Never Split the Difference, by former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss, is not a book about tax or estate planning — but it is unusually useful for business owners facing three specific conversations: negotiating a business sale, resolving a shareholder dispute, and talking to family about money. Voss argues most negotiations fail because people ignore emotion and focus only on figures. His main tools — tactical empathy (naming the other side’s pressure out loud), labelling feelings without judgement, asking open questions instead of making demands, and avoiding a lazy 50/50 compromise just to end an argument — apply as well to a family kitchen table as to a hostage situation. The book will not tell you how Business Relief, Business Asset Disposal Relief or inheritance tax rules work, and should not replace proper advice on any of those. What it offers is a way to actually start, and sustain, conversations that too many families and business partners currently avoid.
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Six short reads each week on tax, Wills, family wealth and running a business, from John Ireland. Since 1996, three decades of protecting families.