Hey friends, If you've followed our newsletter for a while now, you're probably familiar with one of our top negotiation tips: Always show enthusiasm for the role, team, and company at all stages of the interview process. This tip also tends to get the most pushback, so we wanted to dive deeper into it today. Kick off 2026 strong: live negotiations Q&A on Wed, Jan 28 @ 12pm PT (+ free gift for attendees) Quick PSA: We’re hosting our first negotiation Q&A of 2026 on Wednesday, January 28th at...
5 days ago • 3 min read
We’re back this week with Part 2 of our conversation with Arben Malaj, former Minister of Finance of Albania (also Gerta’s father 🙂). Part 2: YouTube | Spotify | Apple If you missed Part 1, you can catch up here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple | Newsletter (FYI: Part 1 was one of our most popular episodes to-date! If you liked it, reply back to this email and let us know what resonated with you most.) Quick recap: In his early 30s, Arben was put in charge of rescuing the country’s economy after a...
9 days ago • 5 min read
Hey friends, We’re sometimes asked if we negotiate with each other or our friends. The short answer: yes, but not in the way people usually think. When most people say “negotiate,” they envision haggling, transactional bartering, and zero-sum wins. Our definition is different. I think what makes for great negotiations is not leaving value on the table, looking for opportunities that make both sides (or at least one side) better off while not making anyone worse off. You may have heard of the...
12 days ago • 1 min read
Hi friends, This week on the Gentle Power podcast (YouTube | Spotify | Apple), we welcomed a guest who has negotiated at a scale most of us will never experience in our lifetimes. He is a former Minister of Finance of Albania who was put in charge of rescuing the country’s economy after a financial crisis pushed it to the brink of collapse. His name is Arben Malaj, and he also happens to be Gerta’s father :) When we visited Gerta’s family in Europe for the holidays, Arben sat down with us to...
16 days ago • 3 min read
Hey friends, A mistake we see job seekers make a lot is overrelying on their current role as leverage. Having a job can feel like they’re holding all the cards: “I’d be fine staying in my current role, I’m happy where I’m at, the recruiter reached out to me and I wasn’t even looking for a new job.” But being happy where you are is usually not the leverage you think it is, and anchoring yourself to your current role can actually weaken your position. Here’s why: 1️⃣ Your current situation is...
19 days ago • 2 min read
Happy New Year, friends! An unexpected first episode of Gentle Power to kick off 2026 (YouTube | Spotify | Apple): we’re currently visiting Gerta’s family in Albania for the holidays, and we both ended up getting COVID. However, we take pride in not having missed a single week of publishing an episode of Gentle Power since we started the show last March, and we weren’t going to start off 2026 having broken our streak. So we recorded an episode anyway, audio-only, while laying in bed sick....
23 days ago • 3 min read
Hey friends, “You always say not to share my preferred salary with the company. But if I don’t share it, what if they anchor me too low?” This is a question that comes up often in our Q&As or when we work with clients. You may have heard of anchoring in Negotiation 101. It means the number that’s thrown into the discussion first will shape the rest of the negotiation and inform the ultimate number you end up with. However, job offer negotiations are more complex, and this does not necessarily...
26 days ago • 1 min read
We blame Hollywood for branding negotiations as an intense, zero-sum power play. Many people imagine having to channel a buttoned up lawyer like Harvey Specter from the TV show Suits or a calculated, stoic CEO in a boardroom meeting. But most real-world negotiations are a lot less dramatic. In fact, we argue that you generally achieve the most optimal negotiation outcomes if you approach them with collaboration, goodwill, and even creativity. In this week’s episode of Gentle Power (YouTube |...
30 days ago • 4 min read
Happy holidays, friends! Over the past few weeks in our recent Q&A sessions and client work, the same handful of questions came up again and again. We pulled together short, practical answers as a quick reference, in case any of these applies to you right now: 1️⃣ "If I’m happy with the first offer, do I still need to negotiate?"Yes. Negotiating is a common business practice, especially for people with multiple job offers or facing limitations like needing to work fully remotely. Companies...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read