IAM1224 – CEO Empowers Small Businesses through Her Negotiation Expertise

Christine McKay is a Business Negotiation Strategist, international speaker, host of In the Venn Zone podcast, and author of Why Not Ask? A Conversation about Getting More. Christine holds a Harvard MBA and is the CEO/Founder of Venn Negotiation. She has negotiated with more than half of the Fortune 100 & hundreds of small and mid-sized companies across 53 countries. She loves leveling the playing field for her clients and empowers entrepreneurs and business owners to ask for more of what they want and shows them how to get it. Her mission is to reduce business failure rates by helping people elevate their negotiation skills! She was born and raised in a rural community in Montana, graduating with the same 20 kids she grew up with. Christine’s been married to the love of her life for almost 30 years and is a proud mom of three grown children.

• CEO Story: It didn’t start so well during her college days, but worked her way up and successfully graduated Cum Laude, even as a single mom and as a full-time student. Started her job negotiating with large telco companies. Subsequently, it hit a point that small companies don’t have the resources and training in what she does, that’s why she launched Venn negotiation.
• Business Service: She helps her clients negotiate with big clients or big corporate suppliers by either coaching them or leading the negotiation with a focus on optimizing the business relationship.
• Secret Sauce: The ability to read people, how to ask questions so that people can disclose or share things with her.
• CEO Hack: Rocket Book allows you to take notes, on paper, and scan them and it automatically loads up to Dropbox or Evernote.
• CEO Nugget: Ask for what you want, and expect to get it.
• CEO Defined: Giving ideas, her heart, her economy, and it is an ultimate serving role.

Website: www.vennnegotiation.com

Links:

www.whynotask.com

venn. zone

Youtube: www.youtube.com/vennnegotiation

LinkedIn: company/venn-negotiation

Facebook: VennNegotiation

Instagram: negotiation

LinkedIn: Christine McKay

Facebook: mckaymch

Twitter: VennNegotiation

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Transcription

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00:23 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:48  – Gresham Harkless

Hello, Hello, Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Christine McKay of Vin Negotiation. Christine, it's great to have you on the show.

00:57  – Christine McKay

It's awesome to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

01:00  – Gresham Harkless

Awesome to have you on as well. And you're doing so many phenomenal things. What I wanted to do is just read a little bit more about Christine so you can hear about some of those awesome things. Christine is a business negotiation strategist, international speaker, host of the Vin Zone podcast, and the author of Why Not Ask? A conversation about getting more. Christine holds a Harvard MBA and is the CEO and founder of VIn Negotiation. She has negotiated with more than half of the Fortune 100 and hundred-sized companies across 53 countries.

She loves leveling the playing field for her clients and empowers entrepreneurs, and business owners to ask for more of what they want and show them how to get it. Her mission is to reduce business failure rates by helping people elevate their negotiation skills. She was born and raised in a rural community in Montana, graduated with the same 20 kids she grew up with, and Christine has been married to the love of her life for almost 30 years, and is a proud mom of three grown children. Christine, you are doing so many awesome things, and I love your mission your purpose, and every awesome thing that you're doing in between. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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02:08 – Christine McKay

I am so excited to be here to speak to you and the community. So let's do this.

02:12 – Gresham Harkless

Let's do it then. Let's make it happen. So, to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here, a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

02:21 – Christine McKay

Well, it started not so well. So I was. What happened? I had a great high school career. I was a beauty queen. I was an honor student. I did all this amazing stuff. And then I went to my first year of college and stuff. Kind of went to hell in a handbasket. And I discovered I was pregnant. I just lost my job. I got evicted from my house. I started living in the back of my car, and I was homeless for the first roughly six months of my pregnancy. I met a woman named Roxanne Eucan, who is no longer with us, but I always want to honor her.

And she. She challenged me to write down four goals and to pray about them. And I only remember one of those goals. And I went to the welfare office for the first time, and they said, what are you going to going to do? And I said I'm going to go to Harvard. I just blurted out one of those goals. And they laughed at me. Well, I ended up marrying somebody who turned out not to be such a nice guy. Had two more kids. So I had three kids. At 22. He couldn't. I wasn't allowed to work. I wasn't allowed to go to school, but he couldn't support us.

We were buying groceries at the local food bank. We were boiling water on the stove for the kids to have baths. And there were times when I went through the garbage can to be able to put gas in my car. And I hit a day. One day, my. I couldn't feed my daughter. I had a can of tomato soup in the cupboard. She hated tomato soup. And she did what any self-respecting three-year-old would do, and she threw a temper tantrum. And I was like, I can't keep living this way. So I went to a community college. I took a risk, went to community college, got a 4.0, and earned a scholarship to Rensselaer Poly's Technical Institute in upstate New York, and decided it was going to be easier on my own than with my husband at the time.

And I became the first woman to graduate from Rensselaer, who was both a full-time student and a single mom. And my kids were three, four, and five at the time. And I ended up graduating cum laude and with honors. I worked my ass off. And that time I met and married. I met the man of my dreams and ended up marrying him after I graduated, and he was super supportive. And I had an opportunity to start working in international mergers and acquisitions in my first company out of my undergrad program. And he was like, you have to do this. And so I started doing.

I started my negotiation career in Jakarta, Indonesia, and worked all over Southeast Asia, negotiating large telecommunication deals and then I just, I fell in love with it and I just kept it going. And I made negotiation part, a conscious part of every job, every project, everything I did, so that it hit a point when I realized that small companies don't have the same resources, they don't have the same access to education and training, and they don't have, you know, can't afford a ton of advice, advisors to come and help them do some of these things.

And so I launched Venn negotiation and our Venn masters training program as a way of helping small businesses and entrepreneurs level the playing field, ask for more of what they want, and then show them how to get it.

05:40 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you so much and sharing your story, especially the journey that you went through and how it didn't start, I guess all sunshine and rainbows, for lack of a better term. And I think that is, you know, a lot of inspiration and a kind of reminder to us. Like, even in the darkest time and the darkest moments, there is light at the end of the tunnel. And I love the intentionality and the power of words and having that, that vision and that mission, sometimes even before we know how we're going to do it. And I love that that was one of the goals that you had and how you were able to kind of, you know, reach that, that goal.

06:12 – Christine McKay

Absolutely. I mean it. People ask me all the time, how, how did you become successful? And my immediate response is, I surrounded myself with people who believed in me when I didn't believe in myself.

06:26 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I know you touched a little bit upon Venn's negotiation. I want to drill down a little bit more. Can you take us through how you serve your clients? And I want to hear more about your book your podcast and all the things that you're doing.

06:38 – Christine McKay

I have so many things going on, and it's. And I love that. I love that. So, venn negotiation, we work primarily with small and mid-sized companies, and we do a lot of what I affectionately call David and Goliath negotiation. So we help our clients who are negotiating with big customers or big, big corporate suppliers, big government agencies, or who are trying to exit their business and sell to a larger company as a company, buying their organization. And we help them develop the strategy. Sometimes we coach them through strategy, but more often than not, our clients ask us to lead the negotiation.

So we're not attorneys. We take a very pragmatic, business-focused view and we partner with people's attorneys, but we really, focus on what is, how you optimize the business relationship, because in all my years of negotiating, which has been, it's almost 30 years, and it is over 50 countries that I've negotiated in. And all of my early negotiations were not in the United States. And so I developed my view of negotiation outside the US. And so my experience shows me that negotiation is a conversation about a relationship. And you cannot win a relationship, but you can get more value out of it.

And so we focus and help our clients get more value out of the relationships that they have and the relationships that they're looking to develop. That's why my company logo is a Venn diagram, a three-circled Venn diagram, because it requires curiosity about you, your counterpart, and the situation to find that sweet spot, that Venn zone, as we call it, of where agreement exists and where. Where there's the intersection of what we all want in that. That zone.

08:38 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I love that. And I feel like that can kind of manifest itself in so many different aspects. Would you consider that to be like, what I like to call your secret sauce, which is the thing that kind of sets you apart and makes you unique or your organization? Do you think it's your ability to not just be versed in negotiation, but to be able to communicate what it sounds like in so many different ways and help them to be able to navigate their relationships a lot better? Do you think that's your secret sauce?

09:02- Christine McKay

I think that part of it is being able. I'm effective at hearing what people are not saying with their words. So over the years, I've just been able to learn how to read people, how to ask questions, so that people disclose things to me that people share things to me that they wouldn't necessarily share under other circumstances. Part of that's because of my background going from nothing to Harvard and kind of beyond. Right. I've worked with in the boardrooms of some of the largest companies on the globe, and, you know, and I've eaten on the street in, you know, out of a can. Right. It's that.

So part of what I love about my experience in life is that it gives me this very broad view, and it also gives me a view. I can see other people's insecurities, and I don't want to highlight those insecurities. I want to help them address those insecurities.

10:05 – Gresham Harkless

Appreciate you so much and empowering people and teaching that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:19 – Christine McKay

Oh, I have a new one that just came into my life a few months ago. I'm like, I'm going to show it off. It's a rocket book. I don't know if you've heard about Rocketbook, but Rocketbook allows you to take notes on what's, like, paper, and then you scan it and automatically you set it up so it automatically loads up to your Dropbox, your Evernote, you're whatever. And this thing is amazing. It's. I load it up to Evernote, and it's, like, totally searchable. My. So I can take as many notes as I want, and you just use a damp cloth to erase it and start all over again.

10:58 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I love that. And I had heard about Rocketbook before, but I hadn't heard if it synced with Evernote and Dropbox. So I love that next step where you can have it integrate with everything you might be doing. And I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a little bit more of a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client, or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:18 – Christine McKay

Well, for me, that's pretty much always the same thing. It's a Maya Angelou quote, ask for what you want and expect to get it. And I just. I love it. I mean, if we asked for more and we stopped negotiating with ourselves all the time, telling ourselves that we're not worthy, we don't deserve this, or, you know, and stop and not be afraid to ask for what we want. We get more yeses in our lives than we get no's. But we focus on the nos. So give yourself permission to ask for what you want and see what yeses come into your life, you'll be surprised.

11:53 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I love that. It's very, very powerful. And I think so many times we don't realize the power of our words, as I kind of talked about earlier and in your story and in your life, but also, too, we can ask.

12:04 – Christine McKay

I had to ask for help. I had to learn that it was okay to ask. And, you know, negotiating is about giving and receiving, and we have to learn how to receive as much as we do give. And I always say that one of the greatest gifts of being that poor and struggling that hard was that I had to learn how to receive graciously. And I think that you really can't understand what it is to give until you've had to receive. And because that receiving piece is just as important in some cases, if not more important, than the giving part. And so, negotiation is about, giving and receiving. And I. And so that, and it's a huge piece.

12:52 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I think I'm a big believer in, I call them binaries, where to know goods, a lot of times you have to experience bad. To know high, you have to experience lows. And I think when you go through the breadth of that experience, you start to get, I think, a better perspective and maybe even appreciation of the experience as a whole. I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEO's on the show. So, Christine, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:20 – Christine McKay

For me, it means it's a giving role. It's, I mean, it's actually kind of, for me, the ultimate giving role from a professional perspective, giving of my ideas, giving of my heart, giving of my economic. I mean, it's just an ultimate serving role. And it's one of the things that I love about it is that you know, I'm still important. But, my God, my team is, I love watching my team grow. I like helping see them expand learn more new things and take on new challenges.

I love seeing my clients take off and achieve the things that they want and achieve the goals that they have in place. And for me, that's really about serving and giving. And so that's part of what I love the most about being a CEO is being in that ultimate giving role.

14:18- Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I love, you know, that perspective because I think so many times when you think of being a CEO, leader, whatever, you know, title we might give, it's almost like you're the one that's charging ahead. You're telling everybody what to do. But I think when you start to flip that on its head and look at it onto what it is, at least the people that I think are the most impactful, they serve. So, Christine, truly appreciate that definition, and I appreciate your time even more.

What I wanted to do was just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best they can get ahold of you, your team, get a copy of your book, your podcast, and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

14:55 – Christine McKay

Oh, thank you for that. This has been great. You have a great show. I love the work that you're doing. It's amazing. You can easily find me on our website even negotiation venn negotiation.com. why not have a conversation about getting more? The book is available on Amazon. It is not available on Audible yet, but that's coming soon. The podcast in the Venzone is on everything, all the major podcasts and yeah, just come check us out and you can hit, you can find me on LinkedIn and all the social media stuff and all that good stuff. So I hope to connect with all of you.

15:35 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And to make it even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes too, so that everybody can follow up with you. But truly appreciate you of course, for taking some time out today and providing us with so much information and knowledge. But I think I appreciate you even more for the impact that you're having in so many different ways and kind of reminding us of why we can ask for certain things and how we can ask for certain things, but also that we get to opportunity to kind of rewrite and create the life and business and everything in between that we want. So thank you so much for giving us that gift as well too. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:07 – Christine McKay

Thank you. You too. I appreciate being here. Such an honor.

16:11 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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