The Negotiator

I tried to recall the first time I was able to negotiate and although this surely isn't the first moment, this is the one I would like to relay to you friends.

So it was a muggy day on the big island, at least on the Hilo side. The twins and I were looking to buy a car on the island, hitchhiking was getting tiresome. We heard through the grapevine whom we might want to speak with to get a cheap car on the "DL" and if you can imagine the used car salesmen stories you have heard, they too exist on the big island. So we were to meet this guy at some gas station on the rainy side and I can remember his tshirt, " is it recess yet?" I mean he was flippin' classic. He took us to his "home" which I guarantee was his dump home and his fat pad was down the street. And while he was trying to wheel and deal and get us to buy the cars on his lot, he would get on the phone on pretend conversations and try to create an urgency about the car we were looking at. I remember getting into the back of the one car and the door wouldn't open and his comment about it was like, "oh yeah just hop out the window." Hilarious. I could just see it now I would be Daisy from the Dukes of Hazard. Well so as we finally chose the gray truck with a jacked up axle and no back gate, or excuse me it had a gate but we would have to weld it on ourselves, oh yeah and he knows a "guy" where we can get the welding done. As the negotiations went the twins, Ian and Ryan began to talk him down and I stepped in, I could tell he got a bit heated that we might actually be talking him down. And as he told us off pretty much and we started to walk away I blurted out 650 and some how it was a done deal, we actually got him down from just over a grand! We drove away that day with no registration tags or insurance. And although that guy may have been shady I guess so were we. As we drove the truck to the welders home, it was quite a trip. The house was an old wooden log cabin and an older man with long gray hair awaited us at the front doorway. He handed Ian a hard hat and said if you want to weld it you can do it yourself! So there my Ian was welding away, so brave and willing. Lets just say from that experience I realized that I had the power of negotiation, to not get intimidated to have some guts. We also sold that truck months later after driving it around for a while and made a profit of 150 dollars, not bad! So as I can remember the fear he must have felt that day for the moment he realized that these three "kids" were not going to back down and were confident enough to find something else. But until I walked up to the lion, facing fear and just asking for a smaller offer, it was handed to us on a silver platter. So what is it that you have to fear, besides the person you look at in the mirror?