You've been on the call for two minutes and you still don't know what the other person actually wants.

Not what they're asking for... what they want. Those are almost never the same thing. They'll ask for a lower price when what they actually want is to know they won't get blamed if this fails. They'll say "just send me a proposal" when what they actually want is proof you understand their world well enough to be trusted with it. Most people never close that gap. They answer the question that was asked instead of the one underneath it, and they wonder why the deal, the raise, the buy-in never quite lands.

Jake sits down with Ron Hubsher, founder of the Sales Optimization Group, author of Closing Time, and a guest lecturer on negotiation at Harvard, to break down what negotiation actually is once you strip away the cigar smoke and table-pounding. Ron explains why nobody ever really loses on price, how to separate a business risk from a personal one, and why the best negotiators talk the least and ask the most. They get into preparation, discovery, reading the emotional language underneath a request, and why the goal is never to win against the other side — it's to make the deal better than either of you imagined going in.

Negotiation isn't a tactic you pull out for contracts and salaries. It's every conversation where you're trying to move someone from where they are to where you'd like them to be — and the person who's done the work always sounds like it.

Connect with Ron Hubsher

Website: salesog.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ronhubsher

Book: Closing Time: The 7 Immutable Laws of Sales Negotiation : https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981789005?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback

Phone: 650-520-9849

Email: [email protected]

Follow Jake

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakestahl/

Instagram & TikTok: @OwnTheRoomWithJakeStahl

Podcast: https://thejakestahl.com/podcast/

Book: Own the Room: https://thejakestahl.com/books/

Work With Jake: [email protected]

This episode is brought to you by Orchestraight. Try Orchestraight free for 7 days at orchestraight.com. Orchestraight. The straightest path to success.

You didn't lose them at the end. You lost them in the middle, in a moment so small you talked right through it.

In this one, Jake takes you inside the exact second a conversation slips — the lean back, the dropped eyes, the "yes, yes" that turns into a slow "yeah, okay" — and breaks down the three reasons you miss it every single time: you're running your script, you're protecting your good feeling, and you're afraid of the silence. He walks through five specific things to watch for in yourself, not in the room, the next time it matters — from catching yourself performing to getting quiet enough to actually hear what their face is telling you.

The signal was never hidden. You just weren't there to catch it.

Follow Jake

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakestahl/

Instagram & TikTok: @OwnTheRoomWithJakeStahl

Podcast: https://thejakestahl.com/podcast/

Book: Own the Room: https://thejakestahl.com/books/

This episode is brought to you by Orchestraight. Try Orchestraight free for 7 days at orchestraight.com. Orchestraight. The straightest path to success.

You didn't lose the deal at the end. You lost it in a single second, right in the middle — and you kept talking straight through it.

Jake and Jon dig into one of Jon's own deals to find the exact moment it turned: a buyer's small question about timeline, met with a fast, confident non-answer, followed by a lean back and a glance at her CFO that Jon registered for half a second and then talked right past. From there they break down why a great-feeling meeting is often the warning sign, not the reassurance, and walk through five moves for catching the shift while it's still happening instead of finding out three weeks later through the grapevine: split your attention between your pitch and their reaction, watch the shift instead of the words, stop your pitch the instant you feel it, name it out loud, and reopen the conversation around what's actually true for them. It's the "S" in Jake's STRATA framework from Own the Room — Signal — in action, in real time, on a real deal.

They always show you the moment you're losing them. The only question is whether you're still in the room to see it.

This episode pairs with the solo episode coming later this week, "You Were Talking When You Should Have Been Reading" — this one teaches you to see the moment, the next one teaches you the presence to catch it.

Follow Jake

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakestahl/

Instagram & TikTok: @OwnTheRoomWithJakeStahl

Podcast: https://thejakestahl.com/podcast/

Work With Jake: [email protected]

Book: Own the Room: https://thejakestahl.com/books/

This episode is brought to you by Orchestraight. Try Orchestraight free for 7 days at orchestraight.com. Orchestraight. The straightest path to success.

You've done the preparation. The ideas are solid. The case is clear.

And somehow you still walk out of that room feeling like nobody actually heard you.

This episode is going to tell you why. And it has nothing to do with your ideas.

It has everything to do with the sound underneath them. The rising pitch at the end of a sentence that turns a statement into a question. The I just wanted to that opens the thought before you've even made it. The does that make sense you add at the end not because anything was unclear but because you needed a nod. The apology for taking up time. The third reason you give when one would have been enough.

Every one of those is the same request, said without words, to a room you were never not allowed to be in. Am I okay to be here?

And the room answers. Not the question you meant to ask. The one you actually asked.

This solo episode goes somewhere most communication advice never reaches. Not into better words or stronger decks. Into the specific fear underneath the tells and five ways to catch it before it leaks out of you and into the room.

The approval you keep reaching for is only available to the person who stopped reaching for it. The room gives status to the person who doesn't need the nod. The second you need it you've told them you're beneath it.

Follow Jake

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakestahl/

Instagram & TikTok: @OwnTheRoomWithJakeStahl

Podcast: https://thejakestahl.com/podcast/

Book: Own the Room: https://thejakestahl.com/books/

This episode is brought to you by Orchestraight. Try Orchestraight free for 7 days at orchestraight.com. Orchestraight. The straightest path to success.

You were the most prepared person in the room — and the least believed. It wasn't your ideas. You got read before you got heard.

Jon Goehring and I rebuild a room he should've owned and lost, and break down the five status tells that quietly leak low status — the uptalk, the permission-asking, the over-explaining, the rushed silence, the reflexive apology — plus the exact one-sentence swaps that flip each one.

The truth is, it's not your ideas. It never was. It's the sound underneath the ideas. And that sound is a need — the need for them to approve of you — and it leaks out of you before you finish your first sentence.

Follow Jake

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakestahl/

Instagram & TikTok: @OwnTheRoomWithJakeStahl

Podcast: https://thejakestahl.com/podcast/

Book: Own the Room: https://thejakestahl.com/books/

This episode is brought to you by Orchestraight. Try Orchestraight free for 7 days at orchestraight.com. Orchestraight. The straightest path to success.

Jon had a client who wanted to cut the timeline in half and skip the testing entirely. He'd seen this exact situation blow up before. He knew exactly what was going to happen.

He said yeah, we can make that work.

The campaign launched. It flopped exactly the way he knew it would. And then the client looked at him and said you're supposed to be the expert. Why didn't you say something?

He lost the account. Not because he pushed back. Because he didn't.

This episode rebuilds that moment from the ground up with five specific moves that turn the silent yes into the kind of pushback that actually raises your standing instead of threatening it. Including the one line at the end that earns you the right to push back again next time.

They're not paying you to agree. They're paying you for the one thing a yes man can never give them. The truth from someone who's still on their side.

Follow Jake

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakestahl/

Instagram & TikTok: @OwnTheRoomWithJakeStahl

Podcast: https://thejakestahl.com/podcast/

Book: Own the Room: https://thejakestahl.com/books/

This episode is brought to you by Orchestraight. Try Orchestraight free for 7 days at orchestraight.com. Orchestraight. The straightest path to success.

Every time someone with power over you headed the wrong direction and you said sounds good, you told yourself a story about why.

It wasn't worth the friction. They'd made up their mind anyway. You were picking your battles.

This episode is going to say the quiet part out loud.

That wasn't judgment. That was relief. You felt the flush of fear about pushing back, took the exit, and dressed it up in words that sound like wisdom so you'd never have to admit it was just about fear.

And here's what it costs you quietly over time. Every time you swallow it, you teach them your agreement means nothing. A yes that's always a yes isn't information. They stop weighing it. They stop asking. And one day you realize you have a seat at the table but no voice at it.

You gave the voice away yourself. One sounds good at a time.

Five things to watch in yourself the next time power is heading the wrong way. Including the one decision you need to make before you ever walk into the room.

Your agreement was never loyalty. It was fear. And a powerful person can always feel the difference between a yes with a spine and a yes without one.

Follow Jake

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakestahl/

Instagram & TikTok: @OwnTheRoomWithJakeStahl

Podcast: https://thejakestahl.com/podcast/

Book: Own the Room: https://thejakestahl.com/books/

This episode is brought to you by Orchestraight. Try Orchestraight free for 7 days at orchestraight.com. Orchestraight. The straightest path to success.

Everyone's heard the word mindfulness. Most people picture someone in a robe on a mountaintop. What it actually looks like in a boardroom, a sales call, or a difficult conversation at home is something else entirely.

Clayton Platt, founder of Inner Edge Consulting and a senior facilitator specializing in mindfulness, meditation, and leadership development, joins Jake for a conversation that reframes what mindfulness actually is, why it's become one of the most important skills in leadership, and how anyone under pressure can use it to think more clearly and communicate more effectively in the moments that matter most.

This one covers the neuroscience behind why we catastrophize, why busyness might be quietly degrading the quality of every decision you make, and why the ability to pause between stimulus and response is where all real power lives. Including a Viktor Frankl quote that reframes the whole conversation in one sentence.

There's also a question near the end that's worth sitting with. We spend decades teaching people how to communicate with others. Why have we spent so little time teaching people how to communicate with themselves?

Follow Clayton Platt

• Podcast: Magic in the Moment: Mindfulness in Real Time
• Email: [email protected]
• Book: Magic in the Moment: Mindfulness in Real Time

Follow Jake

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakestahl/

Instagram & TikTok: @OwnTheRoomWithJakeStahl

Podcast: https://thejakestahl.com/podcast/

Book: Own the Room: https://thejakestahl.com/books/

This episode is brought to you by Orchestraight. Try Orchestraight free for 7 days at orchestraight.com. Orchestraight. The straightest path to success.

There's one sitting in your chest right now. You know exactly which conversation it is. You thought of it the second this episode started.

And you have a name for why you haven't had it yet. Patience. Timing. Kindness. Waiting for the right moment.

This episode is going to say the thing nobody else will say to you about that.

It isn't patience. It's fear. Not fear of the conversation itself. You know the words. You could write them down in two minutes. It's fear of the feeling the conversation is going to let loose. Their face changing. The defensiveness. The week where things feel weird. And so you keep waiting for that feeling to go away on its own.

It won't. And while you wait, the problem grows, the resentment quietly builds, and it starts to leak into your tone, your coldness, the way you show up around that person right now.

You think the silence is protecting the relationship. It's the thing that's corroding it.

Five things to watch in yourself before you talk yourself out of it one more time. Including the one that finally makes the conversation feel cheaper than the silence.

The comfort you're waiting for lives on the other side of the conversation. Not before it. Pick a time. Walk through the door.

Follow Jake

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakestahl/

Instagram & TikTok: @OwnTheRoomWithJakeStahl

Podcast: https://thejakestahl.com/podcast/

Book: Own the Room: https://thejakestahl.com/books/

Jon avoided a conversation with a team member for months.

He told himself he was being a good leader. Giving her the benefit of the doubt. Waiting for the right time.

What he was actually doing was getting shorter with her every week. Micromanaging without explaining why. Letting the whole team feel a tension nobody could name. And slowly becoming a boss he didn't respect, over a conversation that would have taken ten minutes in month one.

When it finally came out it came out sideways. It landed ten times harder than it needed to. And the relationship he'd been trying to protect took more damage from the silence than the truth ever would have caused.

This episode rebuilds that conversation from the ground up. Five moves. And the version that comes out the other end is shorter, kinder, and cleaner than anything Jon thought he was capable of saying.

Including the line that does more than months of hinting ever could. And the one that ends the conversation on the relationship instead of the verdict.

The conversation was never the thing you were afraid of. The feeling was. And silence doesn't make the feeling go away. It just charges interest on it until the bill arrives.

Pick the one sitting in your chest. This episode is the rebuild.

Follow Jake

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakestahl/

Instagram & TikTok: @OwnTheRoomWithJakeStahl

Podcast: https://thejakestahl.com/podcast/

Book: Own the Room: https://thejakestahl.com/books/

This episode is brought to you by Orchestraight. Try Orchestraight free for 7 days at orchestraight.com. Orchestraight. The straightest path to success.