Episode Details

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ABOUT THE EPISODE:

He was a people-pleaser who said "sounds good" while dying inside. Then a negotiation class he only picked because it "fit his schedule" rewired his entire nervous system — and turned Kwame Christian, Esq. into one of the most in-demand negotiators on the planet.

In this episode of The Creative Entrepreneur, Julie Lokun and Dominick Domasky sit down with Kwame Christian — CEO of the American Negotiation Institute, host of Negotiate Anything (16M+ downloads, 1,700+ episodes, the #1 negotiation podcast in the world for nearly a decade), two-time bestselling author, Forbes contributor, and the creator of LinkedIn's only negotiation certificate. Global Gurus just named him a Top 10 negotiation professional in the world for 2026, and in his spare time, he's a 99th-percentile chess player with 20,000 games logged.

This conversation goes past the LinkedIn-post version of Kwame's story into the real one: a six-year-old getting rejected on the playground, a law school elective picked at random, and the framework — Compassionate Curiosity — that's now taught inside Google, Apple, and NASA.

What You'll Learn

• The chess principle that applies directly to business strategy: why "control the center, develop your pieces, and don't move the same piece twice" is a lesson in decision-making under uncertainty.
• Why negotiation is a skill, not a talent — and how one law school competition win rewired Kwame's entire sense of identity.
• The origin story of his people-pleasing — a first-grade playground rejection that shaped two decades of over-accommodating.
• The Compassionate Curiosity framework: acknowledge and validate emotions → get curious with compassion → joint problem-solving.
• The 70/30 rule: why the best negotiators speak 30% of the time and listen 70%, and why "you can't say something stupid while you're listening."
• The "acceptance speech test": how to frame an offer so well the other side could read it verbatim to their own team as a win.
• "Concede according to plan": Kwame's rule for never making an emotional concession in the moment.
• How to negotiate at home — and why the same framework that works with Fortune 500 clients works with a five-year-old and a ten-year-old.
• Jules Rules: Julie, Dom, and Kwame each share their biggest negotiation misses — and how to avoid them.

Key Quotes

• "I wasn't born this way, I was built this way."
• "The best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations."
• "Negotiation is the art of letting them have your way."
• "I am more willing to accept failure than I am to accept regret."
• "Every good decision will come with some collateral damage."

Timestamps

• 00:00 — Introducing Kwame Christian, Esq.
• 03:10 — Chess as a metaphor for business strategy
• 08:45 — From people-pleaser to negotiation champion
• 14:20 — The playground story behind the people-pleasing
• 19:30 — Introducing Compassionate Curiosity
• 27:15 — Negotiating at home vs. negotiating with Fortune 500 clients
• 33:40 — High-stakes negotiation on the world stage
• 39:05 — Jules Rules: negotiation misses
• 47:00 — The acceptance speech test and win-win negotiation
• 54:15 — Kwame's early-career negotiation mistake and final tips

Connect with Kwame Christian

• American Negotiation Institute: https://kwamechristian.com/
• Negotiate Anything P