Reading the room is just as important as the message you have to deliver. In my career as a sports broadcaster, the level of awareness I bring to an interview has a direct impact on its success. The same is true in business. That’s why I oftentimes keynote on how adapting to the energy of your environment can be the difference between a message that is listened to and a message that inspires action. A recent episode of my podcast Rounding the Bases featured someone who is a master of reading the room thanks to her unique expertise.
There’s bravery, and then there’s my guest, who is downright fearless. Throughout her career, she’s been esteemed as the secret weapon to high-stakes contract negotiations with some of the world’s largest financial institutions. With a personality that precedes her, she’s been leaning in to asking for – and getting – what you want since before leaning in was the thing to do.
Her name is Mary Redmond, the always passionate and sometimes shocking body language boss more commonly known as the Fearless Negotiator. She’s a businesswoman who means business, and manages to do it all by wearing many hats, literally and figuratively. As an experienced coach, speaker and trainer, Mary helps her clients turn the no’s into yeses and challenges into opportunities. After all, everything is negotiable, if only you are fearless enough to ask.
SINGLE: Hard Lessons
Mary learned at an early age how to hold her own. As one of six children, negotiating was an integral part of her childhood. Equally as important was learning how to temper disappointment when things didn’t go her way. Her de facto response when younger was to march to her room. Now as a professional negotiation coach, she teaches more sophisticated techniques, including how not to walk away upset.
DOUBLE: Reading the Words
Early in her career, it became evident to Mary that there is more to contracts than showing up and getting a signature. Every word in the document had meaning, and she recognized her passion for mastering them at the same time she began to understand their power. Careful application allowed her to guide negotiations in her favor. But when she finally understood the unique dynamic between body language and words, she became a force to be reckoned with.
TRIPLE: Room for Rapport
The core of negotiating – and successfully reading the room – is a trifecta of soft skills: Listening, body language and the art of asking open ended questions. Each is significant in its own right, but when used in tandem, they can have major impact on the results of the negotiation. The most important consideration to remember, though, is that no tactic will work if you don’t take time to build rapport with your client. “Don’t walk in and sit down and expert to start negotiating,” warns Mary. “Take the time to get acquainted.”
HOME RUN: Success over Substance
Sometimes personal wins are even bigger than the professional ones. Mary once battled an addiction to alcohol that threatened to ruin everything that mattered to her. It prevented her marriage, her career and even her life from being everything she wanted them to be. She decided to surrender and admit her challenge, and is proud to have not felt the need to take a drink for 23 years. “I’m not fearless,” she said, “I fear less.”
Listen to the full interview here or tune into Rounding the Bases every Monday and Thursday, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Learn more about Reading the Room from Joel
Book Joel Goldberg for your next corporate event. He draws on over 25 years of experience as a sports broadcaster. In addition, he also brings unique perspectives and lessons learned from some of the world’s most successful sports organizations. Whatever your profession, Joel is the keynote speaker who can help your team achieve a championship state of mind.
Full Transcript:
Joel Goldberg 0:00
Welcome into Rounding the Bases presented by Community America Credit Union. My name is Joel Goldberg. And a quick shout out to my friends at Chief of Staff Kansas City. I love the partnership with them. We’re doing a lot of work in terms of, of culture, and they’re one of the best recruiting firms not just here in Kansas City, but around the nation. Making Connections That Matter. I hope that if you have any interest, you will check them out, drop my name if you want. There’s nothing in that for me, but certainly have a lot of great connections and a lot of people I’m close with over their chiefofstaffkc.com. As for today’s episode of Rounding the Bases, there’s bravery, and then there’s my guest who is downright fearless. Throughout her career, she’s been esteemed as the secret weapon to high stakes contract negotiations with some of the world’s largest financial institutions. She should negotiate some my deals, come on, with a personality that precedes her. She’s been leaning in to asking for and getting what you want since before leaning in was the thing to do. Her name is Mary Redmond, the always passionate and sometimes shocking body language boss, more commonly known as the Fearless Negotiator. She’s a business woman who means business and manages to do it all by wearing many hats literally and figuratively. As an experienced coach, speaker and trainer, Mary helps her clients turn the no’s into yesses and challenges into opportunities. After all, everything is negotiable. If only you are fearless enough to ask. Sometimes many of us are afraid to ask. I think I’m one of those sometimes as well. With that said I bring in my friend, Mary Redmond who always has a smile on her face always has the energy. Mary, how are you?
Mary Redmond 2:10
Good day there, Joel. How are you? It’s always it just makes me feel good to see you. You’re, you’re a dear person to me.
Joel Goldberg 2:19
Well, we’ve become friends over the years. You are one of the, do you remember who introduced us?
Mary Redmond 2:25
No.
Joel Goldberg 2:26
I don’t either.
Mary Redmond 2:29
I’m trying to think I don’t know. But I know that very bonded.
Joel Goldberg 2:35
I have to look at old email chains. I should have researched it. But like, you know, we’ve been friends enough. We’ve been friends long enough that it’s too far in the past. I mean, it was early on in my, you know, speaking endeavors that we met. I think I just found it. I don’t know that this is good podcast material, but it was one of my earliest podcast guests. Erica Brune, Unlevered.
Mary Redmond 2:36
Oh, my gosh, yes.
Joel Goldberg 3:05
And this is why I archive emails. January 21 2019. So it’s been over three years. And I believe you said you were delighted to meet me. That sounds like something you would say. But we’ve we’ve really we clicked you know, over the years feels like I’ve been friends with you for about 10 years. I always learn from you. And I think some of it is, is your energy. I want to get into your background and negotiating, Fearless Negotiator and all of that. But you to me through the highs and lows of life and everything that goes on just you always have that energy. Have you always been that way?
Mary Redmond 3:40
Yes, yes, I didn’t recognize that I had this much energy. I grew up in a family with six children. And it’s a little hard to know who’s got the most energy when you have that many children in a family. I have, we range the the for my mother 21 years from oldest to youngest. And I’m what I call the oldest in her second family. Same mom and dad. But they took a 10 year break. And then I came along so that meant I was the big sister to all these siblings that came behind. So I changed a lot of diapers pretty young in life.
Joel Goldberg 4:18
I suppose that the are your older siblings from the first same family changed a lot of diapers until you came around, I guess.
Mary Redmond 4:28
Well, it was a big brother was all ahead of me. And he was 10 years older. So I was in grade school, barely in grade school when he left for college. So he was happy he had, well, he’d had a good life. 10 years, no brothers and sisters. He was like an only child for 10 years. And then five more came along in life.
Joel Goldberg 4:50
Yeah, well you know one thing I’ve always heard about big families and I did not grow up in one I just had and have one sibling, the younger brother but one thing I’ve always heard is when he got a lot siblings, you gotta you gotta fight for a little bit of what you need and want, which can involve negotiation. Right?
Mary Redmond 5:07
Exactly, exactly. Because we were always negotiating in the house. And so just being the oldest of that grouping of five, it doesn’t mean I always got my way. And those were hard lessons, I think it was, I got a lot. And I, I believe my mom favored me a bit. But I did have to learn to hold my own, and not cause world war three, and, you know, under the roof. And so it was a good thing. We had a big house, though, and I could go to my room and stomp off after a negotiation didn’t go my way. That doesn’t happen today. I tell people, you never march away mad.
Joel Goldberg 5:46
Well, let’s talk about this career. I mean, I, you and I met and connected over speaking, and of course, in the speaking world, and if you’re among your many, but if two of your big expertises are body language, and negotiating, which can go hand in hand, that’s certainly relevant to the speaking world. It’s also relevant to just about every single profession. That’s why I love baseball as a teaching tool, because it it really is relatable the everyday aspect of it to everyday life, but so is negotiating so as body language, it’s something that we need every single day, how did you go down this path?
Mary Redmond 6:25
Well, and I don’t want to lose the opportunity to let people know that you were kind and gracious enough to let me coach you. And so you often say Mary was one of my coaches, and you allowed me to coach you in body language. I wasn’t gonna go after you with the negotiation piece. But I did get to coach you in some of your presentations. I believe you hated me at one of your event, and it was probably 500 people there. And you saw me in the second row, and I am writing notes.
Joel Goldberg 6:54
I think you wrote a book.
Mary Redmond 6:56
It was, it was a good 10 pages of suggestions, suggestions of what you might consider.
Joel Goldberg 7:04
Well you’re very perceptive like that, and, and I do want to talk about body language at some point just to some of the basics, because you see things that that most of us don’t see, until we’re aware of them. But what took you down this path.
Mary Redmond 7:18
I had been negotiating for so many years, but I didn’t have a label. I didn’t know what to call it. And so I would be and I, probably my most significant career length was 22 years in the equipment financing industry. And I worked for big banks. And I put together financial transactions. I represented the big bank, and there were my clients. And they were from all kinds of industries. One of the ones I excelled in was law firms. And I began to work with law firms to negotiate their equipment contracts primarily in technology, copier systems, video production equipment that they were working in, and then office furniture. And I realized it wasn’t you take a contract and and they sign it. No, that doesn’t work well, I had to begin to work with words. And I learned very, it didn’t happen quickly. But I learned the power of words in a contract. And I found I liked that I loved understanding the significance of words in a contract, I bring them back to my client. And here’s where difficulties came. I like my clients better than my employer. I’m sorry, my clients were in all kinds of businesses in four states. And I liked them so much that I would go into a negotiation. And I have to ask something really tough for concession from my law firm, operat- Chief Operating Officer. And I’d say, Here’s body language workin’. You don’t want to sign this document, do you? And I’d say, but I have to ask you to do it. You don’t want to sign it. And he’d say, oh, no, I don’t want to sign it. It was giving him enough signals very clearly with the up and down in the side of the sign. He shouldn’t sign this. And he pushed back it was an area I could accept if he pushed back. And that began a lot of the understanding of the dynamics of both body language and negotiation and how they do go hand in hand with another area I talk a lot about which is listening. If you don’t do those three things, well, you’ll never be a good negotiator. You won’t be successful.
Joel Goldberg 9:54
So the three elements of that are listening, body language…
Mary Redmond 10:00
Body language, and then actually the art of knowing how to ask questions, which is, for me the core of negotiation. You begin with open ended questions. And that’s where I start. And part of what I also teach, especially now is to take time to get acquainted with your prospect, your client, don’t walk in and sit down and expect to start negotiating. I have a banker friend of mine, and I have to look at the exact he’s Ken Scott from Cap Fed. And Ken said, it’s the people in the end, that’s all that matters. It’s the people in the end, that’s all that matters. And he said, I spend time getting to know all of my suppliers, and my potential employees that we’re gonna hire at the bank. Because if I don’t know them, how can I ever negotiate with them? And too many people feel pushed and rushed. today. I don’t have time for that getting acquainted stuff, I got to go go get down to the contract. And we’re not successful, not as successful as we could be. If you push to the contract, and ignore the relationship.
Joel Goldberg 11:23
Simple as that? Is that just societal? Is that where we’re at right now?
Mary Redmond 11:26
I think so. I feel the pressure building in relationships and time management and people. I also talked a lot about, do you get on to a call like this? Do you keep the camera on? Or do you turn it off? Because we now have the option to turn it off? And, or is it better to write an email? Or is it a text, and you have to weigh all of those is when is the right type of communication, the one that will serve you best. One rule is if you’re having a tough conversation with somebody, never ever send a text or write an email, you’ve got to do it. If it’s restrictions due to COVID, you’ve got to have a video, you’ve got to have a video call, even though it’s hard. If we’re back to getting Open Meetings, get out of your office and go see him have that face to face. There’s so much power in face to face.
Joel Goldberg 12:27
I agree we’re going the other direction, though. And this is not meant as a you know, against the younger generation rant, but but they they have grown up in an era where you just push a button. And that’s become acceptable.
Mary Redmond 12:40
And you won’t save time. How many times think about it? How many times if you tried to make a meeting appointment? Back and forth. And you’re sending texts? Well, I could do Tuesday at four or Wednesday at nine. Oh, no, I can’t do that. Well, I could do these and then you go back with and you may have sent 10 or 15 texts just to settle one thing. Pick up the phone and just talk to them you ended up in two minutes. It’s it’s much more time, a good use of your time when you have the personal relationship. That doesn’t happen on any level because you also, it’s just text and we lose the tone, the tenor. If, many they’re writing text now they’re writing text and there’s no punctuation and they leave out the commas. There’s a here’s one, here’s a phrase, it’s let’s eat grandpa. A sentence. Let’s eat grandpa. Or let’s eat, grandpa. Is grandpa that main course? Or is grandpa the guest? If you don’t have the comma in the right place, you don’t know the meaning of that simple phrase.
Joel Goldberg 14:03
Especially if you’re among a bunch of cannibals.
Mary Redmond 14:07
Yeah, yeah, they prefer Grandpa is supper. There’s so many examples. There’s one of a law firm, and it’s in new in Maine, and there was a missing comma or a misplaced comma and the meaning change so significantly, that it costs $10 million for the lack of having your comma in the right place. And so you know, not only do we think we’re saving time texting or emailing we don’t use punctuation
Joel Goldberg 14:40
Well, I think the reason for that, the reason not not a justification is everything is bite size. Now everything has to fit in a certain amount of characters for Twitter, social media. Oh, I had Haha, I don’t I don’t have an extra character to spare. So how the heck with it apostrophe here after the comma there, and so that that has slipped into just the way we do everything else, not that everything that we do is in a tweet. But I think that it has taken away some of the habits that we were raised with. And now that bleeds into everything else that we’re doing. And so there’s, there’s a trap there.
Mary Redmond 15:17
And how do we build a relationship? If we leave out the time to look at someone to assess their interest? In some, it’s just flat words on limited words, but never, and here comes body language, but I don’t know if they’re smiling, if they’re angry, if they’re happy. I don’t know what their intention is. If all I see are flat words, I can’t hear that. Hi, it’s good to talk. Hi, comma, it’s good to talk. It, we lose it. And there’s a saying and it was Alan Berg. I think it’s Alan Berg. Just had a note. And it says all things being a – Bob Berg – all things being equal. People do business with people they know like and trust. How do you build know like, and trust relationships? In a text, a tweet. It’s a soundbite not a relationship. So I’m old fashioned, perhaps. But I know that people will cut corners at times, do me favors. Help me along. Give me a hint. If I have a relationship with them?
Joel Goldberg 16:39
Well, let’s talk about this. Because negotiating can have a negative connotation. It doesn’t have to, obviously, negotiation takes on a different look when you have that relationship. Right?
Mary Redmond 16:53
Exactly, exactly. We, we may choose more casual surroundings and too many people. When I say when I talk about negotiations, and they say, Well, I don’t negotiate. And I usually will say, really. So when your boss says, and you already have this stack of responsibilities and jobs, you’ve got to do projects. And your boss says, I need to add one more to your stack. Do you just say yes, I will. Sure I will. Or do you exchange a conversation, have a conversation with them and say, Okay, I’ve got everything, every minute committed for the next week, which ones should I pull away or leave out. And when I take on your new project, that’s a negotiation as we do a given take. Exchanging our time in conversation with another friend, colleague manager, it’s just give and take. And we’re doing it. I say my first negotiation is with an alarm clock in the morning. How many times do I take that little box beside the bed and hit snooze? That’s a negotiation with a little machine. And it’s nevertheless? Or do I choose an apple or a pastry? For breakfast? I’m having a negotiation with myself. And, and so we are always negotiating. It doesn’t happen in a big room when somebody two people are wearing suits. That’s not where we negotiate most of the time.
Joel Goldberg 18:36
Now, the body language piece isn’t going to help you with the apple in the, the alarm clock, pastrly well, hopefully not with the alarm clocks and on my body language is not going to be good when that alarm clock is going out. And I lose that negotiation all the time. And maybe I wind it by getting an extra 10 minutes. I don’t I don’t know. But the body language piece. It’s everything we, provided that we see each other, provide us with each other. Right? That’s true with me on camera for television. That’s true up on stage in a speech that’s true with networking for any of us, even on the personal certainly level as well. And everything that we do. What do you look for in body language? It’s a loaded question. It’s a very open ended question, because I know that you can answer this, I assume in a million ways, but what do you look for?
Mary Redmond 19:21
And everybody, usually they when they talk about the subject to body language, oh, and they go into the handshake and they say, Oh, how did they shake your hands? Well, in our virtual world, there are no handshakes. That’s one way to, if we were face to face, so I designed a resource, just did it for the supply chain management conference that I spoke at two weeks ago in Orlando. And it’s a resource I’ll share with everyone, put it up on my LinkedIn page. And it says, deal with the body language from here to here. As we don’t have handshakes, and we don’t see if their legs are crossed, and we don’t have the, the rest of the body to make the judgment. So I focused on everything from here. Yeah, I have seven different behaviors under all, every category. Are they interested? Are they angry? Are they wanting more information? All of those different things, you look for different body language cues, or tells as we use from here to here that will lead you to read the body language correctly or more accurately. And I, and there’s something called clusters. Clusters are usually two to three examples of body language that must be consistent. They tell the same story. So if and one of the examples I use again in my workshops, and it’s a classic, but some of us won’t relate to it. During the Monica Lewinsky Bill Clinton trial, Bill Clinton saying, here’s how it you watch the video, I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Miss Lewinsky. Voice says no head says yes. Believe what the head says. And so when we, when we read body language, especially from here to here, we’ve got to look for what is the face say and what are the mouth say is to make sure they’re congruent. And so I encourage people I said, don’t make a judgement. on just one. You got to look at at least and find at least three of the behaviors, the body language that are so you can make a judgment on what’s going on with them. Are you getting through or not?
Joel Goldberg 21:54
Is that eyes? Is that smile is that?
Mary Redmond 21:57
It could be your brow is furrowed, okay. It could be a fake smile. And a fake smile is like this. Once my eyes get involved, if I do that, you see the crinkles in the corner of my eyes. So when you see a woman or a man who has lots of crinkles, they’re they’re smiling a lot. And those are permanent. If I see. For example, if I’m rubbing my nose a lot, move away from the Pinocchio thing. But what it’s, it’s saying is, I’m nervous, and I’m trying to calm myself down. And so you can see that very easily. If they’re touching themselves a lot, you know, they’re they’re messing with their collar or something. They’re nervous, they’re very uncomfortable. And so we look for similar signs to show what we are hoping we’ll see. And then if we don’t, we need to adjust what we’re saying or what we’re seeing on our own body to make the communications better, and there’s no place this is more important than in negotiations, that you read it accurately. You don’t misjudge.
Joel Goldberg 23:21
And isn’t there a lot to, from a networking standpoint, from a connecting, meeting people face-to-face, isn’t there something with leaning in or leaning back or mirroring what they do? I’ve heard about that a little bit when I was at work.
Mary Redmond 23:38
I feel comfortable if I see you moving in a manner similar to me. If I sit down at the table with someone, if someone pulls back slightly, or leans back, I might, depending on how it’s going, I might lean forward, or I might which can impact their personal space and be a problem. They may want to be adding more distance and if you encroach, you’re going to make them even more nervous and they’re uncomfortable. Right? Recently had a woman, a young woman, I mentor quite a bit. And she said well I go to all these business events and her job as a business development person is to go to a lot of chamber and lots of networking functions. Well, there’s this group of people and by the way, she’s over six feet tall. She’s a very tall, stately woman. She said, Well, these people they always are sitting and none of them talk to me. And I said you need to come down to them. And so find a chair and get down to their size because the overbearing six foot plus woman on a table of four people sitting you’re never going to break into that group, you got to bring yourself to their level physically. Has to do with your physicality. Become one of them, and you’ll more likely be included in their conversation, then you can work on the mirroring piece. But it’s you got to level the field.
Joel Goldberg 25:21
There’s so many little nuances.
Mary Redmond 25:23
Yes,
Joel Goldberg 25:23
Right?
Mary Redmond 25:24
Yes.
Joel Goldberg 25:24
So many subtleties to this that we can do to help ourselves get to where we want to go. But we often skip, though, we may not even
Mary Redmond 25:35
Think of how many times you’re in a webinar, or some conversation online in a meeting online. And people don’t turn on their screen. What do you think? They don’t.
Joel Goldberg 25:47
I mean, my thought my thought is they’re doing something else.
Mary Redmond 25:51
Yeah, I was teaching a workshop for a major manufacturer here. And I have a lot of good stories I learned. It was during one of those times when they were in the office with COVID. I mean, when people went COVID restrictions were a heavy, but they had six weeks in. And I was having a session and there was somebody who couldn’t come in. And I was with his boss and his colleagues. And I asked him a question because of something going on in the group. Crickets. No response. No visuals. Was he doing something else? Was he even in the room? I don’t know. I don’t know. So it’s, and maybe this is really old fashioned. But it’s disrespect to the, if it’s a presentation, when I see is 70% of the screens are dark. And I see no one. It’s difficult as a presenter, to never see and get the body language opportunities of reading your audience. Are they happy? Are they having a good time? Are they enjoying it? Are they interested? We lose so much in communication when we keep our screens dark.
Joel Goldberg 27:19
Oh, yeah, no. Old fashioned? Maybe. I don’t know. I mean, everything feels old fashioned nowadays with the way things are changing.
Mary Redmond 27:27
And I can have shorts on below this. Who cares? Right? From here to here. I show up as a professional
Joel Goldberg 27:34
Waist up. It’s all that matters. That’s what I did pretty much every day of the pandemic like everybody else.
Mary Redmond 27:42
Yeah, flip flops, who cares? Shorts? It’s ok.
Joel Goldberg 27:46
Me it might be shorts, and a suit coat. You know, at least when we’re doing stuff from home, or when we’re doing stuff from the stadium on the team was on the road, and we weren’t traveling. I can’t pull that off anymore, which is a good thing. But you know, getting dressed for the job now. Yeah, as long as right. I dressed enough for the job before. Let’s do the baseball theme questions. In your career in your life, what has been the biggest home run that you have had?
Mary Redmond 28:13
The biggest home run was this large contract that I have with this manufacturer. And they were all buyers, there were 60 buyers. And I got the opportunity to train them on this open ended questions and these opportunities to engage with their clients and their prospects. And I also learned that the impact of hybrid and in their work world when they had not seen one another for six weeks. And when they came in what I observed and learned in my workshops I did with them I had breakouts and they did not, they did negotiation simulations. And I saw the groups working together. One managers group and four and four and four. And they did brainstorming on how would they solve this negotiation problem. Each of the groups came up with different solutions, all good, all good. But I saw the dynamics of having a hybrid where in this case, they were face to face. And they develop more solutions and different solutions when they were face to face. So in our new world, we need to keep some time for coming in or going home. I did a than I did the same group in virtual and we put them in great breakout rooms. The we had good solutions in each group, but it wasn’t as much fun. There wasn’t as much laughter and there wasn’t as much variety in the solutions in their problems, so it was a good learning experience for me. And I think for them to learn how to negotiate with their suppliers, both virtually and face to face. And I was teaching a lot of taking time to ask those questions, the open ended questions, but also, how is life for you? What’s it like having your kids sitting there saying, Dad? Dad? It’s time for lunch. Because how did they carry on professionally if they built those relationships with the suppliers, rather than just purchase order number, purchase order number status, status, status? It was, it was, it showed me in both dealing with the same audience face to face, and then in their virtual worlds and contrasting that to the levels of communication? So long story to say, What a great time for me to be doing training virtually. And then face to face as well.
Joel Goldberg 31:12
Yep, great lesson. How about a swing and a miss? And what did you learn from it?
Mary Redmond 31:18
Real Estate. Lost a lot of money. We too early in my business development or phase. I decided we needed to build it. And then had and I wanted it to be historic. Well, that’s stupid. 100 year old home, I wanted to convert to Office suites. It was 100 year old. So whenever you opened up a wall or did anything, there was a surprise. Not a good one. Walls that were collapsing when you didn’t know they were and so I didn’t have a contingency fund to cover those bad surprises. We didn’t do adequate marketing for who was going to office occupy our office suites. So the year we built it, and the people didn’t come. It was also a change in the economy during that time when we did it. And more people were beginning to not go to office suites. Perfect Storm. Three bad decisions. It cost us a lot of money. Going into that building with a new concept and not enough homework.
Joel Goldberg 32:37
Lesson learned there.
Mary Redmond 32:38
Bad lesson.
Joel Goldberg 32:39
Bad lesson. Well, good lesson to be learned from it, I guess but a painful one.
Mary Redmond 32:43
Indeed.
Joel Goldberg 32:44
Last baseball themed questions, small ball, what are the little things that add up to the big results for Mary A. Redmond?
Mary Redmond 32:52
And it goes back to the basics of negotiation. Do your homework before you go into a negotiation. Learn everything you can about who you’re going to be negotiating with. What’s going on in the in their world. So it’s do your homework, ask lots of questions. If you keep your mouth shut 80% of the time, and ask good questions, you’ll gather so much data that’s essential to the success of the coming negotiation. Take notes throughout your meeting with the client. Because we can speak at only 175 words a minute, roughly 175 words a minute, we can talk. But we can listen to four or 500 words. We can we can have the capability to hear a whole lot more, but we can’t put it out fast to them. So what are you doing in the spare time with your brain inactive? If you take notes, it keeps you engaged. And then you can ask more good questions. And then the other one is if the negotiation doesn’t go well, don’t burn bridges. By storming out and saying well, we’ll never do business together.
Joel Goldberg 34:14
You never know.
Mary Redmond 34:16
Ya never know. I have learned more times than not if I got huffy and walked out or ended up hung up with someone with bad vibes going on, I’ll pay a big price. Because I know I will need them at another time. So they’re I’ve learned so many lessons that are little little things, but they all add up to making a successful negotiator.
Joel Goldberg 34:42
Last thing before we wrap up because I didn’t go there earlier, but I love inspiration and we’ll hit some fun stuff in my four final questions over on YouTube. But you’ve accomplished so much on a personal end for yourself and really, to me, a beautiful walking example of someone that can overcome something really awful. In your case addiction. I don’t I don’t know you, as an addict, I don’t know you as someone that takes a drink because you don’t. But I just wanted you to share that before we got out of here. And I’ve got to imagine, too, that some of that has to do with your fearless negotiation. Have you been able to overcome some of the toughest of times, that that’s become so much of who you are, right?
Mary Redmond 35:27
It, it stopped me from the potential I had in life. Because I drank. I was a daily drinker, I drank every day, seven days a week. And it was ruining everything I wanted in life, which was a good marriage, and the success in my business and good family relationships. And anybody, anyone who has an addiction, whatever it may be, there, if you look and Google’s addiction, you’ll see 100 Different forms of addiction. Mine happened to be alcohol. And it’s prevents you from being all that, the old-fashioned, be all you can be. If your life is run, and your choices are made based on a substance rather than than the people around you. In the end, it’s the people you love and how you use the gifts you’re given. And so I finally surrendered. Surrendering and admitting, I have a challenge, an addiction and a long recovery time to ask for help. There were people who helped me walk through the addiction. And I’m fortunate to say I, you know, I’m clean and sober now for 23 years. And God’s been good to me. And it’s been very good to me to preserve my marriage, to allow me to have a wonderful career that I get to be, and I might say, I’m not fearless. I fear less, I fear less about life, about the choices I make today, and I have fewer burned bridges. If I continue to stay sober, and, and make relationships. Yesterday, I had a difficult thing going on with another person. And I had to say, I’m sorry for what I said. The I’m sorry, in the past, when I drank, there were no one summaries. And I get to now mend fences on a daily basis. And I’m so fortunate to today not be ruled by addiction.
Joel Goldberg 37:53
Well, that that is truly the ultimate homerun, that’s the Grand Slam, if I’m gonna use my baseball terms, which I don’t always have to, but that’s that’s, you know, a beautiful thing. It really is. And so, you know, I only know you this way, but but I know from your background and your story that it took a lot and it takes a lot to get here and you continue to do that.
Mary Redmond 38:16
COVID, COVID took out a lot of people who had addiction challenges and they couldn’t make it through COVID and, and that’s thrown extra burdens on many, many people to continue to live the way they hoped life would allow them to do. So it’s been a new challenge.
Joel Goldberg 38:40
Well, I’m proud to call you friend you know that and for the the connection, going three and a half years at this point, what I’ve learned from you from a coach, but but but even more than that as a friend if people want to get a hold of you, Mary, how can I do that?
Mary Redmond 38:56
Mary@Fearlessnegotiator.com or my website, fearlessnegotiator.com
Joel Goldberg 39:02
There we go. That’s what I’m looking for. We’ll we’ll jump over to YouTube if you want some fun bonus questions because this is a woman that says she fears less but I would say she’s fearless for some of the things that she does. We’ll get into that on YouTube. But Mary, thanks so much for joining me on Rounding the Bases.
Mary Redmond 39:22
Thank you Joel. It’s been a real pleasure.