Category: Authentic Conversations About Difference

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If You’re Self-Employed, Use These Strategies To Own Your Worth

Deal-Driven Forbes

If you’re self-employed, you face unique challenges when it comes to negotiating with your clients and partners. As challenging as it may be to walk into the boss’s office and ask for a raise, running your own business is even more complicated. “How do I know how to set my rate? ” is one of the most frequent questions I get from freelancers, contractors and entrepreneurs. When it’s a choice between signing a new client or meeting them at the discounted price they want, it may not feel like a choice at all.

Research and benchmarking are the obvious first step in determining how to price to price your services. This applies whether you’re a writer, a graphic designer, a career coach, a photographer, or really, anyone working in a creative field. The phrase “know your worth” is more than a rallying cry ; it’s important to actually know how much people in your market are paying for the services you offer. I’ve written previously about how to do the right research.

But owning your value goes deeper than simply setting your rates according to what others are doing. One thing I’m fond of saying to women is, “Ask yourself what a man would do in your situation. Better yet, ask a man.” Why? Because men are more likely to negotiate. So I decided to take my own advice by speaking with Corey Kupfer, the founder of Authentic Business Academy and author of “Authentic Negotiating: Clarity, Detachment, & Equilibrium — The Three Keys To True Negotiating Success & How To Achieve Them.” Kupfer is a professional negotiator with over thirty years of experience.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Conversations About Difference Authentic Leadership

Is Fear Changing the Way You Do Business?

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

Are your fears and insecurities holding you back in business? Do you find yourself playing small and waiting for external validation before you can make your next move? If you are waiting for some sign that you are doing the right thing, then you need to take a deep breath and a step back.

Your mindset has a huge impact on the long-term success of your business. For me, I keep my mindset positive and focused with a physical reminder. I wear a bracelet with a token that has the word “freedom” engraved on it. I have not taken this off since I bought it three years ago from myintent.org. Freedom is my single highest value in life and it applies to multiple areas including everything from freedom for all people from oppression to freedom for me to create the life I want to live (it’s why I’m an entrepreneur), and the topic of this blog – freedom from fear or, at times, the freedom to face fear and have the courage to push through it.

There are some freedoms you need to work to attain. For example, I have freedom from the fear of financial insecurity not just because I run two successful businesses but, also, because I have done a lot of work related to my relationship with money and staying in abundance instead of scarcity. There are some freedoms you are given. For me that includes having freedom from fear of oppression for my sexuality, skin tone and gender because I am a cisgender straight white male but not necessarily culturally as there is still anti-Semitism and I am Jewish. I have worked and continue to work on breaking through fear in all areas of my life and am committed to using my financial stability and experience to help lift up others from a place of fear because I know what it feels like to be afraid and to come through it.

About six years ago, I was on an Entrepreneurs Organization forum retreat, and one of the things we did was rappel off cliffs. There I was hundreds of feet up with my peers, and I am there despite that I am afraid of heights. Not just afraid and uneasy; heights are a real phobia for me. I was there because every few years I force myself to do something that literally terrifies me as I refuse to be held back by fear.

After, mistakenly, waiting for several of my forum-mates to go first and letting the tension and fear build to almost unbearable levels, it was my turn. The first time I leaned back off the cliff and had to trust the rope would hold me as I went down that mountain, I was absolutely terrified. Anyone who can literally lean back off a cliff and not pass out from the fear has conquered a part of themselves that was limiting them but if you do it with something you have a phobia about, well … . I have done other things to push myself outside of my comfort zone. I’ve done ropes courses, zip lines and even jumped out of a perfectly good plane skydiving. I have even climbed a couple of hundred feet to a tiny platform and bungee jumped. Why do I keep putting myself in a position where I am frightened? Because I want to do something that breaks through those feelings of fear and then be able to call upon that in other parts of my life.

When I say break through the fear, I want you to understand that I’m still always afraid. The act of taking on my fear with a physical test, and then conquering that physical test, shows me that I can trust myself to not let my fear hold me back.

You may have fears around shifting the way you work being out of the office more, trusting others, delegating more, or of your own failure or success.. I’m going to encourage you to break through those fears. Because you can live the life you were meant to lead. I mean, I have done it, other people have done it. Why not you? There are situations in your life where you’ve had a fear of something and then you’ve done something to break through that fear and overcome it so call upon those times and apply that same courage in other parts of your life.

I use those times when I’m afraid of something in business and think back to those moments when I worked through my fears, leaning back off that cliff, leaping off that platform attached only to a bungee or jumping out of that plane. It gives me another level of confidence and not just on an intellectual level; there’s something visceral about it. If I can do those things, I can do anything.

If there’s any fear that comes up around making shifts in your business just listen, face the fear, visualize the freedom and use the experiences where you have had fears in the past and broke through them. Use the work you did on a physical challenge, for example, or other situation as the motivation to get the courage to make a change. When you do your level of success, satisfaction and happiness in business and life will increase exponentially!

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Conversations About Difference

Stop Checking Your Own Email if You Want to Run an Authentic and Successful Business

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

Do you want to know how I run two businesses and still have time for the things that are important to me? I hire great people and delegate to them. The most time-consuming task I delegate is my email.

My whole email system is based on three premises.

1. My assistant reviews my email.

When the emails come in, they get redirected to a box that I have renamed “xRedirected Inbox.” You can set this up as an automated process through Outlook, Google Mail, etc. It is “xRedirected Inbox” so I will have to scroll to get to it. It’s out of sight because of the alphabetical sorting of my folders. The beauty of this is that I can still access it if needed (e.g. when a client emails something while we are on the phone), but I don’t otherwise look at it. Instead my assistant review it every hour or so. She sorts and handles the emails that are about scheduling, sending copies documents and other things that she can handle which is more efficient and responsive for clients as well.

2. Projects get handled quickly.

Have you ever been copied on an email thread that didn’t require your immediate attention? I bet that makes up 90+% of your email. My assistant is great about coordinating with our team members to make sure that client matters are handled efficiently. By the time I would have checked my email, my team has already finished their part of the task at hand and I am ready to review and take more advanced action. The few emails that I need to know about before the end of the day get moved into an inbox that I review in real-time.

3. I get a daily briefing.

At the end of the day for any emails that didn’t require my immediate attention or that my assistant has not been able to handle, I get a simple briefing. I’ll look at that briefing at six, seven o’clock at night, and it takes me literally 15 minutes to review it at most. This is could be the distillation of what was 100-200 emails, but there are usually only 10-20 items in the briefing as everything else has been handled or consolidated in the briefing.

My email system allows me to use the time when I’m in the office to focus on my highest and best use areas. And when I’m away, I’m not worried about my email pinging and interrupting my business meeting, retreat or vacation. In fact I don’t even have notifications on because I know someone else is reviewing it. I instead just occasionally check the box where my assistant would move anything that’s crucial.

If you want to learn more ways you can build an authentic business, check out my video series Authentic Business: Retreat Edition.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Categories
Authentic Conversations About Difference Authentic Leadership

How to Keep Your Business Going During a Family Emergency

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

In the month of April, I had the opportunity to travel quite a bit for work and for pleasure. If you have been reading my articles for long, you know that I am a big advocate of living an integrated life. As a business owner, I have a certain level of control in the day-to-day work that I do, but it is not always easy.

The best laid plans can fall away when a family emergency rises to the top of the list of priorities. The day I returned from a business mastermind trip in Europe, I learned my mother had fallen ill with abdominal issues. As I was back in town, I was able to support my mother in-person, take her to the hospital and spend much of last week with her.

As I write this, I am on Day 8 of being there to provide encouragement to my mother as the doctors try to figure out how best to help her. With my attention on her, it is a relief to know that my business – which is fortunately extremely busy right now – is carrying on without my having to monitor every aspect.

How can your business keep going during a family emergency? It actually came together for me while I was watching the way the hospital operates and being thankful that my business operates much more efficiently and effectively, especially when it comes to client service and satisfaction. (You can watch my video about the connection I drew between business and the hospital operations on LinkedIn or Facebook.)

The key elements your business needs to keep running:

  • Build and empower a great team and then trust them.
  • Systematize your processes.
  • Communicate regularly and transparently with clients, industry partners and other key people.
    Implement and effectively use mobile technology.

You need to have many of these things in place before a family or other emergency comes up. How does your company stack up? Are you ready in case of emergency? If not, take heart and know that you can start to take the necessary steps to improve from where you are starting today.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Conversations About Difference

How to Negotiate with a Potential Employee

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

Unemployment rates are still at 4.1% from the latest Department of Labor findings and employees expect competitive salary and benefits. As a decision maker in the hiring process, you have leverage but, in a tight job market, you do not have all of it.

Before you have selected a candidate for the open position, you will want to go through the deep work necessary to find the clarity on who you want for this position. As a master negotiator, I teach my clients to use my CDE method—Clarity, Detachment, and Equilibrium.

The inner work that brings clarity is not something you can do on a whim. You will want to allow enough time and energy to really dive into the motivations of the company and the team to create the most authentic offer.

Detachment comes when you remove your emotion and biases from the outcome. It is especially helpful to consider the negotiation not from a one-sided – or even a win-win – perspective but rather from a place of meeting each party’s needs. Once we bring in the concept of winning, it is easy for the ego to get engaged and for us to lose the clarity and detachment we need.. If you are able to maintain clarity and detachment, it leaves the negotiation open to mutually beneficial options for the employer and the employee.

Creativity in the offer and listening to how the potential employee responds to the offer will guide you in the next steps. For example, if the salary offered is base plus commission, it is possible that the base could be higher with a lower percentage going forward for the commission. Also consider flexibility in schedule if it serves the company as well as the employee.

With the next steps also comes the need for equilibrium. As the decision maker for the company, you will want to know the parameters available. Equilibrium, or balance, will inform your actions and help you make the best decision for your team and prevent you from getting thrown off or triggered during a negotiation. Maybe something a candidate says triggers you in some way. That could be a good indicator that you shouldn’t hire that employee but it also could be that you got triggered due to some past experience or personal issue that should have nothing to do with evaluation the candidates qualifications.

So, do whatever it is that gets you centered and clear – for some it is meditation or prayer, for others its exercise or calling a mentor or friend or practicing in the mirror or, maybe, doing something unrelated that you enjoy and will put you in a good state of mind. You can also use anchoring right before you go into the room – think about a time when you felt confident, strong, on your game – envision that experience in full color and with all your senses. Then take a deep breath and bring that energy with you into the room.

If you found this helpful and want to hear more, join me May 16th in New York City for my Authentic Negotiating Workshop at SHRM’s Speaker Select Series. The series is open to HR professionals and those in Talent Acquisition, Employee Engagement, Internal Communications, Talent Management and/or Learning and Development. Online registration is available until May 15th.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Conversations About Difference

Start Living on the Creative Plane

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

I’ve talked before about the pitfalls of “winning,” in a previous entry. In it, I explore the differences between winning and success (defined as achieving your objectives). Winning is superficial and often an ego-based feeling, and only leads to the need for another win. Success is complete and satisfying.

Winning versus success is a worthwhile conversation in negotiating-adjusted terms, but the underlying principle is much more universal. One of my mentors draws a line between existing on the competitive plane versus the creative plane. It’s that dichotomy I’d like to unpack a little more in this piece.

Wallace Wattles published The Science of Getting Rich in 1910, and his message remains as important now as it was then. Wattles was speaking to an audience living through the peak of the industrial revolution, an audience who saw plutocrats enrich themselves off of the exploitation of their employees. These “Titans of Industry” behaved competitively to hoard their fortunes. They took and took expecting money and resources to dry up. They were going to take as much of it from everyone else as they could before there was nothing left.

Sure, operating on the competitive plan can make you wealthy, and if wealth is your only objective, then by all means, operate on the competitive plane. But, as Wattles says, “Riches secured on the competitive plane are never satisfactory and permanent; they are yours today, and another’s tomorrow.” How can one ever find peace of mind with that knowledge and mindset? It’s impossible.

So, how do we elevate to the creative plane, become creators, and resist falling into the competitive mindset when the forces around us all seem to be pulling us into that limiting allure? Let’s see what Wattles would advise.

Know that you do not have to take away from any one. Where the competitive mind sees scarcity, the creator knows there is actually abundance, and they have the power to will it into their possession. Creators have no need to cheat, manipulate, exploit, or otherwise take advantage. When a creator gets—creates—what he or she wants, it’s not at the expense of anyone else. On the contrary, their enrichment creates more for all.

Live in a state of gratitude. According to Wattles, true poverty isn’t a material designation, but rather a condition of the spirit. He says of the above mentioned competitive plutocrats that, “the private lives of most of this class will show that they have really been the most abject and wretched of the poor.” True poverty, Wattles says, is a lack of gratitude. His writing on this topic veers into the esoteric, but the underlying idea is that gratitude connects us to and brings our minds into harmony with the creative energies of the universe, which in turn creates abundance in our lives.

Appreciate the power of your thoughts. To Wattles, this is how we summon and direct the creative energies with which we are in harmony. The Buddha said, “With our thoughts we make the world.” This is exactly what Wattles is driving at. The competitive mind thinks only of scarcity and limitations, and so the world—their reality—looks inhospitable to all but the wealthiest among us. It’s a barren world. Oppositely, the creative mind never even considers limitations. The creative mind has a crystal clear mental picture of exactly what they want. Their thoughts are directed with unwavering purpose towards the realization of that picture, and so then are their actions.

The impact that Wallace Wattles has had on my life and philosophy is second to only my father. It’s impossible to read his writings without feeling inspired to change and live with him on the creative plane. If you’re ready to ditch the competitive mindset and join me on the creative plane, check out The Science of Getting Rich.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Conversations About Difference

The Pygmalion Effect: Part Two

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

In Part One, I shared the story of Nancy, a former client who was letting her expectations impede what was otherwise shaping up to be a fair and beneficial acquisition deal for both sides.

Nancy was holding expectations of the deal and of her counterparts that were preventing her from making progress on the deal. She was at the table for a reason—at one point, this buyer was a good fit to acquire her company. But when the time came, skepticism got the better of her. In fact, the more she pushed back, the more she was threatening to compromise her objectives.

I had to get real with Nancy. I told her, “We did a good job getting clear on your objectives, and you’ve been composed, but if you’re thinking that these terms aren’t being offered in good faith, that’s on you, not them.”

I explained to her the Pygmalion Effect. It’s a proven phenomenon that states when we hold higher expectations; we actually manifest increased performance and more positive results. Conversely, and this is what Nancy was exposing herself to, the Golem Effect posits that when we hold low expectations, performance sees a downtick and we see more negative outcomes. Both are self-fulfilling prophecies.

What could Nancy have known about the Pygmalion Effect that could have helped her?

The energy we hold within ourselves matters. I thought we were on solid ground. Nancy had warmed to my authentic negotiating approach with relative ease, but only she knew her truth. The positive work we’d done to prepare for negotiations was being undermined by the negative energy Nancy was carrying, and inevitably putting out into the world. If she’d understood that her inner being has power to impact the outside world, she could have identified her low expectations and negative feelings as a problem early on, then she and I could have addressed them and come to the table with the high expectations that we should have been holding the whole time.

Those low expectations probably already rubbed off on her team. The Pygmalion Effect isn’t limited to our personal pursuits and outcomes. Studies have shown that our expectations of others effect how they perform and the attitudes they carry. In our specific example, the acquiring company was growing tense and weary of Nancy’s mistrust. Her low expectations of them were in turn affecting their mood and their willingness to negotiate. What Nancy might not have known is exactly how long she’d be carrying this negativity. If it was well in advance of the deal, it’s likely her team noticed and started to grow concerned, lowering morale. It’s a huge precept of leadership – the perceptions and expectations leaders hold of their followers are going to greatly influence how those followers think, behave, and perform. By holding low expectations of this acquisition, Nancy was putting a previously positive and productive team at risk.

She had no reason to carry low expectations. Nancy was onboard with clarity, detachment, and equilibrium. Nancy knew what she wanted and never got triggered. She didn’t understand that by doing the inner work that we did in preparation for this deal, high expectations were implicit. Low expectations are a nonstarter because in choosing to embrace authentic negotiating, Nancy was putting herself in complete control of the outcome – whether it was this deal or another, making the exact right one for her business was always going to be in her control.

Eventually, Nancy and I got on the same page and she understood that with our approach, there was nothing to worry about. But, her story shows how not embracing the Pygmalion Effect can creep in and shake even the sturdiest foundations. What’s more, it points to the fact that to be an authentic negotiator and make CDE work for you, you have to be all in. You have to believe and embrace it as a way of being. In fact, it wasn’t until after the first deal didn’t go through and she saw herself repeating the pattern with a second potential buyer that Nancy was able to see how she was sabotaging her objectives. Only then did Nancy go all in and we were able to close the perfect acquisition deal for her and her team.

The Pygmalion Effect is a concept that’s shaped much of my life and thinking. For a deeper dive into some of my other influences, check out the thinkers who’ve impacted me: https://www.coreykupfer.com/resources/

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Conversations About Difference

Learning How to Unlearn

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

If the last few years have taught me anything, it’s that we’re really attached to what we know—or think we know. Adding to this is the sheer breadth of information available to us these days means that we’re all working off personalized information streams. There’s no common denominator anymore it seems.

That’s especially foreboding when we’re presented with new information. I’m a huge proponent of lifelong learning. I think it’s one of the most important things we can do for ourselves personally and professionally. My fear is that as a society, we’re conflating information consumption—more often than not, information that confirms our biases—with actual learning. That is folly.

To truly learn, we have to be willing to unlearn. If all we do is seek to confirm what we already think or know, there’s no room for growth. If we want to commit to learning, we should be constantly questioning what we know, seeking challenging information and comparing it with our preconceptions of certain things.

Learning should be a constant process of clearing the furniture out of the room in our minds and then rearranging it based on the new pieces we acquire. That’s what I had to do when I decided to commit myself to authentic negotiating. There was no shortage of information that would validate the conventional techniques and tactics I’d learned, and it would have been far easier to dig my heels in on those concepts.

But, the obvious upside of authentic negotiating and authenticity in general was too much for me to ignore. I asked myself, “If you were just learning how to negotiate today, what would you tell yourself to do?” I’d cleared out the room, and authenticity became the centerpiece. We should approach all learning and growth this way but, why don’t we?

The Dunning-Kruger effect.

This is a phenomenon that once you hear it, you’ll notice it everywhere. In short, it states that many of us don’t know enough about a topic to realize how much we don’t know. Right away you can see how this immediately takes real learning off the table. If you’re satisfied with your expertise (or lack thereof) on a given subject, any new information will seem farcical and indulgent.

The Paradox of Expertise.

The site psychologytoday.com makes a good distinction between learners and knowers. At some point, perhaps for most of your life, you were a learner, maybe even a great one. Eventually that shifts and you become a knower. And this is where we run into the paradox. The better we are at learning, the more we’re able to know, and so the faster we become knowers. Learning then has to be a constantly iterative process, one that never ends. The best way to avoid the paradox is to simply never allow yourself to become a knower.

Instrumentalization.

We live in a hyper-specialized world. Whether it’s a specific area of law or a unique coding language, our experience and training effectively make us instruments of our chosen professions. So, we’re drawn to information that’s specific to what we do, and only engage with learning that can enhance our strengths. Personally, I find some of my best ideas and greatest inspiration when I allow my mind to wander, allow myself to be intellectually curious, and see what I can learn from other disciplines. Sometimes we have to unlearn the very basis of who we think we are to get past our own instrumentalization and become more well-rounded people.

Unlearning is a necessary part of the learning process. We shouldn’t recoil at the suggestion of changing our minds, but rather we should be excited by the prospect of refining our understanding of anything and everything. The human capacity to learn is something to be celebrated, but more and more I fear we’re letting it wither on the vine. If you’re ready to unlearn the ways you’ve ordered your life and let authenticity transform your life the way it’s transformed mine, let’s make an appointment: https://www.coreykupfer.com/workshops/

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Conversations About Difference

Living an Integrated Life

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

We’d all benefit from more hours in the day. This is especially true for entrepreneurs. When I was getting my firm off the ground, it was a near round-the-clock undertaking. When I wasn’t working on the business I was thinking about the business. It was an obsession, but one born of passion and my own innate desire to create.

I have loved my entrepreneurial journey because I was always clear on why I was doing it and how I wanted my life to look. Yet, if an alien landed on earth tomorrow, I’m not sure they’d opt for entrepreneurship as their chosen path. Things like founder burnout, the struggle for work-life balance, and even the apparent conflict between mindfulness and being in action, often impact the entrepreneurship conversation in ways that I don’t think are all positive.

There is a lot of reading we can do about solutions, but to me, we’re missing the problem; we’re not getting to the root of the root.

We’re not leading integrated lives.

I started my business because I never saw myself doing the 9-to-5 grind, and I didn’t want to answer to anyone. I wanted my life to fit into my job, and vice versa, seamlessly. The two were never at odds with each other because to me they never represented segmented aspects of what I was doing. My life is my life and all that it includes. It’s not this thing I get to once work is done. That’s the value of living an integrated life—you’re putting yourself back in control.

How else can we benefit from living integrated lives?

Our experiences stop being zero-sum. When we’re holding a work-life balance context, we can’t fully give ourselves to either. When we choose to live an integrated life, enjoying our families and taking an overdue vacation aren’t stealing from our work. Working a few weekends, or spending a few nights late in the office aren’t robbing from our personal time. We can enjoy our life without feeling anxious or guilty.

We open ourselves up to inspiration. American mythologist Joseph Campbell said, “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.” Living an integrated life to me means following my bliss. Sometimes that means immersing myself in my work. Other times it can mean pursuing my hobbies and exploring new ideas. When we detach from the obsessive pursuit of “balance” we can source inspiration from all areas of life. Rather than bootstrapping inspiration like it’s something to be called upon as needed, we invite its possibility into our life and allow ourselves to be inspired organically.

We find equilibrium. Balance and equilibrium might seem close in definition, but not to me. The way I see it, seeking balance is reactionary. Something feels imbalanced so I am going to take the following actions to even the proverbial scales. Those decisions and those actions aren’t coming from a place of inner-truth, so we shouldn’t be surprised when we don’t experience the fulfillment we were seeking when we pursue superficial balance. Equilibrium, however, is a state of inner being that we own and can return to. An integrated life is always pointed towards our equilibrium because those energies originate from our desire to return to our equilibrium.

I’m a passionate believer in the power of an integrated life. I believe it’s a byproduct of authenticity and can be a truly transformative change for people—regardless of profession—to make. If you’d like to hear more of my thoughts on how we can and why we should all strive to lead integrated lives, check out my recent video on the subject, https://youtu.be/NImtBXSFEbc.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Categories
Authentic Conversations About Difference Authentic Leadership

You’re Approaching Your Business Relationships Wrong

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

What’s holding you back from making the most of your network?

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

-Maya Angelou

You probably read that quote and thought, Surely, a poet like Maya Angelou wasn’t talking about business relationships. You’d be right. She almost certainly wasn’t. Yet, I think within that thinking is the fundamental issue at the core of how we approach our business relationships. For whatever reason, we give ourselves permission to treat these relationships differently. We try to be different people to our business contacts than in our day-to-day lives; we compartmentalize them, and we have maladjusted expectations of ourselves and our counterparts in these relationships. All that adds up to an inauthentic relationship. Considering our business relationships have the power to shape our career and our long-term success and, thus, shape our lives, this is an issue that needs some focused attention.

I’ve written about how we can build better business relationships before. The subject is one of great importance to me. But sometimes we need to identify what we’re doing wrong before we can correctly implement the best practices I advise. So, what are you getting wrong?

You Botch the First Impression.

Our society puts a ton of weight into the first impression. For good reason, I think. In a world of gray areas, first impressions are refreshingly binary. If you’re not making a good first impression, you’ve made a bad one. Like Angelou said, when someone shows you who they are, we believe them the first time. But, that begs the questions, did you take care to show that person who you really are? In these pressure-packed first moments we go crazy trying to impress the person in front of us. Insincere charm, flashy spending, or even an old foe – mirroring, will all more than likely come off as fake and contrived to the person you’re trying to impress. And just like that, you’ve botched the first impression. The far better option is to be your authentic self. Show that person who you really are. Chances are good they’ll be impressed by your confidence and candor. Embracing authenticity is how we really make a good first impression.

You’re Compartmentalizing.

This is a symptom of “work-life balance” thinking. The idea is that our business should rightly remain separate from our personal lives if we’re to find fulfillment in both. To me, that’s a scarcity mindset that suggests one siphons positivity from the other and vice-versa. Now, imagine approaching your business relationships with this in mind. How could you even begin to give this relationship everything it needs to succeed? With this mindset, you can’t. That’s why I’m an advocate for work-life integration. I became an entrepreneur so that my work could fit into the life I wanted to lead. The same goes for the relationships we want to have. If we feel a push and pull between our personal relationships and our business relationships it means we’re keeping both at arm’s length. With an integrated approach, our business relationships become normal parts of our lives, like anything else. We can then enter into them fully and authentically.

You’re Engaging in Transactional Thinking.

This is our biggest downfall when it comes to how we build business relationships. Increasingly, we seem to have forgotten the simple virtue of being decent for the sake of being decent. There’s a line of thinking that questions the value of any relationship that doesn’t pay material dividends immediately or in the very near future. That’s a toxic mindset. Any authentic relationship must be built on complete trust. If you’re only giving this contact your time and attention because you want something from them, you’re creating a zero-sum context—if I don’t get what I want out of this relationship, this person has won, and I have lost. That’s fear, that’s ego, and that’s transactional thinking in the most cynical way possible. Instead, I always advise giving first, and then handing the relationship over to trust. Trust that you’re acting not out of expectation or selfishness, but because it’s good to give and to be of value to this person. Trust that the energy your actions put into the universe will come back to you and, eventually, the relationship will give you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.

We can get granular about the things we get wrong—the way we choose to speak, appearing aloof and disinterested, more concerned with our phones than the person in front of us, being anxious and neurotic—but, they are all, in some way or another, the result of one of the three business relationship pitfalls discussed above. If you want to learn more about how you can avoid these blunders and build better, authentic business relationships, check out my video: Building Authentic Business Relationships.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

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