THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Slay Every Negotiation w/ Rebecca Zung
Episode Date: August 17, 2021DO YOU HAVE PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE WHO REGULARLY DROP ONE OR MORE OF THESE PHRASES ON YOU? “You interrupted me.” “Just because I didn’t…” “What about your issues?” “What more do you ...want from me?” “You’re the only one who thinks that way.” “You made me…..” If so, you may be dealing with a NARCISSIST. This week, I’m welcoming Rebecca Zung to my show for a revealing discussion on how to deal with narcissists, negotiating better, uncovering the differences between how men and women think, and much more. Rebecca started out with HUMBLE beginnings and has since transformed herself into one a TOP 1% ATTORNEY in the nation, and AUTHOR OF MANY BEST-SELLING BOOKS. While you're reading those be sure to check out her YouTube channel as well! As Rebecca explains, narcissism is beyond UNHEALTHY, and often DIFFICULT TO SPOT. Narcissists have a fragile sense of self and that turns them into expert MANIPULATORS who prey upon certain kinds of people close to them to get what they want. But narcissism is a lot more INSIDIOUS than that. Rebecca has a “SLAY” strategy and a “MANIPULATE THE MANIPULATOR” strategy you can use to ethically negotiate and deal with these kinds of toxic people at work and in your personal relationships. These strategies are easy to understand and put into practice. Narcissists are also fond of FLIPPING THE SCRIPT and putting the blame back on their accusers. Rebecca has will tell you the best way to respond when you’re confronted with people and situations like that as well. If you’re looking for ways to NEGOTIATE your way to a BETTER LIFE, Rebecca’s got some great advice in that area, too. I won’t give it away here, but you MUST listen to one particular nugget of PURE WISDOM Rebecca offers up, in addition to several other tips on how to get the upper hand in all types of negotiations. And if you’re looking for some tips on how MEN AND WOMEN can negotiate better with each other, Rebecca’s got great insights on that as well, including one divorce story involving MILLIONS OF DOLLARS that will blow your mind. You’re going to find Rebecca Zung highly relatable on a lot of levels. 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈 → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ← ▶︎ INSTAGRAM ▶︎ FACEBOOK ▶︎ LINKEDIN ▶︎ TWITTER ▶︎ WEBSITE
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This is the Ed Milach show.
All right, welcome back everybody.
Today's an interesting show because I have a really unique woman on my show.
One is one of the top attorneys in the country.
I'm doing a little background research
on her. I'm finding out this woman was married at 19, drops out of school, has three kids, then goes
back to school, goes to law school, becomes an extremely prominent attorney. But then it's sort of
morphed over this time into an expert. I would call it on negotiating life. And we're going to talk
about a lot of things. We're going to talk about toxic people in your life. We're going to talk
about narcissists in your life. How do I identify them?
A lot of you have them when I was researching the show today. I'm like, well, that front
of mine is somewhere on the spectrum of being a narcissist. That one is, and I wonder
even if I am in some cases, we're going to talk about, you know, how to get what you
want in life, how to be more persuasive, how to be more influential, which is what I
think all of you want. And this woman is uniquely qualified to help you with it. And so I'm really honored to share Rebecca Zung with
everybody today. Rebecca, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
I'm grateful you're here. And I want to thank John Gordon, our mutual friend and Irwin McManus
for connecting the two of us. So, well, I was a lot to cover with you. Let's start out a little bit with
the narcissist thing that you've been talking about lately,
is how to negotiate with a narcissist.
But to me, when I hear narcissists,
there's, correct me if I'm wrong,
I think there's degrees of narcissism in life.
But it's also for me,
it's, a lot of people listen to this
or in different relationships, business relationships,
personal relationships,
and how to identify whether or not this person
is toxic to you,
or just detrimental to your life, or whether or not there are benefit to your life. So,
what is narcissism to start out with, and are there varying degrees of it?
Yeah, I mean to me, a narcissist is a person who has a very fragile sense of self. The person who is the absolute most insecure
person in the world, they have no inner sense of value. So therefore, they have to get all
of their sense of value from external sources, from either the, you know,
adulation, from prestige, from people giving them compliments,
from all of the things that you think about when you think of that.
But, you know, what I call the dark underbelly of that is that,
you know, that control, devaluing, debasing people,
degrading people,
that's the other side of that as well.
So that's the one side of that.
And then the other side of that is that they therefore
have no ability to have any sense of compassion
or care or empathy for other people. And that is because it's
a scarcity mentality to the extreme. If I give to anybody else, therefore I can't have
or I won't have. So that's really what a narcissist is all the way to the end of the spectrum. And as you said, I do believe that all of us,
to varying degrees, have some sense of that. We've all had some feeling of insecurity
at times. We all want to feel seen, heard, and know that we matter that's part of being
human. And so, it's when it becomes pathological. It's when it becomes,
you know, that's the only way that you feel. So brilliant. I want to stay on it because
listen, what's the most important things in our lives is obviously our sense of self. And we,
like as you said, two people, people want to be seen and heard and felt and they want to express
themselves, they want to feel valued. That's healthy. that's okay. But right now, if you're listening to this
or you're watching this, you may be in a relationship
where you're like, is this the one?
Or maybe you're even married,
you're thinking, why are we not happier together?
Maybe it's a business relationship that you have,
people that work with you for you, or are a boss of yours.
And so I want to hone in on this idea that,
because for me, I started to really,
when I'm reading about this, people start flashing.
Well, you know, that, that particular person in my life, man, they are so addicted to attention,
so addicted to getting accolades and admiration externally and we'll do almost anything to
get it, even do things to their own detriment.
So how do we distinguish between the unhealthy and the healthy?
I want to ask you specifically about something.
When I was kind of ranking people that I know,
including myself on this spectrum, so to speak,
because I think there's a point where now
no longer is this person healthy in my life.
They become toxic, there's a line there.
And for me, the other sign of the aggressive narcissist
or the more severe one,
is they also will never take responsibility
for any of their behavior.
They immediately make you think, you're the crazy one.
But what about you?
And they constantly turn the frame and put it back on you.
Everyone right now that knows someone like this is going, I know that person.
Do you think that's where you distinguish the line that this person is unhealthy because
they won't take any responsibility for this addictive behavior for attention and admiration
and accolades is responsibility
one of the quotients we should be looking at.
I mean, I think there's a number of different types of lines and I think it depends on the
type of relationship that you're in with that person as well.
I mean, is it a work relationship?
Is it an intimate relationship?
You know, I think it really kind of depends.
I mean, are you in a business relationship with this person?
Is this person like in your finances?
Are they in your space?
You know, I mean, or is it kind of a more of a casual relationship?
I think it really kind of depends.
You know, how much control do they have over you?
You know, but if you know, you are feeling where
you know, the hair is on the back of your neck
or up, the gut, your gut reaction is not feeling good.
You're feeling like this relationship is not working for you
in some way.
I mean, I know for me, I had a very minor business
with a person, a business relationship
where I had gone into
a business partnership with someone.
Thank God it didn't go very far
and the business didn't really make any money.
But it was enough that it absolutely
made my life completely miserable.
It was a covert narcissist.
And, you know, right from the beginning,
I saw red flags, but I kind of ignored
them because I was like, well, but this person seems so nice. And, but yet I knew that there
were these flags and I let them go. And I thought that I could overcompensate for them. And
I thought that, well, there's these other things that seem good and I I can see you.
Yeah, you know, and I ignored them because I thought that I could make up for them in other
ways.
Yes.
Because I did that, I paid for it so dearly and it ended up to be one of the absolute worst
nightmares of my entire life. And you know, you are most
of the time with these people you know from the beginning. Yeah. That it's not good.
You said something in there Rebecca. I just want to jump in and ask you about it because
to me, you said such a great distinction in business and personal. Personal for me, one
of the things I measure is how much of my energy am I using to have to feed
this person's ego and prop them up.
Right now, if you're in a relationship,
friendship, personal, intimate relationship
with somebody, measure it,
how much of your energy time thinking
goes to having to prop up their ego constantly, right?
And how much energy are you expanding?
And is it a never-ending thing you're doing?
You wanna do that the rest of your life.
Business sometimes, though, to your point, I'm locked in now, and I may need to be dealing with them for a while. Maybe
I do need to exit, but if you can't, you have to deal with someone who's got some form of
narcissism. You have this thing you say that is so brilliant. If you'd cover two of them
at once, one is slay, and the other one is sort of this related is this sort of how
to ethically manipulate the manipulator, which you sort of touch and related is this sort of how to ethically manipulate
the manipulator. Would you sort of touch on that? So I'm in a business relationship. I can't
exit it right now. How do I negotiate and deal with in all different settings? Someone has one of
these forms of narcissism. Yeah, well, I mean, those are kind of both related with each other. Okay. So, I mean, slay is, you know, developing a super strong strategy and creating invincible leverage,
anticipating what they're going to be doing, and then focusing on you and your position and your
case. And this is, if you're having to negotiate with this person, and I call it, and you're ethically manipulating the manipulator throughout the entire
process because these people are
master manipulators.
I always go back to the Malcolm
Gladwell 10,000 hour thing,
where he talks about how it took
10,000 hours to become good at
something.
These people 10,000 hours was like, you know, they hit that at toddler, you know.
I mean, they were doing this long ago, long ago.
They're very good at what they do.
They know exactly how to push your buttons.
They know exactly how to trigger you.
They've been reading you from the
beginning. And you know, so a lot of times people beat themselves up over like, how did
I fall into this thing? How did I fall prey to this? Well, they know how to read you. They
know how to, you know, manipulate you. So you have to learn how to take what it is that motivates them, which is their need for narcissistic supply,
which is anything that feeds their ego
and use that to manipulate them in order to create
leverage.
I mean, this is within the context
of actually negotiating with them for people
who are negotiating with them. Well, everything's a negotiation, though. And so every single
day, you may have a boss who's got a former narcissism. And so what she's talking about with
slay is being very aware, right? And being cognizant of, listen, oftentimes, you have to,
there's got to be compliments. There's got to be feeding them, and then sticking in there what you need or that you want.
Right, so a good example of that, not to cut you off, but I want to give you, please.
I want you to, I want to give a good example of what exactly you're talking about.
So a good example of that would be something that I call bartering.
So bartering in the real world is,
you know, an exchange of goods and services, you know, without money. So what does value look
like to a narcissist? Well, it's adulation. That is the great A-diamond level supply for narcissists. So in the narcissism world, supply is what they feed
on. It's their lifeblood. It's their food. It's their oxygen. It's anything that feeds their
ego. But within that world of narcissism, there is a hierarchy of this supply. So, you know,
there's the good food. There's, you know, that prime rib of
beef or whatever, you know, there's the great A. And then there's, you know, like the scraps
of food or whatever. So, like the prime, prime rib or the good food or whatever is the
adulation. It's, you know, and so, if you want something, you might want to say, you might
want to give them some adulation. So, you might want to say something like, if you want something, you might want to say, you might want to give them some adulation.
So you might want to say something like,
if you want them to get, you know,
do the quickbooks or something.
Hey, can you do the quickbooks?
You are so much better at it than I am.
You know, you are way better at math and figures
and you'll get it done so much faster. I'm terrible with that.
And then you, like, you beef up their ego, they'll like want to do it. Yeah, you're right. I am so
much better at it. They get motivated. They'll get it done. You get something you want and everybody is
happy. And, and, you know, so a lot of people think, but I don't, I hate them.
And now you're playing into their ego, blah, blah, blah.
Well, but if you want them to do something,
then you've got to like think about what it is
that's going to motivate them, right?
You may have a, you may be in a situation
where you say, well, manipulates a strong word.
Oftentimes manipulating somebody to do things for their own good.
I've had to manipulate family members of mine to go see a doctor.
And then they found out they had cancer.
Thank God I had the ability to put the words together, the emotions together to persuade them
to go do something for their own benefit.
So you may not be able to escape some of these situations that you're in.
And so these art things that are important, you do need to learn how to do them.
And now I wanna ask you about confronting someone.
And again, guys, there's degrees of narcissism.
There's degrees of being self-centered, there's degrees of ego.
We all have a little bit of it all the way to this point
where it's not really healthy.
And we're gonna talk in a minute, by the way,
we're gonna talk about how to get what you want
regardless of who you're interacting with.
But what would your recommendation be about,
you are interacting with someone who is behaving and acting out
in a way that doesn't serve them or you, business or personal.
Is there any upside in confronting a narcissist directly
about their behavior, or do you believe that that's
completely useless use of energy and words?
Well, I mean, there's no upside to, you know,
going up to them and saying, you're a narcissist
and I'm referring more about their behavior.
Hey, listen, this thing you're doing here, here, and her doesn't serve you or I.
Or if you've already identified them as somebody who's a narcissist, are they not going to
own it in any way, shape or form anyways?
No, you're not going to get them to say, you're right, I'm so sorry, blah, blah, blah,
you're totally wasting your breath and your energy by trying to get them to do that.
You might as well go pound sand or whatever.
I mean, I think this is a important Rebecca, just because I think people are constantly doing
this with people in their lives that are this way, like, hey, listen, just change this, just change this.
And then what they like to do is they like to turn the lens
and go, but you, you, and you.
So that's the other part I wanted to ask you.
They start sending you a list of the 18 things
you're doing wrong.
How do you recommend you reply or respond to somebody
who's got that personality type, who's then sort of,
I wouldn't call it attacking,
but turning the lens on to you,
do you recommend you reply specifically
to all the things they're saying you're doing wrong
or how would you best reply
to somebody business or personal?
I mean, what I recommend is,
a lot of times I say, you know,
you wanna reply in a way that's very, very, very specific.
So for example, they've sent a very, very long email.
And a lot of times it's calculated to trigger you in a certain way.
And, you know, it might be 18 pages long.
And there may be one line in there
that you have to respond to.
Like, you know, what time are we gonna meet on Wednesday
or something like that?
And that's actually, when you distill it down,
that's the only thing you actually need to respond to.
And so you can, and a lot of times people are like, but I need to respond to it because
I don't want the judge to be seeing this.
I don't want this to be used down the road and court.
I don't want this to be some trial exhibit.
I need to defend myself, you know, all that sort of thing.
So what I will say is you can respond with something like this.
Thank you for your email.
I am in receipt of it.
I deny all of the allegations herein,
and we can meet at 3 p.m. on Wednesday sincerely.
It's it.
So, reply to the smallest possible most necessitated item
in there, whether that's personal email legal business or otherwise.
That's your advice. I've received it. I deny it. Here's, you know, the only other thing I need to respond to.
Really good. All right. So that's dealing with them. Now let's talk about dealing with our lives.
So the first thing you wrote was about, you know, negotiating as if you matter.
And so I want to talk about now about negotiating our lives
and getting what we want in life,
because that's ultimately where everybody's listening
to my show, right?
They want more happiness, more money, more success,
more peace of mind, more whatever it might be.
So a broad question to begin with,
what are some of the keys you believe in life
to negotiating the life that you want?
What are some of the keys you would suggest?
The best lessons that I ever learned in myself
is I learned this from one of my business,
well, the main business coach that I've had
who's now become one of my best friends.
She taught me something, I'm gonna tell you
what the lesson is and I'm gonna tell you
what the story was.
She taught me that people will think
what you tell them to think.
Yes.
And I get to tell you a story of how she taught me this.
And it's actually a great lesson for negotiating,
but it's also a great lesson for life.
So what happened was I had been practicing law
for about eight years, and then I left the practice
of law for about two years to go be a financial advisor,
wealth advisor.
I spent two years with Morgan Stanley.
I got my Series 7, my 66.
And I thought, oh, I'll have an easier lifestyle.
I had a little child at the time.
My daughter, who's now 19, was young.
And I was like,
oh, you know, I'll have a better, better hours, which, you know, didn't really work out that way.
So after about two years, a friend of mine was leaving her law practice, and she was moving
out of the area. And she said, I've got these clients. If you want, you can take over my client base
and start your own practice.
So I was like, okay, well, people are not going to be dropping law practices in my lap on a regular basis. I'm taking this opportunity. So I decide to take over this law practice. And I'm talking to my
business coach. And I was like, the people in this town
are gonna think I am such a flake.
Like, you know, this girl is a lawyer
and she's a financial advisor
and now she's back to being a lawyer.
Like, this girl does not know what she wants.
And my business coach said,
people will think what you tell them to think.
And she said you can tell them to think that you're a flake
and you don't know what you want.
Or you can tell them to think that you're the only lawyer
that has a financial background.
So you are actually more qualified than any of the
other lawyers in town because you know you've got this financial background and what other family
law attorney has that. So good. And I was like oh yeah I guess I could do that. And so I started to kind of hold myself out as that.
And I can't tell you how many people ended up hiring me
because that's how I held myself out.
I love this.
I have to tell you something.
I have to acknowledge something when wisdom is preached.
So I just, I got brilliant.
And just last night I was mentoring.
I have a financial, one of the business I'm afraid
was a financial firm. I was mentoring a very young guy last night. And I was mentoring. I have a financial, one of the business I'm afraid it was a financial firm.
I was mentoring a very young guy last night and I told him, I just want to second what you
said.
I said, listen, most people are busy with their own lives.
You can create the story.
If you tell them what to believe, they're going to believe it 98% of the time.
I said, I learned this because later in my career, I ended up working with a series of doctors.
The doctor said to me, he said, add, listen, when you're dealing with doctors, it's different
than dealing with other clients. We're really busy. We just want you to
tell us what we need to do, what we need to think and let us do it.
So we can go back to working with our patients. And I said,
really, you want me to kind of, he goes, tell us, tell us and ask
us simultaneously, say things like, obviously, we need to take
these steps. And you create the frame, pre frame, what you're
going to tell me, tell me what this means, then mean it. And
then when you're done, tell me. Tell me what this means, then mean it, and then when you're done,
tell me what you just told me and what it meant.
So pre-frame, frame it, and then post-frame it.
So I started to do it.
And everyone was buying.
And I said to him about six months later, I said, you know what I found out?
It's not just doctors, it's everybody.
I should have been doing this the entire time with everything in my life,
pre-framing what this means for everybody, then framing it, and then what I'm done saying,
this is what you just heard and what it meant, and you create the meaning.
And so this is something forever.
You get no less than this entire TV show.
What Rebecca just told you is absolute truth on how to get what you want in your life.
It's key number one in your life.
Let me ask you about this number two.
When I listen to you and I've watched your content,
so Rebecca's got content that's very diverse.
She's got stuff on divorce, she's got stuff on negotiation,
she's got stuff on narcissism,
she's also been a TV personality
which you'll get interviewed when a high profile
person's going through something.
And so she's learned to communicate in different settings.
One-on-one, financial, courtroom, television, podcast,
you're an unbelievable communicator.
How much of persuasion for you has just been your personal certainty level, just actual
certainty in the way you deliver a message?
Are you conscious of that or was that just sort of like a natural gift you had when you
started practicing law?
My father used to say, my father was from China actually and he came over here when he was 14
and he went to Columbia University undergrad and medical school and you, he was the only Chinese guy actually in those days. And, you know, he's a big deal.
And he used to say to me, whatever you say, say it with authority and people will
believe you.
And he just kind of, you know, groomed me that way.
Like, even if you don't know the answer, don't mind me,
just say, I don't know.
I will get you the answer, but you say with authority.
Like, and so I don't know.
I just think that he was, and even as a girl, like, he just was like,
always believed in me in that way.
And I was really, really fortunate to have a father who was, who believed in me in that way and I was really, really fortunate to have a father who
was, who believed in me in that way. I think there's things Rebecca, I think some people, I watch
this on my show all the time, it's fascinating to me that certain people are great at something
and they're almost unaware of their greatness at it. And I think this is the case with you.
You have a massive degree of certainty when you communicate. It's almost like you have a style when you speak. It's almost like, and I mean, this
is a compliment. There's a way in which you deliver a message. My audience is going to
nod when I say this. Do you have a style of communicating? It's almost like there's
a tone to it that you're almost an idiot if you don't believe what I'm saying right now.
That's almost what it sounds like. It's that depth of certainty. It's not arrogance. It's not condescending, but it's an expression
of certainty that's almost like you're, you just don't get it if you don't agree with
me. That's what it sounds like.
Well, I appreciate that. I mean, I certainly haven't always felt that way, though. I mean,
you know, for people that have followed me, you know, they know that I've
certainly had my share of, you know, stumbles in my life, you know, I got married at 19 the first
time. I had three kids by the time I was 22. I dropped out of college. I got divorced. I went back to law school at night.
I met my husband.
My current husband in law school.
I got married again.
I had another child.
I have four kids.
So I certainly have, I feel like I've
had my share of bootstrapping and getting, you know,
where I need to be.
You know, I was bullied as a kid for being half Asian.
I talk a lot about that, you know,
I've had a deal with these narcissists in my life.
And, you know, I definitely have been,
I've tried to be as authentic as I can
to so that people understand that
it hasn't always come easy for me.
You know, I've definitely had to deal with my own struggles
for sure.
Because I want people to understand
like I'm a human being too.
And if I could do it, anyone can do it.
It's amazing what you've accomplished.
I mean, I don't, everyone, it just flew by, but this is a woman who's married at 19,
three kids, drops out of school.
And you fast forward, Bob Shapiro writes the forward to her book, one of the most powerful
influential attorneys of all time.
I've met Bob a few times, founded LegalZoom, she's television personality, she's a sought
after, she's one of the sought after experts in the world on negotiation.
And it's a remarkable journey.
And I'm curious, have you done anything specifically
that you would share with us to work on yourself confidence?
Because you are at least externally a very strong,
very confident woman.
But now I'm picturing this little girl
who's half Asian getting bullied at school.
I'm picturing this mom running around the house with three screaming babies at any given time.
It in her early 20s, probably not in the best marriage at that time.
You know, I'm picturing this, you know, precious lady at those times of her life.
And then you flash forward and we have what we have in front of us right now.
What have you done to change you? Change your confidence? Oh, I mean, I always joke like that, you know, like I never leave my thoughts on supervised.
Whoa, whoa, very good. What do you mean by that?
Um, you know, I try to make sure that I very much control the input of my thoughts, you know, by listening to the right audio
books, you know, just always making sure I'm working on self-development and surrounding
myself with the right people, defending my light with my life at all times.
Can you say that again?
What did you say there?
Say that again, please.
Oh, it's one of my mantras.
I defend my light with my life.
I know it is, but I want them to hear it.
So what do you mean when you say that?
You know, I believe that I know.
I'm not going to say I believe.
I know that we are beings of energy
and that we are vibrational and you know, beings and we,
I mean, you know, I talked about this with John Gordon. I mean, it's so funny. I'd read
the energy bus years ago. And then when Irwin introduced us, I was like, you know, I know
I must have manifested that because I had read his book so long ago. And, you know, I'm very, very conscious
about keeping my vibrational energy at a certain level
so that I'm always attracting
because I know that like attracts like
and that you have to keep your vibrational energy
at a certain level.
Otherwise, I'm conscious of it, you know, dipping
or negative thoughts coming into my life, I think,
well, you better get rid of that unless you want more of that coming in, you know, so how
can I pivot this right now?
What can I be listening to?
What can I be looking at?
What can I do to be pivoting that?
It's not that I never, never have bad thoughts not that I never have bad thoughts,
or I never have bad people,
or I never have dark times, or whatever.
I mean, everybody does,
because we are human beings.
I'm just conscious of it now.
I get, I'm aware of when it happens,
and I have an arsenal of tools that I use to go to to to combat it now.
I love it. See awareness of our thoughts helps them lose their power over us. And it's such a
critical key that you've just said. Just being aware of your thoughts helps the negative ones lose
their power over you. I just interviewed an MMA fighter named Dustin Porier and I said, because it comes to emotions.
The way the world works, everybody just so you kind of understand how you can change
what she's describing is, it's not the events in our life that define it, our lives.
It's the meaning we attach to them.
So, what happens is an event takes place, a conversation, a meeting, a failure, a setback,
whatever you think it is.
You attach a meaning to it, that gives you an emotion.
And based on an emotion, you take an action. So if you can go all the way back and attach
the right meaning to an event, that will change the emotion you experience and change the action
you take. And I was asking this fighter, he just beat Conor McGregor, I said, do you get scared
and have anxiety and worry before you get into the octagon, he goes every time. Still fearful for
my life, afraid, worried. He said,
those thoughts never go away, but he said, they do become more familiar. And he becomes more familiar
with those emotions, more familiar with those thoughts, and then he's in control of them.
They're not in control of him. You don't have to believe everything you think everybody.
And this idea that Rebecca just gave you, that is absolute truth, that your vibrational
frequency, the energy level that you're moving out in your life is deeply affected by the emotions you're
experiencing and the meanings you attach.
So please be conscious of that.
She's one trillion percent right about that.
I'm curious because you actually are a woman and about 65 percent of my audience are
female is getting what you want, negotiation influence, is that
gender neutral, or are there some differences that impact women that they need to be conscious
of in negotiating what they want in any area of their life, including just the terms of their
life that they want?
That is such a good question. And because the majority of my negotiating experience in a formal setting
was in a high net worth divorce context, I have a lot of data actually in this. And so I'm going to
I'm going to actually kind of use that in my answer. And I've represented billionaires,
high net worth people, CEOs,
all celebrities, all sorts of people.
And so what I'm going to give you is,
I think, pretty good data.
I've represented thousands of people in both
genders in all walks of life. And here's the thing. Men are actually much better at separating
their emotions from the transaction at the time of the negotiation.
At the time of the negotiation itself, they look at the negotiation as a business deal.
And they can literally just, okay, here's what we're dealing with right now.
At the time of the negotiation for a woman,
because of the way our brains are wired,
there's all kinds of stuff going on in the brain.
You know, we are wired up that our emotions
are actually attached to everything that we do.
It's how we are built. It's in a lot of ways a very good thing about women.
It makes us horrible at negotiating in a lot of ways. And I'm saying this as a woman. And so in a
divorce setting, for example, the woman is sitting in front of a husband or
a soon to be ex-husband thinking, does and it means something to you that I raised your
children or gave up my life for you or did all these things for you. And the man is just literally going,
how much is this going to cost me?
And that's it.
He's not seeing that, all those other things.
He's just not.
Not at that moment.
Not to say he's not gonna go home and not think about,
geez, I'm sad because my marriage is over whatever, but he's not thinking about it
at that moment. They just have the ability to put emotions in a different box
at that time. It's just how men are built compared to how women are built.
Would your rights to women be to be more cognizant
of trying to minimize emotion in that business environment
or in negotiation?
So how I have handled this for women,
for all people, is preparation really is the key.
And so how much you prepare it, you know, prior
to really, really helps a lot by having, you know, the research, you've done the research
for both sides. You've taken a look at what your risk assessment is, you know, should
I move forward with this? What is my best case scenario?
What is my worst case scenario?
What will my first offer be?
What is my walkaway point?
What is my leverage?
When should I present it?
Where should the negotiations take place?
Now can I keep my emotions out of it?
And the more you can do all of that kind of preparation,
before you even walk into the room,
the less emotion you will feel that,
that, you know, on the day of the actual negotiation.
That's really good.
I believe that's true for both,
but if you are more emotionally inclined,
if you're a man who's got, you know,
more emotionally inclined,
or if you're a woman, and in your case inclined or if you're a woman and in your case,
you're telling me that that's typically the case
that women will attach more emotion to something,
preparation does reduce emotion.
So it's a sales thing.
I'm anticipating what the arguments are gonna be.
You know, anticipating, hey, listen,
the argument from the other side
is probably going to be this.
And a lot of times what I tell people to do is I,
you know, maybe right out of the gate,
they, I'm anticipating you are going to argue this.
And here's why your argument doesn't have merit.
Like, you know, bring it right up and shoot it down
because that will take the wind out of their sales.
Sometimes that's a great strategy.
And by the way, when you're talking about negotiation to me, that's sales and marketing too.
So for those of you that are, you're going well, negotiation has applied to me.
Every sale you're doing is a negotiation.
So taking objections away early that they were going to give you minimize system,
preparation reduces your emotion.
Highest vibrational frequency is the most influential.
Most certain person influences the less certain person
in almost every conversation in life,
whether that's marriage, you and your kids.
My daughter's getting a car today.
She wasn't supposed to get a car for two weeks.
She's paying for it.
She was more certain she was gonna pay for that sucker
than I was that she wasn't,
and she's driving today to get that car.
So even in parent-daughter relationships,
the most certain person influences the less.
So these apply across the board.
I want to flip the script on you now, though.
So that's what women should be doing.
For the men that are listening to this, if you're going into a negotiation with a woman,
so now I want you to represent the men, take your legal hat and now you're representing
the man, this could be a sales call, a boardroom, a business negotiation, a courtroom, whatever
it might be.
If you're a man and you're going to be interacting
with a woman, it sounds to me like you think
sometimes those negotiations are different
because of the way that you believe they're wired
among taking your word for it and your data.
What advice would you give to a man
who's negotiating with a woman?
Well, sometimes you do need to be a little bit more
compassionate and a little bit more sensitive.
I actually had, I have a really
interesting story for you here. I was representing a guy who may or may not have been a narcissist,
by the way. He was, you know, owned one of the largest development companies in the state at the time. And we were at the end of a very long day. He was looking at
paying a lot of money in Alamoni over the course of the lifetime of the Alamoni. It would have ended
up to be several million dollars. And at the end of the night, the mediator came into the room and
said, I have a very odd request. The wife said that she will wave alimony completely
if he will go over into the room and sit with her alone
and apologize to her sincerely for the way
that he treated her throughout the marriage.
And do you know that he wanted to say no?
He was like, no, I'm not going to do it.
He was like, no, I'd rather pay the alimony.
And I'm his lawyer thinking, oh, here, for sure, he's coming back at me, you know, next
week, going to be pissed off at me for not making him do this.
So I'm like, no, you're going over there.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
Did he?
So I kicked his butt and made him go over there and do it.
And so he went over there and he apologized.
And she actually did.
She waved out on it.
It was like, that's crazy.
Yeah.
That's wacky.
See, I think that a lot of people in sales or marketing,
or if you're a personal trainer, whatever it is, I think
too many people are one trick ponies.
They can attract one type of person.
They can win negotiations with one type of person.
And that limits your ability to scale your business, scale your life, be influential.
I know as a young man, most of people that liked how I talked, spoke, got involved with
me.
We're young to Stosterone Field, former athletes, competitive type crazy people.
And as I got a little further along in my life and my business career, I started to become
rather more conscious of what you've described, which is that expressing other parts of my
own personality, upping my game, being able to express emotions that resonate with people
that are older than me, younger than me, wired differently than me, different gender than me, different sexual preference than me,
different faith than me. And that's to the extent that you begin to be conscious of that,
like Rebecca's saying, that gives you influence in your life. And to me,
the influence if you're a good person is the difference you're making in the life. So if you
really want to make a difference in the world, you've got to get good at what she's describing.
Just such good stuff.
By the way, I want to ever forget that story.
That's super good.
Yeah.
By the way, that lady was crazy.
It's like how much is an apology worth to you?
Is it worth $2 billion?
Oh, but it's like an awful lot.
And so on that, I'm going to shift back for a second.
I'm just curious about this.
I'll just have all is one thing to me.
It's just life. It's just dealing with humans, right? Just to me, the reason I do the show, the reason I'm going to shift back for a second, because I'm just curious about, I'll just have all as one thing to me. It's just life, it's just dealing with humans, right?
Just to me, the reason I do the show, the reason I'm,
I'm a curious person.
I surround my people, people I spend a lot of time,
well, what are your friends like?
I would say in general, my friends are just curious people.
You know, not all of them are wealthier, famous,
are successful, or none of that stuff.
I mean, some are, some aren't.
What have they been common?
They're interesting, they're curious.
They want to expand how they
understand themselves and other people in life. And so that's why like today,
so fascinating for me, but this idea of these degrees of narcissism. And I want
to ask you this because I think it's important for people to know, you could
be negotiating with a narcissist. You could be selling to a narcissist. You could
be servicing an account for a borderline narcissist. You could be selling to a narcissist. You could be servicing an account for a borderline narcissist.
You could be in a relationship with one.
Are there signs with a narcissist of any degree where you can see them about the snap?
They're going to go into full mode.
It's brewing, it's brewing.
We all feel this with people we're connected to that have these tendencies.
It's like I can sense them getting more and more a certain way it's coming. We all everyone right now knows
exactly what I'm talking about. Are there signs you can look for for the snap, so to speak?
Yeah, I mean, it's like all of their, their go to is just start to get more. They start
going through their bag of tricks. So that, you know, when you start to
like get stronger and they start to realize that you're kind of on to them, they'll start
to, you know, come on too much stronger with the love bombing and all of their charm,
charm, charm. Okay, that's not working. So then they start to like kind of flood you,
flood you, flood you with like,
you know, you better, you better do that, you know, or the projection deflection, you
know, lying, denying, you know, but, but more strong, more strong, more strong. And then
when that's not working, then, then it's the rage, you know, the threats, the this, the that, like, you know, longer, stronger, louder, you know, but it becomes much stronger
and more intense than it ever has been in the past.
And you just start to see it like they start to make mistakes.
And actually, I did a video on the Hugh Grant mini series The Undoing. I don't
know if you have seen that, but it's a great, actually, a great example of how he, that guy
was totally a malignant narcissist, but how he starts to become undone. And he really
starts to make mistakes. And he starts to blame people, and he starts to do that.
I don't want to give too much away for people who haven't seen it.
But they start to become like outlandish.
They start to make mistakes.
They start to do things.
And that's actually where they really, you start to actually get some good evidence
against them if you're in a case,
you know, with them. But I always
tell people they are the worst
right before they're ready to
give up because that is when you
start to see the collapse, but you
kind of have to get through the
worst of it before that happens because they do have to
go through that period before they're ready to give up. I think everybody should just be listening
to what we're talking about here. And, you know, let's just be real, you know, if you're having to
deal with this level of predictability, because when the narcissist is going to need to explode,
they begin to lie more, they begin to project more, they begin to blame other people more.
It's their MO, they're never gonna look at themselves
and go, you know what, you're right, I apologize,
I made a mistake, I'll try to do better
and do it sincerely.
And so, if you're in a personal relationship
where this is a tendency, it's not one you should be in.
Long-term, the main thing is exhausting.
This is not gonna change the rest of your life.
And so, you're best to try to find an exit.
If you're in a business relationship,
you're best to use the strategies
that Rebecca's teaching here today
on how to deal with it and navigate it
with a mindset of eventually getting out of that dynamic
if you can.
And so I'm very grateful for all the info today.
I might have a couple questions about
how you've made your life magnificent.
Because although I think there's two types of people.
I think there's people who say inspiring things and then there's inspiring people.
Very rarely is somebody both.
And in my mind, you're both.
In my mind, you say very inspiring, very valuable things that no one else is saying.
Like people have listened to the show today.
This is not a normal show you've listened to you've not heard this type of content anywhere else
So she's that but then she is also inspiring her life is inspiring and so I want to ask you
If someone was listening to this Rebecca and they said
You know, I'm not in the exact same situation you were when you were 19 or 22 years old
But I am not where I want to be I am not living the exact same situation you were when you were 19 or 22 years old, but I am not where I
want to be. I am not living the life that I deserve right now. And I want out of it. I want to change
it. I'd like to someday be on a show like you're doing right now saying that's my old story. And this
was the new one that I built. How do I get from this story I'm in that I'm not happy in to the
story that I want
to be in like you did?
What would be just a few of the pieces of advice you would give to that person just to
start to change that story and change their life?
You know, I always say that the only difference between people who are successful and the people
who are not is really just one word and that is execution.
And I know that sounds, it may sound harsh to some people, but it's, I don't mean it
to sound harsh, but the really, the difference between the Ed Mylads and, you know, anybody
else in the world is just, you do what you say you're going to do
and just pick something small.
It doesn't even have to be anything big.
But, you know, I would just start with small things.
Do small, just little lists, just a tiny thing
that you're going to accomplish today. just a little list, just a tiny thing
that you're going to accomplish today.
Whether it's drinking four glasses of water today, you know, whatever it is, and actually do it.
And pick whatever it is that you're going to do and actually do it. And you know, pick whatever it is that you're going to do and actually do it. And then when you
find yourself that, you know, you're actually executing on the things that you're saying you're going to do,
you will find that you will actually start covering ground in your life. And if there's something that you really want to do in your life,
you know, when I decided that I was going to go back to law school,
I had no money.
I was making $26,000 a year teaching in her city school in Florida.
I had $0 and I had three kids and I went 100% on student loans to school and that's what I did
and you know I figured it out and so you know you can do it. You just figure it out.
I'm picturing this woman back then and then I'm looking literally at you.
It's incredibly inspiring for me. Just even that decision. There had to be a day
where the kids are there. There's three kids. Everyone thinks you're out of your damn mind, right?
And you go, I'm going to go back to law school. I mean, and then you went.
When I love the word decide, like I always think I'm gonna write a book about,
you know, the power of a decision,
like the deciding factor,
because, you know, the word decide,
decide actually means, you know, to cut off or to kill.
Like, decide is, you know, like,
there can't be another option.
Like, you have to just decide in your mind,
like this is it, this is where you're going,
this is the plan, this is it.
The, I wanna unpack a couple things
as she said, never went about decisions.
I love truth.
I love when someone says something on my show
that matches up with my own personal experience,
and I just wanna always like double stamp and validate it,
and it's just true.
You're one decision away from changing your life.
You're one new relationship, one decision, one person,
one shift away.
That's just a fact.
You know what her and I have that maybe you don't quite yet?
Just made that decision.
It was one decision at one point.
And this notion that she said a few minutes ago
about just start small and keep this promise you make to yourself is huge
because if you're not living the life you want right now, you're not feeling the emotions
you want is what you're really saying. You're feeling scared, you're feeling fearful,
you're feeling depressed, you're feeling out of control. That's because you have not built
that self-confidence. Self-confidence is the process of keeping the promises you make
to yourself and getting control over things you can control whether it's making your bed,
drinking that water, making a certain amount of
context, getting up and working out, you know, a certain anything you do.
Why pick something small?
Why do you recommend that?
Because you can control that.
Pick the smallest possible things and do them and you begin to stack
this self confidence so you can do the bigger things.
You don't start out by going to make a million dollars.
You start out by going, I'm going to make my bed by six o'clock today.
And when you begin to do that, you go, I can trust me. I do the things I say I'm going to make a million dollars. You start out by going, I'm going to make my bed by six o'clock today. And when you begin to do that, you go, I can trust me.
I do the things I say I'm going to do.
And then you point your will and your spirit at that next thing like a weapon, and you begin
to magnetize it because you have a habit of doing the things you say you're going to
do.
So it's incumbent upon you to pick easy, small things first, but you got to do one of
the thing everybody.
And then she's going to give you a gift that's going to attach to this.
You have to when you're doing it, be intentional about it and then give yourself emotional
credit.
Wow, I did what I said I was going to do, put it in the bank.
You can't just do it and be oblivious to it.
I made the phone calls.
I said I was going to say, put it in the bank.
I drank the water.
I said I was going to drink.
I did it, put it in the bank and you start stacking paper in the bank account of yourself
confidence and pretty soon you're rich. put it in the bank and you start stacking paper in the bank account of your self-confidence.
And pretty soon you're rich.
And then you can spend that capital on bigger things.
Does that make sense to everybody?
So that's brilliance what she's told you.
So connected to that, you also get where Rebecca's gotten in life by being generous, by
being given.
So you have like, you want to do, you're just a gift you would give if they went to your
website today, right? Isn't there some gift you wanted to do for the audience
today that can connect them with you and also improve their life? So tell them what that
is.
Yeah, so go to winmynegotiation.com. I have a, it's a free crush my negotiation prep
worksheet. So I have one just for your audience today.
So winmynegotiation.com forward slash ed dash or backup.
It's just for your audience.
That's so awesome.
One more time.
Give it to us again.
Give it to us again.
So it's winmynegotiation.com.
It's a free ebook.
And it's winmynegotiation.com, forward slash, ad dash, Rebecca. And it's 15 pages,
it's free ebook, it's absolutely incredible, it will help you win your, your negotiation.
It's got all kinds of amazing, amazing stuff in there. All the stuff I was telling you
about how to actually look at both sides,
research both sides, how to do your risk assessment, all that stuff is in there.
Thank you for that. I think I just think you're awesome. I just think you're awesome.
I want to see more and more women begin to really influence this space that I just call influence.
And you bring something unique to the table based on your experience.
And Rebecca's case, extremely unique experience, extremely special life journey.
And so Rebecca, thank you for today.
I loved it.
It was so good.
I was just really, really grateful you were here.
Thank you for having me.
It was awesome.
So hey everybody, share the show.
We're the fastest growing show on planet Earth,
probably in the entire universe.
I'm pretty sure, at least on Earth, I'm real sure.
So share this with people that you care about.
You want to improve their life.
You want to grow, you want to contribute more,
want to get more fit, want to be happier,
want to be more successful, want to be richer
in every area of their life. Just want to be inspired., want to be happier, want to be more successful, want to be richer in every area of their life.
Just want to be inspired.
They want mentorship and connection, share it with them.
And I just want to thank all of you for listening today or watching.
Subscribe to all the platforms, YouTube, all the audio platforms.
Just say, God bless you to all of you and max out your life.
This is the Ed Milach Show.