What do you get when you combine a lawyer, a comedian, and a chocolate maker? Today’s guest, Nick Yousif, of course. Nick tenaciously pursues his dreams across his varied interests and frequently proves his naysayers wrong. In this episode, he joins Christine McKay to share his exciting journey. Nick talks about how he sees himself taking on the big guys in his chocolate business and what he’s doing to maintain control of his products, vision, goals, and how that informs his negotiation strategy.  He also talks about how he used comedy to relieve tension in difficult conversations.   

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Find the Good and Keep Going with Nick Yousif

I am excited to have Nick Yousif with us. He has the most fascinating background. He is an attorney in Massachusetts, but he’s also a comedian and an actor. I don’t know about you, but the idea of having a comedian and an actor as an attorney makes working with attorneys a lot more fun to me. He graduated from Roger Williams University. He has his own law practice in Boston that he’s been operating for many years. He works in the areas of bankruptcy, divorce, real estate, and personal injury, but he’s also a comedian and performed at the Wilbur Theatre, which if you’re not from the Boston area is an incredible landmark location and venue to perform. He’s also performed at the Comedy Connection, Nick’s Comedy Stop, the Comedy StudioHe’s got an incredible background in comedy and he’s also an actor.  

He co-starred in the Pulitzer Prize-nominatedThe Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity in Pittsburgh the Pulitzer. He is fluent in Arabic. He’s of Lebanese ancestry. He’s conversational in French. This guy is a Renaissance guy. I’m super excited to have Nick join us because he’s got many amazing lessons that he’s going to be able to share with you, things that he’s learned over the life of being an attorney. One of the things that I didn’t readhe’s launching a chocolate business. For all of you, chocolate lovers, just wait. He’s got this wealth of experience to share with us in terms of what negotiation has done for him. What some of the lessons are that he’s learned and some of the stories that he’s gathered along the way in his journey that he’s going to be able to share. Nick, thank you for joining us here on the show. I’m excited to have you. 

In comedy, you can tell a funny joke, but the joke has to be super generous to you. It has to be you. Click To Tweet

I’m glad to be here and thank you for having me. I feel like my mom sent you that bio. 

Tell us a little bit more about youhow you ended up. It’s an unusual path to go to law school, then to become a comedian and then to start an entrepreneurial business in chocolate, of all things. How did you move on to that path? 

I got some great advice when I was younger and it was, “If you have an interest in something, always say yes to it. I don’t think anybody’s ever born an expert in anything. Why should somebody do something that you have a passion for? Why shouldn’t it be you? I feel like, in comedy, you can tell a funny joke, but the joke has to be super generous to you. It has to be you. If there’s a passion that you have, that’s all you need to give you some ownership of it. If you’ve got ownership in that space, you enjoy it, and others around you enjoy it, why not try to profit off of it too? Making a business or profiting off of it is one metric of success. 

There are a lot of things that you can get in being personally enriched by the experience, having another common denominator that gives you something to have something in common with somebody else. If there’s one thing about being an attorney, you’re always trying to think outside the box and you’re always trying to figure out ways to not be confined in certain contracts, in certain situations. For me, it was like, “Why do chocolate companies essentially poison us with all this sugar? How do they take the cocoa bean that was essentially healthy and turn it into something that’s not healthy? How do we get the good out of chocolate, but not having come with all the baggage of processed sugar and unnecessary things that aren’t that organic, that may end up hurting us in the longterm?” 

That’s how I got to that point. My sister had a sugar sensitivity. She’s telling us she likes chocolate and we try to make something that’s a little healthier. I talked to a couple of people that I knew in the business. I went to a couple of fancy food shows. I started making it myself, googling different recipes, and then finally consulting with a few food chemists. Two years later, 100 iterations of my recipe later came up with something that was shelflife stable and that could withstand some time on a shelf and also give you some benefits as opposed to being a sugary, unhealthy product. 

I know many women in particular who are going to be delighted to read that. Where are you at in the production or in the distribution of it? Where are you out in the business process? 

It’s hard because, in the same way that you do comedy, you’re always trying to perfect a joke, but you need to add new material. I have the recipe, I’ve applied for the patent. It’s going to be patentpending recognized by the United States trade patent office. I’m taking a look into distribution because the way you have to make it is you have to get the packaging done. You have to be able to store the material, and then you need a platform with which to sell it. If you don’t have all these things altogether, you’re going to end up not being able to fulfill a lot of order requests and then retailers will drop you.  

If you put it in the hands of the retailer to help you with these different things, they’re going to dictate the cost of the product. You won’t be able to profit on the margins and they’ll be able to move product. That’s where I’m at with it. How much do I determine in terms of how much do I hold in bulk that I can store, that’s still going to be shelflife stable? Also, can I get to a point where I can negotiate with the retailer so that Trader Joe’s or Market Basket or Whole Foods doesn’t come in and try to undercut my prices by $2 and telling me that’s the only way they’re going to let me on the shelf? There’s a whole lot of that.  

I’ve also spoken to some food brokers and food brokers way, they can leverage their relationships with major retailers, but then they take 4% to 6% off of every unit they sell. These are all the economic factors that I have to consider that have nothing to do with the things that I like to do which are improving the quality, making a proteinrich, sweet but not containing a lot of sugar product. That’s where I’m at with it. I’m still technically in development. Although we do have a formula that is that we did apply for a patent. I’m trying to figure out how do I build an organic platform online and try to get enough units sold and then pitch my product later to virtual retailers. 

little bit about the distribution because that’s an interesting conundrum to be in. Do you want to go to a large retailer like Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods or is the goal to get there? How close and how much control do you want to have over the distribution once the formula is patented and you’re ready to go? 

Negotiation: Business is the same as doing comedy, you’re always trying to perfect a joke, but you need to add new material.

 

It’s like a catch22. You want to get yourself out there, but at what cost? At what costs do you want to concede control of your product and distribution to let a larger company or a larger distributor call the shots? The problem is, how do you create valueadd for nothing? Isn’t that the art we’re trying to create? It’s not easier to go to Whole Foods and say, I’ve got ten years of sales records that I can show you and you should be lucky to have this meeting with me. I’m not quite there. I have to create the fire and smoke in the meantime, or at least show them that at least in my area, I can show them trends of loyalty. I can show local either gyms or local healthy markets, continuing to show their repeat request to reorder. There are small little metrics that you can show to give you the big dog bite, even if you’re a small dog. 

Something that I talk a lot about when I’m speaking is for small businesses, sometimes what has happened and I’ve seen it many times over my career is small business will try to do business with a GoliathI do a lot of David and Goliath negotiation as what I call them. What will sometimes happen is that Goliath organization swallows up the smaller organization with process requirements, billing requirements and distribution requirements. In fact, previously I interviewed Scott O’Neill, who’s the CEO of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment. They own the NBA team, the Philadelphia 76ers in the National Hockey LeagueNew Jersey DevilsThey started looking at their supplier base and realized that the same suppliers were winning business all the time. 

The reason was because smaller companies are looking at it in terms of minorityowned businesses and who are not winning their business. The reason was because a small company cannot adhere to the distribution requirements, the pricing requirements because our costs are automatically higher. They looked for different ways to negotiate with their minorityowned businesses in order to be able to do that. We talk a lot about how you have to be careful as a small organization doing business with a monster organization because they will eat into your profits. At the end of the day, a lot of small companies say, I’m making revenue, but that’s not the right question. The question is, “Are you making profit? What are you keeping out of what revenue you’re generatingIf you’re not keeping enough profit to sustain yourself and to grow, then no amount of revenue makes the difference. 

It is a very big challenge and something that small companies often don’t think enough about because they get so excited about, “My product is going to be in Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods,” but what does that mean? What is the longterm implication? I love how you’re talking about that because, in negotiation, a lot of companies don’t think about what’s that longerterm implication? What’s that plan B, plan C or plan D down the road? That is going to impact how I negotiate deal. When it comes to thinking about that and going to one of the big guys versus keeping something kind of closer to the vest, doing it more boutique, maybe doing influencer kind of stuff, how are you evaluating that? What’s your reaction to that? How do you think about that concept within the confines of the business that you are building? 

I try not to even think about it from the purpose of the product. I’m trying to think, “What’s my goal?” My goal is to ultimately control as much of the process I can and to create a platform. I’m creating a healthy chocolate spread. Let’s say I have become the greatest chocolate spreader on the planet, what’s my next stepI think the next step is to create a space of influence and a platform for great healthy products. For me, it’s about keeping control of the product because it’s not just about creating a chocolate spread. 

What if I create other flavors or other food groups or food items that fall in line with what I’m trying to do? Like Coca-Cola, they don’t just make Coke. They are into snacks, chips and all kinds of different things. You have to diversify like that. I can’t make a decision now that later is going to affect my ability to create a larger platform. That’s where I start. If I’m going to say, “Thanks for this $5 million buyout. I’m wonderful. I’m great. part of me says, “If somebody is willing to do that, that means it’s going to create that much more impact on increasing their platform. NowI know I’ve got a potential platform starter, why do I want to sell out for that number when I might be able to exponentially grow the value of my product and my platform?” 

If I’m looking at it, “My chocolate is part of the B. If a larger company came to me and said, “We’re going to introduce you and let you be part of our general platform. Now, we’re talking because to me, it’s not just about the dollar like, “This is the value of this one product. I’m looking at it in terms of how can I create a horizontal move to make multiple vertical loops later on? That’s how I see it. It’s not just about who gives me the opportunity to find customers. That’s part of it. For example, if they make me sign an exclusive with them, what do I get out of that? I made a little bit more money, but to say that I couldn’t have done that on my own. 

What part of that are they giving me that I can’t? I mean, why can’t I get an influencer? Why can’t I get a celebrity and say, Jennifer Lopez, I’m going to give you 10% of everything we make together. Just sponsor it.” As opposed to a company that may come in and say, “We’re going to control what we buy this for and you have to give us exclusivity or we’re going to buy the product from you and the rights for a certain amount of dollars. It doesn’t let me get to my sphere of influence in creating an overall greater platform. I feel like I’ve missed the forest for the trees. 

I love what you said there. One of the things that we talk a lot about is the importance of having clarity in your objectives and your goals when you’re negotiating. You eloquently articulated what that clarity is. That is critical because having that clarity drives everything you do. When you’re negotiating, you can sit and say you want to build a bigger platform. You don’t just want to build a single product and sell the product to the highest better, and then move on to something next. You have a vision of building a platform that brings healthy chocolate in multiple ways to the market and creates the community around that. It’s elevating the importance of that and having a broader impact around so people are eating healthy chocolate, not the stuff that we have on the market. It’s healthy in a different way because you’re motivated by your sister and what her experience has been in wanting to make that improvement for her and people like her. 

To our readers, making sure that you understand that clarity for you and what that looked like for you, knowing what your limitations and walkaways are. Nick, you don’t want to give up control entirely. You don’t want a big company coming in to take over that one product at the expense of the other things that you might be able to create. For the readers, having that understanding of what it is that you want helps you start to develop what your tradeoffs are when you do engage in a negotiation. I was on the phone with a gentleman who’s getting ready to launch a product called IO and it is a beverage. 

His motivation is creating an alternative to alcohol that’s non-alcoholic for people who want to stop drinking or reduce their drinking. His motivation is also very personal. He has some specific things that he’s trying to do with that drink. I would love to introduce the two of you. I think you guys have some interesting things to talk about. One of the things that you didn’t talk about that I’m curious about is, what is your exit strategy? lot of small companies fall in love with what they’re doing because they’re like bearing a child and it’s allconsuming. It’s emotional, physically and financially consuming. They don’t think about what the end game is and what their exit strategy is in because your exit strategy also drives how you negotiate. How are you thinking about an exit strategy as you think about the future of the business? 

It’s hard because I have many other business ventures or things that I already do in my regular workspace, which I think is good and bad. It’s good in that it doesn’t put as much pressure on me to make snap decisions, and I can focus on it and look at some things more of a hobby or more things, and say, “What do I want to get out of this?” I have a wife and child that are counting on me to sell out quick to get the first buck I can out of the business? No, I would say it’s the opposite of that. My exit strategy is more in line with, “Does it allow me to stop doing other things and focus on this?” I’d have to look at first, understanding, “What my time commitment would be? Can I now jump in full time on this?” As opposed to, I’m going to run a law practice, do real estate or do whatever other projects I’m doing. 

Does this exit strategy involve me now being able to focus most of my time on this or is my exit strategy going to be focused more on the economic? I’m not going to have enough time to grow this business the way that I want to. A Frito-Lay wants to come in and say, “We can give you more. We’ll keep you for the shortterm. We’ll give you some money to buy-in and we’ll give you royalties iperpetuity.” It’s to an extent where you’ll always have an involvement in it, but you’ll never have to worry about making long-term decisions for the business. 

The more somebody tells you 'no', the more it means you're doing something great. Click To Tweet

We get back to the original thing which is, “What are you trying to get out of this? It goes back to, Do I want to create a platform or do I want to do well with a single product? I’m leaning towards trying to create a platform with way bigger risks, far more unrealistic, but I had no business creating this chocolate product and nowI’m slowly starting to turn the heads of distributors, who I spoke to them about this many years ago and now they’re trying it like, “How did you do it? The ingredients you told us you were going to use, the chemist told us we couldn’t use it. I said, I know. We shifted it a little bit. Through trial and error, we were able to put the secret formula together, which I can’t disclose for obvious reasons, but I’m going to have to just send you a sample. 

There’s a woman who created a makeup brand that she was told she couldn’t sell and that nobody would do it. She turned this brand that she built into her living room and nearly went bankrupt developing. She sold it to L’Oreal and it was the largest deal in the history of L’Oreal. She became the first woman CEO of a division of L’Oreal as a result of it and she did it. She would be somebody for you to look to because her whole thing was creating a brand. She went on QVC and Home Shopping Network and sold it. 

The first time she tried to pitch to them, they told her no. It’s a great story. It highlights how you can build a community. You’re talking about a different industry than the beauty industry, but what you’re doing has an impact on the beauty industry because we are what we eat. She would be somebody for you to check out, to see her story of how she did it. She’s done what you want to do to a certain extent. Let’s take a little bit of a switch. Let’s talk a little bit about comedy. One of the things that we talk a lot about at negotiation is now we ask for things matters. 

One of the things in all my speaking, because I speak all the time, is that people are terrified of negotiating. I had a guy who interviewed me for a podcast and he’s like, “How can you talk about negotiation? It’s combative. He shut his whole body off. He closed it. He was protecting himself. I talk about it. Negotiation is just a conversation. It’s a conversation about a relationship. My husband and I have been married for many years. The deal that we negotiated at the beginning of our relationship is not entirely the same deal we have now, but how we ask for things matters. How has comedy influenced how you ask for things when you’re in a negotiation? 

Comedy helps me the most when I do divorce cases because the idea of comedy is crossover. It’s what it is to use a basketball analogy. Make them think you’re going this way and then you come this way. The comedy is in the aha like, “I didn’t see that coming. Sometimes, when I try to figure out the ultimate settlement or the one crucial piece to finalizing a divorce deal, I always start off with, “Your spouse has finally decided to take you back, keep the marriage going and we’re ready to do this. What do you say? They look at me like, “Are you kidding me?” Nowthey’re caught off guard by that because I put my acting skills on it, “Here’s the deal. They’re not going to divorce you. You’re going to have to love them forever for eternity. It doesn’t matter if you’re happy or not, you have to deal with it. Can you do it? That’s it. We don’t have a choice. 

If I pretend that I’m serious about it, then they start to get nervous because they’re like, “This guy has never joked with me yet. They don’t know that I do comedy. Finally, when I tell them, “No, I’m just playing with you,” they burst out laughing and they let their guard down a little bit. What’s the price of your freedom? What’s the price of being unencumbered. What’s the price of not having to deal with the anxiety of being stuck in a relationship as your life passes you by? Do you still want to argue over that $5,000? You can keep it and I’ll keep making more money. I hope you do, buI also have to explain to you the economics of the case. 

I’m layering my arguments about, “It’s not just about winning, it’s about how much you’re paying for that win. We need to get you in a different perspective and a different mindset.” If I get you to think a little bit differently and you’re not so obsessive and being compulsive about certain things, it’s easier to see that in the case of 30,000 feet. It’s the same way that comedians are so appreciated for being sometimes brilliant because they can take such a simple and silly thingmake you laugh about it and make you step back and go, George Carlin was great at that or Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy talking about race relations like, ‘These are good points. I didn’t think about that. How do we creatively get people to open their mindsThat’s what we’re trying to do. Sometimes when you come in from the comedy angle, they maybe don’t take it seriously, but because they don’t take it seriously, they start thinking in a different way because I got the lawyer. I got the suit. I got the judge. You wait until the judge hears about my….” “You know what of the spouse? No one cares. Let’s get back to what does matter, your freedom. 

When I’m negotiating, I do a lot of lingo pattern interrupt. That’s a huge pattern interrupt. I do that all the time too. One of the big keys to being able to negotiate is to move somebody, especially on something emotional. The divorce is hugely emotional, but it’s also when somebody has their own business and they’ve invested their entire life and life savings into it, there’s an emotional connection. In Chris Voss bookNever Split the Difference, he talks about tactical empathy. Having gone to Harvard for my MBA and being taught by the guys who wrote Getting To Yes, and they’re part of the Harvard Program on negotiation, they’re very process-oriented, but when I was in school, they never talked about the emotional aspect of negotiating. 

Based on Chris’s book, negotiation is inherently emotional. You cannot take emotion out of negotiation because we are emotional creatures. What you described using how you use comedy and the talent to interrupt somebody’s pattern of thinking, to move them into a different thought process is hugely valuable because we have to do that especially when we’re in a conflict situation and we’re having to resolve something that is intensely emotional for people. Tell me a little bit more about how you’ve been able to do that, both in comedy and even in some of your loss situations, or how you anticipate that playing out in the chocolate business. 

Negotiation: Passion is all you need to give you some ownership of it. If you’ve got ownership in that space, you enjoy it, and others around you enjoy it, why not try to profit off of it too?

 

I think that people come in with preconceived notions all the time. The majority of people make decisions based on emotion. How can you not? At the end of the day, we’re not robots. There’s always going to be some emotional element to it. The emotion is just the trick on your negotiation or your ability to understand what you’re trying to get out of it. Many times clients have been irrational. The funny thing is that any attorney will tell you, “Practicing law is great. The problem is the client. I know what the opposing counsel is going to do. We’ve probably talked off the record. At the end of the day, it’s a job. 

Nobody wants to suffer. We want to get this done and be reasonable, which leaves us, who is ultimately the most unreasonable party. Your client, that’s what they teach you in law school. You think, I’ve done a great job negotiating this,” and you come back and the client is like, “No.” “What do you mean no? That doesn’t make any sense.” I have to the psychology of my client first and using comedy allows me to take a broad brush and take wide strokes, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you didn’t have any of the cars or you didn’t have any of the retirement? You could still get by. We could get a lot of support in the meantime because that car is a depreciating asset anyway. Did you rather get the future income? 

When it comes to negotiating, you want to understand where your leverage points are. Click To Tweet

If they think that I’m joking with them, it allows me to save face with them so they don’t feel like I’m betraying them in a way, but I can paint with a broader stroke so that I can start to realize, “If I take this emotional aspect out of it and get them to smile or smirk, I can say, ‘Now I can push them back and forth a little bit.’” If I sit there and say, “You should take this, they’re not going to hear the message. They’re just going to think that we’re getting them off the phone quickly, getting them off that. If they’re going to speato me on the phone, “Let me get ridiculous with this, get a little humorous. 

They’ll be the ones to reign me back in or if they don’t know what they want, they’ll say, I don’t know if the owners are going to come down to steal the car. Why don’t we focus on the real estate, commit to the child supportthe retirement and be done with it because I can’t keep doing this? I’ve been able to exercise them properly without telling them I’m exercising them in the same way that a judge will frustrate parties by making both sides, spend an obscene amount of money because at some point in time they get fatigued. Comedy allows you not to fatigue them, but it allows you to exercise them, still give them positive energy and reinforce the important things like getting out of a dysfunctional marriage, a bad contract or a bad lease agreement, whatever it is. 

That’s important. As far as how I’m going to use comedy to sell chocolate, isomebody dies eating my product, “The good news is I hadn’t killed anybody before. I use comedy more for me so that I don’t freak out about it. At some point in time, I have to have a good sense of humor about this because it’s overwhelming to go into situations knowing you don’t have the background and the leverage that I need to create the things that I want, but to be okay with the process and having people initially tell me early on, “Stick to law, stick to jokes, stick to whatever. 

“Aren’t you the same people that told me I was stupid for doing comedyAren’t you the same people that told me I was stupid for leaving my job and opening my practice origins?” At some point in time, you start to see the pattern and you say to yourself, “The more somebody tells me no, that means I’m doing something great. I’m going to keep pushing because if everybody tells me, ‘Why are you so smart? You’re so handsome,’ and ‘You’ve got all the right answers, now I know something’s wrong. Now I go, ‘Something bad is going to happen.’” In the same way that I went through that humor process with you, I have to keep reinforcing that with me so I stay positiveI’m doing things for the right reason or if I’m not going to do something, it’s for the right reasons, not because I’m scared or because I think I’m not ready.  

How do we get ready? How many times are we going to keep saying we’re not ready? What haven’t we done to get us to that point? Humor has to be for me because I have to have a good sense of humor about it. Otherwise, I’m going to live on the edge of a nervous breakdown trying to manage and growing a chocolate business, manage a law practice, manage the real estate and feeling like I don’t have any control over any of it. At some point in time, there’s going to be a little bit of luck and I need to catch a break. I also need to make sure that I’m doing everything I can to not blow that opportunity if I get it. 

Negotiation: The majority of people make decisions based on emotion. How can you not? At the end of the day, we’re not robots.

 

Also, have a personal life on top of it. One of the things that I love to talk about and the reason why the comedy in terms of how you describe it for you is that whenever we’re in a negotiation, the hardest part of any negotiation is the negotiation that happens right between our ears. What we convince ourselves of is what happens. If you don’t keep a sense of humor about it, you don’t find ways of being optimistic about the future, then you get stuck in the spiral that ends up yielding you very little on the backend. A lot of times that shows up in our negotiation style like the guy that I was describing, who hates the topic of negotiation. 

He had the hardest time interviewing me because he doesn’t like the topic. I’m going to have him on the show to talk about why he has that reaction. He was very stunned when I reached out to him about that, but I was taken by it. We’ve encountered and you and I both negotiated a lot, our readers have negotiatedmet these people who are value taking and aggressive. If you don’t have that sense of humor and that optimism, then those people in our world, we call them champions, they’re champions for themselves.  

They see negotiation as a battle. They go into it armed and armored. Their whole mission is to wipe the floor with you. They want to annihilate you. If we focus on those individuals as what negotiation is, then we miss the point because the vast majority of us don’t negotiate that way. The vast majority of unegotiate with an end in mind, but we have this openness about what it is that we want and how we’re going to get to that. Most people are reasonable in my experience. How can people find you? How can people get ahold of you, reach out to you and learn more? 

The chocolatewe’re going to be launching a platform. In the meantime, you can always go to my website, ComedyNick.com if you want a couple of laughs. YousifLaw.com is the worksite. Hopefully, I’ll be on stage soon enough. The pandemic has created a challenging situation for comics and entertainers, but we have been doing a lot of shows via ZoomIf you follow me on Facebook, you’ll be able to see a lot of my Zoom podcasts with some other great talented comedians. 

Is there anything else that you want to share about negotiation and your experience? A piece of wisdom that you want to leave the audience with? 

We can't predict the future, but we can predict what's going to happen now in this negotiation. Click To Tweet

I always think that when it comes to negotiating, you want to understand where your leverage points are. There’s something you have in this negotiation that the other side needs. Identify that. Identify all possible areas of leverage because I feel like the person that understands the leverage points in the variety of the leverage points the most quickly will get to the point where they want to get to for their client or for themselves. If I start to think about the other side of where their leverage points are or are not and what mine are, if the other side has underestimated what our leverage points are, when I introduce them in the negotiation, I can already feel the scales tipping in my favor. That’s how I look at it.  

One last thing to close with for me in terms of negotiating tactic is you always want to leave a little bit on the table, because if you go for the jugular, I always tell everybody, “You can go to trial,” and they may walk away from this, what’s the economic impact of thatYou’ve got them in the negotiation. Getting them to the table sometimes is a victory in and of itself. When you go to trial, it’s a loss because you have taken on such an enormous risk of losing that it doesn’t justify whatever you gained by winning and the other side can always appeal. The other side can always have an a-ha. The other side could die and then not make good on their promise. We can’t predict the future, but we can predict what’s going to happen now in this negotiation.  

Get to your leverage points. Don’t be afraid to leave a little bit on the table because you’ve got to get to negotiating the next thing. If you’re trying to grab every crumb and you’re going to beat down the other side, it’s an exercise in futility because you should always be negotiating. You’re taking time away from future negotiations with that party or with other parties where you can make money, get success, get whatever it is you want. Get in, get what you need, know your leverage points, leave some crumbs on the table and get moving with your life. 

Nick, thank you so much. It has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. I look forward to getting my sample of chocolate. To the audience, thank you very much for tuning in. Stay tuned for the next episode. Have a great day. Cheers, everybody. 

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 About Nick Yousif

IVZ 7 Nick Yousif | NegotiationOCCUPATION: Massachusetts attorney, comedian, and actor. Smeloff and Benner 2010-2011. Bankruptcy Attorney. The Law Office of Attorney Nick Yousif 2011- present. Practice areas include Bankruptcy, Divorce, Real Estate and Personal Injury.

ACTING EXPERIENCE: Co-starred (Vigneshuar Paduar) in the Pulitzer Prize-nominated “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity” in Pittsburgh, PA 2017.[email protected];

COMEDY EXPERIENCE: Performed at the Wilbur Theatre 2016, 2017, 2018 Comedy Connection, Comix, Nick’s Comedy Stop, Comedy Studio, etc. Website: comedynick.com

SKILLS: Fluent in Arabic (Lebanese ancestry) and conversational in Spanish. Produced web series “I’ll Call You”- nominated for best actor and director at the LA Web Film Festival 2016.