The Art of Negotiation and Knowing When to Walk Away, with Elisa Henry

Welcome to Money Tales, where Money Gets Personal. I’m Cammie Doder. And I’m Sandi Bragar. For the first time in her life, Elisa Henry did something that felt almost impossible for a high performing deal maker. She stopped, she took six months off work to disconnect from the constant noise of achievement, spend real time outdoors and sit in the quieter questions beneath every money goal. Who am I if I’m not producing? What do I want this next chapter to be about? In that pause, Elisa realized how tightly identity confused with work, how health and presence can become the real scarce resources and why the most meaningful financial plan is the one that supports a life you actually have time to live. Here are three money conversations. This episode will help you navigate. First, how do you know when you’re putting good money after bad? Elisa reflects on a failed real estate investment that taught her the importance of stepping back from emotion and letting the numbers guide the decision. Second, what is the real art of negotiation when money is on the line rather than aiming for a win-win? Elisa explains why. Understanding the motivations driving the other person is the key to structuring a successful deal. And third, how early should children learn to make and invest money? Elisa shares how she opened a brokerage account for her young son and is encouraging him to think like an entrepreneur by spotting simple ways to earn money this summer. Now it’s our pleasure to bring you Elisa Henry’s Money Tales. Elisa Henry, welcome to the Money Tales podcast. Thank you, Sandi. Looking forward to the conversation with you and Camie today. We are too, and I have to tell you guys, it is property and casualty insurance renewal time in my household. Such an exciting time. Such an exciting time. Yes, I got pinged by our insurance broker and then the insurance company itself. And I don’t know about you guys, but I have a lot of my financial life set up on auto pay, including our property and casualty insurance. It’s. This time of year where I actually have to take a beat and take a look at the invoices, how much have the premiums gone up? What is my coverage again? And I’m talking about like it’s me, it’s my family’s. I happen to be the one in my marriage to be responsible for looking at the stuff first pass. But it’s a really important time to take a look at the coverage because I’ve noticed, and I noticed this with clients too, if you keep moving on autopay, autopay, autopay, you don’t pay attention. You can get into a situation where your insurance coverage is stale and should you need to rely on that insurance coverage, you could be in a bit of a bind. That. Was my first important message about this, not only to our listeners, but to myself to take the time to take a look. What happens to me is I have the intention, oh, I’ll get to it, and then in my list of things I’m going to get to, it just slowly gets lower and lower on things that I autopay. So thanks for reminding us that maybe think of it as autopay is great, then you don’t pay any late fees or something like that, but really treat it as I’m paying it today, so I need to review and make sure it’s covering what I needed to cover. Especially as the cost to rebuild a home have gone up, right? Believe it or not, had burglary happened to me in October, and so obviously you just have your regular umbrella insurance, but if you have jewelry and other things that valuable in your home and you don’t have that coverage, guess what? You only have that $10,000 cap. And unfortunately for me, I lost over six figures in assets. So highly recommend for those of you out there to really look at insurance in what you have because that whole element of it’s not going to happen to me, which I’ve been in my home for 20 years in a gated community. It did happen that smashed door in the backyard ransacked the house. So highly recommend taking a look at your insurance and also your umbrella policy. And if you need a jewelry policy, which I didn’t have unfortunately, and that was most of what got stolen, and so anyways, I’m highly recommending it. Yes, you’re bringing up some really important points because jewelry is actually pretty tricky because you could get a blanket jewelry coverage, which would cover a certain amount of your collection or if you have particular piece or several pieces that are quite valuable in and of themselves, you can name them separately. When it comes to jewelry, when it comes to art, musical instruments, antiques, it’s really important to have a good partnering your insurance agent or your insurance broker to really help guide you through these things. Where I always sort of scratch my head personally is, gosh, for some of these items, I’d be so heartbroken if they were lost or stolen and I could never replace them. And that’s the issue. Everything is I replaceable a lot of family heirlooms that were handed down like my grandmother’s wedding ring who’d passed away. She came from Germany during the World War ii, and that’s where the diamond came from. I’ll never see that again, but there’s a lot of pieces unfortunately that you’ll never get back and just never think it’s not going to happen to you and prepare yourself if it does. I always think of when I look at insurance, what’s that worst case scenario for me? I’m trying to figure out, I mean long-term care right now, what does that look like? Right? There’s a lot of risks and insurance is a great way to cover some of those. It is. It can be emotionally hard when you haven’t been burglarized and I’m so sorry that happened to you, Elisa, to you and your family and the loss, and it is an important reminder that things happen and that’s why you have the insurance because I find myself when, oh, do we really need this certain line item? But we probably do, and that’s why the guidance, to your point, Sandi, we did ask the questions and we trust our insurance professionals, and so it’s like, yep, you do. You really need it just in case. Be careful of just assuming everything is good just because you’re making the payment on time, you’re not losing that coverage as a result. That’s a good thing, but you want to make sure your coverage is really at the levels that you need it to be. Should you be suffering from a risk at some point in the near future. Well, let’s pivot our conversation and Lisa, would you start us off by telling a bit about yourself, brief overview and in particular capital pivotal moments or decisions that really impacted who you are today? I’m a single mom. It’s funny because I’m always in work mode. Believe it or not. I didn’t even look like I was pregnant. I was one of those. I mean, I’ve always been in technology working closely as a partner, founder in technology, not many females that were doing that. I’ve been doing this over for 25 years. I didn’t say anything to anybody until people started noticing until I was seven months pregnant. Wow. Now I’m like, no, no, I’m proud to be a mom. It’s okay. This is life. I’m not super superwoman out there trying to do B and do all things to hide that. When you go through life and you get programmed to be a certain way, but I really love what I do. I’ve been in technology my entire career and helping really build companies and bringing value to companies before they want to exit. In other words, they want to sell their business. So 24 to 36 months before a founder is saying, guess what? I need to figure out that succession planning. What do I want to do next? A lot of buyers like to come in and get a good deal. I like to try to say, Hey, you know what? Let’s not sell it for multiple of four. How do we get to a 10 or an eight and then back into that? And so to me that’s a lot of fun and as a result of that, I think I’m learning every day. Every day I’m trying to step out of the box and do something different. I love the Stanford Online Executive education courses. I took longevity classes last year, AI classes. I’m brushing up on my AI skills all the time. Right now I’m having fun with Agen AI and working with that. You know what I think what motivates me as a person is when somebody says, you can’t do that. Challenge accepted. Exactly. Challenge accepted. I’ve always been one of those of what Game on, we’re going to do that. So I love taking the Art of the impossible and making it possible. Oh, Lisa, that’s beautiful. Tell us, when you were growing up, how did you start learning about money? Gosh, you know what? When I look at my parents, so my grandparents came over here, they had nothing. Where’d they come from? They came from Germany. Oh, that’s right, you said Germany. Yeah. They had nothing. And my father was first generation, and so they spoke German in the home then, but my mom, a little bit different situation. She was born to a very entrepreneurial father and uncle. They were twins in Sacramento, the Houtman family, and so they were really well known for gosh, from farming to storage facilities to mortuaries. They were involved in many different things. And so when you look at both of my parents and how I was raised, my dad is always very frugal. You have two pairs of shoes. You don’t get another pair until as a whole, and my mom was just raised very differently. She was able to get the clothes and at 21 she had a Ferrari. I remember that. I was like, mom, really? Wow, you don’t hear that every day? No, you don’t. Both of my parents, the art of negotiation, the art of the value of money, believe it or not, I am the person always asking for a discount even at a department store. It’s just fun. I love to negotiate and I figured my mom and dad taught me that from a very young age going down to Mexico and negotiating with the vendors down there, and so probably saved a lot of money. Lisa, when you look back on your life so far, what are you most proud of in terms of a deal you’ve negotiated for yourself or for a client? There’s a gentleman by the name of Bill. I’ll leave his last name off because it’s public, but I learned a lot from Bill and he’s taught me so much about the art of negotiation within a deal. So that was an exit that I did with him and it was a crazy multiple. It was over a 10 x multiple that we sold a company for. I’ve learned a lot from him when it comes to negotiation, and I’ve also learned a lot of hard lessons of not to take good money and put it into bad money. My ex-husband and I actually bought land to build a storage facility, an RV and boat storage facility. We kept putting money at it and the market had dropped because we didn’t want to lose it and we just had to let it go. That was a big punch in the gut, but that was a very good lesson to learn. Oh, sure. To make that decision. Before. Before you move on to the next example, which I want to hear, I’m curious, at what point did you realize that you were putting good money after Ben? What were the signs? What were the flags that you learned that other people could benefit from hearing about. When you’re saying, okay, I really want this to happen and take place. I know I can make it happen, but when you’re actually looking at a spreadsheet and the dollars and you can go and purchase it somewhere else for less, that’s when it’s like, Hey, you need to pull out now. That makes no sense. What do the numbers say? It sounds like getting out of your emotional mind and stepping back and trying to look at all the facts on the table. Exactly. Which can be so hard to do. Elisa, would you share or describe what is the art of negotiation? I get tense when I think of negotiating. I’ll be honest. It fits in my shoulders, tighten up, but then I think about the most successful negotiations are win-wins as best as possible. So how do you describe the art of negotiation? What’d you learn? It’s not win-win. A lot of people think, and it’s something that teaching my son, it’s getting to understand people, the behavior of people and what’s important and what’s valuable to them, and to not assume. We know that gets us in trouble, but we need to understand what’s driving the motivation of the other person. And once we understand that because truly understanding the behavior of people, everyone’s driven by different things of what’s important to them, then we can back into understanding what does that deal look like? And to me, that is one of the most important things to be do in life that will take you very, very far. What you’re underscoring is having curiosity. What’s important to the other person might not be what is important to you. So. In that sense might be easier to negotiate because it’s easy to say, yeah, let’s give you X, I need Y. Yeah. Absolutely. When I got out of school right away I thought, what do I know I’m good at? And so I just went into sales right away, but that was one of those core foundational things that I had to learn. How do we get this contract signed, but most importantly, what problem am I solving for? So we’re backing into that person’s problem and then addressing that. Elisa, when it comes to your personal and family life with your son, how are you making money decisions? Are you talking to anyone about money? Absolutely. In fact, I just opened up a trading account for him and this morning he’s like, mom, he’s like, you got me up early enough. I want to see make a stock trade. And so last night I showed him the performance and we invested in some copper and I said, okay, now this is what’s happening with copper. But then the software industry, because they think AI is going to take over and they’re going to get marginalized that all the stocks have gone down significantly last week. Let’s look at Intuit and some others. And then he says, mom, I like Costco, and I thought it’s 10th, fifth grade, why everybody. Likes Costco, especially the under 21 crowd. I’ve learned. Everyone shops there, why don’t we buy it? And I said, well, the stock’s over a thousand dollars right now, and you only have $950 in your account. There were some things growing up of like, gosh, I wish I would’ve known how to invest. I wish my parents would’ve showed me how to invest and buy stocks. And so I’m just going back into my journey of what is it that I wish I would’ve had that I’d like to give to my son. Knowing where he is and how old he’s, you know what? You’re always surrounding yourself with people, with friends and family, and you’re always bouncing ideas off of each other of what’s working well for you when it comes to buying, whether it’s buying real estate, whether it’s investing, whether it’s looking at buying a business, but you have all different walks of life around me and I’m going to have to say during graduate school I got the biggest gift and that was lifelong friends. I went to C, I went to USC to get my MBA. But when I look back at those friendships and the conversations and the travels that we have, I’m going to have to say 20 X has nothing compared to what I paid for my tuition and what I’ve received in lifelong memories and also sound financial good discussions and decision making. Kimmy Elisa reminds me of a lot of you in the stories you tell. I. Know, I know. That’s Sandi. Thanks. I’m smiling thinking about that, Elisa, I went to UCLA for my MBA and I feel the same way, the relationships and the sounding board, but we all have this. I think what you’re pointing out is to nurture and cultivate that those relationships. I love one of our podcast guests and probably many of ’em has said this, but one sticking out that you don’t even have to know. You can read books, you can listen to podcasts and develop these relationships that then become sounding boards or at least give you some advice. But I agree that they’re priceless. They are. I was trying to remember the book. That is such a good book. I’ve gone to the Harvard negotiation class. I’ve taken a USC negotiation class, but there’s an amazing book, skip the Classes book is called Never Split the Difference. Oh, a great book, that’s for sure. And so it’s an amazing book. It’s teaching you like here you are hostage rescue and that’s what you’re doing. Or HRT. There is no win-win of you need to get the person out of that situation and there’s life on the line. And so anyways, I just wanted to go back and mention that book. It’s really shaped me and other people that I’ve coached and trained and helped. Thank you for sharing that. It is a great book. Pairing that with what you were saying before about your friends and your peers who you have a great network to bounce ideas off of as you’re making money decisions for yourself is really helpful. I’m curious, are there any money topics that you find difficult to talk about? What’s difficult for me is even though I have a trade account for my son is following equities and then the yo-yo effect, and so sometimes it’s like, gosh, I’m getting sweaty in here. Ugh. I call it my fun account of what I do with my money, but I think it’s better just to give the money to somebody and just say, you know what? I trust you. And I think it’s really hard to find someone that you trust with your money that you’ve accumulated in your wealth and your retirement. As a single mom, it’s all me. There’s nobody else, nor do I want to rely on anybody or any other funds that are coming in, but just on me. So finding that trusted source where you’re going to get to make sure that your portfolio is growing and to have that trust with that financial planner, with that broker, that’s hard and that sometimes those are difficult decisions to open up and to trust that person with your retirement and to ensure that you are accumulating and building wealth over time and as you’re diversified and hedging depending on the state that we’re in. Obviously. It’s interesting that you say that because of course Cammy and I are partners in a wealth management business and one of the things that we focus on when we work with new clients is developing that trust right away. You’re right on with that. It can be difficult for some people to do that, but having a third party that’s objective and who’s following things that you don’t have the time to do yourself can be very, very valuable. If you’re not being served well and serving well sometimes is how you feel in the conversation. Do you feel smart or do you feel not so smart and really you’re smart, it’s likely the other person who might make you feel that way. So it’s such an important message. Sometimes we have a tendency to think, especially with finances, that we got to do it all ourselves. It’s also a great opportunity to remind ourselves what else do we do all ourselves? So find a really good partner and then ask for what you need. I think it’s really important. So thanks for highlighting that. Elisa, would you also take us down the journey of when you’re working with a company towards an exit that’s really hard. You’ve got to show incredible growth, probably hard changes are made for the company, but the exit is really important for your clients, my understanding. Tell us about even those money conversations you’re having with the clients. It depends on the size of the business. I try to work with the small to medium sized companies that are over 10 million and above, but there’s a lot of companies out there that are just humming at 5 million. They have a nice, I call them a lifestyle business and they’re like, oh, Lisa, I just made an extra half million dollars for the business. Oh no, what do I do? And I was just like, well spin up a defined benefit plan. That’s the easiest thing. But it’s funny how a lot of people have the smaller businesses that are out there, they just don’t know and they don’t know the tax saving strategies. But then you also have your very, very high, high, ultra high net worth individuals. They’re wired tight before an exit. They’ve done exits before. They understand those tax planning strategies from moving at a state at a certain time, but there’s all different strategies to try to help mitigate taxes on an exit, not taking all the funds upfront for example, but over time performance-based exits over time also help too, I would say during a transaction, I think it’s very emotional. It’s extremely emotional, and so coming in and working with a founder or multiple founders and partners, you need to make sure that your values are aligned because of how emotional it gets. It can get pretty heated and it’s seven days a week, 24 7 depending on what they’re doing because there’s a lot of money. I mean this is retirement that’s on the line here for them and it’s more than it’s generational wealth effectively for those founders. Managing those behaviors during those heated times is very, very important. Let’s talk through some of those emotions because we see that with our clients too, and I think one of the most prevalent emotions that I’ve witnessed is one around identity. I’m not only selling my business that I created, but my identity is so wrapped up in this business. Who will I be without it? It’s hard to put a value on identity and there can be a real challenge when a perception of the value of a business isn’t matching up with the actual value of the business. I remember going to somebody’s wedding and they were a founder in the business and I looked around the room and I thought, and a person was older when they got married and I thought, gosh, everybody here is really his now wife’s family, friends and family, but his side of the room was everyone he worked with and that’s when I realized that his work is his sense of purpose, a good person, but the most important thing to him was his family in his work and that sense of purpose. So what is he going to do after you’re a fish out of water? And the thing is you go and you do it again. You want to say, people will say, do have it in you, can you do it again? Or you get to a point of your health starts to decline and you need to take a step back and then address your health. Then you want to be present for your family because your kids are getting older. They’re going to be out at the house very soon. It just depends on what path you want to go down. I took a little bit of a break for six months. First time I did, I mean I had my son. I took two weeks off work. I was back at it. I was that person. Lisa. Wow. Time. So I never took a break. Not to hide anything. I just turned 50 last week. Happy birthday. Thank you, thank you. But I took six months off to really like, no, I am going to take some time off. I’ve never done it in my entire life. It was last year. It was very difficult and very hard. I realized that my identity also was my work because I love to make an impact and help people and grow people and be connected in that way, but I think as you get older and life, there’s so much more to life than just work. I definitely learned that I will never probably stop working by going through that experience. I’ll always be doing something and helping grow something. I love it so much. It’s a part of me. It really motivates me very much. Elisa, what did you do during that six months and how often were you thinking about money? During the six months I was really active and so I just really enjoy being outdoors. So mountain biking, hiking, I learned how to ride a dirt bike. I bought a dirt bike. Nice. Cool. Cool, cool. That was pretty fun, right? Went and was fishing and golfing and just really enjoying life with friends and family. Just really tried to really digitally disconnect. I think it was funny just being in silence because I’m so used to always podcasts, being on being connected to technology but was really trying to not be connected to understand more of who I am. It’s hard to do, isn’t it? It’s hard to do and I definitely was thinking about money but not as much. I was really trying to understand who am I, where do I want to go next? What does this new chapter look like for me? And so I think I was more focused on that. So more on purpose than on the financial aspects of that. Absolutely, yes. So Lisa, you took this break six months, fantastic. You learned from it that you will always be working. That’s really important for you. What are a couple other things that you learned during that time off that you are going to adopt going forward or at least highlighted for you? It is interesting because I’m seeing friends that are really close to me and family, some that have passed unexpectedly, and so now I’m saying, okay, what do I want to do in the next 10 years before I’m 60? Right? Those bucket list items, that’s important to do to not lose that sense. I can take the step back and say, Hey, these next 10 years I’m still going to hit it really hard again and go back and to do that, but I think it’s important to make sure you take time. I only have eight more years until my son’s out of the home, but doing trips with him, being present for him is really important. And also taking care of my health and just making sure that I have that sound time and I’m not losing myself because when you’re working so much, you work so hard and on the weekends you crash and you’re in bed because you’re so tired and you get sick, and so that’s the state that unfortunately that I was in for many, many years, but it made me say, Hey, this isn’t what life is all about. Your health being present, living purposefully with your family, especially with aging parents, making sure you’re connecting with them. It just kind of knocked me on the head and said, Hey, you need to pay attention to this because you’re going to look back when you’re 80 and you’re going to be regretful and I don’t want that. Lisa, that is beautiful. Tell us what’s your next money conversation going to be and who’s it going to be with? It’s going to be with my son because I’m really trying to teach him the value of money. I think that that’s so important and to not only that, but to recognize opportunities in how to make money. We’re going into the summer and I thought, gosh, he’s going to be 11. How is he going to make money this summer? I really want to talk with him about how is he going to make money this summer and in recognizing those opportunities, that’s what I’m going to be focused on is teaching him, him that. There’s that old saying, money doesn’t grow in trees. You can’t take it for granted. You can’t take the things that you have for granted, but how are you going to make money this summer? And it can be as simple as we went to the Truckee River last summer. A lot of people are renting inner tubes. Guess what? We can go buy 10 or 20 inner tubes and then you can sell them to people there. That’s an easy one. Just resell inner tubes from big five that you purchase and sell ’em for three x. See a negotiation lesson happening with that. I agree, Sandi, and entrepreneurship 101. This is priceless. We’re going to be having that conversation here going in before we hit summer. What a wonderful conversation or many conversations, and then you demonstrate it through who you are, which is really special. Would you share with our listeners, where is the best place for them to find you digitally. On LinkedIn? Elisa Henry. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m open to answering any questions and being connected. Oh, and it’s been absolutely a pleasure to speak with you on Money Tales and thank you for sharing your story with us. Thank you. Cammie. We just finished off with Elisa Henry and she shared something after the recording that is a quote from the Dalai Lama, and I want to share it here because she didn’t get a chance to do it on the episode, and I think it’s really powerful. Here’s the quote, man surprised me most about humanity because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health, and then he’s so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present. The result being that he does not live in the present or the future. He lives as if he’s never going to die and then dies having never really lived. Wow. Wow. That’s so great. That is the whole thesis for her six months off, which I thought was a beautiful, beautiful idea that not everyone can execute on. That’s right. What a great refresh for her to think about the life she really wants to be living at this point. That’s right. And if you don’t have the six months, we do make the time. It’s something that really got me thinking that you can still make the time. You just have to make the time to really, I love turn off your devices and think about the life you want to live, present, then live today. Yeah. Be in the today present. And use your money in ways that allow you to be present. Yeah, I think. It’s important. Don’t afraid of that if you have money to spend on yourself. For sure. And another thing she talked about that really I appreciated, I asked her about the art and negotiation, and I really appreciated that. You need to understand, and I’ve read never split the difference, and it is fantastic, and I think all these things are great, but sometimes things hit you in a way and she talked about what’s important to that other person that what’s motivating them, and then you can really start understanding how to negotiate. Otherwise, I thought of it. I’m just screaming for what I need and want, which is good. It’s good to know what you need and want, but in a negotiation, you need to make sure it’s somehow you’re progressing the conversation along, so understanding what that other person needs and wants is so important. That’s right. And we negotiate all the time. It’s not always for the purchase of a car or the sale of a business. Sometimes it’s about making a decision about what we’re going to do over the weekend. And. If we’re going to spend money on this particular thing or not negotiating with a family member or a spouse or partner or a friend. And so I think focusing on motivations is a really good reminder for all of us. It is. Good, Sandi. Well, that was a really fun conversation with Elisa Henry. I’m so glad she joined us and we’re glad that you listeners joined us too. If you’d like this episode, please share it with your friends and find us here next week on Money Tales. Thanks for listening to the Money Tales podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, share it with someone you think would benefit from listening and leave us a review on your favorite podcasting platform. Your ratings and reviews help more people find our podcast. If you’re inspired to gain clarity and peace of mind about financial matters, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team at Aspiriant.com/ start a dialogue, or you can email Sandi and me at podcasts@aspiriant.com. See you next time.