The Exit Engine Podcast Episode 53: High Stakes Conversations

Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast, episode 53. Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast. I'm Joe Stapleton. As usual, I'm here with my partner in business and partner in crime, John Kniff. John, how are you, buddy?

I am doing well, Joe, and yourself?

I'm excellent because we've got another great guest today. Joining us today on the podcast is Mishkin Cyr of the Cyr Method, C-Y-R Method. You can find him at cyrmethod.com. Mishkin is an expert in negotiation and figuring out how 2 sides come together to be able to get what both sides want with dignity and clarity and something that's going to last, which is especially important in the exit world as As we all know, Jon, you're not going to be alone in this. You're going to be partners with these people. And the best thing that you can do is establish a good trustworthy relationship early on. That starts with the very first, the beginnings of the negotiation. Michigan Seer, welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast. Thanks so much for being here today.

Thank you for inviting me. It's my honor and privilege. So, really appreciate the invite.

There are all kinds of tactics that people will use, you know, to be able to try to get, you know, to try to get a deal. Everybody's kind of after a deal. There are— there is a naturally adversarial position between buyers and sellers from the jump, right? And the question is, like you said, I think that the issue we always see is there needs to be common ground, first of all, right? There needs to be strategic, you know, strategic fit, meaning that they have to at least agree that in the future we see how this comes together and we see that there's value on both sides. And then, of course, the next thing is, like you said perfectly, is there has to be a win-win.

Yes.

Otherwise, if one party, and this is what we see happen all the time in exit situations, is that especially the seller ends up being disappointed with the entire process well after the fact. They feel like they have been taken advantage of, they have had something pulled over their eyes, they were unclear about what was really going to happen, et cetera, et cetera. Some of that's on them, you know, but it's a good reason for that to hire an advisor to help you through this stuff.

Absolutely.

That's why today on the Exit Engine podcast, we're going to talk with Mishkin Cyr, who has started a practice in terms of helping people figure out these— how to have these high-stakes conversations. And I think that this is something that, again, applies across the board to us as human beings. This isn't just about You know, about CEOs negotiating salaries or negotiating with a strategic partnership or to put an exit deal together. It is stuff that happens to us in our everyday lives. And I can— I will raise my hand first and say that throughout my life, I have been terrible at putting myself into these high-stakes conversations that were necessary But that I avoided at all costs. And it— that the cost for me was huge in the end, right? Where I didn't— I wasn't able to actually get what I wanted.

The—

all the things kind of fell apart because I wasn't able to have, in my past life, have some hard conversations. These high-stakes conversations aren't just about CEOs having conversations with other CEOs or Or when they're selling the company to a buyer or, you know, or in salary negotiations, right? This is everyday life, man. And like I said before, I will raise my hand and be the first one to admit that I used to be terrible at showing up to these hard conversations.

Absolutely. I think you nailed it on the head. It is everyday conversations. And I kind of use— I'm a simple person, so I have a triangle in my mind and there's 3 types of conversations. There's a negotiation, There's a barter, and then there is a conflict, right? And so, a lot of things start from a conflict point of view, which is we're adversarial. And that's what you talked about. People go into this adversarial. Now, you have 2 routes. You can go straight to bartering, which is, what am I going to give up and get from you?

Yeah.

Or— and we start compromising, right? And that's the, well, what's my discount? What's this? What's that? Or if a skilled negotiator can shift it into a collaboration where you realize, We have a common problem. Our impact is different. But if we solve that problem, we can probably get what we both want. And that's where you shift into negotiation. And bartering is often the result of a failed negotiation.

And you have a couple of things on— and I was looking at your LinkedIn before the call, Mishkin, and it's like, you know, one of the most important things, or I think the most important thing that you would say would be, you have to listen, right? You have to listen and understand what your— I don't want to say— but the person across the table from you wants. And can you just talk a little bit about how important that is from the negotiation standpoint?

100%. So what I've found over the years is that the more I get somebody talking, the more I understand what's behind the words they're saying, the more opens up. And what I mean by that is simply You know, I mean, there's that classic saying, understand, seek to understand before you want to be understood. And the reality is, is that when you first start talking to somebody, you have no idea what their motives are. You have no idea what actually they care about. You don't know what they had for breakfast. You don't know who they talk— you don't know who you're talking to, right? Great example. I remember I was talking to somebody, it was just going nowhere. It was going nowhere. I was going nowhere. It was just headbutting. Finally, I stopped it and I said, you know what? I think there's an elephant in the room. I think there's something going on here. Help me understand. Why are we just— and the person was paused. They paused for about 5 minutes.

It was long.

And then they just said, I had a fight with my daughter this morning. I'm sorry. And we just restarted, right? And so even that little thing of, here's this, you know, this person went through something you don't know. So you don't know who you're talking to until you start to dig deep and understand. So the The more you can get somebody talking, and that's where the skills come in and the empathy, but the more somebody starts talking, the more you can really get to those core things that matter to them as a human.

Right.

And ultimately, at the end of the day, a win-win is figuring out those top 3, 4, 5 things and making sure they get it while you get yours. We don't get everything in life, but that's, that's the difference between a compromise and a win-win.

And it's, it's what I love about it too, is that, look, this is a working together situation. And we try to do this and try to coach this as well. And of course, you know, John and I spent a lot of time working on the— with buyers on the other side, right, where we were constantly trying to actually get them to calm down. And what I mean is, is that, you know, they were— because they're constantly looking for a deal, that's their— in fact, they believe that their job, okay, is to get the company— buy this company for as little money as they possibly can, right? So that they could— they're ostensibly— so that their vig, the difference in what they sell it for later, can be great. And all that stuff. And of course, when we're working with buyers, a lot of the times we were like, whoa, you know what I mean? I mean, you're not going to find anybody, right? If you are too restrictive or too— what's the word I'm looking for? You're too rigid, right? If you're too rigid in what it is you're trying to achieve, then you are closing yourself off. And the second you close yourself off, the other party feels that, right?

Yes.

And so now what you've created is a situation where the seller, especially if they're unrepresented, and a lot of times they were, is like, wait, what's going on here? And are all you're trying to— especially when, as they go through due diligence, it seems as if all they're trying to do, and they are, right, is get the price down and find the reasons not to buy something.

Right.

What John and I try to do, and what we've tried to, you know, is try to teach sellers, is this— is to find that common ground early on, right?

Yeah. Able—

first of all, prepare yourself, because the more buttoned up you are, the less they have to push back on, right?

Yeah.

But at the same time, the— your ability to be able to take the— this, uh, you know, this find the common ground that's important to the buyer Right? Understand that. Look, maybe it is the vig. It's the— they're risk-averse. They are trying to have as little risk as possible. If you can meet them where they are on that risk thing and be prepared to de-risk yourself or have already de-risked yourself to a point, now it's just a matter of saying to them, look, here is— there is a little bit of risk left.

Sorry, I have to interrupt because the most recent negotiation in our, in our, uh, clouding Jo's discussion. And I don't mean that in a positive way, but the word— he said the word risk like 4 times. And the recent negotiation we're in, it was all about risk, Michigan, right? It was all— so the buyer of our— one of our clients. Yeah.

And that's where you— that's where some of the skills for negotiation come in, because we're still at the surface level.

We'll start—

we're still talking about common ground, which I actually believe today is a fallacy. And I also, we're talking about risk, which is great. I've heard that word a million times in my life, like you have, and like most people have. What's behind it, right? It's often fear or it's something else, right? And so until we can get to those, we actually can't solve anything because risk is just the, you know, I'm protecting myself.

Buzzword that's just—

You got it, right?

Actual risk, right?

It's like when people talk about the media being whatever they happen to be, like they talk about the media in general or they like, oh, they're doing something, like, wait, like, that's like, that's like risk in the sense of they're not specifying what the part of risk— like, what is risky? Is it, is it that it may rain later today and I'm doing it, doing something outside? Or is it some type of other uncertainty that they either don't want to, or they don't, they don't want to ascribe a value to it, or they don't want to put a fine point on it because they just want to have it be amorphous?

One of my favorite questions to ask when somebody brings up risk, and this could be a colleague, it could be the risk compliance manager at your company, it could be a counterpart to a business deal, whatever. Oh, the risk, risk, risk. Hold on, can I— I'd like to understand, how do you set your risk tolerance? Right? And all of a sudden it pauses it and it gets them thinking like, oh yeah, how do I set my risk tolerance? As soon as I start to understand where they're— whether, whether A, they have a defined way of setting their risk tolerance, or B, they have no idea, that gives me a direction to start going.

Yeah.

And if they have no idea, great. Now we have to educate them. Now we have to work with them to get to a place where they now understand what risk means in their own minds. Or if they already do, now I understand what I'm working with, right? We understand what the levers are, but now we're working with something concrete versus just the word risk, which for Everybody has a different definition. Right.

Because that exact thing happened in one of our negotiations recently, is that there was no risk tolerance, right? There was no, there was no ability to, to— the person, I should say, could not elucidate and talk about what, how much risk they wanted to take, right? They just, they were just being amorphous about it. And then once we talked on the phone and said, Okay, this is the risk I want to mitigate. Like, okay, cool. It's on the table. Now we know how to move forward and talk about it and deal with it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If things aren't on the table, you can't move forward. And that's, that's half the battle, as I said before, with negotiations is do you have the empathy and skills and trust building to be able to get past all that front-loaded stuff into the real stuff, which is often hidden behind fear, words, lack of knowledge, whatever it could be, right? So It's super critical to be able to dig past that. And that's what I mean by common ground, I find, is a bit of a fallacy. Common ground is great for rapport building. It can be. But ultimately, I just need to understand the other person. I don't have to agree or like it. I just need to understand them. And as soon as I do that, now we have somewhere to go.

Let me ask you, what about building trust? So building trust in a negotiation is— I mean, obviously they have to trust you when they're negotiating with you, but Can you talk a little bit about like the either, either ways to do that when you're, when you're literally just meeting the person in the context of a negotiation?

Well, that's a big question and there's no one size fits all. So I'm not going to pretend there is. Trust is truly, I find depending on the person you're talking to, they're either going to be a low trust, middle trust. They start off somewhere on the equation. And, you know, I'm a high-trust person. When I meet somebody, I'm like giving you the benefit of the doubt. That's who I am. Somebody else, and I've worked with them, they're like, I don't know you. What do you want? Right?

Mm-hmm.

So again, the first step to trust building is genuine curiosity. And you can learn all the tricks in the world out there. You can learn all the techniques, and I can teach those. But if you don't have genuine concern and care for somebody and want to know truly what's going on with them, You will never build trust. You'll just become, you know, the, the snake oil person or whatever else. But the reality is, is depending on who they are, that's part of the digging. And that's partly why one of the things I teach is the more you can get somebody else talking, the more trust you actually build. There's nothing I can say to make you trust me, but one of the most powerful tools is actually listening with care and digging deeper and really trying to understand. Right. And once people realize, oh, this person actually wants to understand me, they want to understand you. And that's where trust is formed. And then the counterpiece to that is that's how you build it, but how do you maintain it? And, and I know it's a very often thrown around the word, but that's integrity, right? And it's actually having like your words matter less than what you do. And so as long as you're following through, as long as you're actually Maintaining your values, as long as you're not compromising your own values and what you say you're going to do, trust is, is earned and maintained. Now, it doesn't mean don't overpromise, because otherwise you have a very safe life. So I actually believe in overpromising, but within limits, you know. Yeah. And it means that like, hey, I'm gonna— oh yeah, I'll do that meeting, no problem. And then all of a sudden you can't make it. Well, here's how you break trust or keep it. You let them know ahead of time, hey, you know what, I said I was going to do this thing and I can't. Let me make it up to you. Something came up. That's that's maintaining trust with integrity. But if you just don't show up and you ghost them, well, you've just lost trust. So that's a very basic form. But but it is really about genuine curiosity into somebody else, and that is where most people fall short because you even said they come in with their own needs and their own desires first, and they try to imprint those and get those. Well, how do you build trust? Because the person is going to think. They don't care about me. They're just trying to get something from me.

It's so important too, because especially in the, again, in this world, because chances are you're going to have to spend the next 2 or 3 years right around each other. Like, very rarely is there a situation where you are selling a company and immediately leaving and never looking back. There is often an earnout period where you have to sit there for the next year or 2 or 3. And so the reality is that when you You've met this person because they are trying to buy you, right, as John set up before. And so you're established from the get-go, you know, in this potentially this adversarial thing where one side's trying to get something from the other. The other side wants the, you know, I want more money, I want less, you know, whatever, right? And of course, the discussion starts to be from the beginning is about the business.

Right.

And so, and what happens is, this is what we've seen too, is that everybody starts off in this, I'm looking at numbers and what are the numbers in this, this, and they think they're in this kind of quantitative situation. But what we try to coach people to is the fact is that this is from the beginning, right, is exactly what you're, you're starting the foundation of the relationship right now.

Yeah.

Right? Don't talk to me about the numbers of the company.

Right?

Talk about you. What do I do? What did I bring to the table? What have I done? Right. And what do I want? Where do I want to see it go?

Yes.

Because that is the first thing in terms of mindset. And we used to coach the buyers to, again, to calm down and, yes, take the meeting and listen to the person. Maybe it takes 2 or 3 meetings before you're comfortable, right, starting to talk about numbers and getting in, digging into the details, or Dig into the details as well as the person, because this is going to be your partner, whether you like it or not, for, you know, for maybe, for maybe 3 years.

A very fast way to break trust is to rush a negotiation.

Oh, yeah, there you go.

And negotiations take as long as they take based on the personalities in the room and the interactions. I remember this one time, there was a project I took over that was underwater. It was 4 years late. $500,000 at a loss for the company I was working with. And it was a $6 million government project with a, with a third party who was a billion-dollar company, and we weren't. We're like, you know, tens of millions. And it was the legal threats, everything else going on. And finally they said, we're coming up. And I said, please do, because I, I put in a stop work order. I said, stop work, we're done, right? And of course that just threw up every flag, right? And it was even people within the company were going, what are you doing? Stop working. Why? Because it's going to get attention. That's the first thing we need. We need a pattern break, period. Then their executives flew up. We had VPs and this and that, everybody in a room, and I set up a presentation. And trust was at an all-time low. I mean, there was yelling matches between the project teams. Like, it was really, really bad.

Those are fun, right?

They are so much fun. So what I did is I simply laid out a very factual presentation at the beginning. I said, we're here for 8 hours today. You flew up, thank you for that. We're not, we're not fixing anything We're making one decision, and that one decision is, are we going to go legal or are we going to try to fix it together? That's it. Then I laid out all of the facts and I said, here's our responsibilities, here's yours, here's where it's broken down, here's the contract. We've veered. We're not— you're not following it, we're not following it. Everybody here in this room has failed to achieve these results. Now, based on that, let's take the next 6 hours to discuss what our options could be and what we want to do. By the end of it, they decided, yes, we do want to try to fix this. And that was the only goal that day, right? That was part of the negotiation to rebuild the trust, to say, here we are, what direction do we want to take? From there, it was a completely different environment, completely different attitude.

Yeah.

And by the end of it, it took 3 more months, but we had an extra, you know, $2.5 million USD in funding. We had an extra year and a half runway. They were getting the results they And we had actually shifted from a waterfall project approach. It was software to an agile approach, which the government didn't want at first. Right, right, right. And it was amazing. And I had replaced the teams. We took out the old culture, put in a new one. But it started with that, hey, it's broken. Let's have the conversation around the broken part because nobody wants to talk about it.

Yeah. And also what I also like about that approach, Mishkin, is don't try to boil the ocean. And everyone always says that, right? But like when you're having— when you have those meetings, it's tempting. And early in my career, I had this— I had a similar situation, and I tried to solve all of the things at once, get to that agreement about legal and the, you know, or going forward, and then do the project plan with everyone in the room. And it was a total absolute nightmare.

Yeah.

And, and, and people were like, wait, what are we doing? And it was the wrong people in the room. And it's like, no, no, Let's focus on one thing. Let's get one thing done and agree to that. Build trust along the way. And then all the other things, you know, that can waterfall, for lack of a better term, from that decision, right? We're going to move forward. We're going to try this. Let's go forward and we can get the right people in the room for the next set of meetings. I really like that.

Yeah, absolutely. You got to start somewhere and you start with the difficult part. Deal with that isolated thing. Everything else unlocks from that. Yeah. Very well put.

Yeah. I, I think there's so much to this. Uh, and again, this, this, this hits home for me because again, I spent so much of my, even my adult life. I, I, look, I was, I was client services, you know what I mean? I was, I was the guy who had to keep everything okay.

Yeah. Right.

And I was the lay— I'm the person who's working between the agency, my agency and the client. Right. And the client is the, and if the client, you know, sneezes, The agency gets a cold, you know, which is what we used to say, right? So you're trying to keep everybody happy and in line. But of course, ultimately, you know, what would happen, you know, every once in a while is you'd come across a client who was just irrational, unreasonable, had their own, you know, internal issues, you know, whatever. And was, again, from their point of view, I can look back and go, they felt under the gun. They were, they felt rightly, wrongly, whatever, under pressure. They were walking around in fight or flight all the time, right? And so when we started, when we got to a point where we had a disagreement, and it took me a long time to get to the point where I was able to say, okay, enough's enough. I need to push back on you. And by the way, you can't talk to me that way. And like, literally got to this thing, right? So it was, but the end, the learning is that the end of this long conversation, I'll never forget, I was sitting in my car. having this conversation with this client going after like a year of just abuse, right? Just saying, enough's enough. We can't— we can no longer do it like this. I'm asking you to step back and I will, I will make sure that I achieve the thing we're trying to work out here. But you have to calm down. Like, we have to—

we can't— Yeah.

I couldn't say that to her either. And I had to be very, very careful about the fact that— but, but I remember I mean, it was a pivotal moment in my career because it was the first time I could really remember saying no. Like, we're not gonna do this. Like, I'm willing to risk the entire thing here if that's what— because you are so irrational and so over the top, right? That— and, and talk about lack of integrity. Like, this was a person who was just like flailing.

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John uses the term, you know, you were trying to catch a falling knife, right?

Right. Yes.

Or save a drowning person who was like, you're trying to— that's what this was. And so—

Well, you named it exactly. It's fight or flight. And that's partly why I've embedded— so in my work, in my coaching and my training of negotiations, I've anchored it around the word dignity. And the reason for that is very simply that, you know, I come from a very dark background in terms of addictions. And I was homeless at one point in my life. Like, I've had a wild life. Point being, It was somebody at that moment when I was at my darkest time that gave me some dignity that allowed me to actually turn upwards. Because now in all conversations and all negotiations, when somebody's spiraling, when somebody's in that fight or flight, my job shifts to how can I help them out of fight or flight? Right. Because then we can go somewhere and without shame, without blame, without— it's just, I can see where they are. I get it. I've been there. How do we move out of that? And sometimes that's giving some time, like, hey, we should talk about this tomorrow. You know, then framing it better. Sometimes it's really just shifting. You know what, I think let's talk about like why, like what, what is causing you to call me every day, right? Like, how do you get around your daughters? What is it? And I'm not saying become a therapist, but it is becoming another human being, which builds trust, right?

And that's it.

And help somebody out of the fight or flight. Now you can move forward. But if somebody's in that mode or I'm in that mode, we're not going anywhere.

But a lot of it is there. Like, a lot of what we do is— I don't want to say therapy because I don't know the first thing about therapy, but it's pretty darn close, right? It's comforting people. It's, you know, it's being CC'd on an email from somebody, or someone forwards an email to us and we look at it and it's like, oh my goodness, like, okay, like, let's sit back and let's think about this. And the person's obviously very emotional about the response because— What they sent to the person is not what they— or what they got back is not what they expected, and they're really disappointed about it. And moving them out of that either fight or flight or just leaving, like stopping the negotiation, is what we have to prevent.

One of the most powerful things anybody can do in business or sales is help somebody out of that. From that point on, if you've done that, they will be loyal and they will work with you and they will be trusting. And I learned that back, you know, over a decade ago in automotive sales. I stopped walking the sales floor because nobody had trust, especially back in that day when it was, you know, dealership didn't have a good relationship with, with the, with the customers. I would actually go down to the service department and I'd just sit down there and I'd wait for the first angry customer to come in. And they'd come in because they were mad about the service or mad about this or mad about that. And the service department started to love me because I say, I'll take care of it. And I'd work with that person to resolve their issue. And after that, I had a customer. like loyal, and I have referrals, right? And I was like, that was my avenue into long-sustained business, and I've carried that with me. If you can solve somebody's emotional problem or emotional challenge, you have now done more for them than your product probably ever will. And that's the reality of sales and humans in business. We're people. We are emotional beings, and we make purchases, whether it's a business, whether it's a sale, whether it's a phone, we do it emotionally, not logically. So, when you say people come in looking at the numbers, I'm like, yeah, never look at the numbers first. It's a waste of time. It doesn't matter what you're selling. If you talk numbers first, you've already lost. You're already into bargaining, not negotiating, and not building value, and not building trust.

Great point. Great point. Michigan, here's what I love about you as a human, which is that you just told that story about the car dealership. It takes a— you have to be in a place mentally. to be able to— and I don't know if it's where you, where you feel again, maybe that you have— there's a safety. We all have to feel safe, right? I mean, our brains are giant alarm systems, right? For the most part, our nervous system is a giant alarm system, and it's all it's doing is basically telling us, you know, danger, danger, danger, right?

Yeah.

It's not telling us why. It's not rational. It's not real most of the time, right? But it is an alarm. And so Our emotions are the reaction, especially the negative emotions are a reaction to that alarm. So let's give you, let's go back and talk specifically about that, that time when you decided, I'm gonna sit in this service thing and I'm gonna take on, yeah, this heated person coming in on purpose because most of us would avoid that like the plague.

Yeah.

And so I wanna know what it is about your mindset that got you there.

So there, there's a combo of things I would say, and some are personal to me and some are universal and can be taught.

Right.

Um, one is, as I've said, I— there's a time in my life where I was degraded to pretty much nothing, and I had to rebuild myself up from nothing. And I don't mean, you know, just materially. I mean emotionally, spiritually, you know, mentally, all those things. What that does is it sets a bar for humility, going, yeah, I'm no better than this person, right? Why would I be? I've been at the bottom. I've been at the top. They're somewhere in that scale. I can relate. That's, that's the personal journey. And everybody's gone through a difficulty in their time. So if you can anchor yourself to that, And remember to not judge. That's A, number one. B, I learned early, I was in the military for a short period, and they said, we're yelling at the uniform, not the person, right? And that's another big one is that if somebody's yelling, it's not me personally. They don't know me. It's at the clothes I'm wearing or the business I represent.

It's my name tag that says Service Director or whatever it is.

Exactly. But the trainable part is actually regulating our emotions in a conversation. And I was musing yesterday because You know, I was Googling and researching, and like, you can learn all the 101s of negotiation by just typing in an AI chat. You can— information in our day and age is everywhere, and you can go look it up. But I can do that with basketball too. Doesn't make me a good basketball player, right? Right. It's how many shots have I taken on net.

Reps.

And so what I've done over the years is I've practiced techniques in a conversation in low stakes and slowly ramped it up. And so one example is a great one is like there's an old classic breathing technique people use, which is, you know, you breathe in, do another sharp breath, and then you breathe out slowly, and that calms your nervous system. Great. Now make it subtle and do it in a conversation.

Just—

Well, yeah.

And, and that resets me from fight or flight. But more importantly, if you say to me, how was your day today? Like, just ask me how my day was.

Great.

How was your day today, Michigan?

Great.

It's like I answered so fast, answered so sharply, you're like, I don't believe you. Now ask again.

Right. Michigan, how was your day today?

It was great. Like the whole tone came down. And now you probably go, I actually believe him. He took a minute.

And actually felt like he was contemplating it.

Exactly. So you can combine these skills to say not only I'm going to regulate myself, but I'm also going to add impact to my next words. And bring that person with me. So we can use and train. But here's what I did to get there. I didn't do it in a negotiation. I went out for dinner to like a group dinner for a weekend or whatever. And I said to my wife, I'm going to be doing this all night. It's going to piss you off, but I'm going to do it. And I just practiced in the middle of conversations that were not high stakes, because then it became second nature. And then I would up it to a one-on-one at work, or then I would up it to a negotiation. low stakes. Eventually, I could do that in front of a boardroom full of VPs. Right. And so that's the key is you train like a sport. It's a skill. It's not, it's not a, it's not a knowledge. It's a skill. Right.

Right.

Yeah.

The pause is so important, right? That, that pause to allow yourself to breathe, one, and then allow the person to like, to allow you to contemplate, and then allow the person to be like, you know, the person's like, wow, they're really thinking like, Michigan is thinking about how his day went, you know, not, not just reflexively saying, great.

Yeah, right. And that's, that's half the battle is can you bring the conversation back to a place— somebody's heightened, how do you start bringing it back?

Be the, be the calm— I always, I always like the phrase, be the calmest person in the room, right? Now, I'm, I, I can be, you know, I can be, especially used to be, you know, shoot from the hip is what they used to call me, right?

Yeah.

Not, not a compliment, by the way. Just as I, as I discovered, I won an award in high school from the, from the news. I was the executive editor of the newspaper. And I, I got this award from the teacher, the Shoot from the Hip Award. And I realized years later that that was not— she was not being complimentary. She was trying to give me, trying to settle it for me.

Wow.

Which again, I, and I get because it was, it would like, that headline sucks. Like, this is not, there are better ways to be able to communicate Right? But what I love about this is that this is not just about business. This is about life in general. This is about human relationships and being able to do this no matter what. And I have taken in my journey, talk about the breathwork, all that stuff. And actually, that technique that you just used is one of my favorite ones. I've actually taught it to my 7-year-old because he's got some anxiety and ADHD.

Right.

This calming of his nervous system is constantly active.

Yeah.

And we're constantly trying to teach him right now. And of course, he doesn't want it to be activated, A, but then he also doesn't want to fix it. So that's like, you know, so it'll be some time before he's really good at it. But when you use these techniques and you— and especially the pause, what I've had to learn, and I've gotten still not great at, I can do this with other adults now. My problem is that I get triggered by him. And so I I'm like, I have to remember to not react. There's a difference. What I always learned— again, this is the knowledge, not the practice— but is there's a difference between reacting and responding.

Yes, very big difference. Yeah. Right. And that's where that breath I found is very pivotal because it becomes my reaction. But in a sense, it gives me a buffer to then respond. Right, right. And the response has more weight. And so we know these techniques. We know them. Everybody knows about a breath. And maybe one or two don't. That's okay.

Right.

But do we practice them? Am I saying I want to become better at negotiating, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna go and train 4 times out of the court? And that could be a dinner, it could be with somebody I meet at a hotel, it could be here on a podcast, it could be anywhere. I'm gonna practice these in so it becomes part of my normal behavior, so that when I actually go to the court, when I'm in an actual high-stakes conversation, It's there. I'm not trying to remember. I'm not trying— the fight or flight isn't fighting me. It's, it's, it's a reflex that we can train. But it does take somebody saying, I'm going to go practice this. If you don't practice—

What I love about this too is in the moment, it doesn't just reset you. It actually resets the other person without them even knowing it.

Yes. No, you're exactly—

Joe, you're exactly right.

It's like, it's like when, you know, bringing the, bringing the conversation down, right? It's not just bringing me, like, as an example, me down. It's It's bringing the whole conversation down. Be like, when you have that pause and someone almost wants to fill that void with— they ask you a question and, you know, some people ask you a question and they answer the question that you've— they've given you. Like, how you feeling, Jo? How you feeling today? You feeling okay? Like, I, I, you know, I didn't even give you a chance to answer the question.

You know, like, are you actually interested in what I have to say?

Or do you want to actually move to the next question and get the next thing out of your mouth?

I'm—

and I've certainly been guilty of this with certain people in, in my life— is I just want to get to the— I'm only asking because I don't really care what they say. I want to get to like the point of what I want to ask.

It's the thing, right?

It's human nature to do that. And that's that fight or flight, right? We're either trying to get through it or we're trying to get out of it. And until we can center ourselves and get that nervous system in control, then there's no hope for you guiding the conversation. And the nice thing is not everybody has to be in that state. Just One person who's skilled can then bring everybody else along with them. And that's, that's one of the keys to negotiation is learning how to do that with other people who don't have the skill.

Absolutely. I think that, again, you bring up another really great insight, which is that not only are you calming everybody else down, but the, but the fact is the matter that we are in any situation, right? And John, here's a great example. I had a, we had a We had a vendor that we were having some issues with, and I— we had a, we had a, you know, we decided we didn't want to work with them anymore, and we had to let them go. And it was kind of a thing, and they kept kind of hanging on. It kept being about like, well, what's going on? And what, you know, what I wanted to do was I wanted to get through it, and I just wanted to say, no, we're done, and that's it, and whatever. And they kept wanting to have a conversation about it, and I was putting it off and putting it off and putting it off and trying to get John to do it, you know, all the stuff. Because again, I still have this little bit of a thing where it's like, I just don't want to be And most of it's because I just don't want to be negative, like, you know. And so I, I try to stay, keep myself, you know, above. And if I have to get into a situation where someone's going to like start telling me that they owe me something or I owe them something because of some contract somewhere or whatever, when they haven't been doing what I think they should have been doing, I just don't want to be in those situations. And that's, again, that's my problem. I'm getting better at it. But, but here's the lesson. I did, I, I forced my John forced me. I got into the thing, I got on the call, I start talking to the guy, and the guy's first thing the guy says out of his mouth is, hey, let me apologize. And that guy just went, took me, and I took everything I had and went—

Just so you know, Joe, and I didn't even tell you this, when you told me that, when you called me that, like, because we had a conversation, we usually do video calls, right? Yeah. When he called me about this, I honestly thought that he had just I don't want to say won the lottery, but I could hear in his voice how, like, happy and how excited he was that, that, A, this was behind him, and more importantly, that it was like—

it was—

it resulted in a satisfactory, like, result, right? So it was—

Without any argument, frankly.

It was amazing.

Yeah.

But again, I went into it thinking it, but this guy And I don't know if he did it on purpose or not or it was just the nature of the thing. The first thing he did was completely like dis— He disarmed you. Yeah. Right. He just, you know, what's the word? He disengaged or, you know, he basically just took the entire level down and took me down with it. Like I barely even said a word and he just jumps in and suddenly everything's calm and he moved it right back down to a place. And then he's like, look, here's how we could do this or whatever. And then at the end of the conversation, he's like, Can I ask some advice?

Well, and that's— so what do you use? I usually call it kind of a tone set or a disarm, as you called it. And really, it is that. If you know you're going into a heated conversation, you know somebody's agitated, maybe you did something wrong, maybe, maybe they're just stuck in their point, like whatever it is. And you know, like, oh, that's probably gonna— how can you start the conversation in a better tone? And often it comes in— feedback's a classic one. Everybody hopefully knows this one, but it's simply like, hey, I really respect you and I think you can handle this, so I'd like to tell you something. Is that all right? Right? And all of a sudden, it's like, oh, okay, well, he respects me. All right, well, yeah, maybe I'll, maybe I'll listen, versus just jumping right into it.

Right.

And one of the key is, one of the keys though, I'm, I always teach is, is if you're gonna ask for a conversation, you're gonna frame it, you're gonna do whatever you want, or tone, get buy-in. If you can't get buy-in, don't engage, right? There needs to be a mutual agreement to talk. And if you can get that buy-in—

Otherwise, it's condescending. It's, it could be, right? It can come across as—

Right.

Well, it also, when you ask that question at the beginning, Michigan, right? Like, can I give you feedback? If the answer is no, then don't have the conversation, right? Like, don't be so— like, I've been guilty of this in my career is I want to get, I want to give someone feedback about, I'm giving a job appraisal to somebody. I have positive things to say. I have negative things to say. And I start with it, you know, start with the positive and go through things. And then it's like, hey, can I give you some feedback? And one time someone said no. And I said, well, I really have to give you this feedback because you're on my team. I had to give it to her, but I didn't have to give it to her right then. And what I chose to do is I actually chose to give it to her. It was a bad decision. But I learned from that to say, if you ask a question, you really have to respect the answer of the person you're working with.

And I've learned as well, even in that basic feedback scenario, which every professional goes through, is You know, A, you don't have to give up your authority. If somebody says no, you can be like, fantastic, not a problem. It is my role to make sure I give you this feedback. How and when would that work for you?

Right?

You can still make sure you're following through. Maybe it's not the right time. But also, when I start, I used to give feedback. And I found out early on that when I would give feedback to a staff, especially negative, it was often an assumption. And I remember this one time, the numbers in the CRM were terrible for the salesperson. And I was like, oh man, I hired him and he's He's just a dud and gonna have to tell him that and sit on him. And I got into— and we were— it was a financially stressful time for the company, so my anxiety was up. And I walked into the conversation having spoken to the CEO, being like, we're gonna have to let him go. He's in— he's in probationary period. We can just cut him. I had poached him, so I took him from a stable job. He had a family.

Ouch.

And now here I am gonna let, like, pretty much let him go because his performance sucked. And I walked into the conversation, and then somehow I remembered, I was like, Seek to understand before being understood. So I said, "Hey, I want to have a chat with you," and I didn't even tell him it was feedback yet. I just said, "How do you think you're doing?" Right? And he started telling me all of these stuff, and I said, "Oh well, and how's this working? How's that?" Turns out I had not given him clear direction. I had not given him clear instructions, and he was up. He was putting things into the CRM at the end of the week instead of daily. Right? So of course his numbers looked weird.

Right.

And it was all of a sudden like, oh, he's actually outperforming everybody. But I just couldn't see it because I was wrapped up in my own mind. So once we actually seek to understand the other person, we actually, we often remove our assumptions and come out with an outcome we never would have thought of. And now I avoided laying off somebody and jeopardizing his family, and they had a top performer, right? So it's amazing what we can do if we, we jump into a conversation without questions, even feedback. It can be detrimental.

But seek to understand. That's the, that's, that is the key.

Before being, yeah, before being, exactly. Before being understood. Let me add, what about emotions? So I've been criticized in the past for, for going into a negotiation where I'm displaying a lack of emotion, right? Like someone's given me feedback to say, after the fact, we've gotten through the negotiation, and it's like, look, dude, like you, you You didn't seem engaged because you weren't, like, emotional in the, in the discussion. And, like, I perceived your lack of emotion as lack of engagement. So I don't know if you've had that specific thing, and maybe this is just an audience of one, but, like, what are your thoughts on that?

I would probably look past what were you emotionally doing to how engaged were you. And I don't mean emotionally engaged, but were you showing interest? Were you asking follow-up questions? Were you, were you actually digging past it, or were you being stoic? And I don't mean stoic as a bad thing, but just kind of the rock. And the comment you made earlier about being the calm one in the room, I'm like, that's, that's, that's— it's, it's a good sort of baseline, but it can also be a trap, right? Because if you overdo it and you overplay it and you just sit there being calm while somebody else is emotionally engaged, like, that's not helpful. If you have that— You gotta be stoic. When an angry customer comes in, And you're just— well, and that's exactly what happened, right?

That's, that's, that's sort of what exactly what happened is someone was so charged up. And my thinking of, of when you're dealing with someone charged up is, well, either I'm going to fight them physically, which no one wants, and, or secondarily, it's like, I have to— I thought that I was in the, the position of, okay, let's, let's, let's de-escalate. Let's, let's sit down. Let's physically get sort of away from each other to talk. And it was very charged, and I did that, and it worked out. But the person was— the person wanted to get into it with me, right?

They wanted to get into it. And that can happen, and you have to be careful of that. I've found being careful of that is important. Sometimes people do just want to butt heads. Yes, sometimes people do just want to be aggressive, and there are ways to deal with that. But it doesn't mean you give ground. It doesn't mean you let them walk over you. It doesn't mean you You know, and some of the best ones is, again, the pause. Somebody says something rude, you just, you just pause. Yeah. And then I'll follow up with a question like, was that meant to be rude? Right in front of everybody, right? And now they have to either double down on it and say, yeah, I was trying to be rude, or they go, well, no, no, sorry, I didn't mean to be rude. That's a good one.

That's a really good one.

Double down on it. But if you, if you respond or you give in, now you just gave them what they want. Right.

And so what they want in the moment isn't actually good for them either. No.

And they don't want it long-term. It's what they want right now. I want that dopamine hit. I gotcha.

Exactly.

You know, and it's that tempting thing where we're like, I want to say the thing that they're going to wake up tomorrow and go, oh, you got—

never mind. I'm going to thank Joe. Joe, thank you for not bringing up the obvious discussion point we would be talking about in this case. So, you know, we've had sort of challenges in the last, let's call it, 3 months with personality conflicts. And not between the two of us, but it's interesting that the way, the way that people choose to deal with those personality conflicts is— I've learned a lot, let's put it this way, from Jo in the last, let's call it, 3 or 4 months about that.

So my view is always give somebody an out. And it goes again back to dignity, right? Like, you're challenging my dignity by yelling at me or being insulting. So instead of reacting and starting to beat yours down, I'm going to pause. I'm going to let you know you hit a line quietly by just staring at you for a minute, and then I'm going to ask you a question, which could be, say that— can you say that again? Or did you mean that? Or, you know, was your intent to insult me? And it gives them an out.

Yeah.

It gives them a way to re-establish their own dignity and their own integrity. Or they can double down. And if they do double down, you know, great, this is not the person for me to do business with. See you later. And that is an okay answer, right?

Absolutely. That's the thing, because at least you know, and now you can move on, right? But look, back to John's point, I mean, the reality is, again, this is just, this is all relatively new, you know, learning for me, because as I've had to figure out myself and come out of my kind of dark night of the soul or whatever, I have, you know, I've realized that, again, my internal interpretation. My defensiveness comes from, you know, again, a defensive position is generally, becomes there, there's a self-esteem issue. There's something there that is about, it has way more to do with me than it does with the other person, right?

Yeah.

And by the way, any kind of interaction is, is at best 50% each, right? Sometimes it's a little bit more the other way. But there's always, there's always a filter. We all have our own perception And so everything that we're taking in is going to run through that filter. Another reason why the breath and the pause is so effective, because it's, it's everybody gets to take that beat.

Yeah.

The fact that when you stop and wait, the other person stops and waits too, right? And they go, wait, even if they're trying to figure out what's going on, they're like, oh, wait, what? And now they're reset. They don't even know it. Right? Because they're in a situation where, you know, because now they've realized, oh, yeah, okay.

And it's steps. It's, you know, if the intensity is up here, that breath will take it down to here. Right? Then maybe in the next 2 interactions, we can bring it down to here. It's a gradual— it's, you know, there's no switch.

Yeah, I want to slightly change gears is, you know, you work with founders and you're helping them negotiate with burnout and dealing with all the things that entrepreneurs deal with, right? So we deal with founders when they're dealing with burnout and it's tough. It's a tough situation for them to be in, for us to coach them out of. So can you talk a little bit about what are the strategies you use when someone comes to you, either a founder and is burned out? Because we deal with it when they're trying to exit their business.

So Yeah. So I mean, that was, that was one of the original, that was the original focus was how can I coach people out of burnout using systems? Because I've been through burnout. I know what it is. I've lived it. I've also found what works for me. And there's, there's, again, it really comes back to somebody's readiness to implement some things. But for example, one person I talked to, they were spinning their wheels, you know, challenged, their time was getting eaten. They were a younger founder, you know, under 5 years. They had started off young in their maybe 20s, 30s, and, and they had a company and it was going, but they were like, I'm drowning. I was like, okay, well, classic stuff. Let's look at your calendar, right? How much time on there is reactive versus proactive? And when we looked at it, they were having all their time eaten by their teams.

Yeah.

And so they had no focus time. And when I said, how much time are you spending on the things that actually improve your business? The things that are critical, that 20%? And they're like, none. And I was like, well, that's, that's it right there, right? And then I said, you, you've done this before, right? At any point, have you had focus time? He's like, yeah. Did it work? Yeah. What happened to it? It got eaten. Right. Let's put something in place to protect it. So what we did is we just said, right now, open up your calendar, pick 2, 3 spots you're going to put in 3 hours focus work. Don't call it focus work, say critical revenue-driven work or something that gives you the The importance of it. Yep. Then the work came in, which is, that's easy. How are you going to protect it? Right. And well, you know, I'll just like, could you stay home? I know you're in an office thing, but turn off your phone, turn off everything, stay home. What could blow up in a 3-hour period that would sink your business? Right.

Right. And by the way, we want you to move towards like 5 days being away.

Yeah. Right. That's the key is start small, don't start big. And that's one of the things like I used to run and I got to get back into it. And I am, but I was up to 10 kilometers every week, you know, on a weekend I'd go for a 10K run and then 3 5K runs. And I was like, wow, this is great. But I started with a 6-minute run, right? And then the next day it is 7-minute run and then an 8-minute run and then a 9-minute. And eventually it was an hour, right? But that's the same in any business, any skill, even negotiation. Start really small, go to those low-stakes things and just get, get the reps in.

And delegation, right? It sounds like in that particular case, it's like, you know, the founder and the entrepreneur, the CEO is dealing with reactive things. It's like, no, no, no, no, you gotta— one of the things we've sort of cautioned people is you don't have to be everywhere, right? You don't have to do everything.

We—

they know that you're the founder. They know that you're working hard. You don't have to respond to everything and delegate. You have to find the people around you that you can delegate things to so they can handle those things.

Yes. Yeah, there's a few traps people fall in there. But I find it's, it's the classic, if you don't set your schedule, someone else will. Right? Yeah, good point. And that's just the reality of it. And it's the same in negotiations. If you don't set the tone, if you don't set the table, somebody else will. And that's just a principle of life. And I'm not saying you have to push people around or do anything like that. But, but it is important to have those boundaries. And if we can't establish them and can't keep the focus, of course, it eats us. And then our results go down and we're spiraling and it's a circle.

I like that. Have a plan for yourself or someone else will.

You know, same sort of deal with this guy.

Exactly.

Right.

Right. 100%.

The, the, one, one of the things that we find, you know, we think is useful, and I think our clients think is useful too, most of them, is when we sit down with, from a negotiation standpoint, we are very, very eager to be able to get everybody in a room or on the phone together at, from the beginning. Right? Sometimes it's not possible. You get people who push back. Sometimes these are, These are tactics, you know, people, again, they're coming from a place and, you know, they're coming from that place when they react that way, when they won't sit down and have a meeting or they won't get in the room or whatever, or they'll do it once and then they won't do it again. But I think that one of the things that really helps is, is that as a tone set, right, is to be able to have a third party, even if you're— even if they're technically working for you or one party or the other, have somebody there who can set the ground rules for how we're going to meet, what we're going to talk about, what the agenda is, what are the things that we have to get out. And having that stuff out on the table from the beginning obviously is a huge, you know, potentially has a huge effect, right?

Yeah, the biggest, the biggest impact that has, and I use that technique on small conversations to big negotiations, and the impact it has is that I actually wrote a post about it, but it's, it's, you know, suspense is great in a movie, terrible in the real world. And here's why. I say, I got to talk to you about something. Well, now somebody's either going to spiral one way or the other way. What could it be? Especially if there's a power dynamic, right?

Yes.

If you're the CEO and you tell an intern, I have to talk to you, they're going to be spending the next 6 hours in their head, and the work goes down, productivity goes down, and they come in and the defense is high.

Right.

If you say, hey, I want to have a chat with you because there's an initiative I'd like you to run, it's about X, Y, and Z. Now they're going, oh, that's exciting. And it's just, it just completely takes, it takes the stress off of them. Same thing with that, that project I talked about. I let them know the agenda is deciding which direction we're going, and here's what we're going to do. Why? So that everybody in the room comes in without that stress of how's this going to go?

Right. Or the unknown.

Are we going to fight again? Right.

The stress of the unknown. What are we going to talk about, right? That's why at one point in my career it was, let's have a— we have to have agendas for meetings because, because, and especially when like a CEO is involved or a division president, because it becomes a nightmare for the people if the meeting's at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. The whole day is wasted because people are like, what are we meeting with Dana about? Like, oh my gosh, you know.

So another key one you mentioned Burnout. It's related to burnout, but, but it's energy levels. And as a negotiator, there's hours of the day and hours of the week that I'll negotiate and hours I won't. And the reason being, back, you know, months and months ago and a year ago, what I do every now and then is a, is a basically an energy audit, I call it. So I take my calendar and I color code it red, green, yellow. Green means I'm feeling high energy and I love doing this work. Yellow is, it's kind of a middle ground. Red is the stuff that drains me and makes— I just feel done at the end of it. And I map that just by keeping a color code of what's on my, on my calendar. So I can see where my energy dips are and where my— the things I like doing, the things I don't. One of the things I do is I try to delegate all the red stuff because there's somebody out there who loves that stuff and I don't.

Right.

Give that to them. Now my energy's higher. But I also always try to put a negotiation after some green work because I'm fired up. I'm excited, my energy's high, and I'm not walking in personally going like, I just did 7 hours of spreadsheets, now we got to do this, right? Like, it just doesn't work. So being aware and knowing where your sweet spots are is another key to both burnout and negotiating.

There's a great, yeah, there's a great study of, I think it's Israeli judges or Israeli court cases. And you do not want to get sentenced by a judge right before lunch, right? So you do not want to, you don't want your, you don't want your—

You don't want to be at an 11:30 hearing.

Israeli things aren't important, but I guess it's judges. But it was a case. It's like they looked at the cases where people were convicted and it was overwhelmingly right before lunch. Like, you don't want that.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's so funny. The, uh, we, we, uh, the, the other thing I think that happens a lot in, in, in negotiation, especially in the, in the, you know, when, when you're selling the company is afterwards, right? So now you've gone through it, you've gone through the negotiation, the deal is done, right? And now you're in this, you know, like I said, we said this, this earnout period. Now you're in a situation where you're in a relationship, right? The relationship at the beginning is kind of like, it's, you know, you're trying to make it, again, try to make it a partnership. You're trying to develop that situation, but you may be, frankly, the buyer may be someone who's buying a bunch of different companies. Maybe, you know, again, they may not have the personal time to invest in a friendship, right?

Yeah.

So there's a business relationship, but that may be that as far as it goes. What are the, what are, what are the, the, One of the things that we see a lot, I think, happen is that over time, right, these relationships are high at the beginning, and then these relationships start to deteriorate over time.

Yeah.

And I'm gonna speak from my own experience. When I sold my digital marketing company, that's kind of what happened. It was very, very high and very, very exciting and whatever at the beginning, and there was this money coming in and all this stuff was happening. And then within the first year, you know, we're starting to be kind of like absorbed into this greater, larger, less frankly fun environment, right? I'm sort of suddenly, I'm being asked to get on a plane and fly somewhere every Sunday and come home every Thursday. And it was like, wait, I didn't have to do that when I, you know. But the idea is that there, there are, um, again, within that, that relationship starts to sour everything else, right? Is there anything, how do you, how do we, how do we protect ourselves against that situation?

It's a great question. I'm not going to pretend that I've got the same experience within that specific scenario, but it's a pattern I see very often, whether it's a short-form, you know, sale. Everybody's excited in the demo, and then comes the money talk, and everybody's apprehensive, and then now you got to deliver it, and now you get— but, but it's, it's really just the same process of a sales cycle. There's, there's a few things I would say. One is setting your own boundaries way up ahead.

Right.

Being clear about, here's what I can do, here's what I can't do, even a year. What does a year look like from now? Have that agreement up front if you can. Front load it and have that conversation to say, this could be a 1, 2, 3-year process. Is that right? Yeah. What does it look like and what are the boundaries we have? And if it derails, how are we going to bring it back or how are we going to readjust? And I think getting ahead of it is key. In anything, because if you can get ahead of it and set clear expectations, then all of a sudden, if those expectations start to veer, there's a conversation, right? And there's a way out. But if we don't set expectations, it goes back to if you don't plan your own life, somebody else will. And that is a clear case of that from what I can tell.

Yeah.

But, you know, it's not— and it's easier said than done, but expectations, expectations. And they don't have to be right. They just have to be there.

Right.

Because then if they change, it's a trigger to say, hey, we need to renegotiate this. Right? That's it.

Right.

Because that brings us back to integrity. And, and again, integrity can be broken. It's does it get repaired? That's what maintains it. You know, the bridge needs maintenance. Right.

But I also, Michigan, I also love your definition of integrity because I think it's actually the right I think that integrity is a word that gets misused all over the place. I forget, I remember having a, I don't know, a job somewhere or whatever, and they had this big test, right? And you took this test and whatever, and it came out, and basically the results of the test were that I had low integrity. And I was just like, first of all, I was highly offended, right? Which is because nobody wants to think that they don't, right? Whatever.

Right.

But it did actually, I did actually examine what it meant. And look at it. And what they were doing was asking questions like they were absolutes. I found that integrity is not absolute.

No.

Right? But they were using it as if, if you saw someone stealing from the till, right, would you turn them in? A, I turn them in. B, I tell them not to do it again. C, I go behind their back and do the thing, whatever. And the answers were— my answer was no, I'd go and talk to them and say, hey dude, I saw you do that. Why are you doing that? And they, they can consider that a lack of integrity. Right? And I was just like, that's not, that's not integrity. Integrity is, is what I promised to do and how I follow through with it. Right? And what you and I agree on.

Yeah, for me, integrity is a critical word in my life. Because there's a period in my life where I was like, you know, you need to be kinder, you need to be, you need to be more consistent, you need to, you need to perform better, you need to be You need to be more honest. That doesn't help me. I'm sorry. It's a very diagnostic way of approaching it. Very, very like psychology, even though it's pseudo-psychology, because psychologists have a place and, and many years of experience. But we go, oh, this, this person is lazy. You need to work. You need to be better.

Right.

How? There's no map there. There's nothing. It's just this thing. Now I just feel like, oh, something's broken and I have to fix it. What do I do with that? It goes back to burnt out. You're not burnt out like that. That's great. Okay, you're burnt out. You're feeling a certain way. But here's here's the system that is behind it because you're getting these results, and there is a system behind it whether you can see it or not. Now that could be that I say I'm going to do something all the time, and then I don't do it, and now I start to feel less inside. I start to feel worse, and all of a sudden now people call me you know dishonest. Okay, well what can I do? Well let's let's just. We could pull back the promises I make. We could push forward the things I follow through on. There's things we can do. So for me, integrity is really just, does it work? That's it. Is it, is it trustworthy? So I think of a bridge. Does that bridge have integrity? Would I drive across it? If the answer is yes, we're good, even though it probably needs new paint and maybe there's some maintenance being done. Cool. It doesn't have to be perfect. I just need to trust it enough to go across it. Same as a human. Am I within integrity of my own values? Am I doing things enough? And if I'm out of integrity, great. What can I do to bring it back? That's it. Are we out of integrity? We had an agreement. That agreement got broken. It's no longer trustworthy because it broke. How do we fix it so that it is now back into a place of integrity and trust?

Oh yeah.

And that for me is the difference because then it becomes something we can both work on versus this moral judgment. And a moral judgment goes completely against my idea of making sure everybody has dignity in the room. And everybody makes mistakes. I have. Of course we do. Let's fix it.

But if you start from a place of prejudgment, right, then you're already— you just shot yourself in the foot in terms of anything you want to accomplish from a trust or from a relationship standpoint.

And that is a quick way to break trust, even if you weren't the one who did it wrong. If you jump on someone for doing something wrong, They're going to retreat. They're going to get defensive. They're going to get.

But if you treat it from a place of integrity, you know, then it's it's less funny because you're it's almost synonymous to like actually it's like coming starting from a place of love, right? I don't want to get too but right. I mean, that's kind of like the idea is like it's like come from this is the again this is a technique my wife taught me about you know we're dealing with our son is. This notion that it is, what is the best possible reason? Like, what's the greatest possible reason behind this? So in other words, instead of it being automatically he's misbehaving and doing something, whatever, it's like, what is the thing— find— try to find the place that is the greatest, the greatest, most positive thing this could be, right? Or Okay, he can't help it, right? So that's the first thing. It's like, okay, this is, this is an automatic thing that his brain does. It's not— he's not trying to hurt you. It's not conscious. Yeah, it's not conscious. It's whatever. And so to start from that place where it says, okay, and can you go to a place where you say, gosh, this must be really hard for you, right? Or that thought you had must have been very scary, or whatever that was, right?

And again, you're trying to understand.

Yes.

And that again goes back to the principle of try to understand before you judge, right? If somebody broke what you perceive as integrity— somebody said something to me once, it was a— he's a fantastic— he's got a great book, Trevor Timbeck. But I was in a workshop with him and he said, you're gonna misunderstand me and I'm gonna misunderstand you. That's how humans work. Hopefully it's in a good way, right? But you just set the tone of like, we are going to misunderstand each other, so let's accept that. And now hopefully it's in a good way and move forward instead of this You have to— why didn't they understand what I said? Well, there's a lot going on in a room when words are going around. So yeah.

The words can mean something. The word integrity, right? The way that we've defined integrity in this very conversation is not fundamentally different, but someone else can come into a conversation and have a very different view of what that word means.

They will come in with a different view, and they will be entitled to that view. This is just mine. Right. This is how I do it. Right, right. Yeah.

It's interesting. Michigan, so this has been awesome. Thank you so much, you know, for talking with us today. It's really great. Where can people get in touch with you? And what's the best way? And what are you, you know, what are you out there? What's your— what are you trying to offer people as you move forward?

Well, as I mentioned at the beginning, I'm pivoting a bit. So I'm in the early stages of rebuilding, redoing my website right now. My current offers are simply one-on-one coaching for folks if they want to jump on and get some one-on-one coaching in negotiation. I provide that. It can be done in short chunks, so like a 90-minute session, as you want. It doesn't have to be some long engagement. We could teach one skill, you go practice it. If you want more, you come back. You can also do longer engagements. And then over the next few months, I'll be spinning up a content mechanism to start just putting information out there for people so they can go and read and digest and learn for free. It's something I believe deeply in. And again, it is really about negotiation with dignity and integrity. Not— it's not about learning all the hacks and tricks and this and that. It's not. I don't do well there. But if people want to actually learn how to hold a room and how to work with other folks where everybody comes out ahead, and that applies to leadership, it applies to managing up, it applies to business sales, it applies to pretty much any part of life. So Those are skills I teach and work with folks. And anybody who wants to connect with me can either go to my site, which is cyrmethod.com, or find me on LinkedIn.

So it's Cyr Method, cyrmethod.com, right? And I was in Michigan, Cyr. I got all these notes. We'll be, you know, we'll put these in the show notes, but you can find them on LinkedIn as well. Michigan, what I— thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate your time today. It Incredibly insightful. This, this time went by like, I can't even believe how it did.

I enjoyed the conversation, and I'm grateful that you invited me. You've been listening to the podcast, and you've got very high-caliber speakers. So when you invited me, I thought, wow, that's something.

Well, you rank among them, no doubt. Really, this is the kind of stuff that, again, people, I think, get a lot of insight out. And this is also one of those topics that people don't want to talk about.

Right?

And it's the kind of thing where they want to be what they want to be, and they're going to be, well, I'm going to be who I am. blah, blah, blah, and screw everybody. But the reality is, is that what we find is that the best deals in the exit world happen because everybody gets on the same page early, because they work together to, you know, to find a deal that works for everyone, and they come from a place. And with Michigan, what Michigan has been doing in this space is, you know, is incredible in terms of giving people the dignity, you know, starting from a place of dignity and being able to then work through, you know, seeking to understand each other's positions, These are the secrets to good negotiations where everybody wins. And that's what we want out of these things at the end of the day, because they are not just one-time wins. This win, whatever this win is, will last a day, and then you will be into another situation with an earnout or whatever where you're going to have to win again.

Yeah.

And these aren't just transactional situations, right? You know, they're, as you mentioned, you know, it's relational. Right. Yes, there's a transaction associated with a negotiation. But to Joe's point about earnouts is you're getting into a relationship with this person. Yes, you're getting money. You're often getting money right when the close happens. But that relationship starts when you begin negotiations and can go for 2 to 3 years. So it's so important to understand, again, to understand. And then before you seek to be under— what is it?

No, sorry.

Did I screw that up?

Understand.

Right.

Yeah.

And before you— yeah.

There's a deeper fundamental thing I've noticed throughout my career, and especially once I've seen behind the curtains to people's salaries, and you see somebody who is exceptional at what they do, their work is top-notch, it is phenomenal, and they're paid $30 grand less than this person over here who's subpar. And when I met those people, I could instantly tell it's because of their ability to communicate. And the reality is, is that if somebody can learn to communicate, in a way like this, it is a, it is a multiplier for them in life. And they can take their careers or their ambitions or whatever they want to do way further. Because on paper, I'm not exceptional by any means. Yet I was able to get into executive and 6 figures and all that relatively quickly because I knew how to negotiate for myself and build partnerships where there was trust.

Love it.

And so, so there's so many people out there who are phenomenal And who are exceptional. And I'm like, if we could just give you this skill, you could take things 10 times further and it would be fair because you, you know, you deserve it. It's an unfair advantage, unfortunately. And, and I see a lot of people who just don't get to where they deserve to be because they don't have that skill. That's right. And that's, that's partly why I want to bring this to others, right? Is to give them that unfair advantage. So, excellent. Thank you.

Oh, Michigan Cyr, uh, thecyrmethod.com. Uh, you can find him there. Uh, cyrmethod.com. Also, obviously, on LinkedIn and whatever. But take a look. It's worth a conversation with Mishkin. He is an incredibly insightful guy. He's been through it, by the way. And again, we didn't get into that, you know, this time around, but obviously, his story and the reason he's here and the fact that he is here at all today is actually kind of amazing. So, it is— he knows of what he speaks, for sure. Mishkin's here. Thank you so much for being on the Exit Engine Podcast today. Thank you. We really appreciate it.

It's my privilege. Thanks, John. Thanks, Jo.

All right. Thank you. Hey, John, amazing stuff, right? I mean, this is the kind of stuff when we talk about negotiations, this isn't just about the ability to be able to, you know, again, we're not bartering. And I love the way that he said that, right? Mishkin talked about this isn't a barter. You're not going saying exchanging this for that or whatever. What you're trying to find is the— and it's not even about common ground. It's about, it's about understanding, figuring out the issues, and then solving each of the individual issues as they arise, right?

Yeah, understanding what's important to the other party, right? You're understanding what's important to the other party, and you're listening, right? You have 2 ears, 1 mouth. Use them in that proportion. And when you do that, you know, what Michigan was saying is, again, you're understanding what, what motivates them. And then After that, then you can sort of clearly, uh, have them understand what you want, what's important to them.

Yeah, it's interesting. I'm sorry to jump in again. I know we ended this. When you get good at it, they start to give the solutions which you've sort of steered them towards, right? And very often, at the end of a negotiation, if I've done it well, I'm not the one who came up with solutions. They did. But they were the solutions that worked for me. And that I wanted.

Well, we always say, or I always say, let them have our way, right? Yeah.

Let them have our way.

And to the extent that they believe it's their solutions crafted from our bullet points, right? It's their paragraphs crafted from our bullet points.

That's fine.

We're happy.

Exactly right.