How to Use Difficult Conversations to Advance Your Business Goals with Naveed Iqbal, PhD

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for joining us today. With over 10 million downloads and listeners from more than 180 different countries, it's dedicated listeners just like you who have made Negotiate Anything the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, author, and the proud CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Now, before we get into today's insightful conversation, I have a golden opportunity for those of you who recognize the power of negotiation in your professional lives. Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could navigate those high stakes conversations with more confidence? Or perhaps you're looking to empower your team with the art of persuasion and conflict resolution? At the American Negotiation Institute, we've crafted specialized keynotes and workshops tailored for those very needs. We've transformed the negotiation skills of professionals worldwide, and we're eager to do the same for you. We believe the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And our goal is to help you improve your lives and the lives of those around you, one difficult conversation at a time. Don't let another challenging conversation leave you second guessing. Click the link in the description to discover how we can help you find confidence in conflict, negotiate better deals, and have stronger relationships. Because in the world of business, every conversation counts. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview.

Navid, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm so happy to be here.

Yeah, it's my pleasure. So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do? Sure.

So I'm a student of mathematics. I'm an applied mathematician who is now working as a co founder and CEO at Dollar, where we, you know, we're helping people get to zero student debt. And you know, I must say that I am a student of your podcast. I'm such a huge fan. I've listened to probably every episode. So to anybody who's listening to this for the first time, please just take the time. It's worth it.

Thank you. That means a lot to me. I appreciate it and I admire the work that you do, too. As a lawyer who's married to a doctor, our student loan debt is laughable at this point. So I admire your mission. Today we're going to talk about managing conflict within the startup world, specifically within our own businesses, if we're starting our own companies. And so before we get into the three things that we're going to talk about, can you tell us why it's so important for people to understand this critical aspect of the business world.

So I'm going to probably end up parroting something that, you know, that you say a lot of times that the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And I think that itself is reason enough, because what we do as a startup, and especially at the beginning, what we're doing is trying to learn about who our customers are, what really. If there's really a pain, we have to have conversations with them. You have to convince somebody to take the time to speak to some random dude who's like, hey, please help me out. So there's a lot of everything is about conversation.

Absolutely. No, this is great, man. This is going to be fantastic. And listeners, the three things we're going to talk about today are first, navigating those difficult conversations with your co founder, and then we're going to talk about navigating difficult conversations and negotiations with vendors and then the partners that we have within the business. So even if you're not in the startup world, there are going to be gems in this episode that you can use and apply to whatever it is that you're working on. And, Navid, let's go ahead and get started with the first one. What are the things that we need to pay attention to with co founders?

So it's really interesting that when you start off, you have to decide who owns what and who has which authority or, you know, the ability to make decisions. And there is a difference between owning a part of the business and, you know, being able to decide how the business goes. And so that's a really interesting. You know, let me. Let me tell you a story about the. Probably the hardest conversation I've ever had in my life that happened in the last two weeks. Oh, wow. With my co founders.

Right.

So in the beginning, and, you know, oftentimes this happens, is that human beings, you know, things are the difficult things. We tend to get a bit lazy about them, or we just. We like. It's okay. I'll sort that out later. I made a big mistake. I made a huge mistake at the beginning. Fifteen months ago, when we started this enterprise, you know, I laid out the equity and was like, this is, I think, what should. What should be fair. And everybody was like, yeah, sure, let's go ahead and do it. And very recently, we were trying to bring somebody new on board to join our team. Very accomplished individual, gonna make a huge impact. And I had the opportunity to go back and look at that Equity structure. And I realized that I really messed up. I messed up because it was grossly unfair to some people based on what they could contribute and their experience. And so now I could have, you know, two things. Nobody had complained about it, so nobody else was worried about it. They're like, yeah, this is it. This is the facts. This is how we're going to operate. But I couldn't. I couldn't live with myself. I couldn't sleep. I was like, it is unfair for me as a representative of these people who have trusted me to continue to let this persist. And so now I had to figure out the hard conversation. How do I approach this person who does have the, one might say the unfair advantage against the others and say, look, we need to talk about this and we're going to have to reduce it. Nobody's going to complain if you tell them, hey, we're going to give you some more equity. What's up? But when you come in, come in and say, listen, we have to reduce things that we agreed to in the past. And this is a big deal because at the startup, all you had is equity, right? Like, it's worth absolutely $0 at zero cents, maybe even negative. So it was extremely difficult. I had to really think about. And listening to your podcast, listen to Negotiating and Negotiate podcast, I realize it's very important to do a couple of things. One is to form a framework. How do I think about these things? How do I approach these conversations? And the second is to realize that just because you can have a conversation doesn't mean that you need to have a conversation. So it's so, you know, I try to use that framework. Okay, what, how do I approach this? The first is, you know, I need to have a conviction in that what I'm seeking out to have a conversation about the outcome that I'm pursuing, that I believe it is the right thing to do. And, and it is fair not only for myself, but also for that other person. Now, you know, fairness cannot, does not necessarily translate to winning, but that is fair, and I have a strong belief in that. So then you have a conviction, fairness. And then I find that it works best for me when I'm completely transparent. That is how my personality is. And so if I don't take advantage of that transparency, things don't tend to work out for me. You know, some people are better at holding some cards back or not. And for me, it's just much simpler if I just say, look, here's where I'm pushing this from. These are the reasons why we're having this conversation now, you should tell me what you think. What do you think is the expected outcome from this? And so that's how we approach this. It was, it's easy to say in retrospect, but it was, it was so difficult for both of us, right? So from his perspective, imagine how you would feel if somebody came in, somebody you trust, some, one of your best friends come and said, listen, you're going to have less of this company when you wake up tomorrow.

It's awful.

It's an awful feeling. And so I had to, I had to think about it, like, how, how am I going to tell my best friend this thing, you know, that's, it's a very hard thing. And then the second thing is that, you know, I would prefer that he agrees with me. He could, he could say no. And then, you know, and then what happens? And so I have to prepare for that as well. What if, oh man, this is an opportunity for me to try to be a good student, say bad now. So I had the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. So I'm so proud of myself for saying that. So, you know, I had to be prepared, like it was completely fair for it. It would be completely fair for him to say, Look, I've wasted 15 months of you. I trusted you, and you're saying these things. I don't believe that it's fair. You know, it was his right to say that. So I had to be prepared for that as well. And so we had this conversation over, you know, a few several days. You know, fortunately we were able to come to the, to the, to an agreeable outcome. But it was so hard, especially because it was only the two of us, right? And especially because I didn't have a personal stake in it. I had to. Leadership is so hard in many ways that people, maybe until you experience it in this way that you really appreciate how difficult it is. Because, you know, there are some people who just their personalities or their experiences, they don't, they're not prepared to negotiate or they don't think about negotiating, they say, ah, that sounds fair. Yeah, I'm okay with it. And so when I come across the situation and I say, okay, these people should have negotiated and maybe asked for more because it'd be completely fair to do that. I can't just ignore it. At least that's not who I am. I wouldn't be able to look at them in the face and say, you know, we're building this together. Believe in what my mission, my vision, Our vision. Let's do it. I can't do that if I believe I'm being unfair to somebody. So I had to negotiate on their behalf. And it was extremely difficult. I had no personal interest. I had no personal gain or loss. Potentially a loss, actually, by losing a co founder. Right. But so that was. It was. It was really, really interesting. And, you know, those conversations happen in the micro level all the time. But doing, you know, co founders disagree, I'm sure you probably disagree with your. With your co founders all the time. It's a natural thing. It's a good thing. There's constructive disagreement. But in this particular context, it was probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life. Wow.

Wow. That is an incredible story. And first, I appreciate you taking the time to share that with us because I know that it was a tough conversation. There's so many good things in here that we can highlight. Naveed, let's pull out a couple. So the first one is this. The conversation did well, right? It ended up going well. Now, here's the thing. It went well even though you felt a lot of angst about the conversation, a lot of tension, a lot of fear, and a lot of times people see that fear and then they use it as a signal to avoid the conversation. This means I shouldn't do it. Right. But you had to go through it. And I think that's one of the toughest things for people to understand is that with these conversations, that feeling of satisfaction or comfort or okayness with the fact that the conversation even has to happen, that doesn't always come. And I think in the majority of situations, for me at least, it doesn't. I recognize, though, I need to push through it. And that's what you did, which was great. Another one, too, was the fact that you took some time to think through it. And so, listeners, I'm sure you've heard me talk about the negotiation guides, of course. So if you go to americannegotiationinstitute.com guide, you can get all those guides to help you prepare for your difficult conversations. And for you, one of the major aspects of the preparation was figuring out what fair was, because fairness is a very nebulous concept. But the fact that it's nebulous and subjective doesn't mean that it is not very real to the people who are involved. Everybody has a personal sense of fairness. And so you had to figure out what that was in this situation and then operate on that truth for you, while at the same time which is perhaps the most difficult, recognizing that your co founder has the same rights and authority to share what he feels is fair in that situation too. And then you have to reconcile those two things. And especially when a company is at its inception right now, you're 15 months into it, so you actually have something a bit more tangible. But especially at the beginning, it's really tough to figure out what is fair in this business that's yet to exist. Right. Understanding that that's going to have a significant impact down the road on future decisions and everything like that. So there, there's a lot in this story that we can learn from. And now that it's done, looking back, what do you think was the most important thing that you learned through that experience? Having that conversation with your partner?

One might say it was a reinforcement of a previous belief in that transparency is really the best approach. Being honest about why we were having that conversation and the process by which I got to even asking him to meet with me about it was extremely important. And, you know, so perhaps there's another one in retrospect, now that I think about it, it's very easy when you have these kinds of conversations to start talking about performance as a justification. And naturally I was inclined to do that as well. But I recognized, fortunately I recognized it was a mistake. We were not talking about performance. We were talking about a fair distribution of equity. And that was a wonderful turning point in our conversation for me, and I think for him as well, is to understand that we can talk about performance on one hand, we can talk about the contribution, reasonable reward for the contribution given the experience given.

That's fascinating. Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense.

Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you.

Can help the folks on your team.

Have better, difficult conversations? At the American Negotiation Institute, we offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate and succeed.

And when you look at your experience as a co founder and then you look at other people in the startup space who have co founders, what are some of the biggest mistakes you feel as though they make early on in those early conversations with their CO FOUNDER.

This is a personal belief of mine. I don't think people spend enough time speaking about how to speak with each other. And the reason that we. I think we were able to have this conversation, the hardest thing I've done in my life, probably the reason we were able to have this conversation and I felt comfortable speaking with this person about it, was we take culture very seriously. But when we say culture, what we mean is our language. Like, how do we speak with each other? Starting with how I express myself. How do you express yourself? How do we express ourselves together? What does it mean to measure performance? We're a startup. We're going to miss goals, we're going to miss deadlines. It's going to happen. How do we deal with that in retrospect, developing that language? My parents always said that language embodies culture. And so that's why we spend so much time. We don't talk about, we're gonna go on an outing, we're gonna go do this thing, or we're gonna have a group meeting, we talk about how to speak. And so that was really, really, really helpful, I think. And I think the mistake that people make is they don't spend enough time on that.

Oh, that's great. I think about it. I mean, it's a relationship I remember with. So, of course, I'm a lawyer. I still practice, too, at a law firm in Columbus called Carlyle, Patchett and Murphy. So I really love the fact that you're talking about these conversations about business partnerships, because this is something that I have to deal with with my clients all the time. It's two friends coming together, and they say, oh, you know, we'll just do it 50 50. I'm like, please, please do not. Let's. Can we please stop and think about this for a second here? Because if you just do it 50 50, then it really leads to a deadlock very quickly, and then decision making isn't really properly attributed to the right person. And that's another thing. And is it. It's very rare that it's truly 50 50, right? It's very rare because down the road, then it becomes very clear what it really is. And then there's a lot of resentment. So I always have to work through with my clients, hey, let's think through this on a deeper level. But I remember one of my mentors, he said, kwame, a business partnership is a relationship that is second only to marriage. And I didn't think about it from that level of gravity, but it makes sense. And I Try to impress that upon the. My clients all the time. Even though the majority of what I do now is with the negotiation trainings with ani, but still I practice in that regard, and it's still a tough conversation, even for me to have between the partners. And the thing is, it's kind of like those love languages between relationships. You know, how do you speak? Is it gifts? Is it acts of love? Right. Is it quality time? Those type of things? Similar thing in the business world. Is it quality time spent in the business? Is it the fact that you are caring about me in a certain way? You know, my chief operating officer here, Catherine, she's more introverted. And so that's one thing. So I have to recognize I have to slow down in these conversations and give her time to process. And then I describe myself as the gas pedal and she's the brakes. I'm always ideating, this will be good, this will be good, this will be good. And her role is to slow me down. And at the beginning, I thought it was a real drag, but then once we started to communicate about how to communicate, I recognized that it played an essential role in the business. And so you're absolutely right. Taking time to essentially negotiate the rules of engagement before we actually commit to each other is a critical part of the process.

I love that so much. And, you know, honestly, I would be remiss if I didn't say that I learned a lot about that from this podcast.

Thank you.

Yes, I 100% agree. It's so important. And, you know, conversations are comprised of words, right? So words are very important. If you came to me and you said, as best friend, you said, hey, my guy, you're underperforming. That's a very different. I would receive that very differently than if you came to me as my boss and you said, hey, you're underperforming. Like, those are the same words coming from different people that mean very different things. And what happens is, like, so, you know, a lot of. A lot of venture capitalists, or you'll hear people say that you should not start a business with your best friends because oftentimes these things are overlooked. And so, you know, we have already established that communication relationship as friends, as buddies, as co conspirators, you know, whatever things that we're trying to do. But now we have a different. There's a very different. And I'm the boss, and it's very difficult to come to terms with. All that means it doesn't make things change. And we have to accept that when we are speaking in a certain fashion, we're talking about the business, it's very important that I have to make sure that. And you know, it's for both of our benefits. I think that when I say both of, I mean the person who's picking and the person I'm really messing this up. There are two people involved. There are two people involved and we both have to understand the dynamic that we're operating under. And so because at the end of the day, why do we do this? We do this because we want to help people. Can we help people if we're constantly scribbling ourselves if we haven't figured out how to talk? No, we can't help those people. And then we have to figure out how do we speak with our customers, our future customers. It's extremely important.

No, this is good. No, this is fantastic. And I feel like we could have spent the whole episode talking about just the co founder aspect and we might have to come back and go deeper. But I think this is a great time to transition to the vendor side. And so what types of things do we need to keep in mind when it comes to negotiating with the vendors?

My answer is always going to be to be 100% transparent about where you are. There's nothing as disappointing as getting on a call with somebody who expects to be talking to a customer who has a thousand thousand users and finding out that you're pre launch. You've just started off the whole relationship wrong. So it's very important. And you know, the thing is that oftentimes from a startup, the power dynamic is so different. Right? You have zero power, literally. So we are in the student loan repayment business. That means we have to make payments to the big loan servicers. We refuse to write checks. We insist on making digital payments. That is our standard. And so if we want to make digital payments, we have to convince them to give us their account numbers and we have to convince them to do work so that we can send them information about how to distribute the funds that we send them. From what pedestal? How do I come and tell you, hey, I'm a team, we've got four people, we're ready to send you money probably in two months. But obviously it's not. That's, it's not. I'm being, I'm being trying to be funny here. But the power dynamic is very different. And so really the thing that, the thing that we noticed, we experimented a few different times. How do we speak? What really gets us results? And it came down to honesty. Like, this is what we do. This is who we are. This is where we're at. This is where we expect to go. We need a favor from you.

That's powerful, Naveen. That's really powerful. Because when I think about it, we're seeing how your philosophy in having difficult conversations with people on your team, your co founders, it really is. It's manifesting itself here again with the conversations with vendors, because number one, it's transparent, and number two, it's mission driven. Right? You have your core value that you're sticking to, and that is what is being the force behind the argument, right? And I shouldn't even say argument, the conversation, your stance. And so in the first side, in the first case study that you provided us, essentially it was fairness. This is, at this point, unfair. It's not your fault, it's not my fault, it's not anybody's fault. But it has evolved to become unfair. And this is how we can solve this problem. And you have to be assertive. And it took some time, but you got there. And here with the vendors that you're coming with something that's completely different, completely different than what they've ever dealt with. And they are large, established financial institutions. And you're coming in and saying, you know what? This is how we see it and this is how we believe it should be done. And that must have been quite frightening the first few times you did it, but you were able to make it work. And so in those instances when you recognize that from the outside looking in, it might seem like a David and Goliath type of situation, how were you able to stand your ground and hold firm in those tough conversations?

Because we had conviction. We had conviction. We knew what we were doing was the right thing. We knew we were not asking for more than they could give us. And we were prepared to do work to make it easier for them to give us what we wanted. So, you know, we had to start with, like, when you're asking somebody for something, you might as well pretend that you're asking them for a ton of money. So we thought about it the same way. Like, these people, they're very busy. They deal in billions of dollars every single month. How. Why should they spend the time to read this email, which is a huge deal in itself, and then why should they respond? And then why should they cooperate? Right? Like, so, like, there's so many things. So, you know, actually, it's a funny story, so there's a couple of things that I try to use to guide to guide how I think I'm going to say them. And then, you know, it would be really fun, I think, if you could try to guess where I got. Not like from a big philosophy book or anything.

Right?

Two things. The biggest lie a man can tell to. Is to himself. Second thing, when the, when the student is ready, the master will come.

I've heard the second one for sure. The first one sounds familiar. I cannot identify the source. I'd be way off if I, if I try.

So it's the movie Zorro. I'm sure they've existed in other places, but for me, the first time I experienced those two things was watching this movie. And then obviously, I still don't know what happened to the rest of Zoro because I started thinking about it. But it's so interesting, right? Like, because honesty, honesty with yourself is the big, Is the first step to be honest with others. And with honesty with self, it leads to conviction, it leads to fairness, you know, because it's so easy to take the easy way out or also to justify taking the easy way out in some senses, right? Like, you may go one level deeper and say, no, no, no, I can justify why I'm doing this thing. But if you can't be honest with yourself about who you are, you know, for some people, they can act in a certain way and they're okay with it and nobody's judging anybody. But I, by the way, that I'm okay with. And, and you know, it's really difficult to be honest with yourself and especially in the context of this co founder conversation that we had, actually be honest, like, is this the right thing to do? And do I want to do it? Should I do it? So the second one is, you know, it's so easy again, you know, so the Internet is wonderful. People like you are wonderful because you provide for free. I can go listen to your podcast and learn incredible things, gain experiences. It's a common excuse that I hear among some of my co founders. Not co, excuse me, not co founders, but other co founders in the startup world is, I don't have practice. I've never done this before. Nobody's ever taught me how to do this. Guess what? Nobody cares. Like, nobody gives a flying anything, right? Like, they don't care. How do you. It's up to you to teach yourself. And you know, people learn in different ways. I negotiate with my wife. That's how I started. I was like, I need somewhere to practice. And so my wife and I started negotiating with random things like, where should we put the flower base, you know, and why. So it's like she gets annoyed with me sometimes, but it's, it's fun. And you, you know, it might seem silly, but you learn a lot from it. If you just think about it the right way.

I think, yeah, no, it makes sense because you have to practice. And that's something we talk about all the time. You know, it's, yes, you could stay in this theoretical type of world, right, Talk about the, the strategies and tactics and everything, but until you actually start to practice it, it won't really feel great. Right. And something that I think is a bit under understated in your approach here is just the strength of your philosophy. It's because it's clear, there's clarity. And when you're clear and people understand you and they understand where you're coming from, it creates a lot of trust. Right? Listen, Naveed's a straight shooter. If, if it's a tough conversation, he's.

Going to have it.

He's going to let me know how I, how he feels about it. Even if it's not a truth that will be fun or enjoyable to share. Right? And so when people are, they recognize the clear strength of your conviction and where it comes from, then people trust you. Even if people end up disagreeing with your ultimate decision, they trust you. And as a co founder, your team is going to grow. You're going to have people who are going to invest, who are going to need to look at you as a, and everything like that. And so they need to trust you. And even if they disagree, they will trust you to ultimately make the right decision and steer the ship. And I think that's really powerful. And even in these negotiations with vendors, for example, too, you're very clear with them. And it's kind of like the last philosophical phrase that you gave. When the student is ready, the master will come. It goes back to your batna, best alternative to a negotiated agreement in this situation. If this institution isn't ready, well, you know, then we will stand strong and we might have to pass on it, but you know where you stand. And then they take you seriously when you, when you hold firm too.

It's, it's powerful, I think. You know, I've been listening to a sales leader I really admire recently. His name is Todd Capone and he wrote a book called the Transparency Sale. And he always says this thing. He says every conversation you have, you're either building trust or you're eroding trust. And when I heard that, I was like, holy Crap. How true. Like, this is amazing. It just ranks so true. So it's really encouraging to hear that, you know, that you agree and that these things actually do work.

Yeah. And one of the things that's so powerful about it is that it's clear and that clarity leads you to be more likely to execute. Right. Because I almost wanted. I almost said easier. It's not easier to execute. Sometimes telling the truth is the hardest path to take. Right. But at least you know what to do because you're not playing games. You're not playing games with yourself, and you're not playing games with other people. So it becomes very clear and understandable what to do. And that ties into the first part of your philosophy. Right. You. The first person you need to be honest with is yourself. Right. And that. I really think that's really. It's brilliant because of the simplicity of application. Right. Because we can give people all these really cool, complicated approaches, but if they don't understand it, then nobody's going to do anything about it. And you say, be honest, be clear. Understand what your conviction is and why you believe this thing, and then articulate it to the other side.

I have to give a lot of credit to my parents for raising us in a certain way that, you know, as tempted. And, you know, look, there are many times where I've done the opposite of these things and then I have felt horrible or I've just failed at the thing because I wasn't being true to myself. So, you know, I think it's really about being true to yourself and doing things that are easy for you, even though it may be harder to execute, like you said.

Absolutely. And, and honestly, too, they. Oh, let's, let's quote. Let's quote some, you know, swordsman movies. I forget which, which. Which movie this was. I've never seen the movie, but I know the quote. They. There was a. Like a swordsman, and he was saying he was really good. He was very, very good, like the.

Best in the world.

And he said, you know why I'm so good? It's because I'm not afraid to die. And I don't remember which movie it was from, but he's like, I'm going to go and I'm going to do what I need to do, and if I lose, I lose. And honestly, that's the framework I have in a negotiation too, because I say sometimes the best negotiation, the worst negotiation outcome, is a negotiation that shouldn't have ended up in a deal. And it's. You're supposed to go there and see if a deal exists.

Right.

It might not. And then you can move on.

That's exactly right. It doesn't have to. You can't. You should force things. That's wonderful. I'm gonna write that down.

Yeah. This is great. This is great. Well, fantastic. Well, with the time we have left, let's talk about the partners. And so when you talk about the difficult conversation with partners, let's get a definition on the table with, with regard to the way that you're using the term first and then we'll jump into it.

So I was thinking about in terms of my wife. She's a major stakeholder in my life. We've agreed to spend our lives together. You know, she has made an investment, just as we have invested in each other. Right. Like, but so if I choose to do something like quit my job, start this thing with, you know, with very little, with very little resources, I need to convince my wife that it's okay for me to do. I need to get her permission. Less convincing, but more I need to get her permission because we are in this together and she is my number one supporter. Nobody. She's the person. You know, my mom taught me, said, you know, listen to what everybody else says, but guess what? At the end of the day, the person you spend the most time in your life with, more than your children, more than your parents, more than your co founder, anybody, is your partner, right? For me, it's my wife. And that's the person whose opinion and feelings that I value the most. So it's very important for me to make sure that I can get her permission, get her buy in. Because when I get her buy in, then I can work without having to worry about somebody nagging me or, you know, if we can set the terms that, okay, you know, if I don't hit this milestone, then you can come and say, listen, we need you to think about something else right now. So we have those conversations often and, you know, yes, we have missed a couple of milestones, but we've had conversations about how she's the board member, man. Like, that's how I think about her.

Okay.

You know, we're. We. This is how. This is our plan for the next three months. This is what we're going to do. This is how it translates to our personal lives. Right? So it's not about necessarily business. It's about. This is how it's going to affect us. These are the potential outcomes and these are the contingencies that if everything goes south, then this is what I will do. And this is the order I will do it in. And having those conversations continuously every three months or so has been very healthy for our relationship. Because you've lived it yourself. Starting something from scratch is so hard. It takes longer than you think and you know, a lot of people have to help you get there. Success doesn't come by itself. You don't do it by yourself. So, yeah, she's my number one part supporter.

This is great.

Yep.

Yeah, man, we are, we're very similar in that regard because I mean, it's tough, especially when there's a bit of a violation of expectations too. I mean, for my wife, my wife's a doctor and she married a lawyer. There's an anticipated trajectory for that. And I was like, hey, you know what, I have something different in mind. I know we just had a baby and everything, but let's try this thing out. It's tough to do, but I think the, if you fail in those negotiations, it is the thing that will have the most negative impact on your life going forward. And people often overlook it. They often overlook it and it's really problematic. And it's not just problematic in terms of the context of the relationship, but I think a lot of these hard charging business people often overlook the fact that it has a negative impact on the business. It has a negative impact on the business. I remember one time I was doing a negotiation coaching session with somebody and so we started the coaching session, he was talking about investors, how he wanted to get the investors on board, get a lot of startup funding and all that type of stuff. And I said, okay, so how does your fiance feel about all of this? He wasn't, you know, she was not completely on board with the way that things were going to move forward and everything like that. And he hadn't cleared some stuff with him. I said, hey, you know what, we're scrapping everything. We were about to talk to talk to, we're going to talk about, because that negotiation is the most important one. And I said, look, I look at you and I know you are like me. You are the kind of person who will charge forward and do what it takes to make this work. You're very competitive. And I said, listen dude, the thing that is going to sink you the fastest is girl problems. We need to fix that now. And so we spent like two or three sessions working on that particular negotiation before moving on to what from the outside looking in would have seemed like the big obvious negotiation, multimillion dollar startup funding deal. But we had to stop and focus at home to make sure that the foundation was secure.

It's so important. It's so important because this is the person who you spend most of your time there. You'll be. Unless, you know, you end up not.

Doing that, which is another problem.

I think one thing that's important to recognize is that oftentimes there are many, many factors at stake. Right. It's not only I'm going to quit my job. It's like, okay, what are we going to do about health insurance? What are our contingencies? We still have to figure out how to pay rent. Like, all of those things are important. And so there's many, many things that you can talk about. It's important to separate the concerns, though. Between I, we're gonna. In three months, we're gonna have several million dollars. Everything's gonna be great. Don't worry about it. That's. Obviously, every startup founder, you know, wishes that that was the case, but unfortunately, truth is, most of us don't ever get there. So it's important to really, I found to separate the concerns about, okay, how is this going to affect home life? How are things going to be different? How is it going to affect business life? How are we going to grow? Because you still need to grow together with your partner. So how are we going to grow together?

Yeah. And so from your perspective, what is something that is often overlooked with this particular conversation?

It, again, comes down to honesty. Right. Because a lot of the. So what does my, like, my partner, she doesn't really care about the details. Right. She knows that I'm doing something I love doing and that I am committed to helping people. That's what's important to her. She doesn't care about the details, but it is important for me to make sure that she understands the right details. What is going to increase our likelihood of failure? What is going to increase our likelihood of success? And that she can appreciate that if I give her some information on that, she knows how to process it and then form her own opinions on what she thinks we should do next from our personal lives. And, you know, a lot of the times people gloss over that. It's like, what do you know about finance? Or you don't care about finance? It's like, it doesn't come from a bad place. Right. It just comes like, oh, they don't care enough to really do this. And then next thing you know, it's a big surprise. Like, what? I thought things were going well, but like, no, I told you last month that Our blah, blah, blah. No, it doesn't mean anything.

Yeah, no. And you know, it's, it's funny because I think we're coming full circle here because when we were talking about the founders, the co founders, one of the things that you mentioned, which I thought was. Was brilliant, was understanding how to communicate with your co founder, essentially what is their love language. Same thing here. We have to understand what matters to them. Because for Whitney, Whitney came from a background where money didn't come easily. And so she was very concerned about making sure that everything was secure. Security was her main thing. Me, on the other hand, that wasn't an issue. My dad's a surgeon, my mom has a PhD in nutrition. She's a professor. So that was never a concern for me. It was just about pushing forward and getting degrees and seeing what we could do. And so I would get excited about ideas and I thought there was a lot of capital in ideas, like Kanye West. I want Zuckerberg to pay me a billion dollars for my ideas. Your ideas though, that's not it tangible. But I. So I would come with ideas. And Whitney's like, I need things that are more tangible. So I stopped telling Whitney about ideas and started telling Whitney about clients acquired. And so even if there was a longer runtime for the acquisition of the money from performing on those clients, she appreciated knowing that more. And so that made her feel more secure and lowered a lot of tension that we were having in the relationship. I was still having ideas. I just wasn't talking about them as much. I was giving her what she needed to know and what she really cared about.

I think we have such similar experiences. Honestly, my wife is from the same sort of background. I came from a similar background to you, and it really tangible is extremely important. So that's wonderful to hear.

This is great. Well, Naveed, I know there's so much more we could talk about, but I think I want to wrap up with this. I know there are a lot of folks out here in the audience who, who have gone to school and have a lot of debt. So again, tell them about Dollar and how they can work with you.

Go to getdollar.com d o l r and if you like what you see, sign up. What we do is very simple. We find more money for your loans, so we help you figure out better ways to spend your own money. We get money from your employer and then money from the apps you use. So more money equals debt gone away quicker.

Love it. Navid, thank you so much, my friend. We appreciate it. And hopefully you can come back on again soon.

It's been such an honor and a privilege. Thank you so much for having me, Kwame.

My pleasure.

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