to feel trapped.

Pete Mockaitis
Interesting. Is it a different kind of a trap? It’s like, “Well, no, but no job is perfect. Come on now.” I don’t know. I wonder if there’s a different kind of defensiveness that that triggers.

Chris Voss
No, there isn’t.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right.

Chris Voss
But what you’re doing is – see, we’re wired to be negative and to be skeptical. Everybody knows we’ve got the caveman brain, the reptilian brain, whatever you want to refer to it as.

That was necessary for the survival of the species because the optimistic caveman would walk by a cave and go, “You know what? I realize that last time we walked by here that Fred walked in and there was a lot of screaming and growling and he never came out. But I’m an optimist. I think this cave is going to be okay. I’m going to walk in there and see what’s inside.” Now that guy died.

Now, so the skeptics survived. That’s how we survive. That wiring is still in our head. Any new idea that you haven’t heard or if you haven’t seen it in action, your caveman brain goes, “I don’t know. I can figure out how this might go bad,” because that was necessary for the survival of the species when we were getting eaten by Saber-tooth tigers.

Unfortunately, we’ve still got that in us and we’re not getting eaten by Saber-tooth tigers. That’s why we miss a lot of opportunities because in our head if it’s new and different, we’re initially skeptical.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. You’d recommend in a sort of sales writing perspective, your headline should try to trigger a no instead of a yes.

Chris Voss
Yeah. Trigger a no or at least stay away from yes because every other swampland, timeshare salesman on the planet has already been at your target audience with their yes questions. “Would you like to live in a beautiful place for free? Would you like to sit back and let your money work for you instead of you work for your money?” All these – it’s been so overdone that people are sickened by it.

I don’t know if it’s a fair analogy, you might have a favorite food. What happens if you overeat that food and become sickened by it? The mere smell of it disgusts you from that point on. The merest whiff of this yes momentum and people are immediately turned off by it.

Pete Mockaitis
Maybe a better question for the timeshare sales would be “Do you pretty much want to stay at home every summer?”

Chris Voss
Something along those lines. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
“Well, no, I don’t. I want to get out a little bit.”

Chris Voss
There you go. Trigger no. It’s crazy. It works on – and it works on everybody.

Employee, employer. I have coached people to go to their boss when they’ve been given a ridiculously difficult task and say to the boss, “Do you want me to fail?” Never had a negative response from that.

But we always – I tell people that and they go, “Ah, boss is going to burst into flames and say, ‘How dare you? Of course I don’t. What’s the matter with you, you insubordinate, ungrateful employee. You’re fired.’” That’s what our caveman brain does to us. But it doesn’t work that way.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. Thank you. I’ve got so much I want to cover. I’m watching the clock here. Hey, it’s the principle stressor, eh? You’ve got so many just juicy teasers in your book, in your table of contents. I’m going to have to prioritize a bit. Can you share what are the two words that immediately transform a negotiation?

Chris Voss
Alright, so normally we want to make our case and we want to get somebody to say yes. The two words are not the two words that come out of your mouth, but the two words that come out of their mouth that transform the negotiation. The most transformative two words, it’s equivalent of sprinkling fairy dust on somebody, is when they say to you, “That’s right.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right.

Chris Voss
You lay – when you first hear, “That’s right,” you think to yourself, “That’s it? I expected it to be something more powerful than that. I love it when people say you’re right.” Actually, “You’re right” is what we say to people to get them to shut up and leave us alone.

But “that’s right,” whatever side of the aisle you’re on, whether you’re Republican, whether you’re a Democrat, in the last presidential election or any presidential election, if you will, when you saw the two candidates on TV, when they said something that spoke to you, that really mattered to you, that resonated with you in a deep level, you didn’t point at the TV screen and go, “You’re right.”

You pointed at the TV screen and you went, “That’s right,” because it’s a conformation words out of your mouth that what you just heard resonated with you on a very deep level. You may have made your mind up in that moment of which of those two candidates to vote for.

Pete Mockaitis
Got it. What are some of the best ways to elicit a “That’s right?”

Chris Voss
Let’s go back to the beginning. Laying out the situation as they see it, not as you see it. Then the real trigger points are when you begin to describe it not as they see it, but also how they feel about it.

A political consultant that took one of my classes said, “You know what? You think that America’s best days are ahead of us and not behind us. You’re frustrated by what’s currently going on today, but you’ve got a sense that America will be so much better.”

That included what I just said to you just now, so words about how people feel. You’re frustrated by this. Especially if you can articulate the negative emotions that someone feels in a situation. The real geniuses are, the courage – the deal – the fixers are the people that can walk into a deal and express it if it’s about them.

Another one of my students, she’s got a business to business negotiation. She’s with a big government contractor. They’ve got a small subcontractor in Washington, D.C. Small subcontractor is mad at the big contractor. The entire deal is getting ready to go down the tubes because the small guy is tired of getting pushed around. They think they’re getting taken advantage of.

She walks in she says, “You know what? You think we’re the bullies. You guys feel like that we’re a big contractor that’s pushing you around and we don’t care about your profit, we don’t care what happens to you and we’re arrogant and we’re dominating the market, we don’t care about the little guys.”

She laid about seven or eight other things out in that conversation into that first conversation, which was getting ready to destroy a multi-million dollar contract. The little guys on the other side went silent and they went, “You know, we appreciate you saying that. We need to go back to our office and talk about this.”

After two more meetings, the big contractor pulled an additional two million dollars in profit out of the deal and the small contractor was even happier. Not only did they increase their profit, but they completely reestablished a relationship with a small contractor was happy to let them increase their profit because they felt so good about the situation.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s wild.

Chris Voss
It’s crazy stuff. It really is crazy, counterintuitive stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so much good stuff. Tell me, Chris, anything else you really want to make sure to highlight before we shift gears and hear about a few of your favorite things?

Chris Voss
No, I think that’s it. If you can develop the knack for describing to people what they see and how they feel about it, you have just become an extraordinarily powerful negotiator.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Thank you. Now can you share with us a favorite quote, something that you find inspiring?

Chris Voss
Wow. I’m reading a bunch of stuff by Ryan Holiday now. The Obstacle is The Way is a book that I just put down. Effectively it’s, and I’m paraphrasing, but it’s, ‘whatever the obstacle is, there’s a secret code in there just for you that’s going to lead you to greater success.’

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Thank you. How about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Chris Voss
Another book I just finished, The Culture Code. Start’s out the book talking about psychological experiment. Four teams are challenged to build a structure out of a marshmallow and like that dried spaghetti little things.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Chris Voss
They’ve got a marshmallow and they’ve got these pieces of dried spaghetti and they’ve got tape. They’re challenged to build the tallest structure they can build. There were teams of MBA students, teams of CEOs, teams of lawyers, and teams of kindergarteners. Guess who won?

Pete Mockaitis
Kindergarteners.

Chris Voss
The kindergarteners won. Like how can kindergarteners outperform MBA students? How can kindergarteners outperform lawyers? How can kindergarteners outperform CEOs? The rankings were first the kindergarteners, second the CEOs, third the lawyers, and last were the MBA students.

Because the kindergarteners didn’t mind making mistakes in front of each other. They weren’t – they just wanted to have fun. They wanted to get into it. They wanted to experiment. They didn’t get mad each other. They didn’t jockey for position or for prestige or authority or who’s in charge, who can be the most in charge and do the least amount of work.

None of that nonsense that the vast majority of us have gotten into that they only other better group – CEOs after a while have learned like, “Look, if we don’t perform as a team, we’re in serious trouble here,” so the CEOs have come to learn that teamwork is tantamount. But the other two groups are still screwing around with “I’m right. You’re wrong. I don’t want to be embarrassed.”

The Culture Code does a great job of getting into how do you in high-performing organizations create this culture of fun because you’re smarter when you’re fun and how do you get stuff done and how do you get people to work together better as a culture.

Some of the people in leadership positions and culture positions in companies have completely turned around companies without changing any of the personnel.

There’s a great story in there, the Pixar guys who create one monstrous great cartoon movie, animated movie after another. Pixar takes over Disney. Disney’s animation department is a train wreck. The Pixar people come in and the two leaders from Pixar all they do is they change the approach. They don’t change any of the personnel.

The next thing you know without firing anybody or letting anybody go, Disney starts turning out hits again.

Pete Mockaitis
What was the practice?

Chris Voss
It was creating a collaborative practice where people felt included and not judged and supported and once feeling simultaneously concluded and supported, then they could take the hard feedback because they don’t make a great animation film without a lot of hard feedback.

They make it companywide so much so that if you take any job with Pixar and one of the great examples was this young lady gets a job. She’s the coffee barista in their café. New employee orientation, they sit you down in a room with everybody else and they say, you are a film maker now. Even a person pouring coffee in a café because they know it’s got to be a team and everybody’s got to support everybody else.

That women then ends up goes on to successful roles within their filmmaking division. She starts out pouring coffee because everybody is part of the same team and they’re all pulling on the same team together.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Chris, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Chris Voss
Subscribe to the Black Swan Group’s negotiation newsletter, The Edge, comes out once a week. It’s a real simple process to subscribe. It’s free, complementary. It’s a good price.

The best way to subscribe, these are short, sweet articles. They’re not long articles that are involved where you have to go take a nap after you’re done reading it because it’s so dense. They come out once a week on Tuesday mornings. The newsletter is also the gateway to everything we do. It’s a gateway to the training. It’s a gateway to the website. It’s a gateway to everything.

The best way to subscribe to the newsletter is send a text message. The message has got to be fbiempathy, all one word. Don’t let your autocorrect put a space in between the fbi and empathy, lowercase fbiempathy. Send that to 22828. The number again is 22-8-28, fbiempathy, all one word. You get a text back to sign up for the newsletter.

We’ll start making you a Jedi negotiator from the first article you read.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Thank you. Do you have a final challenge or call to action to issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Chris Voss
Start paraphrasing what people say to you before you answer their questions. Just try it. Try it on your low-stakes conversations. You’re going to be delighted at the outcome. As soon as you start trying that on your low-stakes conversations, you’ll have the feel to try it on your high-stakes conversation.

People are going to love interacting with you. They’re going to love interacting with you. They’re going to feel heard and understood. They’re going to feel bonded to you. They’re going to want to help you out.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, Chris, I’ve loved interacting with you and feel bonded to you. Thank you so much for taking this time, sharing the goods, and keep on doing the great stuff over at Black Swan Group.

Chris Voss
Thanks Pete. It’s been a pleasure. It was an absolute pleasure you let me prattle on like this.

Pete Mockaitis
Carmine, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Carmine Gallo
Oh, thanks, Pete. Thank you for the opportunity to help our listeners become more awesome at work.

Pete Mockaitis
I think this is going to be a really fun one. To kick it off, I understand that there’s a special creature in your life, not a person, Double Doodle. What’s the story here?

Carmine Gallo
Isn’t that the most ridiculous name? It’s a Double Doodle, which we got a couple of years ago, so his name is Rocky. He is – I don’t know why they call them Double Doodles because they’re actually a mix of three breeds. It’s Lab-

Pete Mockaitis
It’s Triple Doodle.

Carmine Gallo
Yeah, triple – it’s like a Triple Doodle. It’s a Lab, a Poodle, Retriever.  The Poodle – it gets the smarts from the Poodle and retrieves like a Lab, and it’s just a wonderful dog, but for people like me who’ve got some allergies with the animals and the pets, this is great. I get the best of both worlds. I’m glad that breed exists.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, intriguing. The name, Rocky, what’s the back story?

Carmine Gallo
Okay, well, with a name like Carmine Gallo, okay, you can start putting the pieces together. I’m Italian, Sylvester Stallone, Rocky, you know? It kind of goes back to the movie. What can I say?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. I loved the Rocky movies so much when I was a teenager. I rushed to the video store actually of all places, to rent them and watch them in quick succession. Which one is your favorite?

Carmine Gallo
Well, Pete, I’ll tell – the first one. I actually liked Creed, that last one that they did I thought was very good.

But Pete, I’ve got to tell you, in the last few years, Rocky has taken on a completely new experience for me and not just because of my dog. I wrote a book on storytelling prior to this one, storytelling in business. It’s called A Storyteller’s Secret.

I began speaking and interviewing a lot of Hollywood producers and Hollywood type of people because if you really want to understand storytelling, why not go to the source? The Hollywood folks who do it well.

Well, Rocky has the greatest dramatic arc of any Hollywood movie. Most producers will tell you that. I started looking at it completely differently. It helped me as a storyteller in business.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, you say the greatest dramatic arc, what makes it the greatest?

Carmine Gallo
In Hollywood, you need to have that three-act structure. All successful Hollywood movies have that three-act structure, which is the setup, the conflict, and the resolution. Star Wars obviously falls into that genre as well. In fact, George Lucas studied narrative and storytelling while he was writing Star Wars.

But in terms of Rocky, the man is down and out and not just a little bit. His best friends are turtles; he breaks thumbs for a living. You’ve got to start really down and then so that arc of that you’ve got experience of reaching success is even more dramatic.

Of course there’s hurdles and ups and downs, but the beauty of Rocky is that it doesn’t necessarily mean that at the end – a happy resolution doesn’t mean you win the championship. He didn’t win. He didn’t win, but his-

Pete Mockaitis
Spoiler alert for those that didn’t see the first Rocky yet. I’m so sorry.

Carmine Gallo
But as long – Pete, this is the important part – as long as the hero of your movie undergoes some sort of transformation, that’s what’s important to storytelling. The hero has to be a better person because of the experience. We can actually apply that to business very directly.

It’s really interesting talking to Hollywood types, which I actually included some of the things they talked about in my new book. I talked to some Hollywood producers and screenwriters about how to craft more compelling narratives.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s excellent. Let’s maybe back up for a second. Your company, Gallo Communications Group, what are you all about there?

Carmine Gallo
I write books. I do a lot of public speaking and keynotes. Then a third of my business is communication advising.

I used to be a journalist. I was a trained journalist. I went to Northwestern, worked for CNN, worked for a number of different media outlets for about 15 years. Then I transitioned into helping executives of all types, in all fields become more effective and more persuasive at telling their stories, giving presentations. I sort of became a presentation coach.

But since then I’ve evolved into an author of nine books and a communication advisor to some rather large brands. In fact, I like to say there is not any day that goes by when you are not touching a product or using a product or eating a product, I do a lot of agribusiness too, through whom the leaders or the business people who actually make those products haven’t gone through my workshops.

Pete Mockaitis
Impressive. Very cool. All right, so then your latest, the book is called Five Stars, what’s the main idea behind this one?

Carmine Gallo
Five Stars, the subtitle is The Communication Secrets to Get From Good to Great. In a nutshell, it’s in the age of AI, artificial intelligence, I make the argument that mastering the ancient art of persuasion, we can talk about what that means, but mastering the ancient art of persuasion, is no longer a soft skill. It really is the human edge that will make you irresistible and irreplaceable in the work place.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, there we have it. That is a thesis statement for you.

Carmine Gallo
And I’ve never been more confident, Pete. I’ve never been more confident about a book. I’ve written books on Steve Jobs and how he delivered presentations. I’ve written books on how to give a TED-style talk. I’ve written books on storytelling in business.

I’ve never been more confident that the one skill that sets people apart from the rest to go from average to transformational leadership is the ability to communicate emotionally and effectively with another person.

The whole book is really a ton of examples of people in a wide range of fields, from CEOs down to college graduates who are being promoted above their peers, who can credit directly their ability to communicate more persuasively as the secret sauce, the secret ingredient that sets them apart from the rest.

That’s the whole metaphor of Five Stars. It’s not enough to be average anymore. You can’t be average. Not even good is good enough. You have to be exceptional. How do you get there? That’s why I try to tackle.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, now you mentioned – you talk about being persuasive. I’ve been studying up on copywriting lately and your fascinations or bullets associated with the book are very on point, so it seems like you already have street credit and authority from me just by reading your book descriptions.

I can’t resist, I’m just going to ask if you directly off of there, so is this indeed the skill that Warren Buffet says raises our value by 50%?

Carmine Gallo
Warren Buffet is fascinating. Warren Buffet was giving a discussion. He was in a class, I believe it was Columbia University. This was when I first started studying Warren Buffet and persuasion and public speaking.

He’s giving a talk at Columbia University to a class of MBA students, business students. They said, “What is the one skill that you think we need to excel in the workplace?” That was one of the questions. He said point blank, “You have to develop your skill as a public speaker.”

He said, “If one of you comes to me today, I’m willing to invest like 100,000 dollars in your future earnings for any of you because of your degree,” because of your degree, Pete, right? Because they have a business degree. The degree counts for something, but then he said, “And if you’re a good public speaker, I’ll increase your value by 50% on the spot.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, there we have it.

Carmine Gallo
That’s when I started really focusing on the ability of certain people to be more persuasive, to have better presentation, better communication skills. It really does set them apart.

But I think what’s really empowering for all of our listeners today, Pete, is to understand that anyone can develop this skill. A lot of people – men and women, young and old alike, it doesn’t matter where you are in your career. I’ve met them all from Millennial to senior CEOs – most people do have a reluctance to either speak up or to speak in front of larger groups or groups of people.

It’s a very natural nervousness that we have. To the extreme it’s called stage fright, but we all are a little reluctant to be judged by our peers in a social setting. There’s an evolutionary purpose to it from what I’ve read. It’s really fascinating. But we have to kind of get over that hurdle, those nerves, and we have to really embrace the opportunity to speak in front of groups and in front of people at the workplace.

But what’s empowering, Pete, is that I have met and I have heard from a lot of billionaires and CEOs, and very persuasive, very successful people that they too had a real fear of public speaking, not just a little nervousness or being uncomfortable, but a terrible, paralyzing fear of public speaking.

That’s another reason why I like the Warren Buffet story because he’s very open and candid about the fact that when he was a young rising professional in the stock brokerage industry, he had a terrifying fear of public speaking.

He said he went to a Dale Carnegie course and dropped out of the course because he was afraid to speak in front of anyone. He finally got through the course a second time and he said that was the greatest thing that could ever have happened to him, but he had to get over that.

To this day it’s the only degree – I saw this in a documentary – it’s the only degree that he has framed in his office, above and over the business degrees. They’re not in his office. It’s the public speaking certificate. That’s why this content, what we’re talking about today, Pete, is so important to all of your listeners because it really is the skill that will set them apart.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I want to dig into that reluctance point a little bit.

I think some skeptics or those who maybe are just not into doing the speaking, the persuasion, might think, “You know, Carmine, really don’t the best ideas rise to the top? Won’t sort of the good, brilliant ideas be the ones that win while the ones that are intrinsically bad will just fall apart on their own lack of merits?” What’s your take on this one?

Carmine Gallo
Pete, I can trace throughout history – but let’s go back say within 200 years. The greatest movements of our time were triggered by people, by individuals, who had the gift of persuasion, who were better at communicating than other people.

You can go back to the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, which actually I’ve analyzed all of that and it had all of the elements that Aristotle talked about in persuasion: ethos, pathos, logos, all that.

But if you really want to get into it, you can look back at people like Abraham Lincoln, who Doris Kearns Goodwin said was a better storyteller. People came from far and wide, from villages all over to hear this magnificent storyteller.

John F. Kennedy, we would never have put a person on the moon if it had not been for John F. Kennedy being able to blend both the emotion and logic. He was a poet and a leader. There’s actually studies on that that he was persuasive and emotionally resonant.

There’s a great story that I talk about. I didn’t really know too much about this, but in the 1850s I guess people didn’t realize that infections is why people died in hospitals. In Britain there was the Crimean War and Florence Nightingale, I didn’t really know about this story, but Florence Nightingale, she was early STEM. She knew more about science and health than anybody.

She realized, “Oh wait a minute, people are not dying of battle wounds; they’re dying of infections because there’s germs in the air and they’re infecting people.” We didn’t know this at the time. She had to convince the British society at the time, who said, “Well, you’re a woman. What do you know about science and health care?” She said, “No, I’m actually certain about this.”

She was dismissed. She was completely dismissed outright by the men at the time, so she created the first pie chart.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding.

Carmine Gallo
She created this colorful pie chart way before infographics ever were introduced to actually show people visually why people were dying in hospitals. It was because of that that the scientists of the time said, “Wow, that’s pretty persuasive.”

Pete, I can tie this to almost any great movement of our time or any great experience that has transformed society, we can actually trace it back to somebody who was a really, really good communicator. There’s a ton of examples. One third of my book is history.

Pete Mockaitis
I think it’s intriguing. Now, I’m going to kind of go a little farther here with the devil’s advocate play.

Carmine Gallo
Sure, absolutely. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I would say those seem like good and true ideas. Infections are problematic. Freedom, independence is good. Maybe could you share an example of how great persuasion made a terrible idea that should have lost, in fact win and take root?

Carmine Gallo
Well, see now you’ll get me into trouble with that because there’s certainly a number of issues. You could look at politics. You could look at all sorts of different issues of our time where – and this is something that I study.

There are a lot of complicated issues out there, a lot of complicated issues in business and in geopolitics. The ability to communicate those issues and explain those issues really, really clearly is something that a lot of people really need to understand, and study, and take seriously.

Narrative, for example is being studied everywhere, Pete. Narrative, storytelling, is being studied in hospitals. It’s being studied in healthcare because we know that doctors are not the greatest communicators. It’s being studied in science because you can have a great idea as a scientist, but if you cannot persuade another person of that idea, then those great ideas get lost. That’s problematic.

In fact, over the last year, I’ve actually been contacted, I’m not exaggerating, by about five different departments within the US military, doing completely different things, but they are all studying narrative because it’s crucial to study why people behave in a certain way.

In my opinion, Pete, regardless of whether it’s in business or any field, if you can really get good at understanding narrative, I think it’s an amazing skill that will help you succeed in any industry, in any field.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well let’s talk about how that is done. In practice, how does one master this narrative of persuasion, inspiration?

Carmine Gallo
Yeah. One more thing before I forget and I’ll get into right into that Pete.

One of the reports that I read that kind of prompted me to write a book just on the art of persuasion. I read a report last year, 94% of hiring managers will say an employee with stronger communication skills has a better chance of being promoted, than an employee with more years of experience but weaker verbal skills. That’s the why. That is the why behind this book.

Let’s get into, well, how do you do it. Well, one is to recognize that persuasion is something that actually does come naturally to us. Storytelling, for example, is a big part of persuasion. That is something that is innate in us. It’s part of our DNA.

You may have heard about the history or the science of it, but there’s a lot of science now, which shows that the way we connect with one another is through storytelling, telling anecdotes, telling stories about one another. That’s the best way of transferring ideas from one person to another. This has actually been shown in the lab with neuroscientists I’ve talked to.

But it comes naturally to us. We are natural storytellers, Pete, until we get into the business world. Then all of the sudden we open something called PowerPoint, which is – I have nothing against PowerPoint per se. I’ve actually seen beautifully designed presentations.

But it is one of the least effective ways of transferring an idea to one another, especially using bullet points, which is why you never saw a bullet point on a Steve Jobs presentation. He used a different presentation software, but you never saw bullet points. He had an intuitive feel for story and for narrative.

This is something that very much comes naturally to us. What I like to do and I think this has been very effective in terms of helping people through this because I know how abstract this could sound, Pete. Storytelling, narrative, persuasion, it sounds so abstract. The formula was handed down to us 2,000 years ago. We know how persuasion works. We know it. Science proves it.

We know it because 2,000 years ago a really smart guy named Aristotle gave us the formula for persuasion. He said in order for me to convince you of anything, I need to do three things. I need to have three things. He called them appeals. You may have heard about these before and so have your listeners, but it’s worth repeating.

One is ethos, which is my credibility, my integrity. Before you interviewed my, Pete, you went online. You kind of looked at, “Oh, he’s got nine books and here’s how well they’re doing.” That’s my credibility. That is part of who I am before I even enter a conversation.

Then I need the data. That’s what Aristotle called logos. I have to make a logical argument for you to accept my idea. I need to deliver data and information and facts, like the one I just delivered to you, the 94% of hiring managers. I need to do that as part of my persuasion toolkit.

But without pathos, which is making an emotional connection to you through the power of story, then the other two don’t matter.

I have studied TED speakers, for example. I’ve studied the most viral TED talks of all time and I’m pretty close to the TED conference too. They know of me. I know them and I’ve worked with different TED speakers. The best TED talks are the ones that blend all three.

If you want to be persuasive, ethos, we can set that aside. That’s just establishing credibility for who you are. That’s your resume. Those are your credentials. But you have to be able to use facts, figures, data, and logical reasoning in order to convince your boss or your team to accept an idea or to take action for an idea.

But what I have found, especially in the great TED speakers of all time, 65% of their presentations fall under what Aristotle called pathos, which is story, emotion. You have to have a right balance.

Pete, when you walk into any conference room in corporate America today and you watch a standard PowerPoint presentation, it’s 99% data, 99% logos and only 1% maybe pathos. It needs to be more of a balance. I argue a higher element needs to be emotion and story followed up by the data.

It is hard to get across to people because I think people are just – I’m not going to say they’re not courageous, but I feel like they rely too much on the data because they think that they’re being more persuasive that way, where really the smartest people and the people who are the most successful in the fields very much use a combination of both emotion and data.

I can give you a perfect example of that if you’d like.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess I do want to hear that example. It’s true I’m thinking about some of my favorite TED talks, like with Amy Cuddy, hearing her journey of transformation, like she didn’t think she was good enough and then oh by the way, if we look at the cortisol levels in blood after engaging in power posing and they are different. It’s like, oh, well, there you have it. It’s kind of hard to argue with the data.

Carmine Gallo
Pete, let me stop you there. Perfect. Amy Cuddy, Harvard researcher. Perfect.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Carmine Gallo
All right. I’m going to stop you there. Do you remember any – she had a lot of data in that TED talk. Do you remember anything? I’m going to put you on the spot. I’d love for you to ….

Pete Mockaitis
I think there was a bar chart that – I don’t remember the specific numbers, but I was like, “Whoa, that’s definitely quite the drop,” was what I remember.

Carmine Gallo
Yes, but what’s the first thing you remember?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, she had her story associated with she felt kind of outmatched in the academic environment, like maybe she didn’t belong there.

Carmine Gallo
Pete, you just confirmed the thesis, which neuroscientists are concluding in the lab. You and I as human beings are wired for narrative, are wired for story. It is the most effective way of recalling information that we have. It’s the most fundamental verbal tool that we have in our toolbox.

Pete Mockaitis
When you talk about courage maybe being the missing element. I guess, okay, I’m going to put myself in the shoes of someone about to give a presentation to let’s just say a vice president of a corporation with tens of thousands of employees.

Carmine Gallo
Let’s say confidence. Maybe confidence more than courage.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess I’m wondering – I guess it’s a little spooky one to buck the trend of the norm of what you see all the time and two if you start and say, “Pete is a customer in Chicago, who purchased our product and Pete was having some difficulty opening the packaging.”

I guess I’d be a little concerned that the executive there would be like, “Do you have any idea how busy I am? How about you get to the point right away so that we can make this meeting shorter and I can continue generating gobs of shareholder value?”

Carmine Gallo
Oh, Pete, we can handle that one too.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s do it.

Carmine Gallo
Okay. Everything falls under storytelling, but let’s be clear.

When I talk about storytelling in business as a way of setting you apart from your peers and everyone else, it doesn’t mean necessarily, “Oh, I’m going to tell you a personal story,” or, “I’m going to tell you a story about this persona.” It simply means using the elements of persuasion, and story, and pathos, that we know work.

Here’s another element. Remember at the very beginning of this conversation we talked about Hollywood movies. All successful stories, whether they are books, movies, plays, or presentations have a structure, a formula. There has to be the setup, the conflict, the resolution. There’s no successful Hollywood movie that actually doesn’t really fall in those three buckets.

It’s a formula that works throughout all of time. They’ve traced books back thousands of years. There are hundreds of years. The stories in the oldest books follow this formula. It’s not something that we just made up. This is how the brain works.

If you’ve got ten minutes in front of your boss, you can think of that story structure. It doesn’t have to be a particular story. It can simply be the structure of narrative.

You can start with, “Here is where we are today. Here’s the status quo. Here’s what our company’s dealing with today. Here’s the hurdle. Here’s the problem that is manifesting itself or the problem that is going to come up if we don’t handle this particular issue today. Here’s what the world, our industry, our company will look like once we’ve handled the issue.”

If I’ve got ten minutes in front of you and I have to make an argument for something, I’m still going to be thinking in narrative structure, Pete. I’m not going to spend ten minutes telling you this amazing story of somebody whose life was transformed by a product because you’re right. My boss is going to say, “You’re wasting my time. I don’t have time for this fluff.”

But I can still grab your attention by saying, “Here’s the state of our company today. Here’s a conflict that’s happening and this is going to cause a lot of problems for us. Here is the potential solution or maybe three solutions that we can choose from. Here’s how the world, our company, will look after either of these is implemented.”

I’m still using a narrative structure. I can also use metaphor and analogies. Warren Buffet is a big fan of this. This goes back to Aristotle as well.

When Warren Buffet talks about something complex, like financial strategies, he’ll often use a metaphor. He will compare the abstraction to something concrete. Metaphor has been found to be, again, one of our most effective verbal techniques.

But that still falls under Aristotle’s pathos or emotion. Aristotle gave us these formulas thousands of years ago and we can use them today to really stand out in any field.

Pete Mockaitis
In terms of the three part evolution there and the storytelling arc and pathos, you’re seeing that even if you’re not telling a quote/unquote story insofar as an individual did a series of events and this is what unfolded, it’s still a story if you start with, “Here’s where we are today. Here’s the problem and here’s what it looks like if we fix it versus don’t fix it.”

Then I guess for the logos, you’re just sort of laying out the data associated with it, like, “We’ll lose 43 million dollars if we don’t fix it,”

Carmine Gallo
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
So that’s sort of like it’s integrated into that pathos arc.

Carmine Gallo
Pete, “We will lose 43 million dollars if we don’t take this action,” that is the logos. Then I can follow that up with, “Here is an example or an anecdote of a company that was in our similar position and did not take action,” that’s the pathos. That’s the story.

You’re still using the elements of narrative and everything we’ve learned about connecting with people emotionally, but you’re just simply putting it into an abbreviated form.

Pete, this is a big deal. The ability to speak – and we can move past storytelling – but the ability to speak concisely and clearly in ten minutes – ten minutes is actually a good rule of thumb – is something that very few people have but everyone can build on it.

I was at – and I wrote this in the book and I had to be very careful about what I said, but I felt pretty good about it. Last year I was actually invited to kind of a secretive Air Force base in the middle of the desert. It was one of those –

Pete Mockaitis
Is it where they have the aliens, Carmine? Come clean right now.

Carmine Gallo
It was close to it. It was close to it.

Pete Mockaitis
You saw alien corpses over there.

Carmine Gallo
I was actually asked by a very – we’re not going to call him secretive, but it’s a very elite group of Navy and Army officers who are the top 1% in those particular departments. They are dealing with – they’re the ones being trained to deal with some of the most sensitive global issues of our time.

I went to their class. I actually sat there for about four hours listening to this class. They had one of my books as their required reading. They were dog-eared. They were looking at them in paperback. It was all marked up. They’re actually using one of my books. I thought it was fascinating.

Then near the end of it I said, “Why? Why would they need this kind of book for the most complex issues of our time?” Pete, I’ll never forget what the instructor said. They said, “Carmine, when these officers graduate this program and they go into the Pentagon or the White House or they go all over the world, they will have sometimes ten minutes to make an argument.” That’s it.

Why should we take this direction over another one? You have to be able to tell your argument, make a persuasive case in as little as ten minutes, but wow. You would think there would be a little bit more debate about some of these issues. But you understand where that’s coming from.

I think that’s something – I’ve heard this in business as well. Andy Grove at Intel, would give you ten minutes to give him a presentation.

People would go in there with these stacks of PowerPoint slides. They were ready to talk for 60 minutes and he said, “You’ve got 10. If you cannot express your idea in 10 minutes, clearly, succinctly and in a compelling way, I’m not interested.”

You see, Pete, it really does get back down to this idea that whether it’s through the elements of persuasion, the elements of narrative, or simply the ability to communicate your idea concisely and in a way that engages both my emotion, and my reasoning, and my intellect in a short amount of time, that’s a pretty powerful skill.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is. I want to make sure we get to hit two quick tactic tidbits right before we shift into hearing your favorite things. First, these fascinations, so compelling. What is the brain hacks Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, and Picasso used to unlock their best ideas?

Carmine Gallo
I think you got that from one of the chapters of the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Well yeah, I’ve got to know. It’s here.

Carmine Gallo
That is a fascinating brain hack. I’m sure you’ve come across this before, but it’s the idea of getting out of your industry and looking outside of your industry for the most creative ideas, so connecting ideas from different fields and applying it to the field or topic that you’re working on today. That is the secret to creativity, to kind of jumpstarting your creativity.

That’s why people like Steve Jobs, if it wasn’t for Steve Jobs, you know this story.

But if it wasn’t for Steve Jobs taking a calligraphy course in college without any indication that it was going to be used for anything other than just a creative outlet, if it wasn’t for that course, we never would have had this beautiful font and typography and desktop publishing that we have today because he brought it into the Mac.

He did this all the time. I did a lot of research on the Apple store. The Apple store was not inspired by another computer store. An Apple store was inspired by the Ritz Carlton. It’s fascinating. That’s why they do not have cashiers, but they have a concierge greeting you at the front. That’s why there’s a bar in the back of every Apple store. It doesn’t dispense alcohol; it dispenses advice, called a Genius Bar.

That’s a fact because I learned it from some of the top retailers who worked on the Apple store. This was the genius. The genius was looking outside of your field for inspiration. You have to be able to kind of follow your passions, follow your creativity and trust that something is going to connect.

Walter Isaacson goes into it in his book, Leonardo da Vinci was surrounded by people in Florence who were not just painters and sculptors, but they were artists and they were merchants.

Just by being around people who were outside of his little echo chamber, today we call it an echo chamber, Pete. We surround ourselves by the same like-minded people, who think the same and act the same.

Instead you have to kind of get out of your zone and start talking to other people and reading things that you wouldn’t otherwise read and traveling to places you wouldn’t otherwise travel because, and scientists have told me, that is the best way of getting your brain to think completely differently and creatively about problems that you’re working on.

That’s why Lin-Manuel Miranda came up with Hamilton only after he picked up a book that he rarely would have read, which is a history book on Alexander Hamilton, and went on vacation to read the book. That’s when the ideas came to him, not when he was sitting in front of a computer screen.

The best ideas, the most innovative ideas in the world in almost every field, actually happen, there’s a lot of science behind this, actually happen when people are outside of their field. It’s so fascinating to me.

But the reason why I put it in a book on persuasion, Pete, is because those people who can think outside of their field and can bring in different elements from completely different fields and associate these ideas, are much more interesting communicators.

I’m sure you’ve seen that too. People who read a lot like Bill Gates, a voracious reader, they’re interesting people because they are looking outside of their field for inspiration. Would you agree with that Pete? What do you think?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely. It’s cool I was just at the new just insanely gorgeous Apple facility on the Chicago River there, downtown here. It was so funny. I didn’t even know exactly what we were stepping into. Once we got there-

Carmine Gallo
I haven’t seen it yet.

Pete Mockaitis
It was like, “Whoa, what is this beauty I’m beholding?” Then you go down the stairs and you say, “Oh, it’s an Apple store.” I didn’t even exactly know what activities transpired in this Apple sponsored building. It was really cool.

Carmine Gallo
I’ve actually never seen that store yet. There’s actually a really, really good lesson here, by the way, for all of our listeners. Steve Jobs asked better questions.

When they were creating the Apple store. He did not ask, “How do we sell more computers?” That was not the question he wanted answered. He asked, “How do we enrich people’s lives? How do we enrich the lives of every person who walks into a store?”

That’s why the Apple store looks the way it does because he asked more empowering questions. Really interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
That is excellent. Now I’d love to hear some of your favorite things. Let’s hear a favorite quote, something you find inspiring.

Carmine Gallo
I actually came across a quote that I heard in a TED talk last year. I’ve been using it a lot and I put it in one of my chapters in the book. It’s actually by Gary Kasparov, the chess champion who lost to IBM computer. Remember that? A long time ago.

He gave this incredible TED talk that – and it inspired me to write more on my book. He said there’s only one thing or “There’s one thing only humans can do and that’s dream, so let’s dream big.”

Pete Mockaitis
I do like that. Thank you.

Carmine Gallo
Oh man, I love that because – that’s where I realized there is a human edge here. There is a way for us to outsmart the smart machines that we’re building, but it requires us getting back to what we do best, which is making those emotional connections to each other.

I love that though. It’s like that’s true. There’s only one thing we can do and that’s dream. A machine can’t dream, so we might as well dream big.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome, thank you. How about a favorite book?

Carmine Gallo
Okay, I read about 75 books a year because I write a lot for different platforms. My favorite recent book is the same book as Bill Gates said is his favorite book of all time and that’s Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now.

You may have heard of that Harvard psychologist who has 500 pages of evidence as to why we should actually be very, very grateful for the life we’re living today because we’ve made so much progress in every measure of living, which is pretty amazing.

But it’s a hard book to get through. There’s some wonderful passages, but it’s 500 pages of data. There’s not a lot of pathos going on there.

My favorite category, Pete, recently has been those kind of progress books. There’s Hans Rosling’s book is called Factfulness. I would start with his. I would start with Steven Pinker’s book. I’d also read a Swedish historian named Johan Norberg who wrote a similar book. There’s a number of books in this category. I call them progress books.

But I’ve got to tell you, Pete, after reading about five of these books in a row and speaking to three out of five of the authors, you’ll never complain about anything again. Pete, it’s weird.

I won’t complain about a delayed flight. I won’t complain about being in a long line in Costco. Because you look around, you realize, wow this is – never in the history of civilization have I been able to access this much food in one place or get from here to where I have to get in a few hours. Yeah, you get to a point where you actually you feel so grateful that it’s hard to complain.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s awesome. What a transformation and a value to install a permanent upgrade of gratitude inside you just by reading five books. That’s a good trade. Very cool.

Carmine Gallo
We need that. All of your listeners need that because if they want to set themselves up as leaders and as people who aspire for more, especially in their career and workplace, they can’t think like the average person.

These books will teach you that there is a bias psychologically toward the negative, which is why it’s so easy for all of us, Pete, to go negative. But if you want to be a great leader, you’ve got to stand out. You’ve got to see things for what they are and you have to be much more positive. But it takes a little work. It’s actually kind of hard to do, to reframe everything like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hm. Could you share with us a particular favorite resonant nugget, something you share that really seems to connect, get retweeted, note taken profusely?

Carmine Gallo
Yeah. I wrote this two books ago. I wrote a book on the TED talks called Talk Like Ted. I made an observation that in – I go back to Steve Jobs, I know I’ve mentioned him several times – but one of my first communication books is about Steve Jobs, so I know a lot about Steve Jobs and Apple.

At the end of his last major public presentation, again, he asked an empowering question. He said, “What makes my heart sing?” He said, “It’s the intersection of technology and liberal arts that makes my heart sing.”

I actually used that question. I said this is a great question to ask ourselves because if you ask what you do, then it’s pretty factual. It’s pretty unemotional. “Carmine, what do you do?” I’m a communication advisor or an author.”

Then if you ask, “What are you passionate about?” which is a very good question to ask and I ask my clients that all the time, “What are you passionate about?” you still don’t get a really deep response. I can say, “Well, I’m passionate about communication skills.”

But then if you ask, “What makes your heart sing?” then all of the sudden you get completely different reactions from people. For me what makes my heart sing would be to help people with ideas that can potentially change the world, articulate those ideas in a way they get heard.

When you ask what makes your heart sing, you can try this with other people. I do this with clients all the time, Pete. In order for me to really elicit the best communication messages, and the best presentations, and the best stories, I ask people what makes your heart sing. It’s very interesting.

But anyway, that is a portion of one of my books that actually gets retweeted and posted on Instragram quite a bit. I saw how it resonated with people. I didn’t know that at the time. I just thought it was, “Hey, that’s a cool way of looking at the world,” but it seems to resonate with a lot of people.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I like it. I’m going to try it out and see how that plays in opening conversations with people because I think it can get right to some fun stuff quickly.

Carmine Gallo
Oh, use it as one of your questions. Yeah, I can’t wait to hear what people say. Use that as one of your questions and you’ll see that their answers are unexpected, very different than what you would think.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Carmine, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Carmine Gallo
CarmineGallo.com is going to be the easiest way to get ahold of me or remember me. It’s a good Italian name, so it’s kind of hard to forget. But CarmineGallo.com, that’s where you can join my newsletter. You can learn more about all of my books including the new one.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, and do you have a final challenge or call to action to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Carmine Gallo
The final call to action is understand that you have an edge in the workplace. You have the ability to be irreplaceable and irresistible if you master the ancient art of persuasion. Ancient being critical because it’s a formula that we know works and we know how it works, and we can prove it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Thank you. Well, Carmine, thanks so much for sharing this time and expertise. I hope your book, Five Stars, is a smash hit. Good luck in all you’re up to.

Carmine Gallo
I hope so too. Thank you very much, Pete. I put a lot of work into it and I’m very optimistic and very confident about it. If people want to just learn more about that, they can just look it up, Five Stars. It’s sold everywhere or TheFiveStarsBook.com. But you can also get it through my website, CarmineGallo.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect.

Carmine Gallo
All right. Thank you Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
David, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

David Okuniev
Pleasure to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to get into your perspectives, but first I want to hear a little bit of your back story in terms of you had some time playing in some bands and composing songs. What’s the story here?

David Okuniev
Yeah. Well, I guess I didn’t start my career as an entrepreneur. I actually started as a musician. After I left school I chose to study music. I did a course called Commercial Music, which is kind of a combination of music engineering, music performance, and I guess music business.

It was around the time in my first year of university that I kind of, I formed a band with some friends and we got signed up by at the time – well, the first record company to sign us up was Arista Record, so at the time – I don’t know if you remember that record label. They famously put out Whitney Houston’s first record.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, all right.

David Okuniev
So we got signed up by those guys and then actually the person that signed us up Arista moved over to Sony Records to be the president of Sony Records in London and he moved us over. We ended up recording that album under Epic label.

We put it out there. We had kind of limited success to be honest. We went touring around the country. I was doing it for about three – four years, we’re kind of keeping the band kind of alive, but essentially didn’t really get where we wanted to go. Then the band split up.

I ended up pursuing a bit of a solo career by myself, trying it. I was what? Twenty-five at the time. I just locked myself in my basement and started making music by myself. Actually some of the best times in my life in that period of time.

But at the age of 26, I fell in love with a girl from Columbia and I ended up moving to Columbia with her and I just gave up on music at that point. That’s when I started getting into design.

I’d always been doing a bit of design for the band I was in and I was always like a keen – I just loved to build stuff, so it was only natural for me after kind of leaving music to say, “Okay, I’m just going to kind of give this design gig a proper shot.” I set up a small design agency in Bogotá in South America. Yeah, that was kind of the start of my journey towards an entrepreneurship.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. I’m glad to hear that the music lifestyle, the travel, and the sex and the drugs didn’t overcome you and you’re able to use your faculties still to build cool stuff.

David Okuniev
Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess I had to earn money. My choices for music in Columbia was like writing jingles so that’s kind of not what I wanted to do. But, web design sounded like a decent gig. I could pick my hours and do what I want pretty much.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, I’m pleased as I’m sure many, many other Typeform users are pleased that you chose to invest your energies into building this project here. Could you orient us a little bit? You’re a co-founder, a joint-CEO, a product designer behind Typeform, which I think is just the niftiest. But for those who aren’t familiar, can you orient them a little bit? What is Typeform?

David Okuniev
Basically Typeform is a tool that allows you to collect information from either your employees or customers in a more human and conversational ways.

Think with your customers and your employees there’s many points where you need to ask information from them. Typically you use a web form to do that. We have kind of a new take on the web form whereby we think questions should be asked one at a time and feel a bit more like a conversation and look beautiful. In other words, we help companies build forms actually.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and I am a customer and a believer. What I find so cool about Typeform is that it just – well it does more – it is more human. It’s more pleasant. I feel a little sense of – I’m sure you’ve studied this amply, your team, but I feel a sense of reward if you will as I enter each piece. I’m like, “Oh, I making progress,” as opposed to, “There’s a never-ending form and I am just bombarded by it.” Yeah.

David Okuniev
A normal form is like an interrogation. If someone came up to you on the street and asked you questions, they wouldn’t start reading out a list of questions. They’d go one thing at a time and they’d try to get you into a flow. It’s the same thing with a web form. Why ask a million questions in one bang? You want to go progressively forward.

Pete Mockaitis
I would imagine – do you have any cool data on this in terms of – I would imagine if we go sort of side-by-side against an alternative solution, that you would see impressively higher completion rates … versus another.

David Okuniev
Yeah, we have what I call the smoking gun metric, which is our completion rate, well, median completion rate floats around 57%, which is significantly higher than what we’ve seen other players in the industry reporting.

What I usually say is that with Typeform you can get up to four times the completion rate you’re getting with a normal form and it’s just down to good UX mechanics and just making the user feel like he’s on some kind of journey or some kind of process.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Well, I used it to collect input for the Do I Stay or Go course and I did have healthy completion rates, higher than I was expecting and I think my expectations were established with using alternative options, so thank you. That was a real treat.

I’d love to get your take then when it comes to surveys, and you mentioned earlier when we were setting this up that you didn’t even consider Typeform to be a survey …. Can you tell us more about that mindset you’re in?

David Okuniev
We actually see ourselves more as a system of engagement as opposed to a system of records.

We’ve never invested heavily in analytics in our platform. We basically – we focus very heavily on just getting that data off people and then we expect you to map that data into your existing system, so integrations is a big player for us.

A lot of our users just put their data straight into Google Sheets and then they do their analytics on that side. We do provide some basic analytics and the ability to see your data on Typeform, but essentially it’s more a plug-and-play kind of system.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, you’ve done a great deal of thinking associated with the human side of this and what makes it engaging, what makes it conversational and the proof is in the pudding. Wow, four times completion rates. That is smoking gun like.

Tell us on our side if we’re using Typeform or heaven forbid an alternative means of collecting this information, what are some of the best practices in terms of getting the best possible input from folks that we’re trying to learn from?

David Okuniev
Sure. The Typeform format itself is a best practice of like going one question at a time. People really do respond better to conversation as opposed to interrogation so that’s the first thing.

What I usually say to people is try and be yourself. Given that this is a conversation, you don’t have to treat each question like a label. You can be friendly, use relaxed, non-business language to get familiar with your respondent.

Let them know at the start also how long it’s going to take for them to fill in. If it was a survey, just hold them by the hand. Tell them that you’re with them and you can also share with them some insight into like why there’s benefit for them to take part.

One other thing is definitely don’t ask too many questions, especially in a survey where actually most of the benefit is for the questioner. Obviously the more questions you have, the higher the drop off rate is going to be.

Then, as far as other best practices with the Typeform format, try and use images and videos and animated GIFs just to keep rewarding the user as they go one question at a time. Take a break in your questions to make a joke or give some piece of information. Just keep it conversational as much as possible right through to the end.

Pete Mockaitis
I like the point there where you said show how the survey respondent is benefiting. Could you give us some examples of that because indeed it does seem like the questioner is the one reaping the rewards. What are some examples of benefits that the respondent can be having as well?

David Okuniev
I guess it depends on the use case. But if it was a survey and you’re surveying your customers, just bring them close, try to get them to empathize with the fact that you’re trying to improve their experience through the survey. Sometimes you just want to offer a full on reward at the end, like I’ve seen many lead generation forms where they offer some kind of prize at the end.

Just lead them with something to start off with. But if you just say, “Hey, here are my questions. Please answer them,” people aren’t going to be that inclined to answer. The more you can do to just tempt them into the questions, the better you’ll be off.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that, the straight up reward incentive is cool. I’m thinking I’m about overdue for a full scale survey of listeners, but I did it previously and it was handy.

I think sometimes there’s a bit of an intrinsic motivator in terms of, “By sharing this information we’re better able to give you just what you want,” or “that which is going to be the most relevant to you,” or “You’re helping thousands of listeners get content that’s all the more applicable and delightful for what you’re up to.”

David Okuniev
Yeah. Well, I mean in your case you can also offer them some kind of bonus episode, maybe something that you’ve – I don’t know. I don’t want to tell you how to do things, but maybe you could do like a digest of all the best conversations that you had with the people on your podcast and then put that as a downloadable at the end of the Typeform.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh that’s handy because information does not have a variable cost associated with it the way gift cards or other incentives may.

David Okuniev
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. I’d also like to hear, what are some of your favorite questions, items that have just proven again and again to be super helpful for you and for Typeform users?

David Okuniev
I don’t know about whether they’re my favorite, but I come across an article recently and I thought it was a really nice way to do an NPS. It was a bit of an alternative way of doing it.

But basically it’s a very short survey with three questions, which would give you a really good kind of barometer in what your customers are thinking about your company. As I mentioned, it’s basically an NPS survey, but the structure is a little bit different and it has a little bit different angle to it.

The first two questions are kind of qualitative and the last question is quantitative like a typical first question you ask in an NPS survey. I actually wrote this down here. The first question was, “What is the first word or short phrase that comes to mind when you think about business?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like it.

David Okuniev
That’s the first qualitative question.

Then, “Tell us about the time when our business exceeded your expectations.” Actually you could ask them also like, “Tell us about the time when the business did not exceed the expectations,” as well. Then thirdly like, “I cannot imagine the world without our business: a) strongly disagree, disagree, not sure, agree strongly, agree.” That’s kind of like the NPS question, but a bit kind of alternative.

I really like those three questions. I think they really give a good kind of insight into how the customer is feeling.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting, “Imagine the world without it.”  I think that speaks to – I really like it when for better for worse, something breaks with the email and then – but when I get listeners say, “Hey Pete, for your Ten Days for Winning at Work series I got the days one, two and three, and then five, but where’s four?”

It’s like, oh boy. They notice and they care enough to follow up, so imagine the world without it is resonating in terms of that means something.

David Okuniev
… It’s kind of a good question because it gets the user to use their imagination. It’s kind of a ‘what if’ question, which I like.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. That’s cool. I’d like your take as well when it comes to if you have a bunch of responses, you said you’ve deliberately not gotten too into the analytics game.

David Okuniev
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
But those who do, what are some of the best things they do with abundant data. Because I think that’s just the worst thing is like, “Hey, we did a huge survey.” “Okay, that’s cool.” “Here are some bar charts.” Okay, noted.” Then that’s it. What was the point of that?

David Okuniev
Yeah, I guess it depends what you’re looking at, like the qualitative or the quantitative data.

Like I said, I’m no expert, so full disclaimer here, but if you get a lot of qualitative analysis and usually that’s where you really can dig the trends out of what people are saying, but to do that you need to kind of run a proper analysis.

There’s an analysis called the thematic analysis, where you look for common codes or patterns in the feedback. It’s actually one of the most common forms of analysis in qualitative research.

What it does is it emphasizes pinpointing, examining, and recording of themes of these codes within the data. It’s actually simple to use and it’s pretty good for novice researchers. It’s not like an advanced thing. Just Google it, thematic analysis.

I also pulled out a couple of books for broader qualitative research. There’s one called Introduction to Qualitative Research by Uwe Flick. Don’t know if I pronounced that well, sorry, Uwe. Then there’s something that’s a bit more in depth called Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook by Matthew B. Miles and A. Michael Huberman. Yeah, so check those out.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, well any other thoughts that come to mind when you’ve got a bundle of inputs that have come your way and you can do the thematic analysis, anything else that is just a smart move in terms of, “Okay, now that I have a bunch of these responses that’s going to inform and equip me in some key ways?”

David Okuniev
From my experience, I like to look at the qualitative data and try and draw a conclusion and then draw action points. Just create a list of the major takeaways, the major things that I would need to do in order to change some of the opinions.

If you’re getting a lot of negative feedback, try and group that feedback together and then from that you can draw out some solutions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, sure. Well, now then could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

David Okuniev
Yeah, I’m a designer, so I always liked this quote by a guy called Paul Rand. He was the guy that designed the IBM logo. It’s a famous 1960s designer. He famously said, “The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design because that is what it lives with.”

I think there’s just an opportunity to improve things all the time because people are just used to seeing stuff which doesn’t really work or kind of doesn’t look right or doesn’t function right. There’s just always opportunities around to improve things in everything. Just as a designer I find that exciting. It’s like an unlimited ocean of possibilities to improve on.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

David Okuniev
I don’t know. But I have a favorite book.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Let’s hear it.

David Okuniev
Yeah, it’s actually not to do with entrepreneurship, but I think I really kind of get my escape through a writer called Bill Bryson. … you’ve heard of it. He’s a travel writer. He’s a guy that has a really interesting take on the world and he just documents his travels around the world.

It’s just – it’s really hilarious. It’s the kind of thing that if you’re on a train, you have to be careful not to laugh out loud. Definitely would recommend that for anyone that’s into travelling.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. How about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

David Okuniev
Well, part of my time I still design, so Sketch, which is a great kind of vector graphics tool for UI and web design. I use that all the time. I just love it. Couldn’t live without it. There are other good tools out there as well, but I’ve just kind of stuck with that one.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Do you have a favorite habit or personal practice of yours that helps you out?

David Okuniev
Yeah, I mean as a person I’m pretty impulsive, kind of a daydreamer as well. What I kind of do to kind of ground myself is I like to play the drums. That’s kind of my meditation. Try to get like any aggression out. It’s also a very good way to kind of study something that’s pretty regimented. Yeah, that’s one thing I do.

I take plenty of walks. Also, just in work things like try to avoid having too many meetings in a closed room. Also, just taking someone out, like back to going for a walk, like taking someone out for walk for a meeting is usually more productive.

Pete Mockaitis
Is there a particular nugget that you share with folks that really seems to connect and resonate with them? They’re nodding their heads in agreement.

David Okuniev
Is there a particular-

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, a particular thing that you say often that folks really say, “Oh yeah.”

David Okuniev
Yeah, I often find myself repeating that creating a good product is like origami because in origami every fold that you make counts towards the final output. If you miss a couple of folds, then that’s going to affect the following folds.

Actually, the quality of a product is a collection of really well executed tiny details. If you don’t look after those little details, then your final output isn’t going to be as good. Yeah, Typeform, I’m always kind of banging on about looking after the details as much as possible.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. If folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

David Okuniev
I Tweet not that often. We have a really good blog at Typeform, where we share a lot of information on conversational data collection and just general entrepreneurship, so check out our blog, www.Typeform.com/blog.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

David Okuniev
Yeah, think about the user first. Don’t think about the success that you want for yourself. That isn’t output. Try and really solve a problem for people and as an output you will hopefully have monetary success, but it shouldn’t be the input.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well David, this has been fun. Thanks so much for sharing this and keep on making Typeform so delightful as it is.

David Okuniev
Cool. Thanks.