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Take away the things that are distracting you and let's take this tough situation and make it less complex. by dispositioning things.
And you might have to just kind of trust, do some tests say, is this the problem or not?
It is not the problem. Great. Put it away.
Let's not worry about that. That's how I think sometimes great leaders who can synthesize and communicate very complex things in a simplistic way.
I think they... might not understand that they have a level of conscious, unconscious competence.
And what I'm always trying to do is take people to that level of conscious competence. so they can understand why you're successful. is by making these complicated situations less complex by dispositioning things and making the situation more manageable.
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Let's make every conversation a winning negotiation.
Jim, thanks for joining us today. Yeah, thanks for having me, Kwame.
This is awesome. It's my pleasure. I'm excited.
I've been excited from the day we talked about this a few months ago.
So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Yeah, I'm just a dude who's done some things in business.
I've had some success and uh, Now I help other people.
I always say like open their presents. I've had my Christmas day already.
So I think as a parent, there's exciting times when like you get as excited as you were when you were a kid. on Christmas Day opening presents, well, then you become a parent and you see your kids open presents and you get more excited even. for them to open their presence and I'm just one of these guys now that helps other people open their presence and that's what I enjoy in life that's what I'm going to do until the good Lord says, you know, you should probably hang up your cleats.
I love it, man. You really like the values that you talk about.
I know you live these values and That's why I really appreciate you and our friendship so much.
And listen, I know that you're not big on the self promotion, but I'm going to. shout you out here because rumor has it you have a book and a podcast you might want to talk about.
Yeah, I think we met originally through the podcast, the Leadership Podcast.
We've been doing that. I think we're in our... eighth or ninth year or something like that.
We've been doing a long time. You've been on twice.
And it's just one of these... ways that we get to talk to people that we love.
Podcast really isn't a commercial endeavor.
It's more of a, we get to meet and speak with just awesome people and have these wonderful conversations and I get smarter and I learn and you know my span of understanding of the world grows.
And so I really enjoy that and that's been going on a long time.
So people can find out about that at theleadershippodcast.com.
And then last year, I wrote the book that everyone was telling me to write for a long time.
It was like, you need to write a book. I was like, all right, I'll get it.
Only through the podcast, the Leadership Podcast.
We've been doing that. I think we're in our... eighth or ninth year or something like that we've been doing a long time you've been on twice And, you know, it's just one of these ways that we get to talk to people that we love.
Podcast really isn't a commercial endeavor.
It's more of a, we get to meet and speak with just awesome people and have these wonderful conversations. and I get smarter and I learn and my span of, understanding of the world grows.
And so I really enjoy that and that's been going on a long time.
So people can find out about that at theleadershippodcast.com.
And then last year, I wrote the book that everyone was telling me to write for a long time.
I was like, you need to write a book. I was like, all right, I'll get on it.
And I had written it maybe two, three years ago when it started on it.
Then we finally got it out and published last year and it's called Clarity, Business Wisdom to Work Less and Achieve More.
And I'm just really happy I went through the process to put it on paper.
I mean, for me... If people get some value out of it, that's fantastic.
It was more of a personal thing to put a lot of these thoughts on paper.
And I think it makes anytime you have an idea, if you can put it on paper, it gets just better.
Because it has to be cleaner. It has to be, you can't have holes and gaps.
And it was really a reflection of so much of what I've learned through the years through my parents, through my upbringing, through the foundational elements that my parents, my grandparents instilled in me. all the way through all the experiences I had in the corporate world, building businesses, selling businesses.
And it's just, it was a fun process. So I'm glad it's out there.
And if, you know, it's yeah. I'll never regret doing that.
I mean, you shouldn't because your work is impeccable.
And the work that you have, especially when it comes to leadership, that's really what I want to focus on today. for leaders in general, and I want to use that term broadly, It's not just about the authority and position and power, but we are leading in different ways every day in whatever role it has to be.
And leaders have to have tough conversations as well.
That's a critical part of your leadership.
You might have incredible skills and subject matter expertise, but if you can't communicate effectively, then you're gonna struggle as a leader.
So first, I think it would be good for us to start off in general, talking about what makes a good leader in terms of attributes and qualities.
And then let's talk about the communication skills of leadership too.
Yeah. From an attribute, I'd say the number one attribute that I believe and that I've found through just even doing our podcast is I believe curiosity.
I think curiosity just rises to the top for me because It's not that you don't take things at face value, but you always want to understand deeper understand the why behind the how, you ask questions naturally instead of going through some forced process.
And I think the best leaders are naturally curious.
They want to understand things. And I think most people, when they're even in a conversation, One of the best pieces of advice we can give people is listen to understand, not to respond.
And so if you are naturally curious, you're always listening to understand, not to respond.
And I think just personal relationships, you can have better relationships with people and relationships are the glue that help teams do things that individuals can't.
And so if you're understanding what motivates people, if you're curious about what's important to them, what they value.
And then you can kind of weave things together and get that nice tight weave that makes something that you would think is not very strong, just impenetrable.
It's kind of like Kevlar. Like a Kevlar thread is not very strong, okay? by itself, but you weave it into this fabric and then it becomes impenetrable.
And so what great leader does is they're curious.
They want to understand how all the pieces come together, how I can put them together.
And I think that is just the absolute number one quality.
Being able to communicate is important because that's like, you can't weave if you can't help people understand how they...
Do I exert control? Do I cede control? And there's no one answer.
And it changes based on the context and the situation.
And so you're always trying to find this balance point. point and all these various kind of things that we do as a leader.
I think a great leader is able to find that balance point. shift as the situation and conditions shift because you don't just set it and forget it.
If you're doing that, you're not listening. you're not paying attention to the outside influences, to the people.
And so I think it's just that sense of being able to adjust and maintain balance and and all these different things that are important as a leader i think is is i think the secondary key You got those two.
You're probably your odds are going to be good that you're going to be a good leader.
I agree 100%. And what's funny is that it's a continuous process.
It never ends. And I think that's what makes it so tough. because you can improve your skills, you can get better at it, the work will always need to be done and it will always require some level of effort.
And I think a lot of times people struggle with leadership because of the consistent amount of effort and focus and attention it requires because somebody might be able to be a good leader for a couple hours, a day, a week,
Maybe a couple months, but they're like you have to be leading all the time and it can get exhausting too. which speaks to the balance challenge as well.
When you think about leadership, how do you Develop the resilience and endurance and stamina to be a good leader, even under pressure when things are going really tough.
Like when things are difficult. Yeah, I mean, it's a rich and complicated and very good question. because it's covering a lot of different elements.
There's like the consistency, the stamina, the to be able to kind of like you know handle situations where there might be you know withering disagreement or dissatisfaction amongst people.
I think the most essential thing is you have to know your values.
Because that's the bedrock that doesn't change.
And so, you know, I always take a look at it as maybe like the difference between like true north, you know, magnetic north, you know, magnetic north is kind of shifting all the time.
True north is, and that could be your opinions on things.
You should be able to change your opinions on things, but your values really shouldn't change.
That's your true north. You know, that's where you say, like, listen, this is the kind of person I am.
This is the kind of organization I'm leading.
This is what we value. This is how we operate.
Those things you can count on. That's not going to change now.
We may have an assessment of a situation and it may be this way.
Well, we might get more information or we might have something change or a team member leaves or a new team member comes on board. and our assessment changes, and we need to change our minds.
That's okay. And so I think that ability to A, be malleable and flexible to be able to have some ability to rebalance things comes with an understanding of what is you're able to balance and what you're willing to balance and what you're unwilling to compromise on.
Talking to a guy who's an expert in negotiation, I mean, nothing should be, there should be very little that you are unwilling to compromise on. but there should be some things you are unwilling to compromise on and those are your core values.
Agreed. Core values, the mission of the company, right?
These are the things that are the true north.
And I can tell that your close friend and podcasting partner is a Green Beret because true North and magnetic North.
Civilians typically don't know those terms.
I don't know those terms. So now I'm learning.
I'm learning this. This is great. And I love this, Jim, because when we think about the resilience that's required to be a good leader in general there's a level of resilience that's required to have high pressure conversations as well.
And again, just like leadership, you can be a good negotiator a great negotiator for one minute, three minutes, 10 minutes.
But sometimes people reach that breaking point when they run out of energy.
And I think the same focus on values and mission, those two things can really just 10 minutes. but sometimes people reach that breaking point when they run out of energy And I think the same focus on values and mission, those two things can really help us to be more resilient in the moment. because we might have all of these challenges where they are being emotional, they might be being disrespectful, whatever it happens to be,
And you recognize, hey, listen, I know what my true north is.
I know what my values are. I know what my mission is.
And I know what my goal is in this conversation.
There's a lot of noise coming at me that might tempt me to get off track.
But as long as I can stay focused, and I have that knowledge in myself of what's the most important thing to focus on during the conversation. then it helps me to be a little bit more resilient in the heat of the moment.
Yeah, and I think if you are really firm in understanding what you value and where your values are It's very easy not to get distracted by the things that are coming at you, but What most people don't realize, and this is in everything, and especially negotiations,
Most of the time, our worst critic, our worst enemy in negotiations is us Okay.
I was just working with a guy who's trying to get a new job and he was asking you know, some negotiation questions about, you know, salary and this and that.
I said, Dude, stop it. Like stop negotiating the other side.
That's their job. You negotiate for you.
They'll take care of them. You're creating a problem.
You're imagining a world that no one said exists yet.
So you can ask questions to validate if that world exists, but if it doesn't, Don't negotiate against yourself.
There's no need to do that because sometimes we're our own worst enemies.
And so there's a difference between kind of scenario planning for situations and getting so locked into a scenario that you're unwilling to accept the truth that's in front of you.
And so, you know, our goal should always be in tough situations to say let's rather than focus on how tough it is, let's strip away things that are unnecessary.
And so like, even in the book, there's an example where like this mother is trying to find, and this is a personal experience of mine.
I just kind of wrote into the book, but like, So, and I'll tell it from a personal level.
So like I'm, I, made this mistake far too many times.
I was not babysitting. I was just being a dad while my mom was while my wife was the mother of our children was away.
So I was not babysitting. And so I'm sitting there and the kids are in the basement.
They're making a mess. And I'm like ankle deep in like all these plastic toys.
And they were probably like, younger than your kids at this point.
And so we're waiting around in this morass of primary colored toys.
And one of the kids can't find something, you know, this dear little toy of hers.
And she's freaking out and see where DEF CON five and everyone's going mental.
And, and so I'm like, I don't know where this. is.
And finally I said, okay, you know, being really super lazy, this is really a selfish move.
I said, Because it was a mess and I knew I had to clean it up before my wife got home.
I said, let's put away all the toys that aren't this toy.
And then pretty soon there will be less toys in the ground.
We'll be able to find the toy. And literally, we got through like three quarters of the toys, putting them away.
And then finally, you know, this little stuffed animal dog showed its face and my daughter was like, oh my God, there he is.
And, you know, she was happy. And, you know, of course I could clean up the rest, but the kid's We're engaged.
And, you know, the lesson I took away from that is like we have all these problems that seem incontractable.
And sometimes it's easier than just to focus on the complexity of the problem is just like, what's not problem?
Put that away. Disposition that. Take away the things that are distracting you and let's take this tough situation and make it less complex. by dispositioning things.
And you might have to just kind of trust, do some tests. to say, is this the problem or not?
It is not the problem. Great. Put it away.
Let's not worry about that. That's how I think sometimes great leaders who can synthesize and communicate very complex things in a simplistic way, I think they might not understand that they have a level of conscious unconscious competence And what I'm always trying to do is take people to that level of conscious competence. so they can understand why you're successful. is by making these complicated situations less complex by dispositioning things and making the situation more manageable.
I think that's why sometimes know people are like oh my gosh i can't believe you did that or you handled that it's just like There's a process.
It's not overly complicated, but you just have to be disciplined enough to execute it so that you can make super complex things more understandable or manageable.
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Elevate, negotiate, and succeed. From LinkedIn News, I'm Jessi Hempel, host of the Hello Monday podcast.
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I agree. And to that point, Jim, it's really important to also be the type of leader that has the respect his or her team to be able to get them to follow along with that process and because it is a process and you can simplify it and you can execute on it.
But if you're executing on it alone, then it's gonna be really challenging.
And so that's why it's really important to be that type of leader that has the respect. because now everybody's following that process.
And then the other thing too, Listeners, this was very, very, very subtle.
And this shows that Jim is a great negotiator, but also probably a much better husband too.
Because at the beginning of the story, you almost said you were babysitting your kids and you caught yourself because you've been burned on that.
I heard that. I heard the trauma in your voice, my friend.
And that's an example of the trigger word, because there's some ways you might describe something that is perfectly fine for you. you but you know It triggers other people, so you avoid that.
This is an off-topic negotiation note, but I could not let this slide.
Because it was too perfect. Yeah, well, you know, you touch the hot stove enough times you eventually learn.
Exactly. I love this. And I think this gives us a cool opportunity to circle back. to what you talked about at the very beginning, curiosity.
Curiosity is what drives leadership. leaders, but it also makes great negotiators.
We understand that the quality of the question is going to determine the quality of the answer and great negotiators are curious now We can mostly all agree with that.
But what is it that holds people back from actually mobilizing curiosity when in That's such an interesting question because it's a really hard thing to teach. curiosity.
I can instruct someone how to ask better questions and what makes a good question.
But I think Curiosity and authenticity are like first cousins, okay?
If you're trying to pretend like you're curious, but it's not authentic, it really comes across very flat and people will perceive that as, you're trying to manipulate something because you probably are.
I mean, I think curiosity has to be genuine.
And if you're in a situation where you know you should be curious, but you're not, I think you know, it's incumbent upon you, you might not be able to do it in the moment, but if you do an after action report afterwards or you're trying to debrief yourself afterwards, afterwards just say like, why was this not important to me?
Why did I not care? You're curious. I mean, the number one thing is you got to give a shit.
Pardon my French. I mean, you just got to care.
And so if you don't, you got to ask yourself, why did I not care why was this just not why did i just not even want to listen to this person's answer And so then you might be like, am I in the wrong job?
Am I doing the wrong thing? Am I, is this, is what I'm doing not even connected remotely to my values?
So why am I here? Sometimes we have bad days and we kind of check out.
We're like, I'm not on my game today. So then you can think about why was I not on my game today?
Normally I would be interested. Why was I not interested today?
But you've got to find out why you weren't curious because curious should be a natural outpouring of demonstration that you care.
Like I care. And if you don't, those are questions you should ask yourself afterwards because it's a really hard thing to fake.
This is brilliant. The nexus between curiosity and caring is powerful.
Because going back to what you said before, when you're being curious in a difficult conversation, you need to be genuine because if you're not being genuine, and you're doing it only for the purpose of essentially trying to, and I use this word intentionally, manipulate the perspective of the other person for your own benefit.
But if you actually care, You could ask a question.
It might change the way you ask the question, but in terms of the semantics of the words. but it will certainly change the way that you ask the questions in terms of the energy behind the words too.
If I actually care then that means that I care not only about my own interests, but also about your interests.
And that is the difference between manipulation and influence, manipulation and persuasion.
Because it comes down to the intent. If it's selfishly oriented, then it's closer to manipulation.
If you genuinely care about the other person, now it's genuine curiosity and it's more authentic persuasion.
Because I'm going to be open and honest about what I need, what I want and why.
And I want to know what you want, what you need and why. then we can work together and figure that out.
So the mutual curiosity just is amplified by the amount that we care about each other and the deal. gets better, the negotiation gets better.
But it can be scary to be genuine in these conversations.
It can be scary to be authentic because sometimes when you're being authentic, you have to recognize your own vulnerabilities, your own limitations, and oftentimes our curiosity is inhibited from really taking flight because we like to pretend like we know everything and we like to always feel as though we're right.
Well, if you've ever seen, let's say a spy movie and someone in the spy movie says like, You just told two lies now that you have to keep track of.
So they're like, here you go in this, this world, this dark world where you think like you should be a fake person.
But if you were going undercover, the less you have to be fake, the more... and real you're going to be.
And so... I think it's really important to be convincing, to be influential, to have impact And to have, you know, truly power is to really be grounded, you know, truly power. is to really be grounded in who you are and what matters to you and what you care about Now, what's interesting is I could say like, I'm really smart.
And I can manipulate the situation because I'm smarter than everyone else.
And I can play chess and I can do all these other things.
But there are these tiny things that we struggle to kind of control that we can't really control.
And so let me take you on a little bit of a neuroscience journey here.
Yes. There's a guy who did a study, I think Dr. Albert Morabian, years ago.
And it sometimes gets panned, this study, but it was about how people emotionally respond to information they're receiving from you.
And people... They have panned the study because this is how people view what you say or do.
No, this is how you emotionally respond.
And we know that people make decisions based on emotions, okay?
And I think you're the guy who said a great quote, you know, we are emotional creatures that sometimes- are logical.
So let's talk about this study. There's something that came out of it that I call the lock combination.
I use this in sales training all the time.
The locker combination is 7-38-55. And so people emotionally respond to what you are saying at any given time 7%, the emotional response, 7% is just the words I use.
Okay, 38% is my tone of voice. Okay. And 55% is my body language and everything else.
And so we think we can manipulate a situation, but if you go back to, let's say, authentically being curious, I can tell you the question to ask, but the way you ask that question, that tone of voice, 38%. is going to come through as either condescending or incurious or not genuine.
And it's really tough to fake that. And so we think we can control all these things those are very hard things to fake and control And so I always encourage people.
I say like, we worry in job interviews about like what we're going to say, say it the right way. say it a nice way.
Say it with a good tone of voice. It's the reason why I can go to a puppy and I can say, You're the cutest little dog in the world.
And that puppy's tail goes between its legs.
But I can go to that same puppy and I can just say, you're the smelliest, ugliest little dog in the world, aren't you?
And that dog's tail is wagging and it's super happy.
I mean, that's maybe not the best... scientific experiment, but I think you'd kind of get what I'm saying is If you can't fake being genuine, people see through that.
Whether they might walk away not saying like, well, this one thing that Jim said was bad.
They'll just like, it doesn't feel right.
Yes. It's the vibe check. And I think a lot of times we don't appreciate the dynamism that goes into these interactions and we don't appreciate or respect how hard it is to hide our authentic selves because there will always be some kind of leakage.
I think there are times we could look at TV, we could look at different shows and we could say, oh, you know, most of the acting was good, but I didn't. like this actor, I don't think this actor is good.
So think about if you don't think an actor is good, that's somebody who worked for years to be And you probably have not worked at being an actor.
And now we're going to go out and act like some fabricated version of ourselves.
It's not realistic. It's just not realistic.
So I agree 100% authenticity by itself. it creates trust and trust is by itself persuasive.
So when we think about these negotiations that we're doing, when we're thinking about the tough conversations we find ourselves in as leaders.
Just being genuine and authentic is going to be really important.
And going back to that word, caring drives curiosity.
And the example that you gave, I want to circle back to this because it was good.
Because when you are in a conversation and you say to yourself, you start to realize, and you're being honest with yourself.
And you say, you know, I wasn't listening.
I thought I already knew. I didn't ask any questions.
When they were talking, I wasn't hearing.
I was just waiting for it because it was good.
Because when you are in a conversation and you say to yourself, you start to realize and you're being honest with yourself.
And you say, you know, I wasn't listening.
I thought I already knew. I didn't ask any questions.
When they were talking, I wasn't hearing, I was just waiting for them to be done.
What was it that prevented me from caring enough to be curious.
And so if somebody finds themselves in that position where they're saying, I did not care enough to be curious, what type of internal work can they do in order to get to that point where they do care?
Or maybe Maybe it's a sign that they're just maybe in the wrong place.
I'm not sure. Well, it's interesting. I was driving my son and we were doing a cross-country trip as I was driving him out because we had to get his car out to grad school in Portland.
And so we're taking this like five day road trip out to get his car out there and get him started for grad school.
We knew that we had to find a bar to watch a football game because I'm a big Bears fan.
Everyone can pity me after they listen to this episode.
But I'm a big Bears fan and he is too. And we had to find a bar to watch the Bears game.
And so we got to the bar early in the morning and we got a table and we're like, this is going to be great.
I think it was one of the first games of the season.
We're super psyched. And this guy walks in the bar wearing a Bears jersey with a suitcase.
We're like, Yeah, come on. You know, you Bears fans sit down, you know?
So the guy sits down with us. We're talking Bears.
And we're having a great time together. He's a character.
We have lots of fun. You know, we have lunch together.
I learn all about this guy's family. He's telling me about his kids, telling me about his work, telling me about this and that.
And, you know, the game is over. So he leaves and...
I was talking to my son about it. I said, I hope you don't mind that we invited this guy to join us.
I know it was just the two of us. He's like, no, I don't mind.
I mean, I know that's how you roll. You're always networking.
You're always interested in people. He said something like, I was just a little surprised.
Like you didn't like exchange business cards or do anything like that.
Usually you're always networking or something like that.
And I said, well, did you notice anything interesting about our conversation the entire time, this three-hour Bears game.
And he goes, I don't know what, because he probably knows I'm going to tell him.
And so I said, we know this about his wife.
We know this about his son. We know this about his business.
We know all these other things. What does he know about us?
He goes nothing. And the couple times you were... excited to talk about like grad school and what you were doing in portland like He just started chiming about stuff about him.
I said... Nice guy, fun guy to watch a Bears game with, but there's no need for me to connect with someone like Debbie. because it will always be about what he needs and never about what I need.
There will never be a fair relationship here.
Or to establish a fair relationship would take too much work and effort.
It's not worth my time. And so it's just one of these things that you learn with age and experience and And I'm hopeful that encounter was really important for my son to learn that lesson, to say like, wow, I wasn't looking at it.
That is powerful. And it also shows, too, when you're having these conversations.
When we're having negotiations in general, just let's widen the aperture here because you don't just want to do business.
You want to do business. with the right people and a lot of negotiations fail because they're successful.
I successfully negotiated a deal with the wrong person.
We need to take the time to really feel out the relationship here.
Use your curiosity to learn. And this is a great example.
We didn't get curiosity reciprocated to us in that conversation.
That's a red flag. Because the thing is, we can find somebody else.
Who in these early stages of the conversation, we have more vibrational alignment.
We seem to have more of a value match. All of those things.
So we use negotiation and conversation, not just in order to close deals, but make sure that we're getting in the right deals and making the right relationships too.
A hundred percent. A hundred percent. It's really about like just, you know, there's so many young people I'll coach and counsel.
They're always like, I want to get respect, you know, to give respect.
The person you have to give respect to first is yourself.
And that's just, I think the most important lesson we can teach. people is to say, if you don't respect yourself, no one will respect you.
And so I'd say always enter a relationship as a peer and and stay as a peer.
You don't want to be taking advantage of people.
You don't want to have people take advantage of you because the best time to start a relationship as a peer is at the very beginning.
Don't feel like you have to earn the right to be a peer someday down the road.
And the example I use with this all the time is I said, let's say you've got a daughter, okay?
And I've got a daughter. And so let's say your daughter brings home a young man someday and says, you know, Dad, I think he's the guy.
It's like, okay, tell me about him. Why do you think he's the guy?
Well, he kind of treats me crappy right now, but I think if if we get engaged and then we get married and then maybe if we have a kid, maybe someday, you know, he'll treat me well.
Well, if that discussion ever happened, I'd be like, this guy's never seeing you again, okay? because it's never going to get better than where it starts on day one.
Now, That's an easy decision. You can sit there and just say like, I totally get that.
Why would we do the same thing in business?
Why would we say, I'm going to enter into a relationship with this company They kind of treat us like crap right now, but someday they're going to really respect us.
No, you start off as a peer. And once you get there, you stay there.
You don't take advantage of people. Now there are swells in a relationship where someone, things happen, but then you deal with them and those are conversations that are worth having. to get back to the middle okay that balance point that we talked about earlier but never start a relationship if you can't be as a peer.
And at least don't expect it to get better because it won't.
Yes. Oh, Jim, this is amazing. This is like, I feel like I'm in church right now.
You just laid down a word. This is incredible because when you have that peer-to-peer relationship... then you're walking in with power, empowered, regardless of your rank, title, or authority.
And it's a mindset that we have to shift here because if we go in with that idea, hey, they are above me, I'm trying to earn their respect. then what you're doing is that even though there might be a power differential, that where they have power and leverage in that situation, that could be true.
But what you're doing is you're going into the conversation mentally and emotionally.
And you're giving away more of that to the point where they don't even...
It's not just that they have what you want tangibly.
You're also seeking validation from them.
Part of your emotional well-being is in their hands, and you won't feel good until you get a little bit of their validation. that's an incredibly dangerous place to be.
Just psychologically, but also from a negotiation perspective, then you find yourself in a situation in a situation where you're trading emotion for substance. the feeling of acceptance and I'm giving up tangible benefits just so I can feel good to them.
That's a very dangerous place to be. Yeah.
And it's just, it happens all the time. And it really gets back to You can do that if you understand what you value, if you know what your true north is.
I know what my true north is. It's like, listen, no one's shaking me.
I know what's important to me. And because what's your greatest asset in any negotiation? is being able to walk away.
That's one of those things where it's like, I don't need this that bad that I have to have this.
And so I think I'm the first generation born here in America, parents are immigrants.
And not only immigrants that lived through the Depression, that lived through World War II, that lived through a civil war post-World War II in Greece.
I mean, all kinds of like nasty stuff. stuff.
And one of the things they kind of always embedded in us was like, don't be desperate.
It's horrible when you're desperate. Desperation is a horrible place to be And so a lot of that is like, how do you... I think, you know, I'm the... first generation born here in America, parents are immigrants, and not only immigrants that lived through the depression, that lived through world war ii that lived through a civil war post-world war ii in greece i mean all kinds of like nasty stuff And one of the things they kind of always embedded in us was like, don't be desperate.
It's horrible when you're desperate. Desperation is a horrible place to be And so a lot of that is like, how do you know what it means to be desperate?
What are the conditions that create desperation?
Some of those are manufactured. You're not desperate.
That's not a problem. You've got food on the table.
You're okay. You've got this. You've got the freedom to do this and that.
You know, you can argue about how bad things are.
They're not that bad. Here's when they're bad.
When someone tells you, you can't practice the religion you care about. you can't do this.
You can't educate your children the way you'd like to educate them.
I mean, these are things like, yeah, I'll fight for that because those are values I don't want to sacrifice.
But there are other things that, you know, we get all worked up about that aren't that important.
And so if you know your true north, You can go in with your head held high, stand firm. for what you believe in.
Treat yourself with great amounts of respect and negotiate as a peer.
And then seek to understand the rest of the parameters that are surrounding the situation so that you can understand the context. of someone else's position, maybe adjust the context of your position and know if it's worth working through a deal or walking away from a deal because it's just... it's never going to be good.
And so I think those are just things that are, my goal is to help people learn that at a younger age.
I think we all get to a certain age where we kind of learn these things.
Like these are people you shouldn't have in your life.
Maybe you learn that at 75, maybe you learn it at 60, maybe you learn it at 35.
I don't know. But the sooner you learn it, the happier you'll be, the more fulfilled you'll be 100%.
And Jim, before you go, I wanted to... ask this important question based on that last point.
When you think about happiness and fulfillment, are there any... books or podcasts people should listen to or read to be more happy.
And fulfilled. This is the plug. This is the plug, Jim.
There are so many out there. I would say the Leadership Podcast is a good one.
Okay. But there are some great guests. There's one with Kim Cameron.
That is just like he wrote the book on positivity.
He's a great guy. He's like one of these people that you're just like, holy cow, you know, what a wonderful human.
Just a really wonderful human. And if you like this podcast...
Listen to the two we've done with Kwame on ours, and I think you'll be pretty happy too.
Thank you. We'll put links to that in the description.
Jim, pleasure as always, my friend. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Kwame. This is great. Always fun.
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