1009: Negotiating with Difficult People with Rebecca Zung

Pete Mockaitis
Rebecca, welcome.

Rebecca Zung
Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Well, I’m super excited to hear your perspectives. And I’d love it if you could start us with an eye-popping jaw-dropping tale of narcissism run amok in a workplace. Lay it on us.

Rebecca Zung
Ooh, run amok in a workplace. Gosh, I think it’s going to just be like one of my stories. But, in a workplace, I’ve seen it in so many different situations, but one of the ones that I thought was the most egregious was a client that I coached. She had been a CFA for, I think, a Fortune 20 company here, and she was wooed to Hong Kong. Initially, she thought she was going to actually be a CEO of China, Asia, of this particular company. It was a family-owned company but, like a billion-dollar company, and she was going to be the CEO of one of the divisions.

And so, this guy completely love-bombed her, brought her to Hong Kong several times, told her that this is how it was going to be, that she was even going to be able to have women’s initiatives, and all sorts of other things, and she wasn’t really looking to leave her other position, but, because this particular person, who was based in Hong Kong, really laid it on for her, and put everything that she wanted into the contract, that she ultimately left her position, moved to Hong Kong and started with this company.

Now, this guy was the son of the owner, who was a billionaire who lived in Switzerland or something, but so she gets there, and the first day, she doesn’t really have an office. There’s all kinds of files and extra things in the office that’s supposed to be hers, and the guy that she was talking to the whole time, he’s not even available to meet with her on the first day. So, they stick her in this office, and they don’t really have anything going on for her.

They don’t even really put her on the website, and that day turned into the next day. And then she started asking questions, and then they were documenting her file that she was difficult. And then the guy started to say, “Well, we’re not ready to have you go into that position just yet. You’re going to start off over here.” Meanwhile, they’re paying her according to the terms of the contract, but they’re not giving her the position.

And, really, she was just trying to get the position that she came there for. And so, ultimately, she hired me and we figured out a way that we could potentially expose him and some things that were going on in that company. And she didn’t, ultimately, wanted to go back there but she just didn’t want, like harm done to her career, and so she was able to make a settlement from it. But that was like one of the craziest stories that I’d ever seen, ever.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Wow, that’s almost like a nightmare movie situation. You could turn that into a horror movie, it feels like, in terms of you know how we’re all a little bit nervous about a new job. It’s like, “This is the worst.” You’re out of your element, your family, your friends, your country, and it’s not what you thought and hoped it would be. That is spooky. Okay.

And so, then, in her situation, the result was to hire one of the best lawyers in America, according to U.S. News and World Reports, and really get into the meat of the matter. And it sounds like you went right for the juiciest, scariest, most sensitive thing they might be worried about a lawyer going after. And I guess we’ll just have to wonder what that might be for confidentiality’s sake, I’m guessing, unless you’ll indulge us. Will you?

Rebecca Zung
Well, I mean, I can’t say too much more because I don’t want it to be so obvious of who it was or whatever, but let’s just say the best way to get to a narcissist is always going to be looking at, what I call their diamond-level supply, which is their image, how they look to the world, their reputation, and then you take their own behavior, and so you’re not lying about anything, you’re not contriving anything.

I call it ethically manipulating the manipulator, and you say, “Well, you know, here’s what’s going to happen if we don’t come to a resolution. I don’t want to have to do this, don’t make me have to do this, because I just want to walk away in peace and I want my life. But if we can’t come to a resolution, then this is how it’s going to have to be.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. There you have it. Understood. So, right from the get-go, we’ve seen the worst-case scenario and then the nuclear option for responding to the worst-case scenario. Understood. Maybe we could back it up a little bit and share, as you’ve worked with this stuff, you’ve researched, you’ve written the book, you’ve worked with clients, any particularly surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made when it comes to this adult bully stuff?

Rebecca Zung
Yeah, they’re always way more afraid of you than you are of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Really?

Rebecca Zung
Yeah, and they love to, you know, what I think of it? It’s always very similar to me when I think about the bully in “A Christmas Story.” Did you ever watch that movie? It’s like on every year.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Rebecca Zung
So, in “A Christmas Story,” this little kid is being bullied every day by this other kid, who’s like bigger, taller, he says he has yellow eyes, and he’s on his way home, and he’s like, “Oh, God, here comes that guy again.”

And then, one day, he’s so mad about other things going on, and it was just not the day to mess with him. And so, he fights back against the bully and ends up, like, going crazy on him. And after that, the bully ran away from him and never bothered him ever again, because it was really all about fear-mongering and terrorist tactics, right? But it all comes from a place of scarcity, a place of fear. It’s not authentic power.

True authentic power, it doesn’t have to use all of that. I love the analogy of “The Wizard of Oz” because in that movie, Glinda the Good Witch, when the Wicked Witch came around, went, “Go away. You have no power here.” And the Wicked Witch went, “Oh, God, I’m not messing with her. I’m going to go mess with people who are actually afraid of me.”

Because Glinda was, like, completely non-plus, it was like a gnat flying around, like, “Please, lady, not even wasting my time.” And that’s what it’s like when you have true authentic power. You don’t have to use control tactics, you don’t have to use fear-mongering, you don’t have to use all of these things because you know who you are, and that’s what makes all the difference in the world.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. I love that. You know who you are. Potent. If I may, if we don’t yet know who we are, how do we get there?

Rebecca Zung
Isn’t that the $64,000 question, right? I mean, you start by realizing that they’re preying upon your own triggers, your own traumas, your own fears, and not who you were born to be. You’re born to be authentically powerful in your mission, in your purpose. And you know when you’re there because you feel aligned with everything that you’re doing, everything that you’re saying.

And what narcissists do is they prey upon your vulnerabilities. They prey upon people who they don’t feel secure. So, dealing with your own traumas, your own triggers, understanding all that stuff got layered on, you were born as a perfectly wonderful baby who had no fears, other than maybe falling or loud noises. But as a beautiful brand-new baby, you feel completely like, “Life is good. Everybody loves me. I love everyone.”

And then what happens? Your parents do something, or grandparents, or kids, you go to school, you get bullied at school, somebody says something, looks at you wrong, then your neighbor kids, and dah, dah, dah, dah, whatever, and your siblings, who knows? But all this stuff gets layered on and you forget that you actually are truly and authentically powerful as you are. You are innately valuable, innately worthy. And what narcissists do is they prey upon people who don’t feel that sense.

And so, the more you gain respect for yourself, the more you realize that you don’t need to respond to every little thing that they do, you don’t need to defend yourself, you don’t need to argue. I always say I’m half Chinese, so I always wear jade, but never jade, never justify, argue, defend, or explain. Because the more you do that, you’re giving them your power, you’re saying, “Here you go. Have my power.”

The true act of power is to take that back and say, “I see you. I see you like I see a toddler having a tantrum on the floor, but when I see a toddler having a tantrum on the floor, I don’t feel like I need to get down on the floor and have a tantrum with them or actually get into it with the toddler.” You just go, you look at them, and you go, “Okay, are you done yet? Well, when you’re done…”

And that’s the way you have to do it. I say you have to put an invisible shield down around you and start putting up boundaries, and say, “I demand respect for myself. I don’t care if you’re my mom, my boss, my sister, my brother, my neighbor, or my best friend, I deserve to be treated with respect and I’m not going to engage in conversations where I’m not being respected.”

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And I’m curious, when we think about, if you want to call them bullies or narcissists or high-conflict personalities, what proportion of the population falls into this category versus might someone just happen to have a different perspective than us, and be having a bad day? And how do we tell the difference?

Rebecca Zung
Yeah, great question. So, when I did my research for my book last year, I found that approximately 15% of the population has a personality disorder that lacks empathy. So, it’s about 6% or 7% narcissism, and then you go into there’s bipolar or personality disorder, there’s other personality disorders that lack empathy. And so, when you put them all together, it’s about 15%.

Now, then there’s also a percentage of the population that has what they call high-conflict personality disorder, which may not necessarily be narcissism or bipolar or any of these others, or borderline or whatever, but it could potentially be extremely difficult to deal with. Now, what I have to say is that this is a spectrum, right? So, all the way to the end of the spectrum are your people that have these personality disorders that lack empathy.

If you think of Jesus, or the Dalai Lama, or whoever your person is, on the other end of the spectrum, then everybody else sort of falls in between. And so, like where are you on that spectrum? It’s hard to say but we all have an aspect of narcissism in us. I mean, we all want to feel, seen, heard, and know that we matter. That’s the human experience. That’s just who we are.

But it’s when you are to the end of the spectrum, where you’re like, “I am in so much pain, so much shame, so much hurt, so much whatever is going on inside of me, that I feel empty inside and, therefore, all I can do is try to get as much supply as I can to the detriment of anybody else. I don’t have the capacity to have feeling for anyone else,” that’s when it’s an issue.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, these numbers are higher than I expected. That’s a good chunk of folks, and just lacking empathy, and so just operationally, definitions, let’s hear. I think I know what empathy means. When you say it in this context, what do you mean?

Rebecca Zung
Having the ability to step in somebody’s shoes, and say, “I get you. I feel you. I understand you. I understand your pain. I can see why you would be hurt by that. Your dog just died. Oh, my God, that’s just awful. I feel that pain for you. I feel that.” A person who doesn’t have any sense of that is like, “Okay, but you’re still going to come to work, right? I mean, you’re not going to…I’m not going to lose money over this, right?” Like, they’re just thinking about themselves in that situation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so you’ve got an acronym to slay the bully, S-L-A-Y. Can you walk us through it?

Rebecca Zung
So, S stands for strategy, L stands for leverage, A stands for anticipate, Y stands for you. The strategy piece is having a vision, a goal, a very specific vision that’s not defined by the narcissist or the bully. It’s defined by what you want. And so, what does that look like? Does it mean, if you’re breaking up with a business partner, that you want to keep the business, that you want to be bought out, that you want to buy them out, that you want to sell the business? What does that look like specifically?

And then L is leverage, which I alluded to earlier, but basically if you have these two different forms of narcissistic supply, which is anything that feeds the narcissist’s ego, and the higher-level form of supply for them, the ultimate form is that diamond-level supply, which is going to be their image, their reputation, how they look to the world, all the window dressing. It could be a prestigious job, prestigious friends, big house, money, the big bank account, the car, whatever it is.

It could be a new girlfriend, a new business partner, a boss, colleagues, employees, people that they don’t want to look bad in front of, they will protect and defend this form of supply above any other form. The secondary form of supply is what I call co-level supply, and that is bullying people, making them feel small, pushing them down so that you feel bigger, smearing people, passive-aggressive remarks or behavior, moving the goalposts in negotiations constantly for no reason whatsoever. All of that is what I call co-level supply.

In order to get a narcissist to not be constantly in your space anymore, you have to figure out a form of supply that’s more important for them to protect, i.e. the diamond-level supply, than the supply that they get from manipulating you, and that’s the co-level supply, and then threaten that source of supply, otherwise, they will never leave you alone.

And I want to back up for a second, and just give a quick little overview about how a narcissist is formed. How they’re formed is formed in childhood. I alluded to this toddler in an adult body, but it’s because when they were children, they were in fight or flight on a continuous basis, different times over and over. When this happens to any of us as humans, our brain emits hormones, adrenaline and cortisol mostly.

And that cortisol, when it’s being built up in a brain of a child, can actually cause arrested development in the limbic part of the brain, and that’s what causes the issues. So, while their prefrontal cortex can continue to develop, the thinking and all of that, what happens is, if they get triggered as adults by a perceived slight, loss of control, exposure, it could be a tone, it could be an eye roll, it could be a body language, whatever it is, then that limbic system is activated, it shuts down the prefrontal cortex, and now you’re dealing with full-on emotion, and they don’t think clearly.

They’re not thinking in terms of rationality. They can’t think long-term, “What’s the impact of what I’m doing?” And so, they will literally take themselves down to take down the other person because they see that other person as public enemy number one. Everything is black and white with them, “You’re either for me or against me. If you’re against me, then you’re public enemy number one.” That’s why it’s impossible to negotiate with, or communicate with, a personality disordered person as you can a rational or reasonable person. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Understood, yes. So, we’re not really talking about the sensible, rational issues, and the options, and the best path forward, but we’re more so, it’s like, “I’m going to take away your toy. Deal with that.”

Rebecca Zung
It’s 100%, “Even if I’m going to get in trouble, I don’t care.” Because I’ve seen guys that’ll say, “I will burn my business to the ground before I have to pay her alimony.” And you think, “Why the hell would you do that? That makes no sense because then you don’t have the income either,” but that’s what they do, because they’re in that full-on, “I’m not thinking from my reasoning brain.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Rebecca, that’s an interesting example there. And so, they say that, and in that moment, they feel that, but in practice, do they actually do that?

Rebecca Zung
Yeah, you do start to see them doing things like that, you know. They’ll fire their top person because that person wasn’t on their side, sided with the wife, or they’ll just stop working. So, we always say in the divorce world, that they end up with SIDS. The incomed spouse, whatever, whoever that is, ends up with SIDS.

We call it sudden income deficiency syndrome, like, “Oh, suddenly they’re not making any money.” And they have no money as soon as the divorce starts. But part of it is because they just decided, “You know what, I’m not going to take contracts, I’m not going to fulfill on them,” things like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and it’s really hard to kind of wrap your arms around because it’s not rational.

Rebecca Zung
It’s not rational.

Pete Mockaitis
And, in some ways, it’s slightly rational in the sense of, if we’re being stone-cold no empathy, it’s like “Hmm, well, now I am earning half as much money from engaging in this work that I get to pocket for myself as I was before, therefore, I’m less interested in doing many of these jobs.” So, I guess in some ways, there’s a cold rationality to it.

But at other times, that’s self-destructive situation you described in terms of, it’s like, “I’ll burn my company to the ground before I pay you a cent because I’m filled with rage.” That stuff, that’s sort of eye-opening for me. I guess I’ve lived a sheltered, kind existence, that folks, they don’t just feel that way in the moment, but they, in fact, execute the rational steps over weeks, months, years to execute.

Rebecca Zung
Yeah, they do it, I’ve seen it. And the other half of that is that people will pay attorney’s fees that they don’t need to be paying. I’ve heard guys say to me, “You know, I’d rather pay you than her.” And so, they are constantly blowing up potential settlements because they don’t want…They enjoy the game of it, it’s the sadistic piece of it.

And so, normal rational people will sit down at a negotiating table, and they’ll say, “All right, how can we make sure that both sides feel seen, heard, know that they matter, get something that they want from this exchange so that we can come to a deal? Like, who wants to pay lawyers? Or who wants to keep fighting? Or who wants to…?” Like, there’s a cost to all of that, right? Not just lawyer’s fees, but also part of your life, and the stress of it.

And whether you’re dealing with a business litigation situation or a partnership litigation or maybe you’re just trying to negotiate with a boss for a raise, or a colleague, or whatever it is, it doesn’t have to be a litigation setting, but they’re not trying to come to a resolution. They enjoy the game.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that really is eye-opening in terms of a total reframe. It’s like, “Oh, the normal game I’m playing with normal people almost all the time is not what to do here.”

Rebecca Zung
No.

Pete Mockaitis
“Instead, I’m going to take this other approach,” which you’ve been walking us through, so we get strategic and leverage, and please continue.

Rebecca Zung
Yeah, so A is, anticipate what the narcissist is going to do, and be two steps ahead of them, which means you know they’re going to try to bait you, you know they’re going to try to trigger you, you know they’re going to try to do whatever they can to continue to get their supply source, their hit. I mean, they’re like drug addicts almost. And so, you want to come up with ways that you’re going to stay ahead of them, shut that down.

And so, what I do is I give people, you know, I have a whole wealth of tools in the toolbox, but some of them, for example, are what I call fluff or favor, vomit later, which is fluff up their ego a little bit to get a little something that you want give it in exchange for something that they want. It’s like you’re fluffing up a pillow, basically. So, sometimes that might be the plan.

Sometimes the plan might be making a plan stand, I call it, which is, whenever you have to meet with them, make sure you have an agenda, a scope, and a time limit so that they can’t sandbag you, so that you keep it to facts, not feelings. Because one of the things that a narcissist will constantly try to do is bait you into all sorts of things, whether it’s going for the jugular.

If you think that you’re really great at money, or handling, or careful with money, they’ll say that you’re a spendthrift, that you were horrible, that the only reason why they have money, the company’s making money is because of them, you know, stuff like that. And you want to sit there and defend yourself, “What are you, crazy? You weren’t even here. I was the one that brought in that particular client, and I was the one…”

Now, they have you. That’s exactly what they want. So, you want to go, “No, today, we’re talking about this issue. We’re trying to figure out how we’re going to dissolve this partnership, and we’re going to look forward. We’re not going to look back,” because you don’t want to get into that.

And then having a time limit because you want to be able to say, “Oh, you know what? It’s an hour or two hours, whatever it is that we allotted for this and, while talking to you is my absolute favorite thing on the planet, we’re going to have to continue this conversation another day,” because you want to take control of the narrative instead of having them take control.

And then the Y is you, which is your mindset. We kind of started with this at the beginning, which is great because I kind of like to start with it. But it’s you and your authentic power and you being on the offensive instead of the defensive. You thinking about how can you walk forward instead of backwards or even just staying straight. You’re shifting a power dynamic. You’re really going 180 degrees a lot of times.

And so, I say, step one, don’t run. Step two, make a U-turn. Step three, break free. Y is you breaking free? Y is you saying, “You know, I see you all the time. I don’t even care because you’re not a thing in my life anymore.” Oak trees don’t worry about whether the wind is going to blow, because they know they’re rooted, and that’s what you want to be.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So much good stuff. Well, now, could you maybe walk us through a couple examples of all this played out in action?

Rebecca Zung
I’ll give you an example for the Y. Many people ask me, like, “What’s a main message when you’re dealing with a narcissist or anybody?” And I always say that you and you alone define your value, and people will think what you tell them to think, and that includes a narcissist.

And I’ll tell a quick little story, which is when I first went out on my own many years ago, I had been practicing law for a few years before, and then I went, I was a stockbroker at Morgan Stanley for a couple of years and I had my Sears seven in ’66. And then I decided to go back to law to start my practice. And at the time, I hired a business coach, and I said to her, “Ugh, these people are going to think I’m such a flake. Like, I literally went from being a lawyer to financial, to back to being a lawyer.”

And I was in Naples, Florida at the time, which was a very affluent community, very kind of judgy, you know. And so, I said I was very worried about looking flaky, and she said, “People will think what you tell them to think.” She said, “You can tell them that you’re a flake or you can tell them that you are the only family law attorney that has a financial background, so, therefore, you are more qualified than any other attorney in town. Which story would you like to tell?” And I said, “Oh, maybe I’ll tell that one. That sounds pretty good.”

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds that’ll be better for a client position and bill a lot.

Rebecca Zung
“That sounds better. I’ll take that one.” So, that’s what I did. I positioned myself that way, I marketed myself that way, and within two years, I had the top family law practice there and I was representing billionaires and all sorts of very powerful influential people. And I can tell you that none of them would have hired me if they thought I was a flake, but it was really how I showed up.

And if I had showed up as, “Oh, I’m sorry. I know I jump around a lot,” and kind of defending myself, then people would have seen me as that. But I showed up as, “No, this is who I am, and this is what I do, and this is my background, and this is actually going to help you.” And I can’t tell you how many people hired me because of that, “I’m hiring you because you’re the only one that has a financial background.”

But it’s such a lesson because you define your value, and people will think what you tell them to think. You can tell once people walk into a room and they know who they are and you can’t mess with them. But they define that.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay. Let’s hear another story.

Rebecca Zung
Well, one of my favorite stories is I call it the $2 million apology. So, I was doing a mediation and I was representing this guy who was, like, the top developer in Florida.

Pete Mockaitis
Real estate developer?

Rebecca Zung
Yeah. And even at the time that we did our initial meeting, our initial consultation, he was acting like I was so lucky that he was choosing me to be his lawyer. And at the time, I was, like, referring out like 80% of the people who were coming to me, and so I had way too much to do. And so, I’m like, “I roll in the whole time, like whatever,” but he goes to hire me.

And so, at the time, he goes, “Oh, is there any room in your retainer or your hourly rate?” And I looked at him, and I was like, “No, but I’m happy to refer you to cheaper people if you’d like.” And he was like, “No, that’s okay. I’m going to go with you.” I said, “Okay.” So, then fast forward to mediation, it’s like 12 hours, it’s like 9:00 o’clock at night, we’ve been there forever, we’re all like ready to get out of there, and we’re about ready to sign the agreement. And the wife was going to get about $2 million in alimony over the next few years.

Of course, she was getting a lot of other assets as well, but part of it was alimony. And so, the mediator comes in to me, and says, “Hey, Rebecca, can I talk to you for a second?” I’m like, “You better be coming to me with an agreement that people are signing. Like, what are we doing over here?”

Pete Mockaitis
“At this hour.”

Rebecca Zung
Yeah. And so, he pulls me out in the reception area, and he says, “I have a very unusual request from the wife. She is willing to waive alimony if he will apologize to her for everything that he did to her during the marriage and take responsibility for it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Verbally, not written?

Rebecca Zung
Verbally.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Rebecca Zung
Yeah, so she wanted him to go into the room without anybody else there and apologize. And I’m like, “What’s the catch?” and he’s like, “No catch. This is what she wants to do against her lawyer’s advice, whatever.” I’m like, “All right.” So, I go back into the room and I tell my client what he has to do, “Go to school over there, you know, like a puppy dog with your tail between your legs, whatever, say your thing and then she’s going to wave alimony.”

And he says, “No, I’m not going to do it.” And I’m like, “Yes, you are,” because I’m thinking to myself, “I’m going to have to give this guy, like in the lawyer’s call, a CYA letter, like cover your you-know-what, because what the heck is he doing over here?” And so, I’m like, “I’m going to kick your ass. Like, get over there.”

So, he finally goes over, and he apologized, and she signed off. She waved alimony. And it was like that important to her to get him to apologize but he almost didn’t do it. And so, at the end of the day, we’re standing in the parking lot, he signed, he’s got a signed agreement, the thing is done, and he says, “Hey, by the way…” he’s like, “Thank you very much.”

And he said, “By the way, I just want you to know that I’m glad that you didn’t negotiate your retainer or your hourly rate at the beginning,” he said, “because if you had, I would have thought that you were going to be soft negotiating on my behalf throughout the divorce.” And I was like, “Oh, really?” But the whole thing was very interesting to me and almost like a great case study in negotiating in so many different ways, because I stood firm on my value, and then the fact that he didn’t want to negotiate at the end because of his own ego, his own pride.

Because what would happen is that he no longer would have a tie to her because he wasn’t going to be paying her these monthly payments, so he couldn’t continue to control her. And that’s part of the reason why she also was willing to waive alimony, because she wanted a clean break from him, and he didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to let go of his supply source but he finally did.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, there’s a lot of layers and things to unpack there. And what’s powerful with that value is that it was, in negotiation they talk about the BATNA all the time, the best alternative to negotiate agreement. And in your situation, it really was the case that you were pretty well booked up, you were referring out lots of work, and therefore, you truly, it sounds like, weren’t even tempted in the least to reduce your retainer.

Like, you could walk away, “And I will not be upset,” as opposed to, if you were just getting started, you’re like, “Oh, man, I need every client I can get. Well, maybe,” you know, you probably have some more temptation there.

Rebecca Zung
Oh, well, I have a story about that, too, if you would like.

Pete Mockaitis
Please do.

Rebecca Zung
So, when I did first go out on my own, the guy who ultimately ended up being my law partner, when I moved to California, he had been practicing for years. He was, basically, like my dad’s age and he was a member of the Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, he’d won all these awards, whatever. He’s such a wonderful man.

I went out on my own, he wasn’t my partner or anything, he was just my friend. He was really opposing counsel in some ways, like 5:00 o’clock one day, I had been out on my own for maybe a month, my receptionist says, “Hey, Jack Long is here to see you.” I’m like, “Jack Long is here to see me? Okay.” So, I go out and sit down in the conference room, and he says, he was from New York originally, so great, and he goes, “I need to talk to you about your hourly rate.” And I said, “What?”

And he goes, “It’s too low.” And so, I mean I was charging like $2.85 an hour or something like stupid because like, I said, “Well, I’m so afraid I’m not going to get clients, you know.” And he goes, “I’m going to tell you a story.” He said, “When I first went out on my own in 1969, or whatever it was, like, it was forever ago,” he goes, “I did a divorce for a guy and I charged him $4,000. And he comes to me and he goes, ‘Jack, you did a great job for me. You charged me $4,000.’” And he’s like, “Yeah?” And he goes, “My wife’s attorney charged her $5,000.” And Jack’s like, “Okay, so you should be happy.” And the guy goes, “Well, obviously he’s better than you.”

Pete Mockaitis
Hmm, obviously.

Rebecca Zung
And so, Jack stood up at that point, and he goes, “Raise your damn rates.” And he walks out. The next day, he calls me, and he says, “I got a great referral for you.” He said, “I’m conflicted off.” It turned out to be Arnold Schwarzenegger’s goddaughter, so I ended up getting to travel with Arnold and become close to him and their family.”

But he says, “I’m giving you this referral,” he said, and he started to explain the case to me and he gave me all the details. And then at the end, he goes, “And they have money, so charge something decent for Christ’s sake,” and he hung up the phone. And so, I took that client, and that day, I raised my rate by, like, a hundred dollars an hour, or something, and I never looked back. We went up from there, obviously. But it was such a good lesson for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, there’s so much there with regard to pricing and psychology. And, boy, my favorite part was the word obviously because, in fact, the relationship between price and quality is fuzzy, and sometimes the best lawyers don’t cost the most. It’s just that high prices have to fund fancy buildings and other overheads, as opposed to strict quality of any professional. But, nonetheless, the perception remains, like, “Oh, well, the best are obviously, obviously the most expensive and the cheap ones must not be the best!”

Rebecca Zung
Yes, exactly. And that’s why he told me to raise my rates.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell me, any final thoughts before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Rebecca Zung
I always like to tell people to start looking at people from an observer’s perspective, because the way people treat other people is a direct reflection of the way they feel about themselves so you can never take anything personally. I mean, people who feel great about themselves don’t go around treating other people like crap. That’s just the bottom line.

So, if you take things personally, then it really is about how you’re feeling inside. So, don’t let your trauma do the talking. Don’t let your trauma do the picking. Do the personal development work and all the rest will come.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Rebecca Zung
I love the one from Rumi, which is, “Set the world on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.” I love that one because I want you to think about, like, “Are people dousing your fire? Are they pouring water on it? Or are they fanning your flames and throwing logs on it and saying, ‘Hey, I love seeing you fly. I want to see you fly some more. There’s room for everybody’?” So, that’s one of my favorite quotes.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And a favorite book?

Rebecca Zung
I love The Seat of the Soul, Gary Zukav; The Power of Intention, Wayne Dyer; A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson. I love there’s one I’m reading right now, actually, called This Thing Called You by Ernest Holmes, I think is the author. It’s an older book, but I didn’t even know that it existed. So good. Really, really powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share with clients or in your books, that folks tend to remember and repeat back to you frequently?

Rebecca Zung
I think it’s the things that we’ve been talking about. You know, one of the things that I do say that I hear is what’s negotiable is contracts, issues, and terms. What’s not negotiable is your self-respect, your self-esteem, or who you are.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Rebecca Zung
My YouTube is RebeccaZung.TV. I do have a “Crush My Negotiation” prep playbook that people can get for free which is at WinMynegotiation.com, and then my website RebeccaZung.com has literally everything, tons of resources, a lot of everything about all my courses, my coaching programs, my certification, all of that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Rebecca Zung
I would say do everything with complete integrity, and do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it, how you say you’re going to do it, even with the smallest things, making promises to yourself and the rest will come. The first negotiation that we have to do most of the time is with ourselves, for our own self-worth, keeping the negative committee quiet in our head. And so, by keeping promises to yourself, it helps you raise your own self-esteem and become the best version of who you are.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Rebecca, thank you. This is beautiful, fascinating, fun. I wish you many successful negotiations.

Rebecca Zung
Thank you. Thank you, Pete. It’s been great.