Hi I'm Rob Hirschfeld, CEO and co founder of racket and your host for the club 2030 podcast. In this episode, we have our quarterly book club meeting, in which we select a business book, and then we discuss it for the session. This time we picked never split the difference by Chris boss, which is about negotiation, fascinating book and something near and dear to all of our hearts, because we are all entrepreneurial in some way and have to deal with selling, which you will hear us talking about quite a bit. The book is fantastic, a high recommend for me personally. And I think we had a very vibrant discussion about it, which I especially enjoy. And then we're gonna go in the last quarter in the fall, we'll actually talk about a related book that we brought up, which is the two Buck rule. And that was also mentioned in this book, great conversation. If you haven't read the book yet, you will get a lot out of the conversation anyway, and possibly motivation to buy it. If you don't vote it. Go, no, you will enjoy the conversation.
I'll tell you from many other vendors that I've talked to the last probably two or three weeks, whether they're, you know, OEM technology plays, or ISVs, I guess. One of the things that all the sales guys that I've talked to all the managers of sales teams, and whatever, not only is the cycle longer, and you know, it takes more to get to yes, but for whatever reason. Product lead growth is not working for them anymore, which I find is ironic. And the reason that it's not, is because we're at this inflection point in transformation, where we're entering the second wave and the second wave is not driven by technology, it is definitely and call it my glory, and validation that this has always been a value play. Right? What is the business benefit you can get to me today, and strategically longer term, I can't invest any more in stuff that will solve a problem without it solving five problems. And that's also to the point that I made earlier about lead. So you have to shift your marketing just a little bit to be a higher level value proposition. Because the product lead is the how you do it. It's not the why or the what's in it for me, or the what's in it for the organization. It's you have to up the game to the strategic level, which is a conversation you and I had about a year and a half ago. And I tend to be foresighted. So
we've we've been making adjustments along those lines. It's not that you can't, you don't also have to do product lead, because the product has to work. But you have to you have to be bringing outcomes into every conversation from that perspective. I've definitely I've definitely seen. And actually, I think this is an interesting transition point to talk about the book. Sure. So because I think I think this idea
of are you guys doing that? Do I need to like if if I'm missing should I go to the Google Docs or? Yes, the
Google Docs has the has the calendar in it. Okay,
all right. Sorry for interrupting that's fine.
So it's always that and then it'll have links to the books and things like that. So the book is Chris Voss is never split the difference. And actually I'll I'll share some of Diana's feedback because I thought it was interesting so it's it's he's a ton of hostage negotiation strategies where splitting the difference would is literally, you know, choosing people to explain, you know, sort of negotiation process and her comment was, you know, she she found it interesting, she read it twice and liked it. Um, she will she will say, is that a hold on? I'm gonna actually read her quote, because I think it's fascinating. Not one thing I learned in the book has ever helped me win a sale.
And that's ironic, because tactical empathy, which is the thing you know, the key one of the key takeaways and I made some notes of there's like eight key takeaways. Tactical empathy, I think would help you close a sale really, really well because you're validating the person's feelings. And we all know that decisions are made subconsciously by emotion long before they're conscious and logical.
I agree with you, I found this book very helpful from a sales perspective. And in part because like I have Sandler Training, which is, you know, things like, you know, take not being upset when you get a no understanding that you often have to get to know before you can get to a yes, anyway, and that you learn a lot from a No, all of those are core lessons out of this book.
And now you're doing the active listening and Mother uring.
mirroring each other Mirroring is a big is a big, big, big takeaway. And just like, helping repeating what somebody said that back to them is so powerful, silly.
But you know, you have to be careful with it. Because you do it all the time, as you're having the conversation. You sound like a parrot. And you're perceived as being less than credible. Because all you're doing is regurgitating their words with your own twist.
So you're saying that you sound like an LLM?
In eating Yes. Yeah, the same thing as as I think also, my number three takeaway from the book was labeling emotions. You can't really get away with that. You can defuse tension with humor. Me, it's with chocolate, as you know. But that notion of labeling emotions, II, I don't want to think for you and I don't I think it's pejorative. Oh,
I think for someone I have, I have used this technique since reading the book a lot. And I found it incredibly powerful. When you say it seems like you are upset because it's you're not. You're not telling them you are upset, which I do find inflammatory. If you say, seems to me, like you're upset. You're, you're, you're describing your feet, your observation about their feeling. And that can then they'll then either yes, and then you've moved forward, or they'll say, No, I'm this. And they've moved, you've managed to discuss move, move the conversation to an emotional place.
The standard technique to like when dealing with upset kids, you label their emotions to get them to get out of the cycle of like, they're upset because of a and then he's making them upset. And
everybody, this is John, John, he, you know, I, like dive in. I tried to get here on time, but But you know, when we were doing all that burnout research, we had bought, and I'm not even sure what book you're talking about. I love this idea of sort of labeling emotions. But I remember we was in Vegas and event and we brought in the suicide hotline, person. And you know, one of the things she said that there's a misnomer about that you think is somebody's going into trouble. If you mentioned the word suicide, they might commit suicide. This is actually just the opposite. He said that, like what they found is if you actually say, Are you committed to thinking about suicide, it opens up. Again, I'm not a psychiatrist, or psychologist, so be very, like not giving advice. I'm just getting what I heard. But he said that, it gets like, oh, you understand my feelings? And it was really enlightening to me. Because, you know, because I wrote that article a few years ago, and people have sort of, in some cases come to me is sort of a lightning rod for whatever. You know, I've often thought about that. And you know, where before that conversation, I would have never had somebody would call and they said, John, you know, they'd be in tears and, and you know, and I would like try to skirt around what I was really thinking anyway. So I think that labeling idea was like, it's an empathy thing, right? It is,
I think, if you haven't read the book, which is the difference by Chris Voss, okay. It is like 30% of the book is about how how to do exactly what you just described very succinctly. Oh, yeah, build build empathy. As part like this, a lot of times we're very focused on I need to sell I need to negotiate and what people do is they miss the whole conversation about what? How are you going to what's better for you? What are you doing? You know, how does this improve what you're doing? What problems are you facing? And that that empathy is actually a core part of success in sales.
You know, I tend to hardcore stuff Shut up after this. Have you read the book, how to teach your kid to ride a bicycle, or you can't teach a kid to ride a bicycle at a seminar? It's by the Sandler Institute. And it is the best book on selling, because it's basically that same kind of concept of that you don't sort of like brute force them, you literally draw them into, hey, you know, we got this, I think you have a problem. I think we have a solution. If you're hearing me, right, your problem is like this, if I if I'm wrong, and you know, sorry, I wasted your time. And you literally draw them as opposed to I'm trying to cheat you out of money. You know, more of a like a, you know, if you really do have this problem, I think we understand it, and I might have people that connect, you know, it's it. It's one of the best, you know, sort of life books I've read, be honest with you. And so
I'm gonna order this, this is out of love since I took Sandler, and it was one of the most impactful Oh, I did.
It's incredible. That whole body of work is off the chart. And so
yeah, and this also puts into light. Why our people fight, and rightfully so find cold calls, or just like direct emails. So off putting is that I mean, sometimes did try to build empathy, but they're completely off the off it like, they're just making a guess. And then they're not listening to you just direct sale.
What am I finish learning she from that book in a friend of mine, who was the greatest salesman ever known, the first thing he taught me about selling, which was when you call somebody, the first thing you say to them is now a good time. And that is so powerful. And it's powerful in multiple ways, because more often than not, if they don't know you, they'll say no. But you're like, Okay, is there another time, and then they give you another time you call me say, Is now a good time. And they say no. And by the third, and this is really a gamification from selling, by the third or fourth time they feel guilty. And they literally take your call, but in general, the idea that you would just call somebody blue and assume that they're going to drop everything to talk to you is so arrogant. You know, again, that comes from Sandler Institute mentality as well as
well, I think the, you know, maybe I didn't express it well, but I think the thing that I found about the way he described labeling emotions of, it seems like your feeling, to me comes across as very pejorative, and somewhat rude. Maybe that's just because of my background, I tend to say to people, you know, other people that I've had this conversation with have been, and describe their emotions, or how they feel about something, and it tends to be less in your face more nuanced and more subtle. And then they go, You know what, I would agree with that. And then you're putting it on a third party, because you're not, and you're not taking the impact directly if you're wrong. And it also gives them an opportunity to voice their own opinion, in their own words, without you kind of like me pulling it out of them saying, I think you might be feeling like this. I actually had somebody say to me, not long ago. I like the fact that you didn't make an assumption. And I think we're living in a time where people are very sensitive about you making assumptions for them. And I think a lot of that has to do with, you know, their fear their FOMO about AI. You know, think with me, don't think for me, and when you do it in voice as a human being. They're even more, you know, standoffish about that. It could be just the people that I'm speaking to but so I tend to rather throw it on the third invisible party and get the reaction that I want to get from there. But the he does a good job of telling you of saying do it, but he doesn't do a good job of telling you other ways to get the person to sing what they're feeling.
And this is where the study of rhetoric actually comes in very handy. Because um, I should not have studied this. So, they are essentially a rhetorical figures are, can be classified by the appeal to either recent emotion or, or character or morality. So these are logos, pathos, and ethos. And it's been well known in vertical circles like this goes back all the way to play, though, that appeal to emotion has the strongest effect when trying to convince someone?
Absolutely. So one of the things I found really fascinating this book and loved, sadly, was not until near the end was this idea of when somebody says That's right. Like this, this trigger of being in a situation where you've heard them enough, you've mirrored back what they said, and they say, That's right. Like, I have observed since doing this book, both when I do it in a sales situation. And when, when, when the person I'm talking to because sales isn't just like getting somebody to buy, it's discussing something with your own team. Right? A lot of a lot of these, these things are much more about, you know, hey, I'm working with my kids, my spouse, somebody, and you know, getting the empathy to hear what they're saying. And it is universal, that somebody when you've been able to explain their point of view will say that's right back to you. And it's, it is everything he described, it's like this, you know, you can literally change the path of a discussion, when you've listened enough to say something and have the person come back and say that's right for
you. Well, you know, into clay Schafer, right, like, he's a dear dear friend of mine. And, and for years, he annoyed the heck out of me, because he never agrees with you, even when he does agree with you, you know, so I mean, there's a meta point there, and he does it to learn. I, when I finally figured that, I mean, I love the guy, ideally, anyway, right? But, but like, he was like, the annoying brother that you know, and then one day I realized, you know, he was talking about how he took the bait in high school in college. And then I realize Andrews about learning and if he agrees with you, you know, and then the only other thing that Sandler has, is, you know, to what you were saying, Rob, one of the things he talked about in the Sandler Training, and I think it's in the book too, is that, that you immediately get to that this is a team this is like, if you agree, you have a problem. If you think that I might have a problem, you know, that you start like a conversation like, Okay, before our next call, I need you to do these three things, and I'm going to do these three things. And you're sort of working together as a project, you know, and it really sort of changes the whole, you know, the dynamics of that, you know, like, where to hey, you know, I'm sorry, I only got to have the, you know, the, the customer you're trying to sell to he's apologizing to you now.
I think I think that that's an important insight in the book. It's really interesting, because you're, you know, one of the things he says that's, that's helpful, is he's like the people capturing hostages don't actually, there's an interesting story in here, because the script had been people capturing hostages don't want the hostages, they want something else. And so, so from that perspective, the negotiations were, you know, figuring out something that both people wanted so that you could move things forward. And there's an interesting story, the telson, the middle of when the what people wanted was the media exposure, and the chaos of, you know, being in a in a shooting situation, you know, they so they, you know, all these things are hostage negotiations or things like that, but he said, you know, gave examples of times when somebody doesn't actually want to share it outcome, their their outcome is martyrdom. But understanding that also was was useful. And it's so it's a really fascinating story to use. In business finding, finding that shared outcome for somebody and get in getting to it is really helpful conversation as I'm thinking about ways I'm gonna have the refreshers, always good. The
the place where this may have an incredible impact on me was when I had to do negotiations, big negotiations in Japan, with with NTT and KDD and you are immediately struck by the fact that many off many times, you have to know what is a legitimate or an acceptable expression of agreement or disagreement. And in particular, disagreement. The worst possible thing you can do is put a person on the other side of the table into a position where he or she has to say no. If you saying no, you have lost face. So you absolutely. So you come to a conclusion where Ah, okay. In those conversations where you're trying to find the, you know, the right jointly held, you know, path forward, you, you might suggest the path forward. But you also offer as an alternative, an escape, right? You give them you give the other person the exit, which is a signal, I took the exit, ah, that was a no, I can't do that. And I mean, the list goes on, but when you start dealing with those kinds and, and Klaus is reference to rhetoric melee I, I studied it as well. And so, that became a very, very important part of the way I interacted, whenever I was doing any kind of business, I had to really super adjust my situation, whenever I was doing this in Japan, and came to understand exactly, not quite to the same extent. But anytime I was dealing with large companies from outside the US, and I had to deal with them, especially on data communications, or some some aspect that was a technical issue or an economic issue. I always had to kind of think through and put myself in the other on the other other side of the table and do as much as I could to understand what was proper etiquette.
I think that's one of the only things I found missing in his book. It's a very, and I keep saying this to you guys over and over again. And I don't need to be disrespectful at all. It's a very American centric point of view, to your point, which I have found that I've worked in six different countries, I have always made it my point, to know the cultural norm. Before you ever enter any kind of a meeting, I don't care whether it's a negotiation, or just, Hi, this is who I am or who we are, if you don't take the time. And but I think in North America, even that state by state it differs.
And company.
And that to company, by company, I mean, you know, I, I think a perfect, very quick anecdote, when I used to go to the West Coast, particularly if I went to Seattle, and then into California, because I was coming from the East Coast. And because I was coming from Canada and Toronto being what it is, people didn't understand. So yeah, I heard every hockey joke. Yes, I heard disparaging comments, like, Do people really live in igloos and whatever, whatever, whatever, you know, all the BS that goes along with that. But consistently, the first three or four trips that I would make to the same customers or the same companies, it was like, you probably want seafood. Do you know what it's like to to understand that a person cannot eat seafood six days of a week. It's ridiculous. But I on the other hand, would bring things, you know, to them to understand that, okay, they're making that assumption, because of where I come from, food wise, and a lot of these meetings or dinner or lunch or whatever. But I, I felt that the West Coast mentality of business is absolutely different than the East Coast mentality of business. And if you were in middle America, or the south, especially the deep sells, you have to keep adjusting over and over again. So for all his stories in the book, The point that I'm getting to is, I admit that not in his context description, where does he bring the cultural aspect into it? Like, does he just mentally do that, but he didn't mention anything about it. And I think that's part of the underpinnings that we all have to learn as we apply the techniques. I don't know if anybody else felt the same way.
I feel Like, you're entirely right, and there's the the empathy and rapport piece is a big is a big component for what what he was saying. And one of the one of the things I think that is interesting is, I think he mentioned this in the book, but it's definitely, people get uncomfortable about it. And it's very helpful to acknowledge when you don't know and ask right to say, you know, instead of assuming that you've watched seafood the whole time, they say we do, do you have a preference we have, you know, like, like, we don't ask enough, you know, we, and I'm guilty of this, too. We don't ask when we should.
But even there, even there, and by the way, the reason I brought that up, was because I found it was missing in the book, because I thought the book is really, really very good. But that was one part where I just kind of said, No, not my experience.
When you are asking, sometimes, you have to know how to ask, or at least how to interpret the answer. Because you can't always get a completely up front. This is the situation answer. Even if you've established trust, they know what, you know, one another. There are there are
there are rules, there are rules of the road, and you have to know which side to drive on. So it
can it can be very, I'll give you a concrete example from my wife, we were we were going to a pancake breakfast. We're both gluten free. She's very gluten sensitive, meaning celiac. And, and was like, you know, should we bring our own food? Or will you will you have gluten free options for us? But the challenge with that question is when they say yes, then you have a whole bunch of follow up questions about, you know, contamination, isolation, all this stuff. And so it was an it was an interesting negotiation. For her to be for her to ask the questions and drive down away that actually not to, are you going to, you know, are you going to cross contaminate. And the end of the story is we're bringing our we're now charged with the gluten free option, which was a fine option, which is a fine outcome. But there's an even in something as simple as, as that. There's somebody saying, yes, that's thing I want is not the answer. She was looking for her the answer she was looking for is, if you're doing gluten free options, are you? Are you worried about celiac? Or are you just putting, you know, putting a checkbox on the list, you're
describing my life, my wife is not a celiac, which is pretty allergic. And my son's friend is a celiac. And, you know, I mean, we've gotten really good now picking questions, but me and my wife were in India a few years ago, and you want to talk about him battle? To get her like, in anytime we go to a foreign country. It's just it's incredibly different. You right? You'd like celiac, my son's girlfriend? Like, yes, is not an acceptable answer. You know, and
because of the negotiation process, you get into a, they say, Yeah, you know, they give you a yes. And that's, that's not actually in that. So you're pushing back on a yes. Which feels really weird, ya know? And so it's an interesting, I had a Kelly, check. Same, same, it's hard. And it's very hard to negotiate my
best. Yeah, I mean, I basically, you know, I'm over the whole. Not so much the etiquette of it. But I learned my phrases of saying, Listen, I need you to know that I'm extremely peanut allergic, as in it's a life or death issue. So if I ask you something about it, it's because I'm really stressing to you, this is a life or death issue for me. Right? And then they kind of take it seriously. And I'm not sure if you want to go to that extreme, Rob. But it does work. If you tell them there are serious health repercussions. But I find it's the same that I think people need to become more culturally aware. And maybe that's just a personal perspective, that the background of the person that you're talking to, does make a difference. I will tell you, I had a situation yesterday with a gentleman who I had no way of, well, I looked him up. I did every bit of research that I could on the individual. And it turns out he was a Palestinian halfway through the call, he called me a cake. Wow. And I said to him, What did I do to provoke you to say that? And he goes, You didn't have to I was gonna tell you that from the get go because you're Jewish. But I thought there are a few expletive deleted was in many languages I could use right now. And all I said to him was, I hope that works for you. You know, if you want to be hateful human beings, okay, I hope that works for you. Yeah, but
the three medications or anything else? And you're describing it, but he's at that point, you're like, is it possible? It's not even possible for you to get on the same page? This is?
Yes. It's not, I don't want to compare the severity of this. But it's also it's I mean, we see that with like, the don't want to work with startups mentality, there's this massive bias against you, and some folks can overcome it, and some can't. So where I'm getting to is trying to uncover the the level of that bias. And if, if it's there, then I know I need to move on quickly is,
is that I wanted to bring up his comment about black swans. Another very thing I mean, that's, in a lot of ways, there's a blind, you're describing a black swan here, it's something that had nothing to do with the topic that you were talking about, or the relationship, but it became, it becomes a impossible to address issue that you needed to know you needed to know, you discovered something about him, hopefully, he's not important. You know, there's, there's, you can just close close the book. And that's it. But
actually, he's a VP of it for a major corporation in the US that I have done business with in the past. He's new in the job and maybe a year and a half. And I, I had two ways to go. I finally very late last night, and this was part of my way I was wandering around the house and stressing, I sent a letter to his boss quick email saying, Listen, I am, you know, I'm trying to disassociate, but you need to know that this is what the individual said to me, not because I'm looking for some repercussion, or, you know, like other than an apology. But if this is his attitude, you need to be careful with people he that are not only collaborative inside, but outside the organization as well, because this is not good for your brand. And I got a response that probably seven o'clock this morning saying thank you for letting me know, I'm terribly sorry, this happened bah, bah, bah, blah, what can we do? And I said, it's up to you, you know, you want to have another conversation where it's a different individual involved, no problem. But frankly, I would prefer never to speak to this individual again. And if that means losing you as a customer, so be it, you know, but but, Tyler, to your point, there's a quick and dirty way to figure out whether you're going to end up in that situation. Ask them if they have a risk mitigation policy as part of their procurement process, about, you know, we don't give more than x amount of revenue or 25%, or whatever, whatever to companies your size. If you ask the risk mitigation question as part of the process early enough, fine, you'll find out very quickly whether you're barking up the wrong tree. Well, you know,
my approach is probably too direct, but it fits my personality, which is, you know, there's some time during the first meeting or two. I may just ask them straight up, you know, so are you comfortable working with small companies like ours?
Yeah, I mean, I know that experience has been you don't find that out? Until your until your way down the road for procurement?
Well, no, not really. So. So if if if the buyer in it or in marketing or wherever, if they're not comfortable working with a small company, you're not you're not going to make progress. So you've actually got you you've got to get through procurement. Absolutely. But you got to get through
that that's a that's a that's a that's a you know, when did you stop beating your wife kind of question And but no, it's it's, it's it's the kind of question that you know, if you say it that way, very, very few people are going to be willing to be as upfront and kind of say, you, you can ask the question in different ways you can get
away with it. Yeah, absolutely. Not saying that. I always ask it now, okay. But that's how I asked it if I think they're not comfortable. And I just want to validate that and move on to the next opportunity.
I've done about 10 startups and operating. So I this is something I've lived very dearly. The real question or that? I mean, I think the point is absolutely spot on. But the question is, understanding if the person you're dealing with understands the procurement process for a small non vetted company, that's absolutely the way sound smart. Because a lot of those people are your champions. Like they're the ones that found you and reached out to, and so you want to mature that and you want to you don't want to give them any negatives, because you're trying to blossom their ability. And you know, are they an influencer? Do they understand, but the point you have to get to reasonably fast in my experience is, will you get through procurement? Is there a channel and there usually isn't a big company? Is there a channel to get through procurement for small companies, and sometimes they're there in primes there are? You know, yeah, so but anyway, yeah, but I think that's a really good point. Tyler, I think it was. And yeah, it's super situational,
right? I mean, that the case that's top of mind that just happened with me it was because we had somebody on the, in the buyer team that had a bunch of objections around small companies that were unvoiced, because I had locked up other folks in the team that when they went away, I had not handled those objections. But then I go talk to the to the other contact, and he's like, oh, yeah, now we had that conversation about, you know, you know, creating escrow for your code base, and, you know, mitigating all the small company risk, and he didn't really want to listen to it. I was like, Okay, well, right. You know, that's, you know, I guess what I was, so the bluntness piece, like, if you're in a if you're in a situation where you have this individual that has been introduced to you through a trusted third party, whether it's in the customer company, or external. Our you've got to be able to figure out what their propensity is, you know, I'm sure most of you guys heard this story, when we were in the Coca Cola bridge community here in Atlanta, back in 2017. And this, it was a competitive process where you pitched and they picked us out of law, they picked 22 startups out of about 250 that applied. And then the idea was for them to 12 Fortune five hundreds ponied up money for this program, so that the bridge community could broker conversations between startups and buyers within the enterprises.
To me, this is this has
got to get them on point. So we were at, at the garage and midtown next to ATDC. And there was a group of about 25 Different Coca Cola IT executives in there. And so we came in to talk to him, and at 1.1 of the people said, you know, this is just, this is kind of a waste of time, because I'm not going to put my job at risk to buy from a startup said that in front of us and the whole world. And I'm looking at all the Coca Cola IT guys nodding their head going Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. So that, yeah, I mean, you have to just constantly qualify that and and get them to voice objections around small companies, because if you get the relationship with them, you can start to turn their attitude around. But oh, my God being a small company has so pot it's so hard to triangulate on all of the different folks in the buying group across your whole sales pipeline. It's not
the buyer or the group of buyers, just statistically has gone from in large companies from 17 to 25. In the last year and a half, and in mid tiers from eight to 15. And in small business, it doesn't really matter. Are they're all going to voice their opinion?
You know, I agree. Do I know it's crazy. And by the way, Joanne, like, if I knew who that company was with that person said that too, I would never do business with them. Carte Blanc, you know, I'm not saying I'm a saint, but I have 000 tolerance for any form of racism or discrimination. You know, especially as you get older, it's, maybe it's a little easier as an old person. But, but, but the point about like, the strategies, or I was just what a start up that went wrong last year, right. But in like one of the agreements I had with the founder, which was, I was literally working with a friend at JPMorgan Chase, who was involved with converting all of Oracle RAC to Oracle rds. Right. And so I had a conversation with him about automated governance, and it was the thing I was working on. And you know, and I know him well, but he said, John, it's gonna be hard. I'm like, Shawn, don't worry about that. You know, he'd always go back to like, how hard it's going to be to sell in JPMorgan Chase. I'm like, I know that. Like, let's focus on solving a problem. Like, if we can solve this problem, then we'll grow that other teams will see it. And in my knucklehead CEO came in and just started talking about ELA A's, and scared the whole, my friend cut us off. Because he literally went to like, how are we going to sell when the point is, those people know how hard it is to sell. I mean, hopefully, it's useful, because I've learned this over the years. They know how hard it is to sell, you have to pull them away. Maybe this is part of the book I haven't read yet. But you have to pull them out of every time they start leaning towards that. You pull on back to like, no, no, and this is classic.
Yeah, no, that's that. Is there is a part of the book about Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, ya know, about, so you have to, it's putting them into a outcome, it's really an outcome focused approach. And so part of what you need to do, and this is part of where the black swans come into, which I felt like this, I understand the naming but you need to understand the moat there motivator that might be tangential, or or below the surface for, for getting things close, right, like for you what you do with what you were doing with the governance piece, right, the fear of an audit, or the lack of information, right, that that sort of fear this is back to Sandler understanding the fear based, which I didn't like any better, but it's the accurate way to say it. If you want to pull them back into what those things are, the thing that was fascinating about about the book is that he he did a really nice job, saying, part of what you're building empathy to do is actually listen well enough to figure out what those what the what the real issues are for them. And so that's that, Jonathan,
to John's point, you know, the person with whom you're most likely to be working after the after the first meeting, is arguably going to be the person who has to be your champion. So basically, what you're, you're putting yourself into is a situation of how do I make that person successful? How do I reduce the barriers for that person? In getting to it? And, you know, is there another, you know, am I aware of all of the other agenda that are, you know, involved with the with the decision to go with my company and my dialer? I you know, well, I know, John and Tyler both, you know, the small companies, early stage, it's always an up is always an uphill battle.
To get one more common in real quick response. One of my defining Twitter moments is when Taleb called me an idiot on Twitter. Like, it should be a poster on my wall.
Do you have that frame job everybody in
it? He called Simon Wardley an idiot to send I'm like, Ah, man, now it isn't good as I thought it was.
as sort of a speed round. I'm interested just from you know, yes, no, there were there are two techniques that he added into into the book that I that I've I've used that I think are useful. One is odd numbers, or overly specific numbers. And that they're that they have the appearance of being less mobile than round numbers, and then the idea of artificial deadlines, so creating urgency to move a negotiation I found both to be very helpful, but
Yeah, we're always looking for the precipitating event. And whether whether that individual cares about it
I think the odd numbers thing I've used, I liked his, the way he used the framing of the story and the storytelling aspect, which is, you know, a me thing anyway. But I actually dropped odd numbers into a story.
Oh, interesting. Okay. And
that worked really, really well. It really did. Because people don't expect it. Nobody expects your, you know, your cost to be ending in a seven. That's true. And somebody has actually said to me, Well, why is it a seven? And I said, because it's halfway between five and 10. So no, but it's to his point about, you know, you go you, you have to make someone feel like they're gaining something in the negotiation is 6575 85% thing that, oh, you've just created a little win for them. It's, it's that kind of a trick. And I don't mean to trick in the literal sense.
It's, but it's it, I think it's easy. And this is goes back to one of my other favorite books, which is Dan Ariely is predictably irrational, is right, you know, you do we fall into certain modes of thinking, and the book, a lot of ways was entirely about getting out of, you know, traditional modes of thinking. So I thought the title was actually really good, really appropriate as a reminder, not perspective.
It's just you buts thing.
I'm a Well,
is it two butts rule is is actually a concept. I mean, the book is by John Walpert, it just came out literally just came out. But never split, the difference actually has the concept of the two but rules and how to use a two bit rule. Or, but you know, your first fight is to gently object A, you know, contrary to what someone is saying. And your second one is to move them more towards your point of view, in a very nuanced sort of way, how you pivot it,
we're gonna have to think about that more and review it, I definitely, definitely have the two boat rule in the in the reading list for the fall. Right. So
I can get him to come and talk. Oh, that would be wonderful.
I would absolutely love that. And next week, we're going back to the compliance def curve, to spend some time thinking about the math leading into that. And then the 15th we'll look at the AR VR application, you know, revisit that, hopefully Apple computers or the new Apple face computer will come out and we'll have some have some feedback. I'm not on the list to buy one. But
either Am I
actually, John Gruber, who does Daring Fireball and and the is involved with strategic theory and some others has been working with vision Pro for the last week. And he's he's an apple pundit. And he had a very good podcast this last week with I think it may have been on stratigraphy, or maybe it's on their 15 minute, dithering. Talking about using using the vision Pro, and probably worth worth listening to.
Wow, I am so happy that we added these book club discussions into the cloud 2030 Roundtable. I really enjoy the material that we bring in and I really really like people's hot takes on this. It adds such a dimension to the book to have the real salt of experience into them. And then also think about what the what what was added by the author. hope you will join us our calendar doc, it's a Google doc has our schedule what the next books are. Please come in read the books be part of the conversation. We really enjoy hearing the extra voices even if you haven't read the book, you will have something useful to add to the discussion. I will see you there you can find out more our calendar, past episodes and things like that at the top through dark cloud, we'll see you there. Thank you for listening to the cloud 2030 podcast. It is sponsored by rockin, where we are really working to build a community of people who are using and thinking about infrastructure differently. Because that's what rec end does. We write software that helps put operators back in control of distributed infrastructure, really thinking about how things should be run, and building software that makes that possible. If this is interesting to you, please try out the software. We would love to get your opinion and hear how you think this could transform infrastructure more broadly, or just keep enjoying the podcast and coming to the discussions and, you know, laying out your thoughts and how you see the future unfolding. All part of building a better infrastructure operations community. Thank you