The way I look at negotiation, it's anytime you're having a conversation and somebody wants something.

That's a negotiation. My mentality is that the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations.

And so for me, I realize I could make my life better one difficult conversation at a time.

You're listening to the Storybrand podcast based on Donald Miller's best-selling book, Building a Story Brand.

The story brand framework is made up of seven key elements.

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Now let's dive in with your host, Donald Miller.

Kwame, you're one of the world's leading negotiation experts.

How in the world did you become that?

What's your story on how you learn to negotiate? And I'm also curious in the same vein, how did you learn to love it? Because in order to write books on these subjects and teach on this subject, it wasn't just you were good at it. You actually love to explore it when to teach it to others. How did you become a negotiation guy?

Well, a lot of people get into the space because they were really good at it. I got into it because I was really bad at it. How did you discover you were bad at it? What happened? So I was a people pleaser my whole life. And so for a long time, I was just struggling to figure out how to get over this. It's such a silly example, but it stays with me. So there was one time when I was in college, my friends, we were car pulling. So I had a car. My parents bought me the car and they said, listen, you can do whatever you want with the car, but we just have one rule. You have to wear a seatbelt. No matter what, you have to wear a seatbelt. Everybody has to wear a seatbelt. I'm like, okay, that's fair, right? Yeah.

So then all of my friends were in the car, and they just did not want to wear their seatbelts. I was like, guys, I'm not moving this car until we wear the seatbelts, right? And it seems so silly, it's so trivial, especially considering like... It says a lot about you, though. Right, but I'm like, I'm not going to let this happen.

And so in the past, that's one of, I'm not going to let this happen.

And so in the past, that's one of those things I would have just let go, said, okay, it's whatever. But not this time. And it became a standoff, Donald. You would have in the past let it go, but this time you didn't. Was this a part of honoring your parents or doing the right thing, moral conscience? You know what? now that you say that, you're not going to let these people disrespect me. It's both. It was primarily the, just the realization of, like, listen, I made a promise to my parents. I'm going to adhere to that. That's the one thing. But then also, now this was me for the first time learning how to assert myself, just being willing to. And I think that's one of the interesting things, because a lot of times we look for advice on how to speak up for ourselves, how to

have tough conversations. But a lot of times you don't need some kind of framework or anything. You just

need to do it. And we're trying to avoid the discomfort. But sometimes when it comes to life,

there is an inescapable difficulty with what is required. And so just being able to just stand in that awkwardness for 15 minutes until they relented and said, okay, we're going to let you, we're going to do it. That was the difference between what I would have done in the past and what I actually did this time. Okay, let's get into negotiation. I've got two tracks that I want to go. One is, but I'm going to go the first one

first. How did this instance in the car, and I realized that's too concise to match reality, but

how did that instance in the car help you begin to research negotiation.

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