173: Negotiate Successfully As A Woman with Kathryn Valentine

You're listening to the Overcoming Overspending Podcast, the podcast where your life and money merge. I'm your host and money coach, Paige Pritchard. Each week, I bring you the mindset shifts and emotional tools to transform your spending habits so you can feel powerful, peaceful, and in control of your money.

It's time to build the wealth you're worthy of.

Let's dive in.

Hello, welcome to episode 173 of Of the Overcoming Overspending Podcast.

All right, y'all, let's negotiate. Not you and me negotiate, but this is such a cool episode, y'all. I am so excited to bring you this episode this week with Kathryn Valentine, my amazing, amazing guest this week, because we are going to be breaking down negotiation this week. Obviously, what you're going to be able to tell by the end of this episode is that negotiation is not my forte. Negotiation is an area that I don't know a lot about. I'm not very good at. When I was working in my corporate jobs, the 2 corporate jobs that I had, I never once negotiated. Okay, never once. Now, should I have negotiated? Yes, I should have. But did I do it? No, I didn't. And I share a couple reasons in today's episode of why I didn't, but I also think another big reason that I never negotiated was because I never felt confident enough to do it. I didn't feel empowered to do it, how to approach it in a way where I could A, ensure that I was going to get what I was asking for while also B, avoiding the backlash that can sometimes come when you negotiate as a woman. Kathryn and I spent some time talking about this, but there are big differences between how negotiations are perceived And therefore how negotiations should be approached based on gender. If you are negotiating as a male, or if you are negotiating as a female. And so knowing that most of the people listening to this podcast either are or identify as women, I wanted to bring you guys a conversation today around how to negotiate successfully as a woman. I could not have found a better person than Kathryn Valentine to have this conversation with, because y'all, let me tell you what, Kathryn is the negotiation expert. In fact, she specializes in gendered negotiation, and her entire company exists to empower her clients to negotiate successfully as women. Her work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and she has been invited to speak on her research at Harvard, Wharton, JP Morgan, and Meta. All that to say, She's a pretty big deal. We are so lucky to have here today. Catherine and I are going to talk about and break down the importance of negotiation over the lifetime of your career, the impact that it can have to your net worth, which that is going to be shocking. It was shocking to me. I know it will be eye-opening to you. We're going to talk about the biggest obstacles that Catherine sees that stop women from negotiating in the first place. She is going to walk us through 3 strategies that you can take into your next negotiation to reduce the possibility of backlash. But to also get what you want. And she's also going to tell us how to know when it's time to either walk away from your current role or to walk away from a negotiation. This is an episode of the podcast that can have a massive impact on your future earning potential and your overall net worth. Kathryn has a ton of great resources that she talks about in the episode today. She has a negotiation calculator. She has a list of 76 things that you can negotiate. She runs negotiation bootcamps. And she also has a list of resources that you can use to benchmark your salary so that you guys don't have to go and hunt for all of that. I have taken that and I have linked all of it in the show notes. So if you hear anything that we talk about or reference in this episode, just go to the show notes. It will all be linked there for you along with all of Kathryn's information. Like I always ask, if you get a lot out of this episode, please do not be shy about sharing the episode. Tag me, tag Kathryn. Please share this episode far and wide, and also if you were able to use the tactics in this episode to successfully navigate your next negotiation, please do not be shy about letting both Kathryn and I know. We wanna make sure that we can congratulate you and celebrate with you on your successful negotiation. So without further ado, let's hop into this one today. Please enjoy this conversation on how to negotiate successfully as a woman with my guest, Kathryn Valentine. Enjoy.

Kathryn, welcome to the podcast. I'm so thrilled to have you today to talk all about negotiation. I have been wanting to talk about this for a long time, but as I was sharing with you before we started recording, this is definitely not my area of expertise. It is yours though, so you are the perfect person to have this conversation. Welcome.

Thank you so much. I'm really glad to be here, and I feel like, you know, we'll get into it, but I've spent over a decade studying how to negotiate specifically as a woman, but I don't know that much about finances. So when listening to your podcast, it really brings the two together. Like, I can help you make more, but then what you do with that extra is really where I think some of the magic is. So thanks for letting me chat with you about this.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Our 2 worlds are just meshing together and it's just a perfect fit. Give us a little bit of background on you. I heard you tell this story on another podcast, but I want you to share it here. I know that you have a very interesting botched negotiation story. I would love to hear.

Sorry, that time I was escorted out by security that time. So I was getting my master's in business. I had already been— I'd already worked for about 5 years and I was doing my MBA internship, which is essentially like a 3-month job interview. I mean, at this point in time, you've invested a ton of money and time into getting this degree and you are crossing your fingers that you're going to get a job at the end of it that makes that investment, that justifies that investment. And so it's a very high-pressure situation. I was in there. We were given a summer project. I finished my summer project in 4 weeks. And multiple— I mean, I think, you know, the senior leaders heard about it. Like, multiple people were coming up and saying, like, hey, this is incredible work. What's happening for the rest of the summer? And my idea was that if I could negotiate to be placed on another team, then at the end of the summer, I would have twice as many people who could vouch for me. And maybe that is how I would get this job that I so desperately wanted. And so this was on a Friday that I got this idea. This will date me a little bit, but it's when Barnes Noble were, like, everywhere. So I left work, drove to the Barnes Noble, bought all the negotiation books, read them, underlined them, highlighted them, wrote out like a script of what I was going to say. And then I practiced it all weekend. I've never been accused of underpreparing. And so I probably spent— Paige, I probably spent 20 hours getting ready for this conversation. I mean, it was extreme. But I was young, and I was nervous. And so I went into work. We had a meeting Monday at 10:00 AM. And I went and I asked the intern coordinator, if I could be placed on another team. And what I didn't know at that point in time, which I now very clearly understand, is that all of the advice that I had been taking was not created for me. It was created for men. And I managed to step in the crosshairs of that. So I said what the books told me to say, and it ticked this person off so much that I was immediately told that I was not a culture fit anymore. So I walk in, one of the top interns, and within 7 minutes, I'm being told I'm not a culture fit, which we both know means I'm definitely not gonna get this job. And since I'm not gonna get the job, the internship no longer makes sense cuz I need to go find a job. And then, you know, company protocol is if you're no longer their employee, they escort you out of the building by security. And I was like deposited onto the sidewalk holding this really sad cardboard box of my things. It was probably, I don't know, 10:20. By the time all this had happened, it happened—

Oh my gosh.

So fast. My joke is like, I derailed my career in less time than it took me to get a latte.

I feel like you would see that in a movie or something. It's like a storyline in a movie.

It was so bad. And so I was in a really fortunate position where I had a year of business school left. And so I went back and I immediately went to my negotiations professor, who is very famous in business negotiation circles. She's on retainer for a bunch of huge companies for all of their like multi-billion dollar acquisitions. And I said, hey, here's what happened to me. Like, what did I do wrong? And she said, I'm not really sure, but there's a couple new researchers working on what the role of gender is in these conversations, and you might want to go talk to them. And so I spent the next year just researching how to negotiate specifically as a woman. And I just remember sitting in the library in complete shock because I had these huge— I printed out everything, right? These huge binders of academic papers. And the endgame is the way that we are taught to negotiate not only does not work for us, but is worse for us in many cases than if we hadn't negotiated at all. But nobody tells you that, right? So if you Google, like, how do I negotiate, you're going to get advice that was written for men. It's just not going to say that.

Yeah.

And so this became very much a passion project that then turned into a full-time thing on how do you teach women how to negotiate. And then actually the bulk of my work is corporations who hire me to run workshops so that their employees know how to negotiate more effectively. Because if you can negotiate effectively, you're much less likely to leave.

Interesting. I'm totally with you. Whether we want to sit here and say that it should or shouldn't be this way, this is like one of those things where it's like right or wrong, this is just how it is. And I think that any woman listening to this, you have to understand that you negotiating is not going to be the same. It's probably, you know, Depending on who you're negotiating with, depending on your company culture, depending on a lot of factors outside of you, chances are in most situations, it's not going to be received the same as if your male colleagues are negotiating. And so right or wrong, I think you just have to be aware that, okay, this is the environment that I'm in. So it's a game. Let me learn the rules to play the game so I can play the game well and I can win the game. Let's start here. You said there's a lot of traditional advice in the books, on the internet that we're going to read. What are some of those things that you just want to go ahead and tell us? Oh, you're going to hear this. Just don't listen to it. Like, what are those faux pas?

Yeah. Do not walk into your boss's office and say, I deserve to be paid more. That is significantly more like— that was in The Wall Street Journal a year or two ago. That is significantly more likely to result in backlash for women than men. That is terrible advice. And you'll see things like that all the time. What the research shows, Paige, which I find particularly interesting because of what you just shared, is the research shows women are actually better negotiators than men when we negotiate on behalf of someone else. Okay, well, why is that? It's because that's in line with gender stereotypes of who we are. When we're negotiating on behalf of ourselves is when we trip some of those gender stereotypes, and that's what results in backlash. Interestingly enough, men are actually at a higher risk of backlash when they're negotiating for nontraditional things like flexibility or time home with children. Women are at a higher risk of backlash when we're negotiating sort of a whole host of traditional things. That said, there's plenty of research that backs up— and we'll talk about this— but like the 3 strategies you can use to have really good outcomes and virtually eliminate your risk of backlash. And the thing that blew my mind when I read this 10 years ago is how are we not talking about this? Like, we are half the population, but the narrative on how to negotiate is still very much like extremely aggressive.

Yeah. Or you just are told, just go in and tell your boss, like, I either need to be getting paid more or I deserve to be getting paid more. Yeah. I can see how that would not go over well.

Yeah.

I'm just curious about this. Is there anything in the research that shows effectiveness of negotiation if you are negotiating with a man versus a woman? Like, let's say if you're Supervisor, if it's a man versus a woman, and the success of that?

I love this question. It's probably actually the most popular question that I get. And the answer to this is that when I would— well, when I started researching, I thought that I was going to need to produce sort of 2 different guides. Here's what you do if you're a woman negotiating with a woman, but here's the situation where you're negotiating with a man. And the answer is that women have biases too. And actually, it depends on how you present to the world. Not who you're negotiating with. So the strategies we use are actually the same. And you'll— I still hear now a lot of stories about people who either find it less intimidating or significantly more intimidating, but for various genders, right? There's not actually a through line there. Through line is depending on how you present, you might want to negotiate a little bit differently.

As you're saying that, that honestly doesn't surprise me a lot. Like what you said, women, as much as we probably want to think that we don't, we still have our own biases.

Well, and then In the workplace, particularly in male-dominated industries. So a lot of the work that I do for corporations is finance, tech, consulting, accounting. So historically male-dominated, particularly in those industries. Sometimes you will come across women who have a little bit of an I ate broken glass, so you need to as well mentality. I don't think it's as prevalent. You know, it's, it's not everywhere, but sometimes you'll come, you'll come up to that. And I, to your point, Yeah. It's not actually who you're negotiating with, it's who you are.

Let's kind of backtrack a little bit. I'd like to just start at a very basic level of give us the case for why we should even be negotiating at all. Like, why is this important?

A couple of reasons. One, research shows that when you negotiate, you're much more likely to stay in paid employment. And so this came out very clearly during COVID but I did a project with a large consulting firm, and after we finished, They had a 50% reduction in intent to leave because now all of a sudden you have tools to get what you need. You need more resources. Here's how you get them. You need an adjusted schedule. Here's how we're gonna have that conversation. And no longer is hearing a no this career-debilitating situation the way that it was when I did it right now. It's just a piece of information and there's no backlash associated with it. So you can ask for whatever you need. So that's one reason. Another reason is For mental well-being. So we know that when you have more control over your situation, you tend to be more likely to thrive. And one of the things that I see in a lot of these negotiations is some of them are monetary, and I definitely want to talk to you about that given your knowledge area, but more than you would expect aren't monetary at all. It's a woman who wants to negotiate for not only IVF benefits, but also the support to go through that process.

Mm-hmm.

It's somebody who needs to negotiate because the system that their team is on is old and clunky, and if they get this new system, It will allow them to work 40% less. It's someone that needs to negotiate to be offline after 6 PM because of any variety of reasons, right? I worked with a woman who had a son who needed physical therapy and it was just going to have to happen Fridays at 2. There was no way around that. And that was a bit of a negotiation. How can she, you know, how can she do that? There's all kinds of smaller, I don't want to say smaller, non-monetary things that we can also negotiate for. Where do you work has become very salient, but also what resources are you given to do that work? What training do you have? What credibility or credit are you given for doing those work? All of those things are negotiable in some way.

What about the financial impacts of negotiating over your lifetime? You were telling me a story before we hit record and I was like, you're gonna have to retell that.

Okay.

And even reshare it, 'cause there, there will be people who are watching this on YouTube, but you showed me an example of A young woman who negotiated a raise and the impact that that was going to have over her career financially.

I wish I'd done this in the previous one, but let me say this here. For any of your audience, if you want to— that list that Paige and I just ran through of things you can negotiate, we've actually built out that resource. So you can go to 76things.com and you can get a list you can download of things that you can negotiate. That way I feel like we're kind of wrapped up there. Okay, so the financial side, Paige, is really interesting, but there's kind of 2 aspects to this. One is Most people, when you say we're gonna negotiate, think about base salary, and we should definitely talk about that, and we will talk about that. But the other thing that you and I emailed about is all the things around base salary that matter, right? And so to tell the story that you were talking about, I did— I'm hired as a speaker pretty often, and I did a talk in June to a group of women, and I got an email afterwards from one of the young women that had been in that audience. And I'll share my screen with you here so you can see it. This is what we were running through. She was 23, and like you said, it was Her first job, she hadn't thought to negotiate. Frankly, most people don't in their first job. She was in tech. She did something very technical. It sounded complicated, but she ended up having a high salary and then negotiating a very significant raise as a result just of sitting in that one workshop. The thing that was really fun though is we popped it into our negotiation calculator where you put in your age, what your compensation is, what raise you might get or did get, and then what the value of that is over the course of your career. So for her, that one conversation is worth $1.7 million before she retires, and that's if she never negotiates again. Most people, when they build this skill, end up negotiating every couple of years and grabbing some really nice gains along the way. Claudia Goldin, who is the Nobel prize winner last year. Her work shows that it's much more financially lucrative to negotiate a promotion than just a raise. But when we think about, you know, $1.7 million for a 1-hour conversation, pretty good. That's pretty good per hour rate there. Yeah.

Yeah. I can't think of another example, another finance example where you would be able to get that level of return in that short amount of time by really just one conversation or like one decision, right? Like the decision to say, I'm going to negotiate this.

Well, And Paige, let's play with this. Like, why don't you just choose an age?

Let's go with something maybe a little bit older. Let's go with like 33.

Excellent. And what does our 33-year-old friend make? And I realize for listeners, this part's a little bit weird because depending on where you are in the country, it's like incredibly different. But yeah, let's put a number out.

Let's go $80,000 a year.

So our 33-year-old friend makes $80,000 a year. And what percent increase does she successfully negotiate? Now, as a background, the highest that I've ever helped somebody with is an 84%. Um, our average after people go through our course or see this content is about a 36%.

Okay, well, let's use that then. Let's do the average 36%.

And that 36% is blended up, um, between your current employer and if you're getting a job offer. Obviously, the job offers are typically higher.

Okay. Yeah. Okay.

So that's $1.6 million. Yeah. Assume that the conversation didn't go as well and it's a 10% increase. That's almost $500,000.

Wow.

For one conversation. And especially when you use these research-based strategies, and Paige, I'm happy to get into them with you, but when you use these research-based strategies, you don't have the risk that I had when I was escorted out of the building, right? There's no risk. It's just that you get a no, and it's OK. It's not a no that carries with it, no, we're not going to promote you ever. No, we're going to sideline you. No, we're taking away your resources. You don't have to worry about that.

This is super eye-opening. We had a 10-minute conversation before we started recording, and I finally had to tell Kathryn, OK, we've got to start recording because we're saying all the things that I want to catch during our conversation. But we were talking about how, depending on how old you are— and I think even that example shows, even if you're negotiating in your 40s or 50s, Or 60s, it's still going to have a bigger impact than just that one raise because you start talking about it year after year after year, and it really is something that just starts to compound. And we talk about this a lot on the podcast, how we just get so much into the mindset of linear, of just like, okay, well, it's just 3%, like, and we're just focused on the next year, maybe the year after that. Like, we're not thinking about the impact that this one negotiation is gonna have on our overall earning potential 30 years from now. But I think it's important to keep that long-term view when you're thinking about the value of why this is something that you should be doing.

Well, and Paige, this is where our worlds collide, right? Um, that $1.7 million is money in your bank account, right? What happens if— because it's excess money— what happens if you invest it? What happens if you get 8% on it? Like, I don't—

I'm—

I don't actually don't even know how to do that math. Um, but Yeah. What happens if you do it every 3 years instead of just once? There's a lot of really cool things that you could do there that would significantly change the wealth that women are able to accumulate.

Yeah, absolutely. Here's what I want to talk about next. Biggest obstacles that you see of why women don't negotiate. Another thing that I shared with you before we started recording, I worked in the corporate world for about 12 years. I had a job that I accepted right out of college. And then it was like 2 and a half years later, I took another job, another corporate job that I ended up staying at for like 10 years. And that was the last corporate job that I had. So I, I had been in 2 situations where I was negotiating a new job. And then in my corporate job that I was at in about 10 years, I don't think I ever negotiated one time. I had one time where my boss actually came to me after I had been there for about 5 years and he was like, hey, I think you're like ready to like move up to the next level. But it was instigated by him. It wasn't even instigated. Truly, Kathryn, I don't know if that had happened if I would have ever come to the table and said like, hey, I'm ready to advance. I'm ready to move to the next step. And I think the things that always stopped me, especially when I was in my younger 20s, is I was just thrilled to have a job. I was thrilled that somebody wanted to hire me and wanted to pay me a salary. I didn't want to make anybody mad. I didn't want to make anybody upset. I didn't want to ruffle feathers. And honestly, there was kind of this part of me that was like, Especially with the new jobs of, is this going to ruffle feathers before I even step foot in the door? Is this going to taint the way that they see me or view me as a new employee as being difficult, hard to work with? And I'm doing all of this in air quotes, right? Like, oh, she's so difficult. Oh, she's so hard to work with. As a recovering people pleaser, that was like the scariest thing to me is how the negotiation was going to alter the way that people saw me. And so I just didn't do it. So what are some things that you see? I'm sure that has to be common, but—

So common, Paige. It's so common. And the other thing, at this point in time, I've gone through about 13,000 pages of academic research. And of all of those studies, the one that has always stood out the most to me is that researchers did a study with children where they invited children to the lab and they said, here's your work. You know, here's a coloring page. Please go color that. And when you're done, come back and tell us what you think your work is worth. And so they, they had like stickers that they were being paid in. So little girls and little boys went color, color, color. They'd come back and they'd give it to the researcher and the researcher would say, thank you so much for your work. How much do I owe you? And what they found is that age 8 is when little girls started to ask for about 40% less than little boys did. And when researchers went to them and said, hey, why did you choose that number? Overwhelmingly, what they heard is the same thing that I hear from women of all ages and that I just heard from you, which is that I don't wanna upset anybody. Like, even, even, I mean, 2 years old, you don't know the tooth fairy's not real, but you know that there's something about negotiating. Your spidey sense is going off and it's going off to take care of you. There's something about negotiating in the way that it has historically been done that's dangerous for women. And that, I think, is what part of what I hear a lot of. And again, we'll talk about the solutions to get around this. What that leads to is, A, it used to lead to women not negotiating. Now women are negotiating about as often as men are, but they're only successful half as often, again, because the tools that we're being given are built for men, right? We're going to give you an alternative to that. But the other thing that happens is that women tend to not negotiate offensively. They tend to wait until their back's against the wall. They absolutely can't do this anymore. This situation is untenable. And then they negotiate. And when you wait until there are no other options, your negotiation is going to have suboptimal outcomes. That's just the research on that, whether it be in a workplace or, you know, global peacekeeping negotiations. If you don't have another option, it's not going to go as well.

Just not wanting to upset anybody. I think that's the, the biggest thing.

And it's—

that's crazy to me that at such a young age, it's like already there. I have a daughter, she's 2, and even just thinking about her, you know, she's still a ways away from being 8, but even just thinking about her and like stuff that she's going to be like picking up on, I couldn't even like point to something in my childhood to tell you like that's what it was or that's where it came from. I think it was just— I mean, I don't know.

No, it's just, it's just societal concept of gender, right? As women, that our value is in others. And as men, you're told that your value is agency. There's another study where they look at toy coding, which is the toys that are given to children. And they show starting back in the 1970s, and every 5 years since that if you go into homes, little boys are being given toys that teach them that they are in control. You build a building with your blocks, you knock it down, you're impacting the world around you. And little girls are disproportionately given toys that you react to. Your baby cries, you feed it. Nana's thirsty, you make her tea in your toy kitchen. And it starts so early that it would be almost impossible. And some people don't suffer from this, and good for you, you're amazing. But it would be almost impossible not to because it's basically just in the water that we drink.

Wow, that's so interesting. Like I said, I look back and that was by far the biggest thing for me was just like, okay, I'm just going to accept the status quo. I'm just gonna accept what they offer me. It's good enough.

I'm so lucky to have a job.

Yeah, truly. That's honestly how I felt. So let's get into how to actually approach the negotiation process, negotiate like a woman in ways that are actually going to work and be effective with us. I know you said that there's 3 strategies that you have, or 3 Is it 3 techniques or 3 strategies?

It's 3 strategies. Think holistically, ask relationally, and then discuss collaboratively. So maybe I'll give you kind of the high level and we can dive into them. Is that—

Yeah, let's go through each one. This is gonna be the helpful part for people. So, so we can spend a lot of time here. So let's dive in.

Great. So think holistically is just a reminder to broaden the aperture a little bit. Again, when you ask people, hey, what's a negotiation? 84% of people picture a person asking for salary, and that's absolutely of a negotiation, but there's so much more you can ask for. So from a financial perspective, I feel like I should call this out for you and your listeners. I mean, you know this, but for your listeners, which is that yes, base salary is important, but also the gender gap in salary is about 20%. That is dwarfed by the gender gap in stock options, which is about 80%. So men are getting about $107,000 in stock options and women are getting about $26,000. 25% fewer women are getting them at all. The gender gap in equity is anywhere from 15 to 30%. There's a gender gap in performance pay. There's a gender gap in 401 benefits. Men are somehow getting 30% more 401 benefits. This is research out of Robert Walters, a recruiting firm. The other one that you can negotiate for, and this one isn't directly financial, but women on average are being given team sizes that are 25 to 40% smaller than comparable men to get the same amount of work done. And so we want to think, You know, when we say think holistically, it's think of all the things you could negotiate that would allow you to deliver your full impact at your lowest stress level. So do you need 3 more people on your team? Do you need to work from home on this day and this day? Do you need this additional training? Do you need a performance bonus that actually rewards the success that you have in your role? And again, I mentioned this, but we built this resource of the 76 things we've seen women negotiate, which you can download at 76things.com, just because it didn't exist anywhere.

Yeah.

A lot of information travels through sort of historical sources of power. So white men mostly were telling each other the things that they had negotiated, but a lot of marginalized groups were locked out of that, and we're trying to shed a light on that, right? So there's all kinds of things. We've seen plenty of people negotiate a car allowance, which never would have occurred to me. I saw someone negotiate a mortgage. There's all over the place of what you can do if you kind of open it up and think about what you might want to negotiate. So that's Think Holistically.

Okay.

Part is ask relationally. And this is the part where the research shows if you do this, you can virtually eliminate— that's a direct quote— the risk of backlash. What the research shows is that when you ask something and show that it's— your ask is both legitimate and beneficial, then you can significantly reduce the risk of backlash while also significantly increasing the chances of success. I don't do one-on-one coaching anymore, but when I did, what I noticed is Women are so busy and sometimes overwhelmed that when you say something that nebulous, it's not practical enough to be helpful. And so we ended up actually creating a formula that you can use to ask relationally, which is past performance plus future vision plus the ask, and then stop talking. Because we found that women, in an attempt to make other people feel comfortable, would start negotiating against themselves, and we don't wanna do that. So what that would look like is instead of our favorite example of I deserve to be paid more, You would say, as you know, this past quarter we were able to exceed targets by X percent. I believe that we can do the same thing next year. In order to achieve that, I wanted to talk about pay commensurate with the value that I bring, a couple of additional resources, and I don't know, Friday afternoon to work from home so that I can take care of a few things, whatever it may be. What do you think? And what do you think is a conversational volley, which signals that it's time for you to stop talking and the other person to start talking. And then what you're gonna do is you're gonna go into step 3, which is to discuss collaboratively. So there tends to be a mindset around individual negotiations that it's a winner and a loser, and most women are not particularly interested in those outcomes. Instead, if you negotiate collaboratively, it becomes a how can we both do better? So for example, in an employee situation, it's anything that decreases the impact that you can deliver to the company or increases your stress is a problem for you. And a problem for them. And so the negotiation becomes, we are on one side, the problem is over there. How do we solve this problem? I can contribute more. Here are the roadblocks I'm having to hitting those targets for you. How can we solve those roadblocks? When you discuss collaboratively, now I'm saying, hey, I need X, and my boss is saying, well, shoot, budget's just closed. I can't do that right now, but I can do this. What do you think? So we worked with a woman a few years ago who was a She was full-time employed. She had a background in graphic design, and they went back and forth about her salary. She'd been there a couple of years, and what they ultimately uncovered is that if she was willing to work slightly more hours, they could move the freelance budget over to her. So it wasn't a direct raise. She was just getting paid as an employee and then also as a freelancer to do the work that would have gone to an outside consultant. So there's things like that you can start to uncover. When you negotiate collaboratively. Paige, I feel like I just talked forever.

No.

Um, do you think, was that helpful? Do you have questions?

It's so very helpful. And I really loved that example that you gave walking kind of through that, that second piece of just how to word it. Because I'm kind of that way. I'm like, just tell me exactly what to say and I'll say it. Like, just gimme the script and I will say it.

To be a negotiation expert, it takes me a lot of time to do this. Right. Yeah, these things simple so you can pick up the tool and run with it and do and live your life.

Could we potentially walk through an example of somebody negotiating not in their current role in current company, but negotiating like for a new job? Because in your example, we can touch on or reference things that we've done in the current job or position. If you're negotiating for a new role, is it just pulling things that you've done from the past at past roles to kind of use in Negotiating for a new role, a couple of thoughts.

One is that your negotiation leverage is the highest after they've given you the offer. So what we do have sometimes is people who go into an interview and they're like, but in order to do this, I would need X, Y, and Z. I mean, you can, but they're not gonna get a chance to know you now because you're throwing roadblocks up immediately. Instead, if you get to know them, you get the offer, that's when you have the most negotiation leverage. And so to your point, the way that the formula works then is it's still the same formula, past performance, future vision, the ask, and then stop talking. But the past performance are the things that made them hire you, and the future vision is what they're asking you to do. I worked with a woman recently who's in quality control for hospitals, which I don't know much about, but her negotiation was, thank you so much for this offer. Given my unique background, I agree that there's only about 3 people in the United States that have the credentials to do this job well. I can also see— oh, she's— this woman has a— um, she was like, I can also see that once we are known for quality, it's going to help all of your companies do better, not just this one. In order to make this work, I wanted to talk to you about X, Y, and Z. The other question we get a lot on job offers is people who have multiple offers and they want to know if they should pit them against each other. And the answer is yes. And so the way the formula would work then is, thank you so much for this offer. I'm really excited to come join your company. Given my background, let's say you're, you know, just graduated. Given my background in design, I think I can be really helpful in the new product launch that we have coming up. I've also received another offer from X, and they're offering me, you know, whatever, $10,000 I'd really like to be here. Can you help me exceed that gap so that I can come here and contribute, be on part of your team? And that tends to be a way where people are like, oh, I'm no longer battling you. Now we together are battling them, and we don't like them because they're our competitor. So sure, let me throw more money at you.

A common theme that I'm just seeing come up more and more and more is just this collaborative approach to it of working with the person that you're negotiating with. That's how I think a lot of us view negotiation is we view it as you and the person you're negotiating with are Like on opposite teams, you're butting heads. One of you is gonna win, one of you is gonna lose. But kind of what I'm picking up on through talking to you is like making it feel like the person that you're negotiating with, you guys are on the same team. There's this problem outside of you both that's a problem for both of you that you're both trying to solve. And when I think about it that way, I'm like, oh, oh. Instead of just like going to the person and being like, you need to pay me more.

Yeah, I deserve to be paid more.

I deserve to be paid more. What about just this process as you're going through and finding a new job? I feel like everybody— I haven't done this in a really long time, okay, but I see a lot of this stuff on social media where it seems to happen very early on in the job searching process. Like typically when you're talking to the recruiter, right? You, you haven't even gotten to the point where you're like having conversations with people more on the interior of the company. But that question of what do you wanna get paid? And I think there's this big question of like, do you give a number? Do you even tell someone, like when you're filling out a job application, it's like, well, what do you make now? Is there information that shouldn't be handed over that early? Or like, when is it appropriate? Is it okay just to tell 'em? Should you not tell 'em?

This is quickly becoming one of my favorite interviews ever because you're asking these questions that are so good. Yes. Here's the research behind that. If you know the bargaining zone, which is the likely place that an agreement will happen. Then you wanna anchor high. That means give a high number. So for example, if you know that this role is typically between $50,000 and $75,000, then you wanna say high because then they might come back to you and say, hey, we've, you know, we really love you. We've really loved getting to know you. Unfortunately, we can't get X done, but we can get Y done. Okay, Y is gonna be higher than if you didn't give them a number at all. However, if you don't know the bargaining zone, then you're better off not saying anything at all because if you say something outside of the bargaining zone, you're gonna blow up your own negotiation. For example, if the range is $50,000 to $75,000 and I say $95,000 because I saw one data point on Glassdoor, now they're just— they're not gonna interview you anymore because it's so ridiculous that they assume that you're out of touch. And so again, like, if you know what's likely, anchor high, give them the high number. But if you don't know what's likely, kick the can. And a, a good way to kick the can is to say something like, you know what, I'm just really excited to get to know this company. This is gonna be a big move for me and my career. And so I wanna know all the parts of this role before I answer just one of them. So I'd love to meet people that I'll get to work with. I'd love to understand more about the projects that I'm going to get to contribute to. I need to understand the whole package before I can just give you an answer to one piece.

That's a really good response. So either anchor high or kick the can down the road.

It's very succinct. Yes, I should have said it that way.

I know, because you always hear, which I don't even know how you feel about this advice, but I think a common thing that you hear in the negotiation world is like, whoever says the number first loses or whatever. And it's like, I don't know. I don't know if that's necessarily true.

But it's not true. It is factually not true.

Okay.

It's 2 people that know nothing about what they're negotiating for. Like if, let's see, a house is a bad example because you can get some pretty good comps on houses. But if I'm negotiating for a very specific painting, I'm just going to toss that out because it's a little bit— art's a little nebulous and I don't know what it's worth, then I shouldn't say anything. But if I'm negotiating for a house and I know that the house next door just sold for X and the house across the street just sold for Y, And this house is a little bit smaller than those. Like, now I have a pretty good idea.

Another question that just popped into my head was, you hear this saying a lot, which I'll be honest, I've been guilty of using this. Let's do it. Okay. This notion of negotiate your worth, negotiate your worth. You know, I'm thinking back to like 25-year-old Paige. I'm thinking of her and I'm like, I don't even think that she would know how to determine what my worth is to an employer. So I'd love to just get your thoughts on that saying in general, negotiating your worth. But of course, like you said earlier, there's things that are happening in the external market that you have to keep yourself within, right? Like if you're negotiating for a job that has a range of $60,000 to $75,000, you can't go in there and be like, pay me $115,000, because they're going to be like, absolutely not, get out of here. But it's like, what's that balance between staying within the market confines and also being like, but this is what I'm worth? Like this is what I bring to the table. I don't even know what I'm asking, but I'm like this whole conversation. You know what I mean?

Things. So first of all, if you're in that situation where like the range is whatever to whatever and you want one fifteen, just as an aside, one of the things I love to do is like get to know the company because maybe they've leveled this role at X. But once they get to know you and your background, they realize that you can do Y, and so they're gonna level it up. That just happened in a negotiation that I did last. week where it's like, oh, actually, she could contribute this. She could run this project, this project, and this project as well. So technically, it's not this level. It's that level, right? And sometimes they have the freedom to do that right then. Sometimes it'll be 6 more months before they open up a new role. But go in and really get to know them and what you can deliver because there is always leeway there. To your point of know your worth, I hate this saying.

I figured you might. I'm like, I just have a feeling she's not going to like this.

I hate this saying. less as a negotiation specialist and more as a mom, which is that my worth and your worth and the worth of human beings is not our market value. Our worth is so much bigger than that, but our market value is what we can negotiate. And so in terms of getting to know your market value, what I would say is spend a couple of minutes online. That's always helpful. Please don't stop your search there. Talk to colleagues. My very favorite is to talk to colleagues who have left the company because they don't care. They'll tell you anything. They'll tell you what they made. They'll tell you what their buddy made. They'll tell you what they thought they were gonna make. I mean, the whole nine yards. Talk to recruiters if you're in an industry or at a level that that's available to you. Uh, your alma mater. A lot of colleges and schools right now are building up Rolodexes of information so they can try to eliminate bias in hiring. So depending on where you went, there could be a lot of good resources there. I feel like there was one other one I wanted to mention. Oh, you know what? I worked with a couple of people who would just find the role and industry and randomly shoot off notes in LinkedIn. That has a lower hit rate, but it's an interesting way to approach it, particularly for folks who really do want everyone to be paid fairly. When you're asking for information, don't just ask for base salary. Ask for all compensation, because what's happening now with salary transparency laws Is that a lot of the inequity is moving into squishier places?

That's what I, what I was just about to say was the— is that what it's called? The salary transparency law? Okay. Where you have to, like on job postings and stuff where they have to put the salary. That's not everywhere yet, right? That's just in certain states where that's happened.

Last I checked, it was in 38 states.

Oh, okay.

So most states. I mean, the other thing I think your listeners probably know, but legally employers cannot ask you what you make. They can ask you what you want to make. They cannot ask you what you make. Interesting.

But they do a lot, right? I feel like that's like on every job application, like, what are you making right now?

And they found other ways to ask the question. They still kind of ask the question, but they found other ways to ask it, which is, what are your salary expectations?

Oh God, okay. Because probably most people are basing that probably pretty closely off of what they're making now.

Yes, but you don't have to. Whereas before, what's happening is you were only getting, you Employers were only offering you 5% to 10% over what you made, which meant that— and The Wall Street Journal did a really interesting study on this showing that the gender wage gap is present the second you start working. And so what would happen is women would— you could never get rid of a 20% gap if you could only bump it up a few percentage points.

All right, well, now let's talk about this because, of course, my people-pleasing brain, this is where it's going. What happens, or I guess how do you know When to walk away if you don't get the things that you're asking for in the negotiation. This is another thing about negotiations that I hear a lot is like, or another popular saying that I feel is like both people in the negotiation are going to feel like they lost a little bit. Have you heard that before? Both people are going to walk away feeling like they didn't, like they lost a little bit and they really like didn't get ultimately what they wanted.

Or the flip side is both can walk away feeling like they gained a little bit, but the point is that But what will happen sometimes with beginning negotiators is they'll go in and ask for exactly what they want. The problem is we know it's going to get lowered in the process of negotiation. And so that's kind of the whole thing of like everyone gives a little bit. So one of the strategies we have is don't just ask for one thing, have a couple things in your back pocket. So let's say we ask for, I don't know, $10,000 more in our base salary, and they're like, well, unfortunately budgets are locked, we can't do that. Okay, I understand that. Can we make that up somewhere else? How about somewhere else so that I can join your team? Could we find an assigning bonus or a performance bonus? So we're kind of going around that, but, but then, you know, you didn't quite get what you wanted. They didn't quite get what they wanted, but you both got something.

Okay. And I mean, do you see situations a lot or ever in your work where no movement is made on the negotiation, where the employer is just like, no to all of it? Sorry, no.

So what we know from the research is that women's careers are more impacted by the support of their manager, by sponsorship. than men's careers are. So what I would say is, I generally speaking have a rule of 3, which is that if you hear no one time, we can assume that there's a lot of factors that drove that. One common mistake people make is they go into their annual review to negotiate. But for a lot of companies, budgets are due before the annual review. So your manager cannot say yes to anything financial.

Mm-hmm.

And so let's assume the first time we weren't time aligned, we, we didn't have it quite right. Okay, I can get that. If you hear a no, the best thing to do is to say, okay, what can I do so that next time this is a yes? So what do I need to do to demonstrate that I'm ready for that performance in— or ready for that promotion in 6 months? Oh, I need to do X, Y, and Z. Okay, so you're going to use the no as an opportunity to learn more information.

Mm-hmm.

If you hear no a second time, depending on the situation— this is a judgment call— there may be reasons for it, particularly with companies that are going through mergers There's a lock on hiring. There's a lock on, you know, whatever. That could make sense. Or if you think it doesn't make sense, then go with that. If you hear no a 3rd time, then I have to say there's a very low chance that your manager sees the potential in you the way that we would want them to. And so at that point in time, it's time to start thinking about how to be under a manager that sees what you're capable of. And that might be at this company, or it might be at different company, but it's time to find a manager that can help you get where you want to go.

Yeah, I will say when I was in my, my second company that I was with for almost 10 years, I worked in the automotive industry. This is when we lived up in Detroit. So I worked in automotive, very male-dominated. You know, I was working at a data company that sold data to the big automotive companies, right? I mean, even with that, it was still very like male-driven, male-dominated, and And when I look at the progression that I was able to make in that 10 years, it was because I had champions in my corner who all happened to be male, by the way.

Yeah.

They were all men. And part of me feels very, very lucky and very blessed for that. But they were— I can think of 3 in particular that were always in my corner, that were always, you know, like bringing me into rooms that maybe other people would have been like, oh, she's a little too junior for that. Like, they were always like bringing me into the rooms being like, come on, like, just come be be in this meeting, come listen to this conversation, or you're gonna lead this meeting with this client or whatever. And, you know, I just think about like the impact that that had on just even like the visibility that I got in the organization. Because at this time, doing what I do now, entrepreneurship, like it was not on the table for me. Like I went back and I got an MBA because I, in my head, I was like, I'm gonna work here for 35 years and like rise up the ranks of this company, right? So like I went back and got an MBA and like I did all the things that I thought I needed to do to like climb that corporate ladder. But I think all this to say is I had those champions, which made all the world of difference. And like I told you, one of those came to me and was like, Paige, like, you're ready. Like, let's go. Let's like move to the next step. Like, he did that for me. I didn't even like instigate that. But I think finding those champions are really, really important because they made such a huge difference for me.

Well, and you just added something really important there, which is that one, you need to have champions. 2, And maybe you could get away with not having this for 12 months, but your manager needs to be a champion. No matter who champions you, if your manager sits at that table and says, no, this person isn't ready, nobody can get around that. Or maybe they can get around it once, but not every time. And so, you know, to your point of when do you walk away from no, you know, the first time you hear no, let's learn more information. But at some point in time, no means I'm not going to be championing you. And that means that you need to go find somebody. The other thing, just as an aside, that always kind of tickles me, the research would say is of those champions that you had, a disproportionate number of them probably have daughters.

Yeah, 2 of the 3 did. They were all dads.

What the research shows—

They were all fathers.

But we've gotten a big sort of wave of men who have been telling their daughters, you can be whatever you want to be. And then they get into— they go to work and they're like, uh-oh. And so all of a sudden that cohort becomes a really great champion for other women.

Oh, that's so interesting. I've never thought about that before, but honestly, that makes total and complete sense. Yeah, my manager, he had 3 kids. One was a daughter, the other one had twin daughters. One, he had 2 boys, but he was a very active dad. Like, he was a very present, active father. Like, his kids and his wife and his family were like the most important thing to him, right? That's so interesting. I've been in a job before where I hated— I did an internship in college and hated it.

He was my manager. It was awful.

It was terrible. Like, literally, I would come home and I, I had a countdown on my wall of like how many days I had left in this godforsaken internship. Seriously, I would come down, I'd rip, I'd rip the Post-it note off the wall and I'd slap another one up that was like one day less. I was like, I cannot wait to get out of this. But we can wrap up and end with this, but any encouragement that you have to somebody who's listening to this conversation and they're kind of having this like moment where they're like, yeah, I'm not in a situation where I'm being valued, I'm being recognized, I've hit a brick wall, I've hit a dead end? Because it can be daunting. It can be daunting to like make the change, find a new job, switch to a different department in your, in your company. Like, it's hard, it's tough. Any encouragement you have for that?

So when I used to do one-on-one coaching, one of the questions I would— the question I would ask that I loved the most is, if I had a magic wand and I gave it to you, what would your life look like in a And the answer to that question was always very telling. For me as a coach, it was telling about what they could negotiate. But for your listener, that's very telling on how, you know, directionally, where, where should you go now? And the good news is, you know, that you are somewhere you don't wanna be. I think that there are a lot of people that languish and it's like, good enough, good enough, good enough. And then they look back and they wish they'd made a, you know, made a change 10 years ago. Um, you know, it's not where you wanna be. Think about where you wanna go and then take one tiny step. One tiny step could be reaching out to somebody who does that and asking them how they got there. How do they like their job? How do they like their company? How could you start to make those moves? Right. But one small move, tell a friend, ask them to ask you again in a week to make sure you made your small move. But like, you've done the hardest part, which is figuring out that this isn't where you want to be. Yep.

Having that awareness, honestly, reaching that point is a huge, huge first step. So, well, Kathryn, thank you so much for this conversation. I think you've given us just so many good tips and arm's with so much good information. Tell us more about the 76 things you can negotiate. I feel like we ran through that pretty quickly, but you've come up with a whole list of things that can be negotiated outside of a base salary, right? Where can people find that?

Yeah, Paige, thanks for just having me on. Like, this has been such a fun conversation to have. This list of 76 things we put together as a free resource because we're trying to get more information that women haven't had access to readily available. Level. And so you can go to 76things.com and download that. The other thing I would say is, you know, if you're someone listening to this and you're part of a women's group that regularly has speakers, like, please invite me to come speak. The, the best way— and Paige, maybe we can have this conversation later because it feels like my job right now, now that we have the answers, is to get it out to as many women as I can. Right now I'm doing that through speaking. There might be other ways I should be thinking about doing it. But if you're part of a women's organization, help me spread Like, please talk to other women about it and invite me to speak if it could be helpful.

Yeah. And you said you do speaking at companies too, right?

The— that 80% of my revenue is from corporations, which is so funny because people are always like, are companies really hiring you to teach women to negotiate? And the answer is yes, because it makes good business sense. It costs companies twice as much to replace you as it does to keep you. And so if keeping you means, uh, some more resources and training and a different schedule and whatever you want, chances are that's a better decision for them than spending twice as much on somebody that is completely unknown.

Yeah. Well, and that was the point that you gave us at the beginning of the episode saying when you negotiate, you stick around longer. So from that perspective, it makes total sense of why companies would be clamoring to get you in to help people negotiate. Yeah. It makes all the sense in the world to me.

It's somehow logical. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's way— it's so much more expensive to have to replace someone than just paying them more or Or benefits or perks or whatever it is. So any other resources that you want to share with us before we, before we go?

Well, only because you asked about it, if you, if your listener wants to play around with that negotiation calculator we looked at, you can Google my name and negotiation calculator or the name of my company, Worthmore Strategies, and negotiation calculator. We also have a list of, I think, 30 places that you can do benchmarking for salaries if that's helpful. You can Google that. It's hidden on our blog Okay, cool.

What I'll do is I will get, get all of this from you. I'll get the calculator and the 76. I'll get the links for all of that and we'll just put it all in the show notes so that anyone listening to this, y'all can just go straight there and it's all right there and you can just have direct access to all this stuff. So, well, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you and your time. What's crazy, you guys, is that even just one person listening to this episode and just getting out of their people pleasing tendencies like me and having the courage to do one negotiation over over like one point in their career can literally make a difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is wild, y'all. Like by you listening to this conversation, you could potentially change the trajectory of your net worth by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like, well, it's crazy.

Let's make that a challenge. Like if you're listening to this and you do it like the woman in that speaking engagement did, let us know. I think Paige and I would both love to know how much more money you just made, and then Paige can tell you what to do with it. I don't know. There we go.

I know, exactly, exactly. Also, go out, make all the more money, all the extra money, and then, you know, I will be here to help you spend it wisely, manage it wisely, do all the good with it. So I love that. All right, Kathryn, thank you. I appreciate it.

It was great chatting with you, Paige. Thank you so much.

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