Hi Reader,

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Greetings from Albania! 🇦🇱 Every summer, we spend extended time visiting Gerta’s family here in the Balkans surrounded by family and often by the sea.

We wanted to share a bit about Gerta’s home country and our annual excursion here, but if you’re just here for the negotiation tips, scroll down!

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Our Albanian summers: family, beaches, & midnight Zooms

Despite the beautiful setting, it’s definitely not all lounging by the sea. We’ve still been working remotely full-time supporting our clients through live negotiations, running virtual Q&As, making content for this newsletter, our weekly podcast, and social channels, all while operating six to nine hours ahead of US time zones. Let’s just say we’ve consumed an inordinate amount of Albanian espressos while taking our Zoom calls in the middle of the night.

On a related note, most of our friends in the US know very little about Albania. Unfortunately, the most common association they have with Gerta’s home country is the image that Hollywood has fed them, usually portrayed in a negative light thanks to blockbuster hits like Taken and War Dogs.

So we’ll let you in on a little secret: Albania is one of the most up-and-coming travel destinations in the world. Imagine Southern Italy or Greece at a fraction of the cost, an “off-the-beaten path” feel with very few tourists, amazing food (think Turkish x Italian x Greek cuisine), kind people, breathtaking nature from epic mountains to some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, a burgeoning music scene (top artists from Albania’s national hero Dua Lipa to the biggest DJs in the world like Keinemusik are now making Albania a mandatory stop on their world tours), and an incredibly interesting and unique history and culture. European tourists are catching on, but we highly recommend visiting before America discovers this tiny Mediterranean gem.

Alex has a hobby of creating very detailed travel recommendations for places he visits, so here is his doc for Albania. Bookmark this for your future vacation here!

Okay, onto our negotiations topic for the week:

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The cost of chasing fairness

We had an interesting client case last week that really stuck with us, and it might resonate with you if you’ve ever built something with a cofounder, partner, or collaborator.

This client was in the middle of parting ways with a former cofounder. They had created a successful business together, and now they were untangling the pieces: who keeps the branding, who gets to reuse what, and whether there should be any payout for the person walking away.

As we talked through our client’s priorities, she said getting a meaningful payout was most important to her, but she kept circling back to this:

“I care a lot about fairness. I put so much of my heart and soul into this product, I just feel like I need the acknowledgement that my work was valuable.”

At face value, this makes perfect sense. Most of us want to be treated fairly, especially when we’ve invested so much of our time, energy, and creativity into something.

But if your goal is to walk away with real, tangible value, fairness is rarely a wise or reliable negotiation goal.

It reminded us of something that has stuck with Alex from his business school days. In the words of his Wharton ethics professor:

“If you remember one thing from this course, it’s this: just settle.”

It might sound cynical at first, but his point was valid: the business world is full of situations where you won’t be treated fairly. Being treated unfairly is simply a cost of doing business.

If your instinct is to pursue justice, whether through negotiation or by lawyering up and arguing over who’s right, you might end up winning on paper but losing in the amount of time, energy, and resources you’ve spent.

In our client’s case, we helped her get clear:

• Was her top priority a payout?
• Was it the ability to reuse the product language and branding?
• Was it public acknowledgment for her role?

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She told us that payout was the most important, but fairness and recognition continued to surface in our conversations.

And so we gently encouraged her: since the payout was ultimately most important, her time would be better spent if she just settled, took the payout she got to then pivot that and her energy towards what she planned next: to build her own business from the ground-up.

Building her own successful business, which at the end of the day was what truly reflected her passion and drive, and surpassing what she had built with her cofounder, would be the real win and the truest form of public acknowledgment.

And if recognition was truly the top priority, the strategy would look very different than if the goal was to maximize payout. Oftentimes, trying to get both will sabotage your ability to get either.

So don’t forget you have the “just settle” card in your back pocket. Because sometimes choosing to invest your energy into pursuing your next thing is the wiser choice, not dragging out the past.

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Best,

Gerta & Alex
​Co-founders, YourNegotiations.com

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P.S. Know someone who could use our help?

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