 So I'd love to start today's conversation with your earliest memory of a negotiation and what drew you to really researching and understanding negotiation at a high level. I teach game theory, I teach strategy, and I've been applying it to cases of corporate strategy. And I'd written a book called Co-Opetition, which is about creating and capturing value. And that same activity is what negotiation is about. That we work together to make a big pie and we have conflict over how to split it up. And so I'm a little bit of a Johnny One note in the sense of that's the theme and where else can I apply it? I like it. And I'd love to start there with this concept of a pie in general. So what is the pie that we're splitting? It's something that actually people have a hard time with. It's funny that they're doing a negotiation and they don't understand what they're negotiating over. So how could that be? Well, we're not trained. And so let me give the example that I use in the book of negotiating over pizza. You know, New Haven, famous for its clam pizza, sallies and peppers. Some people say they're harder to get into than Yale. At least they have long lines. So we'll take a case where there's Alice and Bob. And if you want, it can be Alice Cooper and Bob Marley, since you're the musicians out there. They could get a nine slice pizza if they reach an agreement. And if they can't, Alice will get two slices and Bob will get one. And so the question is how do they divide up the nine? And there's two answers that people give in the world. One is four and a half, four and a half, just divide the whole thing in two. And the other is they say, well, Alice is going to get twice as much as Bob if there's no agreement. So Alice should get six and Bob should get three, a two to one ratio. And I think both of those answers are wrong. Because what is this negotiation really over? They can get two plus one slices with no deal or three slices. With a deal, they can get nine. The reason they have the negotiation is to go from three to nine to get those extra six slices. Alice can't get them without Bob. Bob can't get them without Alice. So you divide them up three and three, which means Alice gets her two plus three or five and Bob gets his one plus three or four. And that's it. It sounds so simple, but why do we get so hung up on the fairness side of things? We get hung up because it turns out the Alice's of this world try and argue that what's fair is proportional division. And that therefore they should be getting six. And the Bob's of this world say, no, what's fair is we take the nine and divide it in two. Four and a half, four and a half. And so each side comes up with a notion of fairness that's based on where they're sitting. And both of them are arbitrary and misguided. And then we have the clash because I'm fair. I'm being fair. No, you're not. And then we get no deal whatsoever. Right. Then we end up with three slices. Yeah. Not pleasant, especially if you love pizza. So you also talk about two big myths to start the book. And I think we've had discussions around these myths on our show, but I'd love to set them up for the audience as we start to get into the tactics and the strategy. So what are these big myths that we need to understand in negotiations? One is that your power in negotiation is related to your baton or your fallback, what you get if there's no deal. And we just saw that actually from the case with Alice and Bob, which is Bob has a disadvantage of having a worse fallback, one slice. But does that mean he has less power? People say, oh my God, your fallback's worse. You should be happy with anything you get. The point of the negotiation is to beat your fallback. And Alice can't beat her fallback without Bob's help. And therefore Alice needs Bob just as much as Bob needs Alice. And there's no sense in which Alice or Bob is weaker or stronger in the negotiation when you correctly understand the negotiation is over those six slices. So people with weak fallbacks get doubly penalized. They get the worst fallback and then they also accept less than half the pie. And that's a real problem in my view. When we think about that fallback, many of us get so hung up on this idea of, well, that's just good enough. Like the fallback, I should be able to take it. Why can't I just walk away with that? You could, but I think you would be misguided. You would be being treated unfairly. And in fact, we know from a lot of experimental work that people will walk away from deals where they have real money. They'll leave money on the table if they're being treated, if they think they're being treated unfairly. And so if you can come up with a way of helping somebody understand that what they've been offered is a fair deal, they're going to take it. But there's this really strong cognitive distortion around the fear of loss. So when we focus on growing the pie, there's always this nagging feeling, like I'm going to lose something here. So how do we overcome that? Why am I losing something? The bigger the pie is, I'm getting half. I'm not losing anything if I'm being treated fairly and treating the other side fairly. I'm not buying. What I'll lose is if I get no deal. That's a big loss. People talk about zero-sum negotiations. I get more, you get less. Actually, that's wrong because it's possible in negotiation we get no deal, so we both lose. So reaching a deal is a positive sum activity. It's always about getting everyone focused on the win-win. And if everyone comes to the table going, that's what we want. Creatively, we should be able to come to an agreement where we both feel happy with that. However, when you're dealing with people who may be in a cutthroat business deal or you're not dealing with rational actors and they're coming in saying, I need to get one over on this guy or I cannot take the loss here, now we're not dealing with people who are willing and wanting to discuss the win-win. It's how do I get mine? And I don't care about how this other person feels after this deal. There is no relationship. It is focused on me getting mine. Okay. So first off, people will have said about me that I am the Mr. Spock, the bringing the logic into negotiation. One of the things that I advise is you fight fire with water, not with fire. One way to bring emotions down is to bring the logic up. But I also want to tell you that this approach that I'm describing works with people who don't care about fairness. And the example I'll give you is a friend of mine made a rookie error. He went and he filed for a trademark on his own without using a lawyer. Right. And what he didn't realize is that as soon as you file trademarks, they become public. They have to be, right? Because otherwise, how could somebody else protest your filing? And so then he went to buy the website associated with the trademark. He discovered that some troll who I'll call Edward, because that's the guy's name, had bought the URL and Edward writes to him and says, hey, I'll sell this thing back to you for 2,500 bucks. Now, my friend is dumb, but he's not stupid. He valued this URL at a lot of money. But he also realizes a company or organization called ICANN, which is a domain registry and will resolve disputes. And for 1,300 bucks, they would figure out what's going on and what Edward had done is called registration bad faith. So Edward would lose, right? And in fact, if you go on the website, you can discover he's been in many of these cases and has lost every one of them. So my friend writes back to Edward and says, look, you know, 2,500 bucks, uh-uh, I'd rather pay ICANN 1,300. I'd save money and you'd get nothing. And so Edward comes back and says, okay, 1,100. And my friend says, well, you know, I don't think that's fair, because look, if I pay you 1,100, yeah, it's better than 1,300 ICANN, but you're up 1,100. You have no other use for this name. I'm only up 200. I'm saving 200 compared to ICANN. It'd be like my offering you 200. So I'd be up 1,100 and you're only up 200. I wouldn't expect you to take that. You should expect me to accept your 1,100. Why are we having this negotiation? What's the pie here? Because I'm going to get the URL no matter what. If you sell it to me, I get it. If we go to ICANN, I get it. So the only reason we're having this negotiation, the pie here is to save the $1,300 fee from ICANN. I can't save it without you, you troll. You can't save it without me. Let's split it 650, 650. Edward comes back and says, look, all right, 900, which is basically halfway between 650 and 1,100. He's trying to do the old split the difference game. Right. So Edward's done every trick in the book, sort of like anchoring high, then trying to get almost all of the pie, then moving halfway, splitting the difference. My friend has given a principled approach. And so now what's the last thing that happens? My friend doesn't answer this email. In a week later, Edward says, okay, 650, 650, and they're done. Now, Edward doesn't give a damn about the pie. Doesn't care about fairness. But he realizes my friend does. And so if he wants to get a deal, he has to accept the fair deal. And essentially, if you think about the other approach, it's arbitrary. Nothing sticks, 2,500, 1,100, 900. It's like, yeah, you're Gumby out there, man. And so principles beat arbitrary. And that's why you can even use the pie when you're going against somebody who doesn't care about fairness at all. It's such a great example. And I know one of the other common things we hear is whenever you enter a negotiation, be prepared to walk away from the table. Be in a position where you could walk away. And you give a great example of company you started and negotiating with Coca-Cola, which is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, which I'm thinking you don't want to be walking away from that table with Coca-Cola. Yeah, well, look, I never want to walk away. I want to create a big pie and split it. And so how are we going to make that happen? Let's just agree to that upfront. So we had a wonderful opportunity to negotiate with Coca-Cola. The challenge we had is that we weren't ready to be sold to Coke. We were too small. We were 20 million in sales. And if you're at that size, you can get lost in their system. Coke is awesome at bringing companies from 100 million to a billion. They're also able to bring companies from 50 million down to zero. And so we agreed that they would buy us in three years and that they would help us during that time with production, with distribution, with purchasing. But there was a problem. How much were they going to pay in three years? And they said, quite reasonably, we don't want to pay more for all the stuff we're doing to help you. I think, yeah, yeah, that kind of makes sense. Yeah, hard to argue with that. But my response is, actually, we can't achieve this without you, but you can't achieve things without us. So what we should do is say, you should pay full price on sales up to X. And to the extent that sales are higher than X, we couldn't have done it without you. You couldn't have done it without us. You pay half price. We'll split that. And we agreed on that principle in the first hour. Now, we had some disagreements, some back and forth over what X is and what's full price. But essentially, our conversation was now focused on how do we get sales above X? How do we make this pie big? And I knew we were going to have agreement because we were focused on the right things. So no threats, no ultimatums, none of this sort of 2,500, 1,100, 900 BS, right? Right. So when you're preparing for a negotiation, how are you determining the ingredients of the pie? How are you baking the pie? I'm thinking about why it is that these two parties should be doing a deal together. What's the unique value they create? So, look, I mean, between the two of you, right? What can Johnny do without AJ? What could AJ do without Johnny? It's the value the two of you create that double charm. That is sort of one plus one is six. And that extra four is that pie the two of you create. And all you have to be doing is looking for that value. Most people are going to agree, yeah, let's make a bigger pie and split it. Yeah. And so now I have to hold it aside to it. I have to hold myself to it. But now that we've agreed it, let's talk about what the pie is. And it wasn't like Edward was out there sort of immediately seeing the pie. But he knows what's really going on here. Ultimately, the seller of the house understands that there's a $40,000 commission that can be saved. So I would say that once you make it explicit to the other party what the pie is, it's kind of hard to deny. Now there are cases where the numbers aren't as clear and we need to really think through the other person's side and the costs that aren't necessarily on the spreadsheet. Well, actually, look, you can go back to the Coca-Cola case. It wasn't as if we knew what our sales would be absent a deal because we're never going to run that experiment. We're going to do the deal. So yeah, we have to make some estimates. And that's hard work. I agree. And we're going to probably get it wrong. But okay, that's our goal here. That is we're both saying, what's the market price? We're not exactly sure. What do we achieve with no deal? How much can AJ and Johnny do on their own if they don't come together? Right. And a lot of that is having some empathy here, thinking through the other person's perspective. I love that. I talk about the need to be allocentric rather than egocentric, to be curious. So what is it? The Doseki's guy is the most interesting person in the world. You want to be the most interested person in the world. You want to understand the other side's perspective. And you also have to have them understand your perspective. Right. So let's walk through understanding their perspective. Because some people with a lack of experience in negotiating, me not knowing the real estate market and all the costs associated with it, how do we get to that place of understanding through empathy the other person's side? You have to ask questions. You have to ask, what is your objective here? Why are you trying to do this? One of the cases I use involves a couple selling a gas station. And somebody says, well, why are you selling? And people are afraid to answer that question. Now, we know they're selling because there's a for sale sign above the station. And let's talk about a good reason and a bad reason to sell the station. A bad reason is there's a leak in the gas tanks, and the station is about to be declared a superfund site. A good reason, which is the truth here, is they're hoping to take a trip around the world on their sailboat. So people don't say that. They say I'm about to retire to basically tell a white lie, as opposed to they think that's a frivolous reason. So therefore they keep it hidden. My goal in negotiation is to give the other side what they want. Why? Not because I'm nice, but because if they get what they want, I can get what I want, which is in this case, the station. Now, they may be asking for a lot of money. So I'm not necessarily going to give them the money, but what is it going to take to get them on the boat? And now it's time to be curious. Well, interesting. A boat, that sounds great. Are you going to do that for the rest of your life? No, no, two years. Two years is good. Okay, good. And what are you going to do when you come back? Well, it's kind of a challenge because we won't have a job. So we had to put aside $75,000 as a reserve fund. Oh, you don't have a job. You're a great manager. Would you like a job when you come back? And by the way, how are you going to fund your down payment for an apartment or else when you come back? Because all your money is going to be tied up in the boat. Yeah, that's an issue. We don't want to have to do a fire sale of the boat. Oh, would it help you if I gave you a loan against the boat when you come back? Maybe six months to give you more time to sell the boat. So let me understand what your problems are so I can help solve them. Yeah, and I think part of it is being patient as well. I feel many of us, when we get in a negotiation, we feel like time is speeding up and we create this artificial pressure to get it done and we move faster than our logic can catch up with and it's hard for us to get all that information. Yeah. So how do we tap into that curiosity and slow it down when our natural instinct is to speed it up to get the deal to get what we want? You know, actually, I'm going to have to a little disagree with you on this. I think our natural approach to life is to be empathetic. My students at Yale, they're smart, they're empathetic until they start negotiating. And then they act unnaturally. They start acting like jerks. And so actually all you have to be is your natural self. You talk about how it is that you do dating, right? And the same things that make you a successful person in life will actually allow you to be a successful person in a negotiation. Why do we turn into jerks? What is that phenomenon that's going on there? I think it's because people are scared. Stakes can be high. They don't have the idea of the pie. They're afraid they're going to end up with crumbs. And they think the only way to protect themselves is to start off with a high anchor to exaggerate, to look like you're a tough jerk as opposed to can we set the ground rules for how we're negotiating? And people typically start with price. Okay, that's not good. Better is to talk about what your interests are rather than your positions. Even better is to start with, let's talk about how we're going to negotiate. I know for some people the idea of coming in to discuss this, to find out what the pie is, and to have these exploratory chats, so the conversation can be much better, get so hung up on, well, if I'm giving them all this information, that's information that they're going to use against me. Yeah, so that's the Miranda right. You're coming back to me on that, right? So let's talk about, let's go back a little bit to that negotiation over the URL, the domain name. And as you've probably figured out, I was the idiot who didn't buy it ahead of time. I gave Edward my number. I told him it would cost $1,300 if we don't reach an agreement. Does that mean I was going to pay $1,200? Or even $11? So people think I gave away the information, so now I'm in a weak position. I told him I bat now. But the answer is I'm not going to take a 9010 or a 1090 division of the pie. And so, yeah, I put the cards out there, but I'm also going to insist on a fair deal. And once I've got that principle, now I'm not so exposed anymore. So it's true that if I put my cards on the table and haven't stood up for what's fair, then, yeah, I'm in big trouble. I got that. I found that fascinating in the book, because as I'm thinking about it and going through it, and you were discussing what the batting was, and that $1,300 going to ICANN, it's like, oh, that was the fixed number, then, of course, that I merely had stuck in my head. And I was quite surprised. You're going to stick me with $1,299 if you're on the other side? Well, it was the number that I instantly became transfixed on because that was the power position that the way you presented it. And of course, it's easy to see. You're like, oh, okay, he can't go above that. And then, of course, as it was playing out, I was just utterly fascinated by, oh, what you shared, not only did it have my attention on that number, it put his attention on that number. So it's almost sort of like a sleight of hand there of, well, this is the information I'm giving you. It doesn't mean that I'm playing with this number. It just means that this number is involved. It's what the pie is here. Let's understand what it is we're negotiating over. I'm not trying to hide it because when we understand the pie correctly, then we're going to reach a deal. The confusion is when you think you're negotiating over $4,000 and I know it's only $1,300. That's the problem. So I think people are way too unwilling to share information because they're worried about being taken advantage of, which is why if you agree up front, we're going to split the pie, now you're protected. In many of these classic negotiation situations that I was talking about, buying a house, renting, buying a car, there's often one party who is more seasoned sitting at the other side of the table who has done more of these negotiations, who has done more of these deals. So naturally, you then start to feel like, if I give too much information to someone who's more experienced than me, then they are going to use it against me. Yeah, so actually here's another example of something how to protect yourself. I may not know what the pie is today, but if we can see what the pie is tomorrow and you can agree to split it with me, now I'm okay. So I've got the art dealer who comes in to buy my grandfather's painting that I inherit. I don't know what it's worth and the person offers me $1,000. And the thing is, I could say $2,000, but maybe it's really not worth that much and so I'll lose the $1,000. I could go to pay and get an appraised that's going to cost $1,000 and I don't want to spend $1,000 to get $1,000. That doesn't make any sense. So the dealer knows where it's worth, I don't. It looks like I'm in trouble. I could say the dealer, here's the thing, I'll sell it to you for $1,000, but if you resell it for above $10, I want half of everything above $10. So I don't know, if it's worth $100,000, I'm going to be much happier having said that. If it's worth $8,000, God bless him, okay, you can make some profit. Now, if he says no to that deal, what have I learned? There's a pretty good chance this thing is worth more than $10,000. Right. Yeah. In which case, now maybe I should go get it appraised. So the $10,000 is a way for you to seek more information from someone who is more seasoned. Yeah. So I'm saying, look, I'm prepared to split the pie with you. Are you willing to do it with me? And essentially, if this is a $100,000 pie, yeah, I really do need to get $50,000. Right. If it's a $4,000 pie, okay, you pay me one and you have to do some work to make this happen, I got it. That's fine. Right. And so there's a lot of times when I don't know the pie today, but there's an ability to figure it out in the future. Right. And so I'll ask the bird to split it with me as it materializes. That makes a lot of sense. And it allows you, again, to be negotiating in good faith. Right. And make sure the other side is also negotiating good faith. Exactly. Because now you're getting them to share information that if you hadn't said that, they probably would have held from you. There's an information imbalance. One, you can have practice. We talk about case studies in there. And two, one of the reasons why negotiations probably went bad in the past is you were acting like a jerk. The other person was acting like a jerk. It made everybody uncomfortable. When my students are done doing these cases, they say, you know, it's kind of funny. It didn't feel like a negotiation. What went wrong? And the answer is nothing went wrong. That's what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be like problem solving as opposed to all conflict. Why would you imagine you know how to do this well if you've never been trained in it? There are situations, of course, where you are the art dealer, where you have done all the research, you understand all of it, and you're struggling now to get them to see the pie because they don't have that information. So how do you lay out the case for the pie when you have the information and they don't? Yeah, well, again, if I'm the art dealer, I say to the person, look, you're worried that I'm taking advantage of you. I'm telling you this thing. I'm paying you 1,000, but I have to advertise it. I have to store it. I have to restore it. So, look, I'm hoping to sell it for eight and my profit in this will be a couple thousand. But you know what? Don't worry. If I sell it for anything above 10, I'm happy to split those, the excess above 10 with you. And so now the other person doesn't have to fear they're being taken advantage of. I was helping the city of New Haven negotiate with a large investment bank who was going to be investing in our airport. I didn't know what I was doing. I don't know about how airport economics works. So I turn to them and say, you know what? I need to see your spreadsheet. I need to see how much money you're making, how you're modeling this. It's like, well, that's our spreadsheet. I said, yeah, but you know, I have to recommend this to the mayor. And essentially I want to see what the pie is and I want you to make money because I want you to come here. I want this to be attractive to you. But it's going to be embarrassing if you make a 200% rate of return. And so essentially let me go through it. And then we talked about the numbers. They defended it. We talked about why they had these various assumptions. And it was like, yeah, okay, you're making 16%. I got it. That's good. We get an airport that works. We're happy on both sides. So ask the other side for the information or share the information with them. It's not a problem. And that's a one great way of building trust. Right. That's what I was getting at is this transparency piece. So whether they have all the information and you don't or you have all the information and they don't, the best thing to do which is sort of again counterintuitive to what many of us default to which is hold our cards close to the vest like we play poker. You don't want to show anyone anything. Actually, it helps to show exactly how large the pie is. It helps to do that once you've got an agreement that you're going to split the pie. Right. And so that's why you first have to have the principle established and then it's okay to open up the kimono some. Right. But if you're going in just showing the numbers without that agreement, then you're putting yourself at a disadvantage. Absolutely, because now they can say, well, okay, yeah, I'll give you, you know, I'll push you up against that 1300. And we have no sense in which we're going to try and split the pie. Now we've talked about some of the myths and misconceptions that a lot of us have around negotiating, but you've taught a lot of students this exact framework. So what are some of the biggest misconceptions that students have coming into your course? Or what are some pieces of advice that you wish people would not follow when it comes to negotiating? Yeah. So one of the big myths that we've already actually seen is that you should start off and try and anchor the other side with a really high number. And you can see what happened with Edward in the domain name. He tried to soften me up with the 2500. Did that help him or not? What does he have to do after 2500? And I say, hey, ICANN is 13. He says, okay, 11. So now he's made this gigantic movement and he shows me that he's like spaghetti. He has no backbone. Nothing he says sticks. Or you go and say, that's my last offer, making the ultimatum. It's like, really? I'm at 650, you're at 900. If we walk away, you're losing 900. I'm only losing 400. So you have a lot more to lose than I do. I propose something fair. You've got a lot at risk. I don't believe you. And so people try these stupid things like opening up with the unreasonable number. And by the way, if you go and you make an offer on a house and it's unreasonably low, what does the seller think? Like what? You don't know what the market is? You're trying to take advantage of me? And so you say, okay, yeah. Take that $800,000 house. Like, yeah, I'll give you $400,000 for it. It's like, okay, are you listening? Do you know what this market is? Fine. I'll give you. Sorry. I tried to low ball you. I realized it doesn't work. How about $700,000? It's like, well, wait a second. What kind of person are you that just offered me four and now you're willing to go to seven? I can't trust a word out of your mouth. So one thing I'm really against is making unreasonable offers at the start. You lose trust. You piss off the other side. And you force yourself to make giant movements. Yeah. Well, even in the web address, with him going to 11, it's like, well, now I just want to pay the 13 because I just to stick it to you. Now I see you're just the jerk. So I'd rather you get zero. Let's talk about salary negotiation because that is a situation that is stressful for a lot of people in our audience, especially with the I do it wrong and now I lose the opportunity entirely, right? Almost like the Coca Cola. And it's worse than that in some ways because oftentimes when you're applying or getting a new job, the salary negotiation is really the first time they're getting a sense of who you are as a person. And you don't want them to think, oh my God, what a jerk I just hired. This is your chance to actually demonstrate that you are a person who's out there trying to make the pie bigger. And you want them to want to hire you more as a result of this negotiation rather than less. Yeah. So I'm not a giant fan of word games, but here's one or two examples. Imagine there's salary, there's bonus, and there's equity. Okay, of course I'd like more of all three, but I could ask the other side, help me understand where you are least flexible. Now if I say where you most flexible, they're probably not going to want to answer that question. Right? It's sort of, it's a scary question for them to answer. But if I say where you least flexible, everybody wants to tell you that. Yeah. Yeah, look, I have no room to deal with salary. That's fixed, it's come from high up, whatever. Okay, so now you know what I do? I don't ask them about salary. Nope. Yeah. Right? And I say, well, okay, let's talk about bonus. Let's talk about equity. And then they can't say, that's right. I said, well, I know you're least flexible on this thing. So. Right. But you got some room to move. So you got some room, as opposed to, well, where are you least flexible? Everywhere. You know, it's probably not the answer you want to hear. Yeah, it's probably not the answer you will hear. Okay. So I want to allow them to tell me information in a way that's not threatening to them. And also I want to respect it. Yeah. Because in fact, just like I want to give the other side what they want, I don't want to take from the other side what they don't want to give me. Right. Because that makes them not want to do the deal. Or even waste time on stuff that they can't move on. Absolutely. It's a useless negotiation. Another version of this is to say, help me understand why those wonderfully talented people you've hired in the past haven't worked out. Because I assume whenever you hire somebody, you're expecting it's going to be great. And I'm expecting it's going to be great. So I, you know, can we just talk for a moment about what led to the failures? And the reason why that's so valuable is they'll then tell you things which you can either say, you know, they'll say, what we really care is about team players that you may be a superstar on your own. But if you're not part of the team, that doesn't work here. And I realize, oh my God, I am kind of the lone wolf person. Maybe I shouldn't take this job. Or you say, hey, guess what? Let me show you why I am Mr. Team. And then help them understand why you're going to create a bigger pie and that you are not going to be the failure. So if you can understand what goes wrong and you can convince them that you're not the type where they're going to make a mistake, they're going to want to have you even more. Right. It's a sure bet for them. Yeah. You're trying to make it a sure bet for them. And one way of understanding that is to explain why you're not going to be the unusual case where things go wrong. So it's funny to talk about failure a little bit. Yeah, I think many would feel uncomfortable about it, but it's such valuable information. And again, it's showing them that you care about their interests, right? Going back to this empathy, their side of the table. I want to make a big pie. That's my goal here. So I want our interests to be aligned and I'm trying to demonstrate how it is that we're going to succeed on that. I'm a big fan of making the other side's argument. So a lot of people in negotiation, when they hear the other side making some story, they spend all their effort showing what's wrong with it. And then what happens, the other side doesn't think they're being understood. You see, in life, we can't always get what we want, but we can always be understood. And therefore I need to help the other side. I need to demonstrate to them that I understand their perspective. So this is actually a place where Chris Voss and I disagree a little bit. Voss will, when you can't give the person a bonus, he says things to the effect of, I know you must be thinking that I don't really value your work because I'm not giving you this bonus. And he wants the other person to say, oh, no, no, I realize you do like me and this, that. Actually, if that's what my boss says to me and leaves it there, say, yeah, FN right. So you can't just say, I know you're thinking this. You have to explain, here's why I really do value what you do. Here are the ways in which I value it. Here's how I've demonstrated I value it. Here's how I'm going to value it going forward. I may not be able to do this, but here are the other things that I do. And so you have to make the other side's argument, but you're not doing it to put them on the defensive. You're doing it to demonstrate you understand and there's something else that's going on that's even more relevant. Well, again, and even in sales, summarizing their points allows them to feel good that you're on the same page, which opens the door then for more communication. Without that, those conversations don't go nearly to the place that we want, well, that I want them to, speaking personally. And let's actually work on that some more, to do the yes and to that story, which is, let me put out on the table all of the objections that you might have. Right, absolutely. Because the fact is if you don't ask them, I don't get a chance to answer them. And so you might just be walking away in the end. We're not going to have a deal because there are these problems that I haven't addressed. So I don't want to hide them. I want to talk about them because if I can't resolve them, then we're not going to reach an agreement. And you may be embarrassed to ask them, but I know you're thinking of them. So, you know, for example, I'm thinking the listener to this podcast saying, well, okay, Barry, that's great if you were the small party. But why should the big party ever agree to this? Why should they give up more than half the pie? Because they were used to getting it. And my answer is that if the small party makes this argument and you reject it, you're showing that you're kind of the jerk out there, that you don't listen to reason, that you're obstinate. And so you might end up with no deal. And getting half of a great deal is better than a lot of no deal, right? I think the lines I'd rather have 10% of a watermelon than all of a grape. Now it's a little bit trickier in the event that the small side is prepared to accept less than half the pie. Now do I tell them? And do I want to have a reputation for somebody who does fair deals out there so that more people want to do deals with me? I might choose not to in that case. That's the harder one, if you'd like. That's such a key point that we've made on a past episode is that a lot of this stuff theorizing is if there's no other deals to be made and there's no reputation or no trust that's built. But all of our careers, all of our lives, we are building that reputation. And do you want to be known as the person who's the cheapskate, who's the cheat, who's the manipulator, who plays the sleight of words to get one over on someone, to get that small win, only to lead that person saying, never do a deal with this person again? Correct, yeah. So I think in life we want to have a reputation for being fair, for doing deals painlessly and for making deals great, for making the pie bigger. People say, oh Barry, oh my God, I'm scared to negotiate with you. And the answer is no, actually, people like negotiating with me because I'm spending my effort trying to make the pie big. Right, and in a sales example, that leads to referrals, right? So if someone feels that you've been transparent, that the pie's been made larger and they're getting their fair share, they're going to be happy to introduce you to their neighbor who also needs your financial services or their buddy who's looking for a used car or their friend who's looking for a real estate agent. So all of this reputation, when you have a greater sense of the pie and understanding how to split it fairly, pays off in the long run. We're on the same page, my friend. What are some pies that might be invisible to our audience right now that they're not thinking about that they could actually have some fun practicing these skills? I think it's useful to do it in some fake cases where the stakes really don't matter because in some sense, let's, and how do you learn how to play gin rummy or poker? That was the question? Yeah, not here in Vegas, sitting down and putting money into the casino. But what else was true the first time you played? What did you do? You lose. You lost. Yeah, but in particular, even before that, what happened, I claimed you learned how to play with cards up. Yeah. Yeah. And it was artificial, it wasn't completely real, but it allowed you to understand what was going on. And so I actually like to teach people negotiation initially with all the cards open, because that allows both sides to understand what's happening. If we can't figure out how to reach a deal with all the cards open, boy is it going to be hard to figure out how to reach a deal when people are hiding stuff. Absolutely. And so I think that's an issue that sort of, it'd be so much harder to learn to play gin rummy, bridge, poker, whatever if we have to do everything all at once. And so one of my big suggestions, if you'd like, is to do the cards open versions of negotiation. So we can get comfortable with that and understand what's going on. And then we can start moving to more complicated. So the next version I'd say is negotiations where people don't have to reveal information, but they're not allowed to lie. Harder, but we're sort of making our steps one at a time. And essentially, let's not jump into the English channel and try and swim across it before we first have had some simpler negotiations to play with. Got it. Well, we love asking everyone of our guests what their X factor is, what's that unique skill set that has set you up for success. What do you think your X factor is, Barry? I'm an iconoclast. I like to challenge the status quo. That gave my parents a lot of challenges when I was growing up. It's like when somebody says, that's the way it's done. You know, it's like, well, yeah, but why? Why? Right. I was sort of a why not kind of person. And even when I have good ideas, you know, like, okay, honesty, none of my colleagues invested in it. I came up with a new way of doing an MBA program. What we do is we bring students right out of college. They do the first year of their MBA, then they go out and work for one or two years. And then they come back and finish their MBA. The reason why that works so much better is that when they're getting their work experience, they know something. They know some accounting, some finance, some marketing. So they get much more useful jobs, much better experience, better pay, as opposed to spending two years doing PowerPoints in Excel where they don't know anything. Right. And my colleagues say, you know, look, we really love that idea. But if we do it, it's just going to encourage you to come up with more stuff. I'd say my superpower, if you'd like, is challenging the status quo. Well, I love it. Thank you for asking so many wise, fantastic book on negotiation with so many great case studies and examples that were easy to follow. We really appreciate you stopping by. Thank you for letting me have an hour of total coolness that I hope will last for at least a while so my daughters can say, wow, you know, Johnny, I can't believe it. That's great. Well, you made us cooler in negotiations, Barry. We appreciate that. All right. We made a big pie. Let's share it, my friends. Thank you. Love it. Thank you.