Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Grasp Talk. Today, we are excited to have Gerta Marley with us. So Gerta is a negotiation expert and the co-founder of yournegotiations.com, a platform dedicated to helping professionals and businesses master the art of deal-making. And she has helped hundreds of people increase their compensation by tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. And with over a decade of experience

spanning big tech like LinkedIn, IBM, and global biotech startups and venture capital like South Park Commons, and Gerta brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. And she holds a master's degree in logistics engineering from MIT and a mathematics degree from Wellesley College. And beyond negotiations, Gerta has co-founded multiple ventures and including Inception Studio, a founder community and incubator. Today, we will explore Gerta's journey,

her expertise in high stakes negotiations and her strategies for navigating complex business deals. Thank you for joining us, Gerta, today. Yeah, thanks for having me, Kazuki and Kay. Thank you. So first of all, we know what you do, but to our audience, could you tell us what is yournegotiations.com is and why did you start the company? Yeah, so yournegotiations.com is a business I started with my husband, Alex.

We help people negotiate job offers as well as business deals. And we've had some incredible success in terms of job offers. We've helped people increase, in terms of absolute numbers, we've helped people increase their job offers by 550K from initial offer to final and that was one of our clients. And then in terms of percentages, the best one we've seen is 42% over the initial offer in total compensation. So we're seeing great success there.

And I think what I'm most proud of is that our approach preserves, if not strengthens your relationship with the company. And it's very creative and collaborative. It's not combative, which is what we typically think of when we hear of negotiations. Why we started it is I have always had a passion for negotiations and behavioral sciences and psychology. And I've been trained throughout my career, but especially at MIT under an MIT professor

who came from Harvard Law School. And so it's been very rewarding and using all that experience throughout my career, I've negotiated million dollar contracts myself at various jobs. And what I love about it is how creative it is and how empowering it is. So as we help people negotiate their job offers, it kind of changes their perspective and their own relationship with themselves and with others in a way that they can take

in every other area of their lives. And so they come out of it very empowered. That's extremely rewarding to me, not only just the financial aspect where now this family has hundreds of thousands of dollars more that over years, it could translate into a lot more. They could pay for their kids' education. There's so much you can do with it. All of that, just making everyone better off, finding win-win opportunities,

it's extremely rewarding for me and Alex. Cool, yeah, amazing. And it's impressive that one of your users and clients increased 42% from the initial offer. I'm curious, was that because the initial offer was too low? I'm not sure, but you know. And also I'm curious about your tactics and strategy, the details of your negotiation. Yeah, I don't think the initial offer was necessarily too low. The way I think about it is that,

and actually this is how negotiations professionals talk about negotiations. You think of a deal as a pie and you're trying to, a good negotiator, at least what I think of a good strategy is to increase the pie. So it's less about I take more of the pie and you take less. I think that's too narrow-minded. It's more about, let's just see if we can increase the pie. And now we both have more. And so for that particular client,

I obviously cannot reveal too much details, but they were very talented. So the initial offer was not too low, but it's just that they were very talented. They were very desirable in the market and the team was very excited to have them. So we explore different ways in which they could both be better off. Both sides would be better off. So with the initial offers, the client wouldn't have been very happy with it.

And then the company would have missed out on an incredible talent, but now with a better offer, they were both happier. So that's what I find super rewarding. And that's the creativity of getting to that point is it keeps me energized every day. And then I think your second question was like, what are some practical tactics? Was that it? Yeah, exactly, yeah. Let's see. I think, again, so I guess in the broader sense,

again, you wanna be very, you wanna keep it collaborative and cordial. More practically, you always wanna show excitement about the opportunity that's in front of you. A lot of the examples I will give will be in the job offer sense, but a lot of this is transferable across different situations, such as business deals and all that. So you wanna show excitement, you wanna show collaboration, but you also don't wanna show your hands.

So negotiations are like a game of cards. You simply cannot play or you cannot win if you show your cards. Like we're not playing anymore if we all show our cards, right? Game over. And so, yes, you wanna be very collaborative and cordial, but you also wanna keep a lot of cards to yourself. And one interesting thing that I've noticed actually is that the more, so everyone we work with at yournegotiations.

com is mid-career to exec. We don't work much with early career. Sometimes we do just sort of to, almost as pro bono in a sense, but our clients are mid-career to exec. And the more talented a client, the more, I guess what I'm trying to say is, in tech especially and as a high achiever, one of your key strengths that helps you succeed is over-communication. So imagine like a rockstar product manager or rockstar engineer or anyone else,

they need to over-communicate to keep different cross-functional partners aligned. So you're always like trying to communicate what's happening and get alignment and all that. That is one key characteristic that actually hurts you in negotiations. In negotiations, you don't want to over-communicate because over-communication is like showing your cards. So a lot of clients, they're so used to that in their day-to-day work.

And so they go into negotiations. They're like, I've done so much research. This is how much I think I should be making. And like, oh, by the way, like I'm planning on having a kid soon. Oh, by the way, I would love to live in Portugal within a year. And also like I'm talking to this and this other company and blah, blah, blah. So now they've shown all their cards and now the company is like, maybe they factor a lot of that into their decision,

whether to make an offer or not, as well as how low to come in at. And I have examples I can share as to, more examples of as to when not to over-communicate, but I want to hand it back to you. And yeah, that's really interesting. From the employer side, seems like their job is like to ask more, let them speak more. Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I'm happy to share an example of when a client thought over-communicating,

consciously thought this will be good for me, but actually it was not. Let me know if that's helpful. Yeah, that would be helpful, yeah. So I had a client a while ago who had two offers, one from TikTok and one from a healthcare startup. And the client was very excited to share with either side, I have another offer. So think of like, they go to the healthcare startup and they're like, I have another offer, it's from TikTok.

So of course they're showing, I'm so desirable in the market, I have another offer from a top tech company. But think about from a healthcare startup, they can never compete with TikTok salaries. TikTok pays top of market, one of the best salaries out there. The healthcare startup will never compete with that. And their sort of advantage in the job market is their mission. They have a very different mission from TikTok,

they're helping people's lives and health. health. And so when they hear that this job applicant has another offer from TikTok, they don't even try to increase their initial offer, because they're like, if you're going for money, go to TikTok, I cannot compete with that. If you're going for a mission, you come to us, and we have a much better mission, according to the healthcare startup.

And so they don't increase the comp pretty much at all. They have no incentive to. Similarly, when this client goes to TikTok, and they say, I have another offer from a healthcare startup, again, TikTok knows they pay top of market, they know a healthcare startup is not paying competitively to TikTok. So they have no incentive to increase their initial offer, or give a higher offer to begin with. And similarly, they're like, if you're going for a mission, this is what we do, we're TikTok.

And then if you want to go do help in healthcare, you go help in healthcare. And so this is where over communication, even consciously, like the client knew what they were doing, it actually hurt them. On the other hand, think about approaching this without showing without saying who your other offer is from, the healthcare startup doesn't know who the other offer is from, it could be another healthcare startup. Now they're competing with their peers to get top talent.

So they have more incentive to throw in more money over the initial offer to get you. And similarly, with TikTok, they don't know who the other company is, if you didn't tell them. And so maybe they're competing with, I don't know, Instagram, or Snapchat, or whoever TikTok's competitors are. And now they, you know, now they have more incentive to give you more money. So to win this talent and take them off of the market. I see. Interesting. Yeah, that makes sense.

And at the same time, there are two components in salary negotiation, right? One is like a base salary, like as you mentioned, and also another is like a stock option, or RSU. And which should applicants deal with? Yeah, and I'm curious about this. Oh, that's a great question. So, well, first, where do I even begin? First, as a job applicant, before you even apply to jobs, I strongly recommend you get a, you sit down for at least half an hour to an hour, and get crystal clear on your priorities.

And some people have not done that exercise. And I go through their priorities. The first thing I do with a client, as soon as I get a new client, like, what are your priorities? Like, of course, salary. Okay, well, what about title? They're like, I don't care too much about title. Really? Your last title was, I don't know, senior PM. Would you take a job that is just PM? Or you were director? Would you take a director of PM? Would you take a PM job? Oh, actually, no.

So, they had assumed that they will stay at the same title. But in this environment, actually, in this hiring environment, so many talented people are getting under leveled. And so, go through this exercise. I think I have a free resource on my website. If not, I plan to upload it soon. So, if you go to yournegotiations.com, I have a lot of free resources there, including this exercise. And so, be very crystal clear on what your non-negotiables are.

A lot of people have non-negotiables around working remotely. So, if you want to be fully remote, or if you want to be at least a couple days a week remote, don't even apply to a job that is fully returned to office or fully in office. So, get crystal clear on your priorities and question yourself on each of those. And sort of do the exercise of like, what if this is lower than I had at my last job or current job? What if, can I have one without the other? And so, I cannot answer for the client

whether they prefer equity or cash. And you asked about base salary versus stock. There's so much more to it, right? There's annual bonus. It depends on the company and the role. There's sign-on bonus. There's 401k matching. There's vacation dates. There's start date. There's return to office date. There's free food or food reimbursement. There's so much you can negotiate and so much to think about what's important to you. And so, that I cannot answer for the client.

They need to know their own preferences and risk tolerance. But I do help them as I work with them. I help them figure it out by asking these questions like, okay, well, would you, I don't know, would you not, they're like, I want to make at least, I don't know, 300k. Okay, would you not take 290k for the perfect job? Would you not take 280k for a job that matches your 401k much more than others? That we do this exercise to really get crystal clear on the priorities.

But I think what you are actually asking, or if another way to think about your question is, which components are companies the most flexible with? And for that one, it really varies on the stage of the company. So, if we're talking about a startup, the earlier the startup, the more equity they can give you. I had a client recently interviewing with a seed stage startup and the startup offered them 800k. But they're seed stage.

And 800k in equity, only investing over, I believe, three years or four years. And that feels like a lot. But it's a seed stage startup that you will probably never see that turn into real money, or the chances are so small. And now they're comparing this to a big tech offer and like, oh, it's nowhere near this. It's only like, I don't know, 400, 500. Of course, but if it's a public company, that money is guaranteed. You can cash out as soon as the cliff hits or you're investing.

So anyway, going back to the question, a startup will move so much more easily with equity, but a lot less easily with cash because they are generally more cash poor than later stage startups or public companies. And then similarly, public companies or big companies or later stage companies, they can give you more cash and less equity. The easiest cash component that companies can work with within cash is the sign on bonus. And that's because it's a one time thing.

And it's not recurring every year. It's easier to get approvals on. And base, another reason is because base is one of those things that like, when you're comparing peers in a company or people in the same level, you're often looking at base and total comp, but not usually like sign-ons and all these little things. However, I would not recommend, unless you have very good reason, I would not recommend when you negotiate asking for a specific component, because a company might

be willing to work more easily with different components. And so if you generally care about total comp, let them give you whatever they can best work with. So think about a startup. And if you generally care about total comp, I recommend just saying like, hey, is there any more room in your budget for an increase in total comp, rather than can I have a higher base salary, because they can so much more easily give you hundreds of thousands in equity, assuming you're okay with

the risk level, rather, and versus a base, they can only give you probably like a couple tens of thousands. So this is just to illustrate sort of the dynamics. Thanks for sharing. I'm just curious, like who are the main users or customers of your negotiations, like dot-com product? Because you mentioned like mid-level to executive, like the target you are helping or supporting, but do you have any other characteristics or like, you know, traits or like, you know,

categories using your product? Yeah. We do get a wide variety of, I guess, demographics, if that's what you're asking. And you can see our testimonials on our website. We have, you know, men and women and different races, different nationalities, mostly U.S., but we actually work with internationals as well. But one thing that's been, there's a couple characteristics that they might just be because of our network, because of course, when you start a startup, we started

yournegotiations.com two years ago. So I am ex-LinkedIn, I used to work at LinkedIn, and my husband, Alex, who's my co-founder, he used to work at Instagram. And so a lot of our clients are ex-meta, so he's ex-meta. It also coincided that we started our company when meta had their peak layoffs around two years ago. And so with the layoffs at meta, people were getting lower job offers elsewhere in terms of both title and compensation.

And, you know, in tech and in Silicon Valley, people really tie their identities to their jobs and to their compensation and titles, and so a lot of people came to us proactively. We didn't do that much outreach actually. We're not that good at social media, we're trying, we're trying, but we're posting more on LinkedIn and stuff, but people are coming to us. So because of that, a lot of our clients are ex-meta, ex-Google because of referrals,

ex-Bang basically, top tag, but I think it's just the nature of our network. And then another, yeah, and I guess a strong correlation with layoffs, like a lot of people who have been laid off, and I think that's because, well, you know, they're the ones getting new job offers, but also the job offers, because it's such a tough hiring market right now, the job offers are coming in at lower than what they were making before, and so they want to recuperate

some of that. I think, yeah, interesting. And I saw your post that, you know, like your service is featured in Times Square billboards. Yes. Yeah, that's amazing. Yes, we're very proud of that, thank you. Yeah, so we work with Brex, the banking company, and they offered to feature us on Times Square, you know, just a few seconds as it goes in Times Square, but we were very proud that they supported us in that way, they sponsored that, and yeah, it was such a joy.

So you mentioned that you are helping clients, you know, globally, so not only the States, but so do you see any difference in like salary negotiations between US and other countries? Yeah, so first I want to say both Alex and I are very cross-cultural and international, so Alex is Korean American, and I am Albanian American. I also speak seven languages from various cultures, which has really helped me understand different cultures, and so in terms of

our negotiations approaches, they are pretty universal, especially since the world is so global right now, there is a lot of like standardized communication practices. The difference that we do see is, of course, American companies have higher budgets and higher, both higher initial offers, but also more room to give you more of an increase. That is the biggest change that I've seen.

Yeah, even for the same type of role, if it's somewhere in Europe, we have a lot of European clients, London, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Belgium, I want to say France, India, I'm trying to think, yeah, and Latin America as well. Those are off the top of my head that I can actually think of specific people, and yeah, even for the same role, and actually I have clients who used to work in the US, and they moved internationally, and the offers are much lower, but we all knew this.

I hope it's not a surprise, yeah. I see, I see, thank you, and I want to know more about, you know, the details of all potential opportunities, where the opportunities is, and so you mentioned that, you know, base stock option, and then sign-on bonus, and which one is easy? Sign-on bonus is the one you usually your clients get higher, or can you tell us a little bit about, you know, which one is easiest? Oh, which one is easiest? Yeah, yeah, like I said, it really depends on the

size of the company that you're negotiating with, so the bigger the company, the more they can give you cash, because they're, you know, think of a seed, I'm gonna give two very extreme examples, because they might be clearer to sort of perceive, so think of a seed stage startup, they're probably raised a few million, like five or ten million, and they need the runway, and all that, and they don't have, they can give you equity, because it's probably at this point, just a couple

founders, and yeah, but they can't really give you that much cash, they need it for everything else, and now think of like Meta, or Google, equity is tougher, but they have so much money as companies, and so when you're negotiating with a big company like Google, they can give you a lot, or like, actually the best sign-ons I've seen are TikTok, and yeah, TikTok has very healthy sign-on bonuses, Google too,

number, it really varies, yeah, range in the tens of thousands, sometimes, yeah, some big companies even have, like I've seen in the hundred thousand sign-on, also that, also in a banking context as well, banking companies have that as well, but again, it really varies, so imagine, like I said, our clients include mid-career, like 10 years of experience and up, including C-level, C-suite execs, and so really, and then

we have, like from engineers, to product people, to project managers, designers, so it really varies, like how senior you are, how, and which type of role, and which company you're negotiating with, and so to go back to your question, as you're negotiating with a big company, they can give you a lot of cash in sign-on, it's a one-time thing, it probably doesn't get factored into their, like across team equity, and when I say equity, it's like,

is everyone being paid roughly the same? Usually, sign-ons are kind of left out of that, even though it could be a big amount, and then if you're negotiating with a startup, they will give you a lot more equity, because it might never materialize, you might not even stay four years to see it fully best, and so those are the sort of the components to work with, but again, I would not recommend, unless you care specifically, for whatever reason, so let's say

you want to buy a house soon, or you just want to take a risk, you want to work for a startup, because you really believe in the founder, so if you want to buy a house soon, you need more cash, presumably, and so you might want to negotiate, like hey, I need some liquidity, can I get an increase in the cash components of the offer, or if you really believe in this founder, you're joining a company where you're putting a bet on this company, then you probably want

more equity, and so you can ask for equity, but unless you have these very specific reasons, I recommend you negotiate more broadly, you ask for more, an increase in your total compensation, so that you allow the team to give you whatever they can best work with, because sometimes it's not very obvious, I said these reasons, but sometimes they might have other reasons why they pay differently, so a big company might give you more equity,

depends on their compensation philosophy, for example, actually, if you don't mind me, I was working with someone, who was a while ago, who was negotiating with Netflix, and their entire compensation was cash, which is, you would be, it's a little surprising, right, a lot of big companies give you equity, but this person, they offered them fully cash, a huge amount, but fully cash, so some companies might have their own strange, edgy

compensation philosophies, so that's why I would recommend you let the team give you what they can give you the most, if you don't care too much, which component goes up. And I'm curious about the business model you're working with, and is that, because if you take, let's say, it's a, you know, if it's a similar, like a typical agency style, you know, if you increase 50%, then we take 20% out of that, and in that case, you know, if you help people

get a job from startups, because, you know, they offer a stock option, right, then in case, in case of stock options, they cannot cash out, so it's harder to get fees, so I'm, I'm curious about the business model of YourNegotiations.com, and how that works. Yeah, thank you. Sorry, is that a tough question? No, this is great, thank you for asking that, yeah, I actually really appreciate you allowing me to explain my model, so up until a few days ago, our pricing model was

fully success fee, very client friendly. And so our success fee was a percentage of the delta between initial offer and final offer of only the first year, but looking at total compensation. So, and, and so let's say, you know, it does really vary, but up until recently, it was 15%. And so let's say you're working, you're negotiating with a startup, they give you an initial offer, we help you negotiate it up in total comp, let's say 100k, then we take 15% of that.

only for first year. So your question is very valid. You're like, well, the startup will give me equity, but I might never see that equity. However, first, let's say the startup increases the offer by 100K in equity over four years. That's a significant increase, right? Like at the end of four years, you're 100K richer technically on paper, right? We only look at first year. So now we're only looking at 25K instead of 100K.

And remember, we only take 15% of that, right? I can't do the math in my head, even with my math degree. So it is much smaller. Now you might say that might never materialize. That is true. One, it might never materialize. One, if you're going to a startup, you're placing a bet that it will be valued more and more as time goes. So we take the money off of the current valuation, which is probably the lowest it will be.

And you take all the upside. That's number one. Number two, this increase in compensation, you actually take with you wherever you go. So now if you go to another job after you've stayed there, or if not, you go to another job, now your baseline is 100K higher, or 25K for the first year. And so that's your new baseline. You can say that I was making this much at my last job. I don't recommend saying it, but you can say it.

I don't recommend it because they might give you more, but you could say it. So now this is your new baseline, and we helped you have this new baseline for the rest of your career. And so we think we need to get in on that. And the other reason is this is so hedged for you. If we don't help you increase the offer at all, you don't pay us at all, even though I will have spent a lot of hours on calls and training you and coaching you

and emails and texts. And a lot of clients text me all the time, different days of the week, including Saturday, Sunday, different times of the day, including midnight and 1 a.m. sometimes. And so you still don't pay me if I don't help you increase it. On the other hand, you will learn so much regardless of whether we succeed or not, and you can take those learnings, not only in future negotiations, but in the rest of your career.

So I know, or in the rest of your life as well. So I know a lot of people apply what we've learned together in job offer negotiations. They apply that to raise and promotion negotiations, or sometimes like to rent negotiations, buying a home negotiations, literally anything. I do tell them not to use it with their partners and husbands and wives, but you can use it everywhere else. Yeah. Do you negotiate with Alex at all?

Do I negotiate with Alex? If I negotiate, and I love that question. If I negotiated with Alex, I think I would win, to be honest. He says I would win. But the funny thing here is that Alex is so sweet and kind and generous that he disarms me with his, like how sweet and generous and kind he is that I don't negotiate. Because he kind of puts all the cards on the table. Now I'm like, okay, what is the actual fair deal here?

Quote unquote deal. So now I start negotiating against myself because he's like, we can do whatever you want. I'm like, okay, what is the fair deal? For example, if it's like, where should we go to dinner? And let's say I want, I don't know, Thai food. And let's say he wants sushi, but he will not, like, he might be like, oh, I can't, you know, I would like sushi, but no, no, let's go to Thai. I'm like, okay, what is the real, you know,

I should think for both. I shouldn't get just what I want. So this, I don't recommend this approach. Well, first of all, I might talk about love negotiations at a later point. I get asked this a lot, like, especially with situations shifts. A lot of people ask me like, how do I negotiate a situation shift? So we're starting a podcast. Maybe I can talk about it there. But the reason why this works between me and Alex

is because we have incredible trust and we're married and we love each other. A lot of the tactics I coach people on is mostly job offer and business deals. So don't apply this there. And do you help companies or employees, employee, yeah, employers as well? So, because- Yeah. You have data, you know what's happening in the market, right? You know the both sides. Yeah. So that's a super interesting question. I'm gonna be honest.

I do get a lot of, I'm very plugged into the startup world, like Kazuki and I met in various founder communities. So I have founder friends and I have connections, including venture capital firms who asked me if I can help them negotiate against employees or job applicants. And the VC funds asked me whether I can help them negotiate against founders. This goes against my life values. I like to help the underdog companies and VC funds.

They have so many resources. Let's take companies first. They have at minimum, no matter the early stage they are, they have investors, they have advisors, they have tools, they have some money, they have co-founders. So many resources, even if it's the earliest stage possible. Job applicants, they just have the internet and their network, which the company already has as well. So job applicants are very disadvantaged

in this interaction. And it's so rewarding for me to help someone who's disadvantaged. This is why we do what we do. And so I do not help employers negotiate against job applicants. Similarly with VC funds, they, we have a lot of VC friends. We're connected to a lot of top VC firms. I do not help them negotiate against founders. Founders, again, VC funds, they have, I don't know, limited partners, LPs. They have money, they have consultants,

they have all their network. A founder, like especially early stage founders, like first time founders, they don't have much of that. And it's so rewarding for me to help founders negotiate in general and sort of level the playing field. So that's why I do what I do, not the other way around. I think it would be more lucrative for us to help the bigger guy, but it's just not in our value system. So thank you for, yeah, thank you for asking that.

That's great, yeah, that's great, yeah, yeah. And also I'm curious, you know, this may be, you know, beyond your service, you know, scope of your, scope of your service, I heard, you know, from some founders and people are hiring, you know, they're hiring managers and then people who often negotiate money, usually, you know, after they get hired and then sometimes don't bring much value because they care too much about money

or compensation, comp, total comp. And on the other hand, you know, people who don't care about much money, but, you know, they really align with their mission or the company or their statement and they work harder. And do you, have you found these traits? I'm not sure, I have no idea, but, you know, do you have some thoughts around this, you know, you know? I'm trying to understand your question and sort of the underlying question within the question.

So is it that if you don't negotiate, you will signal to the employer that you will, you don't care as much about money and you care more about the work? And should we think about it that way? Is that sort of the question? Yeah, yeah, I think something like that. Or, you know, yeah, from employer side, you're hiring manager side. Hiring those people, yeah, yeah. So this is such an interesting question. And I have people who say, you know,

I don't wanna seem greedy, like people who are negotiating. I don't wanna seem greedy. I don't wanna seem like I'm not interested in the role. I'm only interested in the money. But here is the interesting part of this. I think, and I've been on the hiring end as well. I think it's a bit of a red flag if someone doesn't negotiate. One, it feels as if they don't have better options. Because if you have multiple options,

you do negotiate inherently. You're like, I have some good options. Like, who am I gonna choose? Let's see how, if they can give me better deals and that will help me decide. The second piece is, negotiations is such an important business skill to have. It shows how you can improve a deal and make it better for everyone involved, how you use communication skills and how you navigate a delicate situation with diplomacy and elegance.

And when you negotiate, you demonstrate all of those abilities in action for an employer. And so when I've negotiated jobs in the past, my hiring managers have been so impressed that they have given me better projects in the job because they trust me to know how to handle difficult conversations and how to navigate delicate situations. So I've actually had one of my toughest managers that I've ever had. After I negotiated the job, they said,

I'm gonna give you these interesting projects because you were such a good negotiator and I trust that you can handle this. And I was super interested in those projects. And so I think it's the opposite. You don't seem greedy, especially with how we recommend you approach negotiations, very collaboratively, very cordially, very trying to expand the pie. How do we make this deal better for both sides? If you handle it in that way,

you actually get bonus points. Like, wow, this person did not say yes immediately, which would be a little strange. Do you not have better options? But you are leaning into a difficult conversation or what a lot of people find difficult. I don't think it's difficult. I think it's actually a lot of fun, but some people think it's difficult. It's okay. You're leaning into it. You're navigating it with elegance and diplomacy.

You come out of it with both parties winning. That's beautiful. And that gives an employer more conviction to hire you or that they made a good decision to hire you. Thank you for answering the question. Yeah, and actually, Kazuki, you mentioned something earlier that I realized I didn't address. You said you have a lot of data. Do you help employers? So we actually, I know I'm throwing so many misconceptions at you guys,

like controversial takes on negotiations. We don't think market data is that helpful. And this is very counterintuitive. A lot of clients come to us. They're like, oh, because you work with other people, you probably have a lot of data. You're gonna help me negotiate. We don't use data at all. Like, okay, first of all, I love numbers. I have a degree in math and a master's in engineering, love numbers. But here's why data is not that important in negotiation.

Every open role has a budget. And it's not what they're posting publicly, which in many states in the US, they have to do by law. Many big states in the US, they have to, by law, post a salary range on their job descriptions. That is not their true budget. That's just a range that they put there just to abide the law. Strategically, they should not put their budget there. And they don't. It's a very obvious thing to do

to not put your true budget. They have a budget where the team has agreed, whether directly or indirectly, explicitly or inexplicitly, this is how much we are willing to give someone. So let's say we get a top talent or we can't hire anyone. We finally found someone. This is the max we'll go to. That's usually said explicitly, but sometimes you kind of know implicitly. And so every open role has a budget. Now, the team that's hiring for that role

has internal reasons why they may pay below market or above market. And the market already has a range, right? It's not like a market says an engineer in SF with 10 years of experience should make this much. It's not fixed, right? There's a 50th percentile, 25th, 75th, 90th. The market already has a range in itself. But the team also has internal reasons why they might pay below market or above market. So below market, maybe they're low on budget.

Maybe they don't have a sense of urgency to hire. Yeah, those are some reasons why to pay below market. Above market, it could be, maybe there's an exciting new product they need to launch ASAP. Maybe the team is stretched thin. Maybe someone left and was gonna do this job. Maybe they have media attention. So there's so many reasons why they could pay above market. So we can never know this variable that is the internal factors

that affect how much a team will pay for this role. We can never know that unless you have insider information, which is rare, edge case. We can never know that. And that's why the market research that you do will not really matter. So let's say you do market research, okay, for product manager in New York with, I don't know, 10, 20 years of work experience, whatever number, at a big company, the market says I need to get paid this much.

Okay, then you go to the company, you're like, I should get paid $500,000. I read it on levels.fyi, which everyone is going to nowadays. I should make this much. Everyone's saying that's how much. Well, the company is like, well, we have our own internal compensation philosophy. We have our own budget. So that's not how much we pay, right? That's one reason. The other reason is, let's say you go to them with a number.

I recommend never going to, never sharing a number or a range. So let's say you go to them with a number. You're like, I should make 500K. I read it on Reddit. They're like, if their budget is above 500K, now they have no reason to give you more than 500 because you asked for something lower than their budget. So now you've left money on the table. Their budget could have been 700. Now you left 200K on the table, right?

These are fake numbers, obviously, but I do, of course, have clients who make in the millions. And so then you've left money on the table. Or if their budget is 400, and this is maybe a dream job for you or a great job for you, or you don't have other options, they're like, wait, this person is asking for 25% more than our budget. Maybe they're entitled. This is a bit of a red flag. They're asking for a lot. Like, where did they get this number?

Maybe they don't understand the role. So you could turn them off by quoting a very high number. So those are two main reasons why not to worry too much about market research. Other reasons are it's not accurate. So for an employer to get market data, I used to work at salary.com. Companies would pay us a lot of money to have access to market data that was employer reported and aggregated and cleaned up and all that.

Job applicants, a typical job applicant, doesn't have access to that. That's very expensive to get. What you're seeing out there on Levels or Reddit or Google or whatever, that is not good data. At best, even if it is good data, which there's no reason why it would be, good data is expensive. Even if it is good data, it's outdated, usually, by a couple of years. And we know the market has changed so much in the last few years.

I hope that answers your question. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that answers it. Thank you. Interesting. And since... I want to touch on the AI perspective. Since AI is trendy and so many AI agents and AI regimen service, AI negotiation services are out there. So I'm curious, is that a threat to your business? Meaning, you work with a percentage of a total difference, right? But those AI services usually charge $100 per month or something like that.

It's a huge disruption in the market. For sure. Yeah, I'm curious about your thoughts on these AI tools, AI negotiation tools. Yeah. Yeah, so, well, first, I am generally very optimistic about AI. Inception Studio that I co-founded and where I referred you on the first cohort is a incubator and community of founders and engineers building with generative AI. So I'm very optimistic about the impact that AI will have in society.

Now, specifically for my business, there are a few reasons why I don't feel threatened at this point. Of course, maybe something will come out that will disrupt it. I generally welcome disruption. I think as a society, I want us to be more efficient, all of us, so we can focus on other things. And so why am I not threatened? One, AI is still hallucinating a lot. And I have thought about turning myself into, or like, I guess, training a GPT on my content.

I have a lot of content out there. You know, not only private content, but also public content. I've done a lot of podcasts and talks and all of that, newsletter and all that. But I could ride the wave of AI and monetize out of it, but I don't feel comfortable. I can't fully tell you that I am behind what the GPT will recommend because of its own hallucinations and how we will position things. And in negotiations, every little word matters.

So as I mentioned earlier, even when you logically think this is a good strategy, I will tell the healthcare startup that I have an offer from TikTok. It's good logic, right? But you have failed to think about some of the other repercussions. And so AI could convince you, hey, that's a great idea. TikTok is a top tech company. You having an offer from it is a great idea. It shows that you're desirable in the market.

You tell that company that you have another offer from TikTok. Because of my experience in negotiations for like 10 plus years, trained by world-class negotiators and doing this day in and day out, I can go a little deeper in the layers of what's happening versus I don't trust AI to have gone in that depth. And I worry more that with its hallucinations and how convincing it can sound, it might convince people to take the wrong step.

And then, like I said, every little word matters. And I don't think AI is as nuanced as someone who is doing this day in and day out. And I review all my clients' drafts before they send emails to companies as they're negotiating. And I tweak every little word that might matter because of how it can be perceived and because of what it's communicating. And so I don't think AI is there yet. Another reason- Sorry to interrupt, but you know-

No, go ahead. There's more reasons, but go ahead. But since you know about AI and the technology behind it and you started Inception Studio as a co-founder, since you are a negotiation expert, you know how you're going to get it and you modify the email for clients, but have you thought about training AI or fine-tuning AI for your case so that there's a huge opportunity for you? Because you know AI and you are both negotiation expert and AI expert.

If you create AI that actually works, no harassment, no mistakes or wrong statement, that couldn't be the best for your case or not? I know what you mean. I just, we offer such a tailored, personalized service right now that maybe we will build an AI at some point that will be very fine-tuned. Right now, I really enjoy working one-on-one with people and taking in all the little details that make the biggest difference.

So like I said, because the other thing is, we also want the client, like I said, I review their emails and all that. I also want them to sound like themselves, right? And so when AI prepares a draft for you, you can see it's AI. We can all, I mean, I have friends now when they're dating, they're texting, the people they're dating with Chachi BT language is so hilarious. What I'm saying is, I go with such a fine-tooth comb

into all the, how my client talks, what every single word, how it can be perceived. What did the company say? How did they say it? I actually review their emails if there's email exchange. I review their screenshots. And I offer such a personalized, like white glove service to my clients that I don't trust. Of course, AI is 80% amazing, but that 20% makes all the difference in negotiations. And I don't trust that 20%.

What are some other reasons? I was trying to think of some other reasons. Yeah, overall, I think also people like to work with people. Like half my job sometimes is just being like a therapist. So negotiations can be very taxing emotionally. So yes, when my clients come to me, they're like, I'm getting a lower offer. I was making more at my last job. So they want to make more. And I coach them through it and start negotiating.

But the company now, for example, they don't respond to my client for one or two days. Now they start freaking out. Like, oh my gosh, well, they received my offer. So now half of my job is to be a therapist. Like, don't worry. I have seen this with other clients. It's okay. Now they need to get alignment and approval from other teams. And it's hard to get people on the call because they have busy schedule. I'm here with you, don't worry.

And I hop on calls and I can hear my voice and I can soothe them and then comfort them. And that human connection, which is actually half my job, AI cannot replace right now, maybe, but I don't think right now. Then the other half, like I said, the all the details, all the little care that I put into it, taking in all the sort of, yeah, all the ins and outs of the negotiation. Again, I don't trust AI to do that.

To be honest, I'm not even using AI for an initial draft for emails. I actually do that myself from scratch. As soon as I worry, it will start sounding like AI. And then it kind of breaks the rapport with the company. It's like, are they using AI for this? So overall right now, I don't think it's a good solution. I think the personal touch is still, that it has a strong moat. Will it get better? Maybe, but I don't see it in the near future, to be honest.

Makes sense. But if you want to work on an AI solution together, maybe not negotiations, maybe tangential. You know where a lot of people could use some help is job search. So I don't help with job search. I'm very focused on this niche in negotiations, but a lot of people are struggling with job search right now. That could really use some AI solutions. And people are working on that. It's not like they're not.

So we can talk offline about that. Yeah, or if founders watching this video or interview, and you know, it's a great idea to work on addressing. For sure. Yeah, I work with founders too, like I mentioned. I'm just focusing on job offers because that's most of my clients, but a few of my clients are founders as well. I used to negotiate business deals. I used to negotiate million dollar contracts when I worked in tech and biotech and startup.

So I'm happy to chat with founders as well. Cool. And since you mentioned about Inception Studio, I was curious about, you know, yeah, we, you know, Gerta and I met at OnDeck first for the cohort. And then, you know, you started Inception Studio, then you invited me for the first call. And thank you so much. I really, really appreciate it. I was curious, you know, how did you, how and why did you start Inception Studio at the time?

I was curious about the backstory. Yeah, of course. So everyone knows I'm passionate about negotiations. Another thing I'm super passionate about is communities. So I'm Albanian. I come from a very community oriented culture. You're always surrounded by people. As I moved to the US a long time ago, I think it's been 16 years. The one thing I still can't get used to is how individualistic it is and how isolated people are.

So over the, over my entire time in the US, I've built various communities. I've led communities, I've co-founded communities. And I was in a small mastermind circle of MIT alums. And my friend John Whaley was saying how I want to bring together some founders and engineers to like hack away. And I was like, oh, I have a lot of experience with this. I've built communities, I've co-led communities. I've become, I've been member of so many.

Like I was at OnDeck early. We were both like early adopters, like first 10 cohort, cohort nine. And then I was like, oh, I want to be a co-leader. First 10 cohort, cohort nine. I used to live at Launch House. I lived at Launch House, which was also a founder community. Half the group was founders, half was creators. And when I was in BC, I was the operations partner at FPC. And a lot of my job was community building.

And so I'm like, oh, John, I can definitely participate in this. And so we started collaborating together with Andy Chow, the co-founder of Ventrilo that you mentioned at the beginning of the call. So us and a couple other people, we started working on Inception Studio. And with my experience on community building, I had this like, we did this sort of persona breakdown, like who's the right fit? What about the length?

I was thinking through all of that as I had all this experience. And then like, where should we go? Like, I found the place where to have the retreat, did this breakdown of the lengths and all that. So it was very rewarding. And then as it started, like we did the first cohort and it was starting to take off and like, okay, it was great. And I'm like, I also want to start my own business in a different space.

Inception Studio is an incredible community, so talented. The business model is typically having like a fund attached to it, usually for founder communities. You need a fund in general, unless you have people pay to become members, which is similar to the on-deck model. Either of those was not something I see myself doing in the next like 10 years, maybe eventually. And so I started doing negotiations with Alex

and I'm now a friend of Inception Studio. more from the, from, from afar. Oh, yeah. Actually, we interviewed John in the past. Oh, awesome. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's great. Yeah, I see. I see John. I run into him at a lot of events. So with my community building passion, I actually, I still go to a lot of events. And I ran into him recently at one of them. Yeah. And I saw they finished just cohort, Inception Cohort 50 in Japan.

Wow. It's been a while. Yes. Yes, I heard about the Japan cohort. It's wonderful. Yeah. John speaks Japanese, I think. So that's super cool. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. And also, I don't know if you can, it's, you know, time is running out, but if you can, I'm not sure if you can share about this, but you know, I saw you angel invest, you know, in startups. And I'm curious about, you know, what's the criteria you invest in startups.

And if you can share and what you are looking for. Thank you. I had it on my LinkedIn that I angel invest a little bit. And I guess so many cold DMs and so many emails. And so I had to remove it. So right now, both me and my husband are working on your negotiations.com. Which is a bootstrap company. And we are not very liquid. We've been doing this for two years, bootstrap, no venture money. So we are not angel investing right now anymore.

Yes. But thank you for asking that because I had it on my LinkedIn. It's like, you know, it's part of what I've done. And then I was getting so many colds. So I actually removed it recently. But if you have money to invest in, so which area, what kind of company you want to invest in? I don't know if you mean like if I had money in general, how much money and all that, but I care very deeply. There is an issue in the world that I care very deeply.

And it is tied to your negotiations. I care very, very deeply about underprivileged populations, especially vulnerable young women. I come from Albania, a developing country. A lot of vulnerable women there. And I care very deeply about that. So it's less about investing. If I could invest in some sort of nonprofit or whoever is working in that area, I would invest in that. But I don't know if that's the right direction.

I care very deeply about that. So. I don't know yet how I can best help that segment of the population. If anyone watching knows, please reach out. The way I try to contribute contribute is I have a lot of. I have a lot of mentors and I know that. There's a lot of people in the workforce. Can use that. For their own. Education and for their own like compensation and all that. And they do. I get, I get emails.

Every so often. Hey, I listened to your podcast and I made this much more money. Thank you so much. That is extremely rewarding to me. So that's sort of my way of giving back all the free content out there. Yeah. But I would love to help even more underprivileged. I guess. Young women in developing countries. I just don't know how yet. If anyone knows, please let me know. I think we can put the contact information in the description.

Of this video. For sure. Yes. Oh, yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm also on Instagram and Twitter. I have a lot of emails on my website, your negotiations.com. And it's at your negotiations.com. Thanks. Yeah. And do you have any other. Like a goals in your life. Or for your business for the next few years or five years. Do you have some milestones goals? Yeah. My goal is to increase the reach. As much as possible. So my goal, I was trying to.

You know, People who could benefit from. What I share and what are sort of what I know, and I could teach them. They have a way to connect to it. That's my goal in the next five or so years. Right now, because I don't have that much reach. I do a little bit of, you know, social media and stuff. I think there's still an inefficiency in the market. I think it's because people are either working with me or consuming my

free content, but they don't know how to get me. And I don't know how to get them, how to reach each other. And so actually Alex and I are launching a podcast. In the next few weeks. Right now we're thinking of calling it gentle power. Because that's our. Philosophy on negotiation. You have power. You want to protect your power. But you also use it gently. You, you don't want to use it. Forcefully. Forcefully.

So we're considering doing that. And then half the episodes will be on our personal life and sort of our life philosophy and various, just to give people a sense of who we are and what we believe in. Especially since we're husband and wife, like it. It might be interesting to see. What our lives are like. And then the other half is about our business and negotiation tips and. Things that people might find useful in that, from that perspective.

So I think. I think that. The podcast will help us. Reach more people. So that's the goal. I just want to help. As many people as possible. Of course. You know, We'd love to get more clients. But if I can help them for free, that's, that's very rewarding to me as well. Amazing. And sorry. One more question. Sorry about that. Yeah, for sure. I'm curious, you know, what is the most. Important. Aspect or. What aspect do you care the most, you know,

when you are building community. The aspect you care the most when you're building community. That's so interesting. Well for the first thing that comes to mind is this book called the art of gathering. By. I want to try to remember her name. I'm going to try to remember her name. I'm going to try to remember her. Let me just look it up because. I am very curious about this. I think it's yeah. Pria Parker. The art of gathering.

And one thing that she says that's super interesting. Is that don't be afraid. To be opinionated and a little bit quote unquote dictatorial when you gather people. Meaning it's okay to. To be a little bit. A little bit. Opinionated. And so she's talking mostly like in-person gathering, but we can kind of extrapolate. So if you are, if you are very relaxed and you don't have any. Sort of. Rules or. Guiding principles around your community.

And so. When we talk about in-person gathering, for example. One thing I like to do when I gather people in person is like. Sit next to someone you don't know. On both sides. Like if you're gathering. And so similarly for community. You want to have some of these guiding principles. So for inception studio for us, it was. We want rockstar engineers and founders. Right. And so. I recently was co-leading. Global.

The San Francisco chapter of a global community called sandbox. And we, the. The values that we have are people who want to make a difference in the world. We're very ambitious and who care about making the world better. And so we have a lot of people who want to make a difference in the world. And so when you look at the applications. There are some excellent people who apply, but you can tell that they currently don't have the bandwidth.

To invest in the community. Or to spend time in it. And so we actually don't end up accepting them. That's really hard to do. They they're rock stars. We had to turn down a few incredible people like. To, to, to, to, to, to, to sort of. Fit into the ethos of the community, which is. Care about the community, be able to give back, be able to invest time and effort. And if they don't have the bandwidth, it doesn't make sense for them to be members of the community.

So. Bringing from the art of gathering and Priya Parker. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. These like the. The ethos of the community. And if the members. Are a good fit. No matter how much I would love to have them there. Is this a mutually good fit? Yeah. Insightful, you know, Ideas and insights. Thank you. Yeah. So. Before. Thank you. Do you have any advice? to people who are going to negotiate business situation like salary compensation, whatever,

do you have final advice? Yes, so, I mean- Go to yournegotiation.com is- Go to your- Yeah, that's not what I was gonna say cause that's very obvious. And we might not be a good fit to work together. So we do offer a free consultation call to see if we're a good fit. But beyond that, approach it with a lot of curiosity, being cordial and being creative. And the next layer is give people the benefit of the doubt.

So sometimes the other party, they might ask you some very personal questions or they might ask you to show your hand. Like, what's your preferred number? That's an unfair question. How much did you make in your last job? That's an unfair question. It's similar to saying, show me your cards when we're playing. Give them the benefit of the doubt because maybe they don't know it's an unfair question. Maybe their manager has asked them to ask this.

Not only they might not be doing it on purpose, but even if they are doing it on purpose, keeping things positive and keeping the relationship top of mind will benefit you at the end of the day. So that's, yeah, that's the main advice actually. Thank you. And actually today's talk reminded me of, and I took a business course at UC Berkeley and reminded me of one concept, like a ZOPA, Zone of Possible Agreements.

Yes. Yeah, that's an interesting concept, but yeah. Yeah, there's some, there's BATNA, there's all that. When working with me, I don't go into the theory at all. Like, I don't try to do like, oh, what's your BATNA? BATNA is Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement. I don't go into any of that because I like to keep things very practical. I'm a very practical person. I'm a very direct. I tell my clients, I wouldn't phrase it that way.

I would phrase it this way, and here's why. Actually, people find it, I was at some point wondering, like, will they find this too direct? But people find it pretty refreshing. It's a very efficient communication method. Don't do this, don't say this, say this, do this. It helps me, I come from Albania, we're a very direct culture. It helps me just be myself, be more efficient, and then everyone's happier, everyone makes more money.

Yeah, so we don't go into the theory of it all because it's just more confusing. I could walk people through the theory and the psychology, and there's a study from 1997 that says, if you say this, and you're, I don't think that's valuable, especially like, as you're negotiating, you just need to know what to do and not do. I see, thank you. So yeah, this is the last question. Since Grasp is a platform where people share

what they're reading, learning as a digital legacy, we want to ask you what legacy or impact you hope to leave behind for future generations. I'm trying to be, I'm trying to be not cliche, but what I hope to accomplish through my work is for people, for everyone to be as happy as they can possibly be. I think there's an amount of happiness out there. And of course, money is not happiness necessarily, but it does help a lot.

And so when we help people negotiate, having a couple more hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank, it may help your kid with their college tuition or like a better house or whatever. So I just want everyone to be as happy as they can be. I love efficiency. And so I love helping people grab any opportunity that's out there. And negotiations is ultimately about grabbing the opportunities that are out there.

Ask for things, don't leave things in the unspoken. As long as you do it nicely and gently and cordially and professionally, it doesn't hurt to ask. And maybe you will both be happier and better off. That is ultimately the legacy I wanna leave. As part of that, the sort of a secondary effect is empowerment. As people learn these tools, they feel more empowered. Like, wow, I didn't even know, I hear this all the time.

I didn't even know this was possible. I didn't even know I could ask for that. Like when I was a venture-backed founder, we went to a portfolio company of my lead investor. So lead investor hosted a portfolio company retreat. I go there, I'm talking to these founders about negotiations. And back then it was just a passion. I was working on something else. I'm like, who here negotiates their rent? Only half the people raised their hand.

And the other half was like, I didn't even know I could negotiate my rent. And so I want to empower people to know that anything is possible. And I do this through negotiations. Other people do this in other ways. I don't know, yoga, meditation, whatever. But this is my legacy. Empowerment and finesse, I guess. Yeah, beautiful, yeah. And everything is negotiable. And ideally, you wanna increase total pie, but not only in negotiation session,

but total pie for happiness of people. And that's very, very impressive and beautiful, you know, legacy. Thank you, I appreciate it. Thank you. And yeah, again, yeah. Thank you so much for joining today. Yeah, we really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much, Kazuki and Kei. I super enjoyed catching up with you both. We've known each other for so long now. And yeah, we lived in the Inception Studio first cohort house together.

And it was so fun. I see you at OnDeck events and all that. So it's so great chatting with you guys today. Thank you so much.