I’ve been laying a little low but as summer cools off I’m easing back into the money-never-sleeps world wide web with some fresh content.  One thing I’ve just put into the data stream is my new portal site.  At http://bruce-burns.com you can find all the different websites that I personal host, webmaster and generate from my own personal power.

So lets get right to the Negotiator’s Secret of the Day.  I’m not sure how often I’ve shared this as a Negotiator’s Secret on the web but for my apprentices and my clients I’m constantly re-affirming a very important guideline to effective negotiations. In a negotiation there are only 4 possible positions with the negotiating dynamic and they are:

1. No One’s Position Changes
2. Your Position Changes
3. Their Position Changes
4. Both Positions Change

I know that might sound like some kind of faulty zen puzzle, but there it is plain and simple.  You might even ask yourself (or my virtual self) “This is so apparent…why mention it, why include it in the great volume of Negotiating Secrets as if saying ‘The price of gas is expensive.’ isn’t obvious enough?”

Speaking of gas – a great way to thinking about The Four Negotiating Positions is to create a simple metaphor.  Traffic…

What do you do when someone is going to slow in front of you?

Change Your Position.

The reason The Four Negotiating Positions is essential to a powerful and effective negotiation is that knowing which position the negotiation is in helps you to choose what to do next in the negotiation. Lets take something too simple and complicate it.  Have you ever dealt with someone that had no spine at all?  Every negotiation you ever had with them ended up with them acquiesing?  Sure you have.  What was your primary negotiating tactic?  I know when someone else is negotiating for me, my primary negotiating tactic is often just silence.  Let them talk themselves into whatever it is you want to talk them into.

So we review The Four Negotiating Positions and discover that the above-made-up-from-my-imagination-based-on-people-I’ve-actually-dealt-with Negotiating Compliment and discover they are changing their position.  Just as a reminder for simplicity sake we will assume for this lesson that their positions and yours are genuine and not faux-position. What do we know?  We know:

1. Our Position and..
2. they are changing their position and…
3. we haven’t changed our position therefore …
4. we maintain our position as it seems to …
5. be creating a Negotiating Gravity that they are responding too.

Going back to the beginning I remind you that we don’t just Negotiate but we Negotiate to Your Own Best Good.  That “your” can be singular or plural.  In a fulfilling negotiation there is always a transaction to your own best bood.  With few exceptions, The Negotiator wants to avoid position # 1) No one’s position changes.  It is the very change in position that identifies the transaction weather it be words, the signing of a check or the vacating of a condition that was not supportive for The Negotiator.

The study of Position and Positioning in a Negotiation is vast and could be dedicated to an entire other website and set of material.  Since you already know this website I’ll spoil you and keep it here.

If today’s Negotiating Secret has nudged your mind or inspired you to be curious or even if you have an objection (I respect those who challenge the information) then feel free to write me at justask@yourownbestgood.com I always respond to real questions and real people (not Viagra spam) and will even use your question as the source of a future blog with your permission.

Soon I’ll be expanding The Negotiator’s Newsletter and if you would like to receive it regularly please find the sign up box in the upper right portion of this page.

I’ll be watching for you to changes positions at the Negotiating Table.

Bruce Burns, The Negotiator!

In the late summer of 2001 I had the habit of working at night and sleeping during the early hours of the morning. After having descended into the blissful oblivion of up-all-night sleep at about 6 am on September 11th, I was awakened sometime after 8am by my wife. She said the following things to my still nearly comatose brain:

“Cheryl just called and she said that the Pentagon has just been hit and the World Trade Center has been taken hostage by a Jet Airplane.”

I thought I was in a Saturday Night Live skit or something. Since the information didn’t make any sense – I had the urge to tell my wife to turn the lights off and go back to sleep. I love my wife so I asked a question to her Peter Pan/Tinkerbell story: “What?” She repeated the comment and I told her as I was coming back to consciousness “That doesn’t make sense.” She was very upset and had probably been up for hours. She replied “It’s what Cheryl said”.

So I asked a few more questions which led me to believe that something had happened to get two women spreading stories that had a Twilight Zone element to them. My wife was wanting to know if I thought “we” were safe. I explained to her how far away D.C. was from Austin and reminded her that we probably aren’t high on any target list. She likes to walk when she wants to clear her head so I asked her if she would walk our newly acquired puppy, Smooches and I would watch CNN and sort it out.

Smooches Reaction to 9/11 (and everything else)

I did sort it out and of course the “reality” was far less believable than the wake-up story my wife had told me. Like most Americans that day I watched the TV trying to grasp what I was seeing and hoping that some “explanation” would help it make sense.

In the 6 years since that day my life has been shaped by the 9/11 Events in many ways. For those of you who follow my blog closely you know that I’m a big fan of Asking Resourceful Questions. I also train my clients and apprentices how to and when to Challenge the Information. I suppose the biggest transformation that’s occurred to myself as a result of the 9/11 attacks was-is a greater and more focused sense of understanding my place in the complex country we live in, both philosophically and literally (two very different pictures of course). In short I’m 500 percent more civic-minded now than I was before that morning.

Today, children born in 2001 are now old enough to start school and learn to read and write. How many years from now will it take them to grasp all the changes that 9/11 brought into their world (our country). They will mostly like think that:

1. Terror Drills and Lock-Downs at Elementary Schools and Above are normal
2. That anyone with a police uniform should be detaining them, asking them questions, requesting they discuss what their parents do at home, if they have guns, and how many guns is normal.
3. Being stripped searched at Airports is normal.
4. Having an hour of gym a week at school and not being able to “get excited” on the play yard is normal.
5. That every 200th kid they might randomly meet has Autism is normal (there’s never been a report of Amish Autism)
6. That news about war and an existing war is just how the world works.
7. That the biometric “chip” that’s coming down the pipeline in a few years which will implanted somewhere on their body is “normal” and even “cool”.
8. That using a camera or video camera in NYC is a crime.
9. That the right to free speech can only be “allowed” in “free speech zones” is normal
10. Mandatory Civil Service is normal
11. Food scares, local terrorism and FEMA camps are normal.
12. That the word used by the media to represent any ill-defined villain is called Al-Keda
13. That the current “outcasts” of society are Muslim in faith or are of obvious middle-eastern descent but the 4-6 new Hispanic kids in each class each year that can’t speak English are normal.
14. That going to the doctor for most things is an absolute waste of time is normal.
15. Seeing a tape of Osama every year that never seems to change in appearance or content is normal.

Not all of the above is directly related to the attacks of 9/11 however they are a “normal” for these post-9/11 children. I remember what life was like for the 38 years I lived before 9/11. Do we just “get used to it” or do we choose to challenge the information? What each of us as parents and adults living in the post-9/11 society choose will determine what our children believe is “true” and “real” about the world we raise them in.

I wish to say to all those who love someone who died on or after September 11th, 2001 as a result of what happened that day on the South End of Manhattan – I am truly sorry for your loss. For those who were marred by those events directly or indirectly who still are among us – please forgive me for not contributing sooner, for not listening sooner, for not doing something to make a difference sooner – I have no excuse.

If you have been touched by 9/11 or related events and wish to comment or share a story you are welcome to leave a comment at the bottom of this article or send it to me directly at justask@yourownbestgood.com. Even if you disagree with me, your comments or emails are welcome.

I’ll see you at the Negotiating Table!

Bruce Burns, the Negotiator!

Knowledge is Power to the Negotiator on a scale like no other profession. Your words equal an increase in profit, position, opportunity, alliances, options and every other word that represents Resource. If you never learn anything else about Negotiating then please please hear this: A Negotiator’s duty is to inspire the Negotiating Complement’s information to flow and flow and flow. Get your Negotiating Complement talking by any means necessary. The metaphor that helps me remember what I’m doing in this part of a Negotiation is to think of myself as a Safe Cracker. My function is to get the Negotiating Complement to reveal his entire combination so that when I begin spinning the tumblers – the question of accessing all his resources is only a mater of how long I wish to draw the Negotiation out, nothing else.

I wish to qualify the point earlier about any means necessary. I don’t intend to arm any of you with ugly negotiating tools. The only time that I pull out my lumber-jack Negotiating tools is when the context is instantaneous and the rules of the game are already dirty and unforgiving – like catching the car thief hot-wiring your car or the guy that cuts in front of you at the movie theater. Hostile Negotiations are an essential element in the vast array of tools and resources needed by The Excellent Negotiator! that we will cover another day.

The opposite of an assumption in a Negotiation is Asking a Resourceful Question.  If you find yourself thinking in terms of an assumption or if the next thing out of your mouth is derived from an assumption – STOP!  Take a little more time and Ask a Resourceful Quesiton.

In my youth – I remember learning one thing and the excitement and the power of knowing one thing – like how to change the oil in my car was so great that it helped me halucinate the following logic: I know one thing and I learned that thing.  Therefore – I can learn anything and the knowing of all things is simply a mater of learning it.  Therefore I know all things though a few of those things are as yet unlearned.  (which gets shortened to) I know all things.

Today I am 43 years and 1 day old.  I’ve learned enough to know I hardly know anything at all.  In my Negotiations I amp up my own ignorance.  I want my Negotiating Complement to feel the great rush of vast knowledge and shine his rays upon my dull self…so I can then open up his safe and take what I wish.  By the way – each model of car requires you to learn how to change the oil all over again and oh my god that’s such a great way to spend my time.

If you have a story about someone who Negotiates through Assumption (including yourself) or have a question about how to deal with assumptions, asking resourceful quesitons or anything else I may have covered, please feel free to leave a comment or write me at justask@yourownbestgood.com.

If you are interested in hearing more about Negotiations and would like to receive my Newsletter please fill out the form under my picture to the right.  If you wish an even deeper grasp of Negotiations you might wish to sign up for my currently Free Apprenticeship Program.

What would happen if every time you opened your mouth you got exactly what you wanted?  Have you Negotiated to your Own Best Good Today?

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

One of the challenges that arises when you are negotiating purely for yourself or your loved ones is a connection the negotiator experiences that might be akin to being the chess piece that you are about to move (if that makes any sense). My wife of course has been participating in this process fully as well with her own understanding of negotiating (that reminds me of yet another aspect of Negotiations that I’d like to speak about.)

When we play chess and we decide to sacrifice the knight in order to expose the queen – we just do it because it is how we will win the game. However, when we are the king or queen and that knight that was just sacrificed is the family dog – your emotional connection to the negotiation in this chess metaphor can be like a giant tree fallen in the road before you, blocking the fruition of your intended negotiations.

What pollutes our Negotiating Excellence? The last time you thought you might negotiate then you found yourself backpedaling – what caused the backpedaling? What feeling do you experience when you step up to Negotiate and then suddenly it seems that negotiating at all was foolish? I don’t know what your answer is (though you are encouraged to share them with me via the comments section), but mine is fear. When I was a young man one of my favorite movies (I’m dating myself here!) was Dune. There is a scene in the movie where the “smart” guy speaks the following affirmation:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Fear is the Negotiation killer as well.  What happens to me when fear enters the equation is that I often forget what to say or do next.  How do I bring myself back?  What do I do to climb out of the dark hole of embarassment, guilt, shame and any of the other triggers of fear?  Well – if my fear hasn’t completely paralyzed me then I remind myself of Why any of us Negotiate at all, ever.  We have something to offer!  So, whatever you have to offer is truly the focus of a Negotiation for you, Negotiator!  You may ask 500 resourceful questions of the Negotiating Complement and his or her Targeted Resources, but if you cannot tie what they have to what you have then there is no Negotiation.

June is going to be the busiest month of my life in a long time.  I will do my best to post here daily.  I’m going to be working on more things to offer so as to become a greater resource for each of you.  Currently I offer a free Apprenticeship to those who want to really step-up their Negotiating Excellence!  If you are interested in receiving my Newsletter and/or joining my Free Apprenticeship Program then find the links to the right of this post and sign up today!

What have you done to Negotiate to Your Own Best Good?  What would it feel like to get whatever you wanted every time you opened your mouth?  Sign up today and find out!

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

His situation is that he’s had several unfulfilled relationships in the last 8 or 9 years. He really wants to step-up the quality of his mate-choice process and discover someone that is willing to commit for the long haul. As we began our training for this aspect of his life – I do what I always do – ask resourceful questions. When someone asks you a resourceful question, what they are really doing is examining your life. A resourceful question is almost always a question that you ask someone else that they themselves have refused or not known to ask their own self. Thus the essence of The Art of Asking Resourceful Questions is revealed by the relative significance of any question to the person being asked.

As I began my barrage of resourceful questions I soon discovered that my client had a low frequency of flirting as a result of having a vast array of rules governing his own process of flirting. I challenged his information and instructed him to practice every chance he was offered. This was quite challenging to him and he of course showed me his resistance. His resistance was-is a form of anxiety that is defined by unresourceful questions such as “What if I’m wasting my time? What if she’s not the one? What if she states on her myspace account that she’s not looking? What if she’s wearing a ring and I’m not sure if it’s a wedding ring or not..” His list was endless.

We have all played the “what if” game. When adults play it to prevent taking action – they can become self-oppressing. When I find a client has this much resistance to new information then the new behavior I help them install must be easy and simple – something they can do all the time in any situation without alot of thought. For this client the prescription was this: 1)Ask any woman you meet thoughtful questions and 2)Make her feel good. Of course he had a million questions and “what ifs” and so on. He didn’t like the specific instructions – he wanted to “get there himself” so he asked me for a metaphor as a guide. My metaphor was “Treat flirting like golf. When a woman appears before you in any situation think of the golf rule of “playing the ball where it lands”. So if you are in a restaurant, on a subway, walking your dog, jogging, parking your car, etc. that is the right place to flirt. He had another wave of questions for this of course. Resistance is as resitance does not.

The purpose of my instruction was for him to become masterful at flirting so that if he ever did meet the one he’d be ready for it instead of getting overwhelmed by his emotions and choking. Have you ever been in a situation where you knew what you wanted in a relationship but you had no idea what to say next to get it? Feel free to share your thoughts and comments or even your questions in the comment section or you can write me directly at justask@yourownbestgood.com.

What would happen if you were able to flirt for your own best good?

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

My wife, Suzanne is a very devoted entrepreneur. When she’s managing her home-based business and I “pop-in” her Ignore Quotient is quite high. This morning while I was showering I thought I might negotiate through her high Ignore Quotient by creating a pattern-interrupt (see #10). I was looking in my shaving mirror and thought – What would happen if I removed my mustache but kept the goatee? then laughed knowing I had found a way to negotiate thru the Ignore Quotient.

After turning myself into a dead-ringer for the Stone Temple Pilot Singer:

I went into her office and snuck up behind her. I began giving her a shoulder massage and talking to her quietly they way you might speak to an animal that’s about to bite you. Then I told her I had to leave so I walked away from her desk and picked up one of her girly office pillows and covered my face from the nose down real quick. She looked at me a few times kind of the way you look at the person in the left-hand turn lane that has a green light but isn’t turning.

Finally I asked her some benign question with the pillow down. Her Ignore Quotient was strong and unfettered. I asked the question again and the part of her wife-censor that detects annoyance began to wake up. After asking the same boring question a third time she stopped working and looked at me. “What did you do? Did you cut your hair? Something’s different…” It was at that moment that I made a kissy face at her.

Then she made the face. She saw the missing mustache and said not-so-sweetly “That’s scary”. Now considering I was about to go out into the world and deal with people – this was not the wife-will-boost-your-confidence comment I was hoping she’d make. Nonetheless, I did pierce her Ignore Quotient. I’ve been reaping the rewards of my shaved-mustache gambit all day now. Everytime she sees me – we talk about how I need to shave the chin-brow now that the lip-brow has departed.

I was going to shave it but when she compared me to the Stone Temple Pilot singer I changed my mind. I might be bias so you be the judge:

I think there will be some negotiating post I make in the near future that relates to “holding out” for your own best good. How many days do you think I’ll go without shaving the scary chin-brow? What will Suzanne ultimately offer me to do so. Stay tuned…find out!

If you’ve had someone attempt or even succeed to do something with you that put you in shock and changed the entire dynamic of any kind of communication and would like to share a story – please feel free to leave a comment or write me directly at justask@yourownbestgood.com. What can you do right now to Negotiate to Your Own Best Good?

If you enjoyed this post and would like access to more information – please join my newsletter group on the right side of the screen. If you would like personal help with anything to do with Negotiations I’m currently offering Free Apprenticeships to a limited number of people. You can sign up for the apprenticeship at the right-side of the page as well.

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

My Master Mind took a little break in our schedule recently for various wonderful reasons including my 13th Wedding Anniversary. Last night we picked back up and nothing is as amazing as revving up your creative process as joining others to realize your unlimited power. The daily grind has a way of mesmerizing you to the beat of your own routine. Master Mind is a group of unique beats and rhythms all designed to release your creative passion and inspire you to right action which of course allows you to negotiate to your own best good!

What’s really great about Master Mind is that each person in the group is in their own “place” in the world of creating abundance and mastering the law of attraction. That allows each of us to look at the others and either remember resourceful patterns we’ve already discovered and might have set aside or discover new resources and patterns that truly allow you to spring to the next level.

The group I belong to is my first group. I’m so grateful that it’s a strong and focused group. All the details that seem to go into forming and maintaining a Master Mind can be overwhelming in the beginning. All I can say to any of you who haven’t tried it is that first hour of Master Mind will be so strong and so inspiring that the lure of repeating the experience will easily become a resourceful habit.

Thank you Bill Hibbler for demonstrating Master Mind at Unseminar 3. I know we break a few rules that Joe Vitale and Bill Hibbler lay out in Meet and Grow Rich. Our general attitude toward Master Mind is to rock until we drop. Since we don’t meet but every two weeks – we give and receive all that we have for that night (and sometimes the next morning) to each other.

If you are interested in Master Mind or you are already a member of one please feel free to leave a comment or ask a question.  You can also leave comments or ask questions at justask@yourownbestgood.com.  If you’d like to receive my free Negotiator Primer or Join my free Apprenticeship just sign up on the right hand side of this page.  What will you do to Negotiate toYour Own Best Good Today?

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

A few months ago he was diagnoised with Congestive Heart Failure. As an electrical engineer – he is accustomed to doing research on the internet. He did his research and discovered that a)in most Hospitals if you are over 50 and sneeze they diagnose you with CHF and b)he had no symptoms whatsoever of heart problems. For months the doctors wanted to cut him open and operate – pump him full of end-game drugs and so on. He refused. Finally – he discovered that he had acid reflux – which was causing the hydrochloric gas in his stomach to seep into his lungs – starving him for oxygen.

Living in Austin, Texas means I also live in the land of alternative medicine. I’ve been “communicating” the option that my father come to Austin, stay in my home (he lives 2 hours away) and “try” the alternative means to getting better – all the doctors and meds of “modern” medicine haven’t improved his situation even slightly. Sometimes in a Negotiation “time” is the one ingredient that you require in order to succeed. My father will be pulling up in my driveway in a matter of minutes. We are going to see two different kinds of alternative medicine practitioners this morning.

I don’t truly know if they can help him – what I do know is that the difference between those who fail and those who succeed is that he who is willing to fail and try again will eventually succeed – he who fails and quits (in this context at least) dies. My father’s misery with this condition is something I don’t wish to share with the public. I’ll just say that I spent two days with him recently at our Family Estate and when I returned home it took me 3 days to get over the sense of overwhelm of watching him suffer through this.

Today he Negotiates for relief with new doctors. I Negotiate traffic and parking spaces so he can get that relief.  Every chance I had to Negotiate through time with my father without wearing out my welcome on the subject of trying something different in order to create a result – I did.  Even though that’s true, when he called me earlier this week and told me what he wanted – I was still surprised.

The fruit of our Negotiations sometimes appear when we least expect them too.

I love my father.

Bruce Burns The Negotiator

Last night I had the great fortune of speaking with a woman named Kelly for the first time who had read The Attractor Factor by Dr. Joe Vitale. She was in alot of emotional pain and after reading a part of the his book she was inspired to contact him. Her call was eventually directed to my office. We spoke for over 2 hours and the topic of our conversation was RESOURCES.

If Negotiation is my strong right arm, then Resource Coaching is my other strong right arm. The first challenge when someone needs Resource First Aid is to re-direct their attention. When people are in a resource-depraved state – so is their attention. If you ask them what they notice about what’s going on around them and their life – they will tell you all that is wrong, broken and missing. I asked Kelly if she would be open to some training from me over the phone and she agreed.

Resource Coaching is a step-by-step technique. You must train the eyes to see where the feet need to go and get everything working in concert step-by-step. I was taking the first step with Kelly when she balked. She went from listening and wanting help to a long dreadful story about her life. I thought “We’ve slid off the road and now we are back in the ditch she probably called me from. I don’t like being muddy, so I washed my brain down and refocused to get Kelly and I back to the smooth clean road of Resources.

We stumbled up the incline to the road again and I put our “car” into gear and headed on back down the road trying to complete the “first step”. We were approaching the first step when suddenly she reached over (through the phone) and steered us right back in the ditch. It was like 8 or 9 pm when this was happening and I had already had a full day. I was “trying” to be “happy” about Kelly and I being in the ditch again.

This time instead of climbing back up the incline of our experience – I just stayed muddy with her as long as I could to “get” how she kept recreating the ditch result. I asked her lots of RESOURCEFUL QUESTIONS. Guess what I learned? She hated the word “resource”. I use the word resource in about every other sentence when I’m sleeping – you can imagine how often I might use it when I’m awake. So now I have to keep from laughing at the potential Mad TV skit that is arising from this experience: A woman in a resource-depraved state contacts me so she can really hike up her resources and I start giving her the Resource Remedy but she can’t stand to literally hear the word “resources”.

Would you have quit at that point? I did briefly think of hanging up so I could go eat dinner before 10pm but I decided since I had already uesd the words “Play Full Out” with her – that I had to be a model for those words or look like a snake oil salesman.

Staying in the ditch with Kelly (nice and muddy), I began to ask her questions about things that made her happy. Her level of resource-depravity was so strong that we had to sort through about 3 stories before I finally actually found a happy one. (The mud was starting to dry) On the third story of her son eating doodle bugs as a child – I discovered the word “doodle” made her laugh so much she could hardly think of what to do next – so I substituted the word “resources” with the word “doodle”.

We spent the next 30 minutes or so doing some “Doodle Coaching”. We quickly climbed out of the mud, got back on Doodle Road and I discoverd that the Resource Coach’s Fast Car was now a Doodle Bug (pun intended). Near the end of the conversation Kelly asked me if I knew anyone that did Energy Work. I have another client who I do Resource Coaching with and lo and behold at that moment (almost 10pm) she called me on the other line. I took the synchronicity as a sign I could finally have dinner so I networked the two women together and got off the phone.

In a Negotiation sometimes you have to be willing to either a) speak someone else’s thought-language or b) invent a new language in order to Manifest your outcomes. If all forms of communication are a negotiations then communication itself is the most prized negotiation-resource there is.

William Shatner certainly uses a diffrent technique than I do (notice the stun gun)to close his Negotiating Complements. See if you can tell who asked the resourceful question in the clip?