Not Bossy, Just a Boss - How to Negotiate as a Woman with Worthmore Strategies | Networth & Chill

This episode of Net Worth and Chill is brought to you by Marshalls. I love sharing new tips on how to make the most of your money. And one of the biggest misconceptions about looking good is that you have to spend a lot. And I'll be real with you, I want those high-quality items that'll last, but I'm also on the hunt for the best deal. How can I dress in brand-name, on-trend pieces without maxing out my credit cards? My go-to place to do that is Marshalls, where I know I can get the brands I love at 20 to 60% off retail prices. Visit a store or head to marshalls.com to see what good stuff you can find today. What's up, rich friends? Welcome to another episode of Net Worth and Chill. I'm your host, Vivian Tu, aka your rich BFF and your favorite Wall Street girly. And today we are discussing one of the scariest, ick-inducing topics that has ever come across your mind: negotiation. So how do you advocate for yourself when you want and deserve a raise, or more at work, or more out of your life, but you don't want to sound like a greedy, grubby ogre? And I'll be honest, when I was working on Wall Street, I was a young Asian woman primarily surrounded by Brads and Chads in Patagonia vests, and I thought that the best course of action was keeping my head down, focusing on my work, proving that I was the smartest, and just Surviving, but that's all I did. Just survive. I did not advocate for myself. I never asked for a raise, and I had a really hard time speaking up for myself. And turns out, I'm not alone. Even though negotiation is scary for just about everybody, it in particular is very challenging for women. 73% of women have expressed genuine fear. When standing up for themselves at work, only 43% of women are actually asking for raises, and over 60% of women believe they need to work harder than their male counterparts for the same recognition in order to actually get a raise. But the goal of Net Worth and Chill is to have conversations that are going to help you build a more rich, more fulfilling life. And today we are going to be helping the besties overcome their fear of negotiation. So by the end of this episode, I hope we all realize The scary monster in the closet is just a dust bunny. We're joined by a special guest whose life mission is to combat these forces working against women by teaching them the art of negotiation. We are learning how to be convincing and compelling. Everyone, please welcome the founder of Worth More Strategies, Kathryn Valentine.

Vivian, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here. I'm really excited to have this discussion, especially with you, having followed all of the work that you're doing.

Kathryn, thank you so much for being here. I am so excited, and I can't wait for all of the BFFs listening to learn more about being an effective negotiator. But before we get into the nitty-gritty, I have a fun question that I am dying to know the answer to. I want to know, what's one thing that you've negotiated in your personal life that you are most proud of? It can be like a deal on a purchase, a flight upgrade, anything you want.

So, what I do is I use research to help companies advance women. When we were looking at it, what we see is the biggest gap between what is commonly, like, commonly given advice and what is actually proven to be true for women exists in negotiation. So, I spent about 10 years doing just this. The benefit of that, though, is that when I went to buy a house, we did the thing that all negotiators know not to do, which is that we fell in love with something.

No!

Which is a no, right? It's a no-no.

You have to be able to walk away!

We fell in love with something, and it was out of our price range.

Okay.

But what we ended up figuring out is that we were at a stage in our life where money was the most important thing. Like, that was the thing we didn't have. The people that we were negotiating with were in a much more established phase of their life.

Yep.

Where what they actually needed was flexibility. And so we ended up being able to negotiate an agreement where we paid 15% less, which was the very top of our budget, but we could do it.

Yeah.

And in exchange, we gave them as much flexibility as they needed. We would close when they wanted to. We would move when they wanted to. They could stay an extra 3 months if they needed to coordinate the other house and their kids' schooling and all of that stuff. And that ended up being a real win for them. And now we get to live in the house that I am obsessed with.

I love that so much. And I got to ask, did you or a partner lead this negotiation?

Oh, I did.

Yes!

Absolutely.

I love that so much. You got to put your own, you know, your knowledge to use. So this is perfect. Is there a specific moment in your life that like What got you into negotiating? Because for most people, it sucks. We hate doing it.

Yeah, well, actually, that's what got me into it.

Yeah.

It sucked so bad. The, one of the first, the first negotiation I ever prepared for, like really tried to do well in, ended up going so poorly that I was escorted out of the office by security.

Wait, tell me about this. We need to know.

Yeah, so I was getting my MBA. I was doing an MBA internship, which is basically like, A 3-month job interview, so no pressure. And I decided that I wanted to negotiate to be placed on another team, so I did, I did everything you were supposed to do, right? I Googled how to negotiate, I ordered a bunch of books, I like underlined and highlighted and figured out what I wanted to say, and I went in on a Monday morning at 10 AM and used that script to ask to be, to negotiate, and immediately as I was saying it, you could see the person that I was negotiating with stiffen up. At which point in time she said, actually, based on this conversation, I don't think that you're a culture fit. And once you're not a culture fit, like, you're definitely not going to get that job. And at that point in time, I needed to go find a job. So we agreed to end the internship, and per company protocol, a very large security guard showed up.

Oh my gosh.

And escorted me out and deposited me on the sidewalk with all of my things. Yeah.

Looking back on that moment, do you feel like you dodged a bullet, or are you like, ugh, there's a little tinge of regret there?

There's a little tinge of regret there, because what happened is, you know, the joke I always make is like, I derailed my career in less time than it takes to order a latte.

Yeah.

Like, the whole thing was 15 minutes. But the reason why I did it isn't because I didn't do good work, or it wasn't because I didn't enjoy being there. It was because I had taken tools that were built for men and acted as if I was gonna get the same results using them, and that's not how it works. I mean, the research shows that's not how it goes. I just didn't know any better.

Wait, speak on that for a little bit more. Like, what do you mean tools built for men that women, like, it doesn't work for women?

So the bulk of sort of negotiation advice that's given now is given largely by men, but it's given based on personal experience. Like, oh, when I was, you know, X, Y, and Z, this worked for me. The problem with that is that even when they pull into the research, they're usually pulling into research that was done on men in largely male environments. What researchers started to release about 10 years ago is research done on women in workplaces, at which point in time it became very clear that the advice that was commonly given was significantly more likely to lead to backlash—

Oh, wow.

For women using it than for men, which is good for women to know. It's also good for men to know because 50% of the population is women. So if you're negotiating at work or with your manager or with somebody that works with you, Like, it's helpful to know that there are some of these biases that are inherent in those conversations.

Yeah, and I talk about this all the time. It is so critically important for women to negotiate, but you are the queen of negotiation. Tell me why it's so, so valuable when women do decide to negotiate.

So, I'm going to give you 5 reasons.

Oh, okay. We—

I want to talk about the finances and like really go into that, but the other ones that are maybe a little bit less well-known. Are that by negotiating, you actually increase your perceived value. So this is research done by Norcross and Pinkley, where they showed that employers valued an employee not based necessarily on the contributions, but on how much they were paid, which was the, you know, when you're really, really busy, you look for a quick signal. That was the quick signal.

Yeah.

And so the study goes on to conclude, accepting less implies that you are delivering less value, which is not something we want to do.

Which is also crazy because You, everybody knows there's one person at your office who gets paid an astronomical amount, and they're the ones like clipping their fingernails at their desk, and just like picking their nose, and like not doing any work, but their implied value is—

Is very, very high.

High. Yep.

So, relatedly, when you negotiate, you can actually accelerate your career advancement. I would argue a little bit like that person, right? Because you can get more resources, which will allow you to deliver more impact in less time.

Mm-hmm.

With less stress. So, however many people were working for that person actually getting the work done, like, those are resources that have been negotiated over time. So, one is the perceived value, 2 is it accelerates their career growth, 3 is the impact that we're seeing it have on mental health, right? So, when you have control in your situation and are able to negotiate the things that bring help to you, I worked with one woman who negotiated to be offline between 9 and 2 every day, because that was the only time she could do a master's, like, swim, and she could, and that was how she took care of herself. Right, it's a very unusual negotiation.

Yeah.

But we've worked with people that have negotiated IVF benefits, a particular chair, which was a very unusual negotiation, but like, if that's what you need, rock on.

You need the Herman Miller.

This person had scoliosis, didn't want to officially disclose it to the company because of other political reasons, but by negotiating a chair, could sit for more than 45 minutes and could get all the projects done, right? So, that is a negotiation that helps with, you know, just the stress that we encounter. We're all such different and unique people, we should be negotiating different and unique things for that.

Yeah.

So anyway, that's number 3. Number 4 is that new research shows that when women learn to negotiate in gender-specific ways, which we'll talk about today, they have a significantly higher chance of staying in the workforce, which has some pretty intense financial implications.

Yeah.

We did one experiment with a big consulting firm, and they had a 50% reduction in intent to leave after women were taught these skills. And then the 5th one is the financial. So, Linda Babcock tosses out the number of choosing not to negotiate is like giving up $1 million over the course of your career.

Yeah.

That number is, you know, very sensitive to how old you are when you start negotiating and how much you make, and we can talk about some of those particulars. But Margaret Neal at Stanford did a different take on it, which is regardless of what you make, it will take you 8 more years to work to make up for choosing not to negotiate during your career.

Oof.

So, if you have nothing else that you'd rather do with 8 years, then let's not negotiate. But if there are other dreams that you have, let's talk about how you can maximize what you're getting for what you're giving.

Oh, that's crazy.

Isn't that crazy? So, then the other thing that, from a financial perspective, that has come out recently that's really interesting is like the gender wage gap. We all know it's 20%. There's gender gaps in other compensation things that aren't as well known. So, the gender gap in stock options is 80%. That's research done by the Wall Street Journal showing that men are getting 80% more stock options than women are. They're getting about 106, and women average about 26. There's a 30% gap in 401 benefits.

Mm-hmm.

Men are getting more. And then there's actually a 25% to 40% gap in team size. So men are being given team sizes that are larger than women, which is just kind of something to think about potentially negotiating.

Can I ask you a question? Because I know some of the haters are going to be thinking this already. I have gotten a lot of comments that say the gender wage gap is not real because if you adjust for women leaving the workforce and taking time off to take care of families, they actually just choose lower-paying jobs, or like some sort of argument along those lines. What do you have to say? Because you've seen all the research.

Is that true? The truth is that the gender wage gap is much higher for women. I mean, it is a motherhood penalty more than it is a gender-based thing.

Got it.

But also, should we be penalizing just one parent of children when children is something that everyone, you know, that our species needs? Yes.

And also, doesn't it take two to tango?

Like, the last time I checked, and oftentimes you have a partner.

Very, very unfortunate. And you mentioned a couple things like stock options, 401 benefits, IVF treatments, what have you. What are some of the most unique benefits that you have seen people in the workplace negotiate for?

The IVF benefit was one of my favorites because that's one that was considered unique, and now we're seeing more and more.

Yeah.

The one that I I think really opened my eyes is I worked with a woman who negotiated to be in this, in another team's weekly meeting. And the background on this is information travels through historical sources of power.

Yeah.

And she was on an account management team, so she was incentivized once the account was landed to grow the accounts. What she realized is that if she could negotiate to be in the sales team meeting, then she was gonna have 8 weeks of data on those accounts before they came to her.

Oh.

What did they like? What did they not like? Why were they leaving their previous vendor? What did, you know, what about the proposal really intrigued them? And so once she did that, her career really took off.

Yeah.

Because she was able to serve them so much better. So negotiating access to information, I always think is interesting. Negotiating the ability to present to the executive team or to present to your boss's boss or whatever, that's always great for credibility. I worked with a woman who negotiated work remote across the country. So her family and her support network was in, on, the East Coast, and her job was on the West Coast. And instead of relocating, she went to them and she said, basically, my entire support network for my children is over here. If I pick them up, I'm inherently going to have to work less because they're going to need so much. But if I can stay over here, then I can stay focused on my work. So I want to talk to you about what that looks like. And they ended up working something out where she flew, you know, a couple times a month or something like that.

Yeah.

But that was one that was pretty eye-opening to me around the fact that, like, we are holistic people. And we can't ignore what's happening outside of work when we're doing some of these negotiations.

Yeah, that's amazing. And also, I do think it's so unfortunate that we talk so much about like women being able to have it all, but then we don't provide them any of the resources to quote unquote have it all.

That's right.

Yeah. You're just like, yeah, that's an unfortunate statement and true.

Yes, it is true. And one of the things that, you know, sometimes when I do these trainings, I get I think the very justifiable response of like, I shouldn't have to do this differently.

No, of course.

I think you're right. But I also am not going to stand in front of you and say that you have to wait 168 years until the gender parity gap, like until the gender parity gap closes. Like, here are tools that we have now. You can choose to use them or not. But the fact of the matter is like the situation isn't fair. And as we're getting to where we want to be, here are some things that can help make it a little bit easier.

So I think we've addressed why it's important to negotiate, some of the cool things you can negotiate for. But obviously, negotiating is intimidating. What do you think holds people back from doing it, in particular, women?

So, I think what holds people back from doing it is this fear, right? And for women, where that fear comes from is, you know, maybe your spidey sense. And by the way, if anyone ever tells you that that's not right, like, just don't talk to them about negotiation, because they're wrong. Like, research proves that women are at a significantly higher rate of backlash in traditional negotiations, like—

And by backlash, do you mean just like, Like firing or like some sort of retribution? Like, what do you mean?

Great question. It runs a spectrum. My story is a very extreme one. Right.

Kathryn will be escorting you out now.

Yes. A lot of times what you see is more nebulous where you're very quietly sidelined. So, I worked with a woman who negotiated, and before the negotiation, she did analysis, made a presentation, presented to the executive team. After the negotiation, her boss then presented to the executive team, and she was no longer invited to those meetings, right? It's like very quiet sidelining is a little bit more what we see. And that comes from societal concepts of gender, and then this concept that negotiations are a winner and loser.

Yeah.

That's a gender-stacked game that we are set up to fail.

Yeah.

And so what we wanna talk about is how we can change that. I will say the other thing that I've found, and we can go into this later, but if you look at the financial benefits of that conversation, I mean, this is much to what you talk about in your book, right? I worked with a woman recently. She sat in one of our workshops. She's 23. She negotiated a 20% raise, and that will give her an extra $1.7 million over her career, because every future raise you get is on that new higher base.

Yes.

Right? And that's the financial benefit of one negotiation. If you get really good at this, you're going to negotiate, I don't know, every 3 to 5 years in a pretty meaningful way. Like, we're talking millions and millions of dollars that is going to make your life Whatever you want it to be.

And you mentioned this woman who is going to make $1.7 million more over the course of her lifetime because of this one negotiation. I was always under the impression, and this is the advice that I often share, is like, I think you need to be negotiating and asking for a raise every single year. But you just said every 3 to 5. So talk to me about what are the numbers? What are the percentages we're aiming for, and how often are we doing this? Okay, I love this.

So Claudia Goldin, who's the Nobel Peace Prize— or the Nobel Prize winner for her work on women, shows in a very analytical way that if you are maximizing for financial benefit, you want to negotiate for a promotion over a raise. Mostly because they come with larger chunks of money.

Yes.

But also because they can put you at the bottom of the pay band, so you don't have the pay band issue that so many people are hitting up against. What I would say is, I love your advice. You should negotiate for at least something every year. A raise is great. Maybe you want to package a raise with this training, with this resource. Like, maybe you want to do something like that.

Great.

But every kind of 3 to 5, you're going to get a bigger opportunity. It could be the promotion. It could be an outside offer. It could be that there was a merger in your company and a new position opened up and it's on a different team and it's a lateral, but that team is more highly incentivized. Whatever it is, a bigger opportunity should be coming. So, yes, negotiate for a raise every year, but negotiate for the big stuff. That usually happens every 3 to 5, I would say.

Okay, so friends, there are sporting events every year, but the Olympics happens every 4. Well, I guess it happens every 2, but you know, just— You know what I mean. You know what I mean. You know what I mean. The big dogs come out to play every 3 to 5 years. Okay. That is super, super helpful and very concrete. And when we're asking for these, I would say, annual raises, what number should we be shooting for?

What a good question. Okay, here's what I can— I can tell you what the research says, and then—

Yeah.

What the research says is that women tend to undervalue themselves by about 20%. Men tend to overvalue themselves by about 40%. Come on, that's it? And so, and again, and this isn't all men, right? We can certainly talk about introverted, extroverted, marginalized groups and things like that. But if we were trying to make it a monolith, that's what the research says. So, what I would say is, we've learned that women are not very good evaluators of their own market value, but they are spot on when looking at the market value of others. So, the mental trick that I recommend is, What would you advise a friend with your same background and experience to ask for in this situation? That little mental trick typically actually gets you to the right number.

Wow. I love that. And I think that's so representative of just how we as women think, because no one has said anything more horrible to me than I have said about myself in the mirror.

100%.

And I would never in a million years say that to my best friend or say that to, you know, a cousin or somebody who I valued in my life, why did I say it to myself?

Which, by the way, if you can ever answer that question, please let me know, because I need to know that too. But it is one of those things where it's like, oh, well, even, I mean, Vivian, I've known you for 10 minutes, but like, I would say that you should ask for more than I would say that I should ask for, even if we had exactly the same backgrounds.

The same, yeah.

So actually, relatedly, one of the, I think, so I've reviewed at this point in time 13,000 pages of academic research, and the study that always stands out the most to me is one that happened A few years ago where researchers invited children into the lab and they gave them a coloring page, that was their work. And at the end, the children brought their coloring page back and the researcher said, thank you so much for your work, how much do I owe you? And what they found is that at 8 years old, little girls were asking for 40% less than little boys.

Hmm.

And when the researcher said, what made you choose that number? The little girls said something along the lines of, I don't wanna upset anybody. And so now again, obviously gender's not binary. This is just the way that the researchers set it up. So I wanna, you know, honor that. But what it tells you is that, you know, in second grade, before you know the tooth fairy isn't real, you know that there's something about negotiating as a woman where you need to tread lightly.

Yeah.

And that has always stuck with me. Like we are very, I think, intuitive beings. The good news is there's a solution to it. The bad news is that's where it is if you don't intervene.

Yeah, I need to connect you with another girlfriend of mine, Reshma Saujani. She wrote the book Brave Not Good, and she created Girls Who Code, Girls That Code.

Yeah!

And she was doing this study where all of these instructors would tell the girls and boys in the classroom, like, you know, write a line of code. And the boys would write a line, some would be right, some would be wrong. The girls would end up with blank screens, and then they would run the keystrokes back, and it would show that, like, the girls had written lines of code and then deleted them, and wrote in a line of code and deleted it because they were worried it wasn't right. And we teach our girls to be perfect instead of brave, instead of to take risks. And you're— I actually think the book's title is Brave, Not Perfect. You know, I just think that's such a representation.

I would want to meet her.

Yeah, that's fascinating.

Isn't that horrible? It is. And it also, have you, if we really want to nerd out, have you ever looked at the toy coding studies?

No.

So they started these back in the 1970s. It leads into the gender negotiation part, which is why I looked into all this research. But they've been doing it about every 5 years since. And what they showed is that researchers would go into the homes of children and look at the toys that were being given to them. The toys that were being given to little boys taught agency. So you build this brick building, you knock it down, you are exerting your influence on the world around you. And the toys being given to girls disproportionately taught reactivity. You have this baby doll, it cries, you feed it. You have a toy kitchen, you make Nana a tea, right? It taught how we are at the mercy of the things that are happening around us.

Yeah.

To the point where, like, when children are 18 months old, respond with fear, they cry if researchers are tagging them, for anyone that doesn't act in those ways. That's how, like, just stark these gender concepts are.

Okay, so I want to take a second and actually have a fun little section where we practice a negotiation. Let's do it. Um, and we're gonna walk through it. You are going to be all the besties listening, and I am your big, mean, scary boss. But like, how do you start this conversation? How do you make it, as a woman, not feel bossy? I hate that term. And how do you make it effective?

So here's what I'm going to do. Before I go in, the first thing I'm going to do is brainstorm. Is there anything that I can ask for that would make me deliver more impact, that would help me deliver more impact, that would lower my stress, that would make me happy? And then I actually, if it were me, I would check that list of 76 things and like, is there anything on here that I'm missing that could be beneficial? Okay, so now I'm going to have, call it, 3 to 5 ideas of things I want to ask for. Hey, Vivian, thanks so much for meeting with me today. I'm really excited to talk to you about some things that we've accomplished and also some ideas moving forward. Is now still a good time to have this conversation?

And like a normal boss, I'm going to be like, ah, not great, let's do it next Friday.

I really appreciate you telling me that, that sounds great. So what I just did there is, if you're in a bad mental state, I don't want to ask you for things.

Right.

So I would much rather you give me that jewel you just gave me, which is like, today you're going to get a no, come back to me Friday, you're going to have a better chance.

Yeah. Okay, great.

So coming back to you on Friday.

Okay.

Vivian, thank you so much for telling me that last time wasn't good. Is now a good time to chat?

Yeah, let's chat. Great.

Well, I've sent you all the papers, so you've seen, like, looking at the past, in this past quarter, I've been able to increase sales by 5%, which we're really excited about. Looking forward, I actually think that next quarter we could do it by 10%, which would help our department hit our goals. In order to do that, though, I wanted to talk to you about— now I'm just spitballing, but I wanted to talk to you about making sure that my compensation is in line with the above-average performance. And I also wanted to talk to you about maybe attending this conference, because I think I'm going to learn more to help me deliver on that 10%. What do you think?

I want to give a very realistic response instead of just saying yes, because you did a great job, and I feel like I want to say yes, but I feel like there are so many managers and people, employees out there, who feel like their managers would always say no. No. So, what if I give you a wishy-washy answer?

Give me a wishy-washer or just give me a straight no. I can handle with any of these.

So, I don't think, I don't actually think many bosses would give a straight no. I would say, you know, we'd have to check with HR on the budget and, you know, when would the conference be? Like, would you have to take a lot of days off of work for that?

I understand. Here is when the conference is and what I estimate that it would be. Also, when you talk to HR, here's some of the other market data that I've seen. Based on my performance, it looks like I'm going to be in the $105,000 range. Is there anything that I can do? Would you like for me to take this to HR? Like, I'm going to try and make this as easy for you as possible. I want to, like, automate this process.

Yeah.

Would you like for me to take it to HR?

No, I'm happy to take it to HR. I worry that that is going to eat up a lot of our team's budget for the year.

That's an interesting point. One of the things I've wondered is when are budgets due for sort of like next year's reset?

We typically set budgets around October.

Okay, so let's assume this conversation's happening in March.

Okay. Okay, great.

What would I need to demonstrate in the next 6 months to prove that I deserve that raise?

Ooh, that's nice, because now I got to tell you what I want.

So, what I'm trying to do here is we know that bias is more prevalent when things are subjective. I want to make it really objective. So, what I want to walk— if you're giving me— if you give me a yes, great. If you're going to give me a wishy-washy or a no, I want to figure out exactly what I have to do so that next time it's like predetermined. Oh, she already asked, then she proved all these things. Okay, the first place this budget gets allocated is over here to her.

Yeah. Cool. Hey, rich friends. You know I love to talk about the habits of rich people, and one thing they all have in common is that they find ways to keep Their money. That's something my partners at Marshalls can help you with. Because rich people look the part. They're wearing high-quality, brand-name clothes. But what you might not realize is that they didn't pay full price. That's how they're staying rich. And while you're on your way to getting rich, you can get the same good stuff without breaking the bank by shopping at Marshalls. Head to your local Marshalls or visit marshalls.com to shop their ever-changing selection of high-quality, on-trend merchandise. Okay, so I now give you my list of like, you need to hit that 10% for next quarter, you've got to sign XYZ number more accounts, and I want to see you really get a handle on this new hire, this new intern, or this young analyst that we have. You're going to be managing that person.

Perfect. Now, if I feel capable of delivering on all those, I'm going to say, thank you so much for having this conversation with me. I really appreciate it, and I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do. And then afterwards, I'm going to send it all to you in writing, right? Thanks for having this conversation. This is what we agreed on, looking forward to, you know, delivering. If any of those 3 things I don't feel prepared to do, I'm going to have a conversation with you. So, let's see, one of the things you said was deliver on that 10%.

Yep. Okay, great.

I feel like in order to deliver on that 10%, I actually am going to need to have a shot at one of these 3 accounts. I know that you haven't decided who those are for yet. Can I have one of those? Okay, so this is like, I worked with somebody who the boss had said, well, you need to prove that you can run a P&L. You can't like make up a P&L.

Yeah.

Like your boss actually has to—

Yeah, yeah.

And she was like, okay, great, when do I get that P&L? And he was like, oh yeah, I will give you this part of mine effective on Monday, right? So we're just going to guide them through the resources we need to actually deliver on what that says.

Help me help you. Oh, wonderful. And then you put it in writing, so we have a paper trail, a receipt.

And then every single time we check one of those boxes, I'm going to send you a note. That says, thanks so much for sitting down with me. I'm really excited to say that we actually exceeded the 10% and we were able to deliver 12%. And then here's the key, I'm going to explain the impact that has on others. That could be the client, the team, the company, the department. This is going to help us hit our department number. Now I'm able to tell you what was done, but also tell you why it matters.

Yeah, make our win everybody's win. What if you have a horrible boss who just says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, when you ask them for what you need to do, they're like, eh, I don't know, and like, they're just not really receptive? Because I have seen a lot of folks who run into that issue.

You need a new boss. So, the number one determinant of your career success is whether or not your manager believes in you. There is no, it would be incredibly difficult to get a promotion or to accelerate the way that you can if your boss is sitting at the table saying, no, no, no, she doesn't deserve it, she's not like, no, it's this person who should be up next, or it's this person who should get that opportunity. So, if you have a boss, and I kind of use a rule of 3, like if you hear no once, there's all kinds, to your point, there's all kinds of things that could be happening.

Yeah, yeah.

The number one mistake we see people make is they ask for raises in December and don't front-run that. Okay, fine. If you get no a second time, maybe there's organizational things happening. If you get no a third time, I have a really hard time seeing any scenario where that's happening and your manager is a sponsor for you.

Mm-hmm.

So, now it's time to think about where else could you go. And a lot of times people choose to leave the organization. I actually always challenge, like, you've built political capital in that organization, you know how things work, you have friendships to get things done, people trust you. Is there somewhere else in the organization you can go? I think that actually makes it easier on your career, but leaving is also an option.

You just said a buzzword, sponsor.

Mm-hmm.

What is a sponsor? How does it differ from someone who's just a manager versus somebody you take on that's a mentor?

So, women in general are, you're nodding, you really just set me up for this one. Women in general are over-mentored and under-sponsored. The difference between mentors and sponsors is that sponsors take a risk on your behalf. And so, what happens with mentors is, you know, they can give you advice all day long, that doesn't influence or impact them at all.

Yeah.

A sponsor is actually gonna put their name next to yours, which means if you are successful, they gain political capital from your success. If you're not successful, they're losing a little bit. This becomes— this is a risk that someone has to be willing to take on for you.

They buy into your equity. Very well put.

Now I understand why you do this. Yeah.

No, I love this so much because I, I reference my mentor quite often, but the more I think about it, she wasn't just a mentor, she was a sponsor. And she told me, she always said, she says, your wins are my wins. So, I'm happy to see you win.

And like, wouldn't we be— I had one boss like that. Wouldn't we be so lucky to get to work for somebody like that?

Always. Always.

Ugh.

And I want to circle back a little bit. You mentioned earlier a 76-item list of things someone can negotiate for outside of just cash money. What are the 76 things?

So, as we discussed, I mean, like, my full-time job is researching and helping companies retain women. One of the things that came out of that research is that, oh, a lot of what people are negotiating isn't written down anywhere. It's not in the employment agreement. It's not in their job description. It's because Brad told Chad that they could get a car allowance or, you know, whatever it may be.

Yeah.

And so, what we tried to do is over the past 10 years, anytime I've heard of something that someone successfully negotiated, we just wrote it down. And so, now we have that list of Anything from, I don't know, I think there's 15 different sources of compensation to the IVF benefits and anything in between. If you, by the way, if your listeners want that, they can go to 76things.com and download it for free. It's something that we wanted to make available to everybody.

76things.com. You better check this out. You better be asking for 76 of them and you know, I'm just kidding. Ask for a handful of them that are actually important to you. But like, this list is crazy. Please check it out.

Read the list so you know what's available to you. It's not necessarily written anywhere else.

Yeah. Oh, that's so, so smart. And you talk about 5 or 15 ways of compensation. And I'm thinking most of us are thinking salary and bonus, some sort of bonus. Just what are a couple other ones?

Yeah, so salary, bonus, which can be performance bonus, it can be a signing bonus, it can be a retention bonus depending on what's going on.

Retention bonus? That's what I'm asking Amex for when I'm trying to cancel my credit card. What's a retention bonus?

If your company is going through, and I saw a lot of these in COVID, but if your company is going through like a merger, if a ton of people are leaving, if everyone who knows how to run a program is leaving except you, it's a good time to ask for a retention bonus. A retention bonus is something that's easier to give than a raise because it's not, they don't have to put it through the same system.

It's a one-time.

But it makes sure that you're able to stay. So I actually, and this was an outlier, but I worked with a woman last year who negotiated a $300,000 retention bonus. That's some nice money.

Oof.

So, retention bonus, stock options, equity, 401, benefits 401 match, HSA. Now, what else have you seen? I feel like I'm talking to the master on this. What other financial compensation things have you seen?

I think a financial compensation thing is oftentimes especially pertinent to like sales jobs. I've seen weird kickers. I'm gonna be so real. When I was at BuzzFeed, you needed a math degree to figure out how we were getting paid based on how many deals you were closing.

Yeah.

Like, I looked like that Zach Galifianakis meme where the numbers are floating behind his head. I was like, wait, what are we calculating here? It was like, you could get, you know, your base salary, but then If you met your quota, it was like a pretty standard, like you would get like, I don't know, some small percentage of the deal. But if you exceeded your quota, then the math started to get a little crazy. There were percentage kickers, but then there were certain products that were new that they really wanted you to add into your, you know, little briefcase of things you were selling. So they'd be like, you would get extra bonuses cash-wise, just like one-time bonuses for selling certain products or an ad deal, certain marketing things. If you had a mega deal that sold expand 3 different lines of businesses, you get another kicker for that. And it was like you could barely calculate what they actually owed you. But that made me a really good salesperson because I was desperately trying to get these kickers. And I was like, I'll sell whatever, like whatever you want will do. But also I'm gonna try and show you my fanciest, newest, shiniest wares in the hopes that you buy. And then that way, you know, if it does happen, I get a little something something extra on the back end and it doesn't cost my client anything.

Well, I was working with somebody recently who is a derm PA.

Yeah.

And she has kind of a similar, it wasn't quite as complicated, but similar-ish. And one of the things that she didn't realize is that you can negotiate those percentages. And a lot of people just assume like, oh, because it's a percentage, it must be set for everybody. It's not. Or maybe it's set for everybody but you.

Yeah.

So like, if you ask in a way that, you know, what we just talked about, if you use, and we actually can talk about this part, but if you use a relational ask, Then the sort of risk of backlash is, from the academic study, virtually eliminated, which means you can ask—

Wait, explain that in English.

So, the reason why women have hesitated to ask, and men too, because men suffer backlash in non-traditional negotiations, so when negotiating for flexibility, men suffer backlash larger than women do. But a lot of the reason why women haven't asked is because of the risk of backlash. If you use a relational ask in that conversation, which you and I can break down in a second, then the risk to you goes away. The risk of backlash is essentially none. So, the worst-case scenario that happens is you hear a no, but it's not a no that comes with, now you can't present, now you don't get this, now the security's escorting you out. It's just a no.

Yeah.

And so, what the research shows on the relational ask is that the formula we recommend is your past performance, plus your future vision, plus the ask, and then stop talking. So, when you and I were role-playing, I did my past performance, Plus that future vision was the 10%. The ask was the raise and a conference, and then I stopped talking. I said, what do you think? And the reason why that's important is because in an attempt to make the negotiation partner feel better, women will actually negotiate against themselves. They will say, I need to work from home 5 days a week. I could probably do it in 4 days a week. Okay, I think I can pull it off in 3, and you might not have said anything the entire time.

No.

And so we use those sort of conversational volleys To signal that you're now done with your ask and now it's the other person's turn to kind of weigh in on the facts that they may have that you don't have.

I look back on some of my early 20s negotiation where I'd be like, can I have this? But if not, it's okay. Stop talking, Vivian. Like, what is wrong with you? You just asked for something. You made a really good point. You had receipts, you showed your worth, and you just told them it was okay to tell you no.

I didn't even think to negotiate when I started. I mean, my, my, my favorite boss, came to me and was like, it's time to negotiate. And I was like, no, you'll just pay me what I deserve. And she was like, that's not how this works. Yeah.

I do love that your favorite boss was like, I am going to teach you how to fish, not give you a fish, because that probably set you up for a lot more success, especially when you weren't together anymore.

Yeah, she became CEO for a reason. She's very good.

Wow, we love that. We love that. You know, we've got a couple minutes left of this episode, and I want to get super nerdy with you. You actually have a negotiation calculator.

Oh, so fun.

Let's bring out the calculator. It's something that anybody can download, and it shows you the benefits of what your raise would bring to your overall life, and it's going to help you essentially calculate what negotiating over and over and over again can actually do. Show us the tool, one. Show me the goods. But also, like, how do we use this tool to prepare for our financial futures?

So, I use this tool as an incentive. When you were saying, like, why don't people negotiate? Well, because they're scared. Okay, well, what's going to get us over the fear is understanding the value of this conversation.

Yeah.

So, let's play, Vivian.

Okay.

Why don't you choose an age?

Okay, so I am 30.

Okay, perfect. Now, let's choose a current compensation. Plus out whatever you want.

Yeah, let's use an easy number. Let's say I make $100,000 a year. Perfect.

What raise percentage do we want to play with? So, I will say, when we, once women learn these skills and take our course, on average, they're getting about a 28% increase. The largest we've ever had is an 84%.

Woo!

I know, that— Love.

She, yep.

And that was, I mean, that was, she has 3 kids. That was a game changer for them.

That's life-changing money. She almost doubled her pay.

Yep.

So, okay, so what should we be playing for? Let's play for 15%, 20%? Great.

Let's do 15% and then we'll do 20%.

Cool.

So, let's say you negotiate one time at the age of 30 and you get a 15% raise. That's going to be worth $1 million. Just that one negotiation.

One time.

Forget the fact. Exactly. And Vivian, I mean, I realize this is where you're an expert. That's if you just keep the cash in your—

In a savings account.

Yes. If you are investing this money— And not even a high-yield savings account. Yeah.

That is the money you are earning, not even the money that is working hard for you. That is crazy.

That's right. Now, let's say that you got the 20%.

Okay.

That's going to be $1.3 million. And that's $1.3 million one time. So, let's say in 5 years you do another negotiation. Now we're going to add on top of that.

We're Olympicsing every 4 years.

Exactly.

Wow.

And then, let's assume that you put that, and I haven't even pulled out a compound interest calculator, but like, let's assume you put it in the market.

And say you even get a very conservative 8% to 10% on, you know, an ETF that tracks the S&P 500. That's what it's shown. Like, you're looking at millions of millions, tens of millions of dollars. And this is truly a life-changing sum.

And it's a life-changing sum for— I mean, the course that we do is 45 minutes, right? Like, it's a life-changing sum. After that, you should practice. You should, you know, Have a couple of role plays, but like, let's call it 3 hours of prep if you're really doing all of the work.

Yeah. And I do want to take a second to highlight you because we were joking about this before the camera started rolling. Uh, Kathryn's out here doing the Lord's work, and she is not necessarily selling you some scam course on the internet. You truly go and you work with employers to provide this course To employees, right?

Yes, and my favorite employers do the course for the employees and for the managers.

Oh, nice.

Because what's happening is we have hidden value just all over organizations because we all assume that we only need one thing. But Vivian, what would make your life great is different from what would make my life great, is different from what it was 3 years ago or 5 years ago, right? I have really young kids. My needs are a little bit different than when I was 23, than when they will be when I'm 55. The ability for us to have that open conversation, there's a lot of value there, some of which is monetary, but plenty of which is also not.

Yeah. And to have managers take it, like, I feel like that really helps them visualize why people are going to make certain asks and why it's so important to say yes.

Well, managers like it because it makes their teams a lot more effective. When your high performers are staying and when your medium performers can become high performers because all they needed was That extra incentive, or that training, or to freaking be able to park next to the building because of X, Y, and Z, instead of commute 20 minutes from the furthest spot. Like, whatever it is that individual needs, we can now trade off against it.

Oh, I love that. And you talk about, you know, negotiating specifically to you. I have a question which is a little niche for me. What about if you are a 1099 employee who works for yourself, Like I do, versus being a traditional W-2 employee?

Ooh, let's get into it. Okay, so if you're a 1099, all of the strategies we just talked about still work for you. So think holistically, what are all the things you can negotiate? Ask relationally, which is that formula we talked about, and then discuss collaboratively. What do you think? Now we're trading information. The other kind of benefit that you have is that women have better negotiated outcomes than men do when we negotiate on behalf of others.

Mm-hmm.

So, to the extent that you are negotiating on behalf of your company, your employees, versus just yourself, that actually can allow you to have that tailwind. So, one of the things that I always cringe when I see is when women start a company and they call it their own name.

Yeah.

Because it's really hard then to separate you from that entity. The other kind of bonus that I talk to entrepreneurs about is, if you can set up a board of advisors, it's not a legal entity, but it allows you, when you're negotiating with really big You know, big deals to say, "Ooh, let me think about that. I'm gonna have to take that to the board of advisors." You go to the board of advisors, you talk, you can come back and say, "Hey, my board's really not liking that because we've never charged that little before." Yeah. If we're going to do it, I'm gonna need some guarantees that we will get. You know, it's gonna be a three-year deal. It's gonna be on this, and I'm gonna get this video footage or whatever it may be. Right? It allows you another party to play against.

Oh, I feel so good about myself right now, guys, because my agent. My manager and my attorney are all women working hard on my behalf now.

That's awesome.

Yeah. No, I love that. That makes me feel so good. But also, like, man, I wish we could always advocate for ourselves as well as we do for others.

I agree. Although one of the things— the tide's turning here a little bit. One of the questions that I get asked is like, well, why do we have to negotiate differently?

Yeah.

And the answer is because the way the game was played was set up Against us, frankly. But the way that it is moving towards— everything that we talked about is best practice negotiation, regardless of your gender. Women just have an extra incentive to get there a little bit faster. But when you look at how companies are becoming more collaborative, and how gender roles are more in flux now, in 10 years, I think everyone's going to need to negotiate this way, because the old alpha way is going to start to ignite backlash, regardless of your gender.

What's the difference between the old alpha way versus the way that we just did a demonstration for. And then ultimately, like, this podcast is listened to by multiple people, like, not just women, men, non-binary listeners. Like, what— like, why is what we talked about today super relevant to them too?

So the old way of doing things is sort of this I win, you lose. Where's the posturing? I'm gonna fake them out. Let me act like I'm gonna walk away from the table, right? It's a lot of Alpha peacocking.

Yeah, like an NBA playbook. Yeah.

The new way of doing it is we're going to grow the pie and then we're going to split it. So this was made famous about 20 years ago by Bill Ury in international peace negotiations. Turns out also really helpful for us. And so for, you know, men, non-binary, whatever you identify, these strategies can be strategies for you. They're just something to put in your toolkit. We know that for women, the toolkit that we've been given wasn't built for us, so these might feel like they fit a little bit better. But for anyone, I had, I got an email last week from somebody that was like, I just used your course to negotiate an extra $11 million over the course of your career. This is a very, very high-paid attorney. And I was like, great, I'm so excited too. And he was like, I am a white male. And I was like, oh, okay. Oh, cool, nice. I mean, I'm very excited for you too. But also, these strategies work for anyone. The other thing, though, is if you don't identify as a woman, but you have women in your network, maybe share this information with them.

Yeah.

It's amazing how few women know that if we use the tactics that are on the internet, they're just not going to work for us. And we don't know that, and we don't know why. So if you have women that you're talking to that are thinking about negotiating, maybe point them to this episode and let them see what the research is showing actually does work With finances going the direction that they are going, more and more homes are going to become 2-income households.

And if you are a man listening to this, or you have women in your life that you love, and you want to help them, just remember, if your wife makes more money, you get to go on a nicer vacation, you get to have a nicer home, you get to have that nanny, you get to have all of these other things. Nothing bad happens when you put more dollars in the hands of women.

That's right.

Into a woman's pocket.

Well, the other part of it, and the reason why companies pay me, is because there's research out showing that if women are employed at the same rate as men, that releases, that releases an extra $28 trillion in growth.

With a T, trillion with a T.

Which I couldn't, like, you can probably conceptualize, I couldn't, so I had to look it up.

No, I literally can't. You can't, no one can.

That's Apple, Meta, Alphabet, is that Google? Is E, it's Google? Amazon, and there was one other person, combined, multiplied by 25. Like, this is real global growth.

Yes.

Companies want a piece of that, and they understand in order to get a piece of that, they have to be able to attract and retain female talent. The problem is, they've all been built for this very stereotypical way of life, and so, actually, women, one could argue, need to negotiate more often because we are negotiating a place that feels like it fits us in a place that doesn't, wasn't built to, right? So that's the reason why a lot of companies are also interested in having women learn how to do this. Yeah.

When you can't get a seat at their table, build your own damn table.

Heck yeah.

I love that. Okay, so I'm listening to this podcast. I am falling in love with you as we are listening. How can I get you to come to my office and deliver this seminar, deliver this course, and have my employer pay for it? Like, tell me how this works.

I appreciate you asking that, because right now, I mean, still, if you Google, how do I negotiate, you're going to get bad advice if you're a woman. And so, right now, the only mechanism we have to get this information is corporations. And by the way, thank you so much for this opportunity. Yes, of course. And so, if you are in a women's organization, Just send us an email. You can go to worthmorestrategies.com, but we—

worthmorestrategies.com.

We come into ERGs, women's conferences, sometimes by HR, and run a workshop, and we can also run workshops for managers, and that way both sides are doing this.

I love that. Hit 'em both sides so you can make sure that you get Kathryn in front of you in your real life, and the one last thing I did wanna ask, How can they find the negotiation calculator? What is the website for that?

So right now you're gonna Google negotiation calculator and either Worthmore Strategies or Kathryn Valentine. It's hidden in our blog. We haven't figured out how to pull it out yet.

Okay. All right. You know what? What we are gonna do is we are gonna link this in the show notes. So if you are watching wherever, or watching or listening wherever you get your podcasts, you can find it in the show notes. And if you are watching this on YouTube, you can find it in the description down below. But Kathryn, thank you so much. You are a wealth of knowledge. I feel so much smarter and more equipped after having this conversation, and I can't wait for all the Besties to learn more from you.

Vivian, thank you. Of course.

I'd like to thank my partners at Marshalls for sponsoring this episode of Net Worth and Chill. Being responsible with your finances means taking care of future you. And thankfully, while you're looking out for the you of tomorrow, Marshalls is looking out for the you of today. They've got the latest on-trend and high-quality fashion, beauty, and home decor at a fraction of retail prices. So whether you're starting a new job, taking some overdue PTO, or just sitting at home planning your next move, Marshalls will make sure you look good doing it. Shop in-store or online to get the good stuff today. Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you liked the episode, make sure to leave a rating and review and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Got a burning financial question that you want covered in a future episode, write to us via podcast@yourrichbff.com. Follow Net Worth and Chill Pod on Instagram to stay up to date on all podcast-related news. And you can follow me @YourRichBFF for even more financial know-how. See you next week. Bye!