Negotiating

I've read numerous books including the often hated sometimes loved book "the 4-hour work week" by Tim Ferris. I didn't actually buy his book, but instead skimmed through it inside a barnes and noble...hehe. My review of his book, coming up in the next post :). There was some advice that Tim gave that I thought was brilliant, because I'd thought of it too before reading it. The advice was to not let contacts that you're dealing with know that you're the final decision-maker, especially when it came to negotiation. He suggests that you give yourself some mid-level management title so that you can have some negotiation leverage when you need it. "I'll need to check with my boss and let you know" kind of lines. In the past 8 months that I've been working on my business, I've found this to be bad advice. I've found that the times when I've gotten what I wanted from a negotiation was when I was being completely honest about what my situation was, what I'm looking for, what my constraints are. And this honesty, was what got me what I wanted in the end. Not, lying and pretending to be something you're not. I will caveat that, there are times when you need to stretch the truth and I'm no saint. :)