Slower Is Faster

Happy Friday,

⚡ TL;DR | Why confusing selling with negotiating quietly destroys your margin, what Jessica Tarlov’s framework teaches us about high-stakes disagreement, and why a disciplined trade beats scorched earth every time.

How was your week?

Mine (like most of the last two months) was spent preparing for today: moving day for my maman.

For those who've been with me for a while, you know my mom is living with Alzheimer's. Today,  she transitions into a residence designed to give her the care she needs now and down the road.

Sidenote | this place seems lit: yoga, aquafit, restaurants, birthday parties, movie theatre, card and cornhole tournament… basically camp for all our moms and dads.

Getting here, though, meant surrendering completely to her rhythm instead of mine.

My mom still drops the most disarming one-liners. When things got heavy, she'd look at me and say, "You know, Julie, I don't want to remember everything. I don't want to overwhelm my memories." (but say in French French)

Some days she didn't want to move at all, wanted to delay it, or simply sit, have coffee, and catch up. So I ran on her schedule: a strict 10:30 AM start (anything earlier is crazy), a very French lunch of baguette, cheese and grapes at 1:00 PM, and by 4, a not-so-subtle: "Time to go, I'm exhausted, also I want to watch my show."

With Alzheimer's, stress and isolation trigger rapid regression. When a change this monumental happens, you cannot force the timeline. You cannot brute-force your way through the packing boxes or demand quick decisions. To protect her well-being, the goal isn't speed; it's minimizing distress, establishing psychological safety, and meeting her exactly where she is (and it was the best, when I finally gave in).

I often tell my colleagues that sometimes slower is faster. 

This move was living proof | When stakes and emotions are high, pushing only creates resistance and setbacks. Slowing down to meet someone where they actually are is the only way to arrive safely.

Living through this got me thinking about how we handle high-stakes tension in business.

Between packing boxes, I listened to Jessica Tarlov discussing her book I Disagree on Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway (big fan), as well as on her own show, Raging Moderates. Her core thesis is that people can have fierce, principled disagreements without turning every conversation into personal warfare or unprincipled surrender.

It made me think about how uncomfortable disagreement makes people in business. Too often, teams either dig in their heels and turn contract talks into a battle of wills, or they fold on price and give away concessions to keep things friendly.

The truth? 

Selling and negotiating are two completely different sports.

(And a quick aside for my brand builder purists: if you think building a brand isn't an act of selling, we need to grab a Negroni immediately. Brand equity exists to make selling easier, protect your price point, and build loyalty. But how you translate that brand equity into contract terms is where things get messy.)

Let's unpack why mixing them up destroys margin, and what a disciplined trade actually looks like.

1. Selling vs. Negotiating: Know Which Seat You're In

The single most expensive mistake commercial teams make is blurring the line between persuasion and commercial trading:

• Selling is about Alignment | Selling is the courtship. It's uncovering pain points, painting a vision of value, and establishing trust. When you sell, you want agreement.

• Negotiating is about Terms | Negotiation only begins when you disagree. It is the mechanical process of agreeing on price, scope, risk, liability, and timing.

Here is where brands bleed value:

When sales teams feel friction during the commercial phase, they slip back into "selling mode." Instead of defending terms, they throw in free concessions, discount the rate card, or absorb extra scope just to maintain harmony and be liked.

Selling creates the value pie. Negotiating divides it. 

If you try to negotiate before you've successfully sold the value, you end up haggling over pennies. But if you try to sell while negotiating, you give away your margin for free.

2. Scorched Earth vs. The Disciplined Trade

In the corporate world, two prominent negotiation methodologies often clash:

On one side, you have the high-intensity, "scorch-the-earth" style popularized by traditional aggressive procurement (and firms like The Gap Partnership). The playbook: anchor at an extreme, manufacture intense discomfort, squeeze every ounce of leverage, and test the counterparty's breaking point.

Does it yield short-term price drops? Sometimes. But in joint business partnerships, it leaves the counterparty resentful, waiting for the first contract renewal to retaliate or deliver minimal effort. You can't build enduring brand equity on scorched earth.

On the other side sits the philosophy taught by frameworks like Total Negotiation Group: commercial discipline through Take and Give.

• No Free Concessions | Every concession erodes perceived value. If you give an inch without attaching a cost, the counterparty immediately assumes your original position was inflated.

• The Conditional Trade | The four most important words in commercial strategy are: "If you, then I.

• Protecting Equity | A clean trade respects both balance sheets. It leaves the partnership intact while ensuring you never give away value without capturing commercial return.

3. The Jessica Tarlov Masterclass: Disagreeing Without Capitulating

This brings us right back to Jessica Tarlov.

Sitting in a cultural pressure cooker, Jessica doesn't use scorched-earth hostility, screaming gets you alienated, tuned out, or booted from the table. But she also never rolls over to appease the room.

Her playbook offers three critical rules for any boardroom negotiator:

• Anchor in Facts, Not Emotion | When tempers flare, she counters rhetoric with verifiable data. In commercial negotiations, emotion makes you reactionary; clear unit economics keeps you grounded.

• Acknowledge the Counterparty's Reality | She validates where the other side is coming from before dissecting the premise. You cannot move a partner off their position until they feel heard.

• Stay in the Arena | Disagreement isn't failure. You don't need the counterparty to adopt your worldview; you only need to agree on the terms of the engagement.

Just like pacing a move with my mom, the goal of high-stakes communication isn't to shock the other side into submission. It's to hold your ground with discipline, respect the rhythm of the room, and make sure that when the conversation ends, the relationship is still standing.

☕ The Sip Takeaway ☕ 🍷🍸

Don't give away value to buy harmony.

• Separate the Phases | Sell the vision first. Only negotiate terms once mutual value is firmly established.

• Never Give Without Taking | Eliminate unconditional concessions from your vocabulary. Anchor every move in: "If you give me X, then I can offer Y."

• Preserve the Partnership | Anyone can bully a counterparty once. Great brand builders orchestrate disciplined trades that protect margins today and leave the door open for tomorrow.

I’m signing off to help my maman settle into camp, more importantly to thank her for the last two months of baguette lunches and reminders to never overwhelm my memories.

Until then,

See you next week