This is Trend Following Radio, where great thinking comes alive. Nobel Prize winners, legendary traders, best-selling authors, and the pros that know what drive us irrational human beings. I am your host, Michael Covell. Not filtered. Raw. Honest. That’s my passion. Something a little different today. First, a recent speech of mine. All about trend following. Second, my guest today is William Ury. He’s an American author, academic, anthropologist, and negotiation expert. Co-founded the Harvard Program on Negotiation. That is our subject today. Negotiation. We’re all negotiating for something. Money, love, sex, real estate. You name it, we all have to negotiate. What’s the best way to get there? Hopefully some insights you can use today. Again, two parts. First, my recent speech on trend following and my guest, William Ury.

[The second part:]

Now for the second part of this podcast episode, my guest, William Ury, negotiation expert, a world of experience, helping competing sides get to a common interest, a common place of agreement, an interesting conversation. I hope you enjoy. Let me jump in and by way of introduction, before we get into the main idea of our conversation today, talking about essentially the negotiation with self, by way of introduction, I was thinking of an interesting question I could pose to you about your career in general, about negotiation. And I was thinking, can you recall a memory, a time where you were assisting in a negotiation? It could be between states, conflicted parties, where you’re assisting in a negotiation and you know, it’s so tough. It’s the hardest thing because you know, these two sides can’t come together unless you succeed. And the moment where you knew the stakes were so high in a particular example. Yeah, I can think of plenty of examples like that. Pick one. Do you want a political one? You want to, one for example. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. I’m sorry. Go ahead. No, I was gonna say a political one would be great. I mean, you’ve got a lot of experience, whether it’s the Balkans, Middle East, USSR, run with it. Sure. So, well, just one example that comes to mind is I was involved, I’d been actually asked by President Carter a number of years ago to go, to get involved in Venezuela, which was experiencing a lot of civil conflict. There were a million people on the streets of Caracas demanding the resignation of the President Hugo Chavez. And there were a million people on the streets, you know, supporting him. And there were, they were arming themselves with a little bit of violence and international observers were worried that it could tip into widespread civil violence and perhaps even a civil war. And so, and that was a situation where it was really tense and a lot of, a lot of disrespect. The first time I met with President Chavez, he said, you know, those, the opposition, they control the private TV. You know what they call me on television? They call me a mono, which is a monkey, you know, and he was just furious. And, you know, the other side, you know, they were equally furious at him. And, and that, that was really, was dangerous. So what I tried to do, what I proposed to President Chavez, I mean, it was interesting because I was thinking, well, why would this guy even pay attention to me? After all, I’m an American. He’s the kind of, he was the kind of anti-American Yankee. I’m a, I’m a, you know, professor, but for some reason I decided before my meeting with him that I wouldn’t do what my normal instinct was, which was, you know, you’ve got maybe 10 minutes with the president, you know, you’re going to give him advice, you know, tell him, you know, what he could do. And, and I realized, you know, that probably would be counterproductive, you know, he would, he wouldn’t, you don’t give advice to people who don’t want to receive advice. So I decided just to go in there and listen, really listen, listen to him and just see where the opportunity might emerge. And so, you know, there was a long line of people waiting to see him in the palace. And it was very tense. I went in there and we started talking and we had, we had daughters the same age and just a little talking. And then he started telling me a little bit about how he got into politics because it started off in the military and it had a coup d’etat and a coup d’etat against him. An hour goes by, he’s talking to me and all these people are waiting in line. And then at the end of the hour, he said, so, so Bill, what would, what do you think of the situation here? And so that’s when the mind opened. So then there was a little bit of an opening. And I said, well, Mr. President, uh, you know, I’ve been in a lot of situations where there’d been war in here. You have a chance to prevent a war before it happens. And it’s a huge opportunity. And he said, what would you do? I said, well, why don’t you meet and sit down and have a dialogue with the opposition? And then he just got triggered. He said, what do you mean talk with them? They’re traitors. You know, they tried to kill me right here in this room, you know, a few months ago and, uh, an attempted coup d’etat. So, and then, you know, and then I thought, okay, just stay with it, stay with it for a moment. If I said, okay, that didn’t work. So let me, let me try some other texts. I said, oh, do you mean you, I, you don’t trust them. He said, that’s right. I don’t trust them. I said, I understand that. I understand given what happened, you don’t trust them. So would you, would you, uh, would you contemplate the possibility of, you know, what, what could they do tomorrow morning that would send you a signal that maybe they were ready to turn over a new page, that maybe you could trust them a little bit. And he said, you know, well, stop calling me a monkey. Insulting me on their TV shows, uh, you know, personal insults or whatever. So I said, well, what if we had a little exercise where I’ve made up a list of kind of a menu of items of things they could do that would start to build a little bit of confidence and things that you could do. And you wouldn’t have to meet. I would just go back and forth, you know, shuttle, shuttle diplomacy. He said, yeah, sure. Okay. And there, and he pointed to his right-hand man was the minister of interior work with him. And so that night I, I had the minister of interior. I was staying in a little bed and breakfast. I had him on the balcony of my house. He gave me, he was only free at about 11 at night. And I had the leader of the political opposition in the garden below. And I shuttled back and forth between them for about six hours through the night. And we came up with a list, like a menu of items, you know, that each side could do that would send signals to the other side that they could begin to be trusted. And then once I could take, you know, once I could take one item, you know, stop calling him insult. You know, there were various kinds of things that they could do. And each side could do small, many steps. It deescalated the, it deescalated the sense of crisis for a moment. I mean, it didn’t end, doesn’t end the conflict, but it deescalated it. And just an example of an answer to your, to your question of, again, the lesson being to me of, you know, just stay calm, stay what I call, if you know, I use a phrase, I say, stay on the balcony, you know, it’s the balcony. It’s almost like you’re negotiating on a stage. Part of your mind goes to a mental and emotional balcony overlooking that stage. And I was able to go to the balcony in that moment and just look for where the opportunities were. And what’s probably surprising to the audience when they hear that story is that even at the highest reaches of diplomacy, some of the issues and concerns of the actors involved at that moment are often just base emotional things that, you know, the, the proletariat, so to speak, might think, hold on, that’s what they’re really worried about. It’s true. You know, it’s interesting because, you know, you think, okay, you know, they’re worried about power and economics, but in the, yeah, there is that struggle for sure. But in the end, you know, there’s a deep yearning to be respected. And, and I found that, that, you know, in negotiation, the, the cheapest concession you could make, the one that costs you the least, and maybe wins you the most is simply to give the other side some basic human respect because their dignity may not mean much to you, but it means everything to them. And even like in hostage negotiations, you know, trained hostage negotiators, and they, you know, what do they say? One of the basic rules is, you know, just show a little bit of elementary human respect to people. You think, oh, they don’t deserve my respect, but we’re talking about a basic human right, you know, birthright, which is just to be treated with a little bit of dignity. Bill, you are well known for a couple of classic books, Getting to Yes, Getting Past No, and we could talk all day and I would love to pick your mind. Maybe you’ll give me some, a lengthier time in the future. I would love to really get into some of the historical negotiation experiences you’ve had, but where you’re going right now with some of your new work is the idea of getting to yes with yourself. So, and I was thinking about, you’ve got a great acronym here, an acronym called BATNA. And I was thinking about myself today, and I was, I was faced with a situation where a party came to me, they offered me something. I didn’t really like it. And I didn’t really feel like negotiating because I felt like negotiating was become a drama. And so I took the next best choice to me, which was to walk away. So it was the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. I didn’t want the negotiated agreement. I just walked away. And I have a feeling that type of behavior is what you’d like people to do with where your new work is going. Absolutely. Yeah. BATNA is an acronym, Michael, for best alternative to a negotiated agreement. And it is, as you just mentioned, your walkaway alternative. And it’s key. It gives you that sense of confidence. You know, even, you know, before you go into the negotiation, if you just sort of think through, you know, do I have an alternative way of meeting my interests, other than reaching agreement with this particular person? You know, that, A, that may be your best alternative, like it was for you today. Or, you know, even if it isn’t, it gives you that sense of confidence. You’re not so psychologically dependent on the other side for an agreement. You’re going to negotiate more effectively with more confidence. So it makes a huge difference. And, and you’re right. I mean, the thing is, you know, I’ve worked for, getting the yes came out over 30 years ago. And, and, you know, I’ve worked ever since then on specialized in difficult situations like family feuds or boardroom battles or labor strikes or civil wars around the world, like, you know, like the situation in Venezuela, I just described. But it’s interesting to me that I focused on dealing with difficult people, but what I’ve kind of come to the conclusion after all these years is that maybe the most difficult person we ever have to deal with. I mean, this sounds funny. The biggest obstacle to us getting what we really want in the negotiation or in life for that matter, is not the person on the other side of the table. It’s the person on this side of the table. It’s the person we look at in the mirror every morning. It’s us. It’s our own, very human, very natural tendency to react. In other words, to act without thinking, you know, as the saying goes, when angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret. And, you know, that often happens in, in life. And so to me, going back to that for a moment, you know, one thing I’ve noticed in negotiation is we tend to, you know, particularly in conflict situations, it’s very easy to fall into the blame game. You know, it’s their fault. It’s your spouse’s or your friend’s or your neighbor’s or your co-workers or someone else’s fault. You know, if we can learn to take a little bit of responsibility, and one way to do that is to develop our BATNA, as you did. And you took responsibility for the situation and you, and you, you know, pursued your interest, you knew what you wanted, you got to guess with yourself. You know, you mentioned in your new work, you’re talking about the idea that people today, we’ve become reaction machines. There’s more and more reaction. And this is primarily a result of the stressors that we face in the day to day life are just off the charts compared to I can’t even think that when the internet first popped into play 1994, 1995, that was nothing compared to having a smartphone attached to your hip. And so why don’t you talk about the notion of the increased stress level, and the increased reaction level, why that’s, or just kind of note how you’ve seen that adjust and change? Yeah, it’s had a big effect. I think we’re under, you know, where there’s more stress, there’s more distractions, cell phones are going off, texts, tweets, you name it, we’re multitasking. It’s very easy just to go into kind of reactive mode. And you know, I mean, just take an example, imagine you’re at work, and you get an email from a colleague, and you’ve been left out of an important decision, and you’re pissed, you’re angry. So you, you, you know, you compose a reply, and you get that satisfaction of hitting the reply button instantaneously, you know, just with all that irritation, but you don’t just hit the reply button, you hit the reply all button, and it goes out to everyone in the organization, and then you start to see, you know, conflicts start to escalate. Well, there’s a button on that screen, which is very rarely used, which, which I, which is called save as draft. You know, I consider that the balcony button, you know, that, you know, you compose it, get it out of your system, you hit save as draft, okay, then you, everyone has their favorite techniques for going to the balcony, they might, you know, go for a workout, or go have a cup of coffee with a friend, or sleep on it, or, you know, just take a breather of some kind, you come back, and you’re going to look at that email, and you’re going to ask yourself the critical question, is this really going to help the situation? Is this really going to help advance my interests in this situation? And you realize it won’t, so you just hit the delete button, and you pick up the phone, and you call the person, and better yet, you get together in person, and you try to work it out, because in this stressed world you’re talking about, you know, the ability to stop for a moment, to hit the pause button, turns out to be key. And the motto, I mean, the paradox in negotiation, I find, is that if you want to go fast in the negotiation, and there’s a lot of pressure on us to go faster and faster in life, you got to go slow. You go slow to go fast. That’s the paradox. I’ve got a few more questions that I want to dig apart with your new work, but I think for the audience it would be useful to understand, how did you, how did this man, how, Bill, did you become somebody who’s so immersed in the world of negotiation, whether with others or with oneself? What was your inspiration, your passion, your trigger? What got you into the notion of negotiation? Well, you know, it’s interesting, Michael. I was, you know, I grew up, you know, in the 50s and 60s, and back then, you know, at least here in the United States, we had, you know, the threat of nuclear war hanging over us, and I could never understand why, what was, you know, what was so difficult in our conflict with the Soviet Union that it was worth threatening all life on earth, you know, with thousands of nuclear weapons and, you know, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, things like that. So I had that question in my mind of, you know, how are we human beings, you know, going to get along? So I went and studied anthropology, you know, because I thought, you know, anthropology might have, you know, society of human beings might give us some clue of how, how do we get along with each other? And then I happened to think, okay, I’m getting my PhD in anthropology, and I thought, okay, let me, let me see if maybe I could imagine myself like an observer, a fly on the wall, say, at a Middle East peace negotiation. And I wrote a paper about it, and I sent it to a professor at Harvard who was focused on the kind of international conflict resolution, Roger Fisher. And one night, I was alone in my little attic rented room with a graduate student, cold January night, 10 o’clock at night, and I get a call, and it says, this is Roger Fisher. You know, I never got calls from professors, and he says, and I’ve just read your paper about the Middle East peace negotiations, and I thought it was interesting enough that I sent it to the Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East, and I’d like you to come work with me. So that was, that really, that was vintage Roger, very generous and positive and can do, and so I went to work with him, and four or five years later, he and I wrote Getting to Yes, and that’s been my life ever since, is really helping, that’s been my passion, really, is to help individuals, organizations, and whole societies get to yes, because I think that’s the main, you know, that’s maybe the biggest challenge we have on the face of the planet. There’s no problem in the world we can’t solve, I believe, if only we can, you know, learn to get to yes, if we can kind of reach agreement, whether it’s, you know, you name it, poverty, climate change, war, anything. And then, obviously, on a small scale, too, because what it turns out is that, you know, all of us, whether we think of it or not, we’re negotiating, you know, in the broad sense of the term, you know, from the time we get up in the morning with our families, our kids, our spouses, our partners, whoever, to our work colleagues, and everyone. So, as you were just this morning, as you were mentioning. You know, I like that story, though, of how you got started, because it really speaks, there’s a, there’s another lesson there for people that are paying attention, which is, for those folks that think there’s not an opportunity, somebody won’t listen. If you do the work, and you work at something novel, if you go down a path, I don’t care what the subject, what the passion is, people will probably listen. Now, that might not unfold exactly how your situation unfolded, but that’s not the point. The point is, you have to try and just expect that there are people out there that want to raise the bar, raise the game. And so, it’s a great inspirational story of how you got started. Yeah, and then to me, it’s also, it’s, you know, very much related to my new book, Getting to Yes With Yourself, because it was, you know, all of us, you know, we’re thinking, you know, what am I going to do with my life? How, you know, what’s going to make me happy? What’s going to make me fulfilled? How am I going to, you know, do something meaningful? And we’re torn. And there’s often a kind of a no inside of us, actually, if you think about it, a kind of, you know, inner critic doubting you’ll never be a success. You’ll never do this. It’s impossible. You can’t do this. And, and our ability to, to, you know, go to the balcony, observe that voice, you know, that inner judge, neutralize it a little bit and really figure out what is it we really want to do with our life. That’s, that’s a key part of getting to yes with yourself, which incidentally, then makes it easier for you to get to yes with others around you. Obviously, there’s a lot that we can’t talk about in a short conversation today, but you have kind of a, an inner yes, you know, a six step method, and you can run through all six really quick. The one that caught my eye, I’m calling you from Southeast Asia tonight. And having been in Asia for the last couple of years, it’s pretty easy to spot the Buddhist influences, the Confucius influences. And so I noticed your number four was staying in the zone, the present moment. And I think that’s, that’s very difficult. You know, as an American growing up in America, it’s very difficult. People don’t talk about staying in the moment unless, you know, I do yoga now. I mean, now you hear it, but, but generally growing up as a quote, all American guy, we’re not talking about staying in the moment where we’re all living in the past or living in the future. And so I think it’s interesting. Why don’t you run through your, your, the notion of the kind of the yes to self, the yes to life, the yes to others, and this six step process. And if you want to comment on my, my picking out the, the, the Alan Watts inspiration, I would almost want to call it the key is the foundation to be able to go to the balcony, that place of perspective where you can really pursue your interests and really get, you know, you’re not going to get reactive. But, you know, in today’s stressed age, as you mentioned, Michael, we tend to fall off the balcony, and it’s hard to stay on it. So what do you do on the balcony to be able to stay there? And first step is, you know, you got to know you got to put your, you know, in negotiation, we, you know, the first step, people ask me, what’s the most important thing? It’s to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and try and, you know, negotiation is an exercise in influence. You’re trying to change their mind. You need to know where their mind is. You put yourself in their shoes. But what I found is that actually it’s hard for people to do. So the first step actually before that, it’s hard for us to listen to others because there’s so much going on for us in our own minds. We’re so, you know, so many emotions and thoughts and whatever. There’s no mental or emotional space to actually pay attention to others, really listen to them. Unless we first, and this is the first step, is put ourselves in our own shoes. In other words, listen to ourselves. I mean, like, for example, just before you get into a difficult, you’re about to get on a phone call, difficult phone call, have a difficult interaction, just take a minute, you know, by yourself for a few minutes just to settle yourself down, quiet your mind, listen to your thoughts and feelings and just observe them and just let them go and then clear a little bit of space and set your intention for what you actually want to do, what you want to achieve. Because it’s so easy once you get into that difficult conflict or situation to get very reactive and you lose sight of what’s important. Is it the relationship with your spouse or with your business partner? What’s truly important here? So that can help a lot and you can uncover what, you know, you truly want because oftentimes what I find is we think we know what we want but we don’t really know what we want. That’s key and then that leads you to the next question. You know, for example, I was, just to give an example, I was working with a businessman, very kind of leading businessman, who had, was involved in a two and a half year legal battle with his former business partner over the control of the company, which was a huge company, 150,000 employees. But, you know, it was, it was courts, lawsuits, you name it, arbitrations and I asked him, so what do you really want? Because I could sense, you know, did he want to fight, just keep on fighting and, you know, it was hugely costly to everyone, both sides of families and employees. Or do you want to, what do you want with your life? I said, oh, what do you want? He says, well, I want my stock back at a certain price. I want the elimination of the non-compete clause. I want some real estate. I want this, that. He gave me a laundry list. I said, yeah, but what do you really want? And that’s the key is, you know, to understand what you really want. And finally, at the end, he said, you know what? I want freedom. And I said, what does freedom mean to you? He said, well, freedom means the ability to pursue business deals with time to spend with my family. I want my freedom. Well, once we knew that, then even though they’d been engaged in this battle for two and a half years, failed negotiations, in four short days, we were able to reach an agreement that he found. He said, I got everything I wanted. And most importantly, I got my life back. Because he’d gotten the yes with himself. He’d figured out what he wanted. And the next point was, I asked him, so who can give you what you most want? Who can give you the freedom you most want? Is it really just the other side? Or to some extent, is it yourself? Can you give yourself your own freedom? He thought about that. He said, yeah, well, maybe I can. So even before we reached out to the other side, he began to search out for other business deals, became chairman of another company, went on a vacation with his stuff. He fulfilled his own need for freedom. And psychologically, that made all the difference. Because then he wasn’t so dependent. He wasn’t a hostage of the other partner. And it became easier to disentangle. So that’s what I call your inner Batman, which is taking care of yourself. You know, something you were talking about earlier. And then the ability, you know, that leads to, okay, so where… Einstein once asked, you know, he thought the most important question that anyone should ask themselves, the most basic question was, is the universe friendly? Why would Einstein say that? Because he reasoned that if we see life as basically unfriendly, then we’re going to treat everyone as our adversary. And collectively, we’re going to react to the first provocation. And with all these nuclear weapons, we’re going to blow the planet up. But if we can somehow choose to see life in the universe as basically friendly, even in the middle of adversity, you know, we’re more likely to treat the other as a potential partner. And so to me, that’s a key choice inside of us, which relates to our ability to frame things. You can either frame things as friendly or unfriendly. You can frame the situation as totally adversarial, there’s just going to be enmity forever. Or maybe there’s a chance of turning it around, there’s a potential, you can change the game, as it were, from an adversarial confrontation into an exercise in joint problem solving. Not easy, but you can do it. But inside, that frame needs to change inside of ourselves, which then allows us to stay in the zone, which is not an easy thing to do. But athletes, for example, or artists, you know, they know that there’s a time when you’re just at your peak performance, peak satisfaction, it’s kind of you’re in the flow, when you’re not caught up in the past and resentment about the past, and you’re not worried about the future. But all of these steps allow you more and more to practice, you know, staying in the place of where you’re in your place of power, which is in the present moment. And that means kind of letting go. You know, I could give you an example, actually, of, you know, someone who was able to do this at a very high level was, you know, Nelson Mandela, who’s universally admired, you know, what was his trick? How did he do it? Well, he began by putting himself in his own shoes, you know, he’d be in prison there, in South Africa for 27 years. He was, you know, he said, look, I learned to observe myself, that’s the most important thing, I learned to observe myself, he learned to put himself in his shoes, to understand himself, because he realized he’s his own best instrument. And then he developed his own inner Batman, you know, I’m going to, he took responsibility, he didn’t just blame the other side. He refrained, even in very unfriendly circumstances, he was able to see, you know, okay, I can, I can frame things more positively. And that allowed him staying in his own to negotiate with his adversaries, and show them respect, which is not always easy when they’re not respecting you at first, and then engage in a collaborative exercise that he was able to negotiate, basically, a transition to a democracy, he was able to deal with his adversaries, because he had put himself in his own shoes, he was able to put himself in their shoes, he learned their language, and he created the situation, which is not just a win-win, you know, win for both sides, but a third win, which is a win for the whole for all of South Africa, you know, he said, I was fighting for the freedom, not just of the blacks, but of the whites, too, and, and became a kind of symbol for the whole world. So basically, by doing this work, following these principles of getting to yes with himself, he was able to get to yes with others. And that’s, that’s the ultimate final step is kind of the give and receive, avoiding that. Yeah, yeah. And it’s kind of like, I mean, in life, you know, you, we can either be givers or takers. And, and what, you know, we think, oh, look, if life, you know, look, there’s not enough to go around, I’m just going to take, take, take, and the other side does, too. And, you know, you end up with nothing. And it turns out that there’s been some interesting, even psychological scientific research on givers, and it turns out that givers, if they’re, you know, a certain kind of giver, they’re actually more successful than takers. I mean, you know, there’s even studies showing that, for example, people who give more in charity make more money. People who, salespeople who, who are giving better service and just focused on service and not just on the money, actually are the more successful salespeople. So, and the same thing is true in negotiation. If you’re cooperative in negotiation, yes, you have to be vigilant about not being taken advantage of sometimes. But if you’re cooperative, you generally do much better in negotiation than people who are just out to get. You know, that the one step in there that’s really difficult is the respect them, even if, and I know I’m in a slightly unique position. You’ve probably faced this too, but my name has been out in the public sphere for, for well over a decade. And so I have seen slings and arrows that sometimes look like they’ve come from people that are locked up in padded cells. And the things that are said are often, I mean, it’s just bottom of the barrel, crude, rude, you name it, expletive. I mean, attacks of family, just all kinds of crazy stuff. And I think when I first started seeing that stuff, when the internet first started getting going, I, you know, it did bother me and I would try and defuse it. But I have learned that I was great kind of looking at material. I’ve learned that one of the best things you can do is literally, even if somebody comes at you with a page long diatribe, you’ve done nothing more than give something away, give them some free podcast or whatnot. And they got a page long diatribes, you know, saying that you’re just, you know, evil incarnate. It’s basically just to write back and say, well, thank you for your interest and leave it like that. Yeah. I mean, there’s nothing and it befuddles them. They don’t know what to do that. You don’t, you don’t want to fight is you don’t want to fight the crazy fight back at them. Then they just disappear. That’s it. You know, there’s a old saying about there are three reasons why you shouldn’t wrestle with a pig in the mud. You know what they are? One is you both get dirty. The second is no one could tell you apart. And the third one is the pig loves it. So, you know, yeah, exactly. You know, it’s, you know, an eye for an eye and we just go blind. And so to me, one of the keys in negotiation is how do we break that cycle of rejection, rejection, attack, attack. And it only takes one to do it. And it could be you and you just did that, you know, thank you for your interest. But, you know, what’s interesting about your work is that that’s not, I learned that from a lot of scars, right? So, you know, I think what’s interesting is if you can dig into a conversation and, and learn from other people and, and hear these things. And sometimes it’s hard, you can hear about it, but then when you’re in the middle of the, you’re in the middle of the war, it’s a little bit different. You don’t necessarily think back to, well, hold on, I got to get the yes with myself. But I do think that this topic area in our, our ever conflicted world is, is really something that everyone should be thinking about because everyone’s going to face these conflicts one way or the other. Everyone, I mean, this is, if you’re a human being, you’re going to, you’re going to be, you know, negotiating, trying to get to yes, because in this day and age right now, and thanks partly to the internet, you know, it used to be the major form of decision-making, the major form of decision-making in life was, you know, people at the top of the pyramids of power gave all the orders and people on the bottom simply follow them. But thanks to the knowledge revolution and thanks to the internet, you know, those pyramids of power slowly flattening themselves, you know, and organizations increasingly resemble networks and people don’t, won’t just accept orders anymore. Everyone wants to participate. So it means that in order to get your job done, in order to get what you want these days, we’re literally dependent on dozens, hundreds, thousands of individuals over whom we exercise no direct control. We can’t simply give orders. We have to negotiate for what we want and whether that’s small things about where we’re going to go for vacation or where we’re going to go to the movie or the restaurant or it’s, you know, larger things in the world. And to me, Michael, there’s no problem on the planet, I believe, that we can’t solve if we can only learn to get to yes. And that starts with getting to yes with ourselves. Bill, the best place, the book is out now. It’s on Amazon, all that fun stuff, Barnes and Noble, the best place for people to think they can go buy the book there. Where’s the best place for people to find out more information about you? Where’s the best website? It’s just my name. It’s William Yuri, which is URY, WilliamUry.com. And there’s lots of information, lots of videos to find out about, including about, all important, getting to yes with yourself, which helps you and also helps you get to yes with others. William, listen, I appreciate you taking the time today. Great stuff. Thank you. My pleasure, Michael. Real pleasure. And I wish all your listeners much success in getting to yes with yourself and others.