Welcome to the American Negotiation Institute's podcast, where we will teach you the skills you need to get more out of life.

And now your host, Kwame Christian.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode three of our podcast series.

This is going to be a very exciting episode because it is our first interview episode.

And so in today's interview, I'm interviewing my good friend John Halvastat.

He is a, I guess we could call him a serial entrepreneur. He has his hands in a lot of

different businesses. So John is a realtor. He's also part owner of a real estate investment company

with his brother. He's also part owner of a pharmaceutical company and part owner of a company that builds pipes for semi-trucks.

And so it's really interesting to see how he's able to use his military experience, legal, and

business background to parlay that into business success in other areas.

And of course, what's most fascinating to me is how he's able to use his negotiation skills to achieve business success and manage the critical

relationships in his life. This episode is a lot of fun because not only are you going to get

some great negotiating advice from a successful entrepreneur, you're also going to get some good business advice.

So let's get right into it.

So I am here now with my good friend John Halvestat.

We went to law school together where we dominated the intramural basketball league, winning in our 3L year, or my 3L year. Our greatest combined achievement, I believe. I would say so. I would say so, until we get this house off the market. That'll be the next one. So as you can tell from that, John is also my realtor. He sold us our first house, and now we are getting out of our first house.

And, yeah, John and I go way back.

So if you want to just go ahead and give a little background on you, that would be great.

Yeah, I'm from Salem, Ohio, which is on the east side.

My family's been there a long time, and went to Bulling Green undergrad.

At one point, I wanted to be a history professor, but I spent some time with some grad students there and I definitely decided that that was not necessarily what I wanted to spend my 20s doing. So after a couple fits and starts, I lived all over the country.

I lived in LA, I lived in New York, I lived North Carolina.

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