The Neuroscience Of Negotiations With Former FBI Negotiator Chris Voss

0:00Hello, everybody and welcome back to Life Negotiations. My name is Lousin Mehrabi. I'm a Professional Negotiator and as you know by now I always bring you fascinating Professional Negotiators. I just had a conversation with the one and only, the legendary, the author of the famous book, Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss. Chris is a former Head of Hostage Negotiations for the FBI.

0:24He was the only Lead International Kidnapping Negotiator for the FBI. He is today the CEO of The Black Swan group where he shares his negotiation techniques with the world. We had a fascinating conversation about everything negotiation, about how aligned we are, about the importance of emotional intelligence in negotiations. He shared fascinating stories that he had, tips, and tricks. It was a wonderful conversation

0:49that I'm happy to share with you now. Enjoy. Hello, Chris. Hello. Welcome to Dubai. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time for this interview, and welcome to Life Negotiations. My pleasure. What I love about what you say is "everything in life is a negotiation." Right. And as a Negotiator, I'm trying to convey that message and teach people how important it is

1:14to use negotiation skills in everyday life. But how far do you think it goes? This aspect of everything is a negotiation. Can you elaborate? Yeah, well, anytime the words that I want, or I need are either in your head or coming across your lips. So the person that you're talking to says that you're going to negotiation.

1:37Most people only think negotiations are when money's involved. The commodity is money. That's a negotiation. But in point of fact, the commodity first is time. Collaboration, I want a cup of coffee, I need you to speed up the project. It was a couple of years ago when I was in Los Angeles, I was telling this young lady, she said, “I work for Sony, and we sell the rights to my job is you know, we sell the rights to songs to movies.”

2:11She says there's no negotiation there, there's a price on songs they tell us. And either they get it or they don't. And I thought oh my god, like, alright, so somebody calls up to try to get a song. And they got a bad tone of voice. Does the person that take that call, lose their request?

2:35Or because they didn't like the way they asked? Do they put the request on the bottom of the pile? Or maybe because they like the way they asked, -They put it on top? Or maybe they walk it down the hall? Because the mail's not going to be picked up for a day? Can I walk it down there right now?

2:52You know, so it's performance. And if you look at it like that then very few things that aren't negotiations. So how come you think people then still don't know the importance of negotiation? And they still believe you know, it's about salary, or it's about this and that? I don't know. I think like everybody's teaching negotiations

3:14has been trying to get people to rethink negotiations for a very long time. The book's probably first really started coming out, "Getting To Yes", which probably came up in I don't know, maybe in the 1970s 1980s - it's been a long time. I think one of the problems with "Getting To Yes" is it's intellectually flawless.

3:37But it's like trying to learn a language by reading a dictionary. There's nothing wrong in the dictionary, but it's just hard to apply because it's academically perfect or it's intellectually flawless, but people are not academically perfect or flawless. So there's the academic books out there. Well, then there's, you know, Donald Trump's "The Art Of The Deal" Which tells you a lot more about him

4:08than a lot of people really realize, like, I read that. I was in New York. So I was, you know, back then he was a business icon I was very interested in and I learned a lot about him. We actually ended up with mutual friends, went to the same church.

4:24And I thought the book was enlightening about him. Like he talks about when he owned the Plaza Hotel. He likes people who could handle him. So he owned the Plaza Hotel, he took over, and it talks about the story and he's starting to micromanage the guy running the Plaza Hotel. And he realizes he shouldn't do it but he doesn't care cause he wants to micromanage So the guy comes back and then wants him to make every decision, Instead of fighting him on the decisions he's trying to make,

4:54The guy goes "okay, what kind of towels you want?" You know, "what kind of tissues do you want?" "What kind of flowers you want?" He comes back to him for every decision. And then Trump finally says, “You know what, stop bothering me, just run the place yourself.” And he tells a story out of respect

5:08for the guy that understood how to deal with them. So anyway, that was one of the first books on how to negotiate for the real world, you know, normal people, not academics. And so then that's why I think, you know, my book is really about how to negotiate for regular people using emotional intelligence, simple phraseology that anybody could use.

5:30And I think that's helped. So if you look at the very first books that came out, and then you have the FBI method, where, you know, people like you and Gary Noesner really helped spread the word of okay, this is how the FBI negotiates. And then we go to the Harvard method, again, written by academics,

5:48what do you see as the main differences between all these models? My Harvard colleagues, I have a tremendous amount of respect for and they are really, really smart people. But a lot of philosophers, academics, they come up with a theory, and then they look for instances in the world that fit their theory. And the true line really isn't there,

6:12or we refined The Black Swan Method. Because the students we taught, we made them use it in real life. Like we didn't have them do simulations, and tell us how it worked in the simulation. We said take this to work. One of my students in Georgetown once had had the manual from the class next to him,

6:38while he literally negotiated a billion-dollar deal on Wall Street. And he kept referring to his notes from the class. And he negotiated the billion-dollar deal. And then we had him write about it. And so we refined it in the real world. My Harvard colleagues, they have all their students do simulated negotiations, so that people are negotiating when they don't actually have skin in the game. And the other thing is, they'll sit down for one conversation

7:09and try to seal the deal in 45 minutes. That's the one thing that I learned when I went through their course. They had us doing simulations every day. And every student loves simulations, and you feel like you got a lot out of it and you do. But in looking back on it, I realized we'd only meet one time

7:30and we'd only give it 45 minutes. And if wherever we're at 45 minutes, like, all right, we got what? “Okay, let's, you know, it's close. Let's be done.” Because if we didn't, we felt like we failed. Yeah. And in real life, real life, three interactions, 10 interactions. Yeah, you don't even know how long you have. 30 minutes, 90 minutes, six hours –

7:52-six months -six months. So that's a totally different laboratory that the real-world laboratory is different than the artificial laboratory. And so everything that's in that in the book, I take a hostage negotiation skill, and then I had students prove it in the real world. And then they come back and tell me about it.

8:12And so we proved it in the real world. So as long as it's real-world, then whether it is the FBI method that you use The Black Swan Method or any method, and it's in crisis negotiations, or in business negotiations, as long as it's the real world, do you then see more similarities between those? Yeah, exactly. Because then, and you mentioned Gary Noesner,

8:35who's was my boss and mentor. But on the way over here, he's, I've had a number of mentors. I probably learned as much from Gary as I did from anybody. I learned a lot from Gary. I used to call him after he retired because I'd find phrases that he taught me coming out of my mouth.

8:58Really? And I call him on the phone and be like, “Man, you infected me, man.” I'm saying the same things. Now, you said to me four years ago, but the decision making in a crisis and decision making in a business deal, if it's a human, it is the same. What am I afraid of losing? How does it affect how I see myself, my identity?

9:18What does this mean for who I am? And really, what more what am I afraid of losing is the biggest driver of all human decision making. It's not the only driver. But the biggest driver of all human decision-making is what am I worried about losing and as soon as you wrap your mind around that

9:38you can get a read on anybody in any situation. Okay. As you know, in life negotiations, I pull the negotiator to a personal story. Because what I'm really interested in is how can we use negotiation skills for everyday situations, for everyday life, especially when we're facing adversity. So would you be willing Chris to share a story where you had a personal loss or personal failure or personal difficulty,

10:06that knowing how to be a negotiator helped you solve it? Well, as much as knowing how to be a negotiator and also the negotiation somebody used on me when I was working on a case in the Philippines, the Burnham-Sobero case, which was a train wreck from end to end, Guillermo Sobero was murdered by the Abu Sayyaf about three weeks and the Abu Sayyaf killed a lot of Filipinos along the way and brutal and a brutal fashion and in ended about 13 months later,

10:35a botched rescue attempt. There were three hostages left after 13 months. Two Americans Martin, Gracia Burnham, and a Filipino female named Ediborah Yap botched rescue attempt. The Scout Rangers didn't even know there were hostages in a camp, they just assaulted open fire. Martin Burnham was killed. Ediborah Yap was killed and Gracia Burnham was wounded too in the leg and lift

11:00and is still here to this day. I maintain an acquaintanceship with her and her children. And when that went down, I happen to be in the US. And like it had been it had gotten ugly. And we were just wondering how was going to end because the bad guys want to stay in disarray.

11:21None of the agencies were cooperating. I mean, it was a mess before that happened. And then I got the call. About five o'clock in the morning. I'll never forget that the negotiator and countries that have got bad news. Martin is dead. And he teed me up with that perfectly. You know, he told me bad news was coming.

11:42He waited about a half, a second, and a half. You just let me brace myself. People are resilient if you let them brace themselves. Emotional pain, physical pain. A podcast I listened to all the time. Now, Andrew Huberman was talking about this on his podcast, said if a doctor says this is going to hurt.

12:06And then he jabs you. You handled it. If he jabs you without telling you, it's horrible. Or if he says, this is gonna hurt and then he waits 10 minutes. Yeah The wait is excruciating. Emotional pain, physical pain, same thing, let a person brace themselves, but don't linger. And they can handle it. And that's what Kevin did when he called me,

12:33got bad news. Martin is dead. It was a personal low point for me at the time. And I had but I had to brief everybody in US government on another side of the world. I started making phone calls. And first I called my bosses at the time, and Gary was still there, I got bad news. Martin is dead.

12:55We call FBI headquarters. I assumed that I knew before state department there. So I call the Department of State ahead to make notifications across the government. I said it exactly that way every time. That was the only way I could get through it. And to this day, if we have bad news for somebody,

13:12let them brace themselves. Don't hit people without warning. Human beings are phenomenally resilient if you let them brace themselves. And I experienced that in that moment. And then a couple of years later, that I realized I said it was a personal low point. I finally came to the point where I realized it wasn’t my father who died.

13:40And it wasn't my brother or wasn't my significant other. So I was being a little bit self-pitying to think that it was a personal low for me when I thought about the impact that it actually had on the stream. And that was one of the things that brought me out of it. You know, I get no business feeling bad about this.

14:01They're the ones that are entitled to be devastated, not me. And I love the way in everything you do, there's always the human elements. There's always neuroscience and there's always emotional intelligence. Right? Emotional Intelligence is in everything that you do. And I love that because we still to this day, despite the science of it,

14:22we have people saying emotions have nothing to do on a negotiation table. Emotions are put, I kid you not Chris, I was invited to speak at the negotiation conference. And when they saw my presentation, all over emotional intelligence, they were like, “No, you're not going to speak.” People don't want to know about emotion intelligence.

14:40When we speak about negotiation. This is a real story. So can you please coming from you, explain how important emotions are in negotiation? Yeah, well, Shawn Achor, Harvard psychologist did a great TED talk. I think it's called The Happiness Advantage, I mentioned so much. I should know the title. But it is my source of data on this. And by the way, anybody who hasn't watched a TED Talk

15:05should watch it because it is hysterical course. Okay, I'll put a link around this podcast. And Shawn says you're 31% smarter in a positive frame of mind. Emotions. Positive emotions make you smarter. Which the flip side of that coin is, if you're in a negative frame of mind, you're dumber.

15:30So you have the recognition of the neuroscience. If you think emotions don't have anything to do with negotiations, you are ignoring neuroscience, which is hard science. To one thing I love about neuroscience, it's not speculation. It's good, solid, peer-reviewed, academically rigorous, serious science. And then you also combine in just before neuroscience started hitting really hard people talking about flow, the mindset of flow. A friend of mine, Steven Kotler wrote a great book on it called The Rise of Superman, where people are capable of extraordinary things in flow, extraordinary physical feats. For example, they used to be Caesars Palace Casino in Las Vegas

16:22used to have this fountain in front of it this monstrous fountain. Back in the 1970s, a motorcyclist tried to jump over Evil Knievel, and he didn't make any crash, didn't kill him, but like broke, broke every bone in his body. He recovered but flow X Games athletes, and X Games athlete on a motorcycle does a backflip over the same fountain.

16:49Just because of what's in his head. You know, human performance has not increased where somebody, their physical powers are not 10x. But their performance is. How does somebody do a backflip over a fountain and another guy couldn't even get over at all? This thing called flow, which you can take in more data, you're more emotional resilience.

17:17You have more mental energy. Everything about your life increases in your ability to perform highly positive it's borderline euphoria. Those are emotions, highly positive emotions, you're smarter in a positive frame of mind. You are dumber in a negative frame of mind. There is no emotional neutral. There's none. And the neurosciences continued to back it up so to say emotions have nothing to do with the negotiations means that you think you still believe in gravitational pole

17:52or that the sun goes around the earth. Yeah. And one of the things you often talk about is tactical empathy, right? The superpower of tactical empathy for those who don't know what is it exactly and how can you apply it in everyday life? What's the neuroscience application of empathy is what it really boils down to we know that the brain is principally negative,

18:15our default mode, the amygdala. The wiring in our brain, which is known as the limbic system is designed to enhance mostly negative thoughts. Neuroscience, it's not speculation, our default mindset is negative, number one. Number two, simply calling out negative emotions is the most effective way to diminish them. It's a neuroscience experiment that has been duplicated a number of times, they put people in negative frame of mind, they have them in an fMRI, they watch the negativity in their brain light up

18:53because they know where the amygdala is, and what parts enhance negative thinking. Then they simply ask the person, they put them in a negative frame of mind by showing them a picture that makes them sad, angry, stressed, anxious, whatever, a puppy dog in the rain, I don't know what was in the pictures, little lady, a homeless person, whatever.

19:15And I simply said, “What are you feeling?" And every single time when the person simply labeled emotion called it out, the electrical activity in a negative part of the brain diminished every time. Now it diminished by different degrees, and the degree of impact of labeling and negative changes. But it doesn't change the type of impact.

19:41It's a neuroscience-proven experiment. So what's tactical about empathy, if I know that you're principally driven by negative emotions, and I know that the best way to get rid of them is to call them out. Then all I got to do is call them out. If I know that you don't trust me, I will say,

20:01"Seems like I haven't earned your trust." And that will begin to change the dynamic instantly. So tactical empathy is, empathy is emotional intelligence. And the neuroscience lessons we apply tactically, to put you in a frame of mind, where you can listen to me without being clouded by your negative emotions. Well, it sounds easier than in reality, right? Because in order to do that, first, you have to be connected to your own emotions, knowing how to label your own emotions,

20:33what is it that I'm feeling? What is it that's happening in my body? In order for you to be able to connect to the emotions of somebody else. So having not only the listening skills through the ears, but like the 3D observation of what's happening for somebody – -Right. And then having the emotional capabilities of expressing what it is that you seem to feel towards another

20:55without judging or pointing fingers. So there's a whole aspect that comes together in this arena of emotional intelligence and the mirroring and having it right. Or sometimes deliberately having it wrong. Right? Exactly. So that they can correct you. Yeah. And say, “That's right.”

21:18Yeah. So there's so much that comes together. But as long as, as we you know, people like you, and I keep emphasizing the importance of emotional intelligence in negotiation. I think we're really making a change. And the way negotiations used to be perceived as this, you know, hardcore, I win, you lose strategy. Yeah. So there's a lot to be done – -Or the argument or –

21:41-Yeah, exactly the selling. Right. Yeah. Emotional intelligence is the hack. It's the mechanism that bypasses all that nonsense. And also on a human level, right? We get to connect on a human level. And we get to get rid of the personas and the titles and the look at me and the ego. And we connect from heart to heart

22:03and that's where we get the magic done. Right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Great, completely. That's right. That's right and if we pull this further and say, “What about using these beautiful skills to negotiate with ourselves?” Yes. I mean, at the moment, as you know, it's a mess in the world. There's so much suffering happening because of COVID.

22:24The COVID measures and the lockdowns and everything that's happening. Mental health is going over the roof, depression. How do you think people can use negotiation skills to change the inner dialogue, the conversation that we have that little voice in our head? Well, it's easy, but it's different than all the feedback that we're getting. So it seems like it's got to be wrong

22:43because the media gets it wrong all the time. You know, the media just gets empathy wrong, whether it's television, movies, any of that stuff, so there's very little feedback and reinforces how to do it properly. Like you may have a character in a movie who's scared of something and they'll give the character dialog and he'll say to himself, “I'm not scared, don't be scared.”

23:06Deny the negative. And suddenly you'll rise up and you know, be Superman. It'll work. Well, I do the opposite. Like, I recognize that anxiety concern is fear and all these different disguises. Yeah. Like, it's all fear with a different word.

23:27And how do I know that practice isn't anything other than practice? But so if I feel concerned, I'll say, “I'm scared.” I'll say it out loud. -And called it out. And I feel it go away a little bit. And so I literally I'll go, “I'm scared. I'm scared. I'm scared. I'm not scared.” You know, because I diminished it every time. Coaching some real estate agents a couple of months ago,

23:53one of the agents on a zoom call she comes out. She says, “Yeah, I don't know. You know, I'm really worried about doing this.” which seems contrary to all my training. So I said, repeat after me. She said. "Okay." I said, “Say I'm scared”. She said, "I'm scared." I said, "Say it again. Say it again. Say it again." So I said, “Now how do you feel?” She said, “Yeah, I am fine.”

24:18And then what I do is I pull it further and say, "Okay, then what is the need?" What do you need? Right now that you know what you feel, What is the need behind it that creates this fear?" Because if you're scared, if you're scared, there is a need for certainty for this, for that, whatever it is. And if you connect with the need then,

24:35then you can get back into empowerment of saying, okay, what can I do about it? How can I satisfy that need? And the other day, I get one of the most beautiful compliments I've ever had in my life. There was this lady in one of my trainings, she said, “Please, I have a son with special needs, who doesn't communicate always, you know perfectly well, what his needs are.” So as a mom, I need to really be focused on understanding what is it that he really needs, whether it's physical, emotional, mental,

25:05and this lady told me, "Lousin, may be because you have a son nwith special needs. You're automatically connected with the needs of other people, you know, you go beyond the words and the act and the ego and you wrote, okay, what is the need? What is it that this person needs? And if you do that on the negotiation table, and you're so focused on let me try to understand what this person needs, then that also helps to calm everything down and to look for the collaboration and the solution,

25:32which in the end, that's what we're all looking for. Right? Yeah, I would agree completely. And the interesting point about what you just said, is, it's just practice. Yeah, exactly. You know you get forced into a situation. So no fault of your own. But you find yourself the answer. I get to tackle this.

25:50Yeah. And the more you do it, the faster you are at. And pretty soon, bang, you pick it up. Yeah. And then comes up and used it with everybody. Yeah, good for you. Yeah, cause it's there. It works. You know, you built a circuit in your head. I know your son, Brandon, is working with you.

26:07Right. In The Black Swan Group, how do we teach our – By the way, I have a funny story related to Gary if I can. Of course. Because my whole time with the FBI. Like, God bless Gary. I mean, he knew I was gonna do the job. But I realized, in hindsight, now, I was a loose cannon,

26:24I was a loose cannon and hit the target. Like, I would call Gary at five o'clock in the morning and say, “I'm getting ready to get on a plane to Florida.” And he'd be like, okay. You know, and I know that he like he was, at any given point in time people, you know, my common goal, like, “What's Voss doing?”

26:44And his answer would be, “He's doing his job. He'll be fine, leave him alone.” But what I'm saying is, I never really let anybody know that I was doing until I was already doing it. I wasn't good to let people know in advance. So how do I expect my son to be any different than me?

26:59My son is ridiculously independent. And he does a job the whole time. And about a year ago, something else is going on in the company. I don't know anything about it till it's getting implemented. And I'm like, how can I expect anything different? Because I knew what I was doing. I want to be left alone. So I sent Gary a text. And it said, “My son is exactly like me. I owe you an apology.”

27:25Wow. That's beautiful. Yeah, we talked about when Gary was on the show, he talks a lot about leadership, and how you back your team and make them feel trusted, and backed by their by their leader, even though they make a mistake. Right. And I thought that was really powerful. And also in the way he managed the Waco incident by calling everybody on the team and saying,

27:47"This was not your failure. You know, this was a teamwork. We did everything together. I'm proud of you despite the outcome." So it was really powerful the way he combines negotiation and leadership in that arena. Yeah, yeah, he always backed us up. So you confirm, yeah? Yeah. All right. Well, I could listen to you for hours. And I have I mean, I have so many questions, but I'm aware of your time

28:14and I will respect that. Just a last question. We're having all these decades of experience now, both on the field and in academics, and combining everything. Looking back, have you seen the negotiation evolve? Is it changing? Is it moving towards a certain direction? And then can you pull it further to future negotiations and what you expect?

28:33Well, we're evolving what we're doing. Like one of the differences with The Black Swan team is very much like when I was working for Gary, you know, the cadre that Gary pulled together at the crisis negotiation unit at the time, like we breathed it, like there was, there was one person got transferred in after Gary left.

28:54And this person said, another persona teams. They said, “You guys, ou guys breathe this.” And my colleague went, “Oh, yeah." And so we were always pushing the art forward there. And a variety of things happen. And principally, the biggest thing was really, not only do we have Gary, but the chain between us all the way

29:21up to the director was completely supportive. I mean, we couldn't have asked for more support, all the way up to the director of the FBI, Louis Freeh. I mean, they were, they knew we were about the right thing. And they wanted to find people who were getting the job done. And as you know, as a chain fell apart,

29:37bureaucracy went in another direction, the environment went away. But in The Black Swan Group, now we breathe this stuff, like me, and my son, Brandon, and Derek are the principal thinkers, although we got several other people, Sandy, and Troy and Barbara, that are bringing in this stuff. And we love it. I mean, we breathe this. And so within the parameters

30:03of what we believe tactical empathy is we're constantly inventing new stuff. And we're sharing it with the world. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that we've learned since the book came out that we're teaching people in our classes now and we breathe this and we love it. Can you name a few that are not in the book but – It was one thing that my son came up with, which is a combination of what would effectively be an open-ended question,

30:31which we refer to as calibrated questions. With a label with calling on emotion. I think if I'm getting ready to ask you something. And I know that your concern is going to be that you're going to get into trouble. You know, my son on his own, and he taught the rest of his will say,

30:50how many people are going to get mad at you if you do this? So before your answer, you know, we call it a thought-shaping question. Yeah. We know that the obstacle is the reaction. So we get you to deal with the reaction before you answer. With the question form like that, you'll think about who's going to get mad at you.

31:15And you'll decide whether or not you can live with that. And since you've thought about it, you probably can. And you will have dismissed it. And then you'll agree to move forward. Yeah. As opposed to you agreeing to move forward and then finding out later that people were mad at you, you know, what we've done is we've deactivated

31:36a negative emotion in advance. It's predictable that you're going to be worried about who's going to get mad at you. And we do is time after time after time you watch a person think that like, now, let's go ahead. Yeah, that's so powerful. That indeed is really powerful. It made me think of a question that

32:00the other day, I had to make a very difficult decision. It was about medical treatment for my son. Am I going to give it, not give it? The side effects are massive. Wow. Not giving it to it's going to have effects on his quantity of life. You know, how long he was gonna live.

32:15A horrible situation like, what am I gonna choose? You know, am I gonna make things worse but prolong his life? Or am I gonna choose for him to stay happy as he is? And then maybe live? Less? Horrible choice. No kidding. So I called one of my partner negotiators and I said, “Listen, I am going to explain you the situation.

32:35Obviously, I'm emotionally involved. So I need you to tell me what am I missing? And you know, what, what don't I see that you see being outside of it?” Okay. And what I loved, he listened. He heard me out and he said, “Lousin, whatever you decide, you're going to regret it. With which regrets can you live better?”

32:55Interesting. Exactly. And that was exactly what I needed to get to the decision. Which regret would you rather live better with? -Powerful. -That's a great question. Because there is no right decision in this situation, whatever you do, the future will tell whether you were right or wrong and probably you're wrong. Exactly. So, with which regrets can you live better?

33:20Take away the need to be perfect. Yeah. Which is a fool's errand anyway. Exactly. Wow. That's a smart guy. Good friend. He has been trained by Gary also. Yeah, I think in this whole interview, we have Gary all over the place and the impact that he has had on you, on me, on the next generation of negotiators.

33:43Yeah. It's huge. Yeah. Like the amount of retirement. So I like I was driving here and I thought I want to mention Gary somewhere out of my gratitude for him, but then you're doing it as well. So… Yeah, very grateful that I worked for him. Thank you so much, Chris. Is there anything you would like to gift the listeners? I mean, these are people who are interested in negotiations,

34:05I only speak to professional negotiators. Is there anything that with your expertise you would like to leave them with? Well, first of all, keep learning and be delighted by. But you know, if you're interested in any of our ideas, you need our ideas, The Black Swan ideas, and you don't have to be I mean, there's lots of places to get ideas.

34:26And you should look at and review them. And you should look at Steven Kotler, you should look at Daniel Coyle who wrote The Talent Code and The Culture Code. But, you know, check out our website, I mean, we got we've got a lot of free material. Yeah, I've seen that. A lot of free material that we want people to use to move their lives forward.

34:46So feel free to take everything free that we've got. Thank you so much. Obviously, I will put the link to the website there. And I'm really grateful for everything that you're sharing, you're really helping shape the negotiation arena, the professional negotiation world for negotiators like me. It's a goldmine of information. And I would thank you very much

35:06and thank you for your time and for this interview. It was a pleasure talking to you. The pleasure is mine. Thank you so much.