Sam Donaghey

Welcome to the Fast Slow Motion Podcast where we teach you how to build a business you love while enjoying your life. I’m your host, Sam Donaghy, and today I’m joined by Fast Slow Motion’s Director of Growth, Michael Johnson. Michael, it’s always good to have you on the show.

Michael Johnson

Sam, I’m excited to be here.

Sam Donaghey

Well, today we’re really honored to have Jonathan B. Smith join us. Now, Jonathan is a successful entrepreneur. He’s an expert in implementing and using the EOS framework. And he’s also a master negotiator and trainer with the Black Swan Group. And today we’re going to be discussing some details on what determines success using EOS, as well as some of the basic mistakes made in negotiating and dealing with others. So Jonathan, it’s awesome to have you here on the podcast today.

Jonathan B. Smith

It’s awesome to be here!

Sam Donaghey

Looking forward to this conversation.

Jonathan B. Smith

Me too.

Michael Johnson

Jonathan, when I first got introduced to the EOS community, everyone kept saying, you’ve got to meet Jonathan. You’ve got to meet — I’m like, who is this guy? You need to connect with him. And we met close to one year ago, and I’m really glad we did. You’ve got two books. You’ve got Optimized for Growth, which is available on Amazon. And you’ve got Fight Less, Win More, which is going to come out this September. And for our audience who might not know you, might not be familiar with you, can you give maybe a brief background on who you are and how you and Gino Wickman, author of Traction and founder of EOS, connected and what EOS even is?

Jonathan B. Smith

Sure. Well, Gino Wickman wrote a book called Traction. I happened to be in the book because I was his second client. So I met him, I think, in like 2002 or something at an event for the Entrepreneurs’ Organization. We were at a bar and he was bouncing around with a lot of energy. And I said, I got to go meet that guy. And we became his second client. I ended up building an Inc. 500 business in the security space using the system.

And in 2013, I became an EOS implementer. So I help entrepreneurial leadership teams get what they want from their business as an EOS implementer. So I really do strategy execution for businesses. When I started, the businesses were two to $50 million, high growth with 10 to 50 employees. So high growth, open-minded, willing to learn, frustrated and wanting help.

So at this point, like 25,000 companies have worked with an EOS implementer to implement EOS. I have done it over 150 times with 40 exits with my clients. So that’s my EOS background. And in 2015, I published Optimize for Growth. And the idea with Optimize for Growth was I was seeing my clients using a model that they didn’t even necessarily know they were using. So a lot of them were in Vistage — they had a coach which was their Vistage chair, they had a peer group which was their Vistage group that they were in — and then they were using EOS with their team and I would be their EOS implementer. And I wrote the book really as a way to market to Vistage chairs so they would realize that we weren’t in fact competitive, but we were actually complementary and we would help arm their members. My clients get what they want from their business.

Sam Donaghey

So, sorry Michael, just as like a high level overview, what exactly is EOS then? Can you give us a summary of what it does?

Jonathan B. Smith

Yeah, so EOS — we say it’s a holistic system. It does three things: vision, traction, and healthy. And so when we say vision, it’s getting everyone on your team rowing in the same direction, knowing that five to 10 years from now, here’s where we’re taking this business. Traction is holding everyone accountable, having clear accountability, setting goals in the next 90 days to get moved towards that vision.

And healthy is then ultimately having organizational clarity and having the difficult conversations that you may not have had for a long time. So in the end, you know where you’re going, you know what you need to get done, and you have a functional cohesive team that’s going to help you get there. So that’s what EOS is.

Michael Johnson

It’s super valuable, Jonathan, because as leaders, a lot of times you come in and you think, wow, yeah, I can just say what I want, and then everybody’s going to roll in the right direction and it’s just going to be healthy and we’re going to have traction. But without a system to drive it, a lot of times you’re going to miss the mark. You’re going to fall short. There’s miscommunication and all these things. So it’s a super valuable system.

And I’ve enjoyed interfacing with it and I’ve enjoyed seeing folks like you implement it and really have an impact on businesses. And wow, 40 exits out of 150 over a period of time — that’s fantastic.

Jonathan B. Smith

Yeah, and one of the things, Sam, is that I can be in the room and be independent. So the CEO doesn’t have to run the meeting. I’m the one who ends up running the meeting. I actually had a pitch this morning — a warm call — and I said, look, I’m not the enemy looking to be a consultant in your business. I’m an ally with you and I will be the 12th man on your team, helping you get what you want from your business, but I’m just not there every day. It gives me an interesting purview.

Michael Johnson

Yeah, that outside perspective can be helpful. What type of issues do you see EOS solving for companies that you work with?

Jonathan B. Smith

Yeah, so we call them the five frustrations. So there are five common frustrations that we see. People — we either can’t get the right people or they’re not in the right seats and we can’t get them to do what we ask them to do. Profits — there just aren’t enough profits. So it’s great, we can sell business, but if we can’t sell profitable business, there’s no point in just turning the crank. Control — people just don’t feel like they have enough control of their business. So they feel like every day is Groundhog’s Day. Hitting the ceiling — you grew the business to, let’s say, $3 million and now you can’t seem to get past it. It’s been year after year after year at $3 million, but you want to get to seven, but you can’t seem to get there because you don’t have the right people or you don’t have the right systems or you don’t have the right control over the business.

And then the last thing is like, you’ve tried lots of things and nothing seems to be working. So you’re just super frustrated. So those are the five frustrations that we typically see.

Michael Johnson

Yeah, as far as hitting the ceiling — I mean, that’s a common thing that we hear. Is there any type of income level that, if folks are listening to this, maybe they’re a $1 million company or $3 million company — is there an income level they need to be at before EOS will work for them?

Jonathan B. Smith

So when I started in 2013, we’d say revenue-wise, it was two to $50 million. That was our target market. Now I’ve worked with clients as big as $5 billion and my typical client is like $25 to $500 million at this point. The reality is what we’re doing is managing human energy. So you could do it in a startup. The issue is can you afford to have an implementer with your startup? So typically I’m dealing with a lower middle market profitable business or a highly funded startup. It just gets harder when someone’s bootstrapping and every last dollar is spoken for.

Michael Johnson

Gotcha. Well, so if I’m a business owner and I’m listening to this and I’m looking at my team, how do I know that I’m ripe for EOS? How do I know that I’m in that market that’s really going to benefit from using some of these principles?

Jonathan B. Smith

Yeah, so we call it target market. Target market to us is, again, $2 to $50 million, 10 to 250 employees, growth oriented. You have to want to grow your business. If you want to just stay where you’re at stagnant, a lot of times EOS isn’t formed for you. You have to be open-minded. You have to be willing to learn. You have to be frustrated and want help. And we used to say privately held.

But I have plenty of clients that are owned by institutional capital at this point. They like what we’ve done to the business and they’re like, great, we don’t have to do those pieces — we can go apply additional levers.

Michael Johnson

Yeah. So I’ve hit the ceiling, let’s say, and I’m frustrated and I’m now willing to learn. I’ve recognized, okay, I need some help and I’m willing to take on maybe an implementer to come in and implement EOS. Could you maybe give some background on what an EOS implementer does and why someone might need one?

Jonathan B. Smith

So EOS implementers are experts in EOS. You don’t have to be a subject matter expert in EOS yourself. My role as an EOS implementer is teacher — I’m going to teach you the EOS tools. Coach — I am going to coach you and your team through the process. And then facilitator — I’m going to be the one to facilitate those difficult conversations.

And I think actually 70% of the success of EOS is in the facilitation component, having an implementer. A facilitator is defined as someone who is an intervention. So I will know when to — I observe and then I intervene at the appropriate time. So as I’ve gotten better at EOS, I speak less, but I intervene at the right time to try to help get the team where they want to go. So: teacher, coach, facilitator. In my case, I also say I’m another entrepreneur on the team and I will jump on the field when appropriate. But the primary roles are teacher, coach, facilitator.

Michael Johnson

Got it.

Sam Donaghey

Understood. Thanks, Michael. So what are some of the common challenges that you do see these businesses encounter?

Jonathan B. Smith

All those five frustrations that we talked about, right? People, control, hitting the ceiling, nothing seems to work. Like that’s what people show up with. I’m like, oh, so you have the disease — I call that the disease. Like if they don’t have that, it’s like people don’t go to the doctor unless they’re not feeling well for some reason. We want someone who wants it more for themselves than we want it for them. If we want it more for them than they want it for themselves, it will not work. It’s hard work.

Sam Donaghey

Do you also find that it’s harder to create that change internally when the business is creating more revenue or is more successful? What situation do you typically find as you go kind of upmarket with larger businesses?

Jonathan B. Smith

I mean, we just have more leverage in those businesses. The key is to get the CEO to want to do it and lead the charge. So it’s the CEO or the COO. We need the CEO’s buy-in. We need the COO — or what we call the integrator — to actually execute the plan. And then what tends to happen is they’re like, it’s actually way easier to grow the business. It’s an immaterial cost to have an EOS implementer, and they wonder why they ever did it any other way. There are all these companies who’ve proven the system. Once it’s in place, it’s like — why would you go to the gym and not have a trainer?

Sam Donaghey

And is it just revenue that you look at in terms of a metric for success, or are there other areas that you would say were critical for identifying those things?

Jonathan B. Smith

Well, everyone wants to think of like, what’s the measurable? Unlike profitability — EBITDA. Like, that’s what matters. Revenue is vanity, right? We want profit and cash flow.

Michael Johnson

Revenue is vanity. I love that. That makes a lot of sense. You mentioned earlier the integrator role. I know within EOS you’ve got the visionary and the integrator. Could you talk about those two distinctions, and maybe someone out there is having an identity crisis and trying to figure out which one they are?

Jonathan B. Smith

Sure. Well, we have a book called Rocket Fuel that describes that entire visionary and integrator dynamic well. But the visionary — on the accountability chart, what we would expect from a visionary is: I call it they own the future. They have all the big ideas. They have these 20 big ideas and two of them are great and they’re going to bring us to the promised land, right? They own the big relationships. They solve the big problems and they own the culture, but they’re not the execution — they don’t lead, manage, and hold people accountable. They’re good at leading, not so much good at managing and holding people accountable.

Now the integrators are like the exact opposite. If the visionary is like the CEO — the outside person — the integrator is the inside person who’s there all the time. Their role is they own the P&L. They’re going to harmoniously integrate the business. They own the special projects. They remove obstacles and barriers. They tend to be more logic-oriented. So they’re the ones who are going to say, yeah visionary, 18 of those ideas are not so great, but I think we can take these two to the promised land — now what’s the plan look like to make that happen? So we have this visionary-integrator duo that we suggest. You’ve seen it time and time again — like Sheryl Sandberg and Zuckerberg at Facebook are an example of a duo that worked. She was there for a long time as the integrator, or the adult in the room — that is an example of a visionary-integrator duo.

Michael Johnson

Sam, we lost your audio.

Sam Donaghey

Sorry guys, I keep getting dogs barking in the background. I’m really sorry about this, but somebody let the dogs out — it’s about four dogs barking. Can you hear them at all? Okay. So, JBS, the EOS methodology has got several components to help guide businesses through the process of organization and transformation. Is there one component that jumps out when implemented, or is there one thing that helps companies have that aha moment?

Jonathan B. Smith

Well, we have six key components. I generally don’t know which of the six are going to be most important for any implementation. So let me just tell you what the six are: vision — where are we going five to ten years from now; people — you’ve got to have the right people in the right seats; data — the data doesn’t lie; issues — we need to be able to compartmentalize and prioritize those issues and figure out which ones we’re going to tackle; process — often the secret sauce, like how do we get it documented and then followed by all; and then traction — what are we doing in the next 90 days to move you forward towards your vision?

If you were to ask me to choose one, I’d probably choose Traction — that’s also the name of the book. It’s really where we get people to commit because they can see they’re making progress. So you’re going to see — it’s like stepping on the scale and you’re like, oh, I lost five pounds because I stopped eating pizza, or whatever it is.

So traction is probably where it starts, but as you go through the EOS implementation process, it’s like whack-a-mole. We fixed the people problem, then we realized, okay, we have better people, but the processes aren’t as strong, or there’s an issue in data. So it is like whack-a-mole as we go through — we take it one quarter at a time, setting those issues up and knocking them down so they go away forever. That’s the goal.

Sam Donaghey

So there’s not necessarily a pattern that emerges in terms of the order that you might see within a business?

Jonathan B. Smith

Every client is — we say every client is a snowflake. So like you walk in and you’re like, okay, this business has great margin but they’re not disciplined. Okay, that business has poor margin and they are disciplined. So do we change something about the business to either increase margin or change the focus of the business? I don’t think there’s one path. I think there are six key components that we have to work on, and then it just emerges which ones we’re going to prioritize based on what’s going on in the business at the time.

Michael Johnson

Yeah. And as an implementer you’ve got to be sharp on all those components. One thing I’ve enjoyed about getting to know more and more EOS implementers over the past year-plus is just the passion for those components. And with what we do with process and data — that’s where we live every day in the CRM world — finding some common ground there has been really fun and exciting in helping transform businesses on those two. But even within those components there are tools that EOS implementers use, like the VTO or rocks or L10 meetings — any of those that are real difference makers when first implemented in companies?

Jonathan B. Smith

I think the Level 10 meeting is one. So we have a 90-minute meeting that’s held every single week with your leadership team — starts on time, ends on time, follows a specific agenda, solves all the major issues. It’s called the Level 10 meeting because the goal is to get a 10 score for the quality of the meeting. We rate every meeting at the end. So oftentimes that is a game changer because it’s now not some ad hoc meeting where people are reading out like, okay, so here’s what I did this week in terms of how many people I called. It’s literally: we’re going to work on the business in that meeting for 90 minutes and it’s going to save you a bunch.

So that would probably be what I’d say. It’s one of the five foundational tools. The five foundational tools are: VTO, rocks, scorecard, meeting pulse, and accountability chart. Those are all foundational. If you don’t do anything else in EOS but you do those, you will make a huge amount of impact.

Michael Johnson

I could see that. Do you see the culture change that comes along with implementing those? It just seems like a big transformation.

Jonathan B. Smith

Yeah, so I had this $5 billion client — the CEO said EOS is the best change management tool he’s ever seen. It’s better than what McKinsey provides.

Michael Johnson

Wow, that’s fantastic.

Sam Donaghey

JBS, also just a quick question about getting the right people in the right seats — do you ever have to approach situations where you have to make tough people decisions, like replacing team members? Do you ever have to get into the weeds on those issues?

Jonathan B. Smith

Every day. And we have a video that says: make one great people move this quarter. And the one great people move is you can promote someone, you can hire someone, you can fire someone, you can move someone’s seat. And when I say that 70% of EOS is about facilitation and team health, it’s because we deal with those issues.

I typically will start and tell people that not everyone is going to survive this EOS process. I can’t tell you who’s not going to survive. But I had a story — I was in a meeting with a client, it was the second meeting we had together. We all check in. So the check-in is: tell me something good personally, tell me something good professionally, what’s working in your business, what’s not working in your business, and what are your expectations for the session. So there’s a gentleman in the room who says, I’ve got nothing personal, nothing professional, nothing’s working, nothing’s not working, and I have no expectations. So I’m like, clearly we have a team health issue here.

So I let everyone check in and then I used the Black Swan technique and I said, I have bad news. We can’t move forward until we deal with this issue, because there’s obviously a team health issue and my job is to create a high-performance team. And I can’t do it if there are things being left unsaid in the healthy component. And I said to the guy, it seems like you don’t want your seat. And he said, I don’t. He stood up, took his bag, and left.

So Sam, that’s the kind of stuff that does happen in EOS. I was not looking for him to leave, but I was looking to figure out a way to solve the team health issue — to uncover it and rip off the bandaid. Because otherwise the whole day would have been colored by the fact that he wouldn’t check in, and it’s my job to make sure I monitor that. It’s like a judgment call — do I call it or not? I don’t want to break the team while we’re doing that, but at the same time, I want to make sure we get the best out of the team.

Sam Donaghey

Yeah, that’s actually a great segue because you mentioned the Black Swan Group. One other thing that you are an expert in that companies need is communication, especially around the art of negotiation. So can you tell us more about your role with the Black Swan Group?

Jonathan B. Smith

Sure. So Chris Voss is the former lead hostage negotiator of the FBI. He wrote a book called Never Split the Difference. I met him before he had the book, actually. I was at a club called the Tower Club in DC — I was living in DC at the time, I think it was probably 2014. I had good relationships on the ground in the UAE and Abu Dhabi. Chris was trying to get paid by someone in Abu Dhabi. I just happened to meet him and sit down for a cup of coffee. He’s telling me about a situation in Abu Dhabi. So I’m helping the negotiator negotiate in Abu Dhabi. He and I become friends. I share with him what I’m doing with EOS. He has a business he’s working on building out. I become his EOS implementer. I become fascinated with his — we call them tactical empathy skills.

I begin to start learning the skills and come to realize — I said, Chris, I think there’s an opportunity here. There’s a book called What the Heck is EOS, which is the primer companion to Traction, the original book. It’s really designed for your employees. Where Traction is sort of an academic operating manual, What the Heck is EOS is like a cartoon — kind of like the comic book that the military uses to explain how to take apart an M16. That book sells one for one with Traction. So I said, okay, Never Split the Difference has sold 5 million copies. Let’s go build the equivalent book.

So the “What the Heck is EOS” for Never Split the Difference — our book is going to be called Fight Less, Win More. It should publish in the third quarter of 2025, around September 3rd.

Michael Johnson

Mm-hmm. Gotcha.

Jonathan B. Smith

So what the heck is EOS? For Never Split the Difference — so our book is going to be called Fight Less, Win More.

Sam Donaghey

That’s amazing. Hey, just a personal question — have you ever used the Black Swan negotiation techniques in everyday life, like getting out of a speeding ticket or something like that?

Jonathan B. Smith

I mean, I use it every day, all the time. It becomes a way of life. So one of the things I used it for — I wanted to get tickets to the inauguration. I was talking to a lobbyist and they wanted help from me with EOS. They spoke for about 28 minutes of a 30-minute call. And I said, well, how hard would it be to get tickets to the inauguration?

They thought for a second and said, not that hard. So I used a no-oriented question — that’s a question where people are sort of exhausted from answering no to a yes-oriented question. So we flip the question to a no-oriented question. They say no, that wouldn’t be hard. And then they said, do you need a hotel room? Because the hotel rooms were really expensive — they were all sold out. So they got me a hotel room.

Then they called me back a week later. They’re like, it’s really hard to get tickets — it’s like getting tickets to Taylor Swift. So this was in December or January, 30 days later, they’re like, I think we got you tickets. So they got me tickets, and then it was too cold and it all went inside, but I did get the tickets and it was kind of a fun way to use the skills. And I used it at the last minute. It’s like — imagine you’re on a sales call and now you’re flipping the script because now I’ve created rapport with that person and I can make an ask of them.

Michael Johnson

Wow.

Sam Donaghey

Yeah, I love that.

Michael Johnson

Yeah, so you just talked about this a little bit. You read Never Split the Difference and you’ve got extensive experience with EOS and helping companies. What drew you to say, this is what my clients need, or this is what I need in business? What drew you to try to solve that problem for businesses?

Jonathan B. Smith

Just ask that question one more time. Was it about negotiation or was it about EOS?

Michael Johnson

What drew you — based on your EOS experience, you had a lot of experience in growing companies and setting up good systems for them to grow, but you saw this potential use case for some of these negotiation skills within business and helping companies communicate better and negotiate better. Was there a story or a specific need that you saw that made you say, okay, wow, I want to take this methodology and use it?

Jonathan B. Smith

Well, I literally architected Chris’s business, the Black Swan Group. Chris is our spokesmodel — he’s like an A-list celebrity, amazing on podcasts and with people. And I’ve been the business architect for the business. I built a great relationship with him over time. I spent a ton of time with him. There was a time — I think what happened was my grandmother was dying. She was in hospice. She was refusing hospice care. So I’m on the phone with my grandmother. She’s a really hard-nosed, independent person. She’s in hospice, she’s broken her hip. I talked to her doctor and they said she’s not going to survive if we give her surgery on her hip — she’s going to die on the table. So I’m with Chris and I’m like, Chris, I’ve run out of capacity. I’m not able to handle this. How do I talk to my grandmother?

So we call that a hospice negotiation instead of a hostage negotiation — it was my hospice negotiation. And in that hospice negotiation, I asked my grandmother: Grandma, I’ve spoken to your doctor. She doesn’t think you’re going to live. How would you like me to handle this? She said, okay, I’ll accept the hospice care.

And she was gone like 24 hours later. So that was pretty intense. And from there, I’m like, my gosh, imagine if every interaction I had in life would be easier. That’s why we say fight less, win more. That was an intense situation where I actually had to be an adult and use the skills.

Michael Johnson

Wow. Yeah.

What a great question though — how would you like me to handle this — and just leaving it there. That methodology has a ton of tools within it. I’ve had the fortune of sitting in a training session that you led that went through some of those. You talked about tactical empathy, giving the other person the feeling of control, using no-oriented questions, using the right language like “that’s right,” asking the right questions that could lead to black swans. There are a lot of tools in that toolkit. And I know some folks in the audience are just now hearing about this for the first time. So what’s one thing they should seek to add to their communication and negotiation toolkit?

Jonathan B. Smith

So funny, Michael — I’m actually working on the proven process for Black Swan right now. So the proven process to us is: what does the customer journey look like? Because the question I get from people is, I understand I can hire you as a coach, but some people might not be able to afford that. So what does the journey look like without having a coach?

So what I generally say is: we start by reading Never Split the Difference. Soon it will also mean starting with Fight Less, Win More — read Fight Less, Win More. We also have a MasterClass. We have courses on MasterClass. Those are like where we start, because you just have to familiarize yourself with the skills.

Then the second piece is a mindset piece. You have to be willing to listen. Most people aren’t in the right frame of mind to listen. So we say there are five levels of listening. Listening for the gist — you’re sitting on the phone talking to someone and going, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s like forget about it. You know that person is not listening to you — like trying to talk to your teenager. Listening to respond — that’s the person in the audience with their hand up while you’re still talking; they’re just waiting for you to take a breath so they can start talking. That doesn’t work either. So what we try to get people to do is just listen for logic — that’s the third level. It’s the one you can stay in because it takes a lot of concentration to listen. Then the next level is listen for logic and emotion — understand logically and emotionally where they’re at. And then the last one is listening for their point of view. Why are they saying what they’re saying? You don’t have to agree with it, but you at least have to acknowledge their point of view.

That’s what I call the mindset component. You’ve got to get the mindset right. That is the most important piece — that you are willing to listen. If you’re not there, the skills will not work. People can smell intention. If you show up and try to use a skill, they will smell the intention.

Then the last two pieces of the proven process are: familiarize yourself with the individual skills — like a no-oriented question, or a calibrated question, or a label, or a mirror, or a summary — those are some of our skills. And then you have to go do low-stakes practice. You have to go out into the world. The adult learning model says I can teach you as much as I want, but if you’re not willing to apply it — my assistant heard me one day talking to the person at the UPS store, and she said, even at the UPS store — I walked in and said, it looks like you just moved in here, you must have spent a lot of money. And all of a sudden the guy told me how long he’d been there, that the business was going really well, and he started telling me all sorts of things. And she’s like, even at the UPS store, where you’re just supposed to be transactional, you’ve decided to use tactical empathy to build relationships.

Sam Donaghey

JBS, are there any common mistakes that you see companies make when communicating with clients or vendors?

Jonathan B. Smith

Making it about yourself instead of making it about them. So we say, any time “I want” or “I need” is in your head, you are in a negotiation. And if you can get the other party to feel heard, you are much more likely to get a deal. People are six times more likely to do a deal with you if they like you. One of our laws of negotiation gravity: walk in and try to figure out what their point of view is, and if you can put yourself in that position, you can make a better deal.

Michael Johnson

Yeah, Jonathan, I think that seems to be the big change in mindset — like you mentioned earlier, the last two levels of listening are emotion and then listening for point of view. And so it’s almost counterintuitive when you hear in your head “I want” or “I need,” and then to think about the other person. It seems like practice is really the way to accomplish that. Do you have any other tips, or how does someone make that shift in their mind?

Jonathan B. Smith

I think it’s change management — it’s making a commitment that you’re going to engage with the skills. It’s being kind to yourself when you screw up, because one of the things is we’re always going to get triggered. We have to accept the fact we’re going to get triggered, and if we do, just do an after-action report. Go in and review what you did wrong. And usually where it happens is with family.

You’re going to get triggered even more with family. So how do you put yourself in a position where you are kind to yourself and you try to use the skills? Most people are afraid to use the skills.

So I went to an event at the Pentagon and we were set up at the Ritz Carlton at Pentagon City. I never stay at the Ritz, but that’s where the event was. I walk in and the lobby is full of people and it’s like two o’clock — you know, you don’t have to check in until three or something like that. And I go to the desk and I talk to the guy and I’m like, oh, it looks like you’re arm wrestling with the reservation system. He’s like, oh, it’s been a terrible day. I’m like, you know, how hard would it be for you to get me the handicap room? Because I don’t care what room I get — I just needed a room. I just got in, I need to take a shower. He’s like, let me see what I can do.

So everyone else is sitting there waiting, and I go get the handicap room. It was fine with me — I was there for one night. So it’s just a matter of having the mindset and putting yourself in their shoes and making people feel important. Acknowledging them as opposed to treating them like they don’t know who you are. That does work.

Michael Johnson

Yeah.

Yeah. So we’re excited about the book that you’re going to release soon — Fight Less, Win More. I’m sure that’s something the audience definitely wants more of. You talked about it a little bit, but can you give the audience just a little more detail on that book, when they can expect it, and what they should expect from it?

Jonathan B. Smith

Yeah, so Fight Less, Win More is designed as the missing manual for Never Split the Difference. So Never Split the Difference has stories about Chris when he was in the FBI — in the mountains in Colombia, dealing with terrorists in the Philippines. Some of those stories are fantastic, but it’s hard to take that story down to the level of having a challenge with your teenage child, or trying to get an extra shot of espresso, or an upgrade at a hotel. So what we did with Fight Less, Win More is — we didn’t want to write the second version of Never Split the Difference because that book is a five-star book and we’re not trying to compete with it. We’re trying to be a supplement to it. The idea is we talk about the skills, we give you low-stakes practice that you can actually engage in. We built a logbook inside the book so you can actually document. I say it’s like a journal — I learned it by having a journal and then reviewing it with a coach every week. The journal basically says: who are you talking to? What was the scenario? What skill did you use? And what was the outcome? We found that’s the best way for people to learn.

We’re going to build a community around that. I think we’re going to add a habit-tracking component with that. So we’re going to try to make it easier for a broader range of people to engage with the Black Swan skills. And then those who want to engage with us for coaching or come to our workshops can do that.

Michael Johnson

Fantastic. Well, we’re really looking forward to it. I’m going to grab it as soon as I can get my hands on it, because I love Never Split the Difference and love your work. So I’m excited to see it.

Jonathan B. Smith

Thank you.

Sam Donaghey

Molly, is there anything that you want us to go back to or revisit?

Mollie Durbin

No, I don’t think so. I myself had to actually look up what a black swan was. So I think Michael mentioned it at one point — it might be an interesting question to ask, just to put it out there, and I can edit it back into the correct place in the podcast. Just one of you ask: so can you tell us — you mentioned a black swan — what is a black swan when it comes to negotiations?

Michael Johnson

Yeah, okay. Jonathan, you mentioned the black swan. When it comes to negotiations, what is a black swan?

Jonathan B. Smith

A black swan is a piece of information that you got that you didn’t have before you started the conversation. And sometimes it’s information that the counterparty didn’t even know they were going to give you, or that they were even giving you intelligence. So the idea is — my personal brand is called Stay Curious JBS — can you stay curious enough to get people to tell you things about the scenario?

For example, we might ask a question like: when you go back to the office, who’s going to be the biggest problem to get this deal through? And they’ll literally tell us, well, I think it’s so-and-so in accounting or purchasing. And then we can actually work through that scenario with them while they’re right there in front of us. So we’re not afraid to ask those questions. And a black swan might be like, hey, purchasing is going to be a problem, or you have a competitor who’s involved in the situation, or we’ve failed in the past on these kinds of implementations. So you can actually get that kind of intel so you can then work to improve your chances of making a deal.

Michael Johnson

That’s such a good question and I’m kicking myself now for not asking that on a few deals I’ve worked over the past year. So thank you for that.

Sam Donaghey

Awesome. Well, as we wrap up, I always like to ask our guests for a quote or a piece of advice that has inspired their journey. So Jonathan, is there a quote that you’d like to leave with our listeners today?

Jonathan B. Smith

Sure. So my friend Todd Opalski was with Delta Force. I jokingly say he’s the human weapon on my accountability chart. And he always says: selection begins daily, assessment is ongoing. It’s from Delta Force. That’s how I live. That’s one of my core values.

Sam Donaghey

Love it, absolutely love it. Well, that wraps up today’s episode of the Fast Slow Motion Podcast. A massive thank you to Jonathan B. Smith for sharing his secrets to running a great business and expert level communication. If you’d like to learn more about his work or connect with his team, you can visit blackswanlimited.com/jonathan-smith or eosworldwide.com/jonathan-smith.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast platform, and you can check out past episodes at fastslowmotion.com/podcast. If you have any questions or topics that you’d like us to explore, as always, you can send them to fastslowmotion.com/podcastfeedback. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you again next time.