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 and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiation for Entrepreneurs.

I'm Kwame Christian.

I'm a business lawyer by trade,

but my passion lies in teaching you how you can use negotiation and persuasion to get more of what you

want and how to make the difficult conversations in your life easier. Before we jump into this episode,

I'd like to give a couple of listener shoutouts. I'd like to give a shout out to Amanda from

Pittsburgh and John from St. Louis. Thank you both for reaching out. You know, I love hearing from all of you, so if you haven't yet, please connect with me on LinkedIn. There's a clickable link in the episode description that takes you straight to my LinkedIn page. So just connect and I'll shoot you a message. I really want to know what kinds of topics interest you, and LinkedIn is the

easiest way for me to connect with you. And for those of you who are looking for the free negotiation

guides from previous episodes, like the negotiation prep guide or the introverts negotiation guide,

or the conflict resolution guide, those links are in the description as well. Also, if you get a chance,

send me your negotiation wins. I want to make sure that I can

share those on the podcast. Today we're speaking to my friend David Mariano. David is a director with an

investment bank called Western Reserve Partners, where he helps companies develop and implement

acquisition strategies. David also hosts a podcast called Finance Career Launch, where his goal is to make sure you develop your full potential as a finance professional so you can contribute as much as you can to your organization and, as a result, advance your career.

So in this episode, we talk about his experience negotiating strategic business acquisitions, how to deal with conflict, and how lawyers can sometimes be deal

breakers and what my fellow attorneys can do to be better negotiators. And I know you're going to get

a lot out of this episode. So without further ado, let's jump into the interview. All right, well,

David, thank you for being here today. Yeah, absolutely. Great to be on the show. So how about

we get started with you

telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do? Sure. My day job, I work at a firm

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