Ex-MIT Negotiator: The 1 Conversation Costing You Millions

They don't talk about it, they don't consider it, they don't prep for it.

“When I was growing up, I was really severely bullied.”

I was blown away because I didn't have to be that scared little kid inside. If you can't keep up with me, too bad, I'm leaving you like, get out of my way.

People can almost always help us.

It depends on if they want to or not. For all of you out there who struggle with negotiation, because you think that it's hammering at each other, that's not true. It's a conversation, it's not a battle. I didn't realize this, but I, for a long time, had a problem with negotiating myself.

Very ambitious guy, very hardworking guy, but I would set a goal, and then, like, because I also have severe ADHD, I would find another thing that I liked, and then I would start negotiating with myself about the original goal,

“and how much time and was at that important.”

And now all of a sudden, this is just one example of this. I'd find myself instead of having one priority that I had already said that I had determined, I'd be negotiating my time and attention and prioritizing all these different things. And now all of a sudden, none of the things that I actually wanted to have happen happen. And then I heard, say what you want about social media, your feed is a reflection of what you give your attention to.

Right? I, my Instagram is mostly like how to coach baseball, motivational quotes, like funny stuff, and like nerdy science shit. So I saw this thing from Kobe, and it was an interview that he was doing, where he described this mamba mentality, and really the core idea of mamba mentality, which is, do not negotiate with yourself. If you say you're going to do X, once you make up your mind, that's it. There's no negotiation. It is written in stone.

For whatever reason that's stupid Instagram video, just like locked into my brain. I was like, I have to solve this for myself. And I will say, it's something I continue to work through. You are negotiation expert specialist. You've written the book. Like, how do we approach this? Like, how do we lock this? One, do you feel this is important enough to prioritize as something you really need to have to be successful? And two, like, how do we actually do this? How do we make

“not negotiating with ourselves a practice in our life? I love this. Because I think that the first”

most important negotiation is the one with ourselves. The internal negotiation that a lot of

people don't ever think about. They don't talk about it. They don't consider it. They don't prep for it. And people think that negotiation is this action where I walk into a room, and I have to sit down and hammer it out across the table with someone. And that's not it. There's so much, so many other pieces of negotiation involved. A lot of it happens before you even walk into that room. So let's talk about the internal negotiation, because I failed at the internal negotiation

for a lot of my life. And I would argue, you know, right, and you mentioned it, that you struggled with it early on. A lot of us do. Why? So I'll give you a little story. When I was growing up, I was really severely bullied. I had frizzy hair, glasses, and braces all at the same time, and in fifth grade there was a girl Bethany. And Bethany had decided I shouldn't have any friends. No one sat with me or talked to me at lunch or recess. I escaped to the classroom,

and my teacher thought it was because I was shy, and it was a heartbreaking year, but a very

powerful lesson for me in influence. So I had a second chance, and we moved, and I decided to create

a really hard exterior and exoskeleton, or a shell around myself. And I started confidence, and I started, you know, I was really good at positional negotiation, where I would state my demand, refused to budge an inch, and threaten to walk away. And that served me really well in the moment, but it didn't have any great lasting impacts for additional repeat interactions, and it had a lot of life impacts outside of just negotiation for me. A couple of decades later,

I'm sitting in MIT, it's power negotiation class with my co-author John, and he says something to me that changes my world. He says, I can get more out of negotiation by caring about what the other person needs, and building a strong foundation, and a strong relationship, and bringing my own interests to the table, creating value for all of us. And I was blown away because I didn't have to be that scared little kid inside, or that domineering person that I was projecting to protect

myself and make sure I got something out of the deal. So that was both sides of failure for me in the internal negotiation, where at first I was really not rocking the boat, and I was quiet,

a lot from growing up as a kid of immigrants. But on the flip side, I decided to assert myself, and I became really hard, and assertive, and just way too positional, and stuck in my kind of stance on what I wanted out of the negotiation. And what I needed to do was that internal

“work on what did I care about, what were my goals, and why was I so afraid to negotiate?”

And we all need to figure out what it is that stops us, because there are often things that stop us from negotiating before we even get started. Are we afraid of what they're going to say? Are we worried about damaging the relationship? Do we have anxiety about bringing something up and being able to defend it and showcase that we are worthy? Are we worried that the thing is going to be taken away from us? We don't want to rock the boat, or sometimes we forget all of that,

and we feel like we have to walk in and assert ourselves and just make the demand because we've

waited for so long. That's the first part of the work, and I'd love to hear your perspective on

that when you were stopping yourself or negotiating with yourself on if that resonates with you, where we don't manage the emotion around it. Completely, and what's funny is I actually

“different, but very similar story. I grew up poor country kid, middle and nowhere, and I was, well,”

my classmates called me fat. I was probably just a little pudgy, but my nickname all the way to ninth grade was fatboy. It's not really a great feeling showing up every day, where your two nicknames were one, Nassau, which is the town I grew up in, and because it was such a shitty little town, literally calling me my town's name was derogatory, and then two, my other nickname being fatboy, and so it was also fifth grade in which I would get tormented from leaving the classroom,

and any day that it was nice out, we would walk from the classroom out to the playground, right, and you do kickball, or whatever we do that day. But there was like to get there, the teachers

would basically push us out the door, and there was like this backside of the building that we

would walk down, there was maybe a couple hundred feet before you got out to the fields, and there'd be a different set of teachers out in the field, making sure that everyone was, you know, doing whatever. So there was a period of time where then these particular these three kids would literally just torment the shit out of me. That, like, from the moment we walked out of the building, to the moment we got to the fields, it would just be pure torment. And I mean, I don't know

that this is positive, but I eventually got so sick of it that one day I threw a punch at one of the kids. I missed this face and hit him in the throat, and he fell to the ground, and I'm not saying that's positive, but it was certainly not, it wasn't positive. It was negative, right? Like, you shouldn't have to do that. I do think, unfortunately, the world works in a certain way, but like certain people just don't respond to anything else. But that moment, like, it wasn't even though

this, from that moment on, they stopped bullying me, because they knew that I would fight back. It wasn't a positive moment. Like, I don't look back on that and go, like, oh, I'm so glad I had to throat punch a kid in fifth grade in order to get him to stop harassing me. So I had a very similar thing where I didn't create a hard shell. What I created was this, like, if you can't keep up with me too bad, I'm leaving you like, get out of my way. Like, I go 100 miles an hour. If you don't go 100

miles an hour or two, you're not as good, get out of my way. I don't care, like, keep up or you don't exist. And that was kind of how I created my version of a hard exterior shell. Now, underneath all of that was all the same rot that you're talking about. Like, I hadn't dealt with any of the emotions, I hadn't dealt with these security or scarcity stuff. So very similar, I'm like, listening to you talk with my stories different, but similar in the ages or similar, which is wild, where, like,

here I am, like, just I'm so driven. I get so much done. Like, if you can't keep up, then you're not as good as, you know what I mean? Like, I had this, like, ego kind of raw. And that was my defense mechanism.

And that ultimately, just as you said, and you're like, that version of me led to a lot of problems,

“including getting fired from multiple jobs, where I think I'm like this hard charging, incredibly”

valuable, get stuff done person. And leadership is like, yeah, maybe, but you're also pissing everyone off while you're doing it. And, you know, we can't have that. It took almost until my mid 30s to kind of figure out, like, this isn't the version of you that's going to be able to be successful long-term. Like, you have to kind of start to change this. And, you know, like I said, now I feel like I'm

experience with getting, you know, pushed around and made fun of to creating a version of myself that didn't really like. I didn't like that version of me. I just didn't, I just knew that version of me. That kid can't run around me in a circle and tell me I'm fat and I'm poor. And like, it's wild to think that as adults, these things that happen to us when we're 10 can carry with us that long.

Oh my gosh, that's exactly. And, well, first of all, kids suck. And I think that we all have a

version of that. We all do. We've all had something that happened to us where whether it was, you know, as a kid or as a young adult, it really impacted us and the way that we perceive ourselves and project ourselves. Because for me, it was, I certainly was also like super aggressive about being the best, right? I wanted to be the best. I wanted to be the strongest. I wanted to be the smartest so that no one could touch me. But that kept me from, for me,

the biggest consequence was not finding anyone who wanted to be in a relationship with me for a couple of decades. Because I was so, I had this level layer between me and everybody else. And I was

“just projecting and working towards something because I thought that's what made me stronger and better.”

And I think when we have that part of us inside that we don't address like you're talking about. We don't think about it. We don't pay attention to it. It presents itself in different ways in our lives that make it tricky when we do come to situations of influence. And I would argue that we are in moments of influence dozens of times per day. Of course, it's at work with our colleagues and our bosses about salary and promotions. And who's going to do what workload and how are we

getting our teammates to get on board with an idea? But it's also with your in-laws on where you're going to spend holidays. And it's with your partner about who's managing the daycare schedule. And it's with your roommate about cleaning the dishes. And it's with your neighbor about keeping the music too loud. All of those are negotiations. And I think if we can do those well, it's the highest return on investment skill development we can have because it gives you more of whatever you want.

More time, more money, more resources. But we have to start internally with ourselves and understand what's stopping us from starting or what's making it. So we aren't doing it in the most productive

way possible. Because people can almost always help us. It depends on if they want to or not.

So when John told me a long time ago that I could get more by caring about what the other person wanted, I was shocked because, but it's true. If we build a good relationship foundation with people, they will absolutely want to help us more in that moment. And they will want to help us later. But we don't think about these things as repeat interactions and how they impact our lives on a daily, monthly, yearly basis. But if we do, all of a sudden you're turning negotiation into a

system in your life that is helping you in every avenue, whether at home, at work, anywhere.

“And I think a lot of people think about negotiation. I know Chris Voss is someone you wrote a”

blur for the book, who I've mentioned. I actually met him for the first time this year.

- He's amazing. - Yeah, yeah, really amazing guy. But they think about it like

some badass, kind of cowboys, dude, negotiation, negotiating, the life of somebody who's been captured by criminals in some other country, whatever. They think about it like it's very combative, very like bang against each other thing. And what I hear you saying is that literally almost every interaction is that we have with anybody, like from, you know, driving your car down the street and letting somebody out in front of you versus you. You're kind of every of these things

are negotiations. And I guess maybe, how do we remove the, I don't know, this is the right word, but like the, the gravity that we put on this word negotiation. It feels like a very big, like, like, I've sitting down at a table and we're face to face. I ball the eyeball negotiating,

“versus just, you know, talking to your partner about who does a dishes tonight or whatever, right?”

You know, like, it doesn't have to be this big, combative, big deal. Is it, is it that we put too much, maybe we've been trained or just haven't put enough thought into what negotiation actually means? Is that, do you think that's part of it? I would argue that so far, when people talk about nogate negotiation, they talk about it as these big things. These big life events that you need to conquer and achieve against whether it's a hostage situation or it's a big merger and acquisition

it's been framed that way, people think that they're either good at negotiation or bad. And I hate

that because it's not innate. No one is born a good negotiator. No one is just born confident.

“It's a skill that you have to develop day by day in the most micro sense where an athlete isn't”

just born in athlete and a musician isn't just born a great musician. They practice. They take the skill very seriously and they break it down into a smallest component and practice that component until they perfect it and then they move on. Negotiation is the exact same way and that's why I think if we can think about it as dozens of times of day in our daily life where we're working in low stakes environments to improve it, all of a sudden we are better with those high stakes

come around and I love the reframing of it because all of a sudden it's accessible. It's something

that I can do today right now. The first thing you could do right now based on what we were

talking about with the internal negotiation is right down the feelings you have before walking into any negotiation. What are those feelings? Because as soon as you write them down and then if you say

“them out loud you are managing them and they are no longer ruling you. You are in control of those”

feelings and that means that you can take the next step which is understanding what it is you truly want out of the negotiation. You will be shocked at how many people walk into a situation without a goal. What is it that you want as the final outcome of this conversation where there is influence involved? But if you can figure that out you have at least a double chance of success if not 4x the success. So taking those, taking the time to do those pieces up front before you walk into

the room is already going to make the outcome more successful. Do you think that negotiation is a life skill that let's say we are not in this crazy common core or lowest common denominator high school, we call primary education system that we currently live in and we are teaching them skills like I need how to balance a checkbook and things like that. Do you think would you put negotiation as one of those classes in this fantasy high school that we are

creating like to me it seems like what I hear you describing and I would say my understanding of negotiation now not obviously my past but today is that this feels like something that we should all just be able to do like if you live in this country right in English understand basic

“mass skills. It feels like one of those core ideas. Would you agree with that? I think”

and here's my the reason for this question is to me it seems like if I'm in sales or I'm a leader of a company then I need to learn negotiation but if I'm in customer service or I'm in product design or I'm in engineering I'm like man I don't need that that's other people that's something I need to have and then they end up those seem to be then we look at the you know that alpha sales person you know walks around with the you know the 75,000 hour Rolex and I'm like

he's good at negotiation or you know she's good at negotiation but but I don't get what I want it's like only because they developed the skills right I mean so this is something we all should have no matter where we sit in any type of organization or value chain yes and honestly I would go back even further this is something that I would love to be taught in kindergarten how do we you know you you're playing with crayons and someone comes and takes your crayons that is a moment of

negotiation it's a moment of influence it is a small moment of conflict and how do you deal with that or you want to take a turn on the swing right you want to influence the other kid to let you have a turn that's happening all of the time constantly especially as a kid we should absolutely be learning those skills early on rather than waiting until we're adults and we think that we need them because of these big deals that we have and the other thing I will say is

negotiation again isn't that big thing that gets you the 75,000 dollar Rolex and we don't have to do it the same way that we see it on TV we don't have to go sit down and hammer it out at a conference

table one of the most powerful things in negotiation other than the internal negotiation managing

our motions and knowing what you care about is building relationships with people and just having a good foundation so that when you do need to make an ask they want to help you and a lot of people under value that but I had a neighbor and we all have these people in our lives that we have bad relationships with oftentimes that work that we think it's just so entrenched it's so negative

have to tolerate each other because we're at work I've had that at work and I just recently

“had it with my neighbor who grew in my move-in day to my dream house because he walked up the driveway”

and said you are on my property and turned out that my driveway is an easement on his property I wasn't technically on his property but he just could not stand the fact that we had an easement on his property and for the next several months would go on and on and try to corner us to yell at us about the easement which like none of us can do anything about and he became my like

adult I've never had an enemy in my adult life and he was just my enemy I was like you are my

namesis like we are just like you know this is never going to go anywhere then my mom of all people had to remind me and say hey listen he's gonna be your neighbor whether you like it or not go take him a cold glass eliminate it's hot out today I was like I would never take my namesis lemonade that's ridiculous and then I thought about it and I considered it and I was like oh

“shit my mom is reminding me of what I teach hundreds of people every month that I need to reset”

the relationship and I'm the only one who can do that and so I did I went and took him a cold glass lemonade and I hated it and I just like was furious inside and just humiliated that I was interacting in a nice way with this person but then you know what happened he was nice and kind and accepting and I started feeling better about the relationship and I also had to do a reset it reset him a little bit in the relationship but it also reset me and we can all make that reset by the idea of reciprocity

just giving someone something small that they will value without an expectation of anything in return other than improving the relationship and whether it is right now a good relationship and you want to keep it good a neutral relationship that you want to make better or a hostile relationship that you need to improve reciprocity is a great way to start that because ultimately what I've found in my

experience is people you always need something from somebody especially the people that you tend

to have the bad relationships with the ones that you don't want to interact with and they always come back into your life in some way so what can you do to improve that relationship because like I said earlier people people can almost always help us with something it just depends on if they want to or not so start setting the tone and the stage for getting them to want to help you what do you think sales people do all day sales is it sales is an industry that shouldn't exist

with LLMs like chat GPT and Claude and everything else should make sales disappear because we can research the exact thing we want and buy it online but it's still a growing industry why because of relationships and that is so fundamental and core to the idea of negotiation which means that for all of you out there who struggle with negotiation because you think that it's hammering at each other that's not true you're going to get way more if you have a positive working relationship and you

work to create value for both people which means it's a conversation it's not a battle okay so if I'm I'm listening to this and let's say I'm a skeptic to the idea that you're throwing out I would say okay I bring my neighbor the glass eliminate but instead of the experience that you have he takes that as a moment a captive moment to just lay the hammer down on me how do I is it found like how do I know how do I position myself a solidify myself whatever the right term is

for okay I'm I'm giving and I don't expect anything back I'm giving without expectation

“reciprocation okay great I believe in that you know but I it doesn't it the person still tries”

to push now I feel like I gave all this to the relationship and I'm getting I'm still getting nothing back how how do I create those guardrails how do I emotionally deal with the fact that I felt like I took a big leap to try to improve things and the other person just seemingly so far hasn't wanted to adjust course or play nice yeah it's it's a it's a great comment because

it's likely that they won't respond the first time so here's the framework in your head I want

you to try a handful of times and I also want you to make it something small it shouldn't cost you a lot right so you shouldn't feel like you're giving them something huge you're giving them a glass lemonade it's free you you're giving them a cup of coffee it was a couple of bucks giving them a pastry that you you know what we're grabbing for yourself anyway so make it small and something that doesn't cost you a lot and no when you're had that you're going to try a handful

of times and research shows that most people's behavior will change not everybody's but most

people on animals showcasing that the idea that we want to return a favor or return a gift is innate

“so you have a very high likelihood of having that person want to reciprocate back to you in some”

way and what's even better is that we have this idea of accounting and sensitivity where if I give you a glass lemonade what happened with my neighbor that glass of lemonade turned into another easement for me if you can believe it and I swear and so that obviously another easement is worth like tens of thousands of dollars versus a free glass of lemonade or time over time you don't people don't necessarily weigh the equation of like I gave this and it equals this so you will

get a lot more value just by starting the momentum and you know nine times out of ten it's going to work for you one out of ten it's not and chalk it up to what did I actually lose I lost a glass lemonade I lost a few bucks on a coffee who care you know if the total cost to you was ten bucks say you know what nine times out of ten this works I lost ten bucks one one out of ten times that's pretty good ratio and I pretty good return for me so you can turn it into an equation if you

want and recognize that the return is still really high for you even if one out of ten doesn't respond now the emotional labor is another piece of it but again you're getting a lot out of it most of the time so I would say this goes back get this goes back to the idea that we talk about which is rejection and our fear of rejection and can you go out and find small ways to get rejected this is a great example of it right go give someone something especially someone who doesn't like you and see if they

rejected or not go to the coffee shop and ask for something special go to a restaurant and see if they can make you something off menu and find ways to get rejected because then you're inoculating yourself against rejection you're building your resilience so that you can go and do these things without fear or kind of this huge emotional baggage that prevents you from making the attempt. I was listening to Chris Williamson show the other day modern wisdom I don't know if you're familiar

with that show but he had a psychologist of some sort on the show as he comes to do and they were talking not necessarily about but they weren't talking about negotiation but they were talking about rejection and the context is escaping me but he shared this stat that north of 40% of men

under the age of 30 have never asked a woman out in person like have never like then in the

same space it said hey do you want to get a drink with me or a cup of coffee or whatever and like and he was kind of he was taking that stat and he had others to kind of show like some of the difficulties that younger generations are having integrating into the workforce at least certain individuals is because they're like they're not used to hearing no right there's just this idea that I don't that I even have a micro loss right I mean I don't there wasn't the

“internet when I was growing up so if you wanted to take somebody out the only way you had to ask”

him in person like I didn't even exist so you know I guess you were you had a couple options you know

whatever but that idea of like never having heard no like you always make the team because there's

an a team a B team a C team a D team you know so whatever sport you decided to play you're always getting a yes and in school you know if you don't get a good grade on the test the teacher let's you take it home and do revisions and come back and you still get an okay grade and like if you're kind of taking this and thinking about maybe saving the younger generations in particular maybe just have not experienced I would say the you know I'm I'm 45 like the avalanche of

nose that just were inevitable because there was no apt to help you get around there wasn't this cultural thing of like everybody gets an a or everybody makes the team those things just didn't exist like so to me the idea of hearing no I don't love it but it's kind of just the way life works

“but I think we're kind of have a generation coming up here a couple generations etc”

who just simply haven't experienced that like their world has almost been crafted so that they

always hear yes or always get some version of what they want so if I'm sitting here and I'm listening

to this and I'm going yeah but I don't want to ever hear no or I've never heard no before or whatever how do you I mean I know you said you know negotiate the coffee thing and and I've heard that in different places and I and I think it's a wonderful idea but even that is probably too scary like

someone who is unfamiliar with the term and that's not a judgment guys you know someone who's very unfamiliar with that term how how do they start to go down in this path of no because because like you said one of the people that you respect Chris Voss his whole thing

is working to know I mean that's the crux of never split the difference is go for no not yes

and that is such a foreign idea to so many people particularly the younger individuals that we have

“hit in the workforce right now yeah I think this is really broadly relevant especially to that”

younger generation but Ryan I would say you and I are entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs have to become good at hearing no but there are a lot of our peers who still really fear rejection and avoided it at all costs so I think that we all need to practice this because if we fear rejection we're not making the ask and we are leaving money on the table every time right we're leaving promotions on the table we're leaving job advancement on the table we're leaving you know money

from the car dealer on the table and I hate that we should never be leaving money on the table and

if you're too afraid to go and make the ask because you're worried about getting rejected you are losing out on a ton of value so we should all be doing this and practicing this but you're right with the younger generation a lot of these skills just general in general what I'm talking about with relationship building are not there we have built not only a generation that does it have the resilience around hearing no or not getting exactly what they want but also they're more isolated

I mean study show the level of isolation and depression is really high and they're not connected with each other with peers with you know friends because they have the phone and the apps and they're they're feeling that disconnect with everybody else and so one thing to bridge that gap on both sides the fear of rejection and the disconnect other facing ask a friend to go out and do something right don't even go and do it with a stranger ask a friend if they want to go for a walk

ask a friend without your phones ask a friend if they want to go and grab a cup of coffee right someone you already know that you have a relationship with that they might not even be doing that

with each other and they might that might also feel scary enough that man we never go and do this thing

all right we always just sit next to each other and play video games or we communicate via snapchat with each other go ask them to do something in real life that's outside of the norm and see what they say right there's an opportunity to get rejected but there's also an opportunity to start with a little

“bit more of that relationship building and I think they could use both of those things it makes my heart”

hurt a little that you said go for a walk and then position it as outside the norm I know that you're I know that that's honest but it also hurts my heart a little bit I do think that's wonderful so okay so I hear that and I go okay okay I can buy that and but what if they say no like how do I not take that personally do they not like me am I not good enough for them am I more of a friend to them than they are than they see me as like am I not good enough is my time not valuable to

them like so that friend says so you text five friends and all five you know from probably just because they're busy or other things going on I like no sorry I can't do it today how do I then not go my friends hate me I'm a loser this exercise was terrible I'm never listening to Ryan's podcast again because we terrible advice and I'm just gonna go back to a dark room in my basement and my video games because that's where I feel safe yeah well first I would say this

“still happens to me right like I think this happens to all of us where especially for people who are”

high achievers and we get the no we take it really personally it hits us hard like I'm not good enough I I'm not worthy they don't like me they don't value me and this still happens to me too so I'd say I'm right there with anyone who feels that way now the way that I combat it is I always see no as a not yet so if they do say no you can follow up with totally get it when would make sense or is there something else that you would prefer right you have two options right when else or

what else could we do because it might not be the right time maybe tomorrow they'll say yes or they might say hey I really don't want to go for a walk it's freezing outside but I'll go bowling or whatever it is or I'll go to the movies and all of a sudden you're turning that

as a not yet and I have to figure out what the lever is and this goes to the idea of their interests

right you have an interest your position is I want to go for a walk but your interest is I just want to spend time in person with my friend so what do they what do they care about now it's my turn to figure out what do they like what are their interests can I guess what they are I realize my friends don't like going for walks but they really like going out to eat trying new restaurants so maybe that's the pivot we go try that instead and now what you're doing is you're creating

value for both of you based on you wanting to hang out in person meeting their interest based on their likes and now you're rolling away from that no into a not yet that's gonna turn into a yes that takes both of your needs and do account how do I put myself in the person on the go sheet what

one okay I think is that back you referred this like you know you don't understand some

on until you've walked my on their shoes or whatever right so I think it is probably reason boom we all get our heads around I may be able to negotiate with you better if I understand where you're coming from but that could be a very difficult thing to do and I think over my career unconsciously for a long time I was able to be successful because I have some natural skills there that had a ceiling until I started to really develop them but I was raised by my mom for the most

part so I have like a at least a baseline level of empathy maybe above standard and but but it was very on there was no structure to it and but when I started to have more of a structural way of watching body language listening researching trying to really think about what they would want you

“know I felt better but I still don't feel like an expert in it that's why I love having individuals”

like yourself on the show how do I if I'm sitting here and I've bought everything that you've said so far I'm on board and I'm like okay how to held away understand where my friend is coming from like let's just take the walk thing so so they said no not now maybe some other day okay so it's a no not yet but but I really want them to go for a walk like I really want the walk like that's I don't want to go bowling with them I don't want to go the movies I want the walk with

no cell phones how how do I start to how would I put myself in their shoes right understand where they're coming from to get them to actually do the thing I want them to do right I'm going to push back on you right now because all you're doing is asserting a position right that's a position it's not an interest your position is I want to walk without phones but what's the interest okay so the interest is I just I want to get to know you even deeper I I think that the conversations

we have when our phones aren't around and we're just kind of doing something simple we connect deeper and we haven't done that lately and I maybe feel a little disconnected from this person

“that I really care about and that's why I want to do the walk perfect so it's not about the walk”

it's about quality time without phones is that right that would yes okay so that's where we have to unstick from the position right you were stuck on the position and that's the self work about what our interests are actually are right that goes back to the internal negotiation

that was not doing the internal negotiation first you're stuck on your position got it

unstick from that and get to the interest the actual interest right my goal my interest is hanging out and having quality time with my friend without phones that is something that you guys can work on together if you're going with the position of it has to be a walk without phones there's nowhere for your friend to go except a yes or no there's that's not a negotiation it's just your friend either saying yes or no to your demand and I think you and I are both good at you know

especially based on our history making demands and trying to get people to go with us on the flip side a lot of people are agreeable and might say yes but might resent it later so you're a asserting a position demanding they say yes if they say no you feel bad if they say yes they might resent you because they're just trying to make you happy you're not caring about their interests so let's talk about how do we think about their interests we're actually very good at guessing

“other people's interests if we take a moment to do it I think that the first idea here”

that I would combat is that we're either good at empathy or bad at it I think we just don't practice it just like negotiation we have to stop and take a moment to think about the person a lot of us are too busy to do that we don't have the energy we don't have the time we don't have the mental capacity but if you actually take a moment to stop and think about someone right we can do it right now like who's someone that you had to negotiate with in the past or someone

that you might have to negotiate in the future that you don't know very well like like actually

and we have a good relationship and I am now trying to help one of my consulting clients

“get in as a partner with my buddy's business but he went from being the boss to being you know”

an executive but not the boss the boss so now he's in kind of a tough spot and this he it originally said hey I'd love to get your client in but now he's getting friction so now we're in this place where he kind of said he'd get us in but now he kind of can't and we're in this weird negotiation is a buddy but there's business involved and so we're kind of in this spot where there's a little bit of friction right now in terms of making the deal happen all right so tell me what you

guessed your buddies interests are take a minute and then give me a list might you think his and

my guest is he wants to do the deal because of me and that while it was a priority to make this

integration when he owned the company outright now that he doesn't it's not a priority and he's stuck in this place where he feels some obligation to me but his priority is not this thing and he's not really sure what to do so he kind of keeps kicking the can and you know he's in that that would be my best guess in a short answer try to think of other interests that aren't related to you or the consulting client what other interests does he have with this business

with the people in it in general he wants to come in and in these early days look like a rock star if possible so that he feels validate he feels that the acquisition of his company was validated

that they made the right decision that he's what they thought he was and that he's going to have

he's going to be the high performer that they purchased when they purchased his company

“anything else he can think of I think that he would prefer to work with people he knows I”

think that he wants to establish himself like I said in the company I think that's a big one I think he wants to be successful I think he believes in the mission of what he was doing and I think he also wants to make sure that he's not well I think he wants to be successful I also do know for a fact that he wants to successfully integrate into this new bigger culture and I think there's a little bit of struggle there too for him because he used to be the boss boss and now he's just one

of the one of the people and that's a completely new dynamic that he's also struggling with at this moment because even if you're good at that kind of thing you're done in the past it's still not easy. Yeah look at that we spent what two minutes on it and all of a sudden you went from one interest which was helping you out because you're a friend to a whole slew of interest right he cares about your friendship he cares about keeping his word he also cares about credibility

with this new organization he wants to show up and have the company see him as valuable for him to still make an impact internally in the organization thinking about his own reputation within the organization all those things are the things that you just mentioned he's new he's still getting his own bearings in the organization now based on all of those interests you just you just took a guess even though you haven't asked him about it and he's your friend so you know him pretty well

“but this is a different situation I think that you came up with a pretty good list and I think”

we all can do that if we take two minutes to sit down and actually think outside of just the little box that we are thinking about in that moment of influence all the other things that they have going on because those other things are going to impact that moment of influence with you because he's probably worried about credibility with the leadership of the organization and bringing someone else in that he doesn't know because you said he wants to work with people he knows bringing someone

he doesn't know in and what if it doesn't work out and he's new with the organization and these leaders then lose the lose respect for him his reputation is damaged he you know doesn't isn't seen as valuable to them anymore so all of a sudden you're starting to see it from his perspective and that means that you're opening up the playing field to understand that he has some constraints and how can I start communicating to him based on what he might be thinking about feeling but not

wanting to verbalize to me because I'm his buddy and he wants to help me out are there other ways that you can introduce the client are there other ways that it doesn't impact his credibility are there other connections that he can make other people he can bring into the conversation other ways to make it feel less personal and more like a business transaction and an opportunity he's bringing to the organization so all of a sudden you're looking at the pie

your clients interest and his interests and working on figuring out a deal that makes sense for everybody how do I validate those ideas without making him feel like I'm putting thoughts in his head or assumptions about what his priorities are yes I love that question because that's the next step

in thinking through their interest so with their interest we always say yes as best as you can

first and then the next step is just tell them say hey man I know that this has been dragging out and it might be feeling sticky I'm not sure but here's my best guess so what's really important is to say it tentatively you're not labeling anything you're not saying this is what exactly

“what I think is happening you're saying my best guess is that you want to work you know help me”

out because we talked about this and it felt really good early on now the dynamic has changed and here are the things that I'm thinking might be coming up tell me where I'm right tell me where I'm wrong so you're just sharing as your best guess and then inviting them into the conversation to tell you where you're right and wrong and he'll what's great about this is you start getting more information from him because he's gonna riff off of it and want to talk about it and most people

I'd say 95% of people will really appreciate the effort that you're putting in because you are making it tentatively you are bringing them into the conversation and asking where you're wrong and they will want to share more with you yeah I think I know um because I feel like if you do this

I don't want to say wrong but I guess that's the bit first there's a way to do it wrong no you're right

“there's a way to get wrong because because you can like I've seen people try to do this”

and have it backfire right the other side that spends all of a sudden they're like that's not what I was thinking or why are you putting words in my mouth or you know why are you making assumptions about how I feel and so maybe we've talked about the way to do it right maybe what are like a few things that kind of commonly may create obstacles or landmines in the process yes so one thing one caveat I will put out there first if you're trying this do it in

low stakes environments for a while because this is a pretty advanced skill so do it with your

spouse or your partner and say that you have a decision coming up and you both have interests in

it guess write down their interests as your best guess and then share it with them and ask them where you're right or wrong and practice doing it in very low stakes with people who are close to you who don't really care if you mess it up and who the relationship couldn't withstand a little bit of pressure if you do mess it up because that way you can have an opportunity to do it a bunch of times in situations where if it does blow up you can recover now the way it sounds wrong

hey man there are a lot of dynamics going on for you internally and I'm worried that this deal may not make sense or that your hesitant or avoiding it right there what you're doing is you're telling him what's going on and that's where people go wrong they make it a statement as opposed to a question if you actually are asking a genuine question this is my best guess but I know that I'm wrong in a lot of these places can you help me out and tell me from your perspective what's going on

that's a question right and it's very tentative when you make it a statement all people have is to get defensive because your nobody wants to be told what's going on in their life or how they are feeling nobody every single person that I've ever met gets defensive when they are being told something right about themselves unless it's in therapy but like if I'm telling you that you are feeling this way and you are facing these situations you're immediately going to be like no I'm not

and that's the difference so it's kind of like you just want to kind of open the door a little bit but they they have to be the one to walk through like it's like you can open the door with a question and then they'll they'll give you a lot of data points simply by do they hesitate do they come right in do they just open it a little more like you get a lot from there and then you can

“continue to go and I think you know tell me what you think about this idea I mean this decision”

a long time ago mentally a struggling with some things I had been fired from a job that I absolutely adored and thought that I was doing a great job in and and you know different things happened and all of a sudden I was like oh and the reasons are the reasons I've explained them on the show before going to begin to it but like I had to do like a lot of come to Jesus stuff

isn't the right way to go so I started thinking about I said to myself well these are just data points

“it's how I frame not taking these things personally is like everything is a data point you know if”

if I say something and you smile it's a data point if I you know if I if I you know push in one direction and someone pushes back okay that's just a data point it doesn't mean like you said it doesn't mean no it may just mean not yet or it might mean you know yes and or maybe and but it's a data point it's not this thing that comes at me and like I found that idea and I don't have it flushed all the way out I'm kind of stream of purchasing this idea to you but it is the way that I

frame it in my head is like if I can think of everything as a data point and not as like a no to you

right then it's much easier to like keep your ears open because like if I feel like I'm coming to you

and regardless of how hard I try or how I position it or how perfectly I position the question to keep the door like just a little bit of jar for you and and you don't react the way I want it's still very hard for us not to take that personally like look how hard I'm trying I'm asking open-ended empathetic questions to like why aren't you responding positively to me like what the hell and it is very hard to not go down that like you know why won't this guy just listen or why won't

she just do what I say or you know why won't she be honest with me or whatever right we we get so it's like that that old ad is like the touch from the outcome like how do we how do we detach from the outcomes of these emotionally and maybe this is where this is probably a good place I want to be respectful of you and your time like this may be a good place to close up our conversation today how do we emotionally and if if you even agree with emotionally detach from these things like

how do we emotionally detach from these different outcomes and these different experiences so that we're not constantly living like in our own little cesspool of you know why not me or you know what's wrong with me kind of you know spiral that we can get into the first thing I would say is

I don't think we should emotionally detach because those feelings are always going to be there whether

“you detach or not I think that if you don't label them again this goes back to the first idea of”

labeling the emotions if you don't acknowledge them they are always swirling around in this negative tornado in the back of your mind somewhere so you better the might as well deal with it because it's somewhere rooted in your subconscious and it's going to come up in one way or another it always does so if you are feeling that way deal with it and label the emotions and understand where they're coming from are they coming from that kind of you know fully little kid inside are they coming from

the vulnerable person who wanted who was making an effort to connect what is the feeling that you're actually going through in that moment label it and say it out loud so that you have control over it and then the next thing this goes back to the idea of resilience one thing that I heard on resilience that I absolutely loved is people who have a high internal locus of control which means

“that we feel like we can control our environments right and I think you and I are both those type of”

people that means that you pivot and figure out what what you can do with like you said that data point what is it that my next step is with that data point so instead of sitting with it you've acknowledge the emotion you know it's there rather than letting it sit and fester you're thinking of it as a data point and you're saying what am I going to do with that data point how am I going to address it so if someone does say no to you and you made all this effort and it goes poorly and they

get upset with you what is the data point right that's information that I didn't do something appropriately or I often see that with emotional responses I kind of tell people to see it as a mirror because the way that people respond to you is a direct reflection of how they are feeling about themselves so that's another data point for you that it's not about you it's about them which means that you can pivot that data point to empathy once again because what they said to you is what they

are saying to themselves and what they are feeling about themselves and if you can frame it that way in your head all of a sudden you can realize like oh my friend said no to meeting with me in person they are probably feeling so deeply isolated that even the idea of an interaction makes them freak out and scared or my friend you know I tried to have this conversation with that

at work which kind of came out in a safe place toward you where like I don't want to deal with this

“right now man and that pivot in your mind of recognizing the emotion labeling it taking the data”

point and understanding it from their perspective about what they are feeling and using it as a mirror makes it so that you can figure out your next step and that gives you control which means that you can continue to influence the situation and it's not a know it's not yet and you can take find your next lever with that information. It's funny when we're negotiating with someone

it's like we always assume they're coming from this like stall where no problems, no stress like

you know white box of like perfect mental attention and acuity in the moment and like this is not reality right like everyone has this maelstrom of stuff going on in their life whether it's relational or their kids or their parents or whatever and you know or you know is the person who's making the buying decision they could have wanted a promotion and just got told no and now they're like I'm saying no to everybody because screw these guys I mean it's like we

“it's like you kind of have to remember that who you're talking to is a human too right like we”

just we always assume I have all this stuff going on and I'm so stressed and I need this deal and

I got to hit my numbers and blah blah blah and this other person is coming from a perfectly no stress, no anxiety, nothing box and they're just saying no to me because they're a jerk and you're like whoa don't like their dog could be sick their kid could have just you know got kicked off the sports team or whatever you know like you don't know how their day started they could be saying no to you simply because they just don't have the brain cycles today to wrap their head around

“what you're asking and it does feel like I mean I love this so the book is never settled”

persuasion and negotiation skills to get what you want absolutely phenomenal comes out May 12th this will be dropping right around that date guys most likely either right on the date or a few days after so you'll be able to go Amazon everywhere books is sold that's true right we'll also have links below so if you scroll down whether you're watching on YouTube listening wherever you listen just scroll down into the description or show notes and you'll be able to find links to the book

but other than getting the book where's the best place to connect with you on the interwebs to follow along with your journey and your work I have my website at tachorechay.com and on there I mean since we talked about emotions so much I have a tool for your listeners in specific which is a slash emotion wheel and it's an interactive tool so for those of us who have a hard time getting discrete about our motions it starts with six-square motions and you can click into it to

figure out the discrete feelings and add as many as you want to it to help you figure out that labeling so that's one great place to get started and you can find a lot of other information about me there I absolutely love it I appreciate you this has been phenomenal I with you nothing but success with the book I'm sure it will be a huge hit and I just love the fact that you spend so much time I'm listed. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.