A Business Guide for Millennials & Gen Z
The Negotiations Partnerships Handbook
What began as a guide to winning negotiations became something far more powerful — a manifesto for building the kind of relationships that make individual deals obsolete.
By Krisjanis (Chris) Ozols — Mentor · Angel Investor · Consultant
A Business Handbook
Negotiations
Partnerships
Handbook
Because the deal is never just the deal.
“No book can make you a great negotiator. But this one will give you the tools — and the mindset — to stop chasing deals and start building something that lasts.”
— Krisjanis Ozols, from the Introduction
About the Book
Why every negotiation is really a partnership in disguise
This book started with a confession: I hate negotiation books. The soulless kind, written by committee, that promise to make you a master dealmaker — and never mention that life is short and the people across the table are worth more than the deal itself.
This handbook covers the full spectrum of professional relationships — from external partners and enterprise customers to direct reports, managers, and the harder conversations with friends and family. Each section pairs sharp tactical frameworks with honest personal stories, in the spirit of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
Inspired by Marcus Aurelius, Sun Tzu, and Dale Carnegie — filtered through a decade of real deals, global operations, and a deeply held belief that kindness is the most underrated competitive advantage in business.
The Scope
Eight Arenas. One Framework.
Organized around the contexts where partnership thinking matters most — each with its own dynamics, power structures, and failure modes.
From the Manuscript
Selected Excerpts
Raw, direct, and drawn from real experience. These passages give you a sense of how Krisjanis writes — and thinks.
Reading this book will not make you a great negotiator. No book can do that. If they say otherwise, it’s just false advertising. I hate books like that — soulless, often written by ghostwriters, every chapter beginning with a promise that you’ll become some keyword-optimized version of yourself. Puke.
So no. I refuse to oversell. But if you read carefully enough, this book will give you the tools and methods which, if used consistently, will help you become a good negotiator and a swell human being in general. I’m offering thoughts, learnings, real-life case studies, and ideas for how you can develop yourself as a great professional. That’s the deal.
Here’s a controversial idea: befriend the people across the table. The common wisdom is that emotional attachment won’t help you get the best outcome. My response: life is short. Don’t waste it on emotionless, cold relations with some of the brightest, most motivated people you’ll ever meet.
Talk to them like you would your next-door neighbor who watches your dog while you’re out of town. If they open up — you have already won. Using this method, I have disarmed highly trained, experienced negotiators who were objectively smarter, better educated, and holding more leverage than I was. Yet in one of many friendly talks at the bar, they all revealed they were completely perplexed by my approach. They didn’t know what to do with it.
You have to be a well-rounded human being. You should be interesting — with life experience and conventional wisdom. Formal education isn’t a disadvantage, but it is dreadfully boring when it’s all someone has. An experienced negotiator and people-reader will have no problem recognizing that person, and dismantling their by-the-book approach before the first coffee is finished.
Travel. See the world. Gain experiences. Learn to read people, learn empathy, learn to read the room. Learn to control yourself and project energy. And never stop. The negotiating table is just a reflection of who you are outside it.
Preparation is the unsexy half of every great negotiation. Know your goals. Know your best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Know your walkaway point. Do this rigorously — then put it in your back pocket. Because the moment you’re more focused on your BATNA than the human in front of you, you’ve already lost the most important thing in the room: the connection.
Before you prepare your opening position or concession strategy, ask twenty questions about the relationship. Who is this person inside their organization? What have they promised their stakeholders? What does a good outcome look like for them in six months? The answers don’t just inform your tactics. They transform your understanding of what you’re actually doing there.
Intellectual DNA
Three Thinkers. One Through-Line.
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
The Stoic insistence on controlling only what is yours maps perfectly onto high-stakes negotiation. Your response to the table is always yours. The other side’s position is not.
Sun Tzu · The Art of War
“Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
The greatest partnership moves dissolve opposition entirely — not through force, but through understanding so complete that conflict becomes unnecessary.
Dale Carnegie · How to Win Friends
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming genuinely interested in others than in two years trying to interest others in you.”
Carnegie understood what most negotiators forget: the most powerful thing you can offer someone is genuine attention. It is also, it turns out, the most disarming.
Ready to change how you show up at the table?
Pre-order your copy of The Partnerships Handbook and be among the first to receive it on launch day.
