How to negotiate your next promotion 💸 Yota Trom

A lot of people, they really have no idea about how much money they should be making. So they come to me and they think, oh, I have such a good salary. I only want to work on my leadership skills. And then we realize they're like 34% down the average market rate, but they've just never done the exercise of figuring out what's the right number is about what they're doing and what's the value they bring. Then combine that with, combine that with not asking, they feel stuck and then they blame the company. I think in many cases the blame is on us.

This week's Millennial Master is Jutta Tromm. She's a coach and founder who's helped hundreds of people get promotions, negotiate solid salary increases, and position themselves for senior roles without burning bridges or playing politics. Her work sits at the intersection of value, visibility, and self-belief, especially for people who are already doing the work but aren't being rewarded for it. In this episode, we talk about how to negotiate a promotion without making it awkward, why most people are underpaid and don't realize it, and the business case every founder and employee needs to understand. Jota, welcome to Millennial Masters. Where are you joining us from today?

Hi, Daniel. It's so great to be here. I'm joining from the beautiful Wimbledon today.

Let's get straight into it, Jota, because I want you to share with us when somebody asks you what you actually do for a living, what's your answer?

So I have two big passions. The one is personal branding for founders and entrepreneurs. And the second is helping people in corporate make more money by helping them with career growth, promotions, pay rises, all this nice stuff that not many people are talking about.

I see. And we definitely got to touch on both of those topics. So then what's the most recent story that reminded you why helping people ask for more at work actually matters in real life and not just for the LinkedIn posts?

So I'm going to go with a client. Actually, I had a session, right, maybe a couple of days ago on Friday. And, um, she's a client I've worked with quite a few years, around 3 in total. We have 4x'd her salary since then. And now she's, I'm preparing her for her next promotion at the VP level, which is pretty exciting. When she came to me, she was a first-time manager and within 3 years, we managed to get one promotion after the other. And I'm not gonna share her name just for confidentiality reasons, but, um, when she first came to me, definitely getting a promotion or a pay rise was not part of the agenda. The main reason she came was to help her with her leadership skills as a first-time manager. And one of the things that was really obvious from the get-go was that she really didn't know how good she was at what she was doing. So her previous role in the company was sales and she was super highly regarded within the company. She brought a lot of money in and then transitioned to having a team, but it was a little bit slightly out of the sales path. So she thought, okay, that's something new. She didn't ask for way more money because she thought was just one step up from where she was. So talking to her, the first thing we realized was that there was so much potential, first of all, on what she was doing, but also bringing in a lot of the skill sets, a lot of the skills that she had before to her new role. And another thing that was important is the amount of revenue that she was bringing in the company and how much more of that she could bring in her new position. And I started coaching her on how to ask for more, but also more importantly, how to position herself and prove that she was capable, she deserved that money. And just to say here that most people, when they ask about a promotion, they think about it more from a selfish perspective because they need more money. But what they don't understand is that the promotion requires to build a business case because the business is investing. In you, so they want to see how are they going to get return on their investment. So what I started doing with her was actually building a strong business case about how this new position was a way significant step up in her career, but also how it would enable her to bring more money in the business. Long story short, straight after maybe a couple of months, she got about, she was at 50K when we started, so she managed to get to $75K. Then a year later, she was bringing so much revenue in the business. And again, it was a mindset problem where she was not thinking she should ask for more. She told me, oh, I just got all this money, such a big pay rise. So I feel I should just be grateful and keep doing what I'm doing. And when we sit down and we're going to talk a little bit about that later on, I guess, and kind of build her promotional case, the business case, why she needed more money in order to kind of reflect the value that she was bringing the business. Again, there was so much resistance on why she should do that. And again, we start all the coaching process. How do you build the business case? How do you position yourself? What's the value the business is going to get? And from $75K, we managed to get here. I think it was $110K. That promotion was $150K. And now we are hopefully going to hit $180K in this round. But the reason I chose this story is because what was the biggest change that I saw in her was a mindset shift. So she was coming from a middle-class family. Her mom, the highest salary she ever made was $30K. So for her making $50K or $70K or $80K was already a significant success based on what she has seen around. And she wasn't able to see her growth and the impact that she was making. And she kept undervaluing herself. But everybody in the business would see that. That's why they were giving her these promotions, more responsibility, putting her more in front of like big clients, CEOs, um, HR, um, like senior leaders within the HR function. And we had to change the way she would view herself. And I think that's such a common thread when people just don't see their own value. And of course, if you don't see how good you are, how are you going to communicate that? And how will you know how much money your knowledge, your skills are actually worth. So yeah, that's one of the examples that stands out for me. And I frequently will refer to her just because of, not only because of how much more money she made, but also about the change in the perception of herself throughout the process.

And I guess this comes from experience, Jutta, because you used to work for big names in tech from Yahoo and Amazon. And who were you back then at work? And how did you think about money and progression before you started coaching?

So it was the exact opposite. And actually, all this is not coming because I was doing that really well. It's actually coming because I was not doing it at all. And only when I started my own business and I had to identify my own worth. I had to ask for what I deserve in order to survive and make sure my business was actually sustainable and kept growing. And that was the first time that I realized what an opportunity I have missed working in some of the biggest tech companies in the world. And I remember when I joined Amazon, they offered me salary. I didn't negotiate because I was just grateful that Amazon offered me a position. And back then I was just one year in the UK, now I'm 15 years plus. But back then I was coming from Greece, again, middle-class family. My parents have been working in the same company since ever. So for me, working in one of my dream companies while I was in tech was already something I was super grateful about. So I didn't think of negotiating, of asking anything more. I ended up working 12, 14-hour days. And then feeling massively underpaid. I ended up having a burnout. But I think the biggest problem was not feeling appreciated for what I was giving back. And of course, that wasn't a problem of the company. That was my problem that I didn't ask for more money, or I didn't know what was the value that I would bring in the organization. So then when I started my coaching journey and I was more focused on leadership and executive coaching, and as I would help my clients build their leadership skills, naturally they would get a promotion and other people would recognize and they would give them more responsibility. So my clients just start asking me, oh, how do I ask for that? And I mean, I've worked with hundreds, hundreds of people so far. And when you do something repeatedly, you have the chance to test and see what works and what doesn't work. So I get testing, okay, what if we say it like that? What data do we need to present before? How do we need to present the data? What information are they looking for in order to say yes or no? What are the common objections? Okay, how do we handle this objection? Let's try this way. Let's try that way. So doing that hundreds of times, I kind of developed my own method of doing that. And then I started getting very steady results. All my business was based on referrals because people were like, I want what you did for him or for her. How did you get them there? So I feel everything started from me realizing how much I was not getting paid what I'm worth, basically, in all my corporate life. And who knows, maybe I, if I was paid what I deserved, I would still have a corporate career, although I love entrepreneurship at the same time. But I think so many people just don't know how to ask, or they're afraid to ask, and they're missing such huge opportunities because, I mean, you're already working in a job, you're already doing what you need to do. Why not make enough money? Out of it, right?

Well, before I'm gonna ask you some specific, uh, stuff about how to negotiate better, I wanted to quickly touch on your move from being an employee to basically an entrepreneur, because walking away from those big brands and was an identity shift. And I'm curious, what did people around you say when you told them you were going into coaching and doing your own business? And also, what were you secretly most worried about when, in a way, leaving employment, securing?

So my family, first of all, thought I was into some cult that somehow wired me in a different way because they couldn't understand why I would leave a very successful corporate career that kept growing. I was making quite like really good money by the time I left Yahoo to officially start my business. So they couldn't really understand. And back then, all my network was people in corporate. So they genuinely thought I was probably crazy. Like, why would you do that? But for me, I think one of the things and the main reason I decided to move in the UK was because I had the question and my question was, how can I help people? So out of like personal challenges, um, over the last few years that I lived in Greece, I felt this need to kind of help others instead of just focusing on myself and my career and all about my ego, but I obviously didn't know how I could help people. So I came here asking this question and then through my master's in positive psychology and coaching, I actually had the tools to help people. And I also, I think I started tapping into my strengths. Like a big thing that I'm a fan of is strength-based coaching, which is how do we help people build on their strengths and leverage their strengths rather than keep focusing on their weaknesses. And I think we spend most of our lives thinking of what we can do better and how we can improve the things that we're not good at. But actually, research shows us that when we do focus on our strengths, then we can amplify by 10x the outcome. So I started tapping into my strengths, which was positive thinking, curiosity, um, this need to help and support others, a growth mindset where I always wanted to become better and improve. And learn and grow. So when I discovered coaching and positive psychology, I thought that was such an interesting direction for my career going forward because I could use my strengths, but then I could also help people while doing that. So I found kind of my why and my vision of what drives me. And yeah, so the transition was interesting. I did get a lot of support from especially my colleagues at Yahoo. They were my first clients. Then I joined a small coaching agency and they started giving me my first clients. And then from there, as I said, a lot of word of mouth and a lot of referrals led to where I am right now.

What were your fears when moving from something that was stable in a way, a guaranteed salary or income to something that could fluctuate wildly from month to month or from client to client?

I think my worry wasn't so much the financial aspect. I think mainly because of ignorance, because because I have never run my own business before.

Naive is what other people have called it on this podcast.

Yeah, exactly like that.

When you're a certain age and you're naive, you will go for it and take your chance and you wouldn't take that risk later on.

Exactly. So I didn't have a family back then. I was like, oh, I found my passion. I want to follow my passion. Why not do it? But I think my biggest fear, which influenced a lot of the direction I took on the business as well, was exposure. Obviously, I was a new coach back then. I hadn't done coaching before, part of my profession. Oh, I was feeling really uncomfortable to put myself out there and to go after clients. Um, and I really hate the fake it till you make it. So I didn't want to pretend that I was successful until I actually felt successful. So I think my biggest fear was how would I put myself out there? And maybe that's why I also started building my personal brand because I felt Okay, I'm not good at sales. I don't know anything about sales. I've never done sales. I'm not good at marketing. I've never done marketing, but what I'm good at is building connections and getting people interested in what I do. So I just started by creating community that was all like nonprofit. I started doing events and then the industry, obviously having the strong tech background, I could support the things that I was talking about. It's just that this time I was bringing more the soft skills perspective rather than the hard skills perspective, which is what made me, what I was using in my career in tech. But yeah, definitely my biggest fear was putting myself out there. Like I've never done public speaking until I started my own business. Didn't have any social media except like Facebook where I was posting maybe once a month or whatever to my friends and it was pretty closed private profile. So I think like, yeah, That was probably my biggest fear.

And fast forward to today, you've worked with hundreds of people through promotions and pay rises. What would you say is the most common and unsexy reason why talented people stay stuck in their jobs?

The top one I would say is they don't ask and they don't know how to ask. And another thing that I have seen practically through my work is that a lot of people, they really have no idea about how much money they should be making. So they come to me and they think, oh, I have such a good salary. I only want to work on my leadership skills. And then we realize they're like 30, 40% down the average market rate, but they've just never done the exercise of figuring out what's the right number is about what they're doing and what's the value they bring. Then combine that with, combine that with not asking, they feel stuck and then they blame the company. Well, I think in many cases, the blame is on us.

That is common and unsexy. So I'll take that one as an answer. Jota, you talk about a 6-step process in your technique. So outside of the marketing language, in plain English, what actually needs to happen before you walk into a promotion or a salary conversation?

Great question. I'm going to try and simplify, although I feel like I believe that there's a lot of power in simplicity. So hopefully, you know, people will just We'll get there. Yeah. So I think first step for me is you need to know whether you are eligible for a promotion or not. I use a very simple technique, but very effective, which is called the self-evaluation worksheet, which is basically just an Excel file, 5 columns where you write role and like responsibilities of your current level, where you are now in your role, examples next to each of them, then one level up, what are the responsibilities in the next level, the one that you want to be promoted to. And then next to that, examples. With these first 4 columns, what we, what becomes really clear to the people is that usually 90% of the clients, they are already doing 100% of their current level. And we have examples to prove that, not only to the manager, but sometimes even to themselves. So that's a good kind of wake-up call for them to realize, oh, well, actually I have been doing everything in my current level. And then when I invite them to do the same thing for one level up, they realize that they've been doing 30, 40, 50, 60% of the one level up, which means that we are totally eligible for a promotion. So the first step is, do you deserve to be promoted? Do you have the skills? Do you have, are you already doing some things of the next level? So that's step number one. Then step number two is you need to know your market value. As I said, a lot of people, they really don't know how much money they should be making. I think I always compare my brain with ChatGPT because I feel like I get so much input from all my clients, which means for me, when someone comes, I will ask them a couple of questions and then I will know what is their market rate, just because I know everybody's salary rate. So everyone who comes to me, the first question I'll ask is, how much money are you making? What is your bonus structure? What are your stocks? What is— so I feel like that gives me a really good sense of the market. And people usually don't have that. And it's pretty easy to find. So I would say the second Step is knowing your market value, how much you should be paid for what you do and your level and your location. So there are a few parameters that we need to take into account. Then step number 3, you need to have the conversation with your manager and your manager needs to know that they are stepping into a salary or into a promotion conversation. So a lot of people, they're just waiting to have the conversation during their performance review. That is too late because—

Which is a year, at least yearly.

It is yearly, but also it's too late because if you were close to the promotion, but you didn't really do everything, you don't have time to react. So ideally, like the best time to have the conversation is right now. Like you're listening to this podcast, tomorrow, have a conversation with your manager and see where do you stand? What are the things that you are missing if you were to get promoted? So the third step is making the manager aware that they want to move to the next level and then sharing the self-evaluation worksheet so then they can have a conversation with their manager saying, look, I'm already doing 100% of my current role, plus like 30-40% of the next level up. I think I deserve a promotion. What do we need to do in order to make sure that this can happen during the next performance evaluation? So, um, that's next step, uh, number 3. Then step number 4 is usually where the negotiation starts. No, actually, no. Step number 4 is building the business case. So after you told the manager, this is what we're doing, the next step is, okay, let's have a follow-up call and explore what would that mean. And that is when they need to go prepared with a business case, as I said, explaining, okay, I'm going to go to this next level. What does that mean for the business?

Yeah, because you can't just say, I work hard and I deserve a promotion. That's not going to work.

Exactly. Because I mean, and you're like, the business is like, okay, that's great. How is that going to benefit me? Why should I give you another $30K if I'm not going to get anything back and you will keep doing what you're doing now with $30K less, right? Ideally, the ideal business case is when it shows that by promoting this person to the next level, you are enabling them to do more things than they could do right now. Whether that is the perception the clients will have, because it's different to talk to a VP versus a director, right? There's way more respect for the VP level when you're doing client-facing work and they feel like they talk to someone more senior. There are like a hundred different reasons why the next level up could enable the person to generate more for the business. So we want to present that first and then Once we present the business case of, okay, we're, we're suggesting this promotion, this is how it's going to impact positively the business. Then you also need to justify why you are the best choice for that. A lot of people forget that because it's not just about, okay, great. We saw why it's important for the business, but then we know that the person who is louder sometimes gets the attention, right? So we also want to make sure that you are presenting yourself as to be the best possible candidate. For that role and why. Um, and then after we do that, it starts a little bit, um, the back and forth with the manager, all of that. And then let's assume things are going well, then you're going into the negotiation part. Um, always I say to my clients, the salary negotiation comes at the end after they have agreed to give you the promotion. So we don't lead with the money. We first lead with the role. And once we secure the role, then it's the right time to negotiate about.

So make sure you get the promotion first and then you can talk about the money.

Yes, because I mean, the whole process of the promotion is demonstrating what's your value and what you bring in the business and what they will earn from promoting you to that level. So it's, um, you cannot ask for money if you haven't shown them why you deserve that. So I feel, and a lot of time people are frustrated because they haven't taken a good pay rise for many years. So they, that's the first thing they want to say, because that's the one that hurts them the most. An emotional decision, that's not a strategic decision. And when we want to get a promotion, there is a strategy, a step-by-step strategy that we're following in order to make sure that this is the right, that we're going to have the outcomes that we want to have. And the final step for me is the network. So a lot of people think that their only advocate is their manager, that is Absolutely not true. Usually 99% of the companies, there's a group of people who are deciding who's going to be promoted or not. And what we want ideally is before these people step into this meeting where they're deciding about your future, your career's future, we want to make sure that these people are actually, they believe in you and they believe you deserve that. So creating this network and talking to the people who will influence the decision is also really important because sometimes, and we see that a lot, right? The managers themselves, they don't know how to ask. So it has happened to me so many times where I will coach someone and then their manager will come as a client because they will say, oh, I really liked how this person asked for the promotion. So can you please coach me on how I can ask for a promotion for myself? So a lot of times no one is teaching us these things, right? So a lot of managers, they really don't know how to build a business case for a promotion, negotiate for us, all of this. So we want to eliminate the chance, right? The element of chance. And the network is gonna, what is gonna really help us do that, because then it's not just up to one person. We have 5, 6, 7, 8, 10. I don't know how many, like depends on the structure of the company, et cetera, people like believing in us and advocating for us. So then we're kind of cementing the chances for getting that next step that we want to.

And Jota, say somebody does all the right things, says all the right things, and still gets a no. What do you tell them to do next week, next year?

So, first of all, we don't get a no for an answer, and we just like stay with it. If we get the no, I want to know why. So I want to know what's the reason. So what I will always invite my clients to do is to have a conversation where we want to understand what is actually the blocker. There are chances where there is objectively no opportunity in the company, maybe of the structure of the companies. I mean, even if you are the best candidate or employee, the company just might not have a position. For you, for your growth. And when that is the case, it's up to the person to decide, do I want to stay in the company knowing that my career growth is not going to be as quick as I would like to, but there are other things on the table. Maybe it's a good environment, maybe they're learning too much. So there we were going to sit down and like, weigh the pros and the cons and see, well, actually, even though we know there's not an immediate opportunity for a promotion and a pay rise, are there other things that are keeping them in the company? And if the answer is no, then I will help them find a new role, like helping them with all the CV, interviewing, all of that in a company. Um, and that's where the personal branding is coming in. I feel like the positioning is just so important. Um, and I see that so much with like the founders, with the executives, it's all about the positioning. And so part of this process is also that they now know what are the things that they need to highlight, what is the value that they bring, how to talk about this value, what examples to bring. So kind of like the promotional strategy is also helping them with their personal branding and the positioning. Sometimes we might actually need to do proper personal branding where we would look into like their presence, both in person and online, and kind of strengthen that. In order to create a perception internally about who they are and what they can bring on the table. And that perception, then you carry it, of course, externally at the same time.

And Jota, you mentioned founders, and most of the audience here at Millennial Masters are founders, leaders, entrepreneurs. And based on your hundreds of clients, you also heard hundreds of reasons why somebody was promoted, or not. So what are the founders and the leaders getting wrong in how they reward and promote their people?

Now, that's a great question. First of all, I think founders are really busy people. They're trying to do a lot of things. They themselves might found themselves in a founder position while clearly they didn't have any training on leadership or in coaching or in any of these things. So a lot of times what I see is that because of how busy the founders or the senior leaders are, they do not really have the time to invest in their people and see, you know, like George, George is doing so much work, like, or it can be a really good asset for the company. Let's help him grow because that is going to come back to us. So I feel a lot of times the founders, they don't even know what the person has brought on the table. And that's why I always start with the self-evaluation worksheet and getting people to communicate their impact. Other reasons that they might be missing that as well is they don't know what people want and they have never asked. So for me, when I, I coach, like when I do executive coaching, one of the sessions I will do with every client is how do you run a one-to-one? Session with your people in order to make sure you understand what does this person want, what drives them, what's their passion, because then you can, I mean, when you help your people grow, you're going to get that back in your company. So I feel it's a win-win situation. And I always say promotion, it's actually a huge win in the company because you get a person who is ready to work harder and kind of is grateful for the opportunity you're giving. So you're going to get multiple the money you're investing in them back. So a lot of times they also don't ask. They don't have a system or a structure, especially we see that in scale-ups. So when the business is growing really quickly, they don't have processes. They don't have, sometimes they don't even have performance evaluations or anything like that. But also most of the managers, because they grew internally from individual contributors to management as the company was growing. They also do not have proper training. So they also do not know how to have career conversations with the people. And as a result, people feel they are not noticed. There's not an opportunity, but actually it's because no one took the time to ask them and help them think, well, actually we do need that. And a lot of times what we see is that, especially in startups, is that people are moving from one role to the other and you might hire someone to do something. And then when you start talking to them and have a career conversation, you realize that, oh, well, actually this person would be so much better if they were doing something else. So back to what I said about strength-based coaching, if we do not know what are the strengths of our people, we're not leveraging the strengths enough. And I feel that is another, um, reason. And then the third one is in some startups and/or smaller companies, there's just not room. For growth because the company is small, it's not growing as fast. So objectively, unless you start making up possible positions to show that there is growth, there is really not. Uh, and that might be for some time. So then you need to find different ways to incentivize and motivate your people to be part.

And, and that's going to be my next question, Jutta, because say You know, there's many founders who, as the business grows and develops, they can't match, say, big tech salaries. What should they be doing so their best people don't quietly drift off, especially if there's not an immediate space for a promotion and a pay rise?

First of all, I would say there are two things, and they're pretty different the one from the other. The one has to do with the intrinsic motivation and identify what is that, what does that look like for your people? People are motivated for different reasons. Not everybody's motivated just for money. Actually, I do know a lot of people that I work with that their biggest motivation was not money, was maybe positive reinforcement and just acknowledging the work that they do, was an opportunity for knowledge, for growth, was opportunities for visibility. For exposure, for other things. So I would say, if you do not have a clear career growth path within your company, or is it not possible, then just take the time and especially with your A players, take the time to have a conversation with them and ask them, okay, that's the structure of the company. We cannot be giving you like one promotion after the other. What is it that you want? What is it that really motivates you? What is, where is your passion? What would you love to do more of? How can we support you in your growth? Or what opportunities do you what do you see in the company that you would like to explore more? Are there maybe other departments that maybe you could go and try new things and kind of like pivot your career? A lot of people choose smaller companies because they want to pivot. Maybe giving them an opportunity like that is a good way to keep them. The other thing that I genuinely think like every founder should invest in is their personal brand. And why is that? Because people, um, as you say, people choose managers and people leave managers. They don't leave companies. And so a big opportunity that a lot of founders are not even thinking is that the way they are perceived is a huge motivator for people to go and work for them. So a lot of times I get the question, how do I attract top talent? And you attract top talent by being a top leader. And if you do not have a brand that shows what are your values, how do you lead, how do you run your company, what are the ethics, all of this. What is your knowledge? What you are an expert at? What is your vision? What do you want to do next? So people buy into that and they want to work for that founder or for that leader. If it's in a corporate, more corporate environment, who is kind of like a celebrity, I will, I call it like a niche celebrity because it might not necessarily be someone that everybody knows, but there are people who will be like, oh, I love this leader. I love what they stand for. I really want to work for them and money is not going to be their biggest incentive in that case. It's going to be the profile of the person, but I have a lot of founders that I work with, like that they come from a tech background. And then obviously, I mean, I come from a tech background. I was an engineer. And when you use, when you choose that as a career, it's usually because you're introverted and you don't want to have to deal with people as much, but then you end up being like a very big founder and your company is growing and now you are the senior leader. So I feel there's a mindset shift that needs to happen. If you want to attract and main, and like keep, retain your top talent, you need to be someone that people want to follow. You need to have a vision and you need to bring your people along with that. And for me, when we're talking about like smaller companies, I think the element of like personal branding and building a strong founder or leader profile can actually work magic for when you're trying to attract or retain the talent in the organization. Like people love to follow a purpose and a vision. Um, and I feel like it's a huge opportunity that many founders don't leverage almost at all.

And you mentioned the founders in the smaller businesses and especially in the early days or early years, and especially with the first hires, a lot of founders feel weird about like paying themselves properly. So when, and you will hear a lot of the time, like, I'll pay myself later when things are stable, but also at the same time, it makes it trickier to pay, say, the A-players more. What goes through your mind when you hear that through your coaching side and leadership side?

I'm a little bit guilty of the same as well as I was building the business. I would say I would invest most most of the money back in the business to help the business grow rather than live like the fancy life or anything like that. But I think this is directly connected with your self-worth. And I think from a societal perspective, we've been trained to associate our worth with money. And I'm not gonna explore whether that's right or wrong. Like I feel that can be a whole conversation on its own.

Separate podcast for that.

Separate podcast. It is true. It is true. People associate success and failure with money. So when you do not feel successful, it's almost impossible that you're going to make the people around you feel successful too. And as a founder, you are instilling the culture in your organization. So if you come from a place of scarcity where you're like, oh, I'm not going to pay myself. I'm not just going to like keep things frugal or whatever like that. Then naturally this is something you communicate even just energetically if we take it, but like people feel it and who really wants to be part of a culture like that, right? So I'm not saying go and reward yourself at the maximum, but I would say identify what is your number as a founder, something that makes you feel good, that you makes you feel successful. Um, and abundant. I love the word abundance when we talk about finance. So it doesn't have to be rich, but it has to be enough. So you feel like there's enough that makes me feel good. And whatever that's the number, it might not be a huge number. I don't think we need like a huge amount of money to feel we're successful when we're first building our businesses, but we do need to lead by example. And a lot of times people come to me and they're like, I tell my team not to work on the weekends. And I'm like, when was the last email you sent? And they're like, Saturday night. And I'm like, what?

You just lead by example.

You just lead by example because then I have their people coming to me and they say, we are exhausted, we're working overtime. And I'm like, oh, but why? And it's like, oh, because our founder is emailing us on a Saturday night. So we think we are expected to respond on a Saturday night, even though he tells us or she tells us not to do that. So it's exactly the same with money. If people don't feel that you are generous with your own self, How can you be generous with others, right? Like generosity is a personality trait. You either have it or don't have it. So I think the first person we are entitled to be generous with is ourselves. And I mean, you give what you have, right? That doesn't mean we all need to have this huge salary, but from a percentage perspective, it can be something that feels fair and right.

About fairness, you Went straight into my next question there, Jota.

I don't know the questions before, Hannes, so I have to say that.

Well, you definitely got the vibe because my question is about fairness and transparency. When one person in a team, say there's two people going for a promotion from a team, and one negotiates hard while another person doesn't. And they sit on the same team. But maybe the one that negotiates harder wouldn't be necessarily the best person for the promotion. How would you reconcile that both from your coaching perspective for leaders, but also for employees?

I would say that perceptions matter. And if that is the case, and if the person who is listening right now is the person who feels that what happened is not fair, I would invite the person to think whether proper positioning and knowing how to communicate your worth and your value is actually a skill that needs to be rewarded. So the fact that this person is asking and getting what they want, that is a skill. That is a skill of positioning. That is a skill of presence. This is a very, very important skill because then you can do the same with your clients, right? If you do it with yourself, you can also do it with the product that you are standing behind. And so I feel that a lot of times it is unfair, but people need to understand that as they grow in seniority, learning how to represent themselves is part of the skillset that they need to have. It's the same as like networking. A lot of leaders, I tell them, I always have like the 4 things a leader should do. And I always say, Number 1, you need to do right by your people. Number 2, you need to do right by the company. So you need to make sure whatever you've been hired to deliver, you're delivering that. Number 3, you need to have a network because if you are a leader and you don't have a network, you cannot enable your people, your teams, your clients, no one. So this is part of, an equal part of the equation. And the 4th, of course, I'm going to say personal branding because it's the perception that people have of you. I feel the same. It's like, I will put positioning under the personal branding and like people who are talking and communicating and asking. This is part of, this is actually demonstrating seniority and is demonstrating a skill. So again, we grew up and I feel this is a mindset problem because most of us, we grew up with this idea of work hard and your work will be recognized. Well, that's not true.

Well, that was I would not say necessarily we grew up with it. It was kind of like put in our heads that that will happen and that all you have to do is learn hard, work hard, go to uni, and then everything will progress from there onwards. Exactly. As the generation of millennials that we are part of has experienced through their life, that is almost never the case.

Because why? Because we have social media. So that has shifted completely and we are the generation of social media. I feel like Facebook was invented. Yeah. We were like, when we were like in our late, I don't know, early 20s or even a bit before, maybe somewhere along that. But I mean, social media changed everything because suddenly self-promotion and asking and getting what you deserve and talking about your impact and what you do and what you're good at. That's just, that's the new norm. So I feel as part of our growth is also changing our mindset into a growth mindset and realizing that all this thing of work hard and your work will be recognized, that comes from like 1950s and the industrial revolution and all of that, where they just wanted people to work and not have a voice. And it comes from a completely different leadership style back then. But since then, things have changed significantly because of social media and how much now the self-promotion is becoming a norm. And you can do it in so many ways that is authentic and real. Like, I feel we have bad examples, but we also have amazing examples of people who inspire us, inspire us and motivate us. We all have people we follow and we admire and we look them up and You know, we learn from them. So I think for those people who are feeling that this is not fair, I want to invite them to think whether they have a growth mindset or fixed mindset. Carol Dweck's book around mindset is an amazing read that I always recommend to everyone and realize, well, actually, maybe here there's a new skill that I need, um, to develop if I want to be successful. Um, and instead of being resentful towards the other person who is doing it well, maybe I should just invest some time and effort to develop that skill because it's not just about what others will see. It's mainly about how you will feel about yourself. And I think if you feel confident, and for me, confidence is a huge part of my work because I feel like so many people they just don't feel confident, although they're brilliant and amazing at what they do. Asking and representing yourself and talking about who you are and what you're good at and all of these things that were like self-promotion is a show of confidence and is actually first starting within. So, I mean, you have so much, you have so many things to earn by challenging yourself and developing that skill.

And that brings us on to personal branding because, well, I know you roll your eyes at the word brand, so, but everybody will understand what we're talking about. So how do you convince these either staff members or leaders or founders that this personal branding is also a promotion tool and not just posting selfies and inspirational quotes on social media?

There are two different ways to, and I feel like as a coach, one of the skills that you develop over the years is that you need to say, you need to convey similar concepts in 20 different ways because each person, for each person is going to land something different. So, and I think when I'm trying to convince people about that and why they should be doing it, whether that's like the personal branding or the self-promotion or asking for a better salary or a higher position, all of that, for me, the first angle is the me angle. So what will it do for you? And as I said earlier on, um, it's just so many people are spending their whole life dealing with imposter syndrome. And not believing and not seeing how amazing they are. While I think every human being in this planet has something that makes them special and unique and different. And it's such a shame not to be able to see that, embrace that, accept it, and project it as well. So I think for me, the first reason is a personal reason. So you do it for you because that's going to make you feel better about who you are. Um, and it's going to help you just grow because you will be able to leverage the things that you have way more. Like, as I said, I leveraged my skills. I was 35 when I attributed communication as a skill to myself. Like back to then, I was like, yeah, I just talk to people and people like me.

Because some things come to you naturally, just like I feel they do for me. Yes.

Exactly. And because they come so naturally, we just assume that, well, everybody does that. Well, actually, no, not everybody does that. There are specific skills that come so naturally and easily to you, but they're so unique. And sometimes it's not just one skill, it's a combination of things that they can come from a lot of different places. They can come from how you grew up, from all your work career and what have you done, your studies, the people you're around, where you live, how much you travel. So each of us has something so special and unique, and I think it's a responsibility to ourselves to to discover that and being able to communicate this. So besides of that, making us feel better in our own selves. Second, if people know what you're good at, they're going to come asking for help. So again, bringing it a little back to the question you did just before, like, oh, when someone is promoted and someone is not promoted, well, actually this person, if everybody knows this person is great at something, then obviously whenever someone has an opportunity or a challenge, This is the person they're going to think and they're going to go because this person has communicated, this is my skill. This is what I do really well. So people are like, I can, I can, like, I need to go to this person to help me. One of the best exercises I give through my personal branding stuff is I always tell my clients to go to at least 10 people. Ideally, we want a mix of people from like family, friends, colleagues, like a very mixed group of people and ask them what What is my superpower? And how have I used the superpower to help you?

Because you don't realize until somebody puts their finger on it and tells you.

Yeah, exactly. And usually this is such an eye-opening question because it's never what people expect because others see in us what we cannot see for ourselves. So sometimes we do need this external point of view. And then for me, the third reason is also impact. So obviously I come from tech and I'm following AI and all of that pretty closely. And one of the things that is happening is that AI is trained based on the content we put out there. And then of course, AI evaluates this content and then shows it as a piece of information to the people who are asking for that. There is a danger into that. And a lot of people are saying, oh, LinkedIn is garbage, the content is not good, blah, blah, blah. There are all these people who are shallow or fake or, and well, if no one is doing anything to put something of quality out there, then this is what we're training the algorithm on. We're training the algorithm on this stuff. So for me, and one of the reasons I'm so passionate about the work that I do and amplifying voices that I feel deserve to be amplified is because if the people who have strong ethics and values and knowledge, they don't go out there and share these things, we're just training the algorithm to all the other stuff that we don't want to see. So I feel like with the AI blooming and all of that, each of us has a responsibility. It's a shared responsibility, especially because the people who are so amazing, usually they don't want to show off. But I really want to invite them to see it differently because a lot of them, they might have kids as well. So it's like, what is it? What is like our legacy? What are we putting out there? If the people who need to have a voice, they don't do it because they don't want to be like this other person or all of that. So I feel like for me, from an aspect of like impact and talking a little bit about the technology. We do want to amplify people who have a different perspective on things. They have passion, they have authenticity because we literally, we lack a lot of that and we lack some like good, good value, like good information. So like, if we think of it from an impact perspective, I think that might work for some people.

And that's where this is leading me to next, because if somebody listening to this had to do one concrete thing this month of December 2025, when we're recording, to make their online presence support their next promotion or job move, what should it be?

I would say do this exercise that I just said about asking the people about your superpower. And then I would talk about LinkedIn because I think when we talk about the professional setting, Most people are on LinkedIn, but I would say maybe your, in your social media of preference, where it makes sense for your work and for what you do, have a look after you have all the answers and see, is superpower communicated anywhere? So when I look at your profile, will it be visible to me what you're good at and what I can come to you for advice, for help, for support, or it's nowhere to be seen. And If it's not, then I mean, we have AI.

You know what you have to work on.

We have AI. Why not use AI and just use a simple prompt and say, hey, this is like some input I got from friends and family and colleagues about what are my superpowers. This is my CV or this is my existing LinkedIn profile. What would I need to change in order to communicate that superpower so the right people come to me when I can help them? With whatever I'm an expert at. And then, I mean, that would take you 5 minutes. It's doable. It's not like, you know, it doesn't take a lot of effort, but I mean, I'm just inviting them to see what happens once they just sift a little bit and communicate the thing that they do best. How is that going to—

I'm going to do this exercise. I'm going to do this exercise.

I will keep you accountable.

Yeah. I'm going to do this exercise, but as you mentioned, AI, I'm wondering, Jota, how has it changed the way you work with clients and what do you see coming next for how people manage their careers?

AI is an interesting one. I think we still haven't settled with these technologies, like when internet happened and everybody was like, oh, internet is evil. We're not going to use internet. And now then everybody's using internet. So I think AI is kind of like going through that phase and We went all the way to the one extreme where everybody was using AI and badly, and then we all knew that that was a bad use of AI. And now slowly people are starting to figure out how will I use AI for me, et cetera. I think the way I use AI personally, um, I do use it every day. And my philosophy around that is that AI is my editor, is not my creator. So whenever I want to create content or whatever that might be, I'm not very good at writing. That's not one of my strengths, but I want to hope I'm pretty good with talking to people. So what I do is whatever I want to write, like an article, LinkedIn post, I will dictate to AI my thoughts and then I will just say, now act as an editor and just edit my own words. So basically, literally, it's just as if I have an editor next to me and I'm not a native speaker, definitely like my English is not perfect, although I've been trying quite hard for 15 years to improve my accent and all of that, but I will use AI as my editor, and a lot of people, they will, they will say, oh, write a post about that. I'll never say that. It's always going to be my things just edited as if I had the professional editor helping me with my language skills next to me. And I feel, I do believe like in online presence. And I do think that in 2025 and 2026 that we're about to get to, online presence is important, whether you are like a corporate employee, a founder, a solopreneur, whatever that might be, you need to have presence. For people in corporate environment, I would say LinkedIn is probably the platform that makes sense. But it's not the same if you are not using the platform. And now with AI, as I said, just use your own voice, tell the AI things that you know, thoughts that you have, and then just use it to help you and make— because a lot of people are self-conscious about, oh, will this look good? So they use it. And I mean, if you're just editing your own words, it's going to look authentic. It's going to be you. It's just going to be a better version than if you were just writing it for yourself. Also with my clients, I'm using AI a lot now with like CV writing. So I have a lot of prompts and things that I give to them. And then, I mean, before it was such a painful process to write a really good CV. And I feel like now this has streamlined that, building business cases. Like I use it for all types of things, but for me, it's always what is the input? So I feel the tool is going to do what you asked, what you will ask it to do. It's what is it that you are asking from it to do and what is that you are putting in as information. So for me, I'm like very mindful because I think authenticity is one of my top values. And I always want people to have the same experience, whether they hear me today talking with you, if they meet me in person, an event, if they have coaching with me, whatever that might be, if they read my content, like I want to have the same experience. And I think for all my clients, I also want the same. I never want someone to read their stuff and then meet them and be like, who is this person? Like they don't know anything about this. So I would say like my big advice and my big take on that as we're getting better with learning how to use this technology, don't get to create stuff. I feel you have knowledge, you have expertise, just use your expertise and maybe elevate a little bit how you communicate that rather than just depend on someone else to write things for you because people are—

I agree and I've had this advice before and I also something that I kind of like share with people always instead of just typing a few words, like it would be a Google search is to speak to it or dictate and give it as much context as possible in your own voice and tone in order to be able to reflect that and adjust that. And if you're going to ask it for ideas without giving it any input from your side, it would be very generic and samey-samey versus this is what I want to say for this particular medium, say LinkedIn post newsletter, whatever it is.

One of the things I want to add about this topic is also, so a few months ago, I was in a meeting, part of the UCL School of Management board, and they invited one of the top researchers on AI adoption from Stanford University, from UCLA University. So they were talking to us about what's happening in corporate, how is AI adoption progressing and all of that. And what they found is that the biggest blocker is not actually the technology, is the shift in the mindset. So a lot of people are afraid that AI is going to replace them. And that's why they kind of are a little bit negative into bringing AI in. And again, for me, talking about growth mindset, we need to understand exactly as I was saying about like self-promotion, I think AI is going to be part of what we do, whether we want it or not. But no matter how good the technology is, we will always need expertise and a person and the human touch. So the human touch, actually, the things that we see is that now that AI is rising, the need for more human connection is increasing rapidly, way more than before. And people are looking for this connection and communication and all of that. So this is going to happen. It's like internet, whether we want it or not, AI is going to dominate all working environments. And I think the people who can be ahead of the curve are the people who will be open to adopting the technology and figuring out how can they leverage my own expertise and combine it with AI. And I'm saying that because I have a lot of clients who are resistant and I think these people are going to be left behind if they just don't open up their mindset to the technology and Do not see it as something, as a threat, but more as an opportunity to supercharge what you do and increase your productivity or improve your skills and output. Exactly. Or even grow into an area that you haven't thought you would grow, like, especially for people who work in tech, which is like a huge part of my industry and where I've spent like all my corporate career, you cannot work in tech and be resistant to technology. Like then you are in the wrong industry. So just something, because I have a lot of conversations around that lately. And I mean, we all need to be more open around that and just figure out not if we're going to use it, but how we can use it better.

Okay, Jota, I've got a couple more questions that I want to touch on. And first one is, what's the worst common piece of advice you hear about promotions or salary negotiation? Bad advice that people receive.

Bad advice is clearly what we said before, which is like, work hard and you will be rewarded. That's never gonna happen. Then I feel like a lot of people, when someone is not asking and is not getting it, they would tell them, oh, there's not an opportunity, look for somewhere else. I feel like the moment they say no, that's when the negotiation starts. And I feel like a lot of people, they give up. When they've just opened the door. So they are actually missing the oppor— the opportunities not to ask. Sometimes we might ask and it happened. I have clients that that happened. So they hadn't even asked. And when we do it, they got immediately the promotion or the pay rise or whatever it is that we needed. But in most cases, you're not going to get a yes from the get-go. So instead of like stopping and feeling like, oh, I need to look somewhere else, or there's no opportunity there, with— there is all this bad advice that people are giving you, I'm thinking the exact opposite. I'm like, okay, great, because now we can start negotiating and we can see what is the skill set that is missing? What is it about our positioning? What, um, uh, do people know? Do they not know? Where's the opportunity? Is there another way to talk about that? So I feel this is the moment where you really, the game starts instead of the game ends. So yeah, I would go against that.

Interesting. And then finally, Jota, you turned your career from, I do a bit of coaching, into a real business with serious outcomes for hundreds of people. What has been the hardest part of scaling yourself without burning out or turning it into a factory?

And I'm not going to lie. I went through my own burnout, but I would say that it's a bit more controlled now. So I am, I have set up my own control mechanisms for my own self and—

Give us a couple of clues.

So I would say that most people are waiting to take a break when they're burnt out. That's too late. The best way to deal with burnout is to not burn out. So for me, the moment I start seeing like a disruption in my sleep or a level of anxiety or start skipping the gym or not eating properly for like 2, 3 weeks in a row, I realize that there's something wrong in my schedule and what I'm doing right now. And I will literally take a step back and I'll be like, okay, what's going on right now? What's my schedule looks like? Have I lost control? What do I need in order to regain control? So I always have this like little signs and usually I would say our body is so smart and our body is always giving us some sign. Like for me, it's always sleep. Like I will start having this random wake up, waking up at 2 AM and start thinking and I'm like, ooh, why is this happening? I'm like, I was tired enough to sleep. Why do I wake up 1 AM and I keep thinking about work? So I have this like small control mechanism just to make sure I will catch it before it it's too late. And then for the question about the factory, it's an interesting one. And I will respond truthfully as I'm very direct as a Greek person. If people were wondering where this accent comes from, I'm Greek and we like honesty and direct.

And they'll have to listen to all the way to the end to find out, but you drop clues throughout.

It's a surprise that expects the listener. And I was considering, because obviously my business is at the moment where it's scaling and I start having more demand. Than what I can deliver. And the way I went about that is, first of all, I am slightly pivoting the business to personal branding, um, because I feel like I'm in a stage where I can really help amplify people's, people's work and, um, personal brands. And I think by amplifying those brands, my impact can be significant. Um, so I work with people who have big audiences or who are running like high-growth startups and all of that, VCs in some cases, just helping them with like the positioning and personal branding, which obviously it's a more high-ticket offer, but then instead of impacting one person at a time, you impact someone who impacts thousands. And I feel in this way, one of my personal measures of success is impact. It is also, I also have financial goals. Of course, I'm running a business, but impact is a big part of how I perceive success of what I do. So I am pivoting slightly towards that direction. And then I'm starting to do more like group things. So I, I played with the idea of coaching, of training other coaches to do what I do. It doesn't resonate with me that much. I want to have the contact with the people and I want people to have access to me. So instead, what I'm doing is I'm doing more like group stuff and things so people can still have access.

And like you said, in the age of AI, the face-to-face or direct communication is more important than ever.

But also I enjoy it more. And I'm also like, I'm fine not to have a huge business. I'm fine to have a still pretty successful business that, as I said, I feel abundance in that. But I am extremely happy with. And like right now I love my business. I wake up every day and I feel the luckiest person in the world. And I wanna protect that at any cost. And I think if I had to, like, I never wanted to build a huge company myself. I want a small and very good team. And I think you can still have a very big business with like 3, 4 people surrounding you. So, you know, that's kind of like the way I'm thinking about it and how I'm thinking of like growing the business, but a little bit differently than just factory, the factory version.

One final question, Jota.

Okay, go.

Something to leave people inspired at the end of this episode. If you could write an email, a letter, a WhatsApp message to Jota when you left the corporate world and you started your your coaching business, what would be the advice?

When I left my corporate job, as we discussed, there was a lot of doubt. The doubt was mostly about myself and what would be possible to achieve. Starting my business, I started this community Together in Tech, which I still run. It's all like a nonprofit. In less than a year, I had about like 4,000, 5,000 people following the community and coming to my events. And I found myself like in the Telegraph hosting events and like in other big companies, big tech companies, et cetera. And I think a lot of times fear prevents us from exploring our full potential. I think if I hadn't challenged myself with entrepreneurship, um, and I haven't found my passion into like coaching and enabling people and all of that, I probably would have missed a huge opportunity to get to know myself. And what I'm capable of. So I would say in positive psychology, the first lesson they did to us at the university, at my master's, was the power of negative emotions and how they're a driving force. So a lot of times, like fear and doubt, of course, no one wants to feel that, and we all want to feel super empowered and confident and all of that, but those emotions are what drives us forward. And if we do not feel the fear and do it anyway, as they say, we might be missing a huge opportunity to happiness. So for me, like feeling the fear and still going for that, of course, my mission, like I had a strong why I was doing that and what I wanted to bring in the world. And I feel that was a huge motivator for me. So I would say like, find your why. And then whenever you feel the fear, see it as an opportunity to explore something more about yourself that maybe you didn't know you were capable of. And I promise you, you will be very surprised by where you can get. But I mean, it's such a shame to spend a lifetime and never know, you know, what you're capable of. It will be such a missed opportunity for you and the world.

So feel the fear, but do it anyway because you don't want to live with a what if.

And not knowing what you can do, right? I mean, a big part of my confidence comes from all of that. Like, I feel you always teach what you are not good, what you struggled with, if I tell the truth. And I think for me, confidence was a big part of my own journey.

And Millennial Masters and the journey of others in business is also a learning exercise and sharing all this knowledge with everybody else through my previous experiences. So I can certainly resonate with that.

Exactly.

Thank you so much, Jota, for opening up and sharing so many insightful tips that will be useful not only for the entrepreneurs and founders, but also for people looking to level up their careers and promotions and get what they deserve for their self-worth.

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for all the amazing questions.

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