X. Stefan Aarnio

what I said and wrote. This

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      book is his turn to do the same for the readers of this outstanding work. In my opinion it should be on everyone’s “must read” list.

      I wish all readers success in their chosen endeavors.

      Sincerely,

      George H. Ross, Esq.

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      How This Book Came To Be

      “85% of your financial success is due to your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate and lead. Shockingly, only 15% is due to technical knowledge.”

      –Carnegie Institute of Technology

      In 2012 I attended a business seminar in Las Vegas, Nevada where a famous lawyer, George Ross of the Donald Trump organization was speaking. George Ross was in his eighties at the time, and was retired from his legal career but had lived a prolific career as a real estate lawyer. Early in his career, George was hired by the legendary New York real estate investor Sol Goldman and negotiated and transacted hundreds of large commercial real estate deals in New York City. Later in his career, George was hired by young Donald Trump at the age of twenty-seven to negotiate and put together some complex and sizable real estate deals in New York City. As George Ross took the stage he said something I would never forget: “Most entrepreneurs fail because they fail at two major things: time management and negotiation.”

      George then proceeded to lecture the audience on the fundamentals of negotiation, and of course he had written a book on the subject and had taught at many universities over his lifetime. George was a pioneer teaching at many of these universities because until fairly recently, negotiation was not considered to be a real subject of study.

      As a budding entrepreneur myself, I had never considered negotiation to be a study or a skill. As a matter of fact, I considered myself to be a good negotiator at the time and later learned when I began to study negotiation that I was in fact a horrible negotiator. I went on to study negotiation and apply the principles and techniques to my own real estate investment business and achieved great success. Throughout my real estate career, I began to coach and mentor others on their own real estate investment businesses, and I learned that nearly every student under my mentorship was a poor or inadequate negotiator! Unfortunately, in real estate all profit is either found through negotiation or built through construction. As I review the profit and loss statement of my own real estate business,

      STEFAN AARNIO

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      it did not take me long to learn that nearly all of my profits were earned because I negotiated them into the deal. In real estate there is no inherent profit in the business; all profit must be negotiated! As an entrepreneur I had identified a major problem in the marketplace. I had many customers in my coaching business who desired to make a profit in real estate investment and were blind, like I was, to the most important skill of their financial success: negotiation.

      Negotiation is something everyone needs, but no one wants. Naming this book and naming this project was a painful process. No one wakes up in the morning to buy a book or program on negotiation. Similarly, we do not want to own a brand-new power drill; rather, we wish to have the hole that the drill produces. We all want the results of becoming a better negotiator without putting in the time, effort, energy, or money to study negotiation.

      Herein lies the problem: we have a patient who is sick, he needs to learn to negotiate, but like all medicines, the medicine—the cure—is bitter and unstimulating. The patient would rather eat chocolate, cheese, or candy than the medicine, and rightfully so. After reading many books on “negotiation” I have concluded that negotiation is indeed a boring subject to read about and write about and thus, very few people wish to study it or buy into the idea of studying it. It is my chief aim to make this book exciting and relevant for you because 85 percent of your financial success relies on this: your personality, your ability to lead, communicate, and negotiate. This dose of medicine was created just for you and in the words of Mary Poppins, I will do my best to serve the medicine with a spoonful of sugar.

      Your personality, ability to lead, communicate, and negotiate—namely the skills taught in this book—are so important, in fact, that they support your entire financial future! If you have the ambition and foresight to seize and master this skill, over time, your financial future will be brighter than it is today—guaranteed!

      The fact that you have self-selected and have chosen to invest in yourself has set you apart from the pack. Eighty percent of books that are bought are never read, so by getting this far you are already in the top 20 percent of achievers. As Woody Allen says, 80 percent of success is just show-

      How This Book Came To Be

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      ing up. Thank you for investing in yourself, thank you for committing to your success, and thank you for your commitment to your number one financial skill: the ability to negotiate. Your financial success rests on your shoulders and with the proper study, guidance and care, through negotiation you can have the whole world in your hands.

      Respect the grind,

      Stefan Aarnio

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      You Were Born To Negotiate!

      “So much of life is a negotiation—so even if you’re not in business, you have opportunities to practice all around you.”

      – Kevin O’Leary

      Believe it or not, you were born to negotiate. You are able to read these words today because you won your first negotiation. When you were a tiny baby, you were hungry so you cried for your mother’s milk. As a natural-born negotiator, you cried—and she fed you. You were born to negotiate, and you won your first negotiation!

      As you grew up, you went to school, and negotiating became less acceptable. You were no longer allowed to kick and scream and cry when you wanted to play with a specific toy. You couldn’t throw a tantrum to get your way, and, in fact, when you entered grade school, the school system did everything it could to decondition you from your natural-born negotiation abilities.

      The school system was designed to create compliant workers, soldiers, and employees, not a society of free-thinking natural-born negotiators. A school with 500 compliant children is easy to manage, not a school of 500 individualistic negotiators, each demanding to get what they want.

      In some ways it’s a good thing that the school system does not train each and every child to get what they want through negotiation, or society could break down into anarchy. After all, someone does need to push the buttons and pull the levers in the factory. However, you are special. You are special because you are reading this book. You know deep down in your heart that you were born to negotiate and that everything you want is owned or controlled by someone else, and to get it, you must reclaim your natural-born talent of negotiation.

      You were born to be a great negotiator, but like riding a bike, you do not come out of the womb ready to ride. You must learn, study, fall down, scrape your knee, and get up to ride again.

      STEFAN AARNIO

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      Educate comes