3 top tips from Corey Kupfer:

1. Love doing the stuff that you are great at! 

If you’re great at some stuff but still hate doing it, get someone else to do it. If you are the owner of the business, partner or executive, it also has to have leverage, it has to move the needle and it has to make a difference. If you are great at delegating, closing deals and negotiating – you’ve got to love it! If not, you need to find somebody to come in. 

2. Personal growth, internal work & self awareness is so crucial for business owners & executives

Businesses can only be as successful as our own personal growth allows, especially as an entrepreneur. If we hit a limit, whether it’s a relationship to money, what we think we deserve, how much we can trust other people to build a team & delegate, or you’re in a place where you’re going to sabotage things & you’re not willing to grow to be able to be that kind of leader, it’s not going to work. 

3. Every business should be a lifestyle business

The business should be designed for the life we want. Because if we’re not creating the life we want, why we invest?

 

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, negotiating, negotiation, clarity, deal, business, objectives, triggered, talking, book, clients, big, detached, meeting, lawyer, relationship, work, listen, place, entrepreneur

Debra Chantry-Taylor 0:04

Welcome to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. I’m your host, Debra Chantry-Taylor. I’m passionate about helping entrepreneurs and their leadership teams get what they want out of business and life. On the show, I invite successful business owners and expert speakers to share their successes. They are open and honest about the highs and lows of business and also life as a business owner. We want to share those learnings with you to inspire you, but also to help you avoid some of the common mistakes. My hope is that you take something from each of these short episodes that you can put into action to help you get what you want, not only out of your business, but also your life. So good morning and welcome to another episode of Better Business better life. Today I am joined by Corey Kupfer, who is the Principal of Kupfer and Associates. And Corey is actually joining us from New York this morning. So good afternoon to you. But good morning for us, lovely to have you here with you. So just looking here. So Corey is an expert strategist, he’s a dealmaker, he’s an attorney, he’s a consultant. He’s very happily married, about to celebrate his 20th wedding anniversary. And he’s also an author and a speaker and around negotiating. So we’re gonna have some real fun talking about this morning. But before we get started, Corey, I always love to share with our listeners a professional and a personal best bit of your story, if you don’t mind.

Corey Kupfer 0:43

Yeah, you know, I grew up as a lower middle class kid in Brooklyn, New York, we were never poor, but we had, you know, sort of paycheck to paycheck. You know, not many people in my family went on to higher education. My father actually did for 14 years at night, you know, while he was working, finally got his college degree. But you know, I was sort of the first professional in the family and sought out big law and in New York, but I always wanted, I always knew I didn’t want to work for somebody in my life. I’ve been running businesses since I was young, I had a business at 15, doing flyers door to door, and I had my friends work for me. So I always had this entrepreneurial bent and, you know, after a little about six years of practice, I got a shingle had no clients, there was a recession, no pay for my rent, or credit cards – anything you weren’t supposed to do. And somehow, you know, I’m still standing 30 years later, and fortunately built a very successful law firm and consulting practice and speaking business. So yeah, it’s been a long way from that low middle class kid in Brooklyn, New York.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 1:50

Fantastic. So along that journey, what are the things you’ve been most proud of?

Corey Kupfer 1:56

Yeah, for me, it’s always, you know, I think I got to a place earlier on than some people who get there later around having it be like, driven by impact, you know, and listen, I don’t want to make it sound like I like making money. I like being able to travel and living good places, and whatever, don’t get me wrong, I’m not some sort of monk. Having said that, though, what juices me up is the impact. You know, I work with entrepreneurial companies to help them grow, and you know, people from startup all the way through exit. And it’s the kind of stuff of having people helping entrepreneurs pursue their dreams and manifest that I’ve got somebody now who I started representing 23 years ago, help them start, he’s about to sell his company. So I’ve been along for that journey the entire time – that gives me a lot of satisfaction. And then also, I have various causes and things that I believe in, I’m involved in having the freedom of, you know, having built my firm the way I do, and having a great team has really allowed me to pursue some of the you know, those things that also make an impact. So for me, that’s the stuff I’m most proud of them.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 2:58

And we talked to them before the podcast and you were saying that actually, you went all fully online back in 2015, which is well ahead of the curve of most businesses, but even more so for lawyers, right? I assume that’s not a normal thing for a lawyer firm.

Corey Kupfer 3:11

No question, that’s for sure. And it’s funny, because I say to people, and it’s true, I don’t think most of my successes come because I’m particularly like, ahead of the curve, or, you know, knowing the future, most of my success has come from just building great relationships and doing great work and you know, caring about people. But I split up a partnership in 2015. And whereas for most of my career, I knew you always you were meeting with people in person, and, and, you know, prospects certainly you wouldn’t get a big client, I started noticing that I was getting clients referred to me and the world was changing. Obviously, I had more of a reputation that was built in trust, and referral sources, but also the world was changing. And not only did people not have to meet with you, but they really didn’t want to take the time, to me. So just I had that instinct and I had my assistant do a analysis of my calendar for three years going back, just to back that up, and figured out that it was right that we were never meeting with people anymore, hardly. So in May of 2015, when I reached that was my I had my own firm for many, many years, went to a partnership and then split out that partnership. And when I re establish my own firm, knowing also that I was getting a place in southern California soon and I was going to be bicoastal and not always in the office. I set it up where we were set up to operate fully virtually like the way a lot of people have moved since the pandemic. You know, we were using, obviously, conference line zoom back then, you know, even everything’s in the cloud, you know, and, and we were working fully remotely since 2015. So that was a blessing when the pandemic hit. First of all, it’s a blessing because I mean, the firm profitability is great when you don’t have especially Manhattan, New York and COVID. And then you know, when the pandemic hit we just didn’t miss it. We literally did not have to change a single thing we were doing we had no adjustment what whatsoever. So we were very blessed in that way.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 5:02

Yeah, I can’t imagine that because we had to make some significant changes we weren’t that far ahead, sadly. But yeah, that’s great. So we’re talking about negotiating today. And obviously, the thing that usually comes to mind is m&a. Right? That’s people think well, with growth growing businesses, that’s what it’s all about. And that’s when you get a lawyer involved. But it’s a lot more than that, isn’t it? There’s sort of deals that you do across a broad range of services, right?

Corey Kupfer 5:27

Yeah, so in terms of the deals that we help people do, and, you know, my whole philosophy, it’s what we work on with people in a law practice. It’s what my guild quest podcast is all about, ‘Hey, listen if you’re a successful business owner, entrepreneur, or executive, you have probably figured out at least to some extent, how you get customers and clients organically, right?’ Sales and marketing, providing great products and services, you need to do that you couldn’t be in business if you didn’t, but maybe you’re in a place where you are not growing, or you’re or you’re frustrated that your growth rate isn’t what it should be, or what you’d like it to be. And if you study any, most companies that grow significantly, and I’m not even talking about the unicorns, the high tech, I’m just talking about, you know, regular growth companies – funded or not, you find that they do it with a combination of organic growth, right sales and marketing, and inorganic deal driven growth of some sort. And there’s a lot of myths out there, you know, that oh, that’s only for the big companies have funded companies. Now, there are strategic alliances, joint ventures, you know, distribution agreements, marketing agreements, online affiliate deals, there’s a million types of deals that you can do. So those are the kinds of things we generally negotiate. But my negotiating book, Authentic Negotiating – actually has negotiating principles that apply to all of that, and a lot of examples of those kinds of things. But frankly, you can apply those principles to negotiating your home purchase, negotiating you know, I joke, probably the toughest negotiation is with like, your teenage kids you can even use it for that.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 6:52

So, your book Authentic Negotiating a little bit about, you know, what is the basis for the book? And what are the things that we could take from that and using maybe looking after our teenagers or with our strategic alliances?

Corey Kupfer 7:03

Yeah, so first of all, the book takes a very different approach, because what I found out there, there’s a lot of negotiating books that are all about tactics and counter tactics, right. You know, if they do this, then you do that. And then if they do that, you do this, right. And I’m not saying there isn’t some good work out there. That gives you some strategic and tactical level, positive things. But there’s also a lot of manipulation, you know, out there, a lot of bad actually advice out there, right? These that are miss things that don’t make sense. But even with the good stuff that’s on a tactical level, my argument and this is true for everything, for me to put success in business, whatever is that is a body of internal work is something beyond the tactical, right? Because here’s the thing, if you come into negotiation, in a place of scarcity, in a place of not feeling that you’re worth it, in a place of fear, and we can go on and on right, from a rigid place, I don’t care what tactics you put on top of that, you’re not going to be successful, right? That body of my work is about this body of work to do to get in that place. And I always say, no matter what tactics you use, if you study what I teach, I think you’re going to be better than 80 to 90% of negotiators out there. Because they may be working tactically, but they’re not working on. Listen, I can sense when somebody comes in and is desperate for a deal. I don’t care. And I can also read every tactic they’re doing, because you know, I’ve seen it all for 30 years. So I have a fundamental framework that I can talk about if you want that’s based on three letters, C, D, E, that if you master can make all the difference in negotiate.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 8:36

Sure, I’d love to hear what CDE stands for.

Corey Kupfer 8:38

So the C stands for clarity, right? So the first thing to do in any negotiation, and listen, if you’re an entrepreneur, or a high powered executive, whatever, we’re all busy. So and we also often pride ourselves on being able to shoot from the hip and wing it, they get on our feet, right? Which is great. And sometimes it’s I mean, it’s a usually good skill to have. And also it can come to haunt us, you know, in a big negotiation – lack of preparation, and not getting that clarity that you need. And there’s two elements of clarity one is just doing the external research, right? What is the market like, you know, what evaluations, what are royalty rates on that licensing deal, whatever it is, right? Doing research on the counterparty, right?What are their goals? What are their interests? What does that particular negotiating want? Do they have a budget to meet? People skimp there, but where they really skip is the internal body of work. Okay, what is it that, why am I doing this deal in the first place? What is it that I really want to get out of it? Can I write down a very specific list of objectives of outcomes that I want out of this negotiation? So that when things get emotional because they do right, especially with what negotiation, I can threw myself back up, and it becomes binary, right? And I’m not talking about rigid I’ll, I can make a distinction there. But you’re very, very clear on the outcomes. Do you want if the deal can get you those outcomes, right? Then you do it. If the deal doesn’t reach those outcomes, you don’t, right? It doesn’t mean if I’m negotiating a deal with Debra doesn’t mean she was a horrible person, or she’s a jerk or whatever, because we can’t get a deal. That just means her objectives in this moment and my objectives in this moment don’t meet. And I gotta trust that I’m not meant to do that deal right now, maybe we’ll do a deal later, maybe we’ll never do a deal, maybe there’s a better deal coming along. So I do multimillion dollar deals sometimes, where people don’t have that level of clarity. And then the problem is, when you get into the negotiation, you have no ground, you have no basis to go for. Right. And it’s so easy to get thrown off and end up either doing a bad deal or killing a deal because you get emotionally involved in something and you have nothing to go back to. So clarity is the first point that’s the C.

Excellent! The kind of applies to almost all meetings that we hold to right, because I was absolutely gobsmacked when you go into meetings, and you actually come out and go, What was the objective for that meeting? It’s like, oh, well, we were just having a meeting now there must have been something you wanted out of it. So it’s something I teach my clients around, you know, making sure every meeting has got some clear agenda objective, knowing what you want from it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 10:51

Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And it’s you know, and it’s crucial in negotiations. And it’s also crucial in every negotiating session, every meeting that you have specific objectives that are for that particular negotiating session, that may be a subset of the larger objective.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 11:25

Perfect. Okay, so the D, what’s the D?

Corey Kupfer 11:28

So the D is detachment. And this is the one that a lot of people have the most trouble with, right? Is the ability to stay detached from the outcome and detachment doesn’t mean, I’ve been told that the Buddha is not that I’m an expert in this use the word unattached, because they see detached is not caring. I don’t mean it that way. I mean, you care – but you’re the best negotiators I’ve ever seen and I’ve got to study a lot of them because I, you know, 35 years. They will ultimately, again, if I’m negotiating a deal with Debra, I should have a preference that you and I get a deal done, right? Because why would I be wasting my time unless I had a preference. But ultimately, we’re going to do a deal, we’re not going to do a deal. And that needs to be equally okay with me. Because I trust if we don’t do a deal, that’s what’s meant to be right. And a lot of people say this in the way of oh, you always got to be able to be willing to walk away. And that’s true. But here’s the big difference. Too many people walk away from upset anger, ego, frustration, whatever it is, right? That’s not what I’m talking about here. Because that could be something that just triggered you. That’s not from a place of clarity. When you are detached, if you need to walk away, you don’t walk away with any of those motions, you walk away from a place of getting connected to the clarity, and understanding that this deal will not meet those objectives. And okay, it’s not meant to be, we’ll move on.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 12:54

Yeah, that’s pretty cool. Okay, so then the E, what is the final one?

Corey Kupfer 12:58

So the E is equilibrium. So now we get into the let’s say, we’ve done our work, we’ve done a great job, we’ve done the external internal work, we’ve gotten out clarity, we go in, we understand when we say detached. And now we’re in that negotiation, and the person on the other side says, ‘Your company’s not worth half that’ or you know ‘I would never pay you that much for that project’ or, you know, we bring so much one at a table on this joint venture that you whatever it is, right?And what happens? We’re human, we get triggered, and emotion comes up, right? Maybe. And, you know, it could be as simple as we just get annoyed because we disagree the point it could trigger something from deep inside of us about our value our worth our, you know, being seen, whatever it is, and what happens, we get thrown off, we lose our equilibrium. So now we lose connection,when no one’s attached, we came in thinking we’d be detached, and we lose connection to our clarity. So a lot of what I teach in the book, and I’ve got a whole tool that I give called CPR, which we may not have time to cover, but it’s in the book, and other ways is okay, how do you get clear? How do you stay attached? But then in the negotiation? What are some of the specific things you can do they maintain that equilibrium, so that you maintain your clarity and detachment and ended up in the right place?

Debra Chantry-Taylor 14:16

That sounds great. So tell me about those sorts of pitfalls or things that you’ve seen people, you know, fall into that have stalled negotiation or even made it impossible to reach a satisfactory conclusion for the objectives.

Corey Kupfer 14:29

Yeah, you know, I talk in the book, I talk about the top six reasons negotiating in negotiations fail. And really, most of the time they come down to some sort of emotion, right? It’s fear, its rigidity. It’s these things that come up at us where because keep in mind, I don’t consider it a failed negotiation. If you do not get a deal done from a place of clarity CDE right. Clarity is actually legal. That’s not a fail. That’s actually a success. Because what means is that you avoided because listen, there’s, there’s only one thing that’s worth worse than not getting a deal done and that’s doing a bad deal. Right. And if you leave a negotiation from a place of clarity, you’ve avoided doing a bad deal. And that’s, and that’s a great thing, right? You get to expand deals, you know, a word, terrible. So the key is not to get triggered, right? If you are coming in, I talk all about fear, I talk about, you know, not owning your value, I talk about being rigid in negotiation, I talked about a lot of these things, not lack of preparation is a big one, which ties into the clarity, a lot of them, which is why I always say it comes back to this internal body of work, right. So, you know, exactly. Listen, I don’t like to make gender based statements, because they’re not always true. And it’s a stereotype or whatever. But I will tell you, and I’ve spoken to many, many female negotiating experts and who agree with me, 100% here, in general, not across the board, but in general, men tend to blow negotiations because of ego, right? Yep, they get annoyed, they get pissed off, they get whatever they get, like, you know, whatever, right? Women, the biggest issue women have in general, is not only the value – there is so much in the society, whether it’s upbringing with advertising, whatever that, we can spend hours on this topic that doesn’t fit people in general, right? Like, you’re not good enough, unless you drive this car – whether it’s makeup but it’s so much more so for women. And the biggest shifts in success in negotiations I’ve seen is for men to be able to breathe and not get triggered and get their ego engage. And it’s for women to work on owning their value and being able to, you know, there’s all kinds of studies on women don’t ask for raises as often, which is part of the reason for the pay gap. You know, and there’s a lot of things involved in that, again, we’ve spent hours on it. But I don’t want to oversimplify this. But you know, if you want to, those are the two big points on how generally women and men go negotiations.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 17:01

And I’ve got to be honest, I’ve observed the same thing in my own practice as well. I mean, I think that females in general, I’ve had to work very hard myself on myself, to ensure that I actually own that value. Because I think it’s a, it’s an inherent thing that goes back to the way that we nurture and whatnot. Is this, I dont know I can’t explain, I’m not a psychologist, but I certainly have seen it. So tell me that I’m interested with the whole triggering thing, because I’ve done a lot of work around self development, and I help people with, you know, with when they do get triggered, what do you recommend? How do you first of all, recognize that you’re triggered? And then what can you do to, to bring yourself back to a connection?

Corey Kupfer 17:36

Yeah, so incident a couple of ways, there’s some things you can do before the negotiation to prep, to make it more or less likely that you know, so, you know, and the first thing I always say to people is, ‘Listen, what do you do in any situation in life, to get yourself calmed down and reconnected righ?’ For some folks that’s meditation or prayer, for some people it’s going out for a run, to some people it’s calling a friend and bouncing things off and talking it out. For some people are more analytical, it’s creating a spreadsheet with the pluses and negatives of a particular situation, right? So the first thing I was saying is, “Listen, know yourself, what do you do in general in life, to get yourself connected and reconnected and clear and grounded, right? So do that. The next thing I always say is that remember, when you’re in negotiation itself, okay? You don’t, you can take, I mean, just taking a break – this is sometimes the single most best tactic, right? If you feel an emotion coming up, if you feel yourself getting triggered, right? Maybe it’s a lunch break time, maybe you just need to go to the bathroom, or you want to step out, you got to make a phone call, whatever it is, just remove yourself from that situation and give you space. Breathing is also another good thing. And then finally, I do have this particular tool in the book, context, purpose and results, where you it’s a way you get clarity, it’s a way and you actually write it down, you have it in you memorize your context and your purpose. And then you have it with you also in writing. And this is sort of a touchstone that you can go back to, right? Simon Sinek, and others have talked about your wife, we don’t know, the wife, we don’t know, the purpose of what we’re in negotiations for, it’s easy to get thrown off. And then very quickly, context is the being part is who don’t need to be the controller to have that purpose be achieved, right? You know, and certainly, nobody’s gonna say ‘I need to be scared or desperate or whatever, right? You don’t need to be patient to be communism, or whatever it is. So you’ve created that context. And that particular tool is something that you can go back to you can take that break even look at just CPR. So let’s describe more in the Authentic Negotiating book. But one of the things I would say is this, I’m not advocating being a robot, we’re human – emotions are going to come up. The difference is this, your emotion is going to signal you a sign that you’re going to take the time to evaluate why they’re coming up? And be self aware enough to know, ‘Oh, wait a second, I think just my egos getting triggered here. I’m not like I want to blow the deal up.’ Or you know, maybe you have this gut feeling you can’t even put something on but something doesn’t feel right and you trust it right? So the differences are the emotions can be a signal to you or they are they going to control? What you do? We don’t want him to control what you did we want them to be information that has you come in, and whether it’s recognizing that or using my CPR tool, you want to be able to say to yourself, there’s a question I often say to people – Take a moment and say to yourself – Is the next thing I’m going to say or do will be gonna move me closer to my purpose, closer to achieving those objectives I got clear on or further away? And if you take that moment to ask that question, often you’ll get clarity on whether you know, you’re just reacting in a way that’s useful or not useful.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 20:55

You’re checking on your feelings to see if they’re actually being driven by being triggered, or if there is actually something genuine there that you need to be aware of. And go back to what that sort of that the context of purpose or results what you’re actually wanting to achieve out of it. And are you going further towards it? Or is it taking you backwards? How do you end, you know, a negotiation where it becomes obvious that you actually are not going to be on the same page, it’s not going to be a win win is a nice way to sort of, you know, bring that to an end?

Corey Kupfer 21:23

I mean, this may be, you know, counterintuitive to what a lot of people would do. But I think if you think about it really makes sense. I mean, I tend to sort of what I said to you before and the example I said, if Debra and I are negotiating a deal and it’s not going to work out, it’s not because there was a jerk or whatever. It’s because you’re object is not my objective, right? And that’s a very easy way to say, you know, you can you can acknowledge. I mean, acknowledgement goes a long way, right? I have said to folks, listen, I hear you I acknowledge that these things are important to you. Right? They just don’t work for us or for my client or whatever it is, right? No, right or wrong here, right? You need X, my client can provide X. You need to be Y and it doesn’t work for my client right now. So I don’t think it’s the time, you know, I think it probably makes sense for both of us not to spend a lot more time right now negotiating this deal and we should leave the communications lines open. But I don’t think the objectives mean right now, you know, so there’s nothing wrong with it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 22:29

One of the things I was really keen to kind of export a little bit was around the strategic alliances or strategic relationships. Because I know a lot of this stuff gets done by you know, shake of the hand or just a quick verbal agreement. Again, what are the sort of the things that you should be aware of if you’re going to look at a strategic alliance or partnership?

Corey Kupfer 22:48

Yeah, I mean, the first thing I want to say is that strategic alliances and partnerships, joint ventures, whatever however, they’re structured is such an important and often underutilized tool for folks, right. I often ask people ‘Corey, I have been trying to get into this market, I can’t get in there, or, we have this new product we’re trying to sell’ and I always say to them, ‘Who’s in that market already? Have you thought about partnering with them?’ So I just want to say that I know it’s a, because there’s so many times that simple question to folks to say, Have you thought about who you might be able to partner with or have an alliance with? And they haven’t. So just one I want to highlight ask that question. Two, once you do that, yes. I mean, listen I’m actually a lawyer who believes that, ultimately, deals work or don’t work because of relationship and trust. And, having said that anyway is super crucial to document your relationship. Okay. Now, a lot of people think about the reason to document it, you know, there’s two major reasons, a lot of people think about one of them, when they especially when they think about warrants, which is if something goes wrong, if something goes bad or whatever, right, who has rights – who can was what against you. And that’s important. But the other one that’s underestimated by a lot of business folks is this, the process of going through creating the written agreement, helps what lawyers call ‘A meeting of the minds’. But more importantly, from a business level, I’ve seen too many situations where it’s not even somebody turns out to be a bad person, right? Or, but it’s just an honest misunderstanding of the level of time or duties or services or who was going to do why or how, in this particular situation, the money was going to be split or whatever it is. And it’s easy for that to happen when it’s not in writing the process of putting an agreement in writing forces them to get clarity on what it is and also to think through some issues you might not have covered, right? You may have very well covered, okay, you’re gonna do excellent otherwise no, right. But the some of the eventualities of what happens if this happens, that happens only come out when you go through the process of writing agreements. So what it does is it gets that clarity and actually increases the chances of that relationship working out not because there’s a piece of paper necessarily, because if somebody is a bad person or you don’t gel, it’s not gonna work out anyway. But it does two things. One, it helps to make sure that there’s no honest disagreements, you get aligned, you get the same vision, and two if there are disagreements, actually, the process of going through the writing will bring them out earlier, so that maybe you’ll say, Wait a second, this is maybe not the right deal to do. Right. And you didn’t, wouldn’t have had that opportunity, you would have found that out much later, when it cost you a lot more than earlier. By going through and reading during the past.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 25:42

I think as humans, we actually like to have boundaries as well. And so it does help to sort of clarify what those boundaries are that we’re going to work within. And I think you’re right, the whole core values piece now, are we actually on the same page in terms of our core values and beliefs. And I liken it to a relationship or a marriage, you know, you don’t go into marrying somebody without having the conversations around? Do you want children? Where do you want to live? What are your plans for the future? You know, having those those understanding of whether or not you’re on the same page? And if you don’t do that, then often those relationships don’t work out?

Corey Kupfer 26:12

Well, that’s right. And you know, and shockingly, some people even in marriages.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 26:18

Yeah, honestly, this is, this has been fascinating. I’m loving everything about this. So we’ve covered off CDE, we’ve covered off CPR, so you give us some really good tips on those so far. And just in terms of finishing off because we sadly, running out of time won’t be the three kind of top tips that you would give to people or a book, obviously the book they should love read your book Authentic Negotiation. But you know, what are the things you’d like to share with the listeners about what they can do from your experiences as a business owner, and also as a, obviously an expert negotiator.

Corey Kupfer 26:46

Yeah. So you know, I mean, I gave you more of a specific negotiating tip. So I think I’m going to talk about things that are a little more general here. So one is because doing deals in negotiating takes effort and time, right? To do it really successfully, you need to be in a position where you’ve created a business, right, and this is part of what you help people with, right? That’s not fully dependent on you, I mean you’re in the business running the day to day, then your ability to be freed up and look at for deal opportunities, and even take that time to negotiate, right? It’s gonna be, it’s gonna be limited. So actually, you know, organic growth helps actually fuel in organic yield driven growth, which then it could be a very virtuous positive circle, if you do it right. So for me, that whole working on your business and in your business, I’m a big believer in this concept of highest and best use, right? I work to only, so is the best use for me is three things. One, it’s stuff you love to do. But that’s not enough, because, you know, you I’m sorry, the first one is, it’s stuff you’re great at, right? You’re really good at, that’s not enough, because if you hate it, you still shouldn’t get someone else to do it. So you gotta love doing it. And a lot of people stop there on, the fact that they regretted it and they love it. But especially if you are the owner of the business, partner executive, it also has to have leverage, it has to move the needle, it has to make a difference, right? So it’s got to be those three things, everything else, you delegate, well, doing deals, and negotiating may be one of those things for you. If it’s not, you need to find somebody to come in. So that’s. So that’s that would be my first big tip is just, you know, it’s just created a business where you build the freedom to be freed up to do that. The second thing is for me, and I alluded to it, and plus negotiating it applies to business growth, I believe that our businesses can only be as successful as our own personal growth allows, okay, especially as an entrepreneur, right? Because, you know, we, if we hit a limit on whether it’s a relationship to money, what we think we deserve, how much we can trust other people to be able to build a team and delegate all of these things, right? How business is going to suffer, and we could go to and with all respect to what Debra does, which is phenomenal, right? I don’t care what system you have in place, what operating system whatever, right? If you are in a place where you’re going to sabotage things, and you’re not willing to grow to be able to be that kind of leader, right? You know, it’s not going to work. So for me, personal growth and internal work self awareness is so crucial for business owners and executives. And if you’re not willing to do that work, you’re gonna cap out. So that’s, that’s my other big one. And then the final one I’ll say is this, I’m always amazed. I’ve seen so many, there’s this distinction some people make with judgment sometimes about the difference between an entrepreneur and a business owner, somebody’s bought themselves a job and it can be very judgmental. I don’t care it and you know, people put down lifestyle businesses, whatever. I don’t have any of that judgment going on. I watch you and me and Debra and everybody to have whatever business they want to have , and the life they want to have, where I do get concerned or is where people go out, create a business. And then, you know, they have their relationships is still messed up, their health is terrible, they don’t have time to take time or whatever. And I always wonder why? Why are we doing that, right? For me, our businesses, the opportunity in life is for our businesses to create the life we want. So one of the things I often say is that actually, every business should be a lifestyle business. Now, maybe for some of you, that lifestyle you want is to build the next Facebook or Tesla, or, you know, build that unicorn and raised venture capital have been traveling all over the world. And if that’s what you want, that’s a great lifestyle. If you want to have a solo entrepreneurial business where you have a certain small number of clients and you make a very nice living, you don’t have a lot of pressure, that’s what you want. That’s great as well, right? The business should be designed for the life we want. Because if we’re not creating the life we want, why we invest?

Debra Chantry-Taylor 30:56

We are so on the same page. I think that’s why you sort of offered to be on the podcast, I think having read but my beliefs are as well. It’s all about having the best possible life, which comes from having a better business, a business actually meets your personal needs as well. Cool. Hey, um, if people wanted to get ahold of your book, or find out more about what you do, where would they do that, Corey.

Corey Kupfer 31:16

So the best thing we have is CoreyKupfer.com. You can get to my law firm from there, which is called KupferLaw.com, you can get to information on my book and getting information on my DealQuest podcasts. That’s sort of our Hub website. I’m also active on LinkedIn and other social media, but CoreyKupfer.com you’ll be able to find anything that I’m involved in.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 31:40

That’s fantastic. Hey, look, I wanted to say a huge thanks for your time. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. I always love worry, when you’re talking to a lawyer, it might be a bit boring, but I can honestly say that was a lot of fun. So thank you, and some really great tips there that people can put in place, you know, like the CDE and the CPR. So thank you so much for sharing that really appreciate it.

Corey Kupfer 31:58

Thanks for having me on. It was a lot of fun and, you know, being able to talk to your audience.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:05

Thank you very much. Look forward to talking again soon.

 

Debra Chantry-Taylor 

Professional EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner

#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach

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