Negotiation isn't just about contracts and numbers.
It's about people.
And nobody knows this better than Marcy Sims.
Marcy grew up in business, working alongside her father as they built the iconic Sims retail brand.
She walked into boardrooms where people underestimated her, and she learned quickly that respect was the only real currency that mattered.
Over the years, she saw how respect, or the lack of it, could make or break.
Multi-million dollar deals, shape entire company cultures and even decide whether partnerships thrived or collapsed.
In this conversation, Marcy shares the lessons she learned from a lifetime of high-stakes negotiations and shows us why leading with respect isn't soft.
It's the ultimate power move.
So I have kind of lived my life a little bit like what Dwight Eisenhower said, which is plans are kind of useless, but planning is indispensable.
Oh.
Yeah.
That's – oh, I love that.
So let's start there.
That was on my office desk for 35 years.
Oh, let's break this down.
What does that mean to you?
Basically, it says –
You have to understand, whatever you're about to face, all of the elements that might come into play and all of the potential things collaterally, that you are not directly preparing for but should be preparing for.
Because the plan that you have in front of you is not the way it's going to happen.
So if you have five things on your plan, we're going to get through this this, this and this.
You better have 20 things in order to get through the full planning of all the possibilities of the outcome.
I mean, I have a lot of examples of that in my career.
Yeah.
And the transitioning from Not working in a family business working in a family business being the youngest woman on the New York Stock Exchange, a public company, you know those kinds of things.
So you tell me where you'd like to zoom in.
Yes.
OK, this is this is great.
This is great because.
I'm thinking about your.
Let's talk about the mindset, because I think people can understand strategically why this is important.
But what's more what I think is a bigger challenge is understanding the mindset.
And when you think about the ability to pivot and the transitions that you've made in your career, is this something that you've always believed, or was this something that you kind of had to learn the hard way?
Definitely had to learn the hard way.
Yeah.
When I joined my father in the family business, the Sims clothing chain, before we were public and we had about six stores at that point and we made a five-year plan.
And lo and behold, I had no real plan at the end of those five years that we would take the company public.
But I learned along the way so many things that came up that were opportunities that, even though it wasn't part of the plan, let's go follow it.
But every time you follow something that comes up, you have to go through the same exercise.
Where can this go?
How can this go?
How can it go wrong?
How many more people do you need?
What are going to be the financial needs?
What happens if you get to the end and it breaks up part of the business that already exists?
There are so many things that you have to think about beforehand that aren't part of the plan of just growing your business.
I mean, that's such a simple sentence.
Grow the business.
You know, you need capital.
You need to have a vision.
You need to have a team.
You need to be able to articulate your vision.
You need to develop a brand and all that kind of stuff.
And that's a plan, right?
But that's not the planning.
It sounds like the planning.
One of the biggest mistakes that people make when it comes to planning and preparation is that they think it is a singular activity.
It's like you're Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with your plan and it never changes.
Right.
But it sounds like these opportunities and challenges come up and then you don't just jump on it willy nilly or pivot willy nilly.
You say, OK, I have my plan.
Now I'm going to edit and continue the planning process.
So even if I'm taking advantage of an opportunity, I'm doing it responsibly.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
So the thing is, you might not have the tools or the skills to take on a new part of a plan in the planning.
And one of the things that I loved about working with my dad, who was also an entrepreneur, was I had to go back to school all the time.
I had to interview people in the industry all the time.
We started buying our real estate instead of signing leases.
Okay, how about what do you have to do with a purchasing contract?
How about zoning changes?
How about lawyers that deal with real estate?
All those things that you think you know because you have some other experience or talent.
You better not just think it.
You better be pretty sure, because the person on the other side of the table is going to sniff that out right away and you will lose in a negotiation.
Yes.
Okay.
Now we're getting elite here because, when it comes to this, I don't think this is something people fully understand, because when you start to get to the higher levels of negotiation, the person is not just negotiating with you.
They're also reading you, analyzing you, trying to figure out whether you're worth their time or whether or not you might have a lot of resources, but you're the kind of person that people can take advantage of.
So when you're talking, because you've been at the highest levels when it comes to this.
So when you're negotiating and swimming with those sharks, what are the signals that they're reading?
That let them know that there's blood in the water?
Well, first, Kwame, you have to realize that I, as a short woman...
Emphasis on woman walked into a room and I'm the daughter of the founder.
I mean, right away, they think I'm a easy mark.
So it was to my advantage to let them think that for a while and to make them feel comfortable.
And they're just seeing how far they can get with assuming I'm stupid and I don't have the right experience and I'm going to have to run to daddy, or I mean it could be the boss.
You have to run to the boss because perhaps you were not given the authority, even though you have the responsibility to bring back a deal.
You might not have the right authority within the organization to be the yes person.
And that was something in my case that it took many, many years for me to get to the point where, when I said yes, my father and later the board was on board as well.
This is great, because I think a lot of people can relate to not feeling as though people are taking them seriously.
They can relate to not feeling that respect or being underestimated, and there there are a couple of things in your response that really intrigued me.
First of all, you said sometimes it's to your advantage to let them think that, and then you you use it as a trap.
And then other times it can be challenging, but then you have to get that authority from the, the people who have, who could potentially have your back.
So let's, let's talk about those times where you've used this as an advantage, Like letting them underestimate you, because there is only in our 1600 episodes of Negotiate Anything.
There's only one other time I've heard somebody say this.
So this is a great opportunity for us to go deeper in this.
Really, I'm quite surprised, actually, maybe being a woman in that in the room.
And and there are certain prejudices and assumptions to that.
But in my experience, because so often I was the advanced person for my father, for the boss, for the CEO, until I became CEO and being the advanced person, they tried kind of tricks anyway.
You know that if you didn't do your due diligence, what I would actually do in the situations where I knew people were underestimating me and often just underestimating my preparedness is I always wanted to be overly prepared.
I could gather what their style of negotiation was.
I had the time. to get to know them better because they felt comfortable and superior.
They would share more information.
And oftentimes when you just say, oh, I didn't realize that.
Oh, my goodness, I missed that.
And All of a sudden you get a lot of information that you might not have gotten under circumstances where you said, yeah well, we saw that on your past and we looked into your bank relationship and all of that stuff where people just go into their corner or put up a shield.
Unbelievable.
So it's like you're you're.
Almost spinning a web with the information that they create and it becomes a trap because we always talk about.
When it comes to listening and getting people to share, we have to create psychological safety, and we talk about building trust and rapport and things like that.
This that's.
That's like negotiation 101.
We are at the advanced level type of negotiation where you're saying hey listen, you can make them feel psychologically safe while at the same time, it truly being unsafe for them to share, to get a strategic advantage because they are.
They have that superiority, complex or the bias against you, whatever it happens to be, and that leads them to share more.
So, instead of showing all your cards and letting them know how good you are and how much skills you're bringing to the table, you're saying okay cool listen, I'm going to work this and get all of the information I need, because they are unwittingly giving you the tools of their own demise.
Well, Kwame, that sounds really textbook perfect.
Truth, usually in a negotiation, from my experience, we were usually the underdog.
We were usually the smaller fish.
We were usually the less capitalized in a negotiation.
So, truth be told, when I was in a negotiation or gathering information in the advanced team phase, it would be looking at it from a very narrow lens.
The lens was, what's the area?
What's the deal?
What's the ownership that I want to end up with?
What do I want to have separated from this party?
Whether it's a piece of land or a label or a license, or whatever it is.
My desires were quite narrow, so they could have been very superior to me.
They could have been a conglomerate.
And it's a lawyer who has done every deal under the sun.
And I've only done three different kinds of deals.
But because of my narrow interest in what I want my outcome to be, I kind of just have to be really smart about that.
So this allows us to circle back to the preparation.
Because I think in these conversations we can be easily intimidated if we just focus on some of the narrow styles of power, like the old school analyses of power.
So we're saying, okay, I am small.
They are much bigger.
They have more experience, right?
Those can be sources of power.
It's not illegitimate.
There's some legitimacy to that.
But the reality is, if you keep your eyes on the prize and understand clearly what it is that you're driving toward and skillfully navigate there, they could have more power.
They can be bigger, but you can still get there.
And so it sounds like In preparation we're not just preparing strategically for this, but there's an emotional element to this preparation because you can say listen, even if they try to overwhelm me, I still can navigate to this, because that might not be necessarily their interest, but it is mine.
And if I stay focused, I can get that done.
Correct.
Absolutely correct.
And to share a very complex story.
Towards the end of the company's existence, we did a merger acquisition.
And we acquired a company that was pretty much the same size as we were.
And in that acquisition, every box was checked.
We had market share, growing market share.
Check.
We had customer overlap and additional customers that we were looking for.
Check.
We had financing in place without encumbering leverage.
But what we didn't anticipate was culture, the internal culture.
And I have since found that in doing this kind of work you have 70 of mergers do not actually produce for the purchasing company.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah, it's really, I think the only way you can get that is kind of like knowing someone.
No, seriously.
I mean, Harvard Business Review, they know this too.
But if you ask a mergers and acquisition attorney, they go, oh, yeah, we can fix that.
Oh, that's, oh, sure.
That's just structural, structural.
Well, guess what?
It's not strategy.
It's not structural strategy.
Because culture eats both strategy and structure for breakfast.
This is brilliant, because one of the things that I've seen that leads people astray in negotiation is dealmaker bias, where the egos of the people at the table say listen, I see the problems.
I see the pitfalls.
I see the traps.
But I myself am so good.
I am so brilliant.
That I can get this done regardless.
And one of the things I always say is that negotiation isn't the art of deal making.
It's the art of deal discovery.
We're trying to figure out whether a deal can be discovered.
And sometimes, if you think about it through deal making, it leads you to bring your ego to the table and you force through a deal that never should have been made.
And for this I think for people who have not experienced this, it might seem a little bit overblown.
Like really, if the numbers are right, how can culture beat that?
Can't we just, you know, utilize the excess profits to overwhelm the cultural challenges?
Can you break down why culture is so important when it comes to these types of deals?
Well, it's one of the reasons that I focus so much on respect.
Because so much of culture deals with trust and you don't have any trust without respect.
And one of the things that we had at Sims was a great deal of respect, where we built our brand on respecting the intelligence of the consumers who walked in our stores.
And we also dealt with developing the respect to the vendors who supplied us with the designer merchandise, who needed the cash at the end of the season.
And we always paid them in 30 days.
This was the kind of respect.
So in bringing that to the negotiating of this deal and bringing it to the new combined cultures, I thought well, I'll just expand it right.
And it came naturally to us.
It was part of our culture.
That respect was not part of the culture of the company we purchased.
Their attitude was let's pull one over on them.
Let's make sure that we know more than the customer.
Let's make sure that we do better with this deal with the vendor so that we get the best part of the deal.
And it was insidious.
And even from the standpoint of educating and reviewing and working with, it was really insidious.
And at the point that we combined the two stores together under one roof, it became almost like I don't know if you know the reference, but the McCoys and whatever that was with the warring families like half of the store would be dealing with the old culture and the other half would be dealing with this new culture of.
Oh no, that's not an imperfection.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It'll come out in the wash, you know, and it's just a totally different reality.
Yes.
Oh, that's vivid.
We can see that.
That makes it more palpable.
And you really – you can see how, especially when it comes down to just the fabric of the organization.
What – what are we using in order to make the decisions from top down, like all the way to the bottom right?
Because that's going to inform how decisions are being made.
Are we going to respect the culture or what?
Yeah.
There's also the bootstraps mentality.
If you're an entrepreneur and you've gone through the lean times and you've had to tighten your belt and you've had to change your plans because of the finances issues, It's a lot different than an organization that has been grown by different owners, that has a private plane, that goes to the fashion shows and has a lunch at the most expensive French restaurant.
I mean, you know we weren't exactly the Walmart culture, but we were definitely folks who flew commercial in economy and got sandwiches for lunch and took the subway or the underground or the bus or whatever you want to call it, because everything was a budget.
So those two aspects of, and to me, That shows respect for the culture of the founder.
Just like with Walmart when they hired folks.
One of the things he did on buying trips he used to put people in the same room in the motel to just see if they would sign on to this cutting every penny culture.
And if they couldn't stand to share rooms with one another on a buying trip, They were not long for the Walmart culture.
We didn't go that far.
But building culture really has to be respect for the successes.
What made that culture successful?
And you have to perpetuate that.
Yes.
And let's dig deeper into this Marcy, because I think it's easy to sometimes overlook how complex the idea of respect is.
And if only we had somebody who's literally written the book on how to lead with respect on the podcast in front of us.
Oh, wait.
She's right here.
So when you think about respect, how do you personally define it?
I bring it down to one word.
You must have regard in order to have respect.
I have regard for you.
What does that mean?
I see you.
I listen to you.
I make you feel present and seen.
I understand and put effort into understanding you.
That's regard.
And in every relationship, whether it's a marriage or parenting or a friendship, in every relationship it starts with regard.
Regard can incorporate compassion.
It can incorporate empathy.
But foundational, foundational to feeling regarded is being respected.
There's no way around that.
That's brilliant.
It's brilliant in its simplicity.
Right.
Because it helps us to really understand it, because sometimes the conversations about respect can get so philosophical and nebulous that you leave the conversation intellectually stimulated and have no idea what this means or what to actually do about it.
But simply thinking about it in terms of regard.
And I think and tell me what you think about just care and consideration too, because sometimes, when you think about being seen and putting effort into it and being present, it's almost when you feel disrespected.
It feel you feel invisible unseen, like you don't even matter.
That's right.
You feel dismissed.
Yes, i mean, and we're in an age now where impressions are made in less than three seconds and you have to be very careful in um Being able to be seen as a person who respects.
In less than three seconds.
That is going to be picked up by the person who's looking at you whether you're respecting them or not.
Of course, you have to keep going and keep proving.
And it should be just part of how you operate.
It's just part of how you deal with being in the world.
Respect is something that you don't after a while think about.
It's a habit.
It becomes the way you live your life.
And if you live your life with respect, you also have the very foundation for trust.
You can't trust someone you don't respect.
You know one of the most interesting meetings I've ever attended.
I had the great privilege of serving on the New York Federal Reserve Small Business Board.
I was on for two terms as a board member.
And my last term, I was the chair of the board.
So I get invited to what is my favorite meeting of the year going to hear these people ex-board members talk about the economy.
Well, right after the 2008 2009 meltdown that made millions of people lose their jobs, hundreds of thousands of people lose their homes.
I mean, it was just a catastrophic disaster that we have still not emotionally recovered from.
And I remember going to a meeting with all of these past heads of the Federal Reserve.
And it was a small it was a small lunch and it was a roundtable.
Anyway, I was very quiet and I listened to everyone.
They were much smarter, many more degrees than I have.
And so.
And they were really smart and everything, but they were missing something huge, I feel like.
So at the end of the discussion, I kind of said, I have something to add.
I really like to hear what you think of this.
I said, I think the most destructive thing about this whole experience for our culture is the erosion of trust in our financial institutions.
And I don't know how long it'll take for us to get that back.
Because they showed that they don't respect their customers.
Now, that was easy for me to see because of the culture that I live my life in.
The culture of respect for our employees and our customers.
But around the table with all these bankers, I mean, they were mostly heads of banks.
That got away.
That element of broken trust. got away from them.
And I'll never forget, there was like this pause in the room.
And then, of course, they all took it up.
And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I knew I had hit on something.
Right.
I mean, I knew in my gut, it was core.
And I do think that so many of the issues that we confront politically economically, come back down to respect and trust.
I agree.
And simplifying this is so powerful.
And around the table there might have been all of these finance degrees, people with impressive resumes, but you seem to be the only person at the table with a PhD in practical intelligence, in humanity.
Because it's, it's obvious to you, because you see it, you live it, you and you have lived it.
But for them, they're so detached and you see the humanity.
But i also think it's because, very honestly, these things are seen as soft power and i see them as uber powers.
Let's, let's dig into that too, because you're 100 percent right.
And it's we it's been demonstrated so many times.
Just regard, respect, trust.
I mean, isn't that isn't that what our entire currency is is based on?
Dollars grow on trees.
You know, it's the collective trust and belief of the entire world that makes it have credit, makes it have value, right?
And think about Bitcoin.
Bitcoin's value grew in relation to the level of trust that they had and respect that they had for the currency.
So these things, they might be soft, but it's very, very tangible.
And let's get into what is it that a lot of times powerful people miss when it comes to these fundamental elements of trust and respect in the business world.
Again going back to how quickly we make impressions and how quickly humans, all humans in every situation create, through the filter of their own experience, what they think about the person across the table or across the room or on the other side of the screen, that it all happens so quickly that you better enter the room Knowing and feeling what respect means to you.
And how you're going to project that respect to the other.
Because it's very hard to get that back if you don't start with that.
That's amazing.
You know what's interesting about this, Marcy?
I think this is one of the things that even kind of bringing this into a more interpersonal world.
Yeah.
I think this is what often leads people to tolerate disrespect in their lives for so long, because they don't have a clear understanding of what respect means in general, but more specifically what it means to them personally.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I think that there's enough opportunity in our lives to experience not being respected and to know that how that makes us feel, how we operate in an environment or in a relationship where we're not respected.
And we're very different people. than the person we are in a relationship where we are respected.
That's absolutely the same in business.
As a matter of fact business, government negotiations, peace treaties it's all about personal relationships.
It doesn't get anywhere without personal relationships.
Yes.
Okay.
And let's go in from a leadership perspective, too.
Actually no, not just leadership, but also relationships too, because you said something that was profound in passing.
It was almost like a drive-by, Marcy.
I'm not going to let you get away with this.
Okay.
People are very different when they are respected.
It's so true.
When you think about how you present yourself, when you recognize everybody in the room respects you, versus how you present yourself when you don't feel that level of respect.
You're completely different.
You show up completely differently.
Let me share a story.
Yes, please.
Because this was really a very formative story for me.
It was before I started working with my dad.
And it was one of the reasons that I joined forces with him to grow the company.
I was working at a radio station.
I had a terrific job.
It was a job of my dreams.
I was actually producing a radio show.
And I loved it, loved it, loved it.
But I was also the assistant to the president of the radio station.
And I was given an assignment.
I did the assignment.
And the president, who was busy, he just said to me, well, just give it to the VP.
I gave it to the VP.
A few days later, the president calls me in and says how come I never got to see the completion of your assignment?
I said, well, I gave it.
I don't want to use names.
I gave it to the VP, OK?
He said, what are you saying?
I'm saying I gave it.
I handed it in on time.
And he said, well, he gave me a plan, but he didn't say that was your plan.
And I, like at that moment I knew.
I've since found out that so many people have this experience that their work is stolen by their superiors without any attribution.
Well, I knew that this guy didn't even respect himself, because he was having an affair, and he was a father with three kids and he was having an affair with someone at the radio station.
So let's not go into respect.
But I knew that he didn't respect himself.
I had no surprise when he did this to me.
Right.
What I didn't expect was that the president was going to leave to serve in the federal government.
He became head of Voice of America.
And I was left with a boss who couldn't stand me because I had made it obvious that I was going to speak up.
So he comes into my office.
He turns his chair around, like Gary Cooper at high noon, you know, throws his leg over the chair and he goes.
Marcy, what do you really want here?
And for some reason, I was like, Beth Davis, I said, I want your job.
OK.
And wait, wait, I knew it was over.
So then he goes, you're fired.
So he leaves my office.
I close the door and I start crying.
After I close the door, I just completely start crying and everything.
And I realized, after feeling totally humiliated and everything, that I was not actually feeling upset about how it ended, that I knew, because of his lack of respect, that it wasn't going to be for long.
And, you know, he got his in the end.
But the point is, there are so many situations where we are confronted with our values.
And if respect is one of your values, is one of your core ways of being, you can't tuck that away.
It's always present.
This is an incredible story for so many reasons.
It goes back to discovery, deal discovery versus deal, you know, deal making.
Right.
Because there there certainly was a path for you to continue working there.
All you would need to do is sacrifice your soul and lose your self-respect and be a doormat.
And you could have worked there for a long time.
And and help to make dates with the other.
Right.
Oh, my goodness.
This is a perfect example.
And what I recognize is that the more you begin to respect yourself, the less tolerant you are of disrespect of other people.
And you don't even need to get the other person to necessarily change.
Sometimes you have to realize it's that classic saying.
You can't change the people around you, but you can change the people around you by making sure you're reshuffling the deck of relationships that surround you.
Right.
And it's a fool's errand to expect that people who are fully formed and you're working with these adults that they are going to change by anything.
You have to pick yourself up and go somewhere else.
Agreed.
And the other thing too, I want to hammer home, is that it's not a loss if you do that.
Going back to what you said about the deals that you've done before, how you were really focused on what it is.
Your goals are narrowly focused on the goals.
I think a lot of times we get stuck in bad relationships, in bad agreements, bad deals, simply because we are not clear on what our goals are.
We make the person the goal and not the way that we are treated and the lifestyle and the regard that we have and the respect that we are given the goal.
Because if you were to have gone back in time to that situation where you had the toxic VP who then became the boss, and you would have said my goal is to stay at this company, no matter what, then it would have led to a bunch of bad decisions and inappropriate compromises.
But if you say no, my goal is to have a job that treats me with respect and pays me appropriately and gives me the lifestyle I deserve.
Now you can realize.
Oh, there are several options at my disposal.
Yes, really, that's perfectly, that's exactly right.
And of course, at the moment of crisis, you don't feel that way.
But in retrospect and in analysis, that's absolutely perfect.
And that's actually how good moves are made in life.
You know, I mean, sometimes being fired is a kick upstairs.
Sometimes being fired gives you the opportunity to To say well, if this were the job I were going for now, would it be the job I'd accept?
You know it was the job you accepted two, three years ago, but would this be the job I'd accept today?
And so sometimes being fired is a wake-up call too.
Absolutely.
And let's not assume though that people can just pivot on this.
Let's say to this point, they listen to the podcast.
They're like, I'm feeling you, Marcy.
I'm feeling you.
I don't know how to do it.
Because I think there might be somebody listening to this who says to themselves now I realize that a big reason why I have been mistreated in the past or found myself in bad situations is because I was willing to tolerate disrespect for so long.
And for you, you're very confident, very accomplished.
And they might say, well, it's easy for Marcy to do this.
She's Marcy Sims.
Right.
And so I wasn't when this happened.
I wasn't at all.
It was only my third job out of college.
I wasn't.
And I loved this job.
It wasn't like I didn't like it.
It wasn't like I was unhappy or felt underappreciated until the top boss left.
So, no, I was, but I did feel connected with who I was and maybe foolishly also.
I wasn't thinking I didn't have children.
I wasn't supporting someone.
I didn't have the encumbrance of the financial.
I figured whatever it is, I'll figure out, you know, I'll go to Saks Fifth Avenue and sell hosiery.
You know, I just...
I didn't think I'm going to put anyone else at jeopardy but myself.
So that's a luxury.
So I understand that not everyone at all is in that position.
But I think that the voice in your head though, has to make sure that you can identify those times, that you talk yourself up around those times to identify when you are being mistreated and disrespected and how you'd like the outcome, because there might be a situation that presents itself where you can act that out successfully and gain back the respect that you deserve.
This is so good because I think a lot of times we, with our overthinking, we ignore the voice in our head or negotiate against ourselves where the voice is telling us to do something.
And then you say, no, no, no, it's not like that.
But we don't trust our instincts.
And something else that you said, you said you felt very connected with who you are.
How did you get to that point?
Wow.
So I'm the oldest of six children.
I mean, do you really want to go there?
Absolutely.
Okay.
I'm the oldest of six children.
My mom had, she was a lovely, charming woman, but she suffered from postpartum depression.
And so the first 12 years of my life, every two years, my mother had a birth.
And I, at a very young age, was given a lot of responsibility.
And then when my dad started the business when I was nine, it was even more responsibility.
And I decided that that was not going.
I don't know how I decided this honestly, but I just decided because I generally was mostly a happy person.
And maybe it's just the good fortune of my genetics and how I am put together.
I decided that a lot of the things that I had to deal with were not going to define me.
And, you know, just the fact that I didn't have all this time to play with other kids.
And I, you know, I never had a Barbie doll or, you know, all that kind of stuff.
But I just wasn't going to let it define me.
I didn't.
I thought nature was beautiful.
And when we moved from Brooklyn to Yonkers and we had a backyard, I was like in heaven.
And I spent a lot of time with flowers and shrubbery.
And I had just this connection with, I think, just the joy of being alive, like the wonderment of it.
And the wonderment of it has never left.
Oh, there's so much here to explore Marci, because what you're saying, everybody knows what PTSD is post-traumatic stress disorder.
But people don't realize that there's a flip side of that called post-traumatic growth.
And that doesn't get as much shine.
And so what you said was you experienced a hardship and then you made a decision.
And the decision was that you were not going to let it define you.
You were going to define yourself.
And I think a lot of times we get caught up in the idea of life as a process of discovery.
I'm trying to find myself.
But in my experience, and the experience of a lot of high performers that I've had conversations with, it is really more of self-creation.
I recognize something happens and usually it is a bad thing.
And then I'm going to make a decision that I'm going to build myself up with intentionality.
And then the other thing, too we cannot overlook the fact that you are, with intentionality, connecting with things that you find beautiful.
Your escape.
Without judging yourself for it, right?
You like flowers, you like shrubbery, enjoy that.
And don't lose that sense of awe.
Because I've recognized also that the lack of the ability to be moved, like how unaffected you are by the beauty of life, is almost seen as a status symbol.
Whereas that's not a big deal to me.
I've experienced so much.
But you're saying, no, no, life is beautiful and I am going to enjoy that beauty.
And I think a lot of times people suffer from a lack of amazement, awe and wonderment to their own detriment.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
You know, there's an expression to those that more has been given, more is expected.
You know, that with opportunity comes responsibility, right?
And one can welcome responsibility or shy away from it, but it usually adds dimension to your life.
And so I looked at the responsibility of being the oldest of six and having to help my mom all those years.
It was a responsibility that added dimension to my life.
This again, this is such a powerful mindset shift too, because there's so many ways that we can perceive things.
And I.
A lot of people miss the fact that they are in control or have more control over their perception, that they realize, because it's the story that you're telling yourself.
You could have more responsibilities and then say, everything's terrible.
I hate everything.
Forget these flowers.
I, I don't like it.
But instead you're saying, no, okay, this adds depth and dimension to it.
And then I am going to pen a beautiful chapter in my book of life and I'm going to decide what this means to me.
Yes.
Yes.
And that's such a realization.
I know that a member of my family had addiction issues and in helping him or being supportive of, for sure for the times that he was trying to kick his addiction.
He kept saying, but, you know, this happened to me and this happened to me and this happened to me.
And I said, rewrite your story.
Don't tell yourself that story.
You know where that story is going to land you.
It's going to land you back here at rehab, trying again to kick the addiction.
So I think we all have that possibility.
We can't ignore realities.
I'm not saying, you know, if you're hungry, that's going to make your hunger go away.
But it's certainly it puts a different light on everything.
It's like a different light bulb.
Yes.
Oh, that's powerful.
This is great.
And I know we've been chatting for a long time, and I want to make sure I respect your time.
But before we go, I always bring in Simone at the end to ask some additional questions, because he's always listening and seeing opportunities.
So, Simone, what questions are coming to mind while we still have Marcy?
I have a question about respect.
Yes.
Okay.
You have a lot of experience and I'm sure that you have found moments when you give respect, but respect does not come in return.
So maybe 10% of the time, I don't know exactly how many times, but what should we do in those cases?
When we find ourselves in a situation where the other person is not able to show respect.
I think it's incumbent upon us, those that feel respect and have respect for others, to understand the pain of the life they're living.
Their life is not as filled with as much possibility as yours, respecting people.
And having some compassion and patience listening, asking questions, being curious, making sure that you ask them enough questions as to oh, maybe you could explain that further.
You know, I might've been taking that the wrong way and I know you didn't mean it.
And I'm sure that if you explain it to me, I would be able to get this without, without feeling like you're dismissing me.
I think that being calm, being curious is, And being gentle, almost.
Using that moment of lack of respect as an opportunity to show your kindness.
Kindness is also an uber power.
And it's disarming. particularly people who are disrespectful, they're really disarmed by it.
Now, I'm not saying this works if you meet someone in a dark alley who's, you know, inebriated.
I'm saying you're meeting someone in a particular situation where you're safe and you feel that if it goes off the rails, you have an escape.
I have found in most situations like that, in meetings socially, That's showing kindness, curiosity and kind of like making it clear how respectful you are of them by what you say and how you act.
They get intimidated.
They really do.
They're awkward.
They become kind of awkward.
I agree.
And I think that's something that we often miss when it comes to these tough conversations, whether it's a negotiation argument, conflict.
We feel that threat to us when we feel disrespected.
It's more so an emotional threat than a physical threat in most cases.
It is a threat to our ego where you're saying, how dare you treat me like this?
And sometimes, especially in high level negotiations.
That's part of the testing process where they'll hit you.
That's good.
With that disrespect.
And they are intentionally trying to hurt you.
And if you intentionally respond with kindness, it does truly intimidate them and throw them off.
Because what's often beneath that is a shallow set of tools when it comes to the conversation.
They're used to being the biggest and baddest in the room and they're used to people rolling over and just accepting it and being just the doormat of the conversation.
But power respects power.
So I don't need you to respect me as a person.
You will respect my power, though.
You can get respect and not need to be liked in return.
I think that's something that people don't fully appreciate, right?
And the bullies in these negotiations are...
What's interesting is that they might be threatening you, but what they're really offering you, in a really bizarre, toxic way, is peace.
They're offering you peace.
They're saying, hey, look, I have put you under such duress.
And I am now giving you a pathway to peace.
If you give me what I want, now you can have your peace back.
And then you're really what you're saying is like, hey, thanks for the offer.
But I bring my own peace to this conversation.
I didn't come here to get peace from you.
I came here to get the deal done.
So let's get back to business.
And when you get when you hit them with that, it really throws them off.
Yeah.
And I think you're describing really a tactic in negotiation called bullying.
I mean, I was in a negotiation with a bully once.
Who, just who threatened me?
Who out now threatened me, you know, and I was like, oh my God, you know I didn't react immediately in the meeting.
But later, after I said to my lawyer, I said, is this guy I mean, should I be afraid?
Is he?
Is he actually going to like do something on his own that is illegal and harmful to me physically?
And he said, no, that's the way he negotiates.
It's so frustrating.
And here's the thing that we can't forget this.
The reason why they do this is because the tactic has been reinforced by weaker people.
Totally.
Absolutely.
Totally.
And we see it in our culture right now.
Yes.
Agreed.
Agreed.
That's real.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, it is.
Yeah.
And so I think it's powerful.
This is so powerful and so necessary because, And for me, I believe in treating people responsibly, treating people with equity equality, with regard and respect.
And also I recognize we live in the real world.
So, as much as I do these trainings, teaching people how to communicate respectfully with civility, I also recognize that a big part of this that isn't talked about enough is the necessity of resilience.
Because I want to teach people to treat people with respect.
And I also want to teach my people to say when you go out into this world, There will be a substantial amount of times where people don't treat you with respect.
And I need you to have better tools than saying, hey, don't do that and stop being mean.
Because then they're going to say, hey, there's my mark.
No, I'm not going to stop being mean because clearly it bothers you.
So just saying please like, don't like blaming them, doesn't work, because it actually is a signal a lot of times.
So by hitting them with the fact that, hey, listen, you can't hurt me.
If you want to waste your time trying to hurt me, go ahead.
But clearly I'm not moved.
And so you want the real way to stop that behavior is by demonstrating that it does not work.
You're wasting both of our time.
Right.
And even if you respond in a way that might kind of emotionally show some vulnerability, that doesn't mean that you've changed your position on the issue.
That is the core of why you're negotiating in the first place.
Oh, let me tell you an example.
So there was an example when I was negotiating the largest media deal in the history of the company.
And I recognize that the people on the other side were taking advantage of us.
And, you know, we are we're doing well, but we're not like, you know, billions of dollars.
Right.
And so they had the leverage and they assumed we were going to take the deal.
And so I told them this is what I said.
And to your point, Marcy, about being vulnerable, I said, I want to be transparent here.
I no longer feel safe in this relationship with you.
And as a result, we're going to move.
We're going to take a different direction here.
My thing was, listen, I made sure when I got the offer that was highly disrespectful.
I said, hey, team, we're going to do some research.
We're going to figure out what our alternative is so we can find a way to be okay even if we don't have this deal.
I said, listen, this was so flagrantly offensive that I'm not even willing to negotiate.
I don't feel safe in this negotiation because you promised this.
You gave me that.
I'm not interested anymore.
And they came crawling back.
And we got an incredible deal.
I think the deal value went up about, if it did the calculation, it was like 177%.
There was just all this money on the table that they didn't want to give to us.
I said, all right, cool.
We want to play this game.
We'll play this game.
But that's an example of how you can still be strong while being vulnerable.
And that's a classic example of one of the keys to successful negotiation which is being willing to walk away.
Yes, because if I know you're going to stay, then why would I care to treat you well?
If I know you're going to take whatever I give you, then why would I give you my best?
You know, so sometimes you have to be you have to demonstrate and it cannot.
I always say this.
One of my first episodes on the podcast was bluffing and my mentality of I don't bluff.
I just don't bluff because I bluff one time.
They call me on it.
I lose my reputation forever.
So I never bluff.
I make promises.
I make promises.
So I'll say like, hey, listen, if you do this, then I do that.
Your choice.
You let us know where we want to go.
And then if they go the wrong way, then the hammer comes down.
But it can never ever, ever be a bluff, because if they call you on the bluff one time, you lose credibility for the rest of the relationship.
And Kwame, at this point, you have a reputation.
Exactly.
So your reputation is built on that behavior and following through in that way on all of these deals.
So now, when someone has to negotiate with you, they know that that's who they're going to be dealing with.
You know, it's like being the newbie.
That's the uncertain time.
But after you do a couple of deals, you get a reputation.
And people, they better know how to deal with you.
Absolutely.
Oh, this is so good.
Marcy, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming on the show.
Really appreciate it.
Now, before you go, let the listeners know again how they can get in touch with you and the things that you're working on now.
Well, August 26th, my book, Leading with Respect. is dropping on Amazon.
And it is a really quick read.
I wanted something that you could do in a weekend.
And there's not a lot of research, but there is a lot of wisdom.
And I think people will really enjoy it and get a lot from it.
I'm also working at the SciSims Foundation, which is our foundation.
I'm one of the founders.
And we have a lot of causes.
You can see us, scisimsfoundation.com.
And of course, my own website, marcisims.com.
Amazing.
Marci, thank you so much for joining us.
Really appreciate it.
