Communicating willingness to walk away

Most founders think they're not great negotiators. John Richardson thinks they're wrong. Richardson has spent decades teaching negotiation at MIT's Sloan School of Management and before that at Harvard Law, where he was an associate at the Harvard Negotiation Project and co-authored foundational texts with Roger Fisher and Howard Raiffa. His new book is called Never Settle. In this episode, you discover how to

• use a "best guess" about a buyer's motivations to get them talking, even when they're deliberately keeping their cards close

• reframe yourself as the first offer at the table, so you walk into every conversation with leverage you already own

• prepare for the emotional flood that hits founders in high-stakes negotiations, and the neuroscience-backed technique that short-circuits it

• tell the difference between a buyer who's genuinely nervous about AI disruption and one who's using uncertainty as a bargaining chip

• respond to a retrade without blowing up the deal, including the exact language Richardson recommends

• avoid the trap of stating a non-negotiable term too early, and why doing so often ends negotiations before they begin

• find out why the highest offer is not always the best deal, and how to build a personal scorecard that reflects what you actually want