Take it from former spy hunter, Joe Navarro, when it comes to winning any negotiating, everything begins with preparation.
“I think the biggest mistake is thinking that the little things don’t matter,” Navarro says. “From the moment you walk in, how you greet the staff, being attentive to others in the smallest of ways. Being polite, shaking hands, being mindful not to elevate emotions. Simple things.” It perhaps boils down to realizing that, if a negotiation is important to you, the people on the other side of the table, and their perception of you, is important too.
Joe Navarron’s 4 Tips to Negotiation Prep:
Have a Specific Objective
How to Choose Your Words
Think of the Audience
How to Anticipate Their Next Move
This video breaks down Joe Navarron’s 4 tips to prepare before your next negotiation.
Navarron Spent a Lifetime Master the Art of Negotiation…
Joe Navarro moved to the US at age 8 with his family shortly after the Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba. He later was accepted as one of the youngest FBI agents where he spent 25 years in counterintelligence and counterterrorism.
Through his work he was able to study, refine and apply the science of nonverbal communications. His acumen in this field and his success as a spy-catcher, led Joe to begin training FBI agents and the intelligence community.
Retiring from the FBI in 2003, and meeting overwhelming demand for his notable insights into human behavior, Joe has dedicated himself to speaking and consulting with major corporations worldwide.
Today Joe is recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on negotiations.
Jim Rohn was basically the godfather of the motivation speaking industry and mentor to Tony Robbins. He motivated and inspired millions to achieve their goals in pursuit of self-development.
Jim believed self-education knows no limits and has the potential to make you a fortune and it’s the key to self-fulfillment.
Think of all the greatest entrepreneurs of today, and in history… these are all self-educated people.
For all successful people self-education never ends, not after school, not after success or failure. Life is the classroom and the only goal is to learn and grow every day.
Here’s your daily dose of Jim Rhon in his speech that broke the internet…
The ‘finger-lickin’ good’ chicken has been dominating the American fast food fried chicken for decades after a man named Harland Sanders mastered his 11 herbs and spices recipe. But not many people these days know, that he did it from inside his gas station during the Great Depression.
It started way back in the 1930s when Colonel Sanders, who went by his name Harland Sanders back then was running a gas station in his home town in Kentucky.
Here’s the full story…
WATCH:
From Gas Station to Multi Billion KFC Franchise
Harland was born in 1890 and raised quick on a farm outside Henryville, Indiana. His father died when he was just five years old. The oldest child, Sanders was left to care for his two siblings.
His mother taught him how to cook when he was seven. By 13, Sanders left home to pursue a series of professions including railroad worker and insurance salesman. Neither panned out.
In 1930, he took over a Shell filling station on US Route 25 just outside North Corbin, a small city on the edge of the Appalachian Mountains. It was at this gas station when he converted a storeroom into a small eating area using his own dining table, originally serving home cooked meals like steaks, country ham, and fried chicken to his gas station customers. He called his side hustle, Sander’s Café.
Things were going great until one day when became absolutely obsessed with the thought of mass producing fried chicken. Here’s why…
The Simple Invention That Made KFC Immortal
Sanders was supper dissatisfied with the 35 minutes it took to prepare his chicken in an iron frying pan. Time is money and during the Great Depression, his customers couldn’t didn’t have either to spare.
To make matters more complicated, Harlen refused to deep fry. Although a much faster process, in Sanders’ opinion it produced dry and crusty chicken that was unevenly cooked.
The on the other hand, if he prepared the chicken in advance of an order, there was sometimes waste at the end of the day. Then a new product emerged…
In 1939, the first commercial pressure cookers were released, predominantly designed for steaming vegetables. Sanders bought one and modified it into a pressure fryer, which he then used to prepare chicken. The new method reduced his production time to be comparable with deep frying, while simultaneously retained the quality of pan-fried chicken. Now he could prepare high volumes of quality fried chicken at scale.
That is, as long as he could get anyone to buy into the his franchise model.
How Did Harland Sanders Franchise KFC?
In July 1940, Sanders finalized what later became known as his Original Recipe of 11 herbs and spices. Although he never publicly revealed the recipe, he admitted to the use of salt and pepper, and claimed that the ingredients “stand on everybody’s shelf”.
Sanders hit the highways pitching his chicken concept to as many restaurant owners he could meet. Independent restaurant owners would pay four cents on every piece of chicken sold as a franchise fee, in exchange for Sanders’ his recipe and method, and the right to advertise using his name and likeness.
Coined the name “Kentucky Fried Chicken”. Sanders adopted the name because it distinguished his product from the deep-fried “Southern fried chicken” product found in restaurants. Tripling his sales in the first year alone.
That’s when he met Wendy’s future founder Dave Thomas…
The Time Sanders Met the Future Founder of Wendy’s
By 1956, Sanders had six or eight franchisees, including Dave Thomas, who eventually founded the Wendy’s restaurant chain. Thomas developed the rotating red bucket sign, was an early advocate of the take-out concept that Harman had pioneered, and introduced a bookkeeping form that Sanders rolled out across the entire KFC chain. Thomas sold his shares in 1968 for $1 million and became regional manager for all KFC restaurants east of the Mississippi before founding Wendy’s in 1969.
Then, in another random series of cosmic associations, here’s the brief time a serial killer was made a KFC franchise manager at the request of his father in law..
The Time When a Serial Killer Became a KFC Manager…
In the 1960s, John Wayne Gacey was made manager of several Iowa KFC franchises where also around this time and would start his murder spree raping, torturing and murdered at least 33 young men and boys. Gacy regularly performed at children’s hospitals and charitable events as “Pogo the Clown” or “Patches the Clown”, personas he had devised.
There’s currently a documentary that covers the story on Netflix called Conversations With a Killer: The John Wayne Gacey Tapes.
It looks absolutely freaking terrifying…
Outside of the documentary, it’s often claimed that Gacy was such a fan of his workplace, he would provide free fried chicken to his colleagues and even insisted on being called the ‘Colonel’.
It would seem his love for the chain continued right up until he was put to death by lethal injection at the age of 52. His last meal request? A bucket of original recipe KFC.
The Fast Rise of the KFC Franchise
In 1960 the company had around 200 franchised restaurants; by 1963 this had grown to over 600, making it the largest fast food operation in the United States. At 73 years old, Harland Sanders sold KFC for $2 million in 1964 ($17.5 million in today’s dollars).
The company went through multiple acquisitions over the years to eventually Pepsico than Yum Brands who still owns and operates the franchise today. Yum Brands operates KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and The Habit Burger Grill.
Today KFC is pulling in $2.793 billion in revenue with 22,621 locations across 150 countries. And it all started in a gas station in Kentucky…
The video conference app (Zoom) that brought the world together during COVID was invented by a guy named Eric Yan who built it to video call his girlfriend.
Here’s how it happened…
WATCH:
Who Invented Zoom?
Eric Yuan is the Founder and CEO of Zoom. He was born and raised in Tai’an, Shandong Province, China.
Eric had been inspired to find a solution to visit his girlfriend, so he developed a piece of video telephone software in 1987. A decade later, Eric moved to San Francisco and was one of the first 20 hires on the WebEx team. In fact, Eric was one of the founding engineers and proved crucial to the success of its online meetings product.
Ouch. Cisco Turned it Down?
WebEx was acquired by security and networking giant, Cisco, in 2007 for $3.2 billion. Under Cisco’s new ownership Eric became Cisco’s VP of engineering. At Cisco, Eric pitched them his original idea for a mobile-friendly video system. They turned it down…
This mobile friendly video system is what became Zoom.
They Couldn’t Have Gone Public at a Better Time…
In April 2019, Zoom went public. Zoom stock shot above its $36 IPO price almost immediately and peaked at $104.49 in mid-2019.
In early 2020, the world was rocked by the coronavirus pandemic, with millions of people forced to work from home. In March, Zoom was downloaded 2.13 million times in just one day.
Today, Zoom has some staggering usage stats with over 300 million daily meeting participants and 3.5 trillion annual meeting minutes,
Thanks to Eric’s girlfriend in 1987, Zoom has become the world’s biggest video conferencing giant.
Jan Koum is a Ukrainian-American billionaire businessman and computer engineer. He’s the co-founder and former CEO of WhatsApp, a mobile messaging app that was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for an absolutely mind boggling $19.3 billion.
Facebook paid $12 billion in stock and the rest in cash. What’s even more badass than the exit was the fact that Koum arranged for the $19 billion deal to be signed at the same welfare center he used to collect his welfare checks in his teens. Only this time, he drove there in his Porsche.
Jan moved to California from Ukraine when he was 16. As a young immigrant, Koum and his mother had to rely on food stamps. Koum became interested in programming and eventually landed a job at Yahoo! Where he worked for 9 years.
Then in January 2009, Koum bought an iPhone and realized that the then seven-month-old App Store was about to spawn a whole new industry for app creators.
WhatsApp was initially unpopular, but it quickly became one of the fastest growing apps on the market. WhatsApp allows user to send messages, images, audio or video at a cost significantly less than texting.
The app gained a large user base. So large Facebook was monitoring the app for years obsessively. They were paranoid WhatsApp could eventually be a Facebook killer.
Hate networking but know you need to be doing more of it?
Here’s the only video you need to watch today. It’s one of the most watched videos on TedEx with over 2 million views on how to hack networking.
In his talk David Burkus, author of the book “Friend of a Friend“, examines the science of how networking actually works and reveals what the best networkers really do…
WATCH:
Who is David Burkus?
David Burkus is a best-selling author, a sought after speaker, and business school professor. In 2015, he was named one of the emerging thought leaders most likely to shape the future of business by Thinkers50, the world’s premier ranking of management thinkers.
His book, Friend of a Friend, offers readers a new perspective on how to grow their networks and build key connections—one based on the science of human behavior, not just canned networking advice.
David is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and his work has been featured in Fast Company, the Financial Times, Inc magazine, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and CBS This Morning.
Worth mentioning, in addition to the 1,700 locations, Five Guys has an additional 1,500 restaurants currently in development. So if you haven’t been to one yet, just wait.
In just 2 decades, Five Guys has become one of the fastest growing, successful restaurant chains in the United States making them a brand worth knowing and a model to look into.
The Five Guys Origin Story:
In 1986 the founder, Jerry Murrel, along with his 4 sons started a single burger restaurant. As the story goes: Parents Jerry and Janie Murrell offered an ultimatum to their four sons: “Start a business or go to college.”
The business route won and the Murrell family opened a carry-out burger joint in Arlington Virginia with the following business plan:
“Sell a really good, juicy burger on a fresh bun. Make perfect French fries. Don’t cut corners.”
When they say they don’t cut corners, they mean it. Fun fact: there are no freezers at any Five Guys locations, just coolers. Because freezers aren’t necessary when you only serve fresh food.
By concentrating on quality, they scaled the business model built on high ingredient costs, a limited menu, and absolutely zero paid advertising. They also refuse to deliver. Five guys doesn’t deviate from what they’re good at. Cooking badass cheeseburgers.
Five Guys Opened Franchise Locations in 2003
Early in 2003, the “Five Guys,” began offering franchise opportunities. In just under 18 months, Five Guys Enterprises sold options for more than 300 units. The overwhelming success of franchising a local restaurant made national news and word spread to new markets.
In an episode of Company Man (with 1.2M views), they break down the full history and the unique way the Murrell family grew the Five Guys unbelievable growth story.
WATCH:
Getting hungry yet?
Three Key Lessons Driving the Success of Five Guys:
#1 Simplicity of menu – F#$% chicken sandwiches!
“When we first started, people asked for coffee. We thought, Why not? This was our first lesson in humility. We served coffee, but the problem was that the young kids working for us don’t know anything about coffee. It was terrible! We tried a chicken sandwich once, but that did not work, either. We do have hot dogs on our menu, and that works. But other than that, all you are going to get from Five Guys is hamburgers and fries.” – Jerry Murrell
#2 Obsession with old school quality control
“The magic to our hamburgers is quality control. We toast our buns on a grill – a bun toaster is faster, cheaper, and toasts more evenly, but it doesn’t give you that caramelized taste. Our beef is 80 percent lean, never frozen, and our plants are so clean, you could eat off the floor. The burgers are made to order. That’s why we can’t do drive-thru’s – it takes too long. We had a sign: “If you’re in a hurry, there are a lot of really good hamburger places within a short distance from here.” People thought I was nuts. But the customers appreciated it.” – Jerry Murrell
#3 No paid advertising. Word of mouth is still a thing?
You read that correctly. Five Guys doesn’t do advertising. Jerry believes that the customer is the biggest salesperson:
“Treat that person right, he’ll walk out the door and sell for you. From the beginning, I wanted people to know that we put all our money into the food. That’s why the décor is so simple – red and white tiles. We don’t spend our money on décor. Or on guys in chicken suits. But we’ll go overboard on food.” – Jerry Murrell
Once the world’s 6th richest billionaire in 2008 with a net worth of $42 billion, Anil Dhirubhai Ambani, lost it all by 2019.
Here’s how…
Anil Ambani was born June 4th, 1959 in Bombay India as the youngest son of the founder of one of the most powerful companies on the planet. His father, Dhirubhai Ambani, was the founder of a company called Reliance Industries Limited which today is doing $7.366 trillion as a conglomerate, headquartered in Mumbai. It has diverse businesses including energy, petrochemicals, natural gas, retail, telecommunications, mass media, and textiles.
Dhirubhai raised his 2 sons to eventually take over the “family business”. Mukesh and Anil started as executives at Reliance in their twenties. The two couldn’t have been more different. Mukesh was more of a reserved family man while Anil earned a reputation as a flashy playboy who enjoyed rubbing shoulders with Bollywood’s elite.
Tragedy strikes the Ambhani family
Dhirubhai Ambani passed away on July 6th 2002 of a sudden heart attack at the age of 69. At the time of his passing he was the 138th richest man in the world with a net worth of $2.9 billion.
Mukesh, the older brother assumed role of chairman and Anil took the office of Vice President. They were at each other’s throats almost immediately. Each had different ideas for what to do with the company and the two were making decisions without consulting each other.
It was a mess…
It became a real problem. So big that even India’s finance minister tried stepping in to get the bickering duo to make nice. After all, Reliance was one of the biggest economic powerhouses in India.
The sibling rivalry for the control for Reliance was resolved when the 2 decided to split the company down the middle. Mukesh would run the gas and petroleum businesses and Anil would run the communications and power businesses and ultimately leave each other alone.
But the proverbial sky was about to come crashing down.
That same year Anil Ambani made the decision to invest around $2 billion in advancing Reliance Communications Group, heavily leveraging his company into massive debt.
Then shit hit the fan…
In 2011, Anil’s Managing Director and two Vice Presidents were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to acquire mispriced mobile network licenses for companies Reliance Communications has invested in to illegally bolster the company’s share prices in an attempt to close the debt gap.
The following year In 2012, amidst scandals, Anil Ambani acquired even more debt to pay off the existing debts. Reliance Communications took a loan of over $1.2 billion from three Chinese Banks on Anil Ambani’s personal guarantee.
That’s one hell of a personal guarantee.
By 2016, many of Anil Ambani’s companies ran into debt and operational troubles. On the one hand, Reliance Power had to sell its assets. On the other, Reliance Communications lost 98% valuation in a period of just 3 short years.
RCom was unable to compete against the top reigning telecom companies and lost consumers. This brought down Anil Ambani’s net worth to $2.5 billion.
Still not a bad nest egg by anyone’s standards however, Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communication owed the Swedish network company, Ericsson, $80 million, which he failed to repay. Which shocker, lead to a major lawsuit.
In 2019, the Supreme Court of India ordered Anil Ambani to repay the debt along with interest or go to jail. In an unlikely intervention, Anil Ambani’s older brother Mukesh paid the money owed to Ericsson and yes little brother from going to jail.
Reliance Communications then filed bankruptcy in 2019. But Anil’s problems were still far from over.
He still owed over $700 million including interest to the 3 chinese banks he borrowed money from. In February 2020, Anil declared that his net worth has fallen to zeroafter considering his liabilities. He pleaded poverty and claimed that he didn’t hold any meaningful assets that could be liquidated to pay off the debts he owed to the Chinese Banks.
Who would have thought that a man who had a net worth of $42 billion in 2008 would claim poverty by 2020?
He still managed to turn out ahead. Today he and his wife Tina Ambani reside in one of the most luxurious homes in India. A 17 story home situated at Pali Hill in Mumbai.
Hate networking but know you need to be doing more of it?
Here’s the only video you need to watch today. It’s one of the most watched videos on TedEx with over 2 million views on how to hack networking.
In his talk David Burkus, author of the book “Friend of a Friend“, examines the science of how networking actually works and reveals what the best networkers really do…
WATCH:
Who is David Burkus?
David Burkus is a best-selling author, a sought after speaker, and business school professor. In 2015, he was named one of the emerging thought leaders most likely to shape the future of business by Thinkers50, the world’s premier ranking of management thinkers.
His book, Friend of a Friend, offers readers a new perspective on how to grow their networks and build key connections—one based on the science of human behavior, not just canned networking advice.
David is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and his work has been featured in Fast Company, the Financial Times, Inc magazine, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and CBS This Morning.
Once the world’s 6th richest billionaire in 2008 with a net worth of $42 billion, Anil Dhirubhai Ambani, lost it all by 2019.
Here’s how…
Anil Ambani was born June 4th, 1959 in Bombay India as the youngest son of the founder of one of the most powerful companies on the planet. His father, Dhirubhai Ambani, was the founder of a company called Reliance Industries Limited which today is doing $7.366 trillion as a conglomerate, headquartered in Mumbai. It has diverse businesses including energy, petrochemicals, natural gas, retail, telecommunications, mass media, and textiles.
Dhirubhai raised his 2 sons to eventually take over the “family business”. Mukesh and Anil started as executives at Reliance in their twenties. The two couldn’t have been more different. Mukesh was more of a reserved family man while Anil earned a reputation as a flashy playboy who enjoyed rubbing shoulders with Bollywood’s elite.
Tragedy strikes the Ambhani family
Dhirubhai Ambani passed away on July 6th 2002 of a sudden heart attack at the age of 69. At the time of his passing he was the 138th richest man in the world with a net worth of $2.9 billion.
Mukesh, the older brother assumed role of chairman and Anil took the office of Vice President. They were at each other’s throats almost immediately. Each had different ideas for what to do with the company and the two were making decisions without consulting each other.
It was a mess…
It became a real problem. So big that even India’s finance minister tried stepping in to get the bickering duo to make nice. After all, Reliance was one of the biggest economic powerhouses in India.
The sibling rivalry for the control for Reliance was resolved when the 2 decided to split the company down the middle. Mukesh would run the gas and petroleum businesses and Anil would run the communications and power businesses and ultimately leave each other alone.
But the proverbial sky was about to come crashing down.
That same year Anil Ambani made the decision to invest around $2 billion in advancing Reliance Communications Group, heavily leveraging his company into massive debt.
Then shit hit the fan…
In 2011, Anil’s Managing Director and two Vice Presidents were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to acquire mispriced mobile network licenses for companies Reliance Communications has invested in to illegally bolster the company’s share prices in an attempt to close the debt gap.
The following year In 2012, amidst scandals, Anil Ambani acquired even more debt to pay off the existing debts. Reliance Communications took a loan of over $1.2 billion from three Chinese Banks on Anil Ambani’s personal guarantee.
That’s one hell of a personal guarantee.
By 2016, many of Anil Ambani’s companies ran into debt and operational troubles. On the one hand, Reliance Power had to sell its assets. On the other, Reliance Communications lost 98% valuation in a period of just 3 short years.
RCom was unable to compete against the top reigning telecom companies and lost consumers. This brought down Anil Ambani’s net worth to $2.5 billion.
Still not a bad nest egg by anyone’s standards however, Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communication owed the Swedish network company, Ericsson, $80 million, which he failed to repay. Which shocker, lead to a major lawsuit.
In 2019, the Supreme Court of India ordered Anil Ambani to repay the debt along with interest or go to jail. In an unlikely intervention, Anil Ambani’s older brother Mukesh paid the money owed to Ericsson and yes little brother from going to jail.
Reliance Communications then filed bankruptcy in 2019. But Anil’s problems were still far from over.
He still owed over $700 million including interest to the 3 chinese banks he borrowed money from. In February 2020, Anil declared that his net worth has fallen to zeroafter considering his liabilities. He pleaded poverty and claimed that he didn’t hold any meaningful assets that could be liquidated to pay off the debts he owed to the Chinese Banks.
Who would have thought that a man who had a net worth of $42 billion in 2008 would claim poverty by 2020?
He still managed to turn out ahead. Today he and his wife Tina Ambani reside in one of the most luxurious homes in India. A 17 story home situated at Pali Hill in Mumbai.
