Hello, my friend, and welcome to another episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for spending time with us today.

It's listeners like you in 181 different countries that have made Negotiate Anything the most popular negotiation and conflict resolution podcast in the world.

I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator,

professor, and the director of the American Negotiation Institute. Before we get started,

I have two quick questions for you. Is negotiation a critical part of what you do? Do you need to

resolve conflict and persuade at work? If you answered yes to both of those questions, visit

our website to learn more about our negotiation workshops. We've traveled the country working with professionals just like you, and we'd love to have the opportunity to work with you too. Check out the link in the description to learn more. Mariana, thanks for joining us today. You're welcome. Great to be here, Kwamey. Yeah, it's great to have you. So how would you get it started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Sure, absolutely.

So I'm Mariana Swallow.

I live in Chicago where my business is also located.

And I am a professional executive public speaking coach.

And I also teach presentation skills workshops in addition to being a professor of business and professional communications at Loyal University in Chicago.

Fantastic. And full disclosure audience, I wanted to have her on the show just so I could get a free consultation here.

Everybody be ready for a master class. I'm excited for this. And so the three

things that we're going to focus on today. First, we're going to talk about the importance of

having the right mindset before these conversations. Next, we're going to talk about the approach

to the conversations and the biggest mistakes people often make. And then we are going to end

the conversation talking about the ask, which is often the most important part and the part people make

mistakes so let's start off with the mindset absolutely so Kwamey when people want to

make a persuasive speech or you know something like a sales The common, the common knowledge around it or the common thought is I have to convince them.

And when you set yourself up thinking that I need to convince something when you're going into a persuasive speaking situation,

what you're really doing there is kind of setting up an adversarial,

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