Indifference Powers Negotiation
Share
Sam Parr shares a story about his former roommate James who masterfully negotiated his salary while being completely indifferent to the outcome, despite being in dire financial straits.
"I had this roommate named James who was a stoner. He was negotiating a salary with Vungle, a company I introduced him to. He'd been unemployed for 10 months, using his mom's credit card to pay bills.
Vungle made him an offer for $190,000 to be an engineer. When I asked if he was going to take it, he exhales weed and says 'I don't know man, I'm not sure if it's worth my time. I'll just make them sweat a little bit.'
I was shocked because he had no money and had been job hunting for 10 months. Then I get a call from the recruiter saying 'James is like a hot engineer right now, I don't know if we're gonna be able to land him, he's bargaining so hard.'
I told them 'just give him what he wants' and hung up. They ended up increasing his offer. He negotiated from a place of having nothing and didn't care at all. I learned that day that's actually a really good place to negotiate from, so long as you're willing to accept these horrible consequences."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.