376. Exactly How to Negotiate As A Woman, with Negotiation Expert Kathryn Valentine

Welcome to Unfuck Your Brain. I'm your host, Cara Lowenthal, Master Certified Coach and founder of the School of New Feminist Thought. I'm here to help you turn down your anxiety, turn up your confidence, and create a life on your own terms, one that you're truly excited to live. Let's go. Hello, my friends. It is January. And it is that time of year when you are going to be getting your reviews. You're going to be seeing if you got a bonus. You're gonna be potentially asking for a raise, asking for a promotion. And we know that there's a negotiation gap between women and men. So I have brought on a genius in this space to talk to us about why that exists, what's happening with it, and how you can close it. She has so many scripts for you, but I told her you're only allowed to have one or two. Because I want you to learn to use your brain, but that will also motivate you to go track her down and read the rest of her work. So welcome, Kathryn. Kathryn Valentine, such a pretty name also. Will you please tell us, how did you become a guru in this area?

Thank you so much for having me on. I'm really— ever since I've read your book, I'm so excited about having this discussion with you. The way that I came to this work is that I was an overachiever, I think like much of your audience. And I ended up being escorted out of my MBA internship because I negotiated in the way that I'd been advised to. But it turns out that advice was not written for a woman. And so after I was escorted out, I went to my negotiations professor in business school and I was like, can you help me unravel what happened? And she said, no, but there's 2 researchers you should go talk to. And so I went. That's when the role of gender in negotiations was just starting to come out. And I went and I just read everything I could. I followed those researchers. I'm now pretty good friends with them. And I'm trying to take all this amazing research that they've done at Harvard and Carnegie Mellon and Georgetown and push it out to the women who need it now.

I need to ask, escorted out, like they literally walked you out of the building? Like you were a security risk? Or is that a term meaning you weren't invited back?

It sounds so extreme. So this was a Fortune 50 company. And I went in to negotiate. This was my MBA internship. So, basically, like a 12-week job interview, no pressure. And I finished my project way ahead of time. So, I went in to negotiate to be placed on another team. And that negotiation, I said basically what I'd been told to do, which is like, I deserve to be, right? And that didn't go well. And so, I went from one of the top interns to having the coordinator tell me that I was no longer a culture fit, which we both know means that I was not going to get that job. And so, it didn't make sense to continue the internship at that point in time because I need to go find a job. And so, there, it was a Fortune 50 company, and their company protocol is if at any point in time an employee is no longer an employee, whether by choice or not, they are required to be escorted out by security. It felt very extreme. It continues to feel very extreme.

Mm-hmm.

But it is, and we'll get into this, but there is a very high risk of backlash when making, you know, in workplace negotiations for women. And that is what happened.

Okay, Kathryn, so we know that you have been escorted out of a Fortune 50 company. What else should we know about you and your career?

Isn't that such a great, like, just the straight into the most embarrassing, like, career derailing thing that ever happened to me? Since then, I was at McKinsey. I was actually one of their youngest industry advisors ever. I have published in the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and we now have a really good business helping companies retain female talent by teaching women business skills through a female lens. Up till now, it's all been taught through a very male, cis, hetero lens.

I love it. I also just love that you were vulnerable in sharing that despite being a negotiation expert, it was uncomfortable to brag about yourself and talk about the value that you bring.

It's so funny, right? Even reading your book, I was like, I know this, yet it's still almost in the water that we drink. So I am—

There's a difference between intellectual understanding and actually changing your thinking, right? But I also want everyone to hear the story. You can have a professional failure, quote unquote, not get that job at your internship, and it is not the end of your career. It is not the end of the world. It doesn't mean you can't be successful. It doesn't mean you can't have an amazing career, right? That perfectionism of, oh, if that happens, your life is over. No, your life is not over. You can try again. That's why I'm so excited for this conversation, because often when I'm talking about imposter syndrome and valuing your work and all of these things, you get the response of, well, there's backlash. And I'm like, okay, but what are we doing about that? That's not just like, so therefore we never negotiate. That's not really an answer. It's not the end. So let's start with why it's important to negotiate. You've read the book, people listen to the podcast, they know I talk about the gender socialization of Just keep your head down and do a good job and don't seem greedy, and you'll get rewarded. And that is not how it usually goes, right? But women end up waiting for that and waiting for their boss to notice that they're doing such a good job. So can you talk a little bit about why it's important for women to negotiate?

Yes. So I call it the big 5, but there's actually 5 reasons. One is the financial, which generally speaking, we tend to be pretty well educated on. The number that's tossed out there a lot is Linda Babcock's choosing not to negotiate means you will earn $1 million less over the course of your career. Obviously, that number is pretty sensitive to how much you earn. And so Margaret Neal at Stanford did a different analysis on it, showing that choosing not to negotiate was equivalent to working an additional 8 years to retire with the same wealth. So that's reason number 1, purely financial. Reason number 2 is that it increases your perceived value. So this is research by Norcoff and Pinkley showing that applicants with identical experience and performance record, but different salary histories, were rated differently by employers. So basically, in a very busy world where people have to look at signals to decide what's happening, people are looking at what you make to signal how much impact you have, not how much impact you have to signal how much you should make.

It's like if you're shopping for a t-shirt and you're like, this one's $6.99 and that one's $9.99, you will unconsciously assume that one's higher quality, even though you may know intellectually they're made at the same factory, they have different labels on them, but— That's not how you perceive the value when you're in that buying mode.

Yes. And so the researchers go on to say, so accepting less implies that you are delivering less. So that's number 2, your perceived value is important in the marketplace. The 3rd reason is that it actually can be used to improve your well-being. So I worked with a woman who ended up negotiating to be offline between 11 and 2, 3 days a week, because that was the only time that she could find to take care of her health, and she had some things that needed attention.

Wait, we got, can we pause on that? That's so important because people do just think negotiation is money, but your employment has like, part of your compensation is your leave package, your schedule, your whatever, 401 match, the healthcare benefits, the blah, blah, blah. And like that added—

What chair you're sitting in, if you get IVF benefits.

Right. Like everything. If you're gonna, like, the thing about negotiation is you can try to negotiate everything, right? So it's not just about money. Like it's not, there are, and even if you, Ask for money and don't get that, then what's your follow-up? What are things that would make your life better? So I feel like that's such an important— if you take nothing else away from this episode, you should take that away, that when your employer says, we just literally don't have the money this year, or whatever, that's not the end of the conversation. What else would make your job better? What can you ask for?

I love that. We call it a back pocket ask, but whenever you're making an ask, you need to know what's in your back pocket in case they say no. And then a lot of times, even when cash is restricted, which I would argue it's restricted a lot less than we assume it is, but even when it is, you can negotiate for things that increase your market value that you can then exchange for cash in a year or 2. So will they pay for you to get this education? Can you take on this responsibility? Can you be in this meeting?

Those types of things. Yeah. And I think that what's so brilliant about the back pocket thing is that a negotiation is a back and forth. I think how women probably often think about it is like, well, I make an ask and then Just a thing happens, I get it or I don't, that's the end of that conversation. That's where my work ends is I got up the courage to make the ask and then blank, as opposed to a negotiation is an ongoing conversation until you reach a mutually agreeable solution.

And one of the things, I don't coach individuals anymore, but I used to as part of my research. And I got this email from one woman after she did her negotiation and she was like, I failed. It was a failure. And so, immediately I call her, I'm like, what happened? And she was like, we didn't reach an agreement. And it was like, oh, facepalm. The average negotiation takes 28 days. And the reason for that is that a lot of these conversations that we're having are really important, and they need time and reflection. Now, we shouldn't let it drag on too long, but to your point, it's not just one discussion, it's usually a series of them.

Yeah. And think about yourself as a boss, like when I have employees ask for something, if they want a change in their work schedule or their responsibilities or whatever, I usually need to go think about it and see how it would impact other things and see what the industry norm is, as opposed to just— we want an immediate answer for our own anxiety, but that's not necessarily realistic or preferable.

And a lot of times when we get an immediate answer that wasn't well thought through, the implementation of it doesn't work and it ends up hurting you more.

That makes sense. Okay, so sorry, I interrupted you. That was 2 or 3 was—

That was 3. You can use it to improve your wellbeing. You can use it to increase your professional success. So I worked with one woman who ended up negotiating a new IT system because the one that her team was working on was from the '90s. And with the new one, it took them 40% less time to accomplish the same thing. And so you can think about what other— to your point, broaden the aperture here. But what else is it that you could negotiate for? Can you attend that conference? Should you speak at that conference?

What are the other things you can negotiate for that will help you be more successful over Well, and that's so genius because if you now have 40% more time to work on big picture strategy, adding more value, like whatever else you can now focus on, then that's improving your standing long term for future financial negotiations.

And so it becomes this really fun— I think of it as like a virtuous circle where you negotiate for more resources to deliver the impact you're capable of, then you're able to deliver even more, which puts you in a better position to negotiate for more resources, right? We want to keep riding that Almost that slide backwards, right? But we want to keep lining up things.

Which is also so important because I think that I've had this sometimes with people on my own team where I've had to be like, OK, you don't get a raise for what you say you will do. You need to do it, then you get the raise. That's right. It's just like I can't get a mortgage from the bank by being like, I plan to make this much money next year. Here's my written-up plan. May I have the mortgage? The bank's like, fuck off. No, you have to show that you've made that amount of money, and then you can get the mortgage.

You have to show you can make it. And then you have to go back and say, hey, look at what I did. And we'll talk about the way to structure that. But you need to say that because just because you did it doesn't mean they're tracking that you did it. And then the 5th reason, which is new in the research, and I find particularly exciting, is that there's now proof showing that women who are trained in gender-specific negotiation skills, which is what we'll do today, are more likely to stay in the workforce. So we saw this in COVID. I worked with an accounting firm, and we ran a program around this. And they had a 50% reduction in intent to leave after women were given these skills, which makes sense because the workplace wasn't built for us. So it would lead you to conclude that we actually need to negotiate more than the average person to negotiate a space that fits us.

I love that. Okay. So before we get into how we can do that, can you talk a little bit about why you think women negotiate less? What is the kind of historical context? I obviously talk a lot about the type of socialization that would probably lead someone to be uncomfortable. Negotiating, making asks, talking about their own value. But I'm curious for your perspective on that.

So historically, women have negotiated less frequently than men because we're at a higher risk of backlash. So the research on this is you are at a higher risk of backlash in a gender non-congruent negotiation, which means that men are at a higher risk of backlash when they're negotiating flexibility to be with their families. Women are at a higher risk of backlash in all of the— I'm going to put in quotations— traditional negotiations. But resource compensation, promotion, presenting your own perspective— Right.

When you're transgressing your gender role, there's more chance of backlash.

Yes.

Interesting.

So, the good news is there's a solution to this. The bad news is it exists in the first place, which we all wish it didn't. I will also say, just in terms of the most recent research, there's new research out of Berkeley showing that women are now negotiating as often as men, but we're only successful half as often. Which tells me that it's no longer an awareness of that you can negotiate, but it's that the world continues to give women the wrong tools for negotiating. So now it's a little bit more of an upskilling than an awareness issue.

It's interesting. Do you see it— is there a distribution, like an age differential distribution? Do you think younger women are negotiating more because they've come up in a more sort of openly feminist environment?

There is.

I mean, that makes sense to me in terms of also when we think about, okay, now an equal amount of women negotiate averaged out, but then you're still going to have age brackets or groups of women who are still negotiating far less than their male counterparts.

And it's pretty stark per generation.

Think of the last time you really wanted something, a raise, an hour to yourself, something different in bed, And you just didn't ask for it. Or the last time something bothered you, and instead of saying so, you smiled, said you were fine, and stewed about it the whole car ride home. If you're anything like most of the women I coach, you don't have to think very hard to come up with an example or 8. So I created a free quiz so you can figure out exactly what's holding you back from speaking up and what to do about it so you can finally get what you want. To take the quiz, visit unfuckyourbrain.com/quiz. Or text your email to +1-347-997-1784 and use code word quiz when prompted. So we know that historically, at least, there was a much bigger difference in men and women negotiating, not normalized in the same way. I know you talk about a sort of gap of knowledge around negotiation. Can you tell us what that means? I mean, obviously women know negotiating's like a concept, but it's sort of like, is it a— what's a knowledge gap specifically as opposed to like a comfort gap or a—

So, Kara, this is where, when I was reading your book, I was like, I am so excited to get your take on this. So here's from the research part what I can tell you. It's not so much of a gap of knowledge, as you pointed to. Women know we should negotiate. It's a gap in the tools that we're being given. So what I always picture is there are plenty of women that are Googling, how do I negotiate, in order to structure these conversations. And what's happening is they're seeing reputable publications They're clicking on them, and then they're reading advice by experts that say something like, you should go in and say, and I'm quoting here, I deserve a promotion. That was advice in the Wall Street Journal last year. We know from the gender research that is a phrasing that is much more likely to cause backlash for women than for men. This advice is just doled out as if it's a gender-neutral territory, and it's not. And so, just in reading your book, I was kind of thinking about Even well-intentioned women who know they should negotiate still are getting crap advice from very well-known experts with New York Times bestselling books. And I don't know exactly what's your take on that? How do you think about that?

I mean, it's shocking to me that I deserve a promotion would ever work because as a boss, I'm like, what did I have to do with anything? I mean, when I'm talking to women about negotiating and changing their thinking, I'm always actually talking about how A promotion has nothing to do with your worth and value in an inherent moral sense. One of the things I talk about in the book and I'm always yelling about when it comes to professional advice is the negotiation advice to women of know your worth and value is completely stupid because women get that all mixed up with their moral worth and value. And then they're completely— of course you don't want to ask for a raise when you're like, if they say no, it means I'm not valuable as a human or good at my job.

Yeah.

Anything else, right? So what anyone that I would be coaching, I mean, I don't get up in people's like action lines, but if I did, or what I say to my employees is like, if you want a raise, tell me what value you have added to the organization. And obviously, ideally make it like connected to our economic success or our operational success or whatever. But like, show me the value you've added. That's what a raise or a promotion is based on. Yeah. Okay. It is also based on like, what do we see your potential as? But You got to have a track record of having done that, but it's nothing to do with deserving. It's not a moral issue. And somebody could have done an amazing job at their job, but if I don't see potential for them to be able to do the next level, then it really doesn't matter that that would be the right job for them long term. And it doesn't have anything to do with how deserving they are.

I love that this is something that also annoys you because this is the space I live in. Everyone's like, negotiate your worth. No, you are worthy because you are a human being. Period. We're going to talk about negotiating your market value.

Right. Your economic value. And not suffering. Exactly. Yes. That's what I'm always saying. It's like, it's not your moral worth, it's the economic value of what you contribute to this company. And somebody else may not see it the same way as you. And then if you can't convince them, you have a decision to make. Are you going to live with it? Are you going to negotiate for something else? Are you going to go somewhere else where they will recognize it? But it's not personal. It's like if you want to buy a mug and someone doesn't want to sell it to you for the amount that you want it. It's not a verdict on the mug owner or buyer's essential human worth.

I agree. And also, the advice that you give is very much in line with the 3 strategies that we see in the research, specifically for women.

So let's talk about those. What are those 3 strategies?

So the 3 strategies are, one, think holistically. And we talked about this at the top of the hour when it was like, oh, let's open up that aperture and think about all the things that you can negotiate. We have a list of 76 things that we've seen women successfully negotiate. There's a lot. The second step is to ask relationally. And the third step is to discuss collaboratively. So on ask relationally, we just talked about think holistically. On ask relationally, the research here shows that if your negotiation partner sees your ask as both legitimate and beneficial, then you, and I'm quoting from the researchers here, virtually eliminate the risk of backlash. The problem that we found when we were doing negotiation or doing research via coaching is that everyone's so busy, figuring out how to demonstrate that almost requires you to be a negotiation researcher. And so, we ended up structuring a relational ask that you can basically put this structure on any conversation. We call it the RAE to make it sound cool. It's the Worthmore Relational Ask Equation.

Relational Ask Equation. Okay.

And so, the way that this goes is step 1, your past performance. Step 2 is the future goal that everyone can get behind. Kara, when you're talking about what's the economic— like, how does this tie to my business? That's the future goal. Step 3 is making your ask. And then step 4 is to stop talking. That one we put in after a year of coaching people because women are so lovely that in an attempt to make them nervous, they—

you just keep talking, talking, talking because you're afraid to actually be quiet and hear the answer.

Right. So we worked with one woman who wanted to negotiate 5 days of work remote. By the time she finished talking, she had negotiated herself into only two. She was literally like, "I should do five." You know what? I can get it done in four. I see you're uncomfortable. I could probably figure it out in three. Right? Just kept going. So if you think about what that formula is, we now end it with a question like, "What do you think?" Which is a social signal that you now have to stop talking.

Okay. So can we do an example? So that would be like. In my year as a project manager, I have improved efficiency 20%, and we've been able to pull off our 3 busiest launches successfully. And it was—

I think that that's past performance.

And then next is future. And I know next year we want to double our conversions, and I believe I can help make that happen in this, this, and this way.

Now say, in order to achieve that, and make your ask.

In order to achieve that, I'd like to be promoted to Director of Operations so that I can coordinate everyone along these lines in this plan, and I can spend more time thinking about big picture efficiency fixes and offboard my daily admin responsibilities to a project manager. What do you think?

Bingo. So great. Also, just amazing off the cuff there. The only improvement that we would suggest is that when you're highlighting what your performance is, tie it to the company goals. Which is what you were saying earlier, right? So this year I've been able to— and I'm going to try and paraphrase what you said, but I've been able to increase sales by 12%, which allows the company to allocate more dollars to X, or allows our team to hit our goals. Like, what is that, the impact of that on the larger team?

Right, really spelling it out.

And now we're totally on board because giving you your ask is just going to make everything else better for everyone else.

So you said there's 3 elements. We talked about holistically, relationally. What was the third?

The third one is to discuss collaboratively. So this one is best practice negotiation strategy for all genders. In fact, it's often used in international peace treaties.

Sure.

So it's been around since the '90s, but what researchers found in about the past 10 years is that it has additional benefits for women in that it allows us to start on a fair playing field. So, let's imagine that you're going into a negotiation and you're viewing it as sort of a winner-take-all. There's a winner, there's a loser, someone's going to be happy, someone's going to be upset. In that mind frame, women can't win because it goes so against everything that we are valued for and have been trained on. If, however, you flip to the mindset of it's us versus the problem, now all of a sudden societal conditioning and societal expectations of gender are working for you. Because you're very good at working for someone else to solve a problem. And if you think about it, most of what is a problem for the employee is ultimately a problem for the employer, because it's preventing the employee from delivering their highest value at their lowest stress level. So together, we want to solve that problem.

First of all, that's also the best advice for relationship coaching. It's like, it's us against the problem. Have you never heard this? When people in a relationship are having a fight, When you're fighting with your partner, usually people are fighting because it's like, I'm right or you're right. One of us is wrong and one of us is right. One of us is the problem, one of us isn't. And the best way to defuse that in a relationship argument is it's us against the problem. We have this problem and we have this dynamic or this thing keeps happening or whatever, and we're going to work together to solve that problem.

I have never thought about it in that context, but it makes so much sense.

Oh yeah. This is something like marriage therapy. Just shows your marriage, whatever your relationship is, is very strong if you've never heard this. But yes, it's like us against the problem. Parenting also. I mean, this is basically true of anything where you pit yourself against another human trying to control them, and then that doesn't work that well. So I'm curious what you would say the biggest objection I can imagine to this, not to the efficacy of it, but is more just from the perspective of like, why the fuck should we have to do this?

100%.

I'm having to conform with gender norms in order to get ahead. Fuck that noise. I'm sure you have heard that a million times and have a response, so I'd love to hear what it is.

Well, and I think of the million times I've heard it, 999,999 have been from me, right? It's not actually— I don't get this email a lot. It's just one of the things that in the beginning really bothered me. And I would say 2 things to it. One, these are all best practice negotiation strategies regardless of your gender. It's just that as women, we have additional bonuses in using them. I actually think, to your point of, I deserve to be promoted, isn't a good way to do it for anyone.

Right.

I actually think that as the workplace becomes more collaborative, men are going to start negotiating this way more frequently because it will benefit them as well. We have an added incentive to get there faster because of the history around backlash in the workplace.

I was actually wondering if there's studies— because everything you're describing seems like actually the only sane way to negotiate. And it's bananas to me that anybody would go and just be like, I shall dominate you. I deserve this promotion. I win, you lose, or whatever it is. Yeah, but if you think about— and there are research on how these strategies work for people of other genders? Yeah.

Men don't have the backlash when they do it. So think about Steve Jobs or any of those kind of titans of industry. They can say this. Like, they can say it without backlash.

Baffling to me, but I guess that's— they're not getting backlash from other men like them because they would get backlash from me if that's how they came in.

Yes. The other thing that I always say back to myself when I have the objection you had is that the newest— the World Economic Forum says that we're 131 years away from gender equity. I'm not going to be around when that happens. And so what we can do is, I feel like, giving women tools, just another strategy in your toolbox. You can use it or not, but it allows us, hopefully, to be successful as individuals to accelerate the pace of change of the system.

I mean, I totally buy the idea that these seem like best practices for negotiating in general. And I think it all depends. If you're thinking, oh, I have to play small because I'm a woman so I don't get backlash, you're going to feel terrible. But if you go into it thinking, I want to be a collaborative problem solver whose boss doesn't hate them by the end of the negotiation, that seems like the better outcome for all of us. I'm not dying to get to be someone who marches in and, I don't know, is aggressive. These seem to me like the better strategies anyway. I'm curious if there's research on—

What?

Do the genders of the employer make a difference? So is it easier if you are a woman and you are transgressing the gender role by trying to get more money or something without doing these techniques. Does it matter if the person you're negotiating with is a man or a woman, or are we all inflicting these gender norms on each other regardless?

We are. And I think that after reading your work, it probably makes even more sense to you than it did to me in the beginning. I expected— so when I started doing this research, I expected to have to produce 2 guides, one for when you were negotiating with a man, one for when you were negotiating with a woman. I thought it was different. The research shows it's not different. The world is just judging me based on what I look like. And so, the upshot is you only need one strategy because it's based on you.

Right.

The downshot is we see backlash enacted by women on women just as often as by men on women. And I would say the second part is anecdotally, but anecdotally, the stories that I've heard over the past 10 years, the most extreme ones were unfortunately By women on women. To your previous point, I will say, when you were saying if someone negotiates this way, it's better anyway, the research also shows that if you negotiate this way, your negotiating partner ranks you higher on leadership skills than before the negotiation. So simply the act of negotiating itself, if you do it well, is a credibility-building conversation.

I love that also, because that's like a— it's like a strategic byproduct, whether or not you get the outcome you want, it's still worth doing. Because you are still going to be showing up in a certain way. It has results for you in your own self-conception and being proud of yourself and all of that, but it also does impact the other person's perception of you in a positive way, even if you don't win, quote unquote, or get the outcome that you wanted.

Right. Well, and people are 7 times more likely to tell you yes if they've already told you no. So even if you don't get that particular one, you've now positioned yourself really well for whatever the next one is.

Oh, that's so interesting. I love that. People are more likely to 7 times more likely to tell you yes if they've already told you no. All my entrepreneurs out there who don't like following up with people or making a second offer or whatever else, yeah, take that one to heart. All right. This was all so helpful. And I know that you have more even concrete, like scripts and tips and all those things. So where can people find you and your work and learn more?

Par, thank you so much for having me on and just for allowing me to have this conversation with you. For anyone that it would be helpful to, you can get that list of 76 things to negotiate. At 76things.com. We created that as a resource for everyone. And every time we hear about a new successful negotiation, we're adding to that list. So, if you have anything that's not on that list that you negotiated, let us know. It's how we're creating a shared resource so that people can access this information. And the other thing is, if you're part of a women's organization, please consider recommending me as a speaker. That's really how we get these tips and tricks to women. And I would love to be able to do that.

Amazing. All right, go to 76things.com, share Kathryn's work far and wide, and go negotiate because worst case scenario, you don't get what you want, but you're more likely to get it next time. Thanks for coming on. If you're loving what you're learning on the podcast, you have got to come check out the Feminist Self-Help Society. It's our newly revamped community and classroom where you get individual help to better apply these concepts to your life. Along with a library of next-level, blow-your-mind coaching tools and concepts that I just can't fit in a podcast episode. It's also where you can hang out, get coached, and nerd out about all things Thoughtwork and feminist mindset with other podcast listeners just like you and me. It's my favorite place on earth, and it will change your life. I guarantee it. Come join us at www.unfuckyourbrain.com/society. I can't wait to see you there. My friends, I want you to think of the last time you really wanted something— a raise, an hour to yourself, something different in bed— and you just didn't ask for it. Or the last time something bothered you, and instead of saying so, you smiled, Said you were fine and stewed about it the whole car ride home. If you're anything like most of the women I coach, you don't have to think very hard to come up with a recent example. Most women were raised to believe that keeping the peace and not asking for too much is what makes us a good person, and that shows up in everything from how we handle salary negotiations to Sunday dinner plans. But the want or the feeling or the need doesn't go away. It just shows up as resentment or burnout or feeling stuck, even when you can't explain why. So I created a free quiz to help you understand exactly what's been holding you back from asking for what you want and saying how you feel, and how you can finally start speaking up. It's 3 minutes and $0. To take the quiz, go to unfuckyourbrain.com/quiz or text your email to +1-347-997-1784 and use code word quiz when prompted.