Erika Kaneko: Negotiation Strategy When They Want You to Lose

There are a hundred items on the list and you want all hundred, because conceding any of them feels like handing the other side a win. Erika Kaneko asks a different question: of your hundred favorite films, how many are actually your favorite? A handful. The rest are on the list because they are on the list.

Erika Kaneko is a corporate attorney in New York City. She spent years at large firms before opening her own practice about a year before this conversation, working with startups and small business owners on managing risk so they can concentrate on growing. She does not practice family law and says so up front. What she does every day is negotiate, and Lisa brought her on because those skills transfer straight to the thing this audience dreads: sitting opposite an ex with no interest in being fair.

Her starting position is that negotiation runs on feelings rather than terms, and that a deal closes when both sides feel acceptable about where they ended up. She and Lisa apply that to custody schedules, asset splits, and the impulse to make the other person pay for what they did. Erika explains why active listening reveals which items on a long list of demands actually matter to the other side, why preparation should begin with writing down what would genuinely make your life easier, and why grounding a request in something objective and then asking whether it makes sense is difficult for even a very reactive person to fight.

The back half is tactical. Why assuming the other side will say no means you never find out, and how to raise something without signaling how much you need it. When a family member acting as a proxy negotiator helps, and when sending someone who does not fully understand your interests works against you. Why you can let a person lose without attacking their character, and why whoever is deciding your case is watching which of you appears reasonable. What to do when you are worn down enough to concede everything, and Erika's argument that having gotten out may already be the win worth counting. And the point Lisa keeps returning to: if your ex has always gotten their way, nobody knows better than you how to let them believe they got it again.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why most negotiations are settled by how each side feels rather than by the terms
• The hundred-item list, and how to find the one or two things they actually care about
• Preparing by writing down what would make your life easier, not a list of demands
• Anchoring a request in something objective, and why "doesn't that make sense" lands
• Why what you say across the table does not have to match what you feel about them
• When a proxy negotiator helps your case, and when it works against you
• Letting the other side lose without attacking their character, and who is watching
• Turning a long-standing power imbalance into leverage at the table

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 The underrated part of negotiation: it runs on feelings
4:00 What negotiation actually is, versus the courtroom-drama version
6:00 Wanting them punished, and the hundred-item list
8:00 Preparing: what would genuinely make your life easier
11:00 Anchoring in something objective, and "doesn't that make sense"
14:00 Assumptions about what they'll agree to, and how to ask anyway
16:00 Proxy negotiators: when they help and when they don't
19:00 Letting them lose without attacking their character
21:00 Negotiating from desperation, and counting getting out as the win
26:00 Making them feel like they won, and why blame closes the door

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Erika Kaneko: https://erikakaneko.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.