I’m negotiating the final terms in 30 mins. Can we talk?
It was a 9 figure deal.
The most important deal of the founder’s career because it was the first to get to this stage in their new business.
Up until this point, cash had only been going in one direction – out.
They needed this to land for the business, for their family, for themselves.
And the terms of the deal were getting squeezed. Hard.
What was said in this conversation mattered. And how it was said mattered.
It was game time.
Starting out
We’d caught up 11 months earlier.
I’m going to quit my corporate role in 3 months and start my own business.
I have an opportunity and now is the time.
Can you help?
Our coffee arrived as we dug into it further.
The results were clear.
I need to finish my current role strong, leave graciously and retain the relationships because that’s who I am and the world is far too small to burn bridges.
I need to start the new business before I finish the job so I can hit the ground running.
I need to juggle the workload through the transition out.
And then I need to make this business work – I reckon I have 12 months runway.
I asked why they were starting the journey.
I’ve always loved creating things and this business would be a way to do that – the business itself and what we’d be doing with our clients. And I want to have control of my time to spend with my family and friends in the day to day and the adventures we love doing together.
But it wasn’t all roses. There was real challenge along the path ahead.
There was a family to feed, school fees to pay. And while they had a plan, they’d never run their own business before. Didn’t have a website, email address or even a name for the new company yet.
I asked about their energy to do all of this.
I’ve begun some good habits like intermittent fasting and regular gym. I’d love your help to maintain and build on those.
I asked what they thought might get in the way.
The main roadblock wasn’t a lack of information. They had decades of their own skills and experienced advisors already involved.
The main problem I could help with was the fear and focus.
The fear of failing, fear of not being good enough, fear of not providing, imposter syndrome, anxiety.
The fear was translating into distraction, procrastination, chasing shiny objects rather than doing the reps they knew were required.
And so the work began.
Dealing with fear
Using the tools of psychological flexibility we began to develop the mental skills and tools to help them work in the uncertainty of any start up business.
It didn’t take long for them to realise that the fear wasn’t going away. In fact it was the price of entry to pursuing the vision they held.
We started immediately with two techniques.
Technique #1: Create space
The science of psychological flexibility calls this de-fusion. It’s about unhooking from the unhelpful thoughts and feelings that hold us back or pull us away from what truly matters to us.
To do this, we defined their fear response by answering these questions:
What are the tough or unhelpful:
- thoughts?
- feelings?
- sensations?
Where do you feel them?
Do they have a size, shape, colour, texture, weight, temperature?
The fear, the imposter, the lack of clarity was showing up as a black ball in the stomach and hijacking them. They felt overwhelmed by it.
By writing down the answers to these questions, they were able to begin to create a little space between themselves the experience.
Then they could shift their attention to the work that mattered most.
Technique #2: Naming
We layered on an additional technique to help handle the fear response by asking a further question:
Can you give this whole experience a name?
Not to make it go away, but to be able to recognise it showing up. To make room for it.
We began to practice these two techniques so that the founder could recognise when the fear showed up and still make choices and take prioritised action they were proud of. The choices wouldn’t guarantee success, but they would at the very least be the antidote to regret.
We continued to practice these two techniques in order to turn them into skill and then skill into mastery.
We clarified direction by uncovering and connecting to their purpose and values. We defined long, medium and short term goals across work, relationships and health to help them maintain and grow through this period.
We used those goals to align and prioritise daily and weekly actions as they worked through the business plan, processed feedback and made the course corrections every new business demands.
We developed and personalised their calendar and workflow systems to support the habits and action and provide the structure that vanishes when people leave large organisations.
Of course it wasn’t all smooth sailing.
There were failed pitches, collapsed deals, rejections.
There were family health scares. An injury that required an operation and rehab.
There was the struggle to be present at home with family and when out with friends as the business progressed.
While uncomfortable, these challenges had been useful to test and refine these two techniques and others over the 11 months.
And now here we were 30 mins from a critical performance moment.
As the saying goes, we don’t rise to the occasion, we fall to the level of our training.
It was time to bring everything we’d practiced into play.
Negotiating in the presence of fear
When I jumped on the call, we took a mindful breath to start our conversation as we always did at the start of our coaching sessions.
Breathe in for 4, hold for 7, out for 8.
We checked in on how the fear was showing up. It was totally normal. This was expected. We acknowledged it.
We used the Choice Point model for decision making and unpacked their action plan for the call:
- What’s your agenda for this call?
- What’s your objective?
- What’s your opening line?
- Who’s important?
- What’s important?
- What do you need from this conversation?
- Why does that matter to you and the other party?
- How can this be framed as a towards move for you both – ie towards what you both want and need to make this a success?
- Are you prepared to walk away from this if you don’t get the terms?
- What are next steps?
- How can you approach this in a values based way?
- How will you get present before and during the call?
25 mins later we were done. The fear was present. The specifics of the plan were clear. It was up to them to execute.
And they did.
The first deal in their first business was the most important of their career at a critical point when it felt like everything was at stake.
Did it feel comfortable? Hell no. But that’s performance.
Performance is working with discomfort and still taking the action and making the choices that move us towards what matters because it’s too important not to.
The techniques are teachable, learnable and with practice become skills and then mastery.
I especially love the fact that they are meta-skills.
The same techniques can be applied in negotiating in high stakes deals, parenting, relationships, food and drink choices, changing exercise habits, starting businesses, exiting businesses… the list goes on.
And practice in one area helps all areas.
This is why I love what I do.
