Ask Bernadette - How to Ask for a Raise, Dealing with Competition, Ex-Wives

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Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at BlogTalkRadio.com. Setting the Bitch, or share your stories on our website at settingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back. 818-572-2910. Good day, good day, good day everyone, and those of us in the United States, happy, happy Independence Week. We kicked off July 1st yesterday, which means that in a few days we all get a nice long weekend for Independence Day on July 4th. Now, I love when holidays fall like a Wednesday or Thursday because even if you do have to work— so for many of us like Deborah of Deborah Parker House Virtual Services and I, we work for ourselves, And we have to work in order to eat. So we may choose to take some time off, but you most likely will find us doing something to move our business forward. And I will say that on Friday at some point I will be working, but it still kind of sets itself up for a nice quiet long weekend being that it starts really tomorrow because I know a lot of people shutting down early and there are fireworks going on tomorrow night and festivities and festivals and whatnot. And then Thursday is the big day. We have, for many of you who have been listening to the program, every Fourth of July is our Peach Race, our Peachtree Road Race. And we get 60,000 people from around the world to come in and fill up our streets, but also run down a 10-mile stretch of the city. And it's very exciting, and I'll be out there with Coco, my puppy. And will be cheering everybody on. I haven't raced it in a few years. Then Friday, a lot of people might go back to work, but at the same time it's a lot quieter. The phones aren't ringing as much, there aren't as many people if you do go into an office, so it is a nice long weekend. So please, everyone who are celebrating it, have a very safe but fun-filled long weekend. And for those of you just celebrating life, it's July! Which brings us to our conversation for today. It is our Ask Bernadette episode. We do this the first Tuesday of every month and you have an opportunity to share with us your questions, stories, and challenges all through the month regularly and I answer them immediately when I, when I get them and then I bring them right here onto the program the first Tuesday of every month to to drill into them even further, and you have an opportunity to call in and actually contribute to the conversation about maybe your specific question or someone else's question that we're discussing, if you should choose to. And you can always call 1-818-572-2910 to talk to me directly throughout the live broadcast. And then obviously you can download us and take us with you on Apple Podcasts, on iTunes, on BlogTalkRadio, as well as sheddingthebitch.com. So you have a lot of opportunities to reach out to Deborah and I to get your questions answered. And if you're having a challenge, let us help you. And so that's what we are doing today. And so our, our date, being that it's July 2nd, it's also setting up for the fact that we finished the first half of the year and we're about to go into the second half of the year. Now, we're not talking goals today, which we typically would in setting you up for the second half of the year. We're going to talk about that next week, but we do have a couple of discussions today, and I mentioned, I believe it was last week or the— an earlier episode about performance reviews, and it's come up again, and it's not only because I'm sitting outside. I took you on the road with me today. I'm sitting outside a client's office because I have back-to-back meetings regarding performance reviews of my clients and then also of some other folks they are talking to me about. And yet one of my clients, actually she and I are going to be having a conversation about the review but more so in the way of marketing and advocating for herself. So that's one of our discussions for today. We're also going to be discussing how to compete effectively, and that's not necessarily in the workforce, but you can still use the tips that I discussed with a young gentleman when it came to sports. And then our last question came up to me a couple of weeks ago, since the last time we talked on our Ask Bernadette episode, and though we were talking business, she then recognized that her personal life, specifically the fact that she's married, he's divorced, he has an ex-wife and kids, and it is challenging her and creating some struggle for her, which is obviously impacting her work performance. So she wanted to see if I would have any input on that, even though she knows I'm not a divorce lawyer or divorce expert. I haven't even been married. But as we always talk about here, Life is just a series of communications and relationships, and certainly we know about that. So those are our topics for today, but again, if you do have your own question, story, or challenge you want to share, don't hesitate to call 1-818-572-2910. Deborah's out there manning the board and also our Twitter and Facebook. And of course, you can always go to either one of those pages as well and, um, pose your question. All right, let's see what else. We're going to dive into the first question before we even take a break, and that's going to be about competition. I had mentioned to you, uh, several weeks back that I had competed in a pickleball tournament with a young man, 14 years old. He reached out to me, he wanted to play mixed doubles, and he has the confidence in himself and the guts to pick up the phone or email, actually it was, and ask me, a much older individual, and ask, you know, and acknowledge he wanted to play a mixed doubles in this big, large national event here in Atlanta. He even wanted to— sorry, we have a I'm outside and we have a train running behind us. He even wanted to not only play in this Nationals, but he wanted to kind of cross all the areas: singles, doubles, and then mixed doubles. So that was the reason for him reaching out to me. I am going to— forgive me, I'm going to roll up these windows and get some of this noise from behind. And Deborah, you can keep me informed as to how loud it is getting or has gotten. So anyway, so he had the confidence in himself to reach out and ask me, and I said, "Absolutely, let's do it." Well, we had a very good time playing, and we did well. I won't say we did really well, but we were far from sucking it. Well, I mentioned to you that on a previous episode that he had walked away and he was very upset that he didn't win. He's not accustomed to losing. He is an all-around athlete and he typically does very well, but he was very upset and really being hard on himself in regards to losing. So I kind of, you know, I did what I could to console him and coach him and let him know that he's only 14. He only just started playing like 4 months ago. He actually he should give himself cred for even signing up to play in a competition that's national, that's on a really big stage that has professional athletes at it, as well as, I'll call them beginners, although I never like to say that because if you get on court or go out and start doing something even though you are new and inexperienced, that is one big piece of cred that you deserve. Um, so anyway, so I did what I could. Well, the question came up, uh, and it got enhanced this morning when I was watching a recap of the Wimbledon show, uh, the Wimbledon tennis match that's been going on. So let me remind the question. So he asked me, okay, so what do I need to do differently in order to win? And I gave him tips and advice, and that's going to be repeated again today. But I'm going to be reaching back out to him because this morning they were recapping the match between Venus Williams, a 38-year-old phenom herself and a master of Wimbledon who's won 5 singles matches herself over the years. Against a 15-year-old up-and-comer by the name of Cori— she goes by Coco— but Cori Goff. And we will call her Coco, and not just because my puppy's name's Coco, but something she said really made me pay attention and then think of Mason. And what she had said was, "I never played on a court so big." 'But I had to remind myself that the lines are the same size.' So let me repeat that and then I'm going to kind of tell you what caught my attention. 'I never played on a court so big, but I had to remind myself that the lines are the same size.' What she was basically saying is she's played matches, a lot of them. She's played on big stages. Granted, her mission is not as big as Wimbledon. But what she was also saying too is she's playing against her idol, one of the biggest names in tennis, which made the stage even that much bigger. Yet she points out that the size of the tennis court's the same no matter if it's at the Wimbledon Stadium or it's at a local park, tennis park or tennis center. The size of the tennis court is the same. So all she focused on during her matches— and she killed her, she killed Venus, I believe, and don't quote me, I believe it was 6-2, 6-4. So she got her in 2 sets and, you know, she basically just wiped her out. But she said that she was able to do that by reminding herself and keeping herself calm that she's played the tennis court before. She knows where the lines are, she knows where she needs to hit it, she knows how she needs to cover the space because it's no bigger or no smaller than what she's familiar with. So that caught my attention because I thought to myself, that's what Mason needs to remind himself. So here, here are my tips and advice for anyone, whether you're competing, um, you know, out on in a sport or you're competing in a classroom, maybe you're competing in the workplace, maybe you're competing in your own business against other competition. You know what you need to do to win. You know what you need to do to win. So just let me remind you of a few things in case there's times when you get in your own head and you kind of forget. So the first one is in Mason's case, I specifically emphasized to him that he needs to be realistic. He needs to really evaluate and assess what he's up against even before walking in, which I'm sure in this case Coco did. She recognized, okay, I am, you know, the first draw of the whole darn tournament and Venus Williams is in it and she's going to be playing against her. So what does that mean? Forget about the fact that she's going to go and she's going to study her tapes and she's probably been doing it for years now since she's played tennis herself. But she needs to also really pay attention to what does that mean to my psyche that I'm playing my idol. I'm playing with the woman that I've looked up to all of my life at my tender age of 14, or she's 15, Mason's 14. But what is that going to do to me? What is that going to cause me to, you know, get inside my head about? So being realistic about the age, the experience, experience, the degree of expertise. Obviously Venus has decades in this case. Mason and the people that he's playing with— because he joked in Behind His Tears about the fact that he was playing against 50, 60, and 70-year-olds and he was losing. And I said, Mason, consider your age and your degree of experience and expertise. Forget you've been playing this particular sport for only several months. Your degree of expertise in it is far behind everyone else's. They have so much more experience and they know the environment, the surroundings, the situation that they're playing in. And they're able to adapt. So you just need to learn to adapt. Then the other question, and this came up in really in the conversation with Coco because her father Corey is also her coach. But it came up and I loved how he put it. When you go out and you compete in the workplace or in a sport or in a hobby or in a relationship, you also have to be your own best friend. And that kind of goes back to self-care and how you talk to yourself, how you treat yourself, how you feed yourself, how you fuel yourself. So all of those aspects have to be to better yourself, have to be to care for yourself. So you know that old adage that we talk a lot about here as well, but you know when you're on a plane, put the mask on yourself first before helping other people, and that's because you got to take care of yourself first before you can help other people. And then that statement about being your best friend went on to say you need to talk to yourself well. She admitted she won because she kept herself calm and she didn't get overwhelmed with everything around her, even with the woman on the other side of the net. It was more so that she just reminded herself over and over again with every stroke, with every miss, with every slam or ace, she just kept reminding herself that she knows what she's doing, she has the skills, she has the talent, She has the will, she has the determination, she has the persistence, she has what it takes to win. Mason has and had, even in our matches, what it takes to win, and it's a matter of whether or not you put all those things together to have the outcome what you want it to be. Which brings me to the next thing, and Mason certainly does this, and obviously Coco does, and Venus, and any, you know, elite athlete or elite leader in business, they set goals. They pursue those goals. They take action on those goals. They assess those goals and the actions they're taking. They track it. They measure it. They adjust it. They do everything that's needed in order to get to the end goal. They do the work. And this is the key, key, key, key, key thing. I even, you know, I didn't have to mention it to to Mason even at his young age of 14 in the various sports that he plays. He does the work. But whether you're 14 or you're 74, we often have to be reminded we have to do the work if we want to succeed. We can't just sit on our couch or sit on our ass or sit on our blessings or sit on our of, you know, all the things that we have in life, maybe the expectations we have of parents, of friends, of the connections we have. We can't sit on our laurels. That's what I was looking for. We have to do the work. No one succeeds by being pulled forward doing nothing. Now, people move forward and get pulled forward by doing nothing, and we all probably can point to someone or some situation where that's occurred. But trust me, you have to do the work. Sooner or later those connections, those blessings, those laurels are not going to get you where you want to go. And then lastly, when it comes to this, you have to show up. And what I mean by that is, um, this is where I gave the biggest, biggest, biggest kudos to Mason because I've seen grown adults seasoned adults, mature, let's say even old, old adults where they've done the work, they've set the goals, they talk to themselves well, they care for themselves well, they're realistic about the situation or the experience that they're having, yet they don't show up. And what I mean by that is women, for instance, who don't put themselves at the table. You walk into a boardroom, and boardrooms are made up of certain levels of individuals, certain titles, let's call them. So VPs and C-levels, VPs, SVPs, C-levels. And there is somebody in that room who's finding themselves more comfortable sitting on the wall than sitting at the table, because even as successful and as much money and the big titles that they have, they still question, they still doubt, they still think they're a fraud. God, they don't show up. Showing up means, in Mason's case, signing up and putting himself in a tournament, a national tournament after only playing for 4 months. It means picking up the phone and calling someone like myself and asking, "Would you mind playing with a 14-year-old?" It's showing up— oh, excuse me— in Coco's case, of putting herself on a stage such as Wimbledon. And it was funny because I just read shortly before getting onto this call that not only did she show up, but she was taking exams— she's in college— she was taking— no, she must be in high school— she was taking exams during the first round practices and playoffs. So that means over the weekend. She didn't go to school. She skipped school yesterday, Monday, didn't tell her teachers, and her teachers only found out why she wasn't in school when they turned on the TV and probably the news and they saw that she was playing Wimbledon against Venus Williams. You have to show up in life, whether you're in your own business, you work for a company, you're an athlete, you're an entertainer. You have to show up. You have to do it. Friends of mine were impressed by me and in awe, so they say, when they came to my improv showcase last month. They were like, "I don't know how you do that. I wouldn't have the guts or the balls to do that." You have to have the guts and the balls to do whatever it is that you want to do that you want to succeed in. If you want something— I'm not looking to be some improv comedian or improv actor. Or some, you know, big star. So even in my case, it was a very safe decision to make in my eyes to show up because I wasn't— there's nothing really huge on the back end of this that I wanted to achieve other than showing up and learning it because maybe it can apply to my writing. So think about if you were to set the goals, do the work, and show up at the big, big stadiums or big stages or big conference rooms what you could achieve. So that's what I want to leave you with when it comes to, you know, how do you win? You win by doing all of those, all of those things. All right, we're going to take a break. When we come back, we're going to get into the conversation about it is July 2nd and it's time for performance reviews, but we're going to take a different slant than what we've taken talked about in the past. So we will be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to ngtaxsolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch Shedding the Bitch Radio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone, this is our Ask Bernadette episode where I take your questions, stories, and challenges and provide you some tips, advice, and sometimes, sometimes tough love. In our second question, and what we talked about at the top of the hour, it is July 2nd, which means it is mid-year. 6 months are gone. We have 6 months ahead of ourselves. A lot of times I get tons of questions this time of year, and I have, in regards to goals and setting goals. We're going to save that for next week's episode or even a later episode. Because today I was really pleased and proud of the last several weeks that, you know, within my client base, a good majority of them were already proactively— they'd been working on it, you know, all year long, but they were ready for their mid-year performance reviews. And actually, majority of them are this week. Actually, one started on Friday. And I have a lot of meetings and calls this week. And I'm actually, I mentioned, sitting outside of a client's building for several back-to-backs today in regards to their reviews, the actual review itself. But one thing had come up in regards to the reviews that I don't know that we talk a lot about. We've talked in the past of how you definitely prepare for a review. But one thing had jarred my thought process for one of my clients when I was actually giving her feedback on her self-assessed review. And I, and I'm sure a lot of you deal with it. I won't say struggle with it because you may not even realize you're doing it. And that's why I thought this was an important question that she had asked me to share with all of you. And that's really, What does, you know, what is the most effective way in documenting, let alone presenting, the review? That might sound kind of weird or strange because you have your goals and they're probably pre-printed on a document from HR if you are in a corporate or, you know, a size of a company that handles the performance review process very, standardized. So your goals are probably written out and you're just replying to each one of those stated goals. That's typically what I see 99% of the time. And so people respond. So say for instance the goals were— and you have very quantifiable goals— they were revenue, gross profit, number of new clients, number of leads. Maybe it's EBITDA if you're in more of a financial role. Maybe it's number of visits, number of calls, you know, hours spent, you know, working with clients, so forth and so on. Billable hours because a lot of people are services individuals and they go by billable hours. So typically what I see is that people have these goals. And then they respond simply by giving those numbers, giving those facts and figures. And then there might be a goal around, you know, developing their skill in a particular function or technique or tool. And they reply that yes, you know, they've taken classes and all this kind of good stuff. What they fail to or overlook, let's say overlook, to realize is that these performance reviews are tools. They're marketing tools that you can use to position and advocate, which we'll talk about more in a second, to position and advocate yourself, position and advocate yourself for a raise or a bonus, maybe a promotion or a new job assignment, project. They should be positioned in such a way of making an— not an argument, but setting yourself up to then have the big ask at the very end. A lot of employees just think— and because it's true in a lot of— too many, obviously— too many, sadly, companies where the expectation is, well, they only hand out 1 to 2% and it's very standard across the board. It's not going to be any different this time. And I always say to them, why not? If it's not, it's because you're not building a case and advocating for yourself. So I want to talk to you about marketing, advocating, and building a case for yourself. And then I'm going to actually give you some specific feedback. I'm going to read verbatim what I had given to one of my clients of which I've also— it's been typical generic feedback that I give as, as it pertains to how do you write and then present your performance. And then I'm going to talk to you about the one thing a lot of people don't do when it comes to their performance review discussion. And we'll talk about that. So let's start with the fact that these performance reviews, yes, they're a documentation of how well you're, you're doing or maybe targets you've missed and areas for improvement. But like I said, these are used by managers to then assess who's ready for the next job, the next advancement, the next project, the next move, maybe a move to a different group or different part of the organization or maybe physically move to a different region. They're used to determine succession plans. So if your manager leaves, who's going to be, you know, ready and slotted into that space? And therefore, there might be more training and development that they actually put on you and focus on you because you're in that succession plan now. And a lot of people don't think about that. A lot of employees, a lot of my clients, don't consider that when it comes to presenting their performance review and advocating for themselves. Excuse me. Another thing is they're also used by management, HR, for sponsoring, for mentoring, and for coaching opportunities of an individual. So everybody, you know, the manager gets all the reviews back. They see, you know, opportunities from those reviews for who should be mentored, who might, you know, benefit from a coach, who that manager might want to sponsor and start not only putting it in the succession plan but really just taking under their wing even if you don't know that they're doing it. So that's the sponsoring. And if you want to learn more about sponsors versus mentors, coaches, you can go back to our episode at the beginning of the year where we talked about that. And again, BlogTalkRadio, Apple Podcast, sheddingthebitch.com. So this performance review document should be presented in that way. Now, some people, some clients even, they don't have a self-assessment process as part of their performance reviews. What I mean by that is a lot of companies allow you to first measure yourself, provide your feedback and your input, then the manager adds to it, and then when you meet and discuss it, it's to, you know, discuss the overlaps, the things of agreement. And then discuss the inconsistencies or the differences between your assessment and their assessment and then to come up with an agreed-upon plan between the two of you. Some companies don't do that. The manager fills out a form and a lot of times it's by force, not by want— desire at all and then that performance review is given to the employee. Sometimes it's even just passed to the employee and it's never discussed. So what I have to say in that regard is it is up to you to make the performance review process benefit you. So if you don't have a formal self-assessment process, then you need to be doing it yourself, meaning at the beginning of the year you're giving your goals and/or you're contributing to those goals. Say you weren't— contributed, you weren't asked for goals, they just passed them down to you. You then need to be meeting with your boss and setting your goals, discussing what it is that you want to achieve, getting expectations, all that kind of good stuff. Then you should be tracking and assessing yourself throughout the period. So in this case, 6 months, some cases the year, some cases quarterly, and then using that information in— back into your review and discussion with your with your boss. Now, your document, your company document may not provide for that, but that doesn't matter. You can write it up yourself and, you know, sit down, discuss it with your, with your boss, and have them and ask them to add it as an addendum to, to your performance review. And if they don't even agree with that, you can then take it up, if you want to, with HR. But I have never found where a manager pushes really hard on that unless they're really, really lazy and then what I would say to that is make their job easier and just simply say, "Well, then let me do it for you and I'll pass it forward. I'll pass it on now that I have your input." But bottom line is take responsibility for it. So it's a marketing tool and the way it needs to be written and presented is that you're advocating for yourself. Now this got triggered again this morning too because I was listening to an interview with a representative from Refinery29. So if you wanted to Google Refinery29, and they were talking about how women don't negotiate for raises. But one thing that she said really caught my attention, and that was this whole advocacy, the fact that women will fight tooth and nail for other people. They will defend, they will fight, they will advocate, they will do whatever it takes to take care of somebody else. Well, they need— women, you need to turn that advocacy onto yourself. You need to use that same passion, that same fight, that same drive, that same determination to present your own performance and advocate for yourself, whatever it is that you want. But that brings me to the one positioning and posturing of your reviews that we talk about here, and I want to reiterate it, and that is building your case. I often call it a business case, but it's— because it is like building a business case. If you ever had to put together a business use case, they're called, or user case, This is a you case that you're building. And it's emphasizing, you know, not only your goals and your metrics, your results, your facts, and your figures, but it's also wrapping a lot of other less quantifiable things around it. So, for instance, let me tell you specifically— I'm going to read from an email that I specifically sent back to one of my clients regarding her own self-assessment because she— because my clients typically want me to review what they're about to submit. So I basically said, can you use— okay, so this had to do with quantifiable facts and figure type of metrics which many of you may be responsible for, revenue, profit, customers, leads, billable hours, so forth and so on. So obviously you have a goal and you're going to state what you actually did the first 6 months. Then I'm amazed because in analytics and analysis that your managers are looking at, it will always have a plus or minus increase or decrease performance assessment of that metric. And yet we tend to— I see in performance review, even when it's positive, let alone negative, we tend to forget to add that piece. So if you— like, I looked at my clients. There was an increase to profit. There was an increase to EBITDA. There was a change in the number of days of cash flow, so forth and so on, to the better, by the way. And so you should emphasize that. You should show that it's an increase of 25% in revenue, brought on 8 additional customers, put on 30% more billable hours. Decreased in cost or even in profit if that's the case. But you want to kind of show that the impact that you're having to the business and that's what all these things are going to touch on. You need to be contributing your contribution, your impact, your improvement, your even need for improvement to the business, to your team and to yourself., as part of your review. Uh, you, you know, so it, so I go on to say, so in addition to the tactical and factual comments, also add anything about the, the content, about the contribution, about the improvement, about the kudos that were received. Um, you know, whether it's about you or your team, uh, you know, from, from people throughout the 6-month period. Months. You want to make sure that if there's been people giving you praise or testimony or recommendations or referrals, you notate that. You can even notate the specific person. Maybe it's a client, so notate the customer company name, what it was about, what did they say. Add those things. Add quotes. Add statements. To your performance review, building that, you know, that case, advocating yourself and marketing yourself.

We—

I also had mentioned to her that they, you know, she should mention not only that she attended— so a lot of people will put on there, you know, number of networking events and what the networking events were, what the training was that they took, what the— conferences where they attended. What they fail to notate is what they got, you know, took from it, what they got from it, and how those pieces of information, those nuggets, that knowledge, that handout, that material, that content, how it was going to be useful to them going forward, let alone maybe their team or the company. So don't just list that you attended 20 training or attended this, you know, software boot camp or this conference, what did you take from it? Because that's what they're looking for. They send you there, they pay for you, they invest in you, what are you taking from it that's beneficial to you and then others? As well as if you are participating in outside or inside networking groups. Mastermind groups, industry conference groups or expert groups, alliances, forums. You want to mention all those too. And one big reason for that, again, you're building a case advocating for yourself and marketing because you have an ask at the end of this. So, and the ask can be very— very, very broad. You could be asking, you know, for a better raise than the standard. You could be asking for a bonus. You could be asking for more vacation time. You could be asking for a new project, for a promotion, for advancement, whatever the case might be. But you also might be asking— so a number of my clients who's— I have a number of clients who come to me on their own because maybe their companies don't invest in coaching. But they still see the value and the benefit of it, so they come to me directly and they pay for it out of pocket. Well, I have them attribute in their performance review that that's what they're doing, that they have hired a, you know, a personal/professional coach, a leadership coach, whatever they want to say, which has given them these benefits, and then their ask is, "I would love it if the company," invested in it and paid for it versus paying for it out of my pocket. So there's a lot, you know, a lot of different asks that you might have as a result of your performance review and therefore you need to present it, write it and present it in a way that's advocating for yourself. Make sense? All right. Now the last thing I wanted to make sure we mentioned in regards to this subject that a lot of people overlook when it comes to their performance review. Now it's the actual discussion. What they overlook doing is ensuring that by the time they leave that meeting, they have every answer, every concern— I'm sorry, they have every question answered, they have every concern addressed, they have every uncertainty uncertainty resolved. And what— so let me give you examples of what I mean by that. I have a number of clients, especially because I have several new clients, they're not sure of really what their role and responsibility is because they've had new management come in and it's never really been laid out for them. I have one who really doesn't know who they report to because it's a matrix environment So they have multiple people that they support, and yet they don't know who their, you know, main stakeholder is, their main boss that they should be answering to, that they should be getting priorities from, and it sends them into this state of stress because of that. They also don't really know what's going on with whatever changes might be going on in their organization. So the big thing that you need to ensure that you're prepared for and you don't leave the room until you have it done is getting every one of your questions and stories and challenges addressed. If you have a question about anything, a concern, you just— you need advice, you need tips. Let me give you a really quick example. Last week I was with one of my clients and their manager, and I knew of a big question that she had, and I came in late, but I sensed by the discussion that I was now sitting in on that she had not gotten around to asking that question yet. Well, we're about to leave. We're actually kind of moving our chairs away from the table and standing up, and she had not broached that question. So I kind of jarred her, and I kind of egged on her, you know, herself, I won't say her memory because she knew, but for some reason she was apprehensive, and, you know, got her to finally ask the question. And, you know, it only took 3 minutes. She got the, you know, question addressed and it made her feel so much better because the fact that she now had clarity around what she had been stressing on for weeks upon weeks. So ensure that you're using these as opportunities opportunities to get your questions addressed. All right? All right. We're not going to even take a break. We're going to keep going to ensure that we address this one last question that I was given, and it's about divorce. And I'm going to have to cover this in just 3 or 4 minutes, but I will ensure— well, I already talked to the individual who asked me this question, but for yourself. And I will be sure to, to get all of it addressed, and if not, we'll put it up as a blog post on SheddingTheBitch.com. And any of you can reach out to me directly at BernadetteBoas@SheddingTheBitch.com if you need more details. So the scenario is she's been married to this man for 3 years. He has an ex-wife and he has grown children, and I'm talking late 20s, 30s. So there's not a lot of reasons for her and the ex-wife to have to engage, except for the fact that now it's getting more to engagements and, you know, marriages and that kind of thing. Well, her ex-wife, the ex-wife won't allow him to bring her to anything. So she was asking me, how do I handle this? How do I, you know, effectively work with this ex-wife, um, in order to, you know, in order to ensure that I can be at these events. And it doesn't come down to— which a lot of you might be knee-jerking at the moment— it doesn't necessarily all come down to the husband. Now, the husband plays a key role, so you and your husband need to have, you know, a very clear, a very detailed, a very deep discussion in regards to how what it is that you're looking for, how it makes you feel, the impact that it has on you, and your desire to be part of these things, whatever, whatever they are. Now fortunately, she's not dealing with younger children, so she's not dealing with, you know, young kids who are staying over the weekends. So we're not going to get into all that on this particular call, but I would have some insights on that as well. So the two of them first need to set, you know, expectations and, and set those boundaries and, and set those, uh, you know, ideas. And she needs to really understand where the man, the husband's head's at when it comes to dealing with the ex-wife and how he's going to go about doing that. Um, then they need to have a discussion with the ex-wife. And I would suggest that it's not just the husband, but it's the husband and the two, two wives, one ex-wife, and have a discussion. And make it very clear as to what, you know, how this, this threesome relationship is going to take place and what's going to be allowed and not allowed. And, but I did suggest to her, but there's some give and takes. You don't want to, you know, fight everything, you know, you know, don't fight the small stuff. I don't know what those are, she really didn't have any to share with me, but don't fight the really small stuff. Because it's just not worth it. Fight for the big stuff, the things that really matter. Now again, it's going to be very different when you have young children in the house and it comes to the fact that the children are in the house and therefore the new wife has to be able to set boundaries and they have to be the partner, you know, partners I'll call them, not the mom and dad, but they have to be the partners in that child rearing. But in this case, they just have to set expectations. What I had also suggested to her is she needs to take responsibility for any of the impact. And what I mean by that is if it's impacting her mentally, physically, you know, emotionally, in any way, shape, or form, she needs to take responsibility to shift herself out of that situation. She needs to figure out how to put this woman in a box and how to frame the relationship in such a way that it's not negatively impacting her, not stressing her out, not even— now this wasn't the case with this individual, this potential client, but in this case, or not in this case, it could be that, you know, relationships have broken up, marriages have broken up because of exes. And that's just not, that's not what, what, you know, you got married for, is to let an ex destroy it. So you need to figure out how you're going to work in this, you know, conflicted type of arrangement. And then you need to kind of stop yourself. You need to stop yourself from the ugly self-talk or outward talk. You need to be the better person. You need to be the one to go to the other party, in this case the husband, and get him involved to also, you know, get this situation handled. At the same time, you need to ensure that you're not being the ugly one in the match. Let them be the ugly one. You be the bigger one, the better one, the more mature and the more supportive one, especially even if they're 20-something, 30-something, you you know, year-old children, let alone young ones. And you just need to find ways that you can manage that relationship and make it work for everyone. All right. So those are our conversations for today, our questions that you have asked over the last several weeks. And we, like I said, we do this the first Tuesday of every month. However, You can be putting them out on Facebook, on Twitter, on our Shedding the Bitch pages. You can send them to me directly. I get most of them, as I mentioned, on LinkedIn, sheddingthebitch.com. Send them to me at BernadetteBoas@sheddingthebitch.com. I will address them immediately and then on the first Tuesday of every month bring them right here on Shedding the Bitch Radio. So you can download and take us with you if you weren't here live and/or if you want to replay them. Or you want to share them, you can download them on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, BlogTalkRadio, or sheddingthebitch.com. So for everybody here, I want to wish you a great week. For those in the US, I want to wish you a happy, safe, and fun Fourth of July, and I will talk to you right here next week at noon Eastern time. Have a great week, everyone. Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. See you next week.