Welcome to this negotiation masterclass edition of Negotiate Anything.
With over 1600 episodes featuring some of the world's brightest minds, we've carefully curated three powerful conversations for you.
What makes this so special is that you'll hear how different experts from different industries approach the same challenge in their own unique ways.
Our goal is to give you multiple perspectives so you can build your own unique style.
Success doesn't look the same for everyone.
And in this masterclass, you will see exactly why.
Let's dive in.
Melina, welcome back, my friend.
Oh, thank you.
I'm always very excited.
I'm always excited to talk to you and definitely always excited to be on the show.
So thanks for having me.
Likewise, the feelings are mutual.
And listeners.
I want you to know how much of a treat this is because, like the last couple of times, Melina and I tried to record an episode.
We just chatted as buddies.
And then we're like, wow, it's been an hour and a half, maybe next time.
So we're going to get it done this time.
And so, for the listeners who haven't seen your previous episodes, can you tell them about yourself and what you do?
Absolutely.
So my name is Melina Palmer and I am an applied behavioral economist.
And so that is understanding the psychology of why people act, choose, change.
And what I do is help people to understand how the brain really works, instead of how we think that it should, and then how to better communicate with the brain, whether it's your own brain or it's helping to get employees to buy in or customers to buy.
And that's what I do with businesses.
This is great.
And by chance, do you have a book and a podcast?
I have two books and a podcast.
Yeah, thanks.
So yeah, so my podcast is called The Brainy Business and talks about all these things here that I was just saying.
My first book is called What Your Customer Wants and Can't Tell You.
And the second is What Your Employees Need and Can't Tell You.
And that one, the employee one, is about change and how you present information again on that.
Getting people to buy in.
Now, this is great.
And your work is incredible.
So listeners, make sure you check out Melina's work.
Listeners, you're probably familiar with this.
We talk about the importance of internal negotiations.
So negotiating with yourself.
How do you have that difficult conversation with yourself to figure out what it is that you truly want, why you want it and then what it is that you need to do?
Because, like Malin is saying a lot of times, we know what it is that we should be doing, but the difficulty is getting ourselves to do it and we can't understand what's holding us back.
And so I think it sounds to me that we have to start off with a little bit of self-awareness first, to see where we are.
So can you kind of walk us through this process of internal negotiation, and starting off with the self-awareness piece?
For sure.
So there are four things brain biases that come into play here that I always pinpoint for people that once you have an awareness of them, it can help you to break out of the cycle when you will inevitably come back to it.
Because this is how our brains are biased.
It's not something like.
I know what this is, and so it will never plague me again.
Hooray, right?
That would be great, but that's not the way that we can work with our brains, unfortunately.
So the first of them is optimism bias.
So for optimism bias, we feel like we're better faster stronger, smarter and less biased than everyone else, including the S of five minutes ago and the last time we did a project like this.
And so it's easy to say yeah, you know, last time I set aside a day to work on my business and just did email.
That happened.
But next time I'm better because I got all that stuff out of the way already.
So I don't have to worry about it, right?
Yeah.
Or, you know, circumstances are better tomorrow.
Things will be great.
You know, we're going to put it on the list.
So optimism bias is the first thing that's going to come into play for us, that we think we'll be doing better this time and all those future times as well.
The second piece that really builds onto that is planning fallacy.
So optimism bias, we think we're going to be better, faster, stronger, smarter.
Planning fallacy is we also think all the interruptions and things, these external factors are not going to come up this time.
The, The email the client fires, the kids being sick or needing a snack or whatever.
It is the stuff that we think shouldn't end up being an issue, or our own selves needing to eat food or to get up and walk around or to get distracted by things like Instagram or TikTok or whatever.
Those interruptions are small and.
And so we tend to not really account for them, but those small things add up.
And if you aren't predicting and thinking about them, which is what our brains are biased to do, you may look and say hey, I've got a free day tomorrow.
I'm going to write eight whole hours.
I'm going to plan.
I'm going to plan for 10 straight hours and I'm going to get everything done.
But, you know, eight hours or 10 hours is never that long because of all that stuff in the middle.
So not accounting for that then feels really frustrating and stressful and like you didn't do enough.
So that planning fallacy can get you into this really vicious cycle.
Whereas if you do plan for those things and you say, hey, it's an eight hour day.
I'm probably going to get like four solid real hours of work here in that, because of the other things I need to account for.
And then if you get five done, yay.
But it's not like if you planned for eight and you only got five and then you feel like a failure.
So the next one is called bike shedding.
Bike shedding.
So bike shedding is when there is something big and scary that can have consequences associated with it.
Our brain doesn't like the idea of that because it enjoys predictability.
It likes the status quo.
It likes to have things the way that they are and something new. goes against that.
And so what your brain will do is it puts stuff in your way that feels like it is the most important thing ever.
And until you finish this thing, it feels like you can't move on to the next one.
So it's not that the thing that you have to do is always unimportant, but often it is.
And it's also really low stakes, something that is a super waste of time and everyone knows is a total waste of time and objectively say that's ridiculous right.
Bike shedding stuff feels like it's so important and it keeps us from those important changes that we want to make, that we know are important.
And the somewhat frustrating piece is The bigger the change, the more important it is, the more likely these things are to come up if you're doing them on your own.
So then the fourth item is called time discounting.
So time discounting is what I also call the I'll start Monday effect.
So, building on that optimism bias, we've all had the experience where you say okay, I listened to the this podcast episode.
I read the book.
I did the thing.
And I'm so excited.
And come Monday, I'm going to go do all that stuff.
And you know, Monday comes and you get hung up in all the stuff that you've always done and you don't make the change.
And you think, OK, tomorrow I will or tomorrow I will.
And then eventually you just give up saying you're going to do it tomorrow because you've lost that momentum on it.
And so what research has found is, when we think about ourselves in the future, our brain actually lights up, as if we're thinking and talking about a completely different person.
So committing future Melina to do the thing is really, really easy.
She's waking up at 5 am and running and never eating dressing on a salad and doing all these amazing things in business.
But when I actually get up and it's me when the alarm goes off, it feels so different right, and so being able to take something that you can do now to overcome and kind of trick your brain into understanding the importance of of the thing today, that this is me doing it, not future me, but me can be helpful in overcoming that thing that's keeping you stuck.
There is Because if listeners, if you were like me when you were listening to this, you were like oh,
Just knowing that these biases exist, that is not enough to overcome those biases.
And I think that's one of the things that is so frustrating and disempowering sometimes where, even when you know that it exists, you're saying oh man, I'm time discounting, but I can't stop doing it.
I'm bike shedding, but man, I feel like I really need this bike shed right now.
And so understanding that awareness is the first step.
But Melina, in your expert opinion, how do we start to overcome these things?
So it comes with practice.
Where are the points where you start to feel a little bit scared and where you're going to be more likely to bike shed?
And what is scary for me isn't necessarily what's scary for someone else.
And being able to identify those triggers.
What your go-to thing is that you're doing that, you know is scary.
You know your bike shed being kind of the easy piece here.
Right.
So easy in that it's, they can be become easier to see that you start doing them.
It doesn't mean that it ever becomes like that you'll never, never bike shed again, like we've said.
But for me, like my house is never cleaner than when I have some sort of deadline or scary thing that I'm supposed to be working on.
Right.
Like I know that that's something that's scary and can be a tendency.
And so when I'm just so hung up on that.
I can spot it and I can let other people know, like my husband knows, what my trigger, those sorts of triggers, go-tos are uh, when things are feeling a little bit scary.
And so being able to then have a tactic where, if you know your own go-tos and you can say, I can't do this until I do that.
So there's another, uh, tactic within behavioral science.
It's called temptation bundling.
That can help you overcome time discounting in that something like exercising is you have a you know pain now for some potential gain that you may or may not see or realize into the future.
Right.
So I will maybe live a year longer, but I'll never know that I would have.
But like Netflix seems really interesting and I don't want to go run on the treadmill right now.
So by temptation bundling you do the thing you want only if you do the thing that you know is good for you.
But you may be inclined to not do so much.
So I only get to listen to my favorite podcast while I'm at the gym or when I'm on a walk, and I cannot listen at any other time.
But you have to know that.
One of my favorite quotes from a guy named Nir Eyal who wrote a great book called Indistractable and also one called Hooked, is he says that you can't know that something is a distraction until you know what it's distracting you from.
And so until you know what you're supposed to be doing, what you're supposed to be working on, what that big goal is, it's easy to get hung up in all the other stuff.
But for me, social media is a part of my work.
I have to be as this.
You know, in thought leadership, you know like I have to be out and be visible in all the places it feels like all the time.
And so it's really easy to say I have to be doing that right now because it is important for my business.
And there's a lot of times where it's just productive procrastination which is the problem with that bike shedding.
Is that productive procrastination getting hung up in all the ins of your business that can keep you from ever getting to the ons of the things that you know that you should be working on?
And so taking that space, taking that time, having it set aside and having a guide to help you is so important.
Like I said, we've all set aside the day or the afternoon or the weekend where you say I'm going to do all that big planning.
I'm going to do it this time.
I'm ready.
So it is really important to get out of your own way, out of your own routines, out of your own stuff and take that step back.
Because when we're thinking about deadlines, when we've got the stress of meetings, when we have all these demands of our regular day to day,
We are more likely to be in the status quo.
We're going to be less creative, scientifically proven.
Like this is something that we have happening for us.
And if you're trying to do big picture planning and you're feeling the weight and spin of all these other things, trying to do that between meetings or at night or whatever, you will not come up with as good of things, as important, as valuable of things, not reach that potential that you would if you had the space, if you had that time to let your mind wander, where you will be more creative, where you are going to be able to step outside of that status quo, where you are going to be able to be re-energized and excited about what you're working on and have that clarity that comes with space, but not too much.
This is great.
And I think everybody listening can have their own brainy breakthrough in some kind of way here, because it's so helpful to recognize that we have these biases in our brain.
Our brains will work in this type of way.
This is how we're kind of designed, you know?
And so we have to figure out a way to move around that.
And I love the fact that you have taken the theoretical almost it can feel so you know nebulous of a concept.
Okay, biases in general, theoretically, how does it apply?
But you've done such a great job of showing us how it applies directly to our day-to-day and can inhibit our ability to be successful.
And then you impart some tactics.
I think that temptation bundling is incredible.
And it's so right, because I can think about certain things in my life that I don't do until I get my work done.
And essentially, that's a great example of an internal negotiation.
It's like, okay.
And so it's motivating.
But without understanding the psychology behind it.
I might just sit here and say man, I can't get it done.
I'm a failure.
Because you planned it in advance, you don't feel that same fail point.
It's the okay, now's the time to take a break, and you take it before you feel like you need it so that you don't you can go further, you can do more you can.
You can have more success by taking that break earlier, because you know that's what you're going to be needing for that long haul right, that bigger plan, and it helps you push through.
Also, when you're starting to feel exhausted and you want a break, you can say okay, it's eight minutes, i just have two more minutes.
Take one more step, get around the corner, get to the stop sign, right.
You're just trying to get, just get to that 10 minutes and you know you have a break coming up.
It's the same here too in working on your business, that you know you have the thing you need to be working on and say, all right, I'm going to work on this for 50 minutes.
And at the end of the 50 minutes, I get to what, right?
Insert thing here.
I get to go watch an episode of Ted Lasso.
I get to play one round of the video game and hope I don't die immediately.
You know, you get that little thing at the end and then you can set a time limit on that, too.
Right.
I get 15 minutes of scrolling TikTok and I'm going to have an alarm that'll go off to let me know what the next thing is and when it's time to go back in.
But giving those breaks will help you, your brain to be more effective over time.
And again, taking them before you feel like you need them is important.
Tell me what you think about this.
I'll throw in an idea, just making it up on the fly, see if it makes sense, maybe if we think about this internal in the negotiation almost like you as a mediator mediating between the different versions of yourself.
So you have the uh, the childish type of version of yourself who wants to, you know, scroll instagram, play video games and do that thing, whatever it happens to be.
But then you have, like the, the super type a.
I need to be successful and i need to do more work.
The only thing that's better than more work is more work.
You know, and And it's like okay, cool.
We have these different versions of ourselves at the table.
And we're like okay hey, this A-type personality that I have, that's driving me to try to accomplish that, which is impossible.
But at the same time, there's another part of me that wants to relax and have a little bit of fun.
Both of them have validity.
It's almost like finding the appropriate compromises.
So then you can have a plan that is actually achievable going forward.
So the time discounting or saying it's future you and present you that's a piece there but also is to know that we have a it's called a hot cold or a cold hot empathy gap.
And so when we think about when, when you're in the cold state, thinking about what you're going to want and need in the hot state, it's easy to say in the cold state, like right now, I'm just going to say no to dessert.
The end, it'll be easy, right?
And then the cart comes around or everyone else at the table orders dessert and you're in the hot state now.
And that's a different version of yourself.
And you feel very inclined to order.
If you didn't set up the proper plan, if you just in the cold state, you thought you would have more willpower in the moment.
The other side is when you're in the hot state, it's hard to imagine what you would do or think or want in the cold state.
So trying to do all your planning while you're super stressed and in the moment is really hard to do because you can't think about cold, state you and what you're going to need.
So this really has a balance of Again planning and picking the time while you're in the cold state and you can commit yourself to when you know when the push would come to shove.
If you didn't have that, you held yourself accountable.
You have a group that's relying on you to be there and that you've invested in this.
When the hot state comes, you might push it off and say, OK, I'm going to plan next week.
Right.
But instead.
You're committed to it.
You're going to do it because we planned it far enough out that we can overcome that hot state piece.
And then again, in those moments when you're feeling stressed and trying to get the time, that's not the right time to be planning.
You can say, you know what?
I don't have to think about this right now because this is on my calendar, you know, putting the pin in it of what you're gonna work on.
When it feels like you wanna bike shed on some of the big picture stuff, because it goes both ways right.
I can't get my to-dos of today done because I'm gonna just go dream for a bit, right?
I need that space.
But if you know that that's coming in September, in October, then you don't have to let it bog you down today.
So you can be ready when you're gonna be really investing in that time and that can fuel you moving forward.
I can I can instantly very clearly see how beneficial this is for would be for a business person.
But just in general, like the tips that you gave today, anybody who's handling those internal negotiations we could really benefit from this.
So I appreciate this as always, Melina.
But before you go again, remind the listeners about the, the breakthrough experience and everywhere else where they can get in touch with you.
Of course.
Yeah.
And thank you for that.
So you can find more about me at thebrainybusinesscom.
To make sure that there is plenty of one-on-one time with me and everyone is a VIP and gets that value from that.
Awesome.
Melina, thanks again, my friend.
Really appreciate it.
Of course.
Thanks for having me.
That was the first part of today's masterclass.
Up.
Next we'll hear from another expert with a different approach, giving you even more strategies to add to your toolkit.
Let's keep it rolling.
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Naveed, thanks for joining us today.
Thank you so much for inviting me.
I'm so happy to be here.
Yeah, it's my pleasure.
So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Sure.
So I'm a student of mathematics.
I'm an applied mathematician who is now working as a co-founder and CEO at Dollar, where we're helping people get to zero student debt.
And I must say that I am a student of your podcast.
I'm such a huge fan.
I've listened to probably every episode.
So to anybody who's listening to this for the first time, please just take the time.
It's worth it.
Thank you.
That means a lot to me.
I appreciate it.
And I admire the work that you do too.
As a lawyer who's married to a doctor, our student loan debt is laughable at this point.
So I admire your mission.
Today we're going to talk about managing conflict within the startup world, specifically within our own businesses.
If we're starting our own companies,
And so, before we get into the three things that we're going to talk about, can you tell us why it's so important for people to understand this critical aspect of the business world?
So I'm going to probably end up parroting something that you say a lot of times that the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations.
And I think that itself is reason enough, because what we do as a startup and especially at the beginning, what we're doing is trying to learn about who our customers are.
What really.
If there's really a pain, we have to have conversations with them.
You have to convince somebody to take the time to speak to some random dude who's like hey, please help me out.
So everything is about a conversation.
Absolutely.
No, this is great, man.
This is going to be fantastic.
And listeners.
The three things we're going to talk about today are first, navigating those difficult conversations with your co-founder.
And then we're going to talk about navigating difficult conversations and negotiations with vendors and then the partners that we have within the business.
So Even if you're not in the startup world, there are going to be gems in this episode that you can use and apply to whatever it is that you're working on.
And Naveed, let's go ahead and get started with the first one.
What are the things that we need to pay attention to with co-founders?
So it's really interesting that when you start off, You have to decide who owns what and who has which authority or the ability to make decisions.
And there is a difference between owning a part of the business and being able to decide how the business goes.
Let me tell you a story about probably the hardest conversation I've ever had in my life with my co-founders.
And oftentimes this happens, is that human beings, you know, things are the difficult things we tend to get a bit lazy about them or we just we like.
It's okay, i'll sort that out later.
I made a huge mistake at the beginning.
When we started this this this uh, this enterprise, you know, i laid out the equity.
I was like this is, i think, what should, what should be fair, and everybody was like yeah sure, let's go ahead and do it.
And very recently we're trying to bring somebody new on board to join our team, very accomplished individuals going to make a huge impact.
And I had the opportunity to go back and look at that equity structure.
And I realized that I really messed up.
I messed up because it was grossly unfair to some people based on what they could contribute and their experience.
And so now I could have, you know, two things, nobody would complain about it.
So nobody else was worried about it, right?
Like they're like, yeah, this is it.
This is the facts.
This is how we're going to operate.
I couldn't sleep.
I was like it is unfair for me, as a representative of these people who have trusted me, to continue to let this persist.
And so now I had to figure out the hard conversation.
How do I approach this person who does have the one might say the unfair advantage against the others and say look, we need to talk about this and we're going to have to reduce it?
Nobody's going to complain if you tell them, hey, we're going to give you some more equity.
What's up?
But when you come in, you say, listen, we have to reduce things that we agreed to in the past.
And this is a big deal because at the startup, all you have is equity, right?
Like it's worth absolutely zero dollars and zero cents, maybe even negative.
So it was extremely difficult.
I had to really think about it.
And, you know, Listening to your podcast, I realize it's very important to do a couple of things.
One is to form a framework.
How do I think about these things?
How do I approach these conversations?
And the second is to realize that just because you can have a conversation doesn't mean that you need to have it.
So I try to use that framework.
How do I approach this?
The first is I need to have a conviction in that what I'm seeking out, to have a conversation about the outcome that I'm pursuing, that I believe it is the right thing to do and it is fair not only for myself, but also for that other person.
Now you know, fairness does not necessarily translate to winning, but that it is fair, and I have a strong belief in that.
So then you have a conviction, fairness.
And then I find that it works best for me when I'm completely transparent.
That is how my personality is.
And so if I don't take advantage of that transparency, things don't tend to work out for me.
Some people are better at holding some cards back or not.
And for me, it's just much simpler if I just say, look, here's where I'm approaching this from.
These are the reasons why we're having this conversation.
Now you should tell me what you think.
What do you think is the expected outcome from this?
And so that's how we approach this.
It's easy to say in retrospect, but it was so difficult for both of us, right?
So, from his perspective, Imagine how you would feel if somebody came in, somebody you trust, one of your best friends, came and said listen, you're going to have less of this company when you wake up tomorrow.
It's an awful feeling.
And so I had to think about it.
How am I going to tell my best friend this thing?
The second thing is I would prefer that he agrees with me.
He could say no, and then what happens?
And so...
I had to prepare for that as well.
So I had the best alternative to a negotiated agreement.
So, you know, I had to be prepared.
It was completely fair for him to say, look, I've wasted 15 months of you.
I trusted you.
And you're saying these things.
I don't believe that it's fair.
It was his right to say that.
So I had to be prepared for that as well.
And so we had this conversation over a few, several days.
And you know, fortunately we were able to come to an agreeable agreement outcome.
But it was so hard, especially because it was only the two of us right and especially because I didn't have a personal stake in it.
I had to.
Leadership is so hard in many ways that people maybe until you experience it in this way that you really appreciate what, how difficult it is, because you know there are some people who, just their personalities or their experiences, they don't, They're not prepared to negotiate or they don't think about negotiating.
They say, ah, that sounds fair.
Yeah, I'm okay with it.
And so when I come across this situation and I say okay, these people should have negotiated and maybe asked for more, because it would be completely fair to do that,
I can't just ignore it.
At least that's not who I am.
I wouldn't be able to look at them in the face and say, you know, we're building this together.
Believe in what my mission, my vision, our vision, let's do it.
I can't do that if I believe I'm being unfair to somebody.
So I had to negotiate on their behalf, and it was extremely difficult.
I had no personal interest.
I had no personal gain or loss, potentially a loss, actually, by losing a co-founder, right?
Those conversations happen in the micro level all the time.
But doing, you know, co-founders disagree.
I'm sure you probably disagree with your co-founders all the time.
It's a natural thing.
It's a good thing.
There's constructive disagreement.
But in this particular context it was probably one of the hardest things I ever had to do in my life.
Wow.
Wow.
That is an incredible story.
And first I appreciate you taking the time to share that with us, because I know that it was a tough conversation.
There's so many good things in here that we can highlight, Naveed.
Let's pull out a couple.
So the first one is this.
The conversation did well, right?
It ended up going well.
It went well, even though you felt a lot of angst about the conversation, a lot of tension, a lot of fear.
And a lot of times people see that fear and then they use it as a signal to avoid the conversation.
This means I shouldn't do it, right?
But you had to go through it.
And I think that's one of the toughest things for people to understand is that, with these conversations happening, That feeling of satisfaction or comfort or okayness with the fact that the conversation even has to happen, that doesn't always come.
And I think in the majority of situations for me, at least, it doesn't.
I recognize, though, I need to push through it.
And that's what you did, which was great.
Another one, too, was the fact that you took some time to think through it.
And so listeners, I'm sure you've heard me talk about the negotiation guides, of course.
And for you, one of the major aspects of the preparation was figuring out what fair was, because fairness is a very nebulous concept.
But the fact that it's nebulous and subjective doesn't mean that it is not very real to the people who are involved.
Everybody has a personal sense of fairness.
And so you had to figure out what that was in this situation and then operate on that truth for you.
While at the same time which is perhaps the most difficult recognizing that your co-founder has the same rights and authority to to share what he feels is fair in that situation too.
And then you have to reconcile those two things, and especially when a company is at its inception, but especially at the beginning, it's really tough to figure out what is fair in this business that's yet to exist, Right.
Understanding that that's going to have a significant impact down the road on future decisions and everything like that.
So there's a lot in this story that we can learn from.
And now that it's done, looking back, what do you think was the most important thing that you learned through that experience having that conversation with your partner?
One might say it was a reinforcement of a previous belief in that transparency is really the best approach.
Being honest about why we were having that conversation and the process by which I got to even asking him to meet with me about it was extremely important.
And so it's very easy when you have these kinds of conversations to start talking about performance.
Naturally, I was inclined to do that as well.
But I recognize, fortunately, I recognize it was a mistake.
We were not talking about performance.
We were talking about a fair distribution of equity.
And that was a wonderful turning point in our conversation for me and I think for him as well, is to understand that we can talk about performance on one hand and we can talk about the contribution, reasonable reward for the contribution, given the experience, given other things.
That's fascinating.
Yeah.
No, it makes a lot of sense.
And when you look at your experience as a co-founder and then you look at other people in the startup space who have co-founders, what are some of the biggest mistakes you feel as though they make early on in those early conversations with their co-founder?
The reason we were able to have this conversation and I felt comfortable speaking with this person about it was We take culture very seriously, but when we say culture, what we mean is a language.
How do we speak with each other?
Starting with how I express myself.
How do you express yourself?
How do we express ourselves together?
What does it mean to measure performance?
We're a startup.
We're going to miss goals.
We're going to miss deadlines.
It's going to happen.
How do we deal with that in retrospect?
Developing that language, my parents always said that language embodies culture.
And so that's why we spend so much time.
We don't talk about we're going to go on an outing or we're going to have a group meeting.
We talk about how to speak.
And so that was really, really, really helpful, I think.
And I think the mistake that people make is they don't spend enough time on that.
That's great.
I think about it.
I mean, it's a relationship.
So, of course, I'm a lawyer.
I still practice to a law firm in Columbus called Carlisle, Patchett and Murphy.
So I really love the fact that you're talking about these conversations about business partnerships, because this is something that I have to deal with with my clients all the time.
It's two friends coming together and they say, oh, you know, we'll just do it 50-50.
Can we please stop and think about this for a second here?
Because if you just do it 50-50, then it really leads to a deadlock very quickly.
And then decision making isn't really properly attributed to the right person.
And that's another thing.
And it's very rare that it's truly 50-50.
Right.
It's very rare because down the road, then it becomes very clear what it really is.
And then there's a lot of resentment and resentment.
So I always have to work through my clients.
Hey, let's think through this on a deeper level.
But I remember one of my mentors.
He said Kwame, a business partnership is a relationship that is second only to marriage.
And I didn't think about it from that level of gravity, but it makes sense.
And I try to impress that upon my clients all the time, even though the majority of what I do now is with the negotiation trainings with ANI, but still I practice in that regard.
And it's still a tough conversation even for me to have between the partners.
And the thing is, It's kind of like those love languages between relationships.
How do you speak?
Is it gifts?
Is it acts of love?
Is it quality time?
Those type of things.
Similar thing in the business world.
Is it quality time spent in the business?
Is it the fact that you are caring about me in a certain way?
My chief operating officer here, Catherine, she's more introverted.
And so that's one thing.
So I have to recognize I have to slow down in these conversations and give her time to process.
And then I describe myself as the gas pedal and she's the brakes.
I'm always ideating.
This will be good.
This will be good.
This will be good.
And her role is to slow me down.
And at the beginning, I thought it was a real drag.
But then, once we started to communicate about how to communicate, I recognize that it played an essential role in the business.
And so you're absolutely right.
Taking time to essentially negotiate the rules of engagement before we actually commit to each other is a critical part of the process.
Yes, I 100% agree.
It's so important.
And, you know, conversations are comprised of words, right?
So words are very important.
If you came to me and you said, as a friend, you said, hey, my guy, you're great. underperforming.
That's a very different.
I would receive that very differently than if you came to me as my boss and you said hey, you're underperforming.
Like those are the same words coming from different people that mean very different things.
And what happens is like so you know a lot of venture capitalists, so you'll hear people say that you should not start a business with your best friends, because oftentimes these things are overlooked.
We have already established that communication relationship as friends, as buddies, as co-conspirators and you know whatever things that we're trying to do.
But now we have a different, there's a very different, and I'm the boss.
It's very difficult to come to terms with what that means.
It doesn't, things change and we have to accept that.
When we are speaking in a certain fashion, when we're talking about the business, it's very important that there are two people involved, and we both have to understand the dynamic that we're operating under.
And so, because at the end of the day, why do we do this?
We do this because we want to help people.
Can we help people if we're constantly scripting ourselves?
We haven't figured out how to talk.
No, we can't help those people.
And then we have to figure out how do we speak with our future customers.
It's extremely important.
This is fantastic.
And so what types of things do we need to keep in mind when it comes to negotiating with the vendors?
My answer is always going to be to be 100% transparent about where you are.
There is nothing as disappointing as getting on a call with somebody who expects to be talking to a customer who has 1000 users.
And finding out that you're pre-launch.
You've just started off the whole relationship wrong.
You know, the thing is that oftentimes, from a startup, the power dynamic is so different.
You have zero power, literally.
So we are in the student loan repayment business.
That means we have to make payments to the big loan servicers.
We refuse to write checks.
We insist on making digital payments.
That is our stand.
And so if we want to make digital payments, we have to convince them to give us their account numbers.
And we have to convince them to do work so that we can send them information about how to distribute the funds that we send them.
How do I come and tell you, hey, I'm a team.
We've got four people.
We're ready to send you money probably in two months.
But the power dynamic is very different.
And so really the thing that we noticed, we experimented a few different times.
How do we speak?
What really gets us results?
And It came down to honesty.
Like, this is what we do.
This is who we are.
This is where we're at.
This is where you expect to go.
We need a favor from you.
That's powerful, Naveed.
That's really powerful.
Because, when I think about it, we're seeing how your philosophy in having difficult conversations with people on your team, your co-founders, it's manifesting itself here again with the conversations with vendors.
Because Number one, it's transparent.
And number two, it's mission driven, right?
You have your core value that you're sticking to, and that is what is being the force behind the argument.
And so in the first case study that you provided us, essentially it was fairness. this is at this point unfair it's not your fault it's not my fault it's not anybody's fault but it has evolved to become unfair and this is how we can solve this problem and you have to be assertive and it took some time but you got there and here with the vendors that you're coming with something that's completely different than what they've ever dealt with and they are a large established financial institution and you're coming in and saying you know what This is how we see it.
And this is how we believe it should be done.
And that must have been quite frightening the first few times you did it.
But you were able to make it work.
And so in those instances when you recognize that from the outside, looking in, it might seem like a David and Goliath type of situation,
How were you able to stand your ground and hold firm in those tough conversations?
Because we had conviction, we knew what we were doing was the right thing.
We knew we were not asking for more than they could give us.
And we were prepared to do work to make it easier for them to give us what we wanted.
So you know, we had to start with like, when you're asking somebody for something, you might as well pretend that you're asking them for a ton of money.
So we thought about it the same way.
Like these people, they're very busy.
They deal in billions of dollars every single month, how why should they spend the time to read this email, which is a huge deal in itself?
And then why should they respond?
And then why should they cooperate?
So there's a couple of things that I try to use to guide, to guide how I think I'm going to say them.
And then, you know, it would be really fun.
I think if you could try to guess where I got it from, not like from a big philosophy or anything, right?
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The fly a man can tell is to himself.
Second thing, when the student is ready, the master will come.
I've heard the second one for sure.
The first one sounds familiar.
I cannot identify the source.
I'd be way off if I try.
So it's the movie Zorro.
I'm sure they've existed in other places.
But for me, the first time I experienced those two things was watching this movie.
And then obviously, I still don't know what happened to the rest of Zorro, because I started thinking about it.
Honesty with yourself is the first step to being honest with others.
And with honesty, with self, it leads to conviction.
It leads to fairness, you know, because it's so easy to take the easy way out or also to justify taking the easy way out in some senses right.
But if you can't be honest with yourself about who you are, you know, for some people they can act in a certain way and they're okay with it.
And nobody's judging anybody.
But I have to act by the way that I'm okay with.
And, you know, it's really difficult to be honest with yourself. is this the right thing to do?
And do I want to do it?
Should I do it?
And the second one is, It's so easy.
Again, you know, so the internet is wonderful.
People like you are wonderful because you provide for free.
I can go listen to your podcast and learn incredible things, gain experiences.
It's a common excuse that I hear among some of my co-founders not co-founders, but other co-founders in the startup world is I don't have practice.
I've never done this before.
Nobody's ever taught me how to do this.
Guess what?
Nobody cares.
Nobody gives a flying anything, right?
They don't care.
It's up to you to teach yourself.
And people learn in different ways.
I negotiated with my wife.
That's how I started.
I was like, I need somewhere to practice.
And so my wife and I started negotiating with random things like where should we put the flower vase?
It might seem silly, but you learn a lot from it if you just think about it the right way, I think.
Yeah.
No, it makes sense because you have to practice.
And that's something we talk about all the time.
Yes, you could stay in this theoretical type of world, right?
Talk about the theories and strategies and tactics and everything.
But until you actually start to practice it, it won't really feel great.
Something that I think is a bit understated in your approach here is just the strength of your philosophy.
It's because it's clear.
And when you're clear and people understand you and they understand where you're coming from, it creates a lot of trust, right.
Listen, Naveed's a straight shooter.
If it's a tough conversation, he's going to have it.
He's going to let me know how he feels about it.
Even if it's not a truth that will be fun or enjoyable to share, right?
And so when people are, they recognize the clear strength of your conviction and where it comes from.
Then people trust you.
Even if people end up disagreeing with your ultimate decision, they trust you and, as a co-founder, your team is going to grow.
You're going to have people who are going to invest, who are going to need to look at you as a leader And everything like that.
And so they need to trust you.
And even if they disagree, they will trust you to ultimately make the right decision and steer the ship.
And I think that's really powerful.
And even in these negotiations with vendors, for example, too, you're very clear with them.
And it's kind of like you're the last philosophical phrase that you gave when, when the student is ready, the master will come.
It goes back to your, your BATNA, best alternative to a negotiated agreement in this situation.
If this institution isn't ready, well you know, then we will stand strong and we might have to pass on it, but you know where you stand and then they take you seriously when you, when you hold firm to.
I've been listening to a sales leader I really admire recently.
His name is Todd Capone, and he wrote a book called The Transparency Sale.
And he always says this thing.
He says, every conversation you have, you're either building trust or you're eroding trust.
And when I heard that, I was like, holy crap, how true.
Like, this is amazing.
It just ranks so true.
So it's really encouraging to hear that you agree and that these things actually do work.
Yeah.
And one of the things that's so powerful about it is that it's clear, and that clarity leads you to be more likely to execute right.
Because I almost said easier.
It's not easier to execute.
Sometimes telling the truth is the hardest path to take, but at least you know what to do, because you're not playing games.
You're not playing games with yourself and you're not playing games with other people.
So it becomes very clear and understandable what to do.
And that ties into the first part of your philosophy, right?
The first person you need to be honest with is yourself, right?
And I really think that's really, it's brilliant because of the simplicity of application.
Because we can give people all these really cool complicated approaches, but if they don't understand it, then nobody's going to do anything about it.
And you say be honest, be clear, understand what your conviction is and why you believe this thing, and then articulate it to the other side.
I have to give a lot of credit to my parents. for raising us in a certain way.
So I think it's really about being true to yourself and doing things that are easy for you, even though it may be harder to execute, like you said.
Absolutely.
And honestly, too, let's quote some swordsman movies.
There was a swordsman and he was saying he was really good.
He was very, very good, like the best in the world.
And he said, you know why I'm so good?
It's because I'm not afraid to die.
And I don't remember which movie it was from, but he's like I'm going to go and I'm going to do what I need to do.
And if I lose, I lose.
And honestly, that's the framework I have in a negotiation too, because I say sometimes the worst negotiation outcome is a negotiation that shouldn't have ended up in a deal.
And you're supposed to go there and see if a deal exists.
It might not.
And then you can move on.
That's wonderful.
I'm going to write that down.
Well, fantastic.
Well, with the time we have left, let's talk about the partners.
And so, when you talk about the difficult conversation with partners, let's get a definition on the table with regard to the way that you're using the term first, and then we'll jump into it.
So I was thinking about in terms of my wife.
She's a major stakeholder in my life.
We've agreed to spend our lives together.
You know, she has made an investment in each other, right?
So if I choose to do something like quit my job and start this thing with, you know, with very little resources, I need to convince my wife that it's okay for me to do.
I need to get her permission.
And that's the person whose opinion and feelings that I value the most.
So it's very important for me to make sure that I can get her permission, get her buy-in, because when I get her buy-in then I can work without having to worry about somebody nagging me.
Or we can set the terms that okay, if I don't hit this milestone, then you can come and say listen, we need you to think about something else right now.
So we have those conversations often.
And yes, we have missed a couple of milestones.
She's the board member, man.
That's how I think about her.
Okay, this is our plan for the next three months.
This is what we're going to do.
This is how it translates to our personal lives.
These are the potential outcomes.
And these are the contingencies that if everything goes south, then this is what I will do.
And this is the order I will do it in.
And having those conversations continuously every three months or so has been very healthy for our relationship, because you know, you've lived it yourself.
Starting something from scratch is so hard.
It takes longer than you think.
And, you know, a lot of people have to help you get there.
Success doesn't come by itself.
You don't do it by yourself.
Yeah, she's my number one supporter.
This is great.
Yep.
Yeah, man, we are.
We are very similar in that regard because, I mean, it's tough, especially when there's a bit of a violation of expectations too.
I mean, for my wife, my wife's a doctor and she married a lawyer.
There's an anticipated trajectory for that.
And I was like, hey, you know what?
I have something different in mind.
I know we just had a baby and everything, but let's try this thing out.
It's tough to do.
But I think if you fail in those negotiations, it is the thing that will have the most negative impact on your life going forward.
And people often overlook it.
And it's really problematic.
And it's not just problematic in terms of the context of the relationship, but I think a lot of these hard charging business people often overlook the fact that it has a negative impact on the business.
I remember one time I was doing a negotiation coaching session with somebody.
And so we started the coaching session.
He was talking about investors, how he wanted to get the investors on board, get a lot of startup funding and all that type of stuff.
And and I said, OK, so how does your fiance feel about all of this?
He wasn't.
You know, she was not completely on board with the way that things were going to move forward and everything like that.
And he hadn't cleared some stuff with him.
I said, hey, you know what?
We're scrapping everything we were about to talk to talk to, we're going to talk about, because that's That negotiation is the most important one.
And I said, I look at you and I know you are like me.
You are the kind of person who will charge forward and do what it takes to make this work.
You're very competitive.
And I said, listen, dude, The thing that is going to sink you the fastest is girl problems.
We need to fix that now.
And so we spent like two or three sessions working on that particular negotiation before moving on to what, from the outside looking in, would have seemed like the big, obvious negotiation multimillion dollar startup funding deal.
But we had to stop and focus at home to make sure that the foundation was secure.
It's so important.
It's so important because this is the person who you spend most of your.
I think one thing that's important to recognize is that oftentimes there are many, many factors at stake, right.
It's not only I'm going to quit my job.
It's like, okay, what are we going to do about health insurance?
What are our contingencies?
We still have to figure out how to pay rent.
All of those things are important.
And so there's many, many things that you can talk about.
It's important to separate the concerns between in three months we're going to have several million dollars.
Everything's going to be great.
Don't worry about it.
That's obviously every startup partner wishes that that was the case.
But the unfortunate truth is most of us don't ever get there.
So it's important to really separate the concerns about okay, how is this going to affect home life?
How are things going to be different?
How is it going to affect business life?
How are we both going to grow?
Because you should need to grow together with your partner.
So how are we going to grow together?
And so, from your perspective, what is something that is often overlooked with this particular conversation?
It again comes down to honesty, right?
Because a lot of the... My partner...
She doesn't really care about the details, right?
She knows that I'm doing something I love doing and that I am committed to helping people.
That's what's important to her.
But it is important for me to make sure that she understands the right details.
What is going to increase our likelihood of failure?
What is going to increase our likelihood of success?
And that she can appreciate that if I give her some information on that, she knows how to process it and then form her own opinions on what she thinks we should do next from our personal life.
And a lot of the times people gloss over that.
It's like, what do you know about finance?
Oh, you don't care about finance.
It's like, it doesn't come from a bad place, right?
It just comes like, oh, they don't care enough to really do this.
And the next thing you know, it's a big surprise.
Like what?
I thought things were going well.
But like, no, I told you last month that our blah, blah, blah.
It's like, no, it doesn't mean anything.
Yeah, no.
And you know it's funny, because I think we're coming full circle here, because when we're talking about the founders, the co-founders, one of the things that you mentioned, which I thought was brilliant, was understanding how to communicate with your co-founder.
Essentially, what is their love language?
Same thing here.
We have to understand what matters to them.
Because for Whitney, Whitney came from a background where money didn't come easily.
And so she was very concerned about making sure that everything was secure.
Security was her main thing.
Me, on the other hand, that wasn't an issue.
My dad's a surgeon.
My mom has a PhD in nutrition.
She's a professor.
So that was never a concern for me.
It was just about pushing forward and getting degrees and seeing what we could do.
And and so I would get excited about ideas.
And I thought there was a lot of capital in ideas like Kanye West.
I want Zuckerberg to pay me a billion dollars for my ideas.
Your ideas, though, that's not tangible.
But so I would come with ideas.
And when he's like, I need things that are more tangible.
So I stopped telling Whitney about ideas. and started telling me about clients acquired.
And so, even if there was a longer runtime for the acquisition of the money from performing on those clients, she appreciated knowing that more.
And so that made her feel more secure and lowered a lot of tension that we were having in the relationship.
I was still having ideas.
I just wasn't talking about them as much.
I was giving her what she needed to know and what she really cared about.
Well Naveed, I know there's so much more we could talk about, but I think I want to wrap up with this.
I know there are a lot of folks out here in the audience who have gone to school and have a lot of debt.
So again, tell them about Dollar and how they can work with you.
Go to getdollar.com, D-O-L-R.
And if you like what you see, sign up.
What we do is very simple.
We find more money for your loan.
So we help you figure out better ways to spend your own money.
We get money from the employer and then money from the apps we use.
So more money equals debt gone away quicker.
Love it.
Naveed, thank you so much, my friend.
We appreciate it.
And hopefully you can come back on again soon.
It's been such an honor and a privilege.
Thank you so much for having me, Kwame.
My pleasure.
Nicole, thanks for joining us today.
Thanks, Kwame.
It is a delight to be on the podcast.
Yes, it is a delight to have you again, my friend.
So how would you start us off by telling us about yourself and what you do?
Yeah, so my name is Nicole Davidson.
I'm a negotiation specialist.
So what that means is I bring negotiation expertise to help clients get better outcomes from their negotiations and conflicts.
And I do that by teaching them the skills that they need to negotiate better and manage conflict conversations.
I advise and coach on specific negotiations.
And where things have all got really difficult, I'll come in as an independent mediator to facilitate negotiations between parties to resolve conflicts.
Yes.
Oh, listen, and before we get into the actual episode, let the listeners know about your show too.
Yeah, so I record the Negotiation in Real Life podcast.
And the goal of that podcast is to bring on guests who've had interesting and challenging negotiations and get them to share what actually happened in those negotiations so people can learn from their experience.
Love it.
Yes.
Make sure you check that out.
Now Nicole, when you think about the diversity of expertise that you bring to negotiation and conflict resolution, what value do you think that adds to your skill set?
Look, I think it adds a lot and I think it's a big differentiator for me, particularly in the mediation work, but also in the training and the consulting.
But the beauty of it is that it's given me this complete breadth of skills that a lot of mediators particularly don't necessarily have.
A lot of mediators are people who've been career lawyers and have stepped into mediation.
They've never been involved in the financial side of business.
They don't have perhaps as much commercial expertise, and particularly because my focus is around business negotiations and business disputes, that sort of breadth of experience really helps me decide what are the right questions to be asking parties during the mediation to try and move them from being stuck into making progress in that dispute.
You know, what's really fascinating about that answer is that it all came back to curiosity to ask better questions, because you didn't say hey, you know what?
I'm going to come in here like a judge.
I know more than everybody.
I'm going to tell you what to do.
No, you're wrong.
You're wrong.
That type of thing.
No, you said it helps you to ask better questions.
Why is that the thing that you focused on?
Look, I think that's the key to mediation.
And, you know, I like people to be in control of their own decisions.
So I'm not an evaluative mediator.
There are some mediators who will come in and they'll say look, if this goes to court, this is what's going to happen.
Therefore, you should accept this settlement.
I believe that people should be able to make those choices.
And so that's sort of the underlying concept to a lot of the work that I do is actually bringing people to their resolutions through actually thinking for themselves of what the answer is, not providing that answer to them.
I may have an idea of where it's likely to go, and it doesn't always go where I think it's going to go.
So I have to be open to that as well.
But it's allowing them to get there for themselves.
I love this.
It's great.
And I like that you talked about really focusing on helping them to be in control of their own decision-making process.
When they feel that autonomy, that agency, then they're going to stick to the agreement.
They're more likely to stick to the agreement.
It makes it a bit more self-enforcing in that regard.
But you also talked about the process.
So I want to go a little bit deeper onto that line of thinking, focusing on the thought process.
Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Yeah look, I think one of the things that comes up as you work through some of these challenges, whether it's a front end negotiation or a dispute is that a lot of what we do is actually done at a subconscious level.
We're not actually thinking about why we're making certain decisions.
And so what I'm trying to bring out for people is to actually dig into.
You know, they might come up with a statement or a proposal, but they might not be sort of consciously aware of why that's come up for them.
You know, what is it about that that gives them satisfaction?
So I actually want them to come back to start thinking about, well, why have they got there?
Because, you know, it's that classic sort of process.
You know, I keep coming back to getting to yes as one of the sort of foundations.
We need to understand the underlying interests and they will actually come up and you know they'll often tell you what they want, but they haven't really explored why that's important to them.
And we need to dig down and get that understanding a little bit more so that we've got some flexibility, so that if they can't get the outcome that they want, they can get something that still meets those underlying needs.
Absolutely.
And I think it's really important for us to focus on the subconscious for a bit too, because I mean, especially for us as recovering lawyers we can be so focused on rationale, on logic, on data, on evidence and making A to B connections that I feel like a lot of us people who really pride ourselves in the quality of our cognition, we often overlook the fact that there is a lot happening beneath the surface that is steering the decision making of both ourselves and the other side.
And so if we're going to really take it to the next level when it comes to our negotiation skills, we have to be able to be persuasive and speak to the conscious and the subconscious.
I think what that raises for me is there's two levels at which we're playing there as well, because At one level we've got, you know, thinking about the rational decision.
You know, here's all the concrete reasons why this should be an acceptable outcome.
But then we've got the sort of more emotional that needs to be dealt with.
And you know, I could probably be quite rich if I got paid every time.
A lawyer said to me let's just focus on the facts here.
Let's not worry about emotions.
But I think the other thing that plays in is the sort of cognitive biases that come in.
So, even if we're just dealing in fact, because we are looking at things from one side of a picture, we are picking up the facts that help us.
And you can talk about confirmation bias, for example where yes, we're going to pick up on this fact because it supports what we want.
But this little fact over here that goes against it.
Oh well no, that's not relevant, because and we'll justify that away
Now, that's not something we do knowingly or intentionally.
It's a subconscious process.
And what's really interesting and I think this is the value of a third person coming into a negotiation is, even when you tell people that they've got these subconscious biases, they can't stop these biases acting upon their thought processes.
And yet, when I come in as an independent person, whether it's as a neutral or acting for one person my job is to spot where these biases may be operating and help bring that awareness to them, so that we can actually work in a bigger picture.
Absolutely.
And it's humbling to recognize the fact that hey listen, we are humans and we are going to have limits when it comes to our ability to process and think.
And so that's, again, why it's so valuable to have the third party.
And so in our negotiations, if we have the privilege of being able to use a mediator, use a mediator.
It helps.
But then also when we say, all right well, this isn't the type of negotiation where I have the luxury of a mediator.
What do I do?
We can start to bounce ideas off of people who are more impartial.
And when you think about the knowledge of biases, it helps us to understand yes, why a mediator can be so valuable.
But then also it helps us as mediators to recognize that we might not be biased in the exact same way that the parties are, but we still will be biased.
And so that's why semantically, where we can't say that we are unbiased, because that is a psychological impossibility, but we can be impartial by being aware of our biases and actively working against it as we mediate these disputes
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's fascinating because I was talking to someone just the other day about there was a mediation that they put me forward for, but ended up choosing someone who spoke Chinese because both the parties were Chinese.
And it was interesting that the person I was talking to, who represented one of the parties, said the mediator was highly biased towards the sun, based on traditional cultural values of what the outcome should be in this mediation.
And It was quite fascinating to me that someone would come in with a clear.
She said it was just so clear that this mediator had a view of what the outcome should be because of certain family traditions and certain ways that parents were expected to look after children, and totally disrespected the mother in this case.
Mediators do bring their own biases.
And it's a constant challenge, I think, when we are working with clients to try and make sure that we are taking our own belief system around, some of those concepts out of the equation.
Absolutely.
And when you think about the value that mediation brings, but also recognizing the limited applicability.
So my question is how can we take this mentality and some of the benefits that come with mediation and bring it to our everyday negotiations?
The best strategy that I can think of for viewers is, when you get into those dispute situations, you almost have to take yourself out of the picture and look at it as if this was someone else.
If this was a group of friends that were not me and my spouse, What would I be looking for?
What would I be telling them?
And putting yourself into that sort of third party viewer.
You know, I remember doing a coaching course and they talked about putting yourself on Mount Sinai.
You're out of the picture.
You're looking down from the top to get a different perspective.
This is great.
It's funny that you said that, because I drew this image, which you could obviously tell is a balcony.
Yes, yes.
Of course, William Urie and the balcony Mount Sinai, it's all the same, isn't it?
Step off the dance floor, isn't that the metaphor?
Yeah, and it's so helpful, but also so humbling.
I often don't like what I see from the balcony, Nicole, if I'm being completely honest.
But I think it's important for us to be able to have that ability to pull ourselves out and look objectively.
And a lot of times, we'll find out that we're being an a**hole and we are actually the problem.
Yeah, look, I think that's absolutely right.
And you know passive aggression is really easy to step into when you don't want to confront a problem.
It's like I'll create a new problem so that you can get angry at me, because I didn't actually deal with the thing that was going on.
This is why I'm so passionate about giving people skills to have these difficult conversations.
And I think what's fascinating is, even when you get people like ourselves, who work in this space all the time, have a lot of expertise in the space, it doesn't make those conversations easier.
When it's your own conversation, it's always difficult.
But it is being able to pull it back, I think, and go, oh, I can see what I'm doing here.
I'm just avoiding something.
Okay, how will I approach it?
Yeah, and I think that's one of the things that's really interesting about difficult conversations in general.
You can't expect yourself to perform perfectly.
There's no such thing as a perfect performance.
It's about being able to recognize in a lot of situations when you're making a mistake and course correcting.
And I think one of the many things that differentiates like expert and novice negotiators is the humility to recognize when you are off, when you're not seeing things clearly, when you're approaching things the wrong way, catching yourself apologizing in order to rebuild the relationship in the way that you just damaged it and then get back on the right track.
Completely agree with that.
And I think, even if you don't manage that in a particular situation, it's the reflection later that, so that you do things a little bit better the next time.
I always say to people, there's two things you need to say.
If you want to improve your negotiation skills.
There's two questions you need to ask after every negotiation.
What's one thing that I did really well there that I should do again?
And what's one thing that I could have done better and what would have worked more effectively?
And I think, if you ask yourself those two questions after each negotiation, your skills will just continually develop.
This is so cool.
This is validating it, because that's that's one of the things that I said in my first book said you could win every negotiation if you do those two things.
And I said it in the exact same order.
I love it.
This is great.
And now listen.
One of the things I like to do is I like to like advocate on behalf of the listeners.
So remind them again about the name of your podcast and how they can get in touch with you if they want to work with you.
The podcast is called Negotiation in Real Life.
You can access it via Spotify, Google Play, Apple Podcasts, all of those usual things.
Or you can find it via my website, which is NicoleDavidsonNegotiation.com.au.
And you can get in touch with me via the website or via LinkedIn.
This is great.
Nicole, thank you for coming on the podcast again.
Really appreciate it.
Fantastic thanks, Kwame.
Always nice to chat.
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