0343 | Christine McKay

Hi, this is Christine McKay with Venn Negotiation and you are listening to EA Interviews.

EA Interviews, episode 343, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's expert authority effect interview. Have you ever wanted to negotiate a deal? Do you want to get more in sales? Do you want to attract more leads? Hey, you know, what if we offer you this? What about if the incentives are that I tell you. But sales is one of my favorite things. Probably next to hosting, I don't know, it's a tie. Just depends on the day. But today we're filming. Actually we're doing both. We're always selling. But in negotiations, do you feel like in order for you to win, someone else has to lose or do you feel like this is going to be a win win by the time I'm done or do you feel like it's going to be a win win, win? That's what I aim for. You know, it's about making it good for company A, B and their customers. But not everyone has that philosophy and that is why I am excited to have Christine McKay with Vendegotiation on the show because she has a different approach to negotiating and I can't wait for her to share it with you. I'm going to bring her up right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you, regardless of where you think you your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's EA publishingmethodbook.com.

Here she is, ladies and gentlemen, Christine McKay. Christine, how are you feeling today?

I'm doing fantastic. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here today.

Oh, it's my pleasure. I think what you're sharing is so great because there's so many people that want to do negotiation. I don't think there's any business owner that doesn't want to do negotiations, but I know there's a lot of them who may not be doing it as well as they think they are. Would you agree?

Absolutely, absolutely. A lot of, a lot of people are in negotiations and they don't even realize that they're in a negotiation and end up getting taken advantage of in that process. So I 100% agree with that.

Why do you think so many people limit the Negotiation to only in a boardroom or signing contracts or something super, super official.

Yeah.

You know, I think it's because we've been taught that way. We've been told that negotiation is what I call a point in time event. That it's, it's something you go do. You go buy a car, you buy a house.

You sign a contract. It's like we have these meetings that we go to and those are the big negotiation. But that's a tiny, tiny fraction of what the negotiation process is. That's the least important part almost. It's like all the. There's so much that happens ahead of that and there's a lot of stuff that happens behind that. And if you don't get those other two points right, then what you talk about in a meeting actually doesn't matter very much because that's not where the negotiation is the most impactful.

So you're saying it's not a point in time event, is that right?

It is not a point in time event. It is a process. And my philosophy about negotiation is that it is a conversation about a relationship and you cannot win a relationship, but you can get more value out of it. And it's that the process of negotiation, the preparation, before you ever even sit down and talk to somebody, knowing and having tremendous amount of clarity about what it is that you want, figuring out and trying to understand what might your counterpart want. Being really curious about your counterpart, thinking about what's going to make them successful and what is going to make their. How are they going to define success with their own clients and internally? And then you finally get to the point where you have. And engagement, right, where you're, you're actually having a conversation. But then, guess what? What happens when the deal gets signed? Now you get to live with that relationship. How do you renegotiate? How do you keep that relationship alive over the course of time? Right. We have so many salespeople. I mean, any good salesperson will say that their best customer is the customer they have. And people talk all the time about having a customer for a lifetime. They don't often negotiate that way. They don't think about what happens once the deal is, is inked and done. It's that you've got a, you've got a completely long, hopefully a very long relationship. And what works for you at this moment in time may not continue to work for you in three years, five years, two months. If you look back at 2020, right. You know, I know people who sign contracts and three months later they're like, I've got to renegotiate this. We've got to do something different. So. So it's a process. Negotiation is a process. And it is that conversation that you're having to test to see, is this a relationship that's going to work or is it not going to work? And if it's not going to work, that's great. I'll go find somebody else to talk to. That's all.

Does this process ever stop?

No, it does not stop because you're constantly gathering new information about yourself, about the situation that you've negotiated, and about your counterpart. There's always new players, are always new players coming into the market. There are new competitors, there's new technology, new resources, new ideas. And so it doesn't stop. There is a. It's a perpetual activity, the process of negotiation. And one of the challenges is that attorneys and contracts in general kind of put a time limit on things. And it's like either you have an evergreen contract that never expires unless somebody gives you notice, or you have a term contract and it expires at a certain point in time. But one of the challenges is that most people sign a contract and then they forget about it and they never go back and they don't revisit it on a regular basis and ask the question, is this still working for you? Is it still working for me? And have an honest and open dialogue about whether that is the case. I sometimes joke and say, you know, my husband and I have been married. We just celebrated our 28th wedding anniversary recently.

Oh, congratulations.

Thank you very much. And he's an amazing guy. But the deal that we negotiated when we first got married is not entirely the same deal that we have today, because we're just not the same people yet in business, we often enter into relationships and we expect them to stay the same, regardless of the fact that hopefully we both have changed and we both have grown. So how do you make your negotiated relationships grow with you in that process?

Now, what I'm hearing in there is that marriage, that's not business. But you're sounding like it's a negotiation.

Absolutely. My husband, I just had a negotiation just a little bit ago. I mean, it's. You're constantly negotiating. In any relationship, anytime we want something from somebody else, whether it's influence, whether it's a product or a service, an idea, support, whatever it is, that's a negotiation, there's a negotiation that's going to take place. In that process.

You know, you bring up a Good point. Because I wanted to ask you about, hey, would you like to go to the movies?

It depends on the movie.

There we go. People don't think about. I mean, that's one of the simplest, easiest, you know, hey, let's go to dinner. Where do you want to go? I don't know. Where do you want to go? I don't know. Where do you want to go? Like, oh my gosh. I don't think you need to ink a deal and pen it and everything, depending on who it is, but actually can't think of one scenario where you would do that over just a meal. But maybe it's some special bonus, whatever anyway, for like a movie launch, but whatever.

But people don't realize everything's like a negotiation. Everything is sales, everything is negotiating. Because.

I love that you have the philosophy that it's not this zero sum, someone has to win for someone else has to, someone has to lose for someone else to win. Because it's not this finite boardroom thing. Now, yeah, that's an aspect of it. But, for example, with everything you've just said, when is the best time to discuss the details of the negotiation and the deal? Is it the boardroom? Is it beforehand or.

Or is it after the fact?

Well, it depends. I mean, that's the thing about negotiation. And I think one of the things that either some people love or some people get frustrated about it is it always depends because you have two individuals who have two different objectives and we come at the process in a different way. So there are times when I want to get into details really early, depending on the person that I'm negotiating with or the situation. There are times when, here's a good example, you go to a meeting. So now that we're kind of open, opening up again and people are coming together for meetings again, right? You go to a meeting, do you talk about the weather first or ask about somebody's weekend? I know you do, because that was the first thing you asked me when you got on, when we got on camp, got on call together, was you asked me how my weekend was. Now there are people that, that's not the question to ask them out of the first, out of the starting gate. They'd rather hold chit chat and conversation till the end. They wanted to get to business, get it done, get it over with, move forward, and then a relationship. But some people like to build a relationship first and then get into the details of the business. So it truly depends. It depends on who you're talking to and how much you want to make an adjustment in how you operate to. Relative to your counterpart or not. And so that's a very simple.

That's a very good point. I'll also throw in. It's because we just had the weekend. It's not Thursday or Friday.

I'm not sure if it would have made. How was your weekend? Like two weeks ago, A week and a half ago? But that's a great point. You have to understand the person you're talking to and the environment and the situation and the outcome.

Well, let me just ask you, because we just got connected. We've both done guest podcasting, but what if that was my approach? What if I was just, hi, we're going live in 60 seconds.

And for me, that would have been fine because I tend to be more of the person who works to build a relationship at the end. So I'm more, let's get this thing out of the way that we, that we need to do, that we're doing, that we both are enjoying doing. But let's get this part done and then let's have a conversation afterward. And I'll bake time into my calendar to have the conversation at the end of a call or at the end of a. Even my. When I'm doing my own podcast, I bake that time in at the end. Okay, so it is, it's. It is very.

So I do, I do both.

And part of it in the beginning is like, we did make sure the lights, the cameras, the every. The microphone. Microphone, that might be important. I've been on plenty of shows though, where it's like, okay, and I'm fine with it because I've been speaking for a decade.

But.

Yeah, it's like, all right. And then afterwards, oh, hey, how's it going? Da, da, da. I was like.

Glad this is my first rodeo. But the point is, you need to know your audience because I've been in boardroom situations, signing a deal and also negotiating the deal we want.

Was good.

For everyone, but it was very much that we get there, boom, boom, boom. And then we're chatting for 45 minutes after the words. And then there's other ones where it was 45 minutes up front.

In the opposite. So let me ask you, how do you know going into it if you've. So this is like a two parter, because how do you know going into it if you've never met the person? However, is there a lot of situations where you are inking deals where you don't even have a phone call first? You're just going in blind and not talking about any specifics or like, would the business team take care of the details and then the final person just goes to put their name on it.

So, I mean, if you've got a team doing the negotiation work for you, I mean, I've worked in situations where I've been the lead negotiator and I negotiate the deal and you know, this, I go to the CEO or the chairman of the board and they sign the deal. But that's never done blindly. Right? I've kept them in the loop. They, they know what's going on. They know the deal that's been signed, legal, signed off on it, the appropriate operational people.

Here's the updates. Did we get the terms we were asking for?

I mean, depending on the size of the deal that I'm working on, like if it's this, if it's a substantial transaction, whether it's customer, supplier or M and A or divestiture kind of deal, or even a commercial leasing situation, I develop a work plan for my, for my deals so that I know and I, you know, I have a deep consulting background, so I'm very comfortable with, you know, racy models, you know, who's responsible, accountable, that kind of stuff. And it's like, I make sure that I track who I'm keeping it, who needs to, who needs to actually approve something, who do I just need to inform about something, who do I just need to, who do I need to get opinion from in order to craft something? And then, and then I communicate accordingly. And I have like a, like on my very largest deals, I have, you know, sizable work plans. I have, you know, reports that I, that I submit on, you know, the detail out kind of, what, what are the issues, what has been agreed this week, what's still open, what, what do I think, where do I think movement is, where do I need support from my internal team for my, you know, on my client side, et cetera. So it varies. I mean, smaller deals don't necessarily require that level of, you know, direct management and oversight. Right. Because some, you know, not all deals rise to the level of needing that. But yeah, having a sense of what that is important, it helps drive because you always have. I always say I talk about the invisible negotiator at the table. There's always somebody other than you who's influencing the deal, whether it's your partner. Let's say you go and I'm going to go buy a car, and you go and buy the car. You're at the dealer. Right. And you're married or you have a significant other, that significant other, whether they're there at that dealership or not is irrelevant because you can still hear that person's voice in your head telling you, you better agree to that or you better do this, or I want this color, or whatever the heck it is. Right. And so there's always an invisible negotiator at the table. Part of the challenge in negotiating is understand who that invisible negotiator is. Who is that? Who are those people? And figuring out how to make sure that you're aligning your deals to make sure that they're signing, able to sign off on it and that they're successful as well.

That's a great point you bring up because.

It was one of the things I learned early on in sales. When you're talking with someone, are you talking to the decision maker and is there anyone else that we should talk to, or do you have full autonomy to make the final decision?

And the answer to that is almost always no, unless you're talking to the owner. That's the only time you're ever talking.

In an or owner situation. While I might, I need to consult the board.

If you have a board of directors, that's actually something. And I love that you just mentioned that because that's something I. When I'm talking to and speaking to smaller business owners, I tell all of them, no matter what, make sure you have an advisory board. At minimum, if you're not incorporated and don't need to have a formal board of directors, never say that you have a formal board of directors and that you're going to go talk to the board. Make sure you use the right language. But you have an advisory board. I don't care if you're advisory, if your dog is on your advisory board. Right. Whatever it is. But you always want to have a board that you can, that you've committed to, that you're going to take big deals to big decisions to, and you're going to get their advice and counsel. Hence advisory board. Right. So that gives you an out. So that when you're negotiating, you have some. Because your counterpart has this. Almost most of your time, your counterpart will say something like, that's a great idea. I agree with that in principle. But I have to take that up the ladder. Right. You better make sure that you have a ladder to take the ideas up to so that you are not pressured into making decisions at an exact moment in time, that you give yourself the freedom to and the latitude to take something offline, evaluate it and then come back. Especially if it's a, if it's something that you've not evaluated or thought of prior and analyzed it, if you have been able to analyze it and stuff, then maybe you can decide at the table. But most of the time, if it's a big thing, take it offline, go discuss it with an advisory board. And whether that's one person, two people or five people, but make sure you have one as a small business. Absolutely.

That is a great tip and I love everything you're sharing and I know that some of it's even in your newest book. Congrats on that as well.

Thank you.

I want to ask you, what else do you have one or two tips for someone that just starting off or going into any deal, you should say, hey, no matter what the deal is big, small, indifferent, here's what you should always consider going into it.

Well, the big thing is, and it always astonishes me how few people do this very effectively is people actually are very unclear on what it is they want out of a deal. So if I can use a non business intense example, like buying a car.

I asked what kind are we talking? I meant to ask you a little bit ago, what kind are we talking?

It depends on which one you would be buying. But no, I asked people like when you, you decide you're going to go buy a car, right. And if I say to you, get abundantly clear on what it is that you want out of the car and you know, write all the things down that you want in this car buying experience and then evaluate how important those things are. What are some of those things? Right. People come up with, you know, color.

Make and models, chrome rims, tinted windows, leather massaging seats, heated and cooled steering wheel.

Right.

I mean, hypothetically, do you want it.

Today or are you willing to wait for it?

Because that drives economic value on your end as well as the dealer.

Well, today I have it, but when I bought it, I was willing to wait to get the right one.

Right. So in that, so that drives. But that drives a certain negotiation component versus if you have car accident and you have to replace the car. Right. That drives a different type of negotiating behavior.

You could still rent one, rent one or borrow one, or you could figure something out in the time being. I mean, if you. So I guess my thought process would be I'm not going to make this immediate decision even though it is more of an urgent matter.

Right. Okay.

If I plan, if I was like, I don't Care. I don't. I planned on getting a new one in six months or a year anyhow, whatever. Versus no, that was the car I was supposed to have for five or ten years or whatever. I'm not going to just randomly replace it with something I don't really like just because of a week or two or a month or two.

And that depends. And that depends. So for some people, it depends. They may. Like in California, where I live, right? You don't have to have very good insurance. So what if you. All you need to have is liability insurance. So what if you've wrecked your car and you don't have insurance that covers rental, right? But you have to get to work and you have to buy a car, right? So everybody. And that's. But that's the point. You made the point explicitly in that you need to be clear on what it is that you need and want out of every single field.

It's different for everyone.

It is different for everyone. And that's one of the things I love about negotiating, is that I could be negotiating with 10 different people to buy or sell the exact same product or service, and I will have 10 very different negotiations.

It's like the game telephone.

It is like the game telephone. And I talk about how, you know, we all bring two common factors to every negotiation that we ever enter into. We bring our humanity and our life experiences, right? We hope that we all have a positive view of humanity and. But second, we don't know anyone's life experiences. We say and do things based on our life experiences which do not always translate to our counterpart. And so that's one of my big things in negotiation, is that we. And we forget it as we get older. We forget how to be genuinely, authentically curious about ourselves, about our counterparts, and about the situations that we're negotiating, because it's that curiosity where you discover the things that you just talked about with respect to the car that you're not worried about it. You've got insurance that'll. You can go rent a car. You've got, you know, you have alternatives. All right, that. That's something that I discover about you by asking you questions to, you know, figure that out. Whereas, you know, when we wrecked a car in Massachusetts, we needed to have two cars and our insurance didn't cover. We had three kids at home, and our insurance didn't cover rental for very long, so we had to buy something quickly. End story. I bought two cars for the price of one plus $5,000. So I saved, you know, like 23, 28 grand and, you know, with an hour's worth of homework. But it was really. It was really about. It's about getting clear and being curious about. About what it is that you want, what your counterpart needs to be successful in the situation that you're in.

Yeah, it's always what I find a lot of fun is finding something you may have not uncovered. Hey, you want. These are the terms. You want this? I want the black car. I want this. This, this, this. It's. Okay, cool. So you got everything you like, but what would you really like? And for me, one of the non negotiables was in moonroof. Seriously? Yeah, Moonroof. Because tinted windows, you can do aftermarket. There's certain things that it's like, you can do. I mean, you can do moonroof, aftermarket, but whatever. And I'll never forget the salesperson. She was like, who uses moonroofs anymore?

Did you just start here today? And if so, why did they hire you? I don't care if no one uses it. I wanted it, I got it.

Right, But I have a moon roof, too. That was an important thing for me, too.

It's the funnest thing to do when it's snowing. Just open it up with the heat on high. Catch them going down the freeway.

But that's the thing. It's like, people have their own personal. You can get whatever you want for whatever reason. Your job isn't to judge me. That's the last thing I wanted. Do you have what I'm looking for? Can you? You know, I like finding the. Okay, well, you mentioned all these. It seems like you have, you know, pretty unique taste. You're pretty creative. You're not boring. You know, make, make up, whatever you want. But is there anything else you'd really like that we haven't talked about? Oh, well, if I could get a whatever in there, that'd be fantastic. Well, I mean, that's one question. And maybe $100 extra, you know, even if it's like a gift card, gift basket, just something extra. It's like, find out what someone really wants, because they're gonna remember. I will never forget that person. I'm not gonna say the company's name, but I was looking for my black Cadillac, and I knew specifically what I wanted. I had about 27 things on the list, and it was fully loaded with all the bells and whistles, and I was just like, oh, you're gonna ruin my day already. It doesn't even tell you the other 20. You put me down for a moonroof. Like, who doesn't need that?

Needless to say, I didn't get it from there.

One of the things, one of my favorite questions is right before we're about ready to sign the deal, it's like, we've got the deal. The lawyers have done their jobs, is like, how can we make this better?

How can we make this deal even better? Right? Because there's often a way. There's actually research that suggests that when we're negotiating for something, let's say we'll call it 100 just to make it a whole thing, there's actually 42% more value available in most negotiations than we realize. So we're not actually. The thing that we think is 100% is actually 142, but because we get so focused at looking very myopically and very specifically at what it is that we want, and we don't get curious about, you know, ourselves, others and our counterparts in the situation because we're not curious enough, we lose, we give up. We sacrifice at 42% additional value that all of us could be partaking in. Which is why I don't. So I hate the term win when it comes to negotiations. Negotiation. I wrote an article titled Stop trying to win your negotiations. Whether it's win, win, win, lose.

I just like, what if it's win, win, win? Like I said early on, everyone wins.

So the. Here's the thing. Win is. It comes, is binary. It has an automatic, automatic second, second component, which is lose. So even when somebody thinks says win, there's still our minds. It's like. It's like black and white. It's like, yes, no. It's like stop and go. It's like it has a natural partner, and that partner is lose. And so even when we use that language, the win language, there's still. It creates this impression that somebody is going to lose. And that pie that we thought was 100, if you get, you know, 10% of it, then I can't have that 10%. Right? But if we start, if we stop thinking about it as that, in that winning kind of way, and we think, how do we make this bigger? Because there's more here than we realize. How do we discover. How do we expand that and discover what that is and create more for each other? Now, not every transaction, not every deal lends itself to that, right? Buying a car is a fairly finite kind of thing. Buying a house has become. We've made it a very specific transactional thing. And so kind of figuring out when to turn on different aspects of negotiation, when to dig deeper, when is it just a simple transaction or when is it something more complex that you can build off of? I mean, my mom, she's bought. She buys cars like once every 18 months, and she has done so for 30 years. And she buys it from the same dealer every single time. She puts like 200,000 miles a year on her car. And so, and so she goes through cars a lot. And so she built a relationship and she drives like three hours to go to the car dealer that she gets it from every year and a half. She. She does that. And so in whoever that deal, whoever that salesperson was who first worked with her was very, very smart in how he built that relationship with her. Because I don't care whether most of us, most people think buying a car is transactional. That salesperson didn't think it was transactional. He knew it was about a relationship. And she has been his customer for 30 years.

I'm so glad you brought that up. And you're going to love one of the things I'm going to ask you very shortly, but I have one more question for this first part and it is, do you want yellow or black?

I'll take yellow. I actually like yellow.

I like yellow too.

This is the wheel of whatever. And you see your question right there. I'm going to ask you.

Not yet, because it's not on there. Because I was designing it to have questions on there and I did a couple of them without it. I go, oh, I can make up whatever I want.

There you go.

And not run the risk of offending anyone if it lands on something they really don't want. Oh, yellow. We'll stop it there. Then.

I thought about it for some fun. That thing has been, like, just very interesting ever since I started the show. But my question for you is.

What would you rather negotiate that you may have not? You've. To my knowledge, you're strictly business negotiations.

Largely. I mean, I've done some other things outside of business too. I've done some divorces and stuff.

So what would you rather negotiate?

A movie rights deal for celebrities like that are completely opposite or a big real estate deal for two large hotel chains?

Which would I rather do? Yes, I'd rather do the first one.

I'd rather do the movie rights. Why?

Yes.

So it's more complex in a lot of ways and it has. And it's less transactional and what happens with the movie rights. And. And I live in la, so I like that aspect of it. My husband works in the industry and so rights are just super complex and they, they like fall into so many different nooks and crannies around. Right. Does, does. If you could have a right to have the TV show and run that, but that doesn't necessarily give you a right to use that same content for a book. And then what do you do in different situations? So it's, it's much more malleable and a little messier, whereas real estate is much more specific, it's more focused, it's more tangible. And I find real estate to be more transactional and I prefer less transactional deals. I like more complexity.

I was just going to say it sounds a lot more complex and it sounds like you enjoy the challenge.

I do, I love the challenge. I'm working on a cannabis deal right now and I'm learning a tremendous amount about the cannabis industry and weaving a bunch of things together about the places that it's been legalized and how that translates into states that are just new to recreational cannabis and thinking about the product mix and who's buying it and the influence of different generations on how the product mix is changing.

And have you always been drawn to the complex, the more complex ones?

I have. I mean, when I was younger. Well, yeah, I have. I mean I started out negotiating almost 30 years ago in professionally, I started out in international mergers and acquisitions. And it doesn't get a lot more complex than that when you're dealing with governments because it was in the telecommunications industry. So I was negotiating with governments, I was negotiating with quasi state owned or state owned entities. And so there was a lot of complexity. And so I think that I've always enjoyed that and that's what drew me to negotiation was that it is, it's this combination of psychology, analysis and contracts. Right. And, and I like all three of those things together. And so that complexity I enjoy.

Excellent. Well, I appreciate for everything you've shared so far. We're going to thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action run. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours, and it's true. And that's why I'm launching my new book@eapublishingmethodbook.com so you can learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what? Don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori. I went from having an idea and.

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Go with promoting my books. Rocio, there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. If you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficcini or Bill Benner.

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Hey, their words, not mine. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get your copy and I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Christine, are you ready to take imperfect action?

I am.

I got three questions for you. 60 second or less answers. The first one is what is the fastest path to the cash?

Fastest path to the cash is to spend wisely.

That's true. It's not how much you make, it's how much you keep.

Invest. Invest wisely.

Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making in the fastest way for them to fix it?

The biggest problem is that people don't ask for what it is that they actually want in life. Yeah, they just don't ask for it. They're afraid of doing that. And the biggest way of fixing it is to figure out not why you're doing that, but how you get more confident asking for what it is that you want.

Excellent. Number three.

What is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

For me, that is all about being willing to renegotiate the nature of your relationship.

I love that you were saying throughout this you prefer the non transactional. And that's what I was talking about. The dealership. This was the question when you said 30 years later. I was like, oh, this is great. Because so many people don't think about that. They're just on the hamster wheel of. I mean, literally.

They'Re on the hamster wheel of how can I get more? How can I get more? How about how can I nurture what I already have?

So that's a whole other thing. But 1, 2, 3. Good. What books would you recommend? Expert Authority World.

So one of my favorite books is Malcolm Gladwell's Talking to Strangers. It's very powerful and in my world, what it reinforces is that sometimes when we meet people, we innately want to trust people. That is our default is to trust people.

But yet when we're in negotiation, we often try not to do that. And so I love that book because it helps kind of find and discusses the blend. One of the books that I just read recently that I really like is called Prisoners of Geography. And people ask me all the time, well, is anything non negotiable? Right. And for me, my values are non negotiable. But what this book taught me is because it's all about geopolitics is that rivers, mountains, waterfalls and oceans are not negotiable, but they are navigable. And so I love how kind of bringing geopolitics into kind of general business discussions and how that influences negotiation and what's non negotiable and what's not.

Excellent. Well, thank you for that. Where would you like people to learn more?

So the best way to find me is to go to our website, which is vennagotiation.com and it's three N's in a row, so it looks a little weird, but it's a Venn diagram. So vennagotiation.com and you can find us there and you can look me up on LinkedIn on any of the social media platforms. We are on all of them, Most of them, I think all of them now. So yeah, you can check me out there and then definitely connect with me on LinkedIn.

Excellent. Well, Christine, it's been a pleasure. I'm so glad we got connected. Thank you for sharing with Expert Authority World.

It's been an honor to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

All right, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 24 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get started now. Once again, that's eapublishing method book.com thanks for listening to today's episode. I would love to know what you enjoyed most from it, if you haven't done so already. I invite you to connect with me on my new LinkedIn. You can go to it directly at eainterviews.com LinkedIn Once again, that's eainterviews.com LinkedIn. Lastly, check out the full eainterviews.com site for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you on the next one.