Take Your Business to its Next Level With Melina Palmer

Hello, my friends, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. This show is produced by the American Negotiation Institute, and with over 5 million downloads and listeners in over 180 countries, listeners just like you have made this the number one negotiation podcast in the world. Hi, my name is Kwame Christian, and I am the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Here at AI we believe that the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And we are passionate about providing you with the best content that will help you to make your difficult conversations easier, both at work and at home. Lastly, I want to remind you that we offer consulting and conduct trainings both virtually and in person all around the world. Our focus is in three main areas. First, negotiation and conflict resolution. Second, leadership. And lastly, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Check the link in the description below to learn more about how we could work with you and your team. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Melina, welcome back, my friend.

Oh, thank you. I'm always very excited. I'm always excited to talk to you and definitely always excited to be on the show. So thanks for having me.

Likewise. The feelings are mutual. And listeners, I want you to know how much of a treat this is because like, the last couple times Melina and I tried to record an episode, we just chatted as buddies, and then we're like, wow, it's been an hour and a half. Maybe next time. So we're going to get it done this time. And so for the listeners who haven't seen your previous episodes, can you tell them about yourself and what you do?

Absolutely. So my name is Melina Palmer, and I am an applied behavioral economist. And so that is understanding the psychology of why people act, choose, change and buy. And what I do is help people to understand how the brain really works instead of how we think that it should. And then how to better communicate with the brain, whether it's your own brain or it's helping get employees to buy in or customers to buy. And that's what I do with businesses.

This is great. And by chance, do you have a book and a podcast?

I have two books and a podcast. Yeah. Thanks. So, yeah, so my podcast is called the brainy business and talks about all these things here that I was just saying my first book is called what your customer wants and can't tell you. And the second is what your employees need and can't tell you. And that one, they Employee 1 is about change and how you present information. Again on that getting people to buy in Sort of side of things. Definitely in the Kwami realm of the world. Both are, but you know, that one, I would say even more. And of course, you know, there are Kwame mentions in, in the books as well.

Absolutely.

As there should be.

I appreciate it. No, this is great. And your work is incredible. So listeners, make sure you check out Molina's work. We have the, the books, the podcast, there will be links in the descript. The reason why we're having you back again, besides the fact that you're awesome and we just like to chat, is you're launching something that's really, really interesting and I think will help a lot of people. And there are certain psychological principles that are, that's behind your new business endeavor that I think we could all learn from when it comes to difficult conversations and negotiations. So how would you just set the stage by telling us about your new program?

Sure. Well, it is called the Brainy Business Breakthrough Experience. And there's kind of the like having a business break through the brainy business, you know, kind of how that comes together. But it's really something that's catered to small and medium sized business owners and those who've seen success already. And you get to this point where you know what you did to get here isn't gonna get you to the next level. You know, there's a next level, you can see where that is out in front of you and you're excited about what could be. But there are, you know, 8, 10, 20, 50 paths to get there. And it can feel stressful and overwhelming. And you get to that point where it feels like your business is running you instead of you running the business. You're caught up in all the day to day stuff. Maybe you're feeling stretch too thin because of so many things that you could go and do and work on. And it's often easier to work on the idea of what could be instead of focusing on something or to just kind of ostrich in what you've always done and think, you know, tomorrow I'll be able to take that time. And so there are some predictable psychological principles at play that. But build into that which are very important I can talk about in just a second. But it's also, it's something to know that like everybody gets to this point and it's. But as a business owner and especially when you know you don't have the massive team that you get in a corporate space that you, it's hard to get yourself out of that space. We know that we need to Work, you should work on your business and not in your business. Like that's great, that's easy to hear, right? Sure, yeah, I get it. And I should be time blocking and I should be, you know, running a marathon in my spare time. Right. I should be doing all these things, you know, I know what I should do, but I just can't get myself to actually do the thing. And so helping to break through that and have, you know, one specific thing that you know is the most important thing for you to focus on in your business for the next, you know, one to three years, that new guiding light that you can be moving toward is something that can help people in business to push through those, those roadblocks, those plateaus when they inevitably come up. And so what I put together is an in person retreat for. It's set up for 10 small business owners to get together over four days and work together with me to provide this focus on finding that thing that you should be focusing on, balanced with mind wandering, having the space to be able to exist. There's a lot of value mind wandering that I can talk about. And I'll let you ask me what follow up questions you want because I've said all the things because I'm too excited, but that's the basics of what's going together and being able to come out on the other side with, with that focus and that rallying point and the language to help people, whomever is on your team, to then rally behind you so you can stick to whatever you work on during the retreat.

Yeah, I think this is great. And when it comes down to it, it's the question is, are you a business owner? Do you feel like you're plateauing? Do you feel like you need to break through to the next level? Do you want to hang out with an awesome person named Melina Palmer at a resort and then have a successful business on the back end? The answer is yes. And I think there, there's lot that goes into this too because listeners, you're probably familiar with this. We talk about the importance of internal negotiations. So negotiating with yourself. How do you have that difficult conversation with yourself to figure out what it is that you truly want, why you want it, and then what it is that you need to do. Because like Melina is saying, a lot of times we know what it is that we should be doing, but the difficulty is getting ourselves to do it and we can't understand what's holding us back. And so I think it sounds to me that we have to start off with a little bit of self awareness first to see where we are. So can you kind of walk us through this process of internal negotiation and starting off with the self awareness piece for sure.

So there are four brain biases that come into play here that I always pinpoint for people that once you have an awareness of them, it can help you to break out of the cycle when you will inevitably come back to it. Because this is how our, our brains are biased. It's not something like, I know what this is and so it will never plague me again. Hooray. Right? That's would be great, but that's not the way that we can work with our brains, unfortunately. So the first of them is optimism bias. So for optimism bias, we feel like we're better, faster, stronger, smarter and less biased than everyone else, including the s of five minutes ago and the last time we did a project like this. And so it's easy to say, yeah, you know, last time I set aside a day to work on my business and just did email, that happened. But next time I'm better because I got all that stuff out of the way already, so I don't have to worry about it. Right. Or, you know, circumstances are better, tomorrow, things will be great. You know, we're going to put it on the list. So optimism bias is the first thing that's going to come into play for us, that we think we'll be doing better this time and all those future times as well. The second piece that really builds onto that is planning fallacy. So optimism bias. We think we're going to be better, faster, stronger, smarter. Planning fallacy is we also think all the interruptions and things, these external factors are not going to come up this time. The, the email the client fires, the kids being sick or needing a snack or whatever it is, the stuff that we think shouldn't end up being an issue or our own selves needing to eat food or to get up and walk around or to get distracted by things like Instagram or TikTok or whatever, those interruptions are small. And so we tend to not really account for them. But those small things add up. And if you aren't predicting and thinking about them, which is what our brains are biased to do, you may look and say, hey, I've got a free day tomorrow. I'm going to write eight whole hours. I'm going to plan. I'm going to plan for 10 straight hours and I'm going to get everything done. But you know, eight hours or 10 hours is never that long because of all that stuff in the middle. So not accounting for that then feels really frustrating and stressful and like you didn't do enough so that planning fallacy can get you into this really vicious cycle. Whereas if you do plan for those things and you say, hey, it's an eight hour day, but I'm probably gonna get like four solid, like, you know, real hours of work here in that because of the other things I need to account for. And then if you get five done, yay. But it's not like if you planned for eight and you only got five and then you feel like a failure. So the next one is called bike shedding. So bike shedding is when there is something big and scary that can have consequences associated with it. Our brain doesn't like the idea of that because it enjoys predictability. It likes the status quo, it likes to have things the way that they are and something new goes against that. And so what your brain will do is it puts stuff in your way that feels like it is the most important thing ever. And until you finish this thing, it feels like you can't move on to the next one. So it's not that the thing that you have to do is always unimportant, but often it is. And it's also really low stakes. And the reason this got its name is because there was a researcher who was observing a team that was supposed to be designing a nuclear power plant and they spent a hugely inordinate amount of time planning the bike shed. Something that is a super waste of time and everyone knows is a total waste of time and objectively say, that's ridiculous, right? But we do it all the time, right? I can't possibly launch the new website until I've looked at all 85,000 templates that exist to make sure it's going to be the right one. I can't start doing TikTok videos until I watch a bunch of TikTok videos to see what other influencers are doing. I can't do this until I do that. I can't do the planning until I get all these emails out of the way because you know they're going to be bogging me down. It feels so important. Until I answer all these LinkedIn messages, I couldn't possibly create my new newsletter or whatever it is. The list is endless. Bike shedding stuff feels like it's so important and it keeps us from those important changes that we want to make that we know are important. And the somewhat frustrating piece is the bigger the change, the more important it is, the more likely these things are to come up if you're doing them on your own. So then the fourth item is called time discounting. So time discounting is what I also call the I'll start Monday effect. So building on that optimism bias, we've all had the experience where you say, okay, I listened to the this podcast episode, I read the book, I did the thing, and I'm so excited and come Monday, I'm gonna go do all that stuff. Same as, like, you know, you have that one last glass of wine or piece of cake or whatever it is, and you say, I'm gonna start my new diet and exercise plan on Monday. It's magical place. And, you know, Monday comes and you get hung up in all the stuff that you've always done and you don't make the change and you think, okay, tomorrow I will, or tomorrow I will. And then eventually you just give up saying you're going to do it tomorrow because you've lost that momentum on it. And so what research has found is when we think about ourselves in the future, our brain actually lights up as if we're thinking and talking about a completely different person. So committing future Molina to do the thing is really, really easy. She's waking up at 5am and running and never eating, dressing on a salad and doing all these amazing things in business. But when I actually get up and it's me when the alarm goes off, it feels so different, right? And so being able to take something that you can do now to overcome and kind of trick your brain into understanding the importance of, of the thing today, that this is me doing it, not future me, but me can be helpful in overcoming that thing that's keeping you stuck.

Does your company invest in professional development training? If you believe that your team would benefit from a negotiation workshop, all you need to do is go to our website, fill out the workshop request form, and then we'll set up a time to chat. These workshops are completely customizable, and we've done them all around the country. Negotiation and conflict resolution skills are beneficial across all professions, but they're especially useful in procurement, purchasing, sales, sourcing, and contract management. Our calendar is filling up quickly and we even have some workshops scheduled for next year if you think you might want one. I'd suggest reaching out soon so you don't miss out. Check out the link in the description to learn more and we will be right back after this. There is so much to address in this because it's so great, because I if listeners, if you Were like me when you were listening to this, you were like, oh check, this is me. Okay, so I'm not like broken or unworthy or undesirable, but at least not for those reasons, right? This is something that we all go through to a certain extent. And I really want to go back to one of the things that you said earlier. You said, okay, listen, just knowing that these biases exist, that is not enough to overcome those biases. And I think that's one of the things that is so frustrating and disempowering sometimes where even when you know that it exists, you're saying, oh man, I'm time discounting, but I can't stop doing it. I'm bike shedding. But man, I feel like I really need this bike shed right now. And so understanding that awareness is the first step. But Melina, in your expert opinion, how do we start to overcome these things?

So it comes with practice and it's in identifying some of your own trends in this way, right? Like where are the points where you get start to feel a little bit scared and where you're going to be more likely to bike shed. And what is scary for me isn't necessarily what's scary for someone else. And being able to identify those triggers where you, what your go to thing is that you're doing that you know, is, you know, your bike shed being kind of the easy piece here, right? So easy in that it's they can be become easier to see that you start doing them. Doesn't mean that it ever becomes like that you'll never never bike shed again like we've said. But for me, like my house is never cleaner than when I have some sort of deadline or scary thing that I'm supposed to be working on, right? Like laundry's folded, dishes are done, I'm cleaning the microwave, right? Like where the oven door needs to be scrubbed, right? Those things that you never do. I can't possibly get any work done because I'm so like concerned about how dirty my oven door is, right? Like some things that we I can know that like, or you know, I'm at Inbox zero when I'm supposed to be working on writing my book or whatever that is, right? Because I know that that's something that's scary and can be a tendency. And so when I'm just so hung up on that I can spot it and I can let other people know like my husband knows what my trigger. Those sort of triggers go to's are when things are feeling a little bit scary. And so being able to then have a tactic where if you know your own, go to's and you can say, I can't do this until I do that. So there's another tactic within behavioral science, it's called temptation bundling that can help you overcome time discounting in that something like exercising is you. You have a, you know, pain now for some potential gain that you may or may not see or realize into the future. Right? So I will maybe live a year longer, but I'll never know that. I would have. But like Netflix seems really interesting and I don't want to go run on the treadmill right now. So by temptation bundling, you do the thing you want only if you do the thing that you know is good for you, but you may be inclined to not do so much. So I only get to listen to my favorite podcast while I'm at the gym or when I'm on a walk and I cannot listen at any other time, or I only get to go scroll Instagram once I have sent this big newsletter or the thing that matters. But you have to know for something. One of my favorite quotes from a guy named Nir Eyal, who wrote a great book called Indistractable and also one called Hooked is he says that you can't know that something is a distraction until you know what it's distracting you from. And so until you know what you're supposed to be doing, what you're supposed to be working on, what that big goal is, it's easy to get hung up in all the other stuff. But for me, social media is a part of my work. I have to be as this, you know, in thought leadership, you know, like, I have to be out and be visible in all the places it feels like all the time. And so it's really easy to say I have to be doing that right now because it is important for my business. And there's a lot of times where it's just productive procrastination, which is the problem with that bike shedding is that productive procrastination, getting hung up in all the ins of your business, that can keep you from ever getting to the ons of the things that you know that you should be working on. And so taking that space, taking that time, having it set aside, having a guide to help you is so important. Like I said with, you know, we've all set aside the day or the afternoon or the weekend where you say, I'm gonna do all that big planning, I'm gonna do it this time. I'm, I'm ready and you don't, you don't do it. And so this retreat is set up to be, you know, the time to sign up is six months from when it's actually taking place. So you know, the time is there. You know, you're kind of buying that space on your calendar, as it were, and then having someone that can be to keep you through the process, to keep you motivated to find that piece of focus, but also incorporating what's a. Another really, really critical piece to all of this planning and process. And the reason that I have it set up over four days at this amazing resort is the value of mind wandering and space that we're able to get. So it is really important to get out of your own way, out of your own routines, out of your own stuff and take that step back. Because when we're thinking about deadlines, when we've got the stress of meetings, when we have all these demands of our regular day to day, we are more likely to be in the status quo. We're going to be less creative, scientifically proven, like this is something that we have happening for us. And if you're trying to do big picture planning and you're feeling the weight and spin of all these other things, trying to do that between meetings or at night or whatever, you will not come up with as good of things, as important, as valuable of things, not reach that potential that you would if you had the space, if you had that time to let your mind wander where you will be more creative, where you are going to be able to step outside of that status quo, where you are going to be able to be re energized and excited about what you're working on and have that clarity that comes with space, but not too much because we balance it with the focus. Really. That is the value of what I put together here in this, the brainy business break breakthrough experience is that you have that perfect balance of focus and mind wandering and understanding your own brain.

This is great. And I think everybody listening can have their own brainy breakthrough in some kind of way here because it's so helpful to recognize that we have these biases in our brain. Our brains will work in this type of way. This is how we're kind of designed. And so we have to figure out a way to move around that. And I love the fact that you have taken the theoretical almost. It can feel so, you know, nebulous of a concept. Okay, biases in general, theoretically, how does it apply? But you've done Such a great job of showing us how it applies directly to our day to day and can inhibit our ability to be successful. And then you impart some tactics. I think that temptation bundling is incredible. And it's so right because I can think about certain things in my life that I don't do until I get my work done, you know, and essentially that's a great example of an internal negotiation. It's like, okay, the child inside of Kwame wants to play video games instead of writing his book. But, okay, let me, let me get through a certain amount of the book and then now I can hop on and, you know, get on Xbox Live and play a little bit, you know. And so it's motivating, but without understanding the psychology behind it, I might just sit here and say, man, I can't get it done. I'm a failure. But I'm still going to play these video games.

And then you play more, right? You play more of them. It's kind of the. For anyone who's a runner and if you're familiar with any of the run, walk methods, I. When I first started trying to run, it was really demotivating for me that I felt like I couldn't get past 30 minutes without getting tired and having to stop and, or. And walk right? And then you just walk slower, you walk for longer. And a friend of mine had talked about, you know, like a 10:1 running method or finding whatever yours is, that if you plan in advance that I'm gonna go run for 10 minutes and then I walk for a minute and then I run for 10 minutes and I walk for a minute. Or you do 5:1 or 3:1, or whatever it is that you need because you planned it in advance, you don't feel that same fail point. It's the, okay, now's the time to take a break. And you take it before you feel like you need it so that you don't. You can go further, you can do more. You can. You can have more success by taking that break earlier because you know that's what you're going to be needing for that long haul, right? That bigger plan. And it helps you push through. Also when you're starting to feel exhausted and you want to break, you can say, okay, it's eight minutes. I just have two more minutes. Like take one more step, get around the corner, get to the stop sign, right? You're just trying to get. Just get to that 10 minutes and you know you have a break coming up. It's the same here, too. In Working on your business that you know you have the thing you need to be working on. You know you want to be. You have to write the book, you're working on the podcast episode, you're getting the big plan set up, you're working on your pricing strategy, whatever that is, and say, all right, I'm going to work on this for 50 minutes. And at the end of the 50 minutes, I get to what? Right, insert thing here. I get to go watch an episode of Ted Lasso. I get to play one round of the video game and hope I don't die immediately. You know, you. You get that little thing at the end, and then you can set a time limit on that too, right? I get 15 minutes of scrolling tick tock. And I'm gonna have a. An alarm that'll go off to let me know what the next thing is and when it's time to go back in. But giving those breaks will help your brain to be more effective over time and again. Taking them before you feel like you need them is important.

This is really eye opening here because tell me what you think about this. Throw in an idea, just making it up on the fly. See if it makes sense. Maybe if we think about this internal negotiation, almost like you as a mediator, mediating between the different versions of yourself. So you have the childish type of version of yourself who wants to scroll Instagram, play video games and do that thing, whatever it happens to be. But then you have like the super type A. I need to be successful and I need to do more work. The only thing that's better than more work is more work, you know, and it's like, okay, cool. We have these different versions of ourselves at the table, and we're like, okay, hey, this a type personality that I have that's driving me to try to accomplish that, which is impossible. It's not possible for me to accomplish all the things that I want to accomplish that day. I kind of need to tone down that ambition. But at the same time, there's another part of me that wants to relax and have a little bit of one. Both of them have validity. It's almost like finding the appropriate compromises. So then you can have a plan that is actually achievable going forward.

Yeah, definitely. And I think in that there's also an aspect of, you know, so the time discounting where I was saying it's future you and present you, that's a piece there, but also is to know that we have a. It's called a hot cold or a cold Hot empathy gap. And so when we think about when it, when you're in the cold state, thinking about what you're going to want and need in the hot state, it's easy to say in the cold state, like right now, I'm just going to say no to dessert. The end, it'll be easy, right? And then the cart comes around or everyone else at the table orders dessert. And you're in the hot state now and that's a different version of yourself. And you feel very inclined to order if you didn't set up the proper plan. If you just, in the cold state, you thought you would have more willpower in the moment. The other side is when you're in the hot state, it's hard to imagine what you would do or think or want in the cold state. So trying to do all your planning while you're super stressed and in the moment is really hard to do because you can't think about cold state you and what you're going to need. So this really has a balance of again, planning and picking the time while you're in the cold state. And you can commit yourself to when you know when the push would come to shove. If you didn't have that, you held yourself accountable. You have a group that's relying on you to be there and that you've invested in this. When the hot state comes, you might push it off and say, okay, I'm going to plan next week. Right? But instead you're committed to it. You're going to do it because we planned it far enough out that we can overcome that hot state piece. And then again, in those moments when you're feeling stressed and trying to get the time, that's not the right time to be planning, you can say, you know what, I don't have to think about this right now because this is on my calendar in six months, in five months, in three months, in two months, right? You know it's coming and you can be, you know, putting the pin in it of what you're going to work on when it feels like you want to bike shed on some of the big picture stuff. Because it goes both ways, right? I can't get my to do's of today done because I'm gonna, I'm gonna just go dream for a bit, right? I need that space. But if you know that that's coming in September, in October, then you don't, you don't have to let it bog you down today so you can be ready when you're going to be really investing in that time and that can fuel you moving forward.

Oh, this is so good. Yes. And like I said, Melina, if my, if my speaking engagement doesn't go through in October, I don't want to be.

I don't want, it's a weird, I don't want to be hoping that you don't get the speaking engagement because that feels like a bad thing to hope for all the reasons. I just hope that the dates, they, they say, oh my goodness, our dates have changed and we definitely want you and we're going to pay, you know, twice your normal rate. Right. Let's put those if we're dreaming.

Yes. I love that. I love that. This is so good. I can, I can instantly, very clearly see how beneficial this is for, would be for a business person. But just in general, like the tips that you gave today, anybody who's handling those internal negotiations, we could really benefit from this. So I appreciate this as always, Molina. But before you go again, remind the listeners about the breakthrough experience and everywhere else where they can get in touch with you.

Of course. Yeah. And thank you for that. So the other benefit is, you know, you get four days of me providing behavioral economics insight on the work that you're doing and you get a great cohort of others that are working on the same stuff that can help hold you accountable both before and after because there will be, you know, introductions to people in advance and it is a small group. So you can find more about me and the brainy business breakthrough experience@thebrainybusiness.com Breakthrough is where you can get that information. And we are going on sale for this. So there's a whole pre sale thing and whatnot. You want to go right now, right. Right now where you're listening to this and go to the brainybusiness.com breakthrough so you can get on the priority wait list. Because we're going to have this open up for everyone on the priority wait list 48 hours before it goes live, assuming there are spots available because it is limited to 10 people to make sure that there is plenty of one on one time with me. And everyone is a VIP and gets that, that value from that. So that's March 20th is when that priority wait list will open up. So you want to be on the list. And the event itself is taking place September 30th through October 3rd. So yeah, in Arizona, a beautiful place called Mirabal.

Awesome, Melina. Thanks again, my friend. Really appreciate it.

Of course. Thanks for having me.

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