What She Learned from Negotiating Over $500 million in Contracts for Top Athletes

Welcome ladies to The Real Estate Investor Show, providing inspiration, strategies, and insight to empower women investors to live balanced and financially free lives.

Now, here are your co-hosts, Liz and Andresa Guidelli. So today's episode, ladies, this is a must-listen. We interviewed Molly Fletcher. Andresa Guidelli, who spent nearly 2 decades negotiating and representing for top athletes, uh, over 300 athletes. She's closed over $500 million in contracts during her tenure. And she has so much to share with not, not just peak performance. And, and, and I'm sure she saw that in her world, but how to negotiate in a way that works. And she was one of the first women agents, you know, to really dive into this world and be in this business for a long time. Her content is phenomenal in that she not only shares a process by which to negotiate, but tactical things that you could do today. And I just love this episode.

One thing that I want to say is that she didn't, she didn't start negotiating million-dollar contracts off the bat, right? So she talks about the importance of practicing and in real estate and as moms, as, you know, partners. We negotiate every single day. We just don't realize that. And another important piece of negotiation is creativity. It's not just the money, right? You have time and you have so many other items that you can add to the mix and leverage. Such a great episode, ladies, and I hope you guys enjoy it.

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Welcome back, ladies.

This is Liz and this is Andresa.

Welcome back to The Real Estate Investor Show, where our mission is to empower women to live a financially free and balanced life, whatever that looks like for them. As we always like to say, We are so excited to have Molly Fletcher on our show today. Molly, thanks so much for making time. She's been called the Jerry Maguire, the female Jerry Maguire, which I partially like and partially don't because as a woman who runs a women's community, I kind of don't want a man's name referring to women, but I love what you do. I love your background. We're so excited to have you on today. So thank you so much for making time for us.

Absolutely. You bet. As I said, I love having conversations like this. Hopefully that'll help these awesome women.

Yeah. Awesome stuff. We're gonna get into Molly, who she is and, uh, her phenomenal background. And we're gonna talk a lot of things negotiation today. Before we do that, we always like to get connected to you, share a quick tip story, something that we're experiencing that you can bring into your world. And we're, we're so appreciative to have you back on for another week. All the amazing women and men who, who listen and follow our show. So Andresa, what is coming up for you today? What gem can you share with us and our wonderful listeners here?

Well, inside our investor community, and by the way, if you guys are not part of it, join it. It's a Facebook group. It's free. There's a ton of super, super rockstar women hanging out there that can support you. So over there, I hear a lot of women that are looking to expand their team and they're getting frustrated with managing the people, right? And just like, can't they just do what I say and then go from there? And I heard this quote another day that I want to share with all of you, that it made total sense to me. So when things are not going right, quote unquote right, or as expected or as agreed, the person says, you must connect before you correct. And I said, that is right. You know, when we go to a rehab project and we are behind schedule, We're over budget. Things are not right. You've got to connect because if you are just going like rock with rock, it's just gonna create resentment. And the worst thing, ladies, you can do is to communicate with your general contractor over text message. This seems so obvious, but I've seen full-length conversations over text. That doesn't work. Never did, never will, in my honest opinion. So when you are facing, for all of you, if it is your general contractor, if it is your syndication team, if it is your private money lender, whatever the situation is, take a break, sit down, request to have a conversation and connect first. Seek to understand, and then course correct as you go. The most important thing is that both of you are working to achieve the same goal. So restating the same goal, listen, at this point over here, don't care whose fault it was or whatever it is. Let's see how can we create something to avoid the situation if what was the case, or create something that none of us even thought about, create a new possibility that works and you guys focus on, on that. Without that, the correction is just like, we have kids, we know that. We need to, we need to engage in a, in a different way. And with team members and whoever you're dealing with, enrollment, enrollment is the key. So please, please keep that in mind as you are building your team and taking your business to the next level.

I love that. Connect versus correct, right? Love that.

Connect first and then correct.

I think you still have to do that, right? You still have to correct.

Yeah.

I love it, Molly. I'm so excited to have you on today's episode. What you've done being one of the first women agents in the sports, the sports world, it just warms our heart with what we do and what we stand for here at the InvestHer community. So, so thanks for being on. You know, we always like to kind of kick things off. What propelled you to get involved in, in what you're doing and what you, what your career led you to do, especially in being such a pioneer as a woman. So if you can start there, that would be amazing. And then we have Lots and lots of questions for you just to dive into all your great experience in negotiation.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, I was a student athlete at Michigan State. I played tennis and I think I, you know, I wanted to stay involved with sports, but I didn't know what that looked like. And so, you know, I moved to Atlanta to find a job in the sports space. And like a lot of our lives and a lot of our careers, it evolved a bit, right? I mean, I started doing lots of little odds and ends jobs and I didn't have a lot of money when I got to Atlanta. I didn't know a lot of people, but the Olympics was here, you know, lots of pro team sports teams. And I'd grown up in East Lansing, then gone 2 miles away to college. So, you know, through networking, through grinded it a little bit through getting in front of people. And I always say, when you ask for advice, you get a job. And when you ask for a job, you get advice. And you know, I got an opportunity with a small agency and then I saw a gap. And I think probably like a lot of your listeners, I mean, when you see a gap in the market, Arthur Blank, who owns the Falcons, who started Home Depot, told me once on my podcast, he said, You know, Molly, if you see a gap in the market and you follow your heart, it's probably gonna work. And at some level, that was what happened. I saw a gap. We, we had the agency, had 4 or 5 clients, and I thought, gosh, there's all these baseball players in Atlanta. Let's, let's go get 'em. And so I started recruiting and signing athletes, coaches, and it, it, it evolved over almost 18 years and, you know, signed about 300 guys and gals over to that, you know, almost 2 decades. But the, but then to sort of your question, I, you know, saw this common thread between the best, the way they thought, behaved, recovered, navigated change, adversity. And so I wrote a book and thought, well, maybe this will help them. And, you know, and then I wrote another one and then I started speaking and that's my world now. I speak and write and we have training products and all that kind of stuff. So it's evolved over the last, you know, 30 years.

Awesome. And Molly, you negotiated over $500 million in contracts and represented over 300 of sports' biggest names. Whew. Let's take a break over there, right? So when you look back at those negotiations, and what surprised you the most during that negotiation with, I'm assuming, a male-dominant industry?

Oh yeah, it was all men. I mean, the truth is I was often the only woman in the room and often mistaken as the secretary or the attorney. And why is she in here? Certainly she doesn't know a thing about sliders and curveballs and double switches and no way. So, you know, what surprised me the most is in an industry that is incredibly competitive, there's actually more agents than athletes to represent. A lot of people say so it's really competitive, but what surprised me and kind of to your earlier comment, it's about relationships, it's about connection. And what I found is the better my relationships were, whether it was with the athlete or the coach or the, the, the team or the general manager or the manufacturer rep with the, you know, the better the relationship was, the quicker I could negotiate and navigate deals and often the better the outcome. And so a differentiator for me in an industry was, was certainly being a woman, but it was building strong relationships, nurturing and navigating those effectively. So that I could close better deals and close them faster. And the world often thinks, well, gosh, as an agent, I mean, you're just taking the gloves off and it is on, right? But the truth is I found that it was, it was about the relationship. It was about connection. It was about all of those things was a big differentiator for closing better deals faster for my clients.

That's— I have so many questions because, you know, I think about the movie Jerry Maguire. I can't help not think about like, You know, there's always the, you know, the sexy part of something and then there's like the real part of it, right? In every, in every world.

Sure.

When it, when it came down to like, you know, negotiating for these athletes, when you were building the relationship, because that doesn't always get talked about when we talk about negotiation building, it does, but then it's also like, how do you make sure you put your needs first and create win-win? But there's a lot of different techniques, tactics, what have you when it comes to negotiation. And a lot of women don't even get in the game of negotiation. So a lot of women that are listening right now are negotiating properties and negotiating terms, especially right now with the economy shifting and traditional lending and institutional lending kind of getting tighter, interest rates going up, a lot of private money, a lot of creative financing happening in our world.

Yeah. Yeah.

So that just opens the Pandora's box of need for negotiation. And I remember a point you made on one of your blogs and some of the work that you've put out there saying that women are hesitant to even even to negotiate.

Yeah.

So in other words, even before you negotiate, they're even, they're not even in the game.

Yeah.

They're not even in the conversation. So for you as representing these athletes, back to my original point, how did you, how did you navigate the relationship so that you can put your athlete first and also get the best negotiation you could for everyone? Because sometimes I, I, my point in asking that is that sometimes it's really hard for relationship-oriented people because they're hesitant because they don't want to say the wrong thing. They don't want to not be liked. They don't want to have ticked off— you wouldn't have wanted to tick off your client. So how do you navigate relationship first as you try to get the best for everyone?

Yeah. I mean, you know, I think one, I think one of the mistakes people make when they negotiate is they spend so much time worried about what they want, right? What, what is the outcome they want most? The amount of money, the terms, the, the, all the things that go into to any deal. And instead, what I believe is that, is that we've gotta pull back and say, who are we negotiating with? How are they wired? What matters to them? Are they really only worried about the numbers, the financial side? Or are they worried more worried about sort of the long-term implications of this deal? Are they most worried about making sure the relationship stays intact and it doesn't get jammed up? You know, what are they, are they worried about the timing of the deal, the logistics of the deal? So the biggest, I think, mistake sometimes we make is we sit back and we go, well, here's the thing, you know, can you make, we make our list of all this stuff. We've gotta pull back and say, who are we navigating this conversation with and what matters most to them? So anytime I was negotiating, if I was negotiating a middle infielder's deal with a team, I wanted to get inside that team's world. Who do they have coming up in the minor leagues? Who's on the free agent market, right? Who else is in that, in that clubhouse right now that could help them? How important is this to this player, to the, this player is to the team and the reputation. And I spent so much time preparing and getting in the head and the heart of the person I was negotiating with. And, and then the other thing I think's counterintuitive, but to your question about relationships, we, we also have to give to the people that we wanna connect with. And this is counterintuitive. Like people think, well, no man, you, you don't add value to the people you negotiate with. Look, in life, the more somebody likes you and the more they think you can help them, the more they want to connect with you and navigate conversations and negotiation. At the end of the day, it's just a conversation. It's a difficult one with a lot of moving parts and it zigs and zags and there's no, it's not a straight line. And, but it's a conversation and we want to have conversations and navigate those difficult conversations with people that we at some level sort of enjoy dealing with. And so I, I think it's important to recognize that if people don't like us, they don't wanna help us and they're gonna do what they can to maybe look somewhere else to try to, to close that deal. But preparation to me is integral. But to your question about, you know, what I want so badly for women in the world is to practice negotiating and to recognize that it's everywhere. It's everywhere we turn. It's negotiating our time. It's negotiating our energy. It's negotiating what we say yes to and what we say no to. So often people think of negotiation as financial and terms and money, and, and certainly it is a huge part of all of those moments. But I would recognize and challenge people to practice negotiating in the little moments, because to me, the reason that women aren't negotiating as much and what the data shows, what the research shows, and certainly in my own life, what my experiences have been, it's just a lack of practice. And because they're not practicing enough, because they're not doing it enough, They don't have the confidence. I mean, I certainly didn't start negotiating $100 million Major League Baseball contracts, right? Or $50 million coaching contracts. I mean, I started doing $25,000 autograph signings for a player, right? Or, or an endorsement deal or a speaking engagement or heck, even tradeouts for my clients, right? I'm gonna have him do acts and he gets free dry cleaning. And so, but when you start with these littler deals, then when you get inside of the $100 million deals or the bigger deals, You've practiced enough that you can navigate them with confidence because, you know, to me, the way that we ask for what we want when we're negotiating has everything to do with whether we get it or not. Our tone, our timing, our level of confidence in the way that we ask for what we want. It is integral to whether we get it or not. So when we practice a lot, we gain the confidence and the understanding to allow us to to navigate those moments better?

You know, in any single sport, right? Baseball, basketball, I played handball. We gotta follow the rules of the game. And I think that many times women don't even know that they've been, they are being played, that there is just a matter of knowing the rules of negotiation. You mentioned voice tonality, you mentioned body language. What are the other unspoken rules that you would recommend women to observe? Because that is how, like, 101.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And in our negotiation training, we touch on these, but, you know, I think a couple of the big ones would be, you know, when we find ourselves maybe getting a little defensive, right? Which, which happens, doesn't it? Like whether they're, they're not paying attention to us, whether we're not feeling respected, whether we're frustrated with where the the deal is, we have to get curious in that moment. We've gotta shift from defensiveness to curiosity. It's a big mindset shift, but it changes the way we show up. And there was lots of moments where I was getting defensive. I was frustrated. I was, you know, I felt like it was my client, but yet they were talking to the guy that worked for me cuz he was a dude and he played baseball, right? So, and I would instantly shift to curiosity to trying to find a way to to connect, to ask questions and connect. The other big one to me is pausing. So often when people negotiate, they just keep going. Maybe they've connected, maybe they've laid the foundation, maybe they've, you know, asked for what they want, and then they just keep talking. If you've built the connection, if you've prepared, if you've laid the foundation, when you ask for what you want, zip it. It's like when you go to work out, you do abs with your breath. And you're throwing that medicine ball, throw that ball over and just let them hold it. Let them hold it. Because you know what, in that moment, you're sending a message of, look, I meant what I said. I mean it. This is where I am. And I mean, and I think it's important to recognize that sometimes a pause can be 30 seconds, 2 minutes, a week, a month, right? I was negotiating a baseball player's contract who was arbitration eligible, and we hadn't been able to get it done. And so we were gonna have to go to arbitration, which is when I put a guy in a room with 3 strangers to, you know, to, to make a decision on what my guy's gonna get paid. And I never liked to do that. It's not good for the athlete. So we'd been negotiating for 4 months and we just couldn't get it done. And I thought, man, this is unbel— you know, now I'm gonna have to go arbitrate that 11 o'clock that night. And I had laid the foundation. I'd asked for what I wanted. I had a great relationship with this general manager. He calls me up at 11 o'clock at night the next morning. We're flying to Phoenix for the hearing. And he said, hey, Molly. I said, yes. And I was sound asleep, right? I was, he said, you're firm. You're headed to Phoenix. I thought, I thought I'd get a call from you. And I said, no, man, we're firm. And I just paused. And it was a minute, minute and a half. And my husband was sort of there. And he said, is he still there? Like, like, You, you gotta be joking. And I was like, yes, you know, and literally a minute and a half later, he goes, unbelievable. You got a deal. You got a deal. I'll email you over the term sheet. And, and it was done. And that at the core was about pausing. In that moment, I could have gone back to all the things that I'd already said, all the reasons why my guy should have got, could have gone through. I'd done all that. I needed him to know like, dude, we're not kidding. Like you start talking in that moment and he goes, all right, you got a deal, but we're gonna pull these bonuses out. All right, you got a deal if we, we drop the base to X or Y. But I just sat there and we got what we wanted. And I also had a client that was confident and ready to stay firm, which was, of course, helpful as well.

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I wanna talk about the overtalking piece. I did door-to-door sales and they had this acronym called KISS, keep it short and simple. And we knew that we overtalked when we heard the following sentence. Let me think about it. Oh, that was hard. That was hard, but at the beginning you're like, this is so great. This is going to support your business. You're going to grow. And then you're excited, excited, excited. And then you don't shush. And they're saying, okay, let me think about it. And then it's just like, I just overtalked the situation. It did so, so crucial. And I only learned pause years later when I worked for a commercial developer. Jim, Jim, if you're listening, let's get lunch. Super, super important. I observed him negotiating multimillion dollar deals, complicated situations, and he had on his chair, like he moved his chair. People couldn't see him or do anything, but he was having so much fun with the negotiation. And at certain points he will pause and he will do like this. For me, and he will mute people. He will talk about something else. And I was like, exactly what you said. Are they still there?

Yeah.

He's like, yeah. And whoever speaks first is going to lose.

Yep.

So I start practicing it. I'll mute myself and just go silence. And it works so perfectly. You gain this unspoken confidence. Where you stand, but you got to back it up too, right? You cannot just pretend, as you were saying, because the person that you had, you got to make a decision about it and then stand. My question to you is, when do you know it's not going to work?

When you don't walk away.

Exactly.

Yeah. When do you know when to walk away? Here's what I always— I think it's important to ask yourself, am I going to be excited, if you will, or am I going to be happy if this deal goes through under these conditions? right? Like, am I going to regret the terms of this deal and have to live into it? Right? And I think that we have to ask ourselves that question. Is this a deal that I wanna service against on these terms? So if I had a client who grinded me on my feet with them, and maybe, you know, I always say you gotta be better than your problems, right? And maybe they weren't better than their problems. So now I'm at X percent when it should be at Y. And I know that guy or gal is gonna call me every day and, and have expectations to be just to be served like everybody else. And you know, you have to be very intentional. You have to pull back and say, I mean, cuz there's nothing worse than agreeing to a bad deal. And so how do you know? I think you've gotta just get clear with yourself. Do I wanna service this relationship and this deal under these terms? And if not, we've gotta walk away because the truth is it's, it's compromising our ability to be a part of something else. So it's not just about that deal. It's the fact that that's going to suck time from you, energy from you, resources from you that now you can't pour into something else that might have been better. But I also think it's important to pull back and say, how do I leave this in such a way that the relationship stays intact? And that creates— that takes energy. It takes intentionality. It takes all those things. But for me as an agent, it was incredibly important to always keep the relationship because If you've got 50 guys in the big leagues and there's 30 teams or whatever, you, you gotta make sure that, that you can pick up the phone if you take a pass on the Yankees and call them back for another guy. So the relational piece is an important thing to ask yourself. How do I best walk away in a way that allows this relationship to stay intact? And, you know, in general, I believe it's about authenticity. It's about transparency. It's about being real. With people and being honest. And often, obviously, that's, that's what's gonna help keep that relationship intact.

You know, as I'm hearing you talk about your experiences, Molly, all the things that you're saying make someone or can make someone a really effective negotiator. I think about so many of the women in our community, and I, what is dawning on me right now, if that's even the right way to say it, is that women actually have a lot of the right recipe to be actually amazing negotiators.

Totally.

I'm thinking about myself, right? Because whenever we're interviewing someone, we're ever in the game of anything, you know, how can we not think about ourselves? And I, oh, I've never seen myself like Liz in 3 words with amazing negotiator being the top 3 ways you describe yourself. I probably wouldn't use that in the top 3. I don't know if I'd use it in the top 10, but I gotta say my way of being, I actually could be a very good negotiator.

Absolutely.

Very good negotiator. And what, what's coming up for me, and I think could come up for a lot of other women, In that, who are you speaking to? The authenticity. Hey, if this is not gonna work, how do we end this in an amicable way? Mm-hmm. That's women are that naturally. And what I'm saying that is that we negotiate with our kids, we negotiate with spouses, we negotiate with neighbors. I negotiate all the time. I don't think I've ever called it negotiation because when I think of negotiation, I think of a boardroom. I think of hard-nosed terms. I think about that as negotiation. And I think we need to stop thinking of that because if we don't think of that as negotiation and we actually think it's more of this, you know, a collaboration, I think women would jump in faster. I think they would negotiate faster because I think we've all looked at it a little more like the boardroom way of looking at it versus the, who are we talking to? The, the question I have for you is how do women practice? Like things that are popping into my head are, you know, how do I practice more? How do I practice more? How have you seen women practicing?

Yeah. And I really love the way you wrapped that bow around that, because I hope that women heard you. I think, I think that's a really great way to say it. And I couldn't agree more. You know, I think the first way to practice is to recognize what you just sort of are seeing at some level, right? Which is that it's everywhere. It's with our kids. It's with our spouse. It's with the lawn guy. It's with the, housekeeper, the nanny, it's everywhere. And if we have the, the wherewithal, you go get your car washed and the guy says it's $20 and you say, cool, well, if I pay $18 in cash, what do you think? Is that better for you? They're like, yeah, sure. I'll take $18 in cash. Yeah.

Cool.

Like it's everywhere you turn. And so I think we've got to have the courage to do it in really small moments like that in what I believe are potentially maybe more transactional type situations. And practice. And for me, I think it's opening the lens up to say it's everywhere. And I grew up in an environment with a mother who brought, you know, 30 coupons to the grocery store. Half of them were expired. And we'd get to the checkout line and the lady would go, well, it depended on the kind of attendant you got. So I'd watch my mom walk up and look at the attendants and try to figure out who she thinks, who she thinks she can connect with, who she could maybe work a little bit to take these other 15 that are expired. And then we get in the line and then, you know, the lady would maybe say, oh yeah, this coupon, I'm sorry, it's expired. And she'd go, oh man, gosh, you know, I came here because I wanted to use that coupon. I want to use it. You don't know. She just worked her for fun. And often, right, she'd get the lady to go, all right, all right. Because she liked her, right? You know, practice in all these little moments. You find a dress at Nordstrom's and it's got a stain on it. You know, work them. Get 25% off because you know you can get the stain out when you get home. I have 3 daughters and when they were 6, we needed to get braces and we had one and then we had twins 12 months later. That's a whole nother story, but we have 3 little miracles under 12 and a half months. And so I'm at the orthodontist and the orthodontist says, of course they all need braces and shocker, right? And they did. And I said, okay. So I walk into the back room with the manager person and she says, here's the deal. You know, it's, it's, this is the impetus around it. It's 3 grand a piece. So it's $9,000, you know, it's a 24-week cycle, blah, blah, blah. She walks me through the whole thing and I said, sort of pause. And I go, wow, man, your waiting room, is it always this busy? Like, how did that work? And she goes, oh yeah, it's always, I mean, they're in a great location. I said, wow. And I said, you got 5 chairs out? Yeah. And I said, how many people you see a day? And she's going through it. And I said, wow. And I said, do they all pay on time and all that? Because there was a payment schedule, right? And she said, uh, oh no, that's half of my job, man. I got to chase all these people down that don't pay. And I go, wow, that's got to That's kind of a bummer. And she goes, oh yeah, I hate it. It's the least favorite part of my job. And I said, man, that's a nightmare. And she goes, yeah. And I said, hey, what if we did something right? Like where I give you $6 grand cash and I just pay you right up front. We're done. We pay for all the girls. I trust you guys. I know you're— they had an incredible reputation, all that kind of stuff. And then we just, you know, it's like a buy 2, get 1 free ortho deal. And kind of laughed. And she goes, well, oh my God, I don't know. I've never done that. Let me go Talk to the docs and see if we can— comes back 5 minutes later and goes, Dawn, they love it. Yeah. I mean, you're good. Write a check for 6 and then we'll— now I say that only because it was about getting in her head and heart. What is she worried about? She doesn't want to have to chase people down for money. She's busy. She's got a waiting room. And look, I mean, now she saw we solved that problem for her and kind of everybody won, right? But it was about getting curious. It was about anticipating, you know, kind of what are the things that she wakes up every day and worries about. But at the end of the day, I tell that story really because Most people in the world don't think that you grind it with an orthodontist office, right? But it's just an example of, to your question, you can practice everywhere. I mean, you can get, go to Starbucks and, oh man, I wanted to get that extra shot in my latte. Let me go talk to that barista and see if I can get a little free instead of paying the 25 cents. Let me see. And I'm not suggesting that we're cheap, but I'm not suggesting any of that. But what I am suggesting is just have a little fun, practice. Just try in little moments. And the more comfortable you get asking for what you want, and the more you do it, the better you get in the bigger moments.

I remember years ago in one of the, I don't know, workshops, masterminds, whatever it was, the situation. We were at this conference and we were closer to a mall. And one of the exercises that we had to do, we paired up in small groups of 4 or 5 people. And we needed to go to this mall to get stuff for free. And I was like, impossible. They're all corporate. I don't have the decision maker in front of me. And, and, and all of that started running in my head, right? And then the guy said, relax, people. Whatever you can get, a little extra scoop of ice cream or whatever it is, the goal here is for you guys to Practice.

Yeah.

Practice whatever it is. And if you buy something, try to get something extra. Oh, you bought a pair of shoes because you were going to buy it, but can you get a pair of socks for free? And I remember that we, we leveraged the food. We, we were a group of 5 and he said, listen, we're going to all eat over here. Uh, but we want all our drinks comped. And a couple of people said, can't do that. Can I do that? And then we found one restaurant. The manager was there and then we got it. And it's just the practicing of it. At the end of the day, we were just away for fun. It was like, who gives a shit? Nobody knows us here. We're nobody. We're not going to come back to this city. So who cares? Let's just ask. And we just got into a very interesting conversations. My point to you, Molly, is why we cannot, or women that are listening, cannot afford to avoid not negotiating. What is on the table?

Oh man. I mean, I would just encourage number one, you know, all the emotional intangibles of regret, feeling taken advantage of, feeling that we're not being copped like somebody else in our space. I mean, all those things. Things, but then just pull back and do the math. You know, I mean, just do the math over whether it's a career conversation and your comp inside of your career, do the math. It's staggering. If at 23 years old, young girls start a job and then they transition, however they transition, but if they're not asking for what they want and getting it, if they're not consistently having the courage to have those conversations, depending on the level of the employee and their package and all those details, I mean, it can be hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars depending on who it is and what they do. So there's that piece of it, but I would say the bigger piece of it is not feeling like you're being paid at the level by which you deserve and/or is comparable to other people that you work with or to others in that same role from an industry perspective and a comp perspective. And you know, it's funny, like I have, when a baseball player, you know, so often the world looks and goes, why does that guy need all that money? You know, but the truth is it's also a little bit sitting inside of the way the organization is gonna view that athlete, the amount of energy they're gonna put around it, the amount of support they're gonna put around him, the amount of resources they're gonna put around him when he gets hurt. It, when you pay a guy this kind of first round money, for example, if he gets hurt, Even if it's a third round guy getting first round money, they're going to make sure that guy gets back out on the field. And so at some level, we have to recognize that it's about the way that we're treated inside of circumstances and situations too. So there's the mental anguish, the emotional anguish of it, the frustration, and then there's certainly the financial and real implication as well. That's, that's significant.

Yeah. And I keep thinking about like, financing. And that's a huge, right? You cannot buy real estate without someone's money or, you know, and the world is our oyster, even with banks, with even with institutions, let alone private money. And we don't often know that we can even negotiate with a community bank on terms with every— there's so many pieces of this puzzle when it comes to investing in real estate that we could be negotiating that we're not asking, we're not mindful of. It does come back to who are you negotiating with? Who are you building that relationship with? And, you know, really evaluating it for yourself and not putting yourself secondary or last.

I would just add to that, that we had a group of salespeople that went through our negotiation training. And it was interesting because we have this tool that we use that helps people prepare for negotiations. And one of the things is what is in play, right? Like, what are all the things that are negotiable inside of this? And when we went through this exercise, traditionally, these sales folks generally just focused on 6 or 7 things that were kind of the, the default, pretty obvious things that are always in play. But when we went through that exercise, they were able to pull back and collectively expand that list to something like 23 different things that were in fact in play that could be used as a carrot or a stick, or could be used inside of the deal. And it was powerful because to your point, Often we default to the comfortable, to the what the world, that standard, the industry, to what we tend to always sort of lean into. But pull back and get creative, right? To me, one of the, one of the other things that's incredibly important in negotiation is creativity as you prepare. Get creative. Yeah. Because there's often more in play than we recognize on the surface.

Yeah. I wanna relate that to a conversation we were having with one of our Stride members about negotiating an equity deal. So, you know, basically building partnership to buy a property and to go off, you know, get into a project together. And it was interesting in navigating that conversation together. You know, what we often think in negotiating is the players are in the room, right? The two people we're gonna go into partnership with. But I, I reminded her, and I wanna say this because it's so pertinent right now with creative financing, is that it's not just the two people, it's the two people. If this goes well, who do the two people know? If they have money to invest and they're looking to, you know, build partnerships with, with very active investors, they know other people like themselves, right? High net worth individuals or have that. So negotiation's not just taking away, it's also adding to, not just the people in the room. And I think in, in our world of creative financing, that's a big, big, big piece. And that's a piece that we don't often think about.

Yeah.

But when it comes to that, you know, private, private individuals just creating opportunities together. So. So yeah, it's, it's a lot of pieces to this puzzle, you know, and I, and it's great, great. So great getting into a lot of this with you from such a different sector, yet there's so many similarities. I think that's the, the point of why we're so excited about getting into this topic with you in particular, Molly, is because we can learn so much from different industries. Sure. That we can relate to our own. And, and what you've shared today has been just so helpful. So where can the ladies listening learn more about you, connect with you further, and see all the great things you're doing with your business.

Yeah. Well, thank you for what you do and helping women in the space and men, like you said, I mean, it's awesome. MollyFletcher.com is my website and people can go there and kind of everything will stem from there that people could be, could be interested in. We just launched a new course on sort of 8 keys to unlock next level success. That's, that's pretty awesome. We just launched it last week. That's what's making me think to share it, but all that's on MollyFletcher.com. If people are interested, check it out.

Awesome. All this information you guys can find on our show notes. Now we're going to transition to our fabulous 3 questions. The first question for you, Molly, is what's the most transformational book you ever read?

Wow. The most transformational book I've ever read. I mean, I guess I would say probably the Bible. Pretty transformational and pretty powerful, obviously enough said with that one, but the Bible. Awesome.

Second question is, what's the most powerful routine that you do to live a financially free and balanced life? Whatever balance means to you.

I mean, number one, I mean, we are, uh, my husband is an incredible part of, of supporting our business. He's also in the commercial real estate space, but you know, I mean, we're pretty debt adverse. You know, I think that allows you to live a free and balanced life when you, when you are incredibly intentional and consistently investing. I mean, we are consistently and kind of play the long game in that space as well.

Awesome. Last question. Which woman, famous or not, has inspired you the most?

I would say, you know, there's a lot of women that have inspired me that I don't know. I don't know Oprah. I think she's incredible. I don't know— well, I've spent some time with Billie Jean King, which was a real treat, but I don't know her incredibly well, but I have had spent some time with her. She's unbelievable to me, what she did for the game of tennis, a sport that changed my life. In an enormous way, you know, Serena Williams, are you kidding me? I mean, just unbelievable, obviously as an athlete and now seeing her step into this role as a mother and loving every minute of it and pouring into her daughter is just really cool. But to say the one, it would, it would be my mom. I mean, my mom and I are, and dad are really close. And, you know, my mom is somebody who obviously I know incredibly well and who I talk to every day. I'm 50 years old and she's 80 and we talk every day and she's a person in my life who I can, who can say things to me pretty, pretty directly, but it also snaps me right back into shape if I needed it. So, and I just have a lot of respect for that kind of wife she is, the community leader she's been, you know, she worked in the public schools with underprivileged kids forever, 30 years as a teacher and ran about every board in our community. I just have a lot of respect for her and have always tried to model myself in so many ways after her, because she— I'm grateful because, you know, when you're, when you're in that agent space, there's, you know, there's a lot of money and there's a lot of really, you know, planes and boats and fancy this and that. And you can get sucked into that if you're not intentional. And, you know, I always felt like my mom, when I was probably a little bit vulnerable at 26, 27, 28, kept me locked and loaded on what matters most in life. And I'm super grateful for that.

That's awesome. That's great. Sounds like a phenomenal woman. Molly, thank you so much for being on our show. Thanks for sharing all your wisdom today. We appreciate your time so much. So thank you.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

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