The Psychology of Internal Negotiations With Jefferson K. Rogers

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.

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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.

Jefferson, thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me on, brother. Excited to be here.

It is our pleasure, man. We're excited, too. This is going to be. This is going to be a good one. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Absolutely. My name is Jefferson Rogers. I am a business owner. In Southern Utah is where our headquarters are at. We've got locations in Idaho, Arizona, and Nevada. And over the past four and a half years, I have gotten sober, started a business for the first time, and grown this thing now to have produced over $40 million in revenue. And we're preparing some really cool things within the side of the business to be able to have an exit within the next five or six years. And now I've had the opportunity, because of the power of mentors and coaches and advisors and consultants in my journey, to start doing some consulting and advising myself. And I still got a long ways to go, but it's been an exciting journey and I'm excited to jam with you on a little bit of it.

Yeah, man.

Well, that sounds like a busy four years. That's impressive. So Listeners, I'm pumped about this episode because we're going to take a bit of a different route on this. We're going to talk about internal negotiations, so the conversations you have to have with yourself in order to persuade yourself, but also external negotiations all through the lens of the mentorship type of conversations that Jefferson has had throughout his career. So how about you start off by telling us where you were at the beginning of this four and a half year journey. Where were you? Paint that picture. So we, we have a clear starting point.

It was, it was a rough place. So it was, it's very memorable because it was what I would consider my rock bottom. I'd been to a lot of rough places throughout my life, my teenage years, my 20s, just from, you know, the, the decisions that I've made, the people that I hung out with. But it got to a point where I had been married for, let's see, I'd been married for seven years and we started out really great. Where I had been, I had been sober. You know, I had, had landed this incredible, incredible woman because of where I was at in my life. And then life caught up and I had all these new responsibilities. I was an instant dad. She, she had a three year old son when I met her and we got married and he turned four not too long after that. And I've been raising him ever since then. There was, there was a lot of responsibilities. I, you know, I had to make money at a new level that I was ever used to before. And so it got to a point after seven years of marriage where I'd gotten back into drinking, back into smoking pot. You know, I'd done coke a couple times that my wife knew about and she about lost her freaking mind on me. You know, this was just not the person that she had married. And I'd, you know, there's just one big incident that happened in 2017 where I got in a fight. I drank all day, I got my truck impounded. I was supposed to be at my son's birthday party the next day, but I was too hungover to even participate. And it was just this really, really low place, shameful place in my life that as the, the oldest brother of four and you know, always wanted to accomplish great things with my life. My mom told me my whole life that I was meant to do great things. And I was born the first for a reason. And I was, I was mean, a leader and I was just not living up to those expectations. So it hit an all time low. I got involved in a Mentor program just kind of as a, this, this last ditch effort, you know, I got to do something with my life to try and get back on track and be the, the man that I know that I'm capable of being. And within two months of joining that mentor program, I got sober. That was January 8, 2018. So now it's been a couple years and started my business two months after getting sober. And now we've, we've been on a tear. You know, when you say it's been a busy four years, it absolutely has. We've been going hard. Not just me, but, you know, my wife and my kids, they've, they've been busy also. And that the company has grown to almost 100 people. And we'll do around 16, $17 million in revenue this year with some big goals over the next several years to build this thing up to a nine figure level.

Man.

Kudos.

Kudos. This is one of those instances where as a podcast host, I forgot that I was hosting a podcast and I went into listener mode. You know, I was just sitting there listening. It's an incredible story. And I mean, just every aspect of it too, because you hit your rock bottom. You had the humility and awareness to recognize you needed help. You joined the mentorship program, you started a business, and now we start that entrepreneurial journey. And now you have all sorts of new stresses. You had kids before, now you have a hundred kids. You know, like, that's, that's a lot of pressure. That is a lot of pressure. So kudos to you. There's so much to explore. So let's, let's start off first with the internal negotiation that got you from rock bottom to taking that step to get into the mentorship program. What had to change in your mind in order to get you to take that step?

One of the things that stands out is I had just gotten to a place in my life where that behavior, the way that I was making my wife feel that our relationship was, it was just in such a rough place that I, I needed to get it fixed. I wasn't sure how I was going to do it. And it was just the right place at the right time, the right message, the right person, and I was ready to do something. And it just happened to be that this mentor program that I got involved with was that answer. And it still took me a long time, you know, probably six weeks after getting involved with it to actually start taking it seriously and doing the daily activities and, and fulfilling the accountability that they had inside of there. But it Was, you know, for some people, it's like some catastrophe that happens. It never really got to a really low rock bottom where I, I got an injury or I got in an accident or I lost a family member or something like that. But it was enough for me to make a change and to. To start really trying to live up to my potential. And, you know, I spent the last previous, you know, five, six years of marriage knowing that these, the behaviors, the drinking, the smoking weed didn't align with some of the goals that I had originally set out to accomplish with my wife and with our family. And, you know, there's nothing worse than making promises to yourself, but not keeping them. And it deteriorates your confidence and your self belief, and it creates doubt and uncertainty on whether you're ever going to be able to really set out and do great things for yourself. And that was just the first step for me getting involved with that mentor program and then slowly inching my way into it and seeing these other people that were involved in it, that didn't seem all that special. They were accomplishing great things with their life. And it started to really build some belief in me being exposed to success at a different level than I'd ever been exposed to it. That, man, these people really are just ordinary people. They're just a little bit further into the process than me. A little bit more experience, a little bit more time. And the only thing separating me from them is those same components. I just got to put in the time, the effort, develop new habits and disciplines, and there's no reason why I couldn't see that level of success and even more.

Yeah, and you know what's really interesting, Jefferson, about the way that you describe it is that even though four and a half years, that is an incredible amount of change in an incredibly short period of time. But the way that you describe it, it sounds really incremental, which is an interesting dichotomy. Can you walk us through this change in mentality that happened once you got into the mentorship program? Because you said that you weren't fully bought in at the beginning, it took you about six weeks to start to get into it. What got your. Got you to that point where you could actually fully absorb and avail yourself to some of the teachings?

Well, this is. It's an example of life realistically, because we all want things to happen so fast. And when I got involved with this mentor program, it was like, you know, I wanted big things to happen. I wanted them to have happened really fast. And for me to be Able to have things happen. You got to put in the work. You have to take accountability, personal accountability. It was not like I had a coach there personally with me every day, helping me fulfill these activities on a daily basis that were going to help me see results. It was coming to terms with some of that and the commitment that it was going to take on my part to actually do something different so I could get different results.

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And then one of the things that's repeated over and over and over for me is that exact same thing. It's like I always want things to happen fast. I've got these high expectations for myself. I know that I can put in the effort and I want things to happen fast, but the reality is they just happen slow. Things happen slow. Especially you know, these big crazy ass goals that I have. So I, I started to just come to terms with it was going to be incremental, it was going to be slow, it was going to be steady. And as long as I was doing these consistent daily activities, I was going to get results even though it didn't seem like was happening. And I heard this one time from a mentor of mine, Tom Hopkins said that as long as you get to a place where you're doing, you feel like you're doing something productive at every given moment of the day, you're making progress. So it never felt like a lot was happening. But then I just started to become a little bit more aware that I am doing productive things. These things on a daily basis that I'm doing aren't making these huge strides that I would like to happen, but these little steps that I'm taking are producing a level of progress. And now I look back over the four and a half years and it's very apparent that it was happening. But in the moment, still to this day, I struggle with this because I have even bigger goals now and it just never seems like things are happening. Fast enough.

I'm smiling as you're saying this, Jefferson, because I feel like I'm talking to myself right now when it comes to the speed. Because I wish it all could have been accomplished.

Yes.

And then I accomplished something. And somebody's like, hey, Kwame, good job. I'm like, well, I'm behind schedule based on what I wanted to accomplish.

So this sounds really familiar, but I.

Love what you said about coming to terms with the fact that it's going to be slow, because the terminology, like the words you use, coming to terms with it, shows that there was a little bit of reluctance or resistance to accept that. But then something changed in your mind where you did accept it. And it seems like a big part of it was being able to see, like, the small incremental gains that you're making day to day. Because when you're. When you have this big vision for what it is that you want to accomplish, these small changes that you have to make in order to get there, it can seem insurmountable. But when you think about habits, I know habits are something that you believe in really strongly. It was James Clear. He talks about habits are the compound interest of success or something to that effect. Right. The more you start to do these smaller things, it starts to build up. So can you tell us a bit more about some of those habits that you started to put in place to get to where you wanted to go?

Yeah, man. That mentor program, I'm so grateful that I was exposed to that because I'd always heard of habits and being goal oriented. There was all these things. But then, you know what, what a lot of, a lot of us are missing is the actionable things that you need to do on a day to day basis to apply those, those concepts to your life. You can talk about it all you want, but unless you know how to apply it to your life, it's never going to do you any good. So one of the biggest benefits of getting involved with that mentor program was learning how to apply these things to my life. And there was just a series of daily activities that we were challenged with every week. And there was a couple of new ones that would be introduced, but there was some consistent ones. And some of the major contributors were just as simple as getting up before the sun comes up. This, this is, this is so simple. It's like, get up before the sun comes up. Read a couple of pages out of a personal development book. Write your goals down, morning and evening. Get out of obscurity, put yourself out there, talk about the things that you're doing make Facebook and Instagram posts, and it's really. It's not rocket science. I. I did a podcast with a gentleman, and he said that same thing. He's like, is it really that difficult? Is. Can you attribute your success really to these really small things that you're talking about? And I was like, absolutely. The problem that most people have, though, is that anybody can write their goals down for one day. Anybody can get out of bed early for one day. But what truly separates the greats and the people that accomplish incredible things are the people that can apply these very simple concepts consistently for a long period of time that turns into a life of productivity and progress and growth and accomplishing incredible things.

Absolutely. And Jefferson, there's so much we could learn from this, so many different places. But obviously, since stay on brand, I have to focus on persuasion and negotiation. And there's a clear connection here too.

Right?

Because when we think about the negotiations we have with ourselves, we have to be incremental in our approach. If we ask ourselves to do too much too soon, we might not be ready. We might not be in the right mental state to do it. We might not have the skills to be able to do it. And then when it comes to persuading other people, a lot of times we try to get too much too soon. We try to negotiate for too much too soon, too early in the relationship. We haven't established trust. We haven't created a connection. They don't believe that you care yet. You have to take some time and invest into the relationship. And so you see people, for example, they might come into an organization and they say, all of these things need to change day one. But people are saying, well, hold up. What's your name? I don't know who you are. I don't know what you bring to the table. And you can get to that point where you want to with people, but sometimes it just takes time. And the bigger the change you want to make, the more incremental you have to be. So you have to be patient and persistent in order to be persuasive.

Absolutely. Yeah. That's the one of the challenges that I see as I'm developing new salespeople and leaders within my company is, you know, everybody wants to accomplish great things with their life. And once they start to get exposed to the. The importance of having these positive habits and being goal oriented, we all kind of have a tendency to write out an entire list of new habits that we would like to have new goals that we would like to accomplish and put it all out in front of us and be like, I'm going to do all these this year. And then human nature is when, when things don't happen exactly the way that we planned them or we thought that they would play out, like, we get discouraged and we, we self sabotage and we justify our behaviors. And then instead of doing just a little bit of each one of those things and building to a place where we've accomplished the whole list, we just stack that whole list in front of us and we never do any of it. So those are, you know, those are some of the realizations that you come to after battling with those things. Myself is it's never going to happen as fast as you want it to. All these goals, they are attainable one at a time. Some of them you can do two at a time. But these incremental baby steps that you have to take to work towards having the ability to accomplish those things, having developed yourself into the person that is capable of having those things in your life, it just doesn't happen overnight. You have to have patience. And then these constant conversations that you have to have with yourself about this isn't going to happen overnight. I have to have patience. Things are happening. I'm staying productive. I'm doing things that are benefiting and moving me towards my goals. It's never going to happen as fast as I want it to. Those are, those are some of the conversations and the negotiations, the internal negotiations that are always going on that separate the people that accomplish great things and the people that don't. Because the better you are at negotiating with yourself, the farther you can go, the more you can push past the self doubt and the self sabotage and the uncertainty. Because I've accomplished a little bit more and now I've got a little bit more belief in myself. And this is going to be hard. It's going to be difficult. It's more work. There's new things that I've never done before. I'm going through as much of this in my life right now as I've ever gone through because of the level that I'm pushing myself. But because of all the wins that I have stacked up over the past four and a half years, I've just got a new level of self confidence that I can put these things in front of me and know that I can accomplish them.

Yes. You know, this reminds me of a shirt I saw in the gym that I loved. It said a first round knockout is not the goal. And I really love that Mentality, because in life in general, we want to do one thing really hard one time and then coast. We just want to be able to be done with it. And if you have that mentality, once you get that resistance, you're saying, I haven't done those, those mental reps to anticipate what to do when I experience resistance, I must be doing something wrong. This isn't the path for me. And what I'm hearing from you is that it's not a one time negotiation. This is a daily negotiation not only to get you to do the right thing, but then keep doing the right things. And then when it gets hard, continue to encourage yourself through those difficult times. And one of the words that you came, that you said that I think is really important but often overlooked is justify. Because whenever we make these mistakes, whenever we make a bad decision, whenever we kind of get off the straight and narrow, we can always come up with an excuse, a justification to say why it was okay or why I was justified in doing it wrong this time. When you're having those conversations with yourself and you hear that evil version of yourself on the shoulder providing you with justifications, how do you have that conversation with yourself to fight that justification?

I call it the, you know, I've heard it been called the voice. You know, I've got this, this version of myself that is, is the strong version and the encouraging spirit that I have. But then there's also still that, that voice that I've carried around with me my whole life that helps me justify the things in my life that, you know, I, you know, you don't need to work that hard. You need to, you know, celebrate a little bit and, and give yourself a vacation and buy nice things and, and then if there's a, a big challenging task in front of me, the voice comes out strong and says, you know, this is, maybe this just isn't the time or it's, this is too tough right now. It's going to take away from other things in your life. And this is, I have it going on as much as anybody else does, but what I've developed over the past couple of years is just the ability to recognize that if something truly is not going to serve me right now, I've, it's still kind of a justification. And I, I try and weigh all the options, but if it's something that's going to take away from other important things in my life, maybe there's a justification. But I've, I've got other important things that I'm trying to do. But if it's just truly something that I'm scared of and I'm uncertain about and I've never done before, and it's going to be challenging, then when that little voice comes up, it's like, you know what? I'm. I'm hearing you, but I just can't listen right now. I've got too much to do. I've got too much to prove to myself, to my family, to my. Everybody that's within my business, that the only way that things are going to get done is if there is a leader that is willing to look at the fear head on and just tackle it anyways. Feel all the anxiety, all the stress. You can't avoid any of that stuff. You just have to take it all on and you deal with it professionally with a smile and positivity, and you just keep pushing.

I love this. I love this because I have that voice that comes in, in the gym a lot of times, you know, it's like, oh, one more rep. Can you do? You know what? I'm good.

No.

No, you're not. I would, I would respond with a. Just a simple question. Can I do this? Can I do this? Because that, that weak voice in the back of your head is going to say, you know what? Take this day off. No. Then I simply ask the question, can I do this? Can I physically do what I should do in this moment? If the answer is yes, then I should be doing it right. And I love the fact that you're actually. You actually named it. I think that's really important because we, we all have familiar voices in our heads, and I think being able to identify them as like something that is working for you versus something that's working against you is really important. And I love that you described it from like a leadership mentality. You have to be that leader that's willing to tackle anything. And I think a lot of times people are looking for that leader. They're kind of looking for that hero. But the reality is you have to be your own hero. You have to be your own leader and, and win that internal battle. So you could win the battle on the outside, too.

That's right. Yeah. I was, I was talking with. He's a. He's actually my videographer, but he's. He's a business owner and, And I've done some. We've been working together for, I don't know, I guess it's been close to a year now. And so he's. He's coming a long way in his business and his development. And he considers me one of his mentors. And we're having this conversation about integrity and him getting involved in business as a young man, starting to see these other things in other people that he just has. Naturally, he is a high integrity type of person, just an incredibly hard worker and he's accomplished great things in his life and he's only 23 years old. But the integrity that we were talking about is, you know, there's the traditional integrity where, you know, you just do what you say you're going to do and you're reliable. But then there's. When we're talking about these kind of things, I also think about this internal personal integrity because there is the promises that we make ourselves that if you're not keeping. I talk about this a lot because I spent a lot of years not keeping promises to myself and I considered myself a person of high integrity. But this had never really hit the radar because nobody knew about it. I was the only person that knew. And it was for years, ding in my confidence and my belief in myself because I would make these, these claims to myself that I'm gonna, I'm gonna go and earn that next spot at that job. I'm going to go prove myself and work harder and show up earlier and stay later. And then I would just do the same things that I'd always done and get the same results. And because I had done that for so long, you know, you lose a little belief in yourself. But that, that personal integrity, I think, I don't think it's talked about enough because your, your ability to keep promise to yourself is, is a direct reflection of the type of progress that you're going to make in your life. And if you don't have big goals and if you're not making any big promises to yourself, I guess it won't. But I, I always have. I just haven't always fulfilled on, on those promises. And now over the past several years, I've started to really learn the importance of that and see it in other people and be able to pick up on that, that lack of confidence and that, that lack of self belief. And I know exactly where it's coming from. I can't see it and they know that nobody else can see it, but I can just sense that lack of confidence and where it comes from, just from personally being there.

Jefferson, this has been phenomenal. I know I've taken a ton of notes and I'm hoping the listeners have too, when it comes to handling their tough internal Negotiations. And for the listeners who want to learn more about you, can you tell them about your book, your business and the consulting program you have?

Absolutely. I got a book being launched in early 2023. It's called All In Get Unstuck, Accelerate and Go Further Faster. And it just basically goes over a lot of the, the philosophies and methodologies that I've applied to my life to be able to reach a level in business that, you know, is very uncommon. To hit an eight figure mark within, within four years. We actually, within my third year, we did $10 million in revenue in a calendar year. And there's, there's a lot of things that went into that and there's a lot of businesses that get stuck out there at the, the six figure mark and never even make it to seven figures and they're not quite sure what the answer is. So this, this book is kind of an answer to a lot of personal stuff. To be able to overcome self belief and self doubt and self sabotage, but then also be able to apply habits and discipline and some new philosophies to your life to help you reach new levels that you never even thought were possible. And over the last two years, I've had the opportunity to start doing consulting and advising with companies to help them really apply these principles to their businesses, to help them go from six figures to seven and even eight figures.

This is great, Jefferson. Really appreciate it everybody. There will be links in the description so you can get your copy of the book and check out his website. Thanks, brother. Really, really appreciate you coming on the show.

Thanks for having me on. That was a great time.

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