X. Stefan Aarnio

go to school, get a job, work until retirement, and then live while the government and your company pay for your lifestyle. In fact, that plan today in 2016 is virtually impossible. To survive and thrive in the modern world, we are returning to a time that is reminiscent of 1910 where everyone was an entrepreneur and very few people had corporate jobs. There were many micro entrepreneurs—people baking bread, people farming, people making clothes, and so on. And everyone had a small business. This is the age of the small business owner, and arguably the most important skill for business is your ability to negotiate. Without negotiation, the businessman cannot earn a profit or survive.

      What is more important than ever in today’s market economy are your soft skills: your personality, ability to lead, communicate, and—most of all—negotiate! Regardless of your profession, your career, or your business, learning to negotiate is one of the most imperative skills and one of the most transferrable skills. I thank you for taking the time to invest in yourself and learning this very important skill set!

      Visit Xnegotiation.com to claim your valuable bonuses.

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      Part II:

      The Ten Commandments

      of Negotiation

      The Ten Commandments of Negotiation

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      The Ten Commandments

      of Negotiation

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      he more things are different, the more they are the same. There are no two negotiations that are identical; some are complex, and some are simple. Some are long processes that take years; some

      are short and are done in minutes. What remains the same are the fundamentals and undying truths that form a basis of all negotiations—big or small. They say that professionals practice the basics, whether it’s free throws in basketball or long tones when playing the violin or trumpet. Professionals always have a firm grasp of the fundamentals and masters have internalized and implemented them. The following section outlines ten fundamental commandments of negotiation that when followed will likely produce a successful outcome. Over time strong fundamentals and good technique will outperform luck, chance or talent which is how most people attempt to negotiate and ineffective over time. The strongest negotiators win bigger and win more often because they have strong fundamentals and weak negotiators are typically improvising. Studies have shown that no matter how favorable or poorly a negotiator performs in a transaction, he will always think that he did his best. When negotiating, many times you can never know if you could have done better or not, but if you stick to the following ten principles, you will surely be effective in getting what you want.

      The ten commandments are loosely based on the top three traits desired by CEOs for top negotiators. Years ago, 150 CEO’s were contacted and were asked for the top three personality traits desired for the company’s best negotiators. The top three desired traits were indeed surprising:

      STEFAN AARNIO

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      1.) Personality

      2.) Knowledge of human nature

      3.) Ability to organize information

      The ten commandments as I have written them, can be broken down into those three desirable traits. Of the ten, all of the commandments can be classified into personality commandments, human nature commandments, or ability to organize information commandments. Most books on negotiation are very long and very technical with multiple charts, lists, data, matrices, and so on to make the study of negotiation more complex than it needs to be. If you can obey the ten commandments of negotiation as they are laid out as guideposts toward your negotiation goals, you will be successful more times than not in any negotiation. Conversely, should you fail in a negotiation and not get what you want, it is very likely that you have violated one or more of the commandments to cause the negotiation to fail.

      Commandment #1: Get What You Want and Get Out

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      Commandment #1: Get What

      You Want and Get Out

      “Do not go past the mark you aimed for;

      in victory know when to stop.”

      —Robert Greene

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      here once was an American lawyer who took his wife to Mexico for a hot tropical beach vacation. The lawyer and his wife found a sunny spot on the beach. It was a bright clear day, and the sun

      made the sand very hot to touch. The lawyer’s wife noticed a Mexican vendor with beautiful Mexican blankets for sale, and she told her husband that she would like one because the sand was too hot to lie down on.

      The man approached the Mexican vendor and proclaimed, “That’s a beautiful blanket you have there! How much for the blanket!”

      “$20 American dollars, Señor,” replied the street vendor.

      “I’ll give you $5 cash right now,” replied the lawyer.

      “No, Señor, I cannot give away my blankets for $5, but I can sell you one for $15.”

      “$15 is too much!” replied the lawyer and he walked back to his wife to tell her that he was going to “get a deal” on the Mexican blanket that she wanted.

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      As time passed and the couple sat on the hot sand, the Mexican vendor walked by again and the American lawyer offered $8 to the Mexican vendor who countered now at $14. The lawyer, too full of pride, felt that $14 was too much money for the blanket, and he and his wife scorched on the hot sand for a few more hours.

      For the rest of the morning and into the afternoon both the lawyer’s position and the Mexican vendor’s position inched toward each other, and finally the lawyer met his maximum price at $11.25 and the Mexican vendor hit his minimum at $12.50. Neither side would budge, and egos were flaring. The Mexican would not yield, and the lawyer would not give in. Finally the sun went down, and the American lawyer and his wife went home without the Mexican blanket, badly burned and uncomfortable from sitting on the hot sand all day. $1.25 had ruined the beach experience for the lawyer’s wife, and the rest of the trip was very uncomfortable for him.

      The number one rule in negotiating is to get what you want and get out. Negotiating for negotiation’s sake often times doesn’t make sense, and in the story of the Mexican blanket vendor, the lawyer showed us a perfect example of winning the battle but losing the war. In the big picture, $1.25 is not a big deal to an American lawyer who is taking his wife on a hot beach vacation and as they say, a happy wife is a happy life, but unfortunatley pride, egos, and competitive nature took over and suddenly the lawyer was negotiating out of ego rather than getting what he really wanted—a blanket and a nice beach experience for his wife. Even though the lawyer had successfully negotiated the blanket down to $12.50 from $20 and essentialy a 37.5 percent discount from the asking price, he failed to get what he really wanted—a happy wife with a nice beach experience and a blanket. Pride is the worst sin of all because it fools us to believe that we are better than others and our surroundings. In all religions of the world, sins are a